OF LIFE TESTED.

23

he were a Jew worshipping but yesterday in the Bayswater Synagogue: or (being a progressive and Christ-discerning soul) a Christian blending his faith and service with ours this morning. Strangely complex is his character! Strikingly human the combination of defect and excellence, of great mistakes and great devotion, of detestable cowardice and of divine courage! At one moment, so timid that he tells that worst sort of lie, the lie that is a verbal truth, to screen his wife; and at another so fearlessly self-suppressive that in obedience to what he thinks the will of God, he lifts his hand to thrust the murderous knife into the quivering flesh of his darling son. A man dazed by life's illusions, a dreamer of strange dreams, and a seer of impossible visions, he yet has a firm hold of solid fact, and is ready, in the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers, to cross the Euphrates and travel to Damascus, that he may separate himself from idolatry, and not be tempted to prostrate himself before a corrupting falsehood. Tempted in more points than we are, and yielding often, yet so true to the light he sees, that he stands out like a faithful Abdiel in his consecration to the good, the right, and the true. A great traveller and a sturdy soldier, a loving father and a kind master, a real sufferer, enduring a great fight of afflictions, and a true conqueror, never himself becoming a fettered slave; he is a typal Jew, or rather a typal Man; who finds his chief delight in the recognition of the wisdom and goodness and love of that God who has admitted him to the hallowed intimacies and inspiring uses of His sacred "friendship."

Now from that test-life, take the most critical incident. Examine the metal of the man when he is cast into the fiercest fires! Out of his long pilgrimage, select the days in

24

THE MOUNTAIN

which he has the steepest, toughest climb, even along the rugged heights of the mountain of parental self-sacrifice. From his many days of trial, take those in which he needs the "Strength" of God the most, and see whether he has it, what he does with it, and what comes of his use of it. For if the bridge will not bear the biggest load that may at any time cross it, and the wildest whirl of the wildest storm that may sweep over it, it is not safe; but, if at such a time it is tsteadfast as the everlasting hills, we need not fear, but having crossed over it ourselves, we may "wire " back our witness to the solidity of the structure to those who follow us, and assure them that "all is well."

Could any day-I ask those who know most of the men of sorrows and whose acquaintance is widest and most recent with the depths of human suffering-could any day, think you, exceed in misery and anguish that tragical time in which Abraham, seized by the spell of an irresistible inspiration, first felt that he must offer his son, his only son, his beloved son Isaac, to God, or be guilty of disobedience to the Lord and Ruler of his life? Jehovah claimed the full consecration of his most valued and cherished possession to Himself. The Divine mandate rung out in the chambers of his soul, "Offer him for an offering." What a knell of doom for all his fondest hopes! What a baptism to be baptized with! How bitter a cup to drink! Well may he say, "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say ? Jehovah, save me from this hour!" Can you blame him if he offers that prayer? Look, fathers and mothers, at your one child, in whom you have garnered your loves and hopes for a score years, and ask what would have been your cry?

OF PARENTAL SELF-SACRIFICE.

25

And remember too, Abraham is an old man, and his heart is sore, for he has led a troubled life. Early in his days he felt compelled to leave father and mother and kindred, and dwell in a strange land, so that he might not lose his God. Conscience isolated him from the established religion and closed against him the door of "Society." His tent, though it had many costly treasures, was unenriched with that most coveted and satisfying good, a child and heir of his own. It was not till after years of weary waiting, and hope was well nigh dead, that Isaac was born. Then he grew up under his own personal and loving care, rarely out of his sight, his mind stored with all his father knew of God and His revelation, a meek and meditative lad, the pride and delight of that first Hebrew Home. Wasn't the old man likely to love him with a love passing that of women, even though those women were mothers? How tenaciously we cling to the young life about us as we feel our own lease swiftly running out! How we live again in the presence of the tireless and spontaneous activity of that new stock and replenish the wasting fires of our vitality! How we want to keep it near us, to shape it with our own hands, to control its choices, to fix its destiny; and what a loud lament escapes us when God says, "Offer him to me as an offering!" Ah! this is the culmination of human trials! The precious and beautiful vase, chased with figures of exquisite loveliness by our own hands, enshrining our dearest hopes and our fondest affections, is being taken from our home and sight, and we cannot bear it!

The day of the offering of Isaac is, then, the day of days, the day of fearful temptation, of impending judgment in

26

THE REAL MEANING

Abraham's long and much-tried life; more severely afflictive than the day of exile from the old homestead, more endangering than the battle with the kings, more acutely painful than the risking of his wife's safety, more distressing than even the doom of Sodom; worse than any one, or all these put together, and yet he made it unspeakably worse by misreading God's message, and mistaking the significance of the strong impulse that disturbed and tempted him. God said to him, "Go offer thy son for an offering, at a spot and under circumstances of which I will tell thee." The message was not "Go slay thy son," but simply and only"offer him for an offering," i.e., offer him wholly to God and for God's uses, surrender him at once and for ever, let God Himself direct and shape his life, as He has done yours, give him full freedom, permit him to be a living independent Will, unfettered by the restraints of an unwise, though loving parental dictation, dedicated wholly and for ever to God and to God's work in the world. That was the entire meaning of the revelation, and Abraham would have obeyed the Lord's voice in form as well as in spirit, if he had taken Isaac to the mountains, and said like Hannah with her son Samuel, or Isaiah with himself, "Here is my gift, take it, use it, as Thou wilt, and where Thou wilt. I offer it wholly and unreservedly to Thee." Directions would then have reached him of the way in which that surrendered life was henceforth to be used in the establishment of the kingdom, or rule of God on the earth.*

"Offer him for an offering" is the true rendering of the Original Direction. Gesenius, one of the highest authorities, says of the verb, "It signifies (1) to go up, and is often used in speaking of those who go from a lower to a higher place, as from Egypt to Judæa; also of those who go up to the sanctuary, sanctuaries having been built on high

OF THE DIVINE COMMAND.

27

But Abraham fell into the sin which so easily besets us, of importing into the Divine revelation the current falsehoods of that heathen-world from which he had been so steadfastly departing in thought and in spirit all the days of his life, thereby reading into God's mandate a commission to murder his own child, and so adding unimaginable severities to the heart-rending fierceness of the temptations which life had brought him. The words creating this awful crisis in his soul, did not mean "kill thy son, and burn him with fire," although they required a deed of scarcely less poignancy and anguish, as parental experience in many cases will vouch, viz., that total giving-up of the loved and precious life which he had fondled for twenty years, and in which he had stored all his hopes and loves, to a future he could not see and dare not guess. Goaded by the agony of the hour, he leapt forthwith to follow the first impression that seized him; arising early in the places, like monasteries-Ex. xxxiv. 24. (2) To increase, to overcome. (3) To cause to go up, to lead up-Josh. ii. 6. To put lamps on the candlestick-Ex. xxv. 37. Specially to put a sacrifice on the altar in Isa. lvii. 6. The noun" offering" describes what is laid on the altar; and specially with a word signifying perfect-a sacrifice of which the whole was offered." "In after ages it was specially applied," says Prof. Godwin, "to some burnt offerings, but certainly this was not the primary signification, and its use in the Levitical law, whatever that may be, would not prove its meaning in the time of Abraham. There is nothing in the original," he adds, "respecting slaying or burning. There were terms to denote such actions, and these were employed when slaying or burning had to be expressed, but they are not used here. The noun is derived from the verb, and both are general terms, not defining the way in which the offering was made."-Expositor (Second Series, Vol. I., 305.) No doubt the words are emphatic, as in the subsequent promise, God says, "In blessing, I will bless thee, and in multiplying, I will multiply thee," so here the direction is "Offer him for an offering"; but according to a rule illustrated by Ewald (Syntax of the Hebrew language, 51-3) the repetition of the idea of the verb in the noun adds to the intensity of the direction to surrender, and enforces the need for completeness in the gift, but it makes no specification of the mode in which the offering is to be made. It does not say, it must be slain and burnt.