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came by Jesus Christ ? Whether God vouchsafed his revelation 

 immediately from himself, as lie sometimes did to Abraham; or by 

 the administration of angels, as to Lot; or in a dream, as by 

 Jacob's symbolical ladder; those highly-favoured men had none 

 of those doubts which perplexed the philosophers of Greece and 

 Rome. They could not, with metaphysical subtilty, argue in the 

 Stoa or dispute in the Lyceum, yet these unlettered shepherds of 

 Mesopotamia went far beyond them : in strong faith Abraham 

 could plant a grove at Beersheba, and call upon the name of the 

 everlasting God ! When he sent his servant into Mesopotamia, to 

 take a wife for his son, he could say in simple language, " The Lord 

 God of Heaven, who took me from my father's house and from 

 the land of my kindred, he shall send his angel before thee to 

 direct thee in the way." There was no mystery in the revelation to 

 Isaac when the Lord appeared to him at Beersheba, and said " I 

 am the God of Abraham thy father, fear not, for I am with thee, 

 and will bless thee!" Who can be a stranger to Jacob's sentiments 

 when, after leaving his father's house in poverty and distress, and 

 sleeping on the ground, on his journey to Haran, with only a stone 

 for his pillow, he dreamed that a ladder w r as set upon the earth, 

 and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God 

 ascended and descended on it? When he awoke, he was not left 

 to conjecture, but piously exclaimed, " Surely the Lord is in this 

 place; it is none other but the house of God, and the gate of hea- 

 ven !" In his extreme old age, after such an eventful life as few 

 experience, he blessed Joseph, and said, " The God before whom 

 my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed 

 me all my life long until this day, the Angel which redeemed me 

 from all evil, bless thy sons !" When these patriarchs had fi.il- 



