In it we have unfolded to us the two great principles of sonship and heirship. "And Abram said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go _childless_, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, Behold, thou hast given to me no _seed_: and lo, one born in my house is mine _heir_." Abraham desired a son, for he knew upon divine authority that his "seed" should inherit the land. (Chap. xiii. 15.) Sonship and heirship are inseparably connected in the thoughts of God. "He that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir." Sonship is the proper basis of every thing; and moreover it is the result of God's sovereign counsel and operation, as we read in James, "of his own will begat he us." Finally, it is founded upon God's eternal principle of resurrection. How else could it be? Abraham's body was "dead;" wherefore, in his case, as in every other, sonship must be in the power of resurrection. Nature is dead, and can neither beget nor conceive aught for God. There lay the inheritance stretching out before the patriarch's eye, in all its magnificent dimensions; but where was the heir? Abraham's body and Sarah's womb alike answered "_death_." But Jehovah is the God of resurrection, and, therefore, a "dead body" was the very thing for him to act upon. Had nature not been dead, God should have put it to death ere he could fully show himself. The most suitable theatre for the living God is that from which nature, with all its boasted powers and empty pretensions, has been totally expelled by the sentence of death. Wherefore, God's word to Abraham was, "look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them; and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be." When the God of resurrection fills the vision there is no limit to the soul's blessing, for he who can quicken the dead, can do any thing.