Just before God had smiled upon him—­“Fear not, Abram:  I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.”  Then all was light and love.  “The candle of the Lord shone on his head.”  When he complained that he had no child to comfort him, or inherit his possessions, God promised him an heir, and countless progeny—­“Look now toward heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them—­So shall thy seed be.  And he believed the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”  What an occasion of joy?  What strange manifestation of divine favor?  They are scarcely paralleled in the history of man.  But how sudden the reverse?  The same day—­when the sun was going down; lo! the brightness disappears, and an horror of great darkness fell upon him.

A deep sleep fell upon Abram.  This was not a natural sleep.  There is no probability that he would have given way to weakness, and fallen into a common sleep, while engaged in covenanting with God; binding himself with solemn engagements, and receiving tokens of the divine favor, and the promise of blessings for a great while to come.  If he could have slept while receiving such manifestations of the divine friendship, it is not probable that his dreams would have been terrifying:  His situation would rather have inspired joyful sensations, and exciting pleasing expectations.  THAT which for want of language more pertinent and expressive, is here termed sleep, seems to have been divine ecstasy—­such influence of the holy spirit operating in the soul, as locked it up from everything earthly, and shut out worldly things, as effectually as a deep sleep, which shuts up the soul and closeth all its avenues, so that nothing terrestrial can find admittance.

This was often experienced by the prophets, when God revealed himself to them, and made known his will.  Thus Daniel, when the angel Gabriel was sent to solve his doubts, and let him into futurity—­“Now as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground.”  The holy prophet, filled with fear at the approach of the celestial messenger, could not have fallen asleep, like some careless attendant in the house of God.  Yet such is the language used to express his situation at that time, and afterwards on a similar occasion.* The three disciples, who witnessed the transfiguration, experienced similar sensations—­sensations which absorbed the soul, and shut out terrestrial objects, which the evangelist compares to sleep.

* Daniel viii. 18, x. 9.

But why was Abram’s joy, occasioned by the communications of the morning, so soon turned to horror.