The Boy of Promise.

HE second brother had fallen a victim to the jealous pride of the first, his body had returned to the dust, and his spirit, the first of human kind made perfect, had entered heaven— there to raise the first note in that

song of praise to the LAMB slain from the foundation of the world which will never cease-when unto the disconsolate parents the LORD GOD gave another son, whom his mother called SETH-put, or appointed; for God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.

Glancing at the leading events, from this period until the days of the father of the Boy of Promise, we note that unto the first parents were other sons and daughters born;

that men began to multiply, the days of whose years were many, in some cases approaching one thousand; that there were giants in the earth in those days—mighty men of old, men of renown — monsters of iniquity, some of them, whose wickedness was great; that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, warned the ungodly sinners, and was not, for God took him; that God repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart; that after one hundred and twenty years warning he brought the flood upon the world of the ungodly, but saved Noah and his family; that the earth was again re-peopled; that again men rebelled against their Holy Creator, who frustrated their impious design of raising a tower to heaven, by confusing their speech and scattering them over the face of the earth.

The links in the chain which connected the Father of the Boy Brothers and of Seth with the Father of the Boy of Promise, were these

ADAM, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Maleleel, Jared, Enoch, Mathusala, Lamech, Noe, Sem, Arphaxad, Cainan, Sala, Heber, Phalec, Ragau, Saruch, Nachor, Thara, ABRAHAM, as traced by the Evangelist Luke, in his genealogical table, and using his orthography-nineteen links between the Father of the world and the Father of the faithful, extending over a period, as near as we can tell, of 2,000 years, or equal to one-third of the present age of the world. The names are slightly different in Genesis, but they are easily distinguished.

Phalec, or Peleg, who was alive at the dispersion of Babel, probably remained in Chaldea during the erection of the tower, or removed thither afterwards, for we find his descendant Thara, or Terah, settled there at the time of the birth of Abram. The region was several hundred miles to the north-west of the supposed sites of Eden and of Babel, and south of Mount Ararat, and is variously called Chaldea, Mesopo

tamia, and Padanaram-the land between two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris; watered also by the Chebar, it was rich and fertile the olive, vine, and mulberry yielding their fruits without cultivation. The summers were hot and the winters mild. It is now peopled by wild Arabs.

The Father of the Child of Promise was one of the most remarkable men the world ever knew. For faith in God and obedience to God he was unrivalled. Something must first be said about him, or what may be said about his son will not be so well understood. He was born about the time of the death of Noah.

Terah, or Thara, as Luke calls him, when his three sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran, were born, dwelt in Ur, or Ouri, of the Chaldees, or, fire of the Chaldees; and hence some have thought that after the death of Haran, Terah and his family set out for Canaan, because they would not join in the fire-worship of the idolatrous Chaldeans. But it appears that, coming

south, they halted at Haran.

Whether this

place was named from the son whose bones they had left in Ur, or whether he had been named from the place does not appear. There is some doubt as to the exact position of Haran, or Charran, as Luke calls it; some supposing it was but about twenty miles south of Ur, and within Mesopotamia; and others that it was on the borders of Syria, not far from Damascusas Luke seems to intimate in the report he gives of the address of Stephen before the council.

Terah died in Haran. His days were two hundred and five years. Abram appears to have been his successor as head of the family.

The life of this noble patriarch, before the birth of his promised son, was full of interesting incidents, and we advise our young friends to begin at the twelfth chapter of the book of Genesis, to which we have now conducted them, and read the whole as given in our beautiful