If it was of sovereign grace that Abraham was called out of his heathen state and made to know the living and true God; it was no less of that grace to be one born in his house, for Abraham was one of whom God could say:"I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment."

To know God was no small matter now to Abraham ; he appreciated it, he found his delight in it, and to communicate it to his house would be a moral necessity in his soul, and thus subject it to that God to whom to be subject is the height of man's blessing and honor.

To be born, therefore, in such a man's house is but a part of the sovereign grace that called and separated him from his heathen state and position.

What a high and blessed, as also responsible position, therefore, is that of a Christian at the head of his household – God's means of perpetuating the knowledge of Himself in a world where everything tends to destroy it. Alas, for the Christian who fails to realize this, and who allows his house to drift at will. Woe also to the child who fails to recognize the grace of God in having been born in a Christian household, where God's character was manifested, the truth daily taught and practiced, and everything ordered to maintain what God loves and delights in.

As Abraham's children got more and more remote from him, they lost more and more the knowledge of God, until finally God Himself-the God whom Abraham had so readily recognized, and adoringly entertained, when He passed by his tent door-visiting them in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ, was unrecognized, hated, and cast out by them. Their punishment is not small, but how much greater must become the punishment of those who sin against greater light and blessing.

Oh, that every Christian man, in the energy of the Spirit of God, would shake off all this guilty indifference, this unholy pursuit after earthly goods, this dreadful idleness of soul, which cannot trouble itself with the pains of household government; this self-will, which forbids the government of self; and, looking at himself and all his house in the light of the glory where our Lord is now, which is soon to be manifested and we taken into it, take up his task in faith, and give honor to the God who has shown us such marvelous grace and love.

Much failure in detail will even such a man of God have to confess as he goes; but as Abraham will yet behold the glorious ending of his faith in his house when Israel is in her glory, so will every man who has treasured up in his heart the promises of God, and, in faith, turned them into practice.
P. J. L.