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Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers

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Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers

Author: Alexander Maclaren


        
Release date: December 1, 2004 [eBook #7069]
                Most recently updated: October 17, 2012

Language: English

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Produced by Anne Folland, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team











EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

GENESIS, EXODUS, LEVITICUS AND NUMBERS




EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

GENESIS




CONTENTS


THE VISION OF CREATION (Genesis i. 26--ii. 3)

HOW SIN CAME IN (Genesis iii. 1-15)

EDEN LOST AND RESTORED (Genesis iii. 24; Revelation xxii. 14)

THE GROWTH AND POWER OF SIN (Genesis iv. 3-16)

WHAT CROUCHES AT THE DOOR (Genesis iv. 7, R.V.)

WITH, BEFORE, AFTER (Genesis v. 22; Genesis xvii. 1; Deuteronomy xiii.
4)

THE COURSE AND CROWN OF A DEVOUT LIFE (Genesis v. 24)

THE SAINT AMONG SINNERS (Genesis vi. 9-22)

'CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN' (Genesis viii. 1-22)

THE SIGN FOR MAN AND THE REMEMBRANCER FOR GOD (Genesis ix. 8-17)

AN EXAMPLE OF FAITH (Genesis xii. 1-9)

ABRAM AND THE LIFE OF FAITH

GOING FORTH (Genesis xii. 5)

COMING IN

THE MAN OF FAITH (Genesis xii. 6, 7)

LIFE IN CANAAN (Genesis xii. 8)

THE IMPORTANCE OF A CHOICE (Genesis xiii. 1-13)

ABBAM THE HEBREW (Genesis xiv. 13)

GOD'S COVENANT WITH ABRAM (Genesis xv. 5-18)

THE WORD THAT SCATTERS FEAR (Genesis xv. 1)

FAITH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS (Genesis xv. 6)

WAITING FAITH REWARDED AND STRENGTHENED BY NEW REVELATIONS (Genesis
xvii. 1-9)

A PETULANT WISH (Genesis xvii. 18)

'BECAUSE OF HIS IMPORTUNITY' (Genesis xviii. l6-33)

THE INTERCOURSE OF GOD AND HIS FRIEND

THE SWIFT DESTROYER (Genesis xix. 15-26)

FAITH TESTED AND CROWNED (Genesis xxii. 1-14)

THE CROWNING TEST AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH

JEHOVAH-JIREH (Genesis xxii. 14)

GUIDANCE IN THE WAY (Genesis xxiv. 27)

THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM (Genesis xxv. 8)

A BAD BARGAIN (Genesis xxv. 27-34)

POTTAGE _versus_ BIRTHRIGHT (Genesis xxv. 34)

THE FIRST APOSTLE OF PEACE AT ANY PRICE (Genesis xxvi. 12-25)

THE HEAVENLY PATHWAY AND THE EARTHLY HEART (Genesis xxviii. 10-22)

MAHANAIM: THE TWO CAMPS (Genesis xxxii. 1, 2)

THE TWOFOLD WRESTLE--GOD'S WITH JACOB AND JACOB'S WITH GOD (Genesis
xxxii. 9-12)

A FORGOTTEN VOW (Genesis xxxv. 1)

THE TRIALS AND VISIONS OF DEVOUT YOUTH (Genesis xxxvii. 1-11)

MAN'S PASSIONS AND GOD'S PURPOSE (Genesis xxxvii. 23-36)

GOODNESS IN A DUNGEON (Genesis xl. 1-15)

JOSEPH, THE PRIME MINISTER (Genesis xli. 38-48)

RECOGNITION AND RECONCILIATION (Genesis xlv. 1-15)

JOSEPH, THE PARDONER AND PRESERVER

GROWTH BY TRANSPLANTING (Genesis xlvii. 1-12)

TWO RETROSPECTS OF ONE LIFE (Genesis xlvii. 9; Genesis xlviii. 15, 16)

'THE HANDS OF THE MIGHTY GOD OF JACOB' (Genesis xlix. 23, 24)

THE SHEPHERD, THE STONE OF ISRAEL (Genesis xlix. 24)

A CALM EVENING, PROMISING A BRIGHT MORNING (Genesis l. 14-26)

JOSEPH'S FAITH (Genesis l. 25)

A COFFIN IN EGYPT (Genesis l. 26)




 THE VISION OF CREATION


    'And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
    likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of
    the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
    cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping
    thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man
    in His own image: in the image of God created He him;
    male and female created He them. And God blessed them:
    and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and
    replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion
    over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
    and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
    And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing
    seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every
    tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed;
    to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the
    earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing
    that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I
    have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And
    God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it
    was very good. And the evening and the morning were the
    sixth day.

    'Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all
    the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His
    work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day
    from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the
    seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He
    had rested from all His work which God created and made.'
    --GENESIS i. 26-ii. 3.

We are not to look to Genesis for a scientific cosmogony, and are not
to be disturbed by physicists' criticisms on it as such. Its purpose is
quite another, and far more important; namely, to imprint deep and
ineffaceable the conviction that the one God created all things. Nor
must it be forgotten that this vision of creation was given to people
ignorant of natural science, and prone to fall back into surrounding
idolatry. The comparison of the creation narratives in Genesis with the
cuneiform tablets, with which they evidently are most closely
connected, has for its most important result the demonstration of the
infinite elevation above their monstrosities and puerilities, of this
solemn, steadfast attribution of the creative act to the one God. Here
we can only draw out in brief the main points which the narrative
brings into prominence.

1. The revelation which it gives is the truth, obscured to all other
men when it was given, that one God 'in the beginning created the
heaven and the earth.' That solemn utterance is the keynote of the
whole. The rest but expands it. It was a challenge and a denial for all
the beliefs of the nations, the truth of which Israel was the champion
and missionary. It swept the heavens and earth clear of the crowd of
gods, and showed the One enthroned above, and operative in, all things.
We can scarcely estimate the grandeur, the emancipating power, the
all-uniting force, of that utterance. It is a worn commonplace to us.
It was a strange, thrilling novelty when it was written at the head of
this narrative. _Then_ it was in sharp opposition to beliefs that have
long been dead to us; but it is still a protest against some living
errors. Physical science has not spoken the final word when it has
shown us how things came to be as they are. There remains the deeper
question, What, or who, originated and guided the processes? And the
only answer is the ancient declaration, 'In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth.'

2. The record is as emphatic and as unique in its teaching as to the
mode of creation: 'God said ... and it was so.' That lifts us above all
the poor childish myths of the nations, some of them disgusting, many
of them absurd, all of them unworthy. There was no other agency than
the putting forth of the divine will. The speech of God is but a symbol
of the flashing forth of His will. To us Christians the antique phrase
suggests a fulness of meaning not inherent in it, for we have learned
to believe that 'all things were made by Him' whose name is 'The Word
of God'; but, apart from that, the representation here is sublime. 'He
spake, and it was done'; that is the sign-manual of Deity.

3. The completeness of creation is emphasised. We note, not only the
recurrent 'and it was so,' which declares the perfect correspondence of
the result with the divine intention, but also the recurring 'God saw
that it was good.' His ideals are always realised. The divine artist
never finds that the embodiment of His thought falls short of His
thought.

  'What act is all its thought had been?
   What will but felt the fleshly screen?

But He has no hindrances nor incompletenesses in His creative work, and
the very sabbath rest with which the narrative closes symbolises, not
His need of repose, but His perfect accomplishment of His purpose. God
ceases from His works because 'the works were finished,' and He saw
that all was very good.

4. The progressiveness of the creative process is brought into strong
relief. The work of the first four days is the preparation of the
dwelling-place for the living creatures who are afterwards created to
inhabit it. How far the details of these days' work coincide with the
order as science has made it out, we are not careful to ask here. The
primeval chaos, the separation of the waters above from the waters
beneath, the emergence of the land, the beginning of vegetation there,
the shining out of the sun as the dense mists cleared, all find
confirmation even in modern theories of evolution. But the intention of
the whole is much rather to teach that, though the simple utterance of
the divine will was the agent of creation, the manner of it was not a
sudden calling of the world, as men know it, into being, but majestic,
slow advance by stages, each of which rested on the preceding. To apply
the old distinction between justification and sanctification, creation
was a work, not an act. The Divine Workman, who is always patient,
worked slowly then as He does now. Not at a leap, but by deliberate
steps, the divine ideal attains realisation.

5. The creation of living creatures on the fourth and fifth days is so
arranged as to lead up to the creation of man as the climax. On the
fifth day sea and air are peopled, and their denizens 'blessed,' for
the equal divine love holds every living thing to its heart. On the
sixth day the earth is replenished with living creatures. Then, last of
all, comes man, the apex of creation. Obviously the purpose of the
whole is to concentrate the light on man; and it is a matter of no
importance whether the narrative is correct according to zoology, or
not. What it says is that God made all the universe, that He prepared
the earth for the delight of living creatures, that the happy birds
that soar and sing, and the dumb creatures that move through the paths
of the seas, and the beasts of the earth, are all His creating, and
that man is linked to them, being made on the same day as the latter,
and by the same word, but that between man and them all there is a
gulf, since he is made in the divine image. That image implies
personality, the consciousness of self, the power to say 'I,' as well
as purity. The transition from the work of the first four days to that
of creating living things must have had a break. No theory has been
able to bridge the chasm without admitting a divine act introducing the
new element of life, and none has been able to bridge the gulf between
the animal and human consciousness without admitting a divine act
introducing 'the image of God' into the nature common to animal and
man. Three facts as to humanity are thrown up into prominence: its
possession of the image of God, the equality and eternal
interdependence of the sexes, and the lordship over all creatures. Mark
especially the remarkable wording of verse 27: 'created He _him_ male
and female created He _them_.' So 'neither is the woman without the
man, nor the man without the woman.' Each is maimed apart from the
other. Both stand side by side, on one level before God. The germ of
the most 'advanced' doctrines of the relations of the sexes is hidden
here.




HOW SIN CAME IN


    'Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the
    field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the
    woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree
    of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We
    may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of
    the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
    garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither
    shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said
    unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth
    know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes
    shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good
    and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good
    for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a
    tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the
    fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave also unto her
    husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them
    both were opened, and they knew that they were naked;
    and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves
    aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking
    in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his
    wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God
    amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called
    unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he
    said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid,
    because I was naked; and I hid myself. And He said, Who
    told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the
    tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not
    eat And the man said, The woman whom Thou gavest to be
    with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the
    Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast
    done? and the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I
    did eat. And the Lord God said onto the serpent. Because
    thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle,
    and above every beast of the field: upon thy belly shalt
    thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy
    life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman,
    and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy
    head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.'--GENESIS iii 1-15.

It is no part of my purpose to enter on the critical questions
connected with the story of 'the fall.' Whether it is a legend,
purified and elevated, or not, is of less consequence than what is its
moral and religious significance, and that significance is unaffected
by the answer to the former question. The story presupposes that
primitive man was in a state of ignorant innocence, not of intellectual
or moral perfection, and it tells how that ignorant innocence came to
pass into conscious sin. What are the stages of the transition?

1. There is the presentation of inducement to evil. The law to which
Adam is to be obedient is in the simplest form. There is restriction.
'Thou shalt not' is the first form of law, and it is a form congruous
with the undeveloped, though as yet innocent, nature ascribed to him.
The conception of duty is present, though in a very rudimentary shape.
An innocent being may be aware of limitations, though as yet not
'knowing good and evil.' With deep truth the story represents the first
suggestion of disobedience as presented from without. No doubt, it
might have by degrees arisen from within, but the thought that it was
imported from another sphere of being suggests that it is alien to true
manhood, and that, if brought in from without, it may be cast out
again. And the temptation had a personal source. There are beings who
desire to draw men away from God. The serpent, by its poison and its
loathly form, is the natural symbol of such an enemy of man. The
insinuating slyness of the suggestions of evil is like the sinuous
gliding of the snake, and truly represents the process by which
temptation found its way into the hearts of the first pair, and of all
their descendants. For it begins with casting a doubt on the reality of
the prohibition. 'Hath God said?' is the first parallel opened by the
besieger. The fascinations of the forbidden fruit are not dangled at
first before Eve, but an apparently innocent doubt is filtered into her
ear. And is not that the way in which we are still snared? The reality
of moral distinctions, the essential wrongness of the sin, is obscured
by a mist of sophistication. 'There is no harm in it' steals into some
young man's or woman's mind about things that were forbidden at home,
and they are half conquered before they know that they have been
attacked. Then comes the next besieger's trench, much nearer the
wall--namely, denial of the fatal consequences of the sin: 'Ye shall
not surely die,' and a base hint that the prohibition was meant, not as
a parapet to keep from falling headlong into the abyss, but as a
barrier to keep from rising to a great good; 'for God doth know, that
in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall
be as gods.' These are still the two lies which wile us to sin: 'It
will do you no harm,' and 'You are cheating yourselves out of good by
not doing it.'

2. Then comes the yielding to the tempter. As long as the prohibition
was undoubted, and the fatal results certain, the fascinations of the
forbidden thing were not felt. But as soon as these were tampered with,
Eve saw 'that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to
the eyes.' So it is still. Weaken the awe-inspiring sense of God's
command, and of the ruin that follows the breach of it, and the heart
of man is like a city without walls, into which any enemy can march
unhindered. So long as God's 'Thou shalt not, lest thou die' rings in
the ears, the eyes see little beauty in the sirens that sing and
beckon. But once that awful voice is deadened, they charm, and allure
to dally with them.

In the undeveloped condition of primitive man temptation could only
assail him through the senses and appetites, and its assault would be
the more irresistible because reflection and experience were not yet
his. But the act of yielding was, as sin ever is, a deliberate choice
to please self and disobey God. The woman's more emotional, sensitive,
compliant nature made her the first victim, and her greatest glory, her
craving to share her good with him whom she loves, and her power to
sway his will and acts, made her his temptress. 'As the husband is, the
wife is,' says Tennyson; but the converse is even truer: As the wife
is, the man is.

3. The fatal consequences came with a rush. There is a gulf between
being tempted and sinning, but the results of the sin are closely knit
to it. They come automatically, as surely as a stream from a fountain.
The promise of knowing good and evil was indeed kept, but instead of
its making the sinners 'like gods,' it showed them that they were like
beasts, and brought the first sense of shame. To know evil was, no
doubt, a forward step intellectually; but to know it by experience, and
as part of themselves, necessarily changed their ignorant innocence
into bitter knowledge, and conscience awoke to rebuke them. The first
thing that their opened eyes saw was themselves, and the immediate
result of the sight was the first blush of shame. Before, they had
walked in innocent unconsciousness, like angels or infants; now they
had knowledge of good and evil, because their sin had made evil a part
of themselves, and the knowledge was bitter.

The second consequence of the fall is the disturbed relation with God,
which is presented in the highly symbolical form fitting for early
ages, and as true and impressive for the twentieth century as for them.
Sin broke familiar communion with God, turned Him into a 'fear and a
dread,' and sent the guilty pair into ambush. Is not that deeply and
perpetually true? The sun seen through mists becomes a lurid ball of
scowling fire. The impulse is to hide from God, or to get rid of
thoughts of Him. And when He _is_ felt to be near, it is as a
questioner, bringing sin to mind. The shuffling excuses, which venture
even to throw the blame of sin on God ('the woman whom _Thou_ gavest
me'), or which try to palliate it as a mistake ('the serpent beguiled
me'), have to come at last, however reluctantly, to confess that 'I'
did the sin. Each has to say, 'I did eat.' So shall we all have to do.
We may throw the blame on circumstances, weakness of judgment, and the
like, while here, but at God's bar we shall have to say, '_Mea_ culpa,
_mea_ culpa.'

The curse pronounced on the serpent takes its habit and form as an
emblem of the degradation of the personal tempter, and of the perennial
antagonism between him and mankind, while even at that first hour of
sin and retribution a gleam of hope, like the stray beam that steals
through a gap in a thundercloud, promises that the conquered shall one
day be the conqueror, and that the woman's seed, though wounded in the
struggle, shall one day crush the poison-bearing, flat head in the
dust, and end forever his power to harm. 'Known unto God are all his
works from the beginning,' and the Christ was promised ere the gates of
Eden were shut on the exiles.




EDEN LOST AND RESTORED


    'So He drove out the man: and He placed at the east of
    the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which
    turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.'
    --GENESIS iii. 24.

    'Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they
    may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in
    through the gates into the city.'
    REVELATION xxii. 14.

Better is the end of a thing than the beginning.' Eden was fair, but
the heavenly city shall be fairer. The Paradise regained is an advance
on the Paradise that was lost. These are the two ends of the history of
man, separated by who knows how many millenniums. Heaven lay about him
in his infancy, but as he journeyed westwards its morning blush faded
into the light of common day--and only at eventide shall the sky glow
again with glory and colour, and the western heaven at last outshine
the eastern, with a light that shall never die. A fall, and a rise--a
rise that reverses the fall, a rise that transcends the glory from
which he fell,--that is the Bible's notion of the history of the world,
and I, for my part, believe it to be true, and feel it to be the one
satisfactory explanation of what I see round about me and am conscious
of within me.

1. _Man had an Eden and lost it._

I take the Fall to be a historical fact. To all who accept the
authority of Scripture, no words are needed beyond the simple statement
before us, but we may just gather up the signs that there are on the
wide field of the world's history, and in the narrower experience of
individuals, that such a fall has been.

Look at the condition of the world: its degradation, its savagery-all
its pining myriads, all its untold millions who sit in darkness and the
shadow of death. Will any man try to bring before him the actual state
of the heathen world, and, retaining his belief in a God, profess that
these men are what God meant men to be? It seems to me that the present
condition of the world is not congruous with the idea that men are in
their primitive state, and if this is what God meant men for, then I
see not how the dark clouds which rest on His wisdom and His love are
to be lifted off.

Then, again--if the world has not a Fall in its history, then we must
take the lowest condition as the one from which all have come; and is
that idea capable of defence? Do we see anywhere signs of an upward
process going on now? Have we any experience of a tribe raising itself?
Can you catch anywhere a race in the act of struggling up, outside of
the pale of Christianity? Is not the history of all a history of
decadence, except only where the Gospel has come in to reverse the
process?

But passing from this: What mean the experiences of the
individual-these longings; this hard toil; these sorrows?

How comes it that man alone on earth, manifestly meant to be leader,
lord, etc., seems but cursed with a higher nature that he may know
greater sorrows, and raised above the beasts in capacity that he may
sink below them in woe, this capacity only leading to a more exquisite
susceptibility, to a more various as well as more poignant misery?

Whence come the contrarieties and discordance in his nature?

It seems to me that all this is best explained as the Bible explains it
by saying: (1) Sin has done it; (2) Sin is not part of God's original
design, but man has fallen; (3) Sin had a personal beginning. There
have been men who were pure, able to stand but free to fall.

It seems to me that that explanation is more in harmony with the facts
of the case, finds more response in the unsophisticated instinct of
man, than any other. It seems to me that, though it leaves many dark
and sorrowful mysteries all unsolved, yet that it alleviates the
blackest of them, and flings some rays of hope on them all. It seems to
me that it relieves the character and administration of God from the
darkest dishonour; that it delivers man's position and destiny from the
most hopeless despair; that though it leaves the mystery of the origin
of evil, it brings out into clearest relief the central truths that
evil is evil, and sin and sorrow are not God's will; that it vindicates
as something better than fond imaginings the vague aspirations of the
soul for a fair and holy state; that it establishes, as nothing else
will, at once the love of God and the dignity of man; that it leaves
open the possibility of the final overthrow of that Sin which it treats
as an intrusion and stigmatises as a fall; that it therefore braces for
more vigorous, hopeful conflict against it, and that while but for it
the answer to the despairing question, Hast Thou made all men in vain?
must be either the wailing echo 'In vain,' or the denial that He has
made them at all, there is hope and there is power, and there is
brightness thrown on the character of God and on the fate of man, by
the old belief that God made man upright, and that man made himself a
sinner.

2. _Heaven restores the lost Eden_.

'God is not ashamed to be called their God, _for_ He hath prepared them
a _city_.'

The highest conception we can form of heaven is the reversal of all the
evil of earth, and the completion of its incomplete good: the sinless
purity--the blessed presence of God--the fulfilment of all desires--the
service which is _blessed_, not toil--the changelessness which is
progress, not stagnation.

3. _Heaven surpasses the lost Eden_.

(1) Garden--City.

The perfection of association--the _nations_ of the saved. Here 'we
mortal millions live alone,' even when united with dearest. Like
Egyptian monks of old, each dwelling in his own cave, though all were a
community.

(2) The richer experience.

The memory of past sorrows which are understood at last.

Heaven's bliss in contrast with earthly joys.

Sinlessness of those who have been sinners will be more intensely
lustrous for its dark background in the past. Redeemed men will be
brighter than angels.

The impossibility of a fall.

Death behind us.

The former things shall no more come to mind, being lost in blaze of
present transcendent experience, but yet shall be remembered as having
led to that perfect state.

Christ not only repairs the 'tabernacle which was fallen,' but builds a
fairer temple. He brings 'a statelier Eden,' and makes us dwell for
ever in a Garden City.




THE GROWTH AND POWER OF SIN


    'And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought
    of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And
    Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and
    of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel,
    and to his offering: But unto Cain, and to his offering,
    he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his
    countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art
    thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou
    doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest
    not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be
    his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked
    with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they
    were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his
    brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain,
    Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not. Am
    I my brother's keeper? And He said, What hast thou done?
    the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the
    ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which
    hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from
    thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not
    henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and
    a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto
    the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.
    Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from the face
    of the earth; and from Thy face shall I be hid; and I
    shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth: and it
    shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall
    slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore, whosoever
    slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.
    And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him
    should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of
    the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of
    Eden.'
    GENESIS iv. 3-16.

Many lessons crowd on us from this section. Its general purport is to
show the growth of sin, and its power to part man from man even as it
has parted man from God. We may call the whole 'The beginning of the
fatal operations of sin on human society.'

1. The first recorded act of worship occasions the first murder. Is not
that only too correct a forecast of the oceans of blood which have been
shed in the name of religion, and a striking proof of the subtle power
of sin to corrupt even the best, and out of it to make the worst? What
a lesson against the bitter hatred which has too often sprung up on
so-called religious grounds! No malice is so venomous, no hate so
fierce, no cruelty so fiendish, as those which are fed and fanned by
religion. Here is the first triumph of sin, that it poisons the very
springs of worship, and makes what should be the great uniter of men in
sweet and holy bonds their great separator.

2. Sin here appears as having power to bar men's way to God. Much
ingenuity has been spent on the question why Abel's offering was
accepted and Cain's rejected. But the narrative itself shows in the
words of Jehovah, 'If thou doest well, is there not acceptance?' that
the reason lay in Cain's evil deeds. So, in 1 John iii. 12, the
fratricide is put down to the fact that 'his works were evil, and his
brother's righteous'; and Hebrews xi. 4 differs from this view only in
making the ground of righteousness prominent, when it ascribes the
acceptableness of Abel's offering to faith. Both these passages are
founded on the narrative, and we need not seek farther for the reason
of the different reception of the two offerings. Character, then, or,
more truly, faith, which is the foundation of a righteous character,
determines the acceptableness of worship. Cain's offering had no sense
of dependence, no outgoing of love and trust, no adoration,--though it
may have had fear,--and no moral element. So it had no sweet odour for
God. Abel's was sprinkled with some drops of the incense of lowly
trust, and came from a heart which fain would be pure; therefore it was
a joy to God. So we are taught at the very beginning, that, as is the
man, so is his sacrifice; that the prayer of the wicked is an
abomination. Plenty of worship nowadays is Cain worship. Many reputable
professing Christians bring just such sacrifices. The prayers of such
never reach higher than the church ceiling. Of course, the lesson of
the story is not that a man must be pure before his sacrifice is
accepted. Of course, the faintest cry of trust is heard, and a contrite
heart, however sinful, is always welcome. But we are taught that our
acts of worship must have our hearts in them, and that it is vain to
pray and to love evil. Sin has the awful power of blocking our way to
God.

3. Note in one word that we have here at the beginning of human history
the solemn distinction which runs through it all. These two, so near in
blood, so separate in spirit, head the two classes into which Scripture
decisively parts men, especially men who have heard the gospel. It is
unfashionable now to draw that broad line between the righteous and the
wicked, believers and unbelievers. Sheep and goats are all one. Modern
liberal sentiment--so-called--will not consent to such narrowness as
the old-fashioned classification. There are none of us black, and none
white; we are all different shades of grey. But facts do not quite bear
out such amiable views. Perhaps it is not less charitable, and a great
deal truer, to draw the line broad and plain, on one side of which is
peace and safety, and on the other trouble and death, if only we make
it plain that no man need stop one minute on the dark side.

4. The solemn divine voice reads the lesson of the power of sin, when
once done, over the sinner. Like a wild beast, it crouches in ambush at
his door, ready to spring and devour. The evil deed once committed
takes shape, as it were, and waits to seize the doer. Remorse, inward
disturbance, and above all, the fatal inclination to repeat sin till it
becomes a habit, are set forth with terrible force in these grim
figures. What a menagerie of ravenous beasts some of us have at the
doors of our hearts! With what murderous longing they glare at us,
seeking to fascinate us, and make us their prey! When we sin, we cannot
escape the issues; and every wrong thing we do has a kind of horrible
life given it, and sits henceforth there, beside us, ready to rend us.
The tempting, seducing power of our own evils was never put in more
startling and solemnly true words, on which the bitter experience of
many a poor victim of his own past is a commentary. The eternal duty of
resistance is farther taught by the words. Hope of victory,
encouragement to struggle, the assurance that even these savage beasts
may be subdued, and the lion and adder (the hidden and the glaring
evils--those which wound unseen, and which spring with a roar) may be
overcome, led in a silken leash or charmed into harmlessness, are given
in the command, which is also a promise, 'Rule thou over it.'

5. The deadly fruit of hate is taught us in the brief account of the
actual murder. Notice the impressive plainness and fewness of the
words. 'Cain rose up against his brother, and slew him.' A kind of
horror-struck awe of the crime is audible. Observe the emphasis with
which 'his brother' is repeated in the verse and throughout. Observe,
also, the vivid light thrown by the story on the rise and progress of
the sin. It begins with envy and jealousy. Cain was not wroth because
his offering was rejected. What did he care for that? But what angered
him was that his brother had what he had not. So selfishness was at the
bottom, and that led on to envy, and that to hatred. Then comes a
pause, in which God speaks remonstrances,--as God's
voice--conscience--does now to us all,--between the imagination and the
act of evil. A real or a feigned reconciliation is effected. The
brothers go in apparent harmony to the field. No new provocation
appears, but the old feelings, kept down for a time, come in again with
a rush, and Cain is swept away by them. Hatred left to work means
murder. The heart is the source of all evil. Selfishness is the mother
tincture out of which all sorts of sin can be made. Guard the thoughts,
and keep down self, and the deeds will take care of themselves.

6. Mark how close on the heels of sin God's question treads! How God
spoke, we know not. Doubtless in some fashion suited to the needs of
Cain. But He speaks to us as really as to him, and no sooner is the
rush of passion over, and the bad deed done, than a revulsion comes.
What we call conscience asks the question in stern tones, which make a
man's flesh creep. Our sin is like touching the electric bells which
people sometimes put on their windows to give notice of thieves. As
soon as we step beyond the line of duty we set the alarm going, and it
wakens the sleeping conscience. Some of us go so far as to have
silenced the voice within; but, for the most part, it speaks
immediately after we have gratified our inclinations wrongly.

7. Cain's defiant answer teaches us how a man hardens himself against
God's voice. It also shows us how intensely selfish all sin is, and how
weakly foolish its excuses are. It is sin which has rent men apart from
men, and made them deny the very idea that they have duties to all men.
The first sin was only against God; the second was against God and man.
The first sin did not break, though it saddened, human love; the second
kindled the flames of infernal hatred, and caused the first drops to
flow of the torrents of blood which have soaked the earth. When men
break away from God, they will soon murder one another.

Cain was his brother's keeper. His question answered itself. If Abel
was his brother, then he was bound to look after him. His
self-condemning excuse is but a specimen of the shallow pleas by which
the forgetfulness of duties we owe to all mankind, and all sins, are
defended.

8. The stern sentence is next pronounced. First we have the grand
figure of the innocent blood having a voice which pierces the heavens.
That teaches in the most forcible way the truth that God knows the
crimes done by 'man's inhumanity to man,' even when the meek sufferers
are silent. According to the fine old legend of the cranes of Ibycus, a
bird of the air will carry the matter. It speaks, too, of God's tender
regard for His saints, whose blood is precious in His sight; and it
teaches that He will surely requite. We cannot but think of the
innocent blood shed on Calvary, of the Brother of us all, whose
sacrifice was accepted of God. His blood, too, crieth from the ground,
has a voice which speaks in the ear of God, but not to plead for
vengeance, but pardon.

  'Jesus' blood through earth and skies,
   Mercy, free, boundless mercy, cries.'

Then follows the sentence which falls into two parts--the curse of
bitter, unrequited toil, and the doom of homeless wandering. The blood
which has been poured out on the battlefield fertilises the soil; but
Abel's blasted the earth. It was a supernatural infliction, to teach
that bloodshed polluted the earth, and so to shed a nameless horror
over the deed. We see an analogous feeling in the common belief that
places where some foul sin has been committed are cursed. We see a weak
natural correspondence in the devastating effect of war, as expressed
in the old saying that no grass would grow where the hoof of the Turk's
horse had stamped.

The doom of wandering, which would be compulsory by reason of the
earth's barrenness, is a parable. The murderer is hunted from place to
place, as the Greek fable has it, by the furies, who suffer him not to
rest. Conscience drives a man 'through dry places, seeking rest, and
finding none.' All sin makes us homeless wanderers. There is but one
home for the heart, one place of repose for a man, namely, in the heart
of God, the secret place of the Most High; and he who, for his sin,
durst not enter there, is driven forth into 'a salt land and not
inhabited,' and has to wander wearily there. The legend of the
wandering Jew, and that other of the sailor, condemned for ever to fly
before the gale through stormy seas, have in them a deep truth. The
earthly punishment of departing from God is that we have not where to
lay our heads. Every sinner is a fugitive and a vagabond. But if we
love God we are still wanderers indeed, but we are 'pilgrims and
sojourners with Thee.'

9. Cain's remonstrance completes the tragic picture. We see in it
despair without penitence. He has no word of confession. If he had
accepted his chastisement, and learned by it his sin, all the
bitterness would have passed away. But he only writhes in agony, and
adds, to the sentence pronounced, terrors of his own devising. God had
not forbidden him to come into His presence. But he feels that he dare
not venture thither. And he was right; for, whether we suppose that
some sensible manifestation of the divine presence is meant by 'Thy
face' or no, a man who had unrepented sin on his conscience, and
murmurings in his heart, could not hold intercourse with God; nor would
he wish to do so. Thus we learn again the lesson that sin separates
from our Father, and that chastisements, not accepted as signs of His
love, build up a black wall between God and us.

Nor had Cain been told that his life was in danger. But his conscience
made a coward of him, as of us all, and told him what he deserved.
There were, no doubt, many other children of Adam, who would be ready
to avenge Abel's death. The wild justice of revenge is deep in the
heart of men; and the natural impulse would be to hunt down the
murderer like a wolf. It is a dreadful picture of the defiant and
despairing sinner, tortured by well-founded fears, shut out from the
presence of God, but not able to shut out thoughts of Him, and seeing
an avenger in every man.

We need not ask how God set a mark on Cain. Enough that His doing so
was a merciful alleviation of his lot, and teaches us how God's
long-suffering spares life, and tempers judgment, that there may still
be space for repentance. If even Cain has gracious protection and mercy
blended with his chastisement, who can be beyond the pale of God's
compassion, and with whom will not His loving providence and patient
pity labour? No man is so scorched by the fire of retribution, but many
a dewy drop from God's tenderness falls on him. No doubt, the story of
the preservation of Cain was meant to restrain the blood-feuds so
common and ruinous in early times; and we need the lesson yet, to keep
us from vengeance under the mask of justice. But the deepest lesson and
truest pathos of it lies in the picture of the watchful kindness of God
lingering round the wretched man, like gracious sunshine playing on
some scarred and black rock, to win him back by goodness to penitence,
and through penitence to peace.




WHAT CROUCHES AT THE DOOR


    'If thou doest not well, sin croucheth at the door: and
    unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over
    him.'--GENESIS iv. 7 (R. V.).

These early narratives clothe great moral and spiritual truths in
picturesque forms, through which it is difficult for us to pierce. In
the world's childhood God spoke to men as to children, because there
were no words then framed which would express what we call abstract
conceptions. They had to be shown by pictures. But these early men,
simple and childlike as they were, had consciences; and one abstraction
they did understand, and that was sin. They knew the difference between
good and evil.

So we have here God speaking to Cain, who was wroth because of the
rejection of his sacrifice; and in dim, enigmatical words setting forth
the reason of that rejection. 'If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted?' Then clearly his sacrifice was rejected because it was the
sacrifice of an evil-doer. His description as such is given in the
words of my text, which are hard for us to translate into our modern,
less vivid and picturesque language. 'If thou doest not well, sin lieth
at the door; and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule
over him.' Strange as the words sound, if I mistake not, they convey
some very solemn lessons, and if well considered, become pregnant with
meaning.

The key to the whole interpretation of them is to remember that they
describe what happens after, and because of, wrong-doing. They are all
suspended on 'If thou doest not well.' Then, in that case, for the
first thing--'sin lieth at the door.' Now the word translated here
'lieth' is employed only to express the _crouching_ of an animal, and
frequently of a wild animal. The picture, then, is of the wrong-doer's
sin lying at his door there like a crouching tiger ready to spring, and
if it springs, fatal. 'If thou doest not well, a wild beast crouches at
thy door.'

Then there follow, with a singular swift transition of the metaphor,
other words still harder to interpret, and which have been, as a matter
of fact, interpreted in very diverse fashions. 'And unto thee shall be
_its'_ (I make that slight alteration upon our version) 'desire, and
thou shalt rule over it.' Where did we hear these words before? They
were spoken to Eve, in the declaration of her punishment. They contain
the blessing that was embedded in the curse. 'Thy desire shall be to
thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.' The longing of the pure
womanly heart to the husband of her love, and the authority of the
husband over the loving wife--the source of the deepest joy and purity
of earth, is transferred, by a singularly bold metaphor, to this other
relationship, and, in horrible parody of the wedded union and love, we
have the picture of the sin, that was thought of as crouching at the
sinner's door like a wild beast, now, as it were, wedded to him. He is
mated to it now, and it has a kind of tigerish, murderous desire after
him, while he on his part is to subdue and control it.

The reference of these clauses to the sin which has just been spoken of
involves, no doubt, a very bold figure, which has seemed to many
readers too bold to be admissible, and the words have therefore been
supposed to refer to Abel, who, as the younger brother, would be
subordinate to Cain. But such a reference breaks the connection of the
sentence, introduces a thought which is not a consequence of Cain's not
doing well, has no moral bearing to warrant its appearance here, and
compels us to travel an inconveniently long distance back in the
context to find an antecedent to the 'his' and 'him' of our text. It
seems to be more in consonance, therefore, with the archaic style of
the whole narrative, and to yield a profounder and worthier meaning, if
we recognise the boldness of the metaphor, and take 'sin' as the
subject of the whole. Now all this puts in concrete, metaphorical
shape, suited to the stature of the bearers, great and solemn truths.
Let us try to translate them into more modern speech.

1. First think, then, of that wild beast which we tether to our doors
by our wrong-doing.

We talk about 'responsibility' and 'guilt,' and 'consequences that
never can be effaced,' and the like. And all these abstract and
quasi-philosophical terms are implied in the grim, tremendous metaphor
of my text 'If thou doest not well, a tiger, a wild beast, is crouching
at thy door.' We are all apt to be deceived by the imagination that
when an evil deed is done, it passes away and leaves no permanent
results. The lesson taught the childlike primitive man here, at the
beginning, before experience had accumulated instances which might
demonstrate the solemn truth, was that every human deed is immortal,
and that the transitory evil thought, or word, or act, which seems to
fleet by like a cloud, has a permanent being, and hereafter haunts the
life of the doer, as a real presence. If thou doest not well, thou dost
create a horrible something which nestles beside thee henceforward. The
momentary act is incarnated, as it were, and sits there at the doer's
doorpost waiting for him; which being turned into less forcible but
more modern language, is just this: every sin that a man does has
perennial consequences, which abide with the doer for evermore.

I need not dwell upon illustrations of that to any length. Let me just
run over two or three ways in which it is true. First of all, there is
that solemn fact which we put into a long word that comes glibly off
people's lips, and impresses them very little--the solemn fact of
responsibility. We speak in common talk of such and such a thing lying
at some one's door. Whether the phrase has come from this text I do not
know. But it helps to illustrate the force of these words, and to
suggest that they mean this, among other things, that we have to answer
for every deed, however evanescent, however long forgotten. Its guilt
is on our heads. Its consequences have to be experienced by us. We
drink as we have brewed. As we make our beds, so we lie on them. There
is no escape from the law of consequences. 'If 'twere done, when 'tis
done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.' But seeing that it is not
done when 'tis done, then perhaps it would be better that it were not
done at all. Your deed of a moment, forgotten almost as soon as done,
lies there at your door; or to take a more modern and commercial
figure, it is debited to your account, and stands inscribed against you
for ever.

Think how you would like it, if all your deeds from your childhood, all
your follies, your vices, your evil thoughts, your evil impulses, and
your evil actions, were all made visible and embodied there before you.
They are there, though you do not see them yet. All round your door
they sit, ready to meet you and to bay out condemnation as you go
forth. They are there, and one day you will find out that they are. For
this is the law, certain as the revolution of the stars and fixed as
the pillars of the firmament: 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap' There is no seed which does not sprout in the harvest of the
moral life. Every deed germinates according to its kind. For all that a
man does he has to carry the consequences, and every one shall bear his
own burden. 'If thou doest not well,' it is not, as we fondly conceive
it sometimes to be, a mere passing deflection from the rule of right,
which is done and done with, but we have created, as out of our very
own substance, a witness against ourselves whose voice can never be
stifled. 'If thou doest not well' thy sin takes permanent form and is
fastened to thy door.

And then let me remind you, too, how the metaphor of our text is
confirmed by other obvious facts, on which I need but briefly dwell.
Putting aside all the remoter bearings of that thought of
responsibility, I suppose we all admit that we have consciences; I
suppose that we all know that we have memories; I suppose we all of us
have seen, in the cases of others, and have experienced for ourselves,
how deeds long done and long forgotten have an awful power of rising
again after many long years.

Be sure that your memory has in it everything that you ever did. A
landscape may be hidden by mists, but a puff of wind will clear them
away, and it will all lie there, visible to the furthest horizon. There
is no fact more certain than the extraordinary swiftness and
completeness with which, in certain circumstances of life, and often
very near the close of it, the whole panorama of the past may rise
again before a man, as if one lightning flash showed all the dreary
desolation that lay behind him. There have been men recovered from
drowning and the like, who have told us that, as in an instant, there
seemed unrolled before their startled eyes the whole scroll of their
earthly career.

The records of memory are like those pages on which you write with
sympathetic ink, which disappears when dry, and seems to leave the page
blank. You have only to hold it before the fire, or subject it to the
proper chemical process, and at once it stands out legible. You are
writing your biography upon the fleshly tables of your heart, my
brother; and one day it will all be spread out before you, and you will
be bid to read it, and to say what you think of it. The stings of a
nettle will burn for days, if they are touched with water. The sting
and inflammation of your evil deeds, though it has died down, is
capable of being resuscitated, and it will be.

What an awful menagerie of unclean beasts some of us have at our doors!
What sort of creatures have you tethered at yours? Crawling serpents,
ugly and venomous; wild creatures, fierce and bloody, obscene and foul;
tigers and bears; lustful and mischievous apes and monkeys? or such as
are lovely and of good report,--doves and lambs, creatures pure and
peaceable, patient to serve and gentle of spirit? Remember, remember,
that what a man soweth--be it hemlock or be it wheat--that, and nothing
else, 'shall he reap.'

2. Now, let us look for a moment at the next thought that is here;
which is put into a strong, and, to our modern notions, somewhat
violent metaphor;--the horrible longing, as it were, of sin toward the
sinner: 'Unto thee shall be its desire.'

As I explained, these words are drawn from the previous chapter, where
they refer to the holy union of heart and affection in husband and
wife. Here they are transferred with tremendous force, to set forth
that which is a kind of horrible parody of that conjugal relation. A
man is married to his wickedness, is mated to his evil, and it has, as
it were, a tigerish longing for him, unhallowed and murderous. That is
to say--our sins act towards us as if they desired to draw our love to
themselves. This is just another form of the statement, that when once
a man has done a wrong thing, it has an awful power of attracting him
and making him hunger to do it again. Every evil that I do may, indeed,
for a moment create in me a revulsion of conscience; but it also
exercises a fascination over me which it is hard to resist. It is a
great deal easier to find a man who has never done a wrong thing than
to find a man who has only done it once. If the wall of the dyke is
sound it will keep the water out, but if there is the tiniest hole in
it, the flood will come in. So the evil that you do asserts its power
over you, or, in the vigorous metaphor of my text, it has a fierce,
longing desire after you, and it gets you into its clutches.

'The foolish woman sitteth in the high places of the city, and saith,
Whoso is simple let him turn in hither.' And foolish men go after her,
and--'know not that her guests are in the depth of hell.' Ah! my
brother! beware of that siren voice that draws you away from all the
sweet and simple and pure food which Wisdom spreads upon her table, to
tempt the beast that is in you with the words, 'Stolen waters are
sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.' Beware of the first
step, for as sure as you are living, the first step taken will make the
second seem to become necessary. The first drop will be followed by a
bigger second, and the second, at a shorter interval, by a more copious
third, until the drops become a shower, and the shower becomes a
deluge. The river of evil is ever wider and deeper, and more
tumultuous. The little sins get in at the window, and open the front
door for the full-grown house-breakers. One smooths the path for the
other. All sin has an awful power of perpetuating and increasing
itself. As the prophet says in his vision of the doleful creatures that
make their sport in the desolate city, 'None of them shall want her
mate. The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wild beasts of
the island.' Every sin tells upon character, and makes the repetition
of itself more and more easy. 'None is barren among them.' And all sin
is linked together in a slimy tangle, like a field of seaweed, so that
the man once caught in its oozy fingers is almost sure to be drowned.

3. And now, lastly, one word about the command, which is also a
promise: 'To thee shall be its desire, and thou shalt rule over it.'

Man's primitive charter, according to the earlier chapters of Genesis,
was to have dominion over the beasts of the field. Cain knew what it
was to war against the wild creatures which contested the possession of
the earth with man, and to tame some of them for his uses. And, says
the divine voice, just as you war against the beasts of prey, just as
you subdue to your purposes and yoke to your implements the tamable
animals over which you have dominion, so rule over _this_ wild beast
that is threatening you. It is needful for all men, if they do not mean
to be torn to pieces, to master the animal that is in them, and the
wild thing that has been created out of them. It is bone of your bone
and flesh of your flesh. It is your own evil that is thus incarnated
there, as it were, before you; and you have to subdue it, if it is not
to tyrannise over you. We all admit that in theory, but how terribly
hard the practice! The words of our text seem to carry but little hope
or comfort in them, to the man who has tried--as, no doubt, many of us
have tried--to flee the lusts that war against the soul, and to bridle
the animal that is in him. Those who have done so most honestly know
best how hard it is, and may fairly ask, Is this useless repetition of
the threadbare injunction all that you have to say to us? If so, you
may as well hold your tongue. A wild beast sits at my door, you say,
and then you bid me, 'Rule thou over it!' Tell me to tame the tiger!
'Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? Wilt thou take him a
servant for ever?'

I do not undervalue the earnest and sometimes partially successful
efforts at moral reformation which some men of more than usual force of
character are able to make, emancipating themselves from the outward
practice of gross sin, and achieving for themselves much that is
admirable. But if we rightly understand what sin is--namely, the taking
self for our law and centre instead of God--and how deep its working
and all-pervading its poison, we shall learn the tragic significance of
the prophets question, 'Can the leopard change his spots?' Then may a
man cast out sin from his nature by his own resolve, when the body can
eliminate poison from the veins by its own energy. If there is nothing
more to be said to the world than this message, 'Sin lieth at thy
door--rule thou over it,' we have no gospel to preach, and sin's
dominion is secure. For there is nothing in all this world of empty,
windy words, more empty and windy than to come to a poor soul that is
all bespattered and stained with sin, and say to him: 'Get up, and make
thyself clean, and keep thyself so!' It cannot be done.

So my text, though it keeps itself within the limits of the law and
only proclaims duty, must have hidden, in its very hardness, a sweet
kernel of promise. For what God commands God enables us to do.

Therefore these words, 'Rule thou over it,' do really point onwards
through all the ages to that one fact in which every man's sin is
conquered and neutralised, and every man's struggles may be made
hopeful and successful, the great fact that Jesus Christ, God's own
Son, came down from heaven, like an athlete descending into the arena,
to fight with and to overcome the grim wild beasts, our passions and
our sins, and to lead them, transformed, in the silken leash of His
love.

My brother! your sin is mightier than you. The old word of the Psalm is
true about every one of us, 'Our iniquities are stronger than we.' And,
blessed be His name! the hope of the Psalmist is the experience of the
Christian: 'As for my transgressions, Thou wilt purge them away.'
Christ will strengthen you, to conquer; Christ will take away your
guilt; Christ will bear, has borne your burden; Christ will cleanse
your memory; Christ will purge your conscience. Trusting to Him, and by
His power and life within us, we may conquer our evil. Trusting to Him,
and for the sake of His blood shed for us all upon the cross, we are
delivered from the burden, guilt, and power of our sins and of our sin.
With thy hand in His, and thy will submitted to Him, 'thou shalt tread
on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon thou shalt
trample under foot.'




WITH, BEFORE, AFTER


    'Enoch walked with God,'--GENESIS v. 22.

    'Walk before Me.'--GENESIS xvii. 1.

    'Ye shall walk after the Lord your God.'--DEUTERONOMY xiii. 4.

You will have anticipated, I suppose, my purpose in doing what I very
seldom do--cutting little snippets out of different verses and putting
them together. You see that these three fragments, in their
resemblances and in their differences, are equally significant and
instructive. They concur in regarding life as a walk--a metaphor which
expresses continuity, so that every man's life is a whole, which
expresses progress, which expresses change, and which implies a goal.
They agree in saying that God must be brought into a life somehow, and
in some aspect, if that life is to be anything else but an aimless
wandering, if it is to tend to the point to which every human life
should attain. But then they diverge, and, if we put them together,
they say to us that there are three different ways in which we ought to
bring God into our life. We should 'walk _with_ Him,' like Enoch; we
should 'walk _before_' Him, as Abraham was bade to do; and we should
'walk _after_' Him, as the command to do was given to all Israel. And
these three prepositions, _with_, _before_, _after_, attached to the
general idea of life as a walk, give us a triple aspect--which yet is,
of course, fundamentally, one--of the way in which life may be
ennobled, dignified, calmed, hallowed, focussed, and concentrated by
the various relations into which we enter with Him. So I take the three
of them.

1. 'Enoch walked _with_ God.'

That is a sweet, simple, easily intelligible, and yet lofty way of
putting the notion which we bring into a more abstract and less
impressive shape when we talk about communion with God. Two men
travelling along a road keep each other company. 'How can two walk
together except they be agreed?' The companion is at our side all the
same, though the mists may have come down and we cannot see Him. We can
hear His voice, we can grasp His hand, we can catch the echoes of His
steps. We know He is there, and that is enough. Enoch and God walked
together, by the simple exercise of the faith that fills the Invisible
with one great, loving Face. By a continuous, definite effort, as we
are going through the bustle of daily life, and amid all the pettiness
and perplexities and monotonies that make up our often weary and always
heavy days, we can realise to ourselves that He is of a truth at our
sides, and by purity of life and heart we can bring Him nearer, and can
make ourselves more conscious of His nearness. For, brethren, the one
thing that parts a man from God, and makes it impossible for a heart to
expatiate in the thought of His presence, is the contrariety to His
will in our conduct. The slightest invisible film of mist that comes
across the blue abyss of the mighty sky will blot out the brightest of
the stars, and we may sometimes not be able to see the mist, and only
know that it is there because we do not see the planet. So unconscious
sin may steal in between us and God, and we shall no longer be able to
say, 'I walk with Him.'

The Roman Catholics talk, in their mechanical way, of bringing down all
the spiritual into the material and formal, about the 'practice of the
presence of God.' It is an ugly phrase, but it means a great thing,
that Christian people ought, very much more than they do, to aim, day
by day, and amidst their daily duties, at realising that most
elementary thought which, like a great many other elementary thoughts,
is impotent because we believe it so utterly, that wherever we are, we
may have Him with us. It is the secret of blessedness, of tranquillity,
of power, of everything good and noble.

'I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were,'
said the Psalmist of old. If he had left out these two little words,
'with Thee,' he would have been uttering a tragic complaint; but when
they come in, all that is painful, all that is solitary, all that is
transient, bitterly transient, in the long succession of the
generations that have passed across earth's scene, and have not been
kindred to it, is cleared away and changed into gladness. Never mind,
though you are a stranger, if you have that companion. Never mind,
though you are only a sojourner; if you have Him with you, whatever
passes He will not pass; and though we dwell here in a system to which
we do not belong, and its transiency and our transiency bring with them
many sorrows, when we can say, 'Lord! Thou hast been our dwelling-place
in all generations,' we are at home, and that eternal home will never
pass.

Enoch 'walked with God,' and, of course, 'God took him,' There was
nothing else for it, and there could be no other end, for a life of
communion with God here has in it the prophecy and the pledge of a life
of eternal union hereafter. So, then, 'practise the presence of God.'
An old mystic says: 'If I can tell how many times to-day I have thought
about God, I have not thought about Him often enough.' Walk with Him by
faith, by effort, by purity.

2. And now take the other aspect suggested by the other word God spoke
to Abraham: 'I am the Almighty God, walk _before_ Me and be thou
perfect.'

That suggests, as I suppose I do not need to point out, the idea not
only of communion, which the former phrase brought to our minds, but
that of the inspection of our conduct. 'As ever in the great
Taskmaster's eye,' says the stern Puritan poet, and although one may
object to that word 'Taskmaster,' yet the idea conveyed is the correct
expansion of the commandment given to Abraham. Observe how 'walk before
Me' is dovetailed, as it were, between the revelation 'I am the
Almighty God' and the injunction 'Be thou perfect.' The realisation of
that presence of the Almighty which is implied in the expression 'Walk
before Me,' the assurance that we are in His sight, will lead straight
to the fulfilment of the injunction that bears upon the moral conduct.
The same connection of thought underlies Peter's injunction, 'Like as
He ... is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation,' followed
immediately as it is by, 'If ye call on Him as Father, who without
respect of persons judgeth'--as a present estimate--'according to every
mail's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear'--that
reverential awe which will lead you to be 'holy even as I am holy.'

This thought that we are in that divine presence, and that there is
silently, but most really, a divine opinion being formed of us,
consolidated, as it were, moment by moment through our lives, is only
tolerable if we have been walking with God. If we are sure, by the
power of our communion with Him, of His loving heart as well as of His
righteous judgment, then we can spread ourselves out before Him, as a
woman will lay out her webs of cloth on the green grass for the sun to
blaze down upon them, and bleach the ingrained filth out of them. We
must first walk 'with God' before the consciousness that we are walking
'before' Him becomes one that we can entertain and not go mad. When we
are sure of the 'with' we can bear the 'before.'

Did you ever see how on a review day, as each successive battalion and
company nears the saluting-point where the General inspecting sits,
they straighten themselves up and dress their ranks, and pull
themselves together as they pass beneath his critical eye. A master's
eye makes diligent servants. If we, in the strength of God, would only
realise, day by day and act by act of our lives, that we are before
Him, what a revolution could be effected on our characters and what a
transformation on all our conduct!

'Walk before Me' and you will be perfect. For the Hebrew words on which
I am now commenting may be read, in accordance with the usage of the
language, as being not only a commandment but a promise, or, rather,
not as two commandments, but a commandment with an appended promise,
and so as equivalent to 'If you will walk before Me you will be
perfect.' And if we realise that we are under 'the pure eyes and
perfect judgment of' God, we shall thereby be strongly urged and
mightily helped to be perfect as He is perfect.

3. Lastly, take the other relation, which is suggested by the third of
my texts, where Israel as a whole is commanded to 'walk _after_ the
Lord' their God.

In harmony with the very frequent expression of the Old Testament about
'going after idols' so Israel here is to 'go after God.' What does that
mean? Communion, the consciousness of being judged by God, will lead on
to aspiration and loving, longing effort to get nearer and nearer to
Him. 'My soul followeth hard after Thee,' said the Psalmist, 'Thy right
hand upholdeth me.' That element of yearning aspiration, of eager
desire to be closer and closer, and liker and liker, to God must be in
all true religion. And unless we have it in some measure, it is useless
to talk about being Christian people. To press onwards, not as though
we had already attained, but following after, if that we may apprehend
that for which also we are apprehended, is the attitude of every true
follower of Christ. The very crown of the excellence of the Christian
life is that it never can reach its goal, and therefore an immortal
youth of aspiration and growth is guaranteed to it. Christian people,
are you following after God? Are you any nearer to Him than you were
ten years ago? 'Walk with Me, walk before Me, walk after Me.'

I need not do more than remind you of another meaning involved in this
same expression. If I walk after God, then I let Him go before me and
show me my road. Do you remember how, when the ark was to cross Jordan,
the commandment was given to the Israelites to let it go well on in
front, so that there should be no mistake about the course, 'for ye
have not passed this way heretofore.' Do not be in too great a hurry to
press upon the heels of God, if I may so say. Do not let your decisions
outrun His providence. Keep back the impatience that would hurry on,
and wait for His ripening purposes to ripen and His counsels to develop
themselves. Walk after God, and be sure you do not go in front of your
Guide, or you will lose both your way and your Guide.

I need not say more than a word about the highest aspect which this
third of our commandments takes, 'His sheep follow Him'--'leaving us an
example that we should follow in His steps,' that is the culmination of
the walking 'with,' and 'before,' and 'after' God which these Old
Testament saints were partially practising. All is gathered into the
one great word, 'He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so
to walk even as He walked.'




THE COURSE AND CROWN OF A DEVOUT LIFE


    'And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took
    him.'
    GENESIS v. 24.

This notice of Enoch occurs in the course of a catalogue of the
descendants of Adam, from the Creation to the Deluge. It is evidently a
very ancient document, and is constructed on a remarkable plan. The
formula for each man is the same. So-and-so lived, begat his heir, the
next in the series, lived on after that so many years, having anonymous
children, lived altogether so long, and then died. The chief thing
about each life is the birth of the successor, and each man's career is
in broad outline the same. A dreary monotony runs through the ages. How
brief and uniform may be the records of lives of striving and tears and
smiles and love that stretched through centuries! Nine hundred years
shrink into less than as many lines.

The solemn monotony is broken in the case of Enoch. This paragraph
begins as usual--he 'lived'; but afterwards, instead of that word, we
read that he 'walked with God'--happy they for whom such a phrase is
equivalent to 'live'--and, instead of 'died,' it is said of him that
'he _was not_.' That seems to imply that he, as it were, slipped out of
sight or suddenly disappeared; as one of the psalms says, 'I looked,
and lo! he was not.' He was there a moment ago--now he is gone; and my
text tells how that sudden withdrawal came about. God, with whom he
walked, put out His hand and took him to Himself. Of course. What other
end could there be to a life that was all passed in communion with God
except that apotheosis and crown of it all, the lifting of the man into
closer communion with his Father and his Friend?

So, then, there are just these two things here--the noblest life and
its crown.

1. The noblest life.

'He walked with God.' That is all. There is no need to tell what he did
or tried to do, how he sorrowed or joyed, what were his circumstances.
These may all fade from men's knowledge as they have somewhat faded
from his memory up yonder. It is enough that he walked with God.

Of course, we have here, underlying the phrase, the familiar comparison
of life to a journey, with all its suggestions of constant change and
constant effort, and with the suggestion, too, that each life should be
a progress directly tending to one clearly recognised goal. But passing
from that, let us just think for a moment of the characteristics which
must go to make up a life of which we can say that it is walking with
God. The first of these clearly is the one that the writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews puts his finger upon, when he makes faith the
spring of Enoch's career. The first requisite to true communion with
God is vigorous exercise of that faculty by which we realise the fact
of His presence with us; and that not as a jealous-eyed inspector, from
whose scrutiny we would fain escape, but as a companion and friend to
whom we can cleave. 'He that cometh to God,' and walks with God, must
first of all 'believe that He _is_'; and passing by all the
fascinations of things seen, and rising above all the temptations of
things temporal, his realising eye must fix upon the divine Father and
see Him nearer and more clearly than these. You cannot walk with God
unless you are emancipated from the dominion of sense and time, and are
living by the power of that great faculty, which lays hold of the
things that are unseen as the realities, and smiles at the false and
forged pretensions of material things to be the real. We have to invert
the teaching of the world and of our senses. My fingers and my eyes and
my ears tell me that this gross, material universe about me is the
real, and that all beyond it is shadowy and (sometimes we think)
doubtful, or, at any rate, dim and far off. But that is false, and the
truth is precisely the other way. The Unseen is the Real, and the
Material is the merely Apparent. Behind all visible objects, and giving
them all their reality, lies the unchangeable God.

Cultivate the faculty and habit of vigorous faith, if you would walk
with God. For the world will put its bandages over your eyes, and try
to tempt you to believe that these poor, shabby illusions are the
precious things; and we have to shake ourselves free from its harlot
kisses and its glozing lies, by very vigorous and continual efforts of
the will and of the understanding, if we are to make real to ourselves
that which is real, the presence of our God.

Besides this vigorous exercise of the faculty of faith, there is
another requisite for a walk with God, closely connected with it, and
yet capable of being looked at separately, and that is, that we shall
keep up the habit of continual occupation of thought with Him. That is
very much an affair of habit with Christian people, and I am afraid
that the neglect of it is the habitual practice of the bulk of
professing Christians nowadays. It is hard, amidst all our work and
thought and joys and sorrows, to keep fresh our consciousness of His
presence, and to talk with Him in the midst of the rush of business.
But what do we do about our dear ones when we are away from them? The
measure of our love of them is accurately represented by the frequency
of our remembrances of them. The mother parted from her child, the
husband and the wife separated from one another, the lover and the
friend, think of each other a thousand times a day. Whenever the spring
is taken off, then the natural bent of the inclination and heart assert
themselves, and the mind goes back again, as into a sanctuary, into the
sweet thought. Is that how we do with God? Do we so walk with Him, as
that thought, when released, instinctively sets in that direction? When
I take off the break, does my spirit turn to God? If there is no hand
at the helm, does the bow always point that way? When the magnet is
withdrawn for a moment, does the needle tremble back and settle itself
northwards? If we are walking with God, we shall, more times a day than
we can count when the evening comes on, have had the thought of Him
coming into our hearts 'like some sweet beguiling melody, so sweet we
know not we are listening to it.' Thus we shall 'walk with God.'

Then there is another requisite. 'How can two walk together except they
be agreed?' 'He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to
walk even as He walked.' There is no union with God in such communion
possible, unless there be a union with Him by conformity of will and
submission of effort and aim to His commandments. Well, then, is that
life possible for us? Look at this instance before us. We know very
little about how much knowledge of God these people in old days had,
but, at all events, it was a great deal less than you and I have. Their
theology was very different from ours; their religion was absolutely
identical with ours. Their faith, which grasped the God revealed in
their creed, was the same as our faith, though the creed which their
faith grasped was only an outline sketch of yours and mine. But at all
times and in all generations, the element and essence of the religious
life has been the same-that is, the realising sense of the living
divine presence, the effort and aspiration after communion with Him,
and the quiet obedience and conformity of the practical life to His
will. And so we can reach out our hands across all the centuries to
this pre-Noachian, antediluvian patriarch, dim amongst the mists, and
feel that he too is our brother.

And he has set us the example that in all conditions of life, and under
the most unfavourable circumstances, it is possible to live in this
close touch with God. For in his time, not only was there, as I have
said, an incomplete and rudimentary knowledge of God, but in his time
the earth was filled with violence, and gigantic forms of evil are
represented as having dominated mankind. Amidst it all, the Titanic
pride, the godlessness, the scorn, the rudeness, and the violence,
amidst it all, this one 'white flower of a blameless life' managed to
find nutriment upon the dunghill, and to blossom fresh and fair there.
You and I cannot, whatever may be our hindrances in living a consistent
Christian life, have anything like the difficulties that this man had
and surmounted. For us all, whatever our conditions, such a life is
possible.

And then there is another lesson that he teaches us, viz. that such a
life is consistent with the completest discharge of all common duties.
The outline, as far as appearance was concerned, of this man's life was
the same as the outline of those of his ancestors and successors. They
are all described in the same terms. The formula is the same. Enoch
lived, Mahalaleel, and all the rest of the half-unpronounceable names,
they lived, they begat their heirs, and sons and daughters, and then
they died. And the same formula is used about this man. He walked with
God, but it was while treading the common path of secular life that he
did so.

He found it possible to live in communion with God, and yet to do all
the common things that men did then. Anybody's house may be a Bethel--a
house of God--and anybody's work may be worship; and wherever we are
and whatever we do, it is possible therein to serve God, and there to
walk with Him.

2. And now a word about the crown of this life of communion. 'He was
not, for God took him'

What wonderful reticence in describing, or rather hinting at, the
stupendous miracle that is here in question! Is that like a book that
came from the legend-loving and legend-making brains of men; or does it
sound like the speech of God, to whom nothing is extraordinary and
nothing needs to have a mark of admiration after it? It was the same to
Him whether Enoch died or whether He simply took him to Himself. If one
wants to know what men would have made of such a thing, if _they_ had
had to tell it, let them read those wretched Rabbinical fables that
have been stitched on to this verse. There they will see how men
describe miracles; and here they will see how God does so.

'_He was not_.' As I have said, he disappeared; that was what the world
knew. 'God took him'; that was what God tells the world.

Thus this strange exception to the law of death stood, as I suppose, to
the ancient world as doing somewhat the same office for them that the
translation of Elijah afterwards partially did for Israel, and that the
resurrection of Jesus Christ does completely for us, viz. it brought
the future life into the realm of fact, and took it out of the dim
region of speculation altogether. He establishes a truth who proves it,
and he proves a fact that shows it. A doctrine of a future state is not
worth much, but the fact of a future state, which was established by
this incident then, and is certified for us all now, by the Christ
risen from the dead, is all-important. Our gospel is all built upon
facts, and this is the earliest fact in man's history which made man's
subsistence in other conditions than that of earthly life a certainty.

And then, again, this wonderful exception shows to us, as it did to
that ancient world, that the natural end of a religious life is union
with God hereafter. It seems to me that the real proofs of a future
life are two: one, the fact of Christ's resurrection, and the other,
the fact of our religious experience. For anything looks to me more
likely, and less incredible, than that a man who could walk with God
should only have a poor earthly life to do it in, and that all these
aspirations, these emotions, should be bounded and ended by a trivial
thing, that touches only the physical frame. Surely, surely, there is
nothing so absurd as to believe that he who can say 'Thou art my God,'
and who has said it, should ever by anything be brought to cease to say
it. Death cannot kill love to God; and the only end of the religious
life of earth is its perfecting in heaven. The experiences that we have
here, in their loftiness and in their incompleteness, equally witness
for us, of the rest and the perfectness that remain for the children of
God.

Then, again, this man in his unique experience was, and is, a witness
of the fact that death is an excrescence, and results from sin. I
suppose that he trod the road which the divine intention had destined
to be trodden by all the children of men, if they had not sinned; and
that his experience, unique as it is, is a survival, so to speak, of
what was meant to be the law for humanity, unless there had intervened
the terrible fact of sin and its wages, death. The road had been made,
and this one man was allowed to travel along it that we might all
learn, by the example of the exception, that the rule under which we
live was not the rule that God originally meant for us, and that death
has resulted from the fact of transgression. No doubt Enoch had in him
the seeds of it, no doubt there were the possibilities of disease and
the necessity of death in his physical frame, but God has shown us in
that one instance, and in the other of the great prophet's, how _He_ is
not subject to the law that men shall die, although men are subject to
it, and that if He will, He can take them all to Himself, as He did
take these two, and will take them who, at last, shall not die but be
changed.

Let me remind you that this unique and exceptional end of a life of
communion may, in its deepest, essential character, be experienced by
each of us. There are two passages in the book of Psalms, both of which
I regard as allusions to this incident. The one of them is in the
forty-ninth Psalm and reads thus: 'He will deliver my soul from the
power of the grave, for He will take me.' Our version conceals the
allusion, by its unfortunate and non-literal rendering 'receive.' The
same word is employed there as here. Can we fail to see the reference?
The Psalmist expects his soul to be 'delivered from the power of the
grave,' because God _takes_ it.

And again, in the great seventy-third Psalm, which marks perhaps the
highwater mark of pre-Christian anticipations of a future state, we
read: 'Thou wilt guide me by Thy counsel, and afterwards _take_ me'
(again the same word) 'to glory.' Here, again, the Psalmist looks back
to the unique and exceptional instance, and in the rapture and ecstasy
of the faith that has grasped the living God as his portion, says to
himself: 'Though the externals of Enoch's end and of mine may differ,
their substance will be the same, and I, too, shall cease to be seen of
men, because God takes me into the secret of His pavilion, by the
loving clasp of His lifting hand.'

Enoch was led, if I may say so, round the top of the valley, beyond the
head waters of the dark river, and was kept on the high level until he
got to the other side. You and I have to go down the hill, out of the
sunshine, in among the dank weeds, to stumble over the black rocks, and
wade through the deep water; but we shall get over to the same place
where he stands, and He that took him round by the top will 'take' us
through the river; and so shall we 'ever be with the Lord'

'Enoch walked with God and he was not; for God took him.' This verse is
like some little spring with trees and flowers on a cliff. The dry
genealogical table--and here this bit of human life in it! How unlike
the others--they _lived_ and they _died_; this man's life was walking
with God and his departure was a fading away, a ceasing to be found
here. It is remarkable in how calm a tone the Bible speaks of its
supernatural events. We should not have known this to be a miracle but
for the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The dim past of these early chapters carries us over many centuries. We
know next to nothing about the men, where they lived, how they lived,
what thoughts they had, what tongue they spoke. Some people would say
that they never lived at all. I believe, and most of you, I suppose,
believe that they did. But how little personality we give them! Little
as we know of environment and circumstances, we know the main thing,
the fact of their having been. Then we are sure that they had sorrow
and joy, strife and love, toil and rest, like the rest of us, that
whether their days were longer or shorter they were filled much as ours
are, that whatever was the pattern into which the quiet threads of
their life was woven it was, warp and weft, the same yarn as ours. In
broad features every human life is much the same. Widely different as
the clothing of these grey fathers in their tents, with their simple
contrivances and brief records, is from that of cultivated busy
Englishmen to-day, the same human form is beneath both. And further, we
know but little as to their religious ideas, how far they were
surrounded with miracles, what they knew of God and of His purposes,
how they received their knowledge, what served them for a Bible. Of
what positive institutions of religion they had we know nothing;
whether for them there was sacrifice and a sabbath day, how far the
original gospel to Adam was known or remembered or understood by them.
All that is perfectly dark to us. But this we know, that those of them
who were godly men lived by the same power by which godly men live
nowadays. Whatever their creed, their religion was ours. Religion, the
bond that unites again the soul to God, has always been the same.




THE SAINT AMONG SINNERS


    'These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man
    and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with
    God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
    The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was
    filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth,
    and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted
    His way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end
    of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled
    with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy
    them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood;
    rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it
    within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion
    which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall
    be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits,
    and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou
    make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it
    above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the
    side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt
    thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of
    waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is
    the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing
    that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I
    establish My covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark,
    thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives
    with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two
    of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them
    alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls
    after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of
    every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of
    every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
    And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and
    thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food
    for thee, and for them. Thus did Noah; according to all
    that God commanded him, so did he.'--GENESIS vi. 9-22.

1. Notice here, first, the solitary saint. Noah stands alone 'in his
generations' like some single tree, green and erect, in a forest of
blasted and fallen pines. 'Among the faithless, faithful only he.' His
character is described, so to speak, from the outside inwards. He is
'righteous,' or discharging all the obligations of law and of his
various relationships. He is 'perfect.' His whole nature is developed,
and all in due symmetry and proportion; no beauty wanting, no grace
cultivated at the expense of others. He is a full man; not a one-sided
and therefore a distorted one. Of course we do not take these words to
imply sinlessness. They express a relative, not an absolute,
completeness. Hence we may learn both a lesson of stimulus and of hope.
We are not to rest satisfied with partial goodness, but to seek to
attain an all-round perfectness, even in regard to the graces least
natural to our dispositions. And we can rejoice to believe that God is
generous in His acceptance and praise. He does not grudge commendation,
but takes account of the deepest desires and main tendencies of a life,
and sees the germ as a full-blown flower, and the bud as a fruit.

Learn, too, that solitary goodness is possible. Noah stood uninfected
by the universal contagion; and, as is always the case, the evil
around, which he did not share, drove him to a more rigid abstinence
from it. A Christian who is alone 'in his generations,' like a lily
among nettles, has to be, and usually is, a more earnest Christian than
if he were among like-minded men. The saints in 'Caesar's household'
needed to be very unmistakable saints, if they were not to be swept
away by the torrent of godlessness. It is hard, but it is possible, for
a boy at school, or a young man in an office, or a soldier in a
barrack, to stand alone, and be Christlike; but only on condition that
he yields to no temptation to drop his conduct to the level around him,
and is never guilty of compromise. Once yield, and all is over. Flowers
grow on a dunghill, and the very reeking rottenness may make the bloom
finer.

Learn, too, that the true place for the saint is 'in his generations.'
If the mass is corrupt, so much the more need to rub the salt well in.
Disgust and cowardice, and the love of congenial society, keep
Christian people from mixing with the world, which they must do if they
are to do Christ's work in it. There is a great deal too much union
with the world, and a great deal too much separation from it, nowadays,
and both are of the wrong sort. We cannot keep too far away from it, by
abstinence from living by its maxims, and tampering with its pleasures.
We cannot mix too much with it if we take our Christianity with us, and
remember our vocation to be its light.

Notice, again, the companion of the solitary saint. What beauty there
is in that description of the isolated man, passing lonely amid his
contemporaries, like a stream of pure water flowing through some foul
liquid, and untouched by it, and yet not alone in his loneliness,
because 'he walked with God!' The less he found congenial companionship
on earth, the more he realised God as by his side. The remarkable
phrase, used only of Enoch and of Noah, implies a closer relation than
the other expression, 'To walk before God.' Communion, the habitual
occupation of mind and heart with God, the happy sense of His presence
making every wilderness and solitary place glad because of Him. the
child's clasping the father's hand with his tiny fingers, and so being
held up and lifted over many a rough place, are all implied. Are we
lonely in outward reality? Here is our unfailing companion. Have we to
stand single among companions, who laugh at us and our religion? One
man, with God to back him, is always in the majority. Though surrounded
by friends, have we found that, after all, we live and suffer, and must
die alone? Here is the all-sufficient Friend, if we have fellowship
with whom our hearts will be lonely no more.

Observe that this communion is the foundation of all righteousness in
conduct. Because Noah walked with God, he was 'just' and 'perfect.' If
we live habitually in the holy of holies, our faces will shine when we
come forth. If we desire to be good and pure, we must dwell with God,
and His Spirit will pass into our hearts, and we shall bear the
fragrance of his presence wherever we go. Learn, also, that communion
with God is not possible unless we are fighting against our sin, and
have some measure of holiness. We begin communion with Him, indeed, not
by holiness, but by faith. But it is not kept up without the
cultivation of purity. Sin makes fellowship with God impossible. 'Can
two walk together, except they be agreed?' 'What communion hath light
with darkness?' The delicate bond which unites us in happy communion
with God shrivels up, as if scorched, at the touch of sin. 'If we say
that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie.'

2. Notice the universal apostasy. Two points are brought out in the
sombre description. The first is moral corruption; the second,
violence. Bad men are cruel men. When the bonds which knit society to
God are relaxed, selfishness soon becomes furious, and forcibly seizes
what it lusts after, regardless of others' rights. Sin saps the very
foundations of social life, and makes men into tigers, more destructive
to each other than wild beasts. All our grand modern schemes for the
reformation of society will fail unless they begin with the reformation
of the individual. To walk with God is the true way to make men gentle
and pitying.

Learn from this dark outline that God gazes in silence on the evil.
That is a grand, solemn expression, 'Corrupt before God.' All this mad
riot of pollution and violence is holding its carnival of lust and
blood under the very eye of God, and He says never a word. So is it
ever. Like some band of conspirators in a dark corner, bad men do deeds
of darkness, and fancy they are unseen, and that God forgets _them_,
because they forget God; and all the while His eye is fixed on them,
and the darkness is light about them. Then comes a further expression
of the same thought: 'God looked upon the earth.' As a sudden beam of
sunshine out of a thunder-cloud, His eye flashes down, not as if He
then began to know, but that His knowledge then began, as it were, to
act.

3. What does the stern sentence on the rotten world teach us? A very
profound truth, not only of the certain divine retribution, but of the
indissoluble connection of sin with destruction. The same word is
thrice employed in verses 11 and 12 to express 'corruption' and in
verse 13 to express 'destruction.' A similar usage is found in 1
Corinthians iii. 17, where the same Greek word is translated 'defile'
and 'destroy.' This teaches us that, in deepest reality, corruption is
destruction, that sin is death, that every sinner is a suicide. God's
act in punishment corresponds to, and is the inevitable outcome of, our
act in transgression. So fatal is all evil, that one word serves to
describe both the poison-secreting root and the poisoned fruit. Sin is
death in the making; death is sin finished.

The promise of deliverance, which comes side by side with the stern
sentence, illustrates the blessed truth that God's darkest threatenings
are accompanied with a revelation of the way of escape. The ark is
always shown along with the flood. Zoar is pointed out when God
foretells Sodom's ruin. We are no sooner warned of the penalties of
sin, than we are bid to hear the message of mercy in Christ. The brazen
serpent is ever reared where the venomous snakes bite and burn.

4. We pass by the details of the construction of the ark to draw the
final lesson from the exact obedience of Noah. We have the statement
twice over, He did 'according to all that God commanded him.' It was no
easy thing for him to build the ark, amidst the scoffing of his
generations. Smart witticisms fell around him like hail. All the
'practical men' thought him a dreamy fool, wasting his time, while they
prospered and made something of life. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells
us the secret of his obedience: 'By faith, Noah,' etc. He realised the
distant unseen, because he believed Him who warned him of it. The
immediate object of his faith was 'the things not seen as yet'; but the
real, deepest object was God, whose word showed him these. So faith is
always trust in a divine Person, whether it lays hold of the past
sacrifice, the present indwelling Spirit, or the future heaven.

Noah's example teaches us the practical effects of faith. 'Moved with
godly fear,' says Hebrews; by which is meant, not a mere dread of
personal evil, for Noah was assured of safety--but that godly reverence
and happy fear which dwells with faith, and secures precise obedience.
Learn that a faith which does not work on the feelings is a very poor
thing. Some Christian people have a great horror of emotional religion.
Unemotional religion is a great deal worse. The road by which faith
gets at the hands is through the heart. And he who believes but feels
nothing, will do exactly as much as he feels, and probably does not
really believe much more.

So after Noah's emotion followed his action. He was bid to prepare his
ark, we have only to take refuge in the ark which God has prepared in
Christ; but the principle of Noah's obedience applies to us all. He
realised so perfectly that future, with its double prospect of
destruction and deliverance, that his whole life was moulded by the
conduct which should lead to his escape. The far-off flood was more
real to him than the shows of life around him. Therefore he could stand
all the gibes, and gave himself to a course of life which was sheer
folly unless that future was real. Perhaps a hundred and twenty years
passed between the warning and the flood; and for all that time he held
on his way, nor faltered in his faith. Does our faith realise that
which lies before us with anything like similar clearness? Do we see
that future shining through all the trivial, fleeting present? Does it
possess weight and solidity enough to shape our lives? Noah's creed was
much shorter than ours; but I fear his faith was as much stronger.

5. We may think, finally, of the vindication of his faith. For a
hundred and twenty years the wits laughed, and the 'common-sense'
people wondered, and the patient saint went on hammering and pitching
at his ark. But one morning it began to rain; and by degrees, somehow,
Noah did not seem quite such a fool. The jests would look rather
different when the water was up to the knees of the jesters; and their
sarcasms would stick in their throats as they drowned. So is it always.
So it will be at the last great day. The men who lived for the future,
by faith in Christ, will be found out to have been the wise men when
the future has become the present, and the present has become the past,
and is gone for ever; while they who had no aims beyond the things of
time, which are now sunk beneath the dreary horizon, will awake too
late to the conviction that they are outside the ark of safety, and
that their truest epitaph is 'Thou fool!'




'CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN'


    'And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all
    the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a
    wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;
    The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven
    were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;
    And the waters returned from off the earth continually:
    and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the
    waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh
    month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the
    mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually
    until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first
    day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
    And it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah
    opened the window of the ark which he had made: And he
    sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until
    the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent
    forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated
    from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no
    rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him
    into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the
    whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her,
    and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed
    yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove
    out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the
    evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt
    off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off
    the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent
    forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any
    more. And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first
    year, in the first month, the first day of the month,
    the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah
    removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold,
    the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month,
    on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the
    earth dried. And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth
    of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy
    sons wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living
    thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl,
    and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth
    upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the
    earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.
    And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and
    his sons' wives with him: Every beast, every creeping
    thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the
    earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.
    And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of
    every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered
    burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a
    sweet savour; and the Lord said in His heart, I will
    not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for
    the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth;
    neither will I again smite any more every thing living,
    as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and
    harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and
    day and night shall not cease,'--GENESIS viii. 1-22.

The universal tradition of a deluge is most naturally accounted for by
admitting that there was a 'universal deluge.' But 'universal' does not
apply to the extent as embracing the whole earth, but as affecting the
small area then inhabited--an area which was probably not greater than
the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris. The story in Genesis is the
Hebrew version of the universal tradition, and its plain affinity to
the cuneiform narratives is to be frankly accepted. But the
relationship of these two is not certain. Are they mother and daughter,
or are they sisters? The theory that the narrative in Genesis is
derived from the Babylonian, and is a purified, elevated rendering of
it, is not so likely as that both are renderings of a more primitive
account, to which the Hebrew narrative has kept true, while the other
has tainted it with polytheistic ideas. In this passage the cessation
of the flood is the theme, and it brings out both the love of the God
who sent the awful punishment, and the patient godliness of the man who
was spared from it. So it completes the teaching of the flood, and
proclaims that God 'in wrath remembers mercy.'

1. 'God remembered Noah.' That is a strong 'anthropomorphism,' like
many other things in Genesis--very natural when these records were
written, and bearing a true meaning for all times. It might seem as if,
in the wild rush of the waters from beneath and from above, the little
handful in the ark were forgotten. Had the Judge of all the earth,
while executing 'terrible things in righteousness,' leisure to think of
them who were 'afar off upon the sea'? Was it a blind wrath that had
been let loose? No; in all the severity there was tender regard for
those worthy of it. Judgment was discriminating. The sunshine of love
broke through even the rain-clouds of the flood.

So the blessed lesson is taught that, in the widest sweep of the most
stormy judgments, there are those who abide safely, fearing no evil.
Though the waters are out, there is a rock on which we may stand safe,
above their highest wave. And why did God 'remember Noah'? It was not
favouritism, arbitrary and immoral. Noah was bid to build the ark,
because he was 'righteous' in a world of evil-doers; he was
'remembered' in the ark, because he had believed God's warning, obeyed
God's command as seeing the judgment 'not seen as yet,' and so 'became
heir of the righteousness which is by faith.' They who trust God, and,
trusting Him, realise as if present the future judgment, and, 'moved
with fear,' take refuge in the ark, are never forgot by Him, even while
the world is drowned. They live in His heart, and in due time He will
show that He remembers them.

2. The gradual subsidence of the flood is told with singular exactitude
of dates, which are certainly peculiar if they are not historical. The
slow decrease negatives the explanation of the story as being the
exaggerated remembrance of some tidal-wave caused by earthquake and the
like. Precisely five months after the flood began, the ark grounded,
and the two sources, the rain from above and the 'fountains of the
deep' (that is, probably, the sea), were 'restrained,' and a high wind
set in. That date marked the end of the increase of the waters, and
consequently the beginning of their decrease. Seven months and ten days
elapsed between it and the complete restoration of the earth to its
previous condition. That time was divided into stages. Two months and a
half passed before the highest land emerged; two months more and the
surface was all visible; a month and twenty-seven days more before 'the
earth was dry.' The frequent recurrence of the sacred numbers, seven
and ten, is noticeable. The length of time required for the restorative
process witnesses to the magnitude of the catastrophe, impresses the
imagination, and suggests the majestic slowness of the divine working,
and how He uses natural processes for His purposes of moral government,
and rules the wildest outbursts of physical agents. The Lord as king
'sitteth upon the flood,' and opens or seals the fountains of the great
deep as He will. Scripture does not tell of the links between the First
Cause and the physical effect. It brings the latter close up to the
former. The last link touches the fixed staple, and all between may be
ignored.

But the patient expectance of Noah comes out strongly in the story, as
well as the gradualness of God's working. Not till 'forty days'--a
round number--after the land appeared, did He do anything. He waited
quietly till the path was plain. Eager impatience does not become those
who trust in God. It is not said that the raven was sent out to see if
the waters were abated. No purpose is named, nor is it said that it
returned at all. 'To and fro' may mean over the waste of waters, not
back and forward to and from the ark. The raven, from its blackness,
its habit of feeding on carrion, its fierceness, was a bird of
ill-omen, and sending it forth has a grim suggestion that it would find
food enough, and 'rest for the sole of its foot,' among the swollen
corpses floating on the dark waters. The dove, on the other hand, is
the emblem of gentleness, purity, and tenderness. She went forth, the
very embodiment of meek hope that wings its way over dark and desolate
scenes of calamity and judgment, and, though disappointed at first,
patiently waits till the waters sink further, discerns the earliest
signs of their drying up, and comes back to the sender with a report
which is a prophecy: 'Your peace shall return to you again.' Happy they
who send forth, not the raven, but the dove, from their patient hearts.
Their gentle wishes come back with confirmation of their hopes, 'as
doves to their windows.'

3. But Noah did not leave the ark, though 'the earth was dry.' God had
'shut him in,' and it must be God who brings him out. We have to take
heed of precipitate departure from the place where He has fixed us.
Like Israel in the desert, it must be 'at the commandment of the Lord'
that we pitch the camp, and at the commandment of the Lord that we
journey. Till He speaks we must remain, and as soon as He speaks we
must remove. 'God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth ... and Noah went
forth.' Thus prompt must be our obedience. A sacrifice of gratitude is
the fit close of each epoch in our lives, and the fit beginning of each
new one. Before he thought of anything else, Noah built his altar. All
our deeds should be set in a golden ring of thankfulness. So the past
is hallowed, and the future secure of God's protection. It is no
unworthy conception of God which underlies the strongly human
expression that he 'smelled the sweet savour.' He delights in our
offerings, and our trustful, grateful love is 'an odour of a sweet
smell, a sacrifice acceptable' to Him. The pledge that He will not any
more curse the ground for man's sake is occasioned by the sacrifice,
but is grounded on what seems, at first sight, a reason for the very
opposite conclusion. Man's evil heart the reason for God's forbearance?
Yes, because it is _'evil from his youth_.' He deals with men as
knowing our frame, the corruption of our nature, and the need that the
tree should be made good before it can bring forth good fruit.
Therefore He will not smite, but rather seek to draw to repentance by
His goodness, and by the faithful continuance of His beneficence in the
steadfast covenant of revolving seasons, 'filling our hearts with food
and gladness.'




THE SIGN FOR MAN AND THE REMEMBRANCER FOR GOD


    'And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him,
    saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you,
    and with your seed after you; And with every living
    creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle,
    and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that
    go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I
    will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all
    flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood;
    neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the
    earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant
    which I make between Me and you and every living creature
    that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set My
    bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a
    covenant between Me and the earth. And it shall come to
    pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow
    shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember My
    covenant, which is between Me and you and every living
    creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more
    become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall
    be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may
    remember the everlasting covenant between God and every
    living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And
    God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant,
    which I have established between Me and all flesh that
    is upon the earth.
    GENESIS ix. 8-17.

The previous verses of this chapter lay down the outlines of the new
order which followed the flood. The blessing and the command to be
fruitful are repeated. The dominion over animals is confirmed, but
enlarged by the permission to use them as food, and by the laying on
them of 'the terror of you and the dread of you.' The sanctity of human
life is laid down with great emphasis. Violence and bloodshed had
brought about the flood. The appalling destruction effected by it might
lead to the mistaken notion that God held man's life cheap. Therefore
the cornerstone of future society is laid in that declaration that life
is inviolable. These blessings and commands are followed by this
remarkable section, which deals with God's covenant with Noah, and its
token in the rainbow.

1. The covenant is stated, and the parties concerned in it enumerated
in verses 3-11. When Noah came forth from the ark, after the stupendous
act of divine justice, he must have felt that the first thing he needed
was some assurance as to the footing on which he and the new world
round him stood with God. The flood had swept away the old order. It
had revealed terrible possibilities of destruction in nature, and
terrible possibilities of wrath in God. Was any knowledge of His
intentions and ways possible? Could continuance of the new order be
counted on? The answer to such questions was--God's covenant. Now, as
then, when any great convulsions shake what seems permanent, and bring
home to men the thinness of the crust of use and wont roofing an
infinite depth of unknown possibilities of change, on which we walk,
the heart cries out for some assurance of perpetuity, and some
revelation of God's mind. We can have such, as truly as Noah had, if we
use the Revelation given us in Jesus.

In God's covenant with Noah, the fact of the covenant may first be
noted. What is a covenant? The term usually implies a reciprocal bond,
both parties to which come under obligations by it, each to the other.
But, in this case, there are no obligations on the part of man or of
the creatures. This covenant is God's only. It is contingent on nothing
done by the recipients. He binds Himself, whatever be the conduct of
men. This covenant is the self-motived promise of an unconditional
mercy. May we not say that the 'New Covenant' in Jesus Christ is after
the pattern of this, rather than after the manner of compacts which
require both parties to do their several parts?

But note the great thought, that God limits His freedom of action by
this definite promise. Noah was not left to grope in dread among the
terrible possibilities opened by the flood. God marked out the line on
which He would move, and marked off a course which He would not pursue.
It is like a king giving his subjects a constitution. Men can reckon on
God. He has let them know much of the principles and methods of His
government. He has buoyed out His course, as it were, on the ocean, or
pricked it down upon a chart. We have not to do with arbitrary power,
with inscrutable will. Our God is not one who 'giveth no account of any
of His matters.' To use a common saying, 'We know where to have Him.'

The substance of this covenant is noteworthy. It is concerned solely
with physical nature. There is nothing spiritual or 'religious' about
it. There are to be no more universal deluges. That is all which it
guarantees. But consider how important such an assurance was in two
aspects. Note the solemn light which it threw on the past. It taught
that the flood was an exception in the divine government, which should
stand unrepeated for ever, in its dread pre-eminence testifying how
awful it was as a judicial act, and how outrageous had been the guilt
which it drowned out of existence and sight. A wholesome terror at the
unexampled act of judgment would fill the hearts of the little group
which now represented mankind.

Consider the effect of the covenant in encouraging hope. We have said
that the one thing needful for Noah was some assurance that the new
order would last. He was like a man who has just been rescued from an
earthquake or a volcanic eruption. The ground seems to reel beneath
him. Old habitudes have been curled up like leaves in the fire. Is
there to be any fixity, any ground for continuous action, or for labour
for a moment beyond the present? Is it worth while to plant or sow? Men
who have lived through national tempests or domestic crashes know how
much they need to be steadied afterwards by some reasonable assurance
of comparative continuity. And these men, in the childhood of the race,
would need it much. So they were sent out to till the earth, and to
begin again strenuous lives, with this covenant to keep them from
falling into a hand-to-mouth style of life, which would have brought
them down to barbarism. We all need the same kind of assurance; and
then, when we get it, such is the weakness of humanity, we are tempted
to think that continuity means eternity, and that, because probably
to-morrow shall be as this day, there will never come a to-morrow which
shall be quite unlike to-day. The crust of cooled earth, on which we
walk, is thick enough to bear man and all his works, but there comes a
time when it will crack. The world will not be flooded again, but we
forget, what Noah did not know, that it will be burned.

The parties to the covenant must be noticed. Note how frequently the
share in it, which all living creatures have, is referred to in the
context. In verse 10 the language becomes strained (in the original),
in order to express the universal participation of all living
creatures; and in verse 13 'the earth' itself is spoken of as one
party. God recognises obligations to all living things, and even to the
dumb, non-sentient earth. He will not causelessly quench one bright,
innocent life, nor harm one clod. Surely this is, at least, an
incipient revelation of a God whose 'tender mercies are over all his
works.' He 'doth take care for oxen'; and man, with all the creatures
that are with him, and all the wild ones that 'come not near' him, and
all the solid structure of the world, are held in one covenant of
protecting and sustaining providence and power.

2. The sign of the covenant is described at great length in verses
12-17. Note that verses 12, 13 state the general idea of a token or
sign, that verses 14-16 deepen this by stating that the token to man is
a reminder to God, and that verse 17 sums up the whole with emphatic
repetition of the main points. The narrative does not imply, as has
often been supposed, that the rainbow was visible for the first time
after the deluge. To suppose that, is to read more into the story than
is there, or than common sense tolerates. If there were showers and
sunshine, there must have been rainbows. But the fair vision strode
across the sky with no articulate promise in its loveliness, though it
must always have kindled wonder, and sometimes stirred deeper thoughts.
Now, for the first time, it was made 'a sign,' the visible pledge of
God's promise.

Mark the emphasis with which God's agency is declared and His ownership
asserted. '_I_ do set _My_ bow.' Neither Noah nor the writer knew
anything about refraction or the prismatic spectrum. But perhaps they
knew more about the rainbow than people do who know all about how it
comes, except that God sets it in the cloud, and that it is His. Let us
have the facts which science labels as such, by all means, and the more
the better; but do not let us forget that there are other facts in
nature which science has no means of attaining, but which are as solid
and a great deal deeper than those which it supplies.

The natural adaptation of the rainbow for this office of a token is too
plain to need dwelling on. It 'fills the sky when storms prepare to
part,' and hence is a natural token that the downpour is being stayed.
Somewhere there must be a bit of blue through which the sun can pierce;
and the small gap, which is large enough to let it out, will grow till
all the sky is one azure dome. It springs into sight in front of the
cloud, without which it could not be, so it typifies the light which
may glorify judgments, and is born of sorrows borne in the presence of
God. It comes from the sunshine smiting the cloud; so it preaches the
blending of love with divine judgment. It unites earth and heaven; so
it proclaims that heavenly love is ready to transform earthly sorrows.
It stretches across the land; so it speaks of an all-embracing care,
which enfolds the earth and all its creatures.

It is not only a 'sign to men.' It is also, in the strong
anthropomorphism of the narrative, a remembrancer to God. Of course
this is accommodation of the representation of His nature to the
limitations of ours. And the danger of attaching unworthy ideas to it
is lessened by noticing that He is said to set His bow in the cloud,
before it acts as His remembrancer. Therefore, He had remembered before
it appeared. The truth, conveyed in the childlike language, is that God
has His covenant ever before Him, and that He responds to and honours
the appeal made to Him, by that which He has Himself appointed for a
sign to men. The expectant eyes of the trustful man and the eye of God
meet, as it were, in looking on the sign. On earth it nourishes faith;
in heaven it moves to love and blessing. God can be reminded of what He
always remembers. The rainbow reminds Him of His covenant by its calm
light. Jesus Christ reminds Him of His grace by His intercession before
the throne. We remind Him of His plighted faithfulness by our prayers.
'Ye that are the Lord's remembrancers, keep not silence.'




AN EXAMPLE OF FAITH


    'Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy
    country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's
    house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will
    make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and
    make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And
    I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that
    curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth
    be blessed. So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken
    unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy
    and five years old when he departed out of Haran. And
    Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son,
    and all their substance that they had gathered, and the
    souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth
    to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of
    Canaan they came. And Abram passed through the land unto
    the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the
    Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared
    unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this
    land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who
    appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a
    mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his tent,
    having Beth-el on the west, and Hai on the east: and
    there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon
    the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed, going on
    still toward the south.'
    GENESIS xii. 1-9.


I


We stand here at the well-head of a great river--a narrow channel,
across which a child can step, but which is to open out a broad bosom
that will reflect the sky and refresh continents. The call of Abram is
the most important event in the Old Testament, but it is also an
eminent example of individual faith. For both reasons he is called 'the
Father of the Faithful.' We look at the incident here mainly from the
latter point of view. It falls into three parts.

1. The divine voice of command and promise.--God's servants have to be
separated from home and kindred, and all surroundings. The command to
Abram was no mere arbitrary test of obedience. God could not have done
what He meant with him, unless He had got him by himself. So Isaiah
(li. 2) put his finger on the essential when he says, 'I called him
alone.' God's communications are made to solitary souls, and His voice
to us always summons us to forsake friends and companions, and to go
apart with God. No man gets speech of God in a crowd. If you desired to
fill a person with electricity, you used to put him on a stool with
glass legs, to keep him from earthly contact. If the quickening impulse
from the great magnet is to charge the soul, that soul must be
isolated. 'He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy
of Me.'

The vagueness of the command is significant. Abram did not know
'whither he went.' He is not told that Canaan is the land, till he has
reached Canaan. A true obedience is content to have orders enough for
present duty. Ships are sometimes sent out with sealed instructions, to
be opened when they reach latitude and longitude so-and-so. That is how
we are all sent out. Our knowledge goes no farther ahead than is
needful to guide our next step. If we 'go out' as He bids us, He will
show us what to do next.

  'I do not ask to see
  The distant scene; one step enough for me.'

Observe the promise. We may notice that it needed a soul raised above
the merely temporal to care much for such promises. They would have
been but thin diet for earthly appetites. 'A great nation'; a divine
blessing; to be a source of blessing to the whole world, and a
touchstone by their conduct to which men would be blessed or
cursed;--what was there in these to fascinate a man, unless he had
faith to teach him the relative importance of the earthly and the
heavenly, the present and the future? Notice that the whole promise
appeals to unselfish desires. It is always, in some measure, elevating
to live for a future, rather than a present, good; but if it be only
the same kind of good as the present would yield, it is a poor affair.
The only really ennobling faith is one which sets before itself a
future full of divine blessing, and of diffusion of that blessing
through us, and which therefore scorns delights, and for such gifts is
content to be solitary and a wanderer.

2. The obedience of faith.--We have here a wonderful example of prompt,
unquestioning obedience to a bare word. We do not know how the divine
command was conveyed to Abram. We simply read, 'The Lord said'; and if
we contrast this with verse 7, 'The Lord appeared ... and said,' it
will seem probable that there was no outward sign of the divine will.
The patriarch knew that he was following a divine command, and not his
own purpose; but there seems to have been no appeal to sense to
authenticate the inward voice. He stands, then, on a high level,
setting the example of faith as unconditional acceptance of, and
obedience to, God's bare word.

Observe that faith, which is the reliance on a person, and therefore
trust in his word, passes into both forms of confidence in that word as
promise, and obedience to that word as command. We cannot cut faith in
halves, and exercise the one aspect without the other. Some people's
faith says that it delights in God's promises, but it does not delight
in His commandments. That is no faith at all. Whoever takes God at His
word, will take all His words. There is no faith without obedience;
there is no obedience without faith.

We have already said enough about the separation which was effected by
Abram's journey; but we may just notice that the departure from his
father's house was but the necessary result of the gulf between them
and him, which had been opened by his faith. They were idolaters; he
worshipped one God. That drove them farther apart than the distance
between Sichem and Haran. When sympathy in religion was at an end, the
breach of all other ties was best. So to-day, whether there be outward
separation or no, depends on circumstances; but every true Christian is
parted from the dearest who is not a Christian, by an abyss wider than
any outward distance can make. The law for us is Abram's law, 'Get thee
out.' Either our faith will separate us from the world, or the world
will separate us from our faith and our God.

The companionship of Lot, who attaches himself to Abram, teaches that
religion, in its true possessors, exercises an attractive influence
over even common natures, and may win them to a loftier life. Some weak
eyes may discern more glory in the sunshine tinting a poor bit of mist
into ruddy light than in the beam which is too bright to look at. A
faithful Abram will draw Lot after him.

'They went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of
Canaan they came.' Compare this singular expression with chapter xi.
31, where we have Terah's emigration from Ur described in the same
terms, with the all-important difference in the end, 'They came' not
into Canaan, but 'unto Haran, and dwelt there.' Many begin the course;
one finishes it. Terah's journeying was only in search of pasture and
an abode. So he dropped his wider scheme when the narrower served his
purpose. It was an easy matter to go from Ur to Haran. Both were on the
same bank of the Euphrates. But to cross the broad, deep, rapid river
was a different thing, and meant an irrevocable cutting loose from the
past life. Only the man of faith did that. There are plenty of
half-and-half Christians, who go along merrily from Ur to Haran; but
when they see the wide stream in front, and realise how completely the
other side is separated from all that is familiar, they take another
thought, and conclude they have come far enough, and Haran will serve
their turn.

Again, the phrase teaches us the certain issue of patient pilgrimage
and persistent purpose. There is no mystery in getting to the journey's
end. 'One foot up, and the other foot down,' continued long enough,
will bring to the goal of the longest march. It looks a weary journey,
and we wonder if we shall ever get thither. But the magic of 'one step
at a time' does it. The guide is also the upholder of our way. 'Every
one of them appeareth before God in Zion.'

3. The life in the land.--The first characteristic of it is its
continual wandering. This is the feature which the Epistle to the
Hebrews marks as significant. There was no reason but his own choice
why Abram should continue to journey, and prefer to pitch his tent now
under the terebinth tree of Moreh, now by Hebron, rather than to enter
some of the cities of the land. He dwelt in tents because he looked for
the city. The clear vision of the future detached him, as it will
always detach men, from close participation in the present. It is not
because we are mortal, and death is near at the furthest, that the
Christian is to sit loose to this world, but because he lives by the
hope of the inheritance. He must choose to be a pilgrim, and keep
himself apart in feeling and aims from this present. The great lesson
from the wandering life of Abram is, 'Set your affection on things
above.' Cultivate the sense of belonging to another polity than that in
the midst of which you dwell. The Canaanites christened Abram 'The
Hebrew' (Genesis xiv. 13), which may be translated 'The man from the
other side.' That is the name which all true Christians should deserve.
They should bear their foreign extraction in their faces, and never be
naturalised subjects here. Life is wholesomer in the tent under the
spreading tree, with the fresh air blowing about us and clear sky
above, than in the Canaanite city.

Observe, too, that Abram's life was permeated with worship. Wherever he
pitches his tent, he builds an altar. So he fed his faith, and kept up
his communion with God. The only condition on which the pilgrim life is
possible, and the temptations of the world cease to draw our hearts, is
that all life shall be filled with the consciousness of the divine
presence, our homes altars, and ourselves joyful thankofferings. Then
every abode is blessed. The undefended tent is a safe fortress, in
which dwelling we need not envy those who dwell in palaces. Common
tasks will then be fresh, full of interest, because we see God in them,
and offer them up to Him. The wandering life will be a life of walking
with God, and progressive knowledge of Him; and over all the
roughnesses and the sorrows and the trivialities of it will be spread
'the light that never was on sea or land, the consecration' of God's
presence, and the peacefulness of communion with Him.

Again, we may notice that the life of obedience was followed by fuller
manifestations of God, and of His will. God 'appeared' when Abram was
in the land. Is it not always true that obedience is blessed by closer
vision and more knowledge? To him that hath shall be given; and he who
has followed the unseen Guide through dimly discerned paths to an
invisible goal, will be gladdened when he reaches the true Canaan, by
the sight of Him whom, having not seen, he loved. Even here on earth
obedience is the path to fuller knowledge; and when the pilgrims who
have left all and followed the Captain of salvation through a deeper,
darker stream than Abram crossed, have touched the other side, God will
appear to them, and say, as the enraptured eye gazes amazed on the
goodly land, 'Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in
the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.'




ABRAM AND THE LIFE OF FAITH


II


A great act of renunciation at the divine call lies at the foundation
of Israel's history, as it does at the foundation of every life that
blesses the world or is worth living. The divine Word to Abram first
gives the command in all its authoritativeness and plain setting forth
of how much had to be surrendered, and then in its exuberant setting
forth of how much was to be won by obedience. God does not hide the
sacrifices that have to be made if we will be true to His command. He
will enlist no recruits on false pretences. All ties of country,
kindred, and father's house have to be loosened, and, if need be, to be
cut, for His command is to be supreme, and clinging hands that would
hold back the pilgrim have to be disengaged. If a man realises God's
hold on him, he feels all others relaxed. The magnetism of the divine
command overcomes gravitation, and lifts him high above earth. The life
of faith ever begins as that of 'the Father of the Faithful' began,
with the solemn recognition of a divine will which separates. Further,
Abram saw plainly what he had to leave, but not what he was to win. He
had to make a venture of faith, for 'the land that I will shew thee'
was undefined. Certainly it was somewhere, but where was it? He had to
fling away substance for what seemed shadow to all but the eye of
faith, as we all have to do. The familiar, undeniable good of the
present has to be waived in favour of what 'common sense' calls a misty
possibility in the future. To part with solid acres and get nothing but
hopes of an inheritance in the skies looks like insanity, and is the
only true wisdom. 'Get thee out' is plain; 'the land that I will shew
thee' looks like the doubtful outlines seen from afar at sea, which may
be but clouds.

But Abram had a great hope blazing in front, none the less bright or
guiding because it all rested on the bare promise of God. It is the
prerogative of faith to give solidity and reality to what the world
thinks has neither. The wanderer who had left his country was to
receive a land for his own; the solitary who had left his kindred was
to become the founder of a nation; the unknown stranger was to win a
great name,--and how wonderfully that has come true! Not only was he to
be blessed, but also to be a blessing, for from him was to flow that
which should bless all the earth,--and how transcendently that has come
true! The attitude of men to him (and to the universal blessing that
should descend from him) was to determine their position in reference
to God and 'blessings' or 'cursings' from him. So the migration of
Abram was a turning-point in universal history.

Obedience followed the command, immediate as the thunder on the flash,
and complete. 'So Abram went, as the Lord had spoken unto
him,'--blessed they of whose lives that may be the summing-up! Happy
the life which has God's command at the back of every deed, and no
command of His unobeyed! If our acts are closely parallel with God's
speech to us, they will prosper, and we shall be peaceful wherever we
may have to wander. Success followed obedience in Abram's case, as in
deepest truth it always does. That is a pregnant expression: 'They went
forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they
came.' A strange itinerary of a journey, which omits all but the start
and the finish! And yet are these not the most important points in any
journey or life,--whither it was directed and where it arrived? How
little will the weary tramps in the desert be remembered when the goal
has been reached! Dangers and privations soon pass from memory, and we
shall think little of sorrows, cares, and pains, when we arrive at
home. The life of faith is the only one which is always sure of getting
to the place to which it seeks to journey. Others miss their aim, or
drop dead on the road, like the early emigrants out West; Christian
lives get to the city.

Once in the land, Abram was still a stranger and pilgrim. He first
planted himself in its heart by Sichem, but outside the city, under the
terebinth tree of Moreh. The reason for his position is given in the
significant statement that 'the Canaanite was then in the land.' So he
had to live in the midst of an alien civilisation, and yet keep apart
from it. As Hebrews says, he was 'dwelling in tabernacles,' because he
'looked for a city.' The hope of the permanent future made him keep
clear of the passing present; and we are to feel ourselves pilgrims and
sojourners, not so much because earth is fleeting and we are mortal, as
because our true affinities are with the unseen and eternal. But the
presence of 'the Canaanite' is connected also with the following words,
which tell that 'the Lord appeared unto Abram,' and now after his
obedience told him that this was the land that was to be his. He
unfolds His purposes to those who keep His commandments; obedience is
the mother of insight. The revelation put a further strain on faith,
for the present occupiers of the land were many and strong; but it
matters not how formidably and firmly rooted the Canaanite is, God's
children can be sure that the promise will be fulfilled. We can calmly
look on his power and reckon on its decay, if the Lord appears to us,
as to Abram--and He surely will if we have followed His separating
voice, and dwell as strangers here, because our hearts are with Him.

After the appearance of God and the promise, we have an outline of the
pilgrim's life, as seen in Abram. He signalised God's further opening
of His purposes, by building an altar on the place where He had been
seen by him. Thankful recognition and commemoration of the times in our
lives when He has most plainly drawn near and shown us glimpses of His
will, are no less blessed than due, and they who thus rear altars to
Him will wonder, when they come to count up how many they have had to
build. But the life of faith is ever a pilgrim life, and Bethel has
soon to be the home instead of Shechem. There, too, Abram keeps outside
the city, and pitches his tent. There, too, the altar rises by the side
of the tent. The transitory provision for housing the pilgrim contrasts
with the solid structure for offering sacrifices. The tent is
'pitched,' and may be struck and carried away to-morrow, but the altar
is 'builded.' That part of our lives which is concerned with the
material and corporeal is, after all, short in duration and small in
importance; that which has to do with God, His revelations, and His
worship and service, lasts. What is left in ancient historic lands,
like Egypt or Greece, is the temples of the gods, while the huts of the
people have perished long centuries ago. What we build for God lasts;
what we pitch for ourselves is transient as we are.




GOING FORTH


    'They went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into
    the land of Canaan they came.'--GENESIS xii. 5.


I


The reference of these words is to Abram's act of faith in leaving
Haran and setting out on his pilgrimage. It is a strange narrative of a
journey, which omits the journey altogether, with its weary marches,
privations, and perils, and notes but its beginning and its end. Are
not these the main points in every life, its direction and its
attainment? There are--

  'Two points in the adventure of the diver,
   One--when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge,
   One--when, a prince, he rises with his pearl.'

Abram and his company had a clear aim. But does not the Epistle to the
Hebrews magnify him precisely because he 'went out, not knowing whither
he went'? Both statements are true, for Abram had the same combination
of knowledge and ignorance as we all have. He knew that he was to go to
a land that he should afterwards inherit, and he knew that, in the
first place, Canaan was to be his 'objective point,' but he did not
know, till long after he had crossed the Euphrates and pitched his tent
by Bethel, that it was the land. The ultimate goal was clear, and the
first step towards it was plain, but how that first step was related to
the goal was not plain, and all the steps between were unknown. He went
forth with sealed orders, to go to a certain place, where he would have
further instructions. He knew that he was to go to Canaan, and beyond
that point all was dark, except for the sparkle of the great hope that
gleamed on the horizon in front, as a sunlit summit rises above a sea
of mist between it and the traveller. Like such a traveller, Abram
could not accurately tell how far off the shining peak was, nor where,
in the intervening gorges full of mist, the path lay; but he plunged
into the darkness with a good heart, because he had caught a glimpse of
his journey's end. So with us. We may have clear before us the ultimate
aim and goal of our lives, and also the step which we have to take now,
in pressing towards it, while between these two there stretches a
valley full of mist, the breadth of which may be measured by years or
by hours, for all that we know, and the rough places and green pastures
of which are equally hidden from us. We have to be sure that the
mountain peak far ahead, with the sunshine bathing it, is not delusive
cloud but solid reality, and we have to make sure that God has bid us
step out on the yard of path which we _can_ see, and, having secured
these two certainties, we are to cast ourselves into the obscurity
before us, and to bear in our hearts the vision of the end, to cheer us
amid the difficulties of the road.

Life is strenuous, fruitful, and noble, in the measure in which its
ultimate aim is kept clearly visible throughout it all. Nearer aims,
prescribed by physical necessities, tastes, circumstances, and the
like, are clear enough, but a melancholy multitude of us have never
reflected on the further question: 'What then?' Suppose I have made my
fortune, or won my wife, or established my position, or achieved a
reputation, behind all these successes lies the larger question. These
are not ends but means, and it is fatal to treat them as being the goal
of our efforts or the chief end of our being. There would be fewer
wrecked lives, and fewer bitter and disappointed old men, if there were
more young ones who, at starting, put clearly before themselves the
question: 'What am I living for? and what am I going to do when I have
secured the nearer aims necessarily prescribed to me?'

What that aim should be is not doubtful. The only worthy end befitting
creatures with hearts, minds, consciences, and wills like ours is God
Himself. Abram's 'Canaan' is usually regarded as an emblem of heaven,
and that is correct, but the land of our inheritance is not wholly
beyond the river, for God is the portion of our hearts. He _is_ heaven.
To dwell with Him, to have all the current of our being running towards
Him, to set Him before us in the strenuous hours of effort and in the
quiet moments of repose, in the bright and in the dark days, are the
conditions of blessedness, strength, and peace.

That aim clearly apprehended and persistently pursued gives continuity
to life, such as nothing else can do. How many of the things that drew
us to themselves, and were for a while the objects of desire and
effort, have sunk below the horizon! The lives that are not directed to
God as their chief end are like the voyages of old-time sailors, who
had to creep from one headland to another, and steer for points which,
one after another, were reached, left behind, and forgotten. There is
only one aim so great, so far in advance that we can never reach, and
therefore can never pass and drop it. Life then becomes a chain, not a
heap of unrelated fragments. That aim made ours, stimulates effort to
its highest point, and therefore secures blessedness. It emancipates
from many bonds, and takes the poison out of the mosquito bites of
small annoyances, and the stings of great sorrows. It gleams ever
before a man, sufficiently attained to make him at rest, sufficiently
unattained to give the joy of progress. The pilgrims who had but one
single aim, 'to go to the land of Canaan,' were delivered from the
miseries of conflicting desires, and with simplicity of aim came
concentration of force and calm of spirit.




COMING IN


II


If life has a clear, definite aim, and especially if its aim is the
highest, there will be detachment from, and abandonment of, many lower
ones. Nothing worth doing is done, and nothing worth being is realised
in ourselves, except on condition of resolutely ignoring much that
attracts. 'They went forth'; Haran must be given up if Canaan is to be
reached. Artists are content to pay the price for mastery in their art,
students think it no hardship to remain ignorant of much in order to
know their own subject thoroughly; men of business feel it no sacrifice
to give up culture, leisure, and sometimes still higher things, such as
love and purity, to win wealth. And we shall not be Christians after
Christ's heart unless we practise similar restrictions. The stream that
is to flow with impetus sufficient to scour its bed clear of
obstructions must not be allowed to meander in side branches, but be
banked up in one channel. Sometimes there must be actual surrender and
outward withdrawal from lower aims which, by our weakness, have become
rival aims; always there must be subordination and detachment in heart
and mind. The compass in an iron ship is disturbed by the iron, unless
it has been adjusted; the golden apples arrest the runner, and there
are clogs and weights in every life, which have to be laid aside if the
race is to be won. The old pilgrim fashion is still the only way. We
must do as Abram did: leave Haran and its idols behind us, and go
forth, ready to dwell, if need be, in deserts, and as sojourners even
when among cities, or we shall not reach the 'land that is very far
off.' It is near us if we forsake self and the 'things seen and
temporal,' but it recedes when we turn our hearts to these.

'Into the land of Canaan they came.' No man honestly and rightly seeks
God and fails to find Him. No man has less goodness and Christ-likeness
than he truly desires and earnestly pursues. Nearer aims are often
missed, and it is well that they should be. We should thank God for
disappointments, for hopes unfulfilled, or proving still greater
disappointments when fulfilled. It is mercy that often makes the
harvest from our sowing a scanty one, for so we are being taught to
turn from the quest in which searching has no assurance of finding, to
that in which to seek is to find. 'I have never said to any of the seed
of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain.' We may not reach other lands which seem
to us to be lands of promise, or when we do, may find that the land is
'evil and naughty,' but this land we shall reach, if we desire it, and
if, desiring it, we go forth from this vain world. The Christian life
is the only one which has no failures, no balked efforts, no frustrated
aims, no brave settings out and defeated returnings. The literal
meaning of one of the Old Testament words for _sin_ is missing the
mark, and that embodies the truth that no man wins what he seeks who
seeks satisfaction elsewhere than in God. Like the rivers in Asiatic
deserts, which are lost in the sand and never reach the sea, all lives
which flow towards anything but God are dissipated and vain.

But the supreme realisation of an experience like Abram's is reserved
for another life. No pilgrim Zion-ward perishes in the wilderness, or
loses his way or fails to come to 'the city of habitation.' 'They go
from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before
God.' And when they appear there, they will think no more, just as this
narrative says nothing, of the sandy, salt, waterless wildernesses, or
the wearinesses, dangers, and toils of the road. The experience of the
happy travellers, who have found all which they sought and are at home
for ever in the fatherland towards which they journeyed, will all be
summed up in this, that 'they went forth to go into the land of Canaan,
and into the land of Canaan they came.'




THE MAN OF FAITH


    'And Abram passed through the land unto the place of
    Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was
    then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and
    said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there
    builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto
    him.'--GENESIS xii. 6, 7.

Great epoch and man. Steps of Abram's training. First he was simply
called to go--no promise of inheritance--obeyed--came to Canaan-found a
thickly peopled land with advanced social order, and received no divine
vision till he was face to face with the Canaanite.

1. _God's bit-by-bit leading of us._

How slowly the divine purpose was revealed--the trial before the
promise--did not know where, nor that Canaan was land, but only told
enough for his first march.

So with us--our ignorance of future is meant to have the effect of
keeping us near God and training us to live a day at a time.

God's finger on the page points to a word at a time. Each day's route
is given morning by morning in the order for the day.

2. _Obedience often brings us into very difficult places._

Abram was ready to say, no doubt, 'This cannot be the land for me,
peopled as it is with all these Canaanites.' We are ever ready to think
that, if we find obstacles, we must have misunderstood God's
directions, but 'many adversaries' often indicate an 'open door.'

3. _The presence of enemies brings the presence of God._

This is the first time we read that God _appeared_ to men.

As the darkness thickens, the pillar of fire brightens. But not only
does God appear more clearly, but our spirits are more eager and
therefore able to see Him. We are mercifully left to feel the enemies
before we see Him present in His strength.

4. _The victory for us lies in the vision of God and of His loving
purpose._

How superb the confidence of 'Unto thy seed will I give _this_ land.'

That vision is our true strength. And it will make us feel as pilgrims,
which is in itself more than half the battle.




LIFE IN CANAAN


    'And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east
    of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the
    west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar
    unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.'
    GENESIS xii. 3.

These are the two first acts of Abram in the land of Canaan.

1. _All life should blend earthly and heavenly._

They are not to be separated. Religion should run through everything
and take the whole of life for its field. Where we cannot carry it is
no place for us. It is a shame that heathenism should be more
penetrated by its religion than Christendom is.

2. _The family should be a church._

Domestic religion. New Testament households. Abram a priest. The decay
of family religion, worship, and instruction.

3. _The service to God should be more costly than to ourselves._

Pitching a tent cheaper than building an altar. Give God the best. We
build ourselves ceiled houses and the ark dwells in curtains. Pagans
build elaborate temples, but their houses are hovels. Too many
Christians do the opposite.

4. _Building for God lasts, for selves perishes._

A tent is stricken, and no trace remains but embers. The stones of
Jacob's altar may be standing yet. The Parthenon of Athens remains:
where are the hovels of the people? 'He that doeth the will of God
abideth for ever.' Permanent results of transitory deeds.




THE IMPORTANCE OF A CHOICE


    'And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and
    all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south. And
    Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.
    And he went on his journeys from the south even to Beth-el,
    unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning,
    between Beth-el and Hal; Unto the place of the altar,
    which he had made there at the first: and there Abram
    called on the name of the Lord. And Lot also, which went
    with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. And the
    land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell
    together: for their substance was great, so that they
    could not dwell together. And there was a strife between
    the herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's
    cattle; and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then
    in the land. And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no
    strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my
    herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren. Is not the
    whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee,
    from me: if thou wilt lake the left hand, then I will
    go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand,
    then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes,
    and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well
    watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and
    Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land
    of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then Lot chose him
    all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and
    they separated themselves the one from the other. Abram
    dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the
    cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.
    But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the
    Lord exceedingly.'--GENESIS xiii. 1-13.

The main lesson of this section is the wisdom of seeking spiritual
rather than temporal good. That is illustrated on both sides.
Prosperity attends Abram and Lot while they think more of obeying God
than of flocks and herds. Lot makes a mistake, as far as this world is
concerned, when he chooses his place of abode for the sake of its
material advantages. But the introductory verses (vv. 1-4) suggest a
question, and seem to teach an important lesson. Was Abram right in so
soon leaving the land to which God had led him, and going down to
Egypt? Was that not taking the bit between his teeth? He had been
commanded to go to Canaan; should he not have stopped there--famine or
no famine--till the same authority commanded him to leave the land? If
God had put him there, should he not have trusted God to keep him alive
in famine? The narrative seems to imply that his going to Egypt was a
failure of faith. It gives no hint of a divine voice leading him
thither. We do not hear that he builded any altar beside his tent
there, as he had done in the happier days of life by trust. His stay
resulted in peril and in something very like lying, for which he had to
bear the disgrace of being rebuked by an idolater, and having no word
of excuse to offer. The great lesson of the whole section, and indeed
of Abram's whole life, receives fresh illustration from the story thus
understood, which preaches loudly that trust is safety and wellbeing,
and that it is always sin and always folly to leave Canaan, where God
has put us, even if there be a famine, and to go down into Egypt, even
if its harvests be abundant.

But another lesson is also taught. After the interruption of the
Egyptian journey, Abram had to begin all his Canaan life over again.
Very emphatically the narrative puts it, that he went to 'the place
where his tent had been at the beginning,' to the altar which he had
made at the first. Yes! that is the only place for a man who has
faltered and gone aside from the course of obedience. He must begin
over again. The backsliding Christian has to resort anew to the place
of the penitent, and to come to Christ, as he did at first for pardon.
It is a solemn thought that years of obedience and heroisms of
self-surrender, may be so annihilated by some act of self-seeking
distrust that the whole career has, as it were, to be begun anew from
the very starting-point. It is a blessed thought that, however far and
long we may have wandered, we can always return to the place where we
were at the beginning, and there call on the name of the Lord.

Note how we are taught here the great truth for the Old Testament, that
outward prosperity follows most surely those who do not seek for it.
Abram's wealth has increased, and his companion, Lot, has shared in the
prosperity. It is because he 'went with Abram' that he 'had flocks, and
herds, and tents.' Of course, the connection between despising the
world and possessing it is not thus close in New Testament times. But
even now, one often sees that the men who _will_ be rich fall into a
pit of poverty, and that a heart set on higher things, which counts
earthly advantages second and not first, wins a sufficiency of these
most surely. Foxlike cunning, and wolf-like rapacity, and Devil-like
selfishness, which make up a large portion of what the world calls
'great business capacity,' do not always secure the prize. But the real
possession of earth and all its wealth depends to-day, as much as ever
it did in Abram's times, on seeking 'first the kingdom of God, and His
righteousness.' Only when we are Christ's are all things ours. They are
ours, not by the vulgar way of what the world calls ownership, but in
proportion as we use them to the highest ends of helping us to grow in
wisdom and Christ-likeness, in the measure in which we subordinate them
to heavenly good, in the degree in which we employ them as means of
serving Christ. We can see the Pleiades best by not looking directly
at, but somewhat away from, them; and just as pleasure, if made the
direct object of life, ceases to be pleasure, so the world's goods, if
taken for our chief aim, cease to yield even the imperfect good which
they can bestow.

But now we have to look at the two dim figures which the remainder of
this story presents to us, and which shine there, in that far-off past,
types and instances of the two great classes into which men are
divided,--Abram, the man of faith; Lot, the man of sense.

Mark the conduct of the man of faith. Why should he, who has God's
promise that all the land is his, squabble with his kinsman about
pasture and wells? The herdsmen naturally would come to high words and
blows, especially as the available land was diminished by the claims of
the 'Canaanite and Perizzite.' But the direct effect of Abram's faith
was to make him feel that the matter in dispute was too small to
warrant a quarrel. A soul truly living in the contemplation of the
future, and filled with God's promises, will never be eager to insist
on its rights, or to stand on its dignity, and will take too accurate a
measure of the worth of things temporal to get into a heat about them.
The clash of conflicting interests, and the bad blood bred by them,
seem infinitely small, when we are up on the height of communion with
God. An acre or two more or less of grass land does not look
all-important, when our vision of the city which hath foundations is
clear. So an elevated calm and 'sweet reasonableness' will mark the man
who truly lives by faith, and he will seek after the things that make
for peace. Abram could fight, as Old Testament morality permitted, when
occasion arose, as Lot found out to his advantage before long. But he
would not strive about such trifles.

May we not venture to apply his words to churches and sects? They too,
if they have faith strong and dominant, will not easily fall out with
one another about intrusions on each other's territory, especially in
the presence, as at this day, of the common foe. When the Canaanite and
the Perizzite are in the land, and Unbelief in militant forms is
arrayed against us, it is more than folly, it is sin, for brethren to
be turning their weapons against each other. The common foe should make
them stand shoulder to shoulder. Abram's faith led, too, to the noble
generosity of his proposal. The elder and superior gives the younger
and inferior the right of option, and is quite willing to take Lot's
leavings. Right or left--it mattered not to him; God would be with him,
whichever way he went; and the glorious Beyond, for which he lived,
blazed too bright before his inward sight to let him be very solicitous
where he was. 'I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to
be content.' It does not matter much what accommodation we have on
ship-board, when the voyage is so short. If our thoughts are stretching
across the sea to the landing at home, and the welcome there, we shall
not fight with our fellow-passengers about our cabins or places at the
table. And notice what rest comes when faith thus dwindles the worth of
the momentary arrangements here. The less of our energies are consumed
in asserting ourselves, and scrambling for our rights, and cutting in
before other people, so as to get the best places for ourselves, the
more we shall have to spare for better things; and the more we live in
the future, and leave God to order our ways, the more shall our souls
be wrapped in perfect peace.  Mark the conduct of the man of sense. We
can fancy the two standing on the barren hills by Bethel, from one of
which, as travellers tell us, there is precisely the view which Lot
saw. He lifted up his greedy eyes, and there, at his feet, lay that
strange Jordan valley with its almost tropical richness, its dark lines
of foliage telling of abundant water, the palm-trees of Jericho
perhaps, and the glittering cities. Up there among the hills there was
little to tempt,--rocks and scanty herbage; down below, it was like the
lost Eden, or the Egypt from which they had but lately come.

What need for hesitation? True, the men of the plain were 'wicked and
sinners before the Lord exceedingly,' as the chapter says with grim
emphasis. But Lot evidently never thought about that. He knew it,
though, and ought to have thought about it. It was his sin that he was
guided in his choice only by considerations of temporal advantage. Put
his action into words, and it says, 'Grass for my sheep is more to me
than fellowship with God, and a good conscience.' No doubt he would
have had salves enough. 'I do not need to become like them, though I
live among them.' 'A man must look after his own interests.' 'I can
serve God down there as well as up here.' Perhaps he even thought that
he might be a missionary among these sinners. But at bottom he did not
seek first the kingdom of God, but the other things.

We have seldom the choice put before us so dramatically and sharply;
but it is as really presented to each. There is the shameless cynicism
of the men who avowedly only ask the question, 'Will it pay?' But there
are subtler forms which affect us all. It is the standing temptation of
Englishmen to apply a money standard to everything, to adopt courses of
action of which the only recommendation is that they promote getting on
in the world. Men who call themselves Christians select schools for
their children, or professions for their boys, or marriages for their
daughters, down in Sodom, because it will give them a lift in life
which they would not get up in the starved pastures at Bethel, with
nobody but Abram and his like to associate with. If the earnestness
with which men pursue an end is to be taken as any measure of its
importance in their eyes, it certainly does not look much as if modern
average Christians did believe that it was of more moment to be united
to God, and to be growing like Him, than to secure a good large share
of earthly possessions. Tried by the test of conduct, their faith in
getting on is a great deal deeper than their faith in getting up. But
if our religion does not make us put the world beneath our feet, and
count all things but loss that we may win Christ, we had better ask
ourselves whether our religion is any better than Lot's, which was
second-hand, and was much more imitation of Abram than obedience to God.

Lot teaches us that material good may tempt and conquer, even after it
has once been overcome. His early life had been heroic; in his young
enthusiasm, he had thrown in his portion with Abram in his great
venture. He had not been thinking of his flocks when he left Haran.
Probably, as I have just said, he was a good deal galvanised into
imitation; but still, he had chosen the better part. But now he has
tired of a pilgrim's life. There are men who cut down the thorns, and
in whom the seed is sown; but thorns are tenacious of life, and quick
growing, and so they spread over the field and choke the seed. It is
easier to take some one bold step than to keep true through life to its
spirit. Youth contemns, but too often middle-age worships, worldly
success. The world tightens its grasp as we grow older, and Lot and
Demas teach us that it is hard to keep for a lifetime on the heights.
Faith, strong and ever renewed by communion, can do it; nothing else
can.

Lot's history teaches what comes of setting the world first, and God's
kingdom second. For one thing, the association with it is sure to get
closer. Lot began with choosing the plain; then he crept a little
nearer, and pitched his tent 'towards' Sodom; next time we hear of him,
he is living in the city, and mixed up inextricably with its people.
The first false step leads on to connections unforeseen, from which the
man would have shrunk in horror, if he had been told that he would make
them. Once on the incline, time and gravity will settle how far down we
go. We shall see, in subsequent sections, how far Lot's own moral
character suffered from his choice. But we may so far anticipate the
future narrative as to point out that it affords a plain instance of
the great truth that the sure way to lose the world as well as our own
souls, is to make it our first object. He would have been safe if he
had stopped up among the hills. The shadowy Eastern kings who swooped
down on the plain would never have ventured up there. But when we
choose the world for our portion, we lay ourselves open to the full
weight of all the blows which change and fortune can inflict, and come
voluntarily down from an impregnable fastness to the undefended open.

Nor is this all; but at the last, when the fiery rain bursts on the
doomed city, Lot has to leave all the wealth for which he has
sacrificed conscience and peace, and escapes with bare life; he suffers
loss even if he himself is 'saved as dragged through the fire.' The
world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of
God abideth for ever. The riches which wax not old, and need not to be
left when we leave all things besides, are surely the treasures which
the calmest reason dictates should be our chief aim. God is the true
portion of the soul; if we have Him, we have all. So, let us seek Him
first, and, with Him, all else is ours.




ABRAM THE HEBREW


    'And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the
    Hebrew.'
    GENESIS xiv. 13.

This is a singular designation of Abram as 'The Hebrew.' Probably we
have in its use here a trace of the customary epithet which he bore
among the inhabitants of Canaan, and perhaps the presence of the name
in this narrative may indicate the influence of some older account,
traditional or written, which owed its authorship to some of them. At
all events, this is the first appearance of the name in Scripture. As
we all know, it has become that of the nation, but a Jew did not call
himself a 'Hebrew' except in intercourse with foreigners. As in many
other cases, the national name used by other nations was not that by
which the people called themselves. Here, obviously, it is not a
national name, for the very good reason that there was no nation then.
It is a personal epithet, or, in plain English, a nickname, and it
means, probably, as the ancient Greek translation of Genesis gives it,
neither more nor less than 'The man from the other side,' the man that
had come across the water. Just as a mediaeval prince bore the
_sobriquet_ Outremere-the 'man from beyond the sea'--so Abram, to the
aboriginal, or, at least, long-settled, inhabitants of the country, was
known simply as the foreigner, the 'man from the other side' (of the
Jordan, or more probably of the great river Euphrates), the man from
across the water.

Now that name may suggest, with a permissible, and, I hope, not
misleading play of fancy, just two things, which I seek now to press
upon our hearts and consciences. The one is as to how men become
Christians, and the other is as to how they look to other people when
they are.

1. Men become Christians by a great emigration.

'Get thee out from thy father's house, and from thy country, and from
thy kindred,' was the command to Abram. And he became the heir to God's
promises and the father of the faithful, because he did not hesitate a
moment to make the plunge and to leave behind him all his past, his
associations, his loves, much of his possessions, and, in a very
profound sense, his old self, and put a great impassable gulf between
him and them all.

Now I am not going to say anything so narrow or foolish as that the
Christian life must always begin with a conscious and sudden change;
but this I am quite sure of, that in the vast majority of cases of
thoroughly and out-and-out religious men, there must be a conscious
change, whether it has been diffused through months or years, or
concentrated in one burning moment. There has been a beginning; whether
it has been like the dawn, or whether it has been like the kindling of
a candle, the beginning of the flashing of the divine light into the
heart; and the men that are most really under the influence of
religious truth can, as a rule, looking back upon their past
experience, see that it divides itself into two halves, separated from
each other by a profound gulf--the time on the other side, and that on
this side, of the great river. We must take heed lest by insisting on
any one way of entrance into the kingdom we seem to narrow God's mercy,
or sadden true hearts, or make the method of approach a test of the
fact of entrance. God's city has more than twelve gates; they open to
all the thirty-two points of the compass, yet there is, in the
religious experience of the truest saints, always something analogous
to this change. And what I desire to press upon you is, that unless you
are only religious people after the popular superficial fashion of the
day, there will be something like it in your lives.

There will be a change in a man's deepest self, so that he will be a
'new creature,' with new tastes, new motives stirring to action, new
desires pressing for satisfaction, new loves sweetly filling his heart,
new insight into the meanings and true good of life and time guiding
his conduct, new aversions withdrawing him from old delights which have
become hateful now, new hopes pluming their growing wings, and new
powers bearing him along a new road. There will be a change in his
relations to God and to God's will. God in Christ will have become his
centre, instead of self, which was so before. He lives in a new world,
being himself a new man.

Our Lord uses this very illustration when He says, 'He that heareth My
Word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not
into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life.' That is a great
migration, is it not, from the condition of a corpse to that of a
living man? Paul, too, gives the same idea with a somewhat different
turn of the illustration, when he gives 'thanks to the Father who
delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the
kingdom of,'--not, as we might expect to complete the antithesis, 'the
light,' but--the 'kingdom of the Son of His love,' which is the same
thing as the light. The illustration is probably drawn from the
practice of the ancient conquering monarchs, who, when they subjugated
a country, were wont to lead away captive long files of its inhabitants
as compulsory colonists, and set them down in another land. Thus the
conquering Christ comes, and those whom He conquers by His love, He
shifts by a great emigration out of the dominion of that darkness which
is at once tyranny and anarchy, and leads them into the happy kingdom
of the light.

Thus, then, all Christian men become such, because they turn their
backs upon their old selves, and crucify their affections and lusts;
and paste down the leaf, as it were, on which their blotted past is
writ, and turn over a new and a fairer one. And my question to you,
dear brethren, is, Are you men from the other side, who were not born
where you live now, and who have passed out of the native Chaldea into
the foreign--and yet to the new self home--land of union with God?

2. This designation may be taken as teaching that a Christian should be
known as a foreigner, a man from across the water.

Everybody in Canaan that knew Abram at all knew him as not one of
themselves. The Hebrew was the name he went by, because his unlikeness
to the others was the most conspicuous thing about him, even to the
shallowest eye. Abram found himself, when he had migrated into Canaan,
in no barbarous country, but plunged at once into the midst of an
organised and compact civilisation, that walled its cities, and had the
comforts and conveniences and regularities of a settled order; and in
the midst of it all, what did he do? He elected to live in a tent. 'He
dwelt in tabernacles, as the Epistle to the Hebrews comments upon his
history, 'because he looked for a city.' The more his expectations were
fixed upon a permanent abode, the more transitory did he make his abode
here. If there had been no other city to fill his eyes, he would have
gone and lived in some of those that were in the land. If there had
been no other order to which he felt himself to belong, he would have
had no objection to cast in his lot with the order and the people with
whom he lived on friendly terms. But although he bought and sold with
them, and fought for them and by their sides, and acquired from them
land in which to bury his dead, he was not one of them, but said, 'No!
I am not going into your city. I stay in my tent under this terebinth
tree; for I am here as a stranger and a sojourner.' No doubt there were
differences of language, dress, and a hundred other little things which
helped the impression made on the men of the land by this strange
visitor who lived in amity but in separation, and they are all
crystallised in the name which the popular voice gave him, 'The man
from the other side.'

That is the impression which Christian people ought to make in the
world. They should be recognised, by even unobservant eyes who know
nothing of the inner secret of their lives, as plainly belonging to
another order. If we seek to keep fresh in our own minds the
consciousness that we do so, it will make itself manifest in all our
bearing and actions. So that exhortation to cultivate the continual
sense that our true city--the mother city of our hearts and hopes--is
in heaven is ever to be reiterated, and as constantly obeyed, as the
necessary condition of a life worthy of our true affinities and of our
glorious hopes.

Nor less needful is the other exhortation--live by the laws of your own
land, not by those of the foreign country where you are for a time. If
you do that thoroughly, you will not need to say, 'I am from another
country.' Your conduct will say it for you. An English ship is a bit of
England, in whatever latitude it may be, and however far beyond the
three-mile limit of the King's authority upon the seas it may float.
And so, wherever there is a Christian man, there is a bit of God's
kingdom, and over that little speck in the midst of the ocean of the
world the flag with the Cross on it should fly, and the laws of the
Christ should be the only laws that have currency. If it could be said
of us as Haman said to his king about the Jews, that we were a people
with laws 'diverse from those of all people,' we should be doing more
than, alas! most of us do, to honour Him whom we profess to serve.
Follow Christ, and people will be quick enough to say of you 'The man
from the other side,' 'He does not belong to our city.' There is no
need for ostentation, nor for saying, 'Come and see my zeal for the
Lord,' nor for blowing trumpets before us at street corners or
elsewhere. The less of all that the better. The more we try to do the
common things done by the folk round us, but from another motive, the
more powerful will be our witness for our Master.

For instance, when John Knox was in the French galleys, he was fastened
to the same oar with some criminal, perhaps a murderer. The two men sat
on the same bench, did the same work, tugged at the same heavy sweep,
were fed with the same food, suffered the same sorrows. Do you think
there was any doubt as to the infinite gulf between them? We may be
working side by side, at the very same tasks, and under similar
circumstances, with men that have no share in our faith, and no
sympathy with our hopes and aspirations, and yet, though doing the same
thing, it will _not_ be the same thing. And if we keep Christ before
us, and follow His steps who has left us an example, depend upon it
people will very soon find out that we are men 'from across the water.'

Notice, further, how this dissimilarity and obvious aloofness from the
order of things in which we dwell is still perfectly compatible with
all sorts of helpful associations. The context shows us that. There had
come a flood of invasion, under kings with strange and barbarous names,
from the far East. They had swept down upon the fertile valley of
Siddim, and there had inflicted devastation. Amongst the captives had
been Lot, Abram's relative, and all his goods had been taken. One
fugitive, as it appears, had escaped, and the first thing he did was to
go straight to 'the man from the other side,' and tell him about it, as
if sure of sympathy and help. No doubt the relationship between Abram
and Lot was the main reason why the panting survivor made his way to
the hills where Abram's tent was pitched, but there was also confidence
in his willingness to help the Sodomites who had lost their goods. So
it was not to the sons of Heth in Mamre that the fugitive turned in his
extremity, but he 'told Abram the Hebrew.'

I need not narrate over again the familiar story of how, for once in
his peaceful life, the 'friend of God' girds on his sword and develops
military instincts in his prompt and well-planned pursuit, which show
that if he did not try to conquer some part of the land which he knew
to be his by the will of God, it was not for want of ability, but
because he 'believed God,' and could wait. We all know how he armed his
slaves, and made a swift march to the northern extremity of the land,
and then, by a nocturnal surprise, came down upon the marauders and
scattered them like chaff, before his onset, and recovered Lot and all
the spoil.

Let us learn that, if Christian men will live well apart from the
world, they will be able to sympathise with and help the world; and
that our religion should fit us for the prompt and heroic undertaking,
as it certainly does for the successful accomplishment, of all deeds of
brotherly kindness and sympathy, bringing help and solace to the weak
and the wearied, liberty to the captives, and hope to the despairing.

I do not believe that Christian men have any business to draw swords
now. Abram is in that respect the Old Testament type of a God-fearing
hero, with the actual sword in his hands. The New Testament type of a
Christian warrior without a sword is not one jot less, but more,
heroic. The form of sympathy, help, and 'public spirit' which the 'man
from the other side' displayed is worse than an anachronism now in the
light of Christ's law. It is a contradiction. But the spirit which
breathed through Abram's conduct should be ours. We are bound to 'seek
the peace of the city' where we dwell as strangers and pilgrims,
avoiding no duty of sympathy and help, but by prompt, heroic,
self-forgetting service to all the needy, sorrowful, and oppressed,
building up such characters for ourselves that fugitives and desperate
men shall instinctively turn to men from the other side for that help
which, they know full well, the men of the country are too selfish or
cowardly to give.

May I venture to suggest yet another and very different application of
this name? To the aboriginal inhabitants of heaven, the angels that
kept their first estate, redeemed men are possessors of a unique
experience; and are the 'men from the other side.' They who entered on
their pilgrimage through the Red Sea of conversion, pass out of it
through the Jordan of death. They who become Christ's, by the great
change of yielding their hearts to Him, and who live here as pilgrims
and sojourners, pass dryshod through the stream into His presence. And
there they who have always dwelt in the sunny highlands of the true
Canaan, gather round them, and call them, not unenvying, perhaps, their
experience, 'The men that have crossed.' The 'Hebrews of the Hebrews'
in the heavens are those who have known what it is to be pilgrims and
sojourners, and to whom the promise has been fulfilled in the last hour
of their journey, 'When thou passest through the river, I will be with
thee.' _They_ teach the angels a new song who sing, 'Thou hast led us
through fire and through water, and brought us into a wealthy place.'




GOD'S COVENANT WITH ABRAM


    'And He brought him forth abroad, and said, 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.
    And he believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him
    for righteousness. And He said unto him, I am the Lord
    that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give
    thee this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord God,
    whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? And He
    said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and
    a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years
    old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. And he took
    unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and
    laid each piece one against another: but the birds
    divided he not. And when the fowls came down upon the
    carcases, Abram drove them away. And when the sun was
    going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an
    horror of great darkness fell upon him. And he said unto
    Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger
    in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and
    they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also
    that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and
    afterward shall they come out with great substance. And
    thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be
    buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation
    they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the
    Amorites is not yet full. And it came to pass, that,
    when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking
    furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those
    pieces. In the same day the Lord made a covenant with
    Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land,
    from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river
    Euphrates.'--GENESIS xv. 5-18.

1. Abram had exposed himself to dangerous reprisals by his victory over
the confederate Eastern raiders. In the reaction following the
excitement of battle, dread and despondency seem to have shadowed his
soul. Therefore the assurance with which this chapter opens came to
him. It was new, and came in a new form. He is cast into a state of
spiritual ecstasy, and a mighty 'word' sounds, audible to his inward
ear. The form which it takes--'I am thy shield'--suggests the thought
that God shapes His revelation according to the moment's need. The
unwarlike Abram might well dread the return of the marauders in force,
to avenge their defeat. Therefore God speaks to his fears and present
want. Just as to Jacob the angels appeared as a heavenly camp guarding
his undefended tents and helpless women; so, here and always, God is to
us what we most need at the moment, whether it be comfort, or wisdom,
or guidance, or strength. The manna tasted to each man, as the rabbis
say, what he most desired. God's gifts take the shape of man's
necessity.

Abram had just exercised singular generosity in absolutely refusing to
enrich himself from the spoil. God reveals Himself as 'his exceeding
great reward.' He gives Himself as recompense for all sacrifices.
Whatever is given up at His bidding, 'the Lord is able to give thee
much more than this.' Not outward things, nor even an outward heaven,
is the guerdon of the soul; but a larger possession of Him who alone
fills the heart, and fills the heart alone. Other riches may be
counted, but this is 'exceeding great,' passing comprehension, and ever
unexhausted, and having something over after all experience. Both these
aspects of God's preciousness are true for earth; but we need a shield
only while exposed to attack. In the land of peace, He is only our
reward.

2. Mark the triumphant faith which wings to meet the divine promise.
The first effect of that great assurance is to deepen Abram's
consciousness of the strange contradiction to it apparently given by
his childlessness. It is not distrust that answers the promise with a
question, but it is eagerness to accept the assurance and ingenuous
utterance of difficulties in the hope of their removal. God is too wise
a father not to know the difference between the tones of confidence and
unbelief, however alike they may sound; and He is too patient to be
angry if we cannot take in all His promise at once. He breaks it into
bits not too large for our lips, as He does here. The frequent
reiterations of the same promises in Abram's life are not vain. They
are a specimen of the unwearied repetition of our lessons, 'Here a
little, there a little,' which our teacher gives His slow scholars. So,
once more, Abram gets the promise of posterity in still more glorious
form. Before, it was likened to the dust of the earth; now it is as the
innumerable stars shining in the clear Eastern heaven. As he gazes up
into the solemn depths, the immensity and peace of the steadfast sky
seems to help him to rise above the narrow limits and changefulness of
earth, and a great trust floods his soul. Abram had lived by faith ever
since he left Haran; but the historian, usually so silent about the
thoughts of his characters, breaks through his usual manner of
narrative to insert the all-important words which mark an epoch in
revelation, and are, in some aspects, the most significant in the Old
Testament. Abram 'believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for
righteousness.'

Observe the teaching as to the nature and object of faith in that first
clause. The word rendered 'believed' literally means to steady oneself
by leaning on something. So it gives in a vivid picture more
instructive than many a long treatise what faith is, and what it does
for us. As a man leans his trembling hand on a staff, so we lay our
weak and changeful selves on God's strength; and as the most mutable
thing is steadied by being fastened to a fixed point, so we, though in
ourselves light as thistledown, may be steadfast as rock, if we are
bound to the rock of ages by the living band of faith. The metaphor
makes it plain that faith cannot be merely an intellectual act of
assent, but must include a moral act, that of confidence. Belief as
credence is mainly an affair of the head, but belief as trust is an act
of the will and the affections.

The object of faith is set in sunlight clearness by these words,--the
first in which Scripture speaks of faith. Abram leaned on 'the Lord.'
It was not the promise, but the promiser, that was truly the object of
Abram's trust. He believed the former, because he trusted Him who made
it. Many confusions in Christian teaching would have been avoided if it
had been always seen that faith grasps a person, not a doctrine, and
that even when the person is revealed by doctrine, it is him, and not
only it, which faith lays hold of. Whether God speaks promises,
teachings of truth, or commandments, faith accepts them, because it
trusts Him. Christ is revealed to us for our faith by the doctrinal
statements of the New Testament. But we must grasp Himself, as so
revealed, if we are to have faith which saves the soul. This same
thought of the true object of faith as personal helps us to understand
the substantial identity of faith in all ages and stages of revelation,
however different the substance of the creeds. Abram knew very little
of God, as compared with our knowledge. But it was the same God whom
Abram trusted, and whom we trust as made known in His Son. Hence we can
stretch out our hands across the ages, and clasp his as partaker of
'like precious faith.' We walk in the light of the same sun,--he in its
morning beams, we in its noonday glory. There has never been but one
road to God, and that is the road which Abram trod, when 'he believed
in the Lord.'

3. Mark the full-orbed gospel truth as to the righteousness of faith
which is embedded in this record of early revelation, 'He counted it to
him for righteousness.' A geologist would be astonished if he came on
remains in some of the primary strata which indicated the existence, in
these remote epochs, of species supposed to be of much more recent
date. So here we are startled at finding the peculiarly New Testament
teaching away back in this dim distance. No wonder that Paul fastened
on this verse, which so remarkably breaks the flow of the narrative, as
proof that his great principle of justification by faith was really the
one only law by which, in all ages, men had found acceptance with God.
Long before law or circumcision, faith had been counted for
righteousness. The whole Mosaic system was a parenthesis; and even in
it, whoever had been accepted had been so because of his trust, not
because of his works. The whole of the subsequent divine dealings with
Israel rested on this act of faith, and on the relation to God into
which, through it, Abram entered. He was not a perfectly righteous man,
as some passages of his life show; but he rose here to the height of
loving and yearning trust in God, and God took that trust in lieu of
perfect conformity to His will. He treated and regarded him as
righteous, as is proved by the covenant which follows. The gospel takes
up this principle, gives us a fuller revelation, presents the perfect
righteousness of Christ as capable of becoming ours by faith, and so
unveils the ground on which Abram and the latest generations are
equally 'accepted in the beloved.' This reckoning of righteousness to
the unrighteous, on condition of their faith, is not because of any
merit in faith. It does not come about in reward of, but by means of,
their faith, which is nothing in itself, but is the channel only of the
blessing. Nor is it a mere arbitrary act of God's, or an unreal
imputing of what is not. But faith unites with Christ; and 'he that is
joined to the Lord is one spirit,' so as that 'in Him we have
redemption.' His righteousness becomes ours. Faith grafts us into the
living Vine, and we are no longer regarded in our poor sinful
individual personality, but as members of Christ. Faith builds us into
the rock; but He is a living Stone, and we are living stones, and the
life of the foundation rises up through all the courses of the great
temple. Faith unites sinful men to God in Christ; therefore it makes
them partakers of the 'blessedness of the man, ... to whom the Lord
will not impute sin,' and of the blessedness of the man to whom the
Lord reckons his faith for righteousness. That same faith which thus
clothes us with the white robe of Christ's righteousness, in lieu of
our own tattered raiment, also is the condition of our becoming
righteous by the actual working out in our character of all things
lovely and of good report. It opens the heart to the entrance of that
divine Christ, who is first made _for_ us, and then, by daily
appropriation of the law of the spirit of life, is made _in_ us,
'righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.' May all who read
these lines 'be found in Him,' having 'that which is through the faith
of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith!'

4. Consider the covenant which is the consequence of Abram's faith, and
the proof of his acceptance.

It is important to observe that the whole remainder of this chapter is
regarded by the writer as the result of Abram's believing God. The way
in which verse 7 and the rest are bolted on, as it were, to verse 6,
clearly shows this. The nearer lesson from this fact is, that all the
Old Testament revelation from this point onward rests on the foundation
of faith. The further lesson, for all times, is that faith is ever
rewarded by more intimate and loving manifestations of God's
friendship, and by fuller disclosure of His purposes. The covenant is
not only God's binding Himself anew by solemn acts to fulfil His
promises already made, but it is His entering into far sweeter and
nearer alliance with Abram than even He had hitherto had. That name,
'the friend of God,' by which he is still known over all the Mohammedan
world, contains the very essence of the covenant. In old days men were
wont to conclude a bond of closest amity by cutting their flesh and
interchanging the flowing blood. Henceforth they had, as it were, one
life. We have not here the shedding of Abram's blood, as in the
covenant of circumcision. Still, the slain animals represent the
parties to the covenant, and the notion of a resulting unity of the
closest order as between God and Abram is the very heart of the whole
incident.

The particulars as to the rite by which the covenant was established
are profoundly illuminative. The significant division of the animals
into two shows that they were regarded as representing the contracting
parties, and the passing between them symbolised the taking up of the
obligations of the covenant. This strange rite, which was widely
spread, derives importance from the use of it probably made in Hebrews
ix 16, 17. The new covenant, bringing still closer friendship and
higher blessings, is sealed by the blood of Christ. He represents both
God and man. In His death, may we not say that the manhood and the
Godhead are parted, and we, standing as it were between them,
encompassed by that awful sacrifice, and enclosed in its mysterious
depths, enter into covenant with God, and become His friends?

We need not to dwell upon the detailed promises, of which the covenant
was the seal. They are simply the fuller expansion of those already
made, but now confirmed by more solemn guarantees. The new relation of
familiar friendship, established by the covenant itself, is the main
thing. It was fitting that God's friend should be in the secret of His
purposes. 'The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth,' but the friend
does. And so we have here the assurance that faith will pierce to the
discernment of much of the mind of God, which is hid from sense and the
wisdom of this world. If we would know, we must believe. We may be 'men
of God's counsel,' and see deeply into the realities of the present,
and far ahead into what will then become the certainties of the future,
if only we live by faith in the secret place of the Most High, and,
like John, lean so close on the Master's bosom that we can hear His
lowest whisper.

Notice, too, the lessons of the smoking furnace and the blazing torch.
They are like the pillar of fire and cloud. Darkness and light; a heart
of fire and a wrapping of darkness,--these are not symbols of Israel
and its checkered fate, as Dean Stanley thinks, but of the divine
presence: they proclaim the double aspect of all divine manifestations,
the double element in the divine nature. He can never be completely
known; He is never completely hid. Ever does the lamp flame; ever
around it the smoke wreathes. In all His self-revelation is 'the hiding
of His power'; after all revelation He dwelleth 'in the thick
darkness.' Only the smoke is itself fire, but not illumined to our
vision. The darkness is light inaccessible. Much that was 'smoke' to
Abram has caught fire, and is 'light' to us. But these two elements
will ever remain; and throughout eternity God will be unknown, and yet
well known, pouring Himself in ever-growing radiance on our eyes, and
yet 'the King invisible.'

Nor is this all the teaching of the symbol. It speaks of that twofold
aspect of the divine nature, by which to hearts that love He is
gladsome light, and to unloving ones He is threatening darkness. As to
the Israelites the pillar was light, and to the Egyptians darkness and
terror; so the same God is joy to some, and dread to others. 'What
maketh heaven, that maketh hell.' Light itself can become the source of
pain the most exquisite, if the eye is diseased. God Himself cannot but
be a torment to men who love darkness rather than light. Love and
wrath, life and death, a God who pities and who cannot but judge, are
solemnly proclaimed by that ancient symbol, and are plainly declared to
us in the perfect revelation in Christ Jesus.

Observe, too, the manner of the ratification of the covenant. The
symbol of the Divine presence passed between the pieces. No mention is
made of Abram's doing so. Why this one-sided covenant? Because God's
gracious dealings with men are one-sided. He seeks no oaths from us; He
does not exchange blessings for our gifts. His covenant is the free
result of His unmotived love, and is ratified by a solemn sacrifice,
which we do not offer. We have nothing to do bu

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