Melchizedek is generally recognised as the most mysterious and

unaccountable of historical personages; appearing here in the King's

Vale no one knows whence, and disappearing no one knows whither, but

coming with his hands full of substantial gifts for the wearied

household of Abram, and the captive women that were with him. Of each of

the patriarchs we can tell the paternity; the date of his birth, and the

date of his death; but this man stands with none to claim him, he forms

no part of any series of links by which the oldest and the present times

are connected. Though possessed of the knowledge of the Most High God,

his name is not found in any of those genealogies which show us how that

knowledge passed from father to son. Of all the other great men whose

history is recorded a careful genealogy is given; but here the writer

breaks his rule, and breaks it where, had there not been substantial

reason, he would most certainly have adhered to it. For here is the

greatest man of the time, a man before whom Abram the father of the

faithful, the honoured of all nations, bowed and paid tithes; and yet he

appears and passes away likest to a vision of the night. Perhaps even in

his own time there was none that could point to the chamber where first

he was cradled, nor show the tent round which first he played in his

boyhood, nor hoard up a single relic of the early years of the man that

had risen to be the first man upon earth in those days. So that the

Apostle speaks of him as a very type of all that is mysterious and

abrupt in appearance and disappearance, "without father, without mother,

without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life," and

as he significantly adds, "made like unto the Son of God." For as

Melchizedek stands thus on the page of history, so our Lord in

reality--as the one has no recorded pedigree, and holds an office

beginning and ending in his own person, so our Lord, though born of a

woman, stands separate from sinners and quite out of the ordinary line

of generations, and exercises an office which he received hereditarily

from none, and which he could commit to no successor. As the one stands

apparently disconnected from all before and after him, so the Other in

point of fact did thus suddenly emerge from eternity, a problem to all

who saw Him; owning the authority of earthly parents, yet claiming an

antiquity greater than Abram's; appearing suddenly to the captivity led

captive, with His hands full of gifts, and His lips dropping words of

blessing.

Melchizedek is the one personage on earth whom Abram recognises as his

spiritual superior. Abram accepts his blessing and pays him tithes;

apparently as priest of the Most High God; so that in paying to him,

Abram is giving the tenth of his spoils to God. This is not any mere

courtesy of private persons. It was done in presence of various parties

of jealously watchful retainers. Men of rank and office and position

_consider_ how they should act to one another and who should take

precedence. And Abram did deliberately and with a perfect perception of

what he was doing, whatever he now did. Manifestly therefore God's

revelation of Himself was not as yet confined to the one line running

from Abram to Christ. Here was a man of whom we really do not know

whether he was a Canaanite, a son of Ham or a son of Shem; yet Abram

recognises him as having knowledge of the true God, and even bows to him

as his spiritual superior in office if not in experience. This shows us

how little jealousy Abram had of others being favoured by God, how

little he thought _his_ connection with God would be less secure if

other men enjoyed a similar connection, and how heartily he welcomed

those who with different rites and different prospects yet worshipped

the living God. It shows us also how apt we are to limit God's ways of

working; and how little we understand of the connections He has with

those who are not situated as we ourselves are. Here while all our

attention is concentrated on Abram as carrying the whole spiritual hope

of the world, there emerges from an obscure Canaanite valley a man

nearer to God than Abram is. From how many unthought-of places such men

may at any time come out upon us, we really can never tell.

Again Melchizedek is evidently a title, not a name--the word means King

of Righteousness, or Righteous King. It may have been a title adopted by

a line of kings, or it may have been peculiar to this one man. But these

old Canaanites, if Canaanites they were, had got hold of a great

principle when they gave this title to the king of their city of Salem

or Peace. They perceived that it was the righteousness, the justice, of

their king that could best uphold their peaceful city. They saw that the

right king for them was a man not grinding his neighbours by war and

taxes, not overriding the rights of others and seeking always

enlargement of his own dominion; nor a merely merciful man, inclined to

treat sin lightly and leaning always to laxity; but the man they would

choose to give them peace was the righteous man who might sometimes seem

overscrupulous, sometimes over-stern, who would sometimes be called

romantic and sometimes fanatical, but through all whose dealings it

would be obvious that justice to all parties was the aim in view. Some

of them might not be good enough to love a ruler who made no more of

their special interest than he did of others, but all would possibly

have wit enough to see that only by justice could they have peace. It is

the reflex of God's government in which righteousness is the foundation

of peace, a righteousness unflinching and invariable, promulgating holy

laws and exacting punishment from all who break them. It is this that

gives us hope of eternal peace, that we know God has not left out of

account facts that must yet be reckoned with, nor merely lulled the

unquiet forebodings of conscience, but has let every righteous law and

principle find full scope, has done righteously in offering us pardon so

that nothing can ever turn up to deprive us of our peace. And it is

quite in vain that any individual holds before his mind the prospect of

peace, _i.e._ of permanent satisfaction, so long as he is not seeking it

by righteousness. In so far as he is keeping his conscience from

interfering, in so far is he making it impossible to himself to enter

into the condition for the sake of which he is keeping conscience from

regulating his conduct.

Lastly, Abram's refusal of the king of Sodom's offers is significant.

Naturally enough, and probably in accordance with well-established

usage, the king proposes that Abram should receive the rescued goods and

the spoil of the invading army. But Abram knew men, and knew that

although now Sodom was eager to show that he felt himself indebted to

Abram, the time would come when he would point to this occasion as

laying the foundation of Abram's fortune. When a man rises in the world

every one will tell you of the share he had in raising him, and will

convey the impression that but for assistance rendered by the speaker he

would not have been what he now is. Abram knows that he is destined to

rise, and knows also by Whose help he is to rise. He intends to receive

all from God; and therefore not a thread from Sodom. He puts his refusal

in the form adopted by the man whose mind is made up beyond revisal. He

has "vowed" it. He had anticipated such offers and had considered their

bearing on his relations to God and man; and taking advantage of the

unembarrassed season in which the offer was as yet only a possibility,

he had resolved that when it was actually made he would refuse it, no

matter what advantages it seemed to offer. So should we in our better

seasons and when we know we are viewing things healthily,

conscientiously, and righteously, determine what our conduct is to be,

and if possible so commit ourselves to it that when the right frame is

passed we cannot draw back from the right conduct. Abram had done so,

and however tempting the spoils of the Eastern kings were, they did not

move him. His vow had been made to the Possessor of heaven and earth, in

Whose hand were riches beyond the gifts of Sodom.

Here again it is the man of faith that appears. He shows a noble

jealousy of God's prerogative to bless him. He will not give men

occasion to say that any earthly monarch has enriched him. It shall be

made plain that it is on God he is depending. In all men of faith there

will be something of this spirit. They cannot fail so to frame their

life as to let it come clearly out that for happiness, for success, for

comfort, for joy, they are in the main depending on God. That this

cannot be done in the complex life of modern society, no one will

venture to say in presence of this incident. Could we more easily have

shown our reliance upon God in the hurry of a sudden foray, in the

turmoil and intense action of a midnight attack and hand to hand

conflict, in the excitement and elation of a triumphal progress, the

kings of the country vying with one another to do us honour and the

rescued captives lauding our valour and generosity? No one fails to see

what it was that balanced Abram in this intoxicating march. No one asks

what enabled him, while leading his armed followers flushed with success

through a land weakened by recent dismay and disaster, to restrain them

and himself from claiming the whole land as his. No one asks what gave

him moral perception to see that the opportunity given him of winning

the land by the sword was a temptation not a guiding providence. To

every reader it is obvious that his dependence on God was his safeguard

and his light. God would bring him by fair and honourable means to his

own. There was no need of violence, no need of receiving help from

doubtful allies. This is true nobility; and this, faith always produces.

But it must be a faith like Abram's; not a quick and superficial growth,

but a deeply-rooted principle. For against all temptations this only is

our sure defence, that already our hearts are so filled with God's

promise that other offers find no craving in us, no empty dissatisfied

spot on which they can settle. To such faith God responds by the

elevating and strengthening assurance, "I am thy shield, and thy

exceeding great reward."

XI.

_COVENANT WITH ABRAM._

GENESIS xv.

Of the nine Divine manifestations made during Abram's life this is the

fifth. At Ur, at Kharran, at the oak of Moreh, at the encampment between

Bethel and Ai, and now at Mamre, he received guidance and encouragement

from God. Different terms are used regarding these manifestations.

Sometimes it is said "The Lord appeared unto him;" here for the first

time in the course of God's revelation occurs that expression which

afterwards became normal, "The word of the Lord came unto Abram."

Throughout the subsequent history this word of the Lord continues to

come, often at long intervals, but always meeting the occasion and needs

of His people and joining itself on to what had already been declared,

until at last the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, giving thus to

all men assurance of the nearness and profound sympathy of their God. To

repeat this revelation is impossible. A repetition of it would be a

denial of its reality. For a second life on earth is allowed to no man;

and were our Lord to live a second human life it were proof He was no

true man, but an anomalous, unaccountable, uninstructive, appearance or

simulacrum of a man.

But though these revelations of God are finished, though complete

knowledge of God is given in Christ, God comes to the individual still

through the Spirit Whose office it is to take of the things of Christ

and show them to us. And in doing so the law is observed which we see

illustrated here. God comes to a man with further encouragement and

light for a new step when he has conscientiously used the light he

already has. The temper that "seeks for a sign" and expects that some

astounding Providence should be sent to make us religious is by no means

obsolete. Many seem to expect that before they act on the knowledge they

have, they will receive more. They put off giving themselves to the

service of God under some kind of impression that some striking event or

much more distinct knowledge is required to give them a decided turn to

a religious life. In so doing they invert God's order. It is when we

have conscientiously followed such light as we have, and faithfully done

all that we know to be right, that God gives us further light. It was

immediately on the back of faithful action that Abram received new help

to his faith.

The time was seasonable for other reasons. Never did Abram feel more in

need of such assurance. He had been successful in his midnight attack

and had scattered the force from beyond Euphrates, but he knew the

temper of these Eastern monarchs well enough to be aware that there was

nothing they hailed with greater pleasure than a pretext for extending

their conquests and adding to their territory. To Abram it must have

appeared certain that the next campaigning season would see his country

invaded and his little encampment swept away by the Eastern host. Most

appropriate, therefore, are the words: "Fear not, Abram: I am thy

shield."

But another train of thoughts occupied Abram's mind perhaps even more

unceasingly at this time. After busy engagement comes dulness; after

triumph, flatness and sadness. I have pursued kings, got myself a great

name, led captivity captive. Men are speaking of me in Sodom, and

finding that in me they have a useful and important ally. But what is

all this to my purpose? Am I any nearer my inheritance? I have got all

that men might think I needed; they may be unable to understand why now,

of all times, I should seem heartless; but, O Lord, Thou knowest how

empty these things seem to me, and what wilt Thou give me? Abram could

not understand why he was kept so long waiting. The child given when he

was a hundred years old might equally have been given twenty-five years

before, when he first came to the land of Canaan. All Abram's servants

had their children, there was no lack of young men born in his

encampment. He could not leave his tent without hearing the shouts of

other men's children, and having them cling to his garments--but "to me

Thou hast given no seed; and lo! one born in mine house, a slave, is

mine heir."

Thus it often is that while a man is receiving much of what is generally

valued in the world, the one thing he himself most prizes is beyond his

reach. He has his hope irremovably fixed on something which he feels

would complete his life and make him a thoroughly happy man; there is

one thing which, above all else, would be a right and helpful blessing

to him. He speaks of it to God. For years it has framed a petition for

itself when no other desire could make itself heard. Back and back to

this his heart comes, unable to find rest in anything so long as this is

withheld. He cannot help feeling that it is God who is keeping it from

him. He is tempted to say, "What is the use of all else to me, why give

me things Thou knowest I care little for, and reserve the one thing on

which my happiness depends?" As Abram might have said; "Why make me a

great name in the land, when there is no one to keep it alive in men's

memories; why increase my possessions when there is none to inherit but

a stranger?"

Is there then any resulting benefit to character in this so common

experience of delayed expectations? In Abram's case there certainly was.

It was in these years he was drawn close enough to God to hear Him say,

"_I_ am thy exceeding great reward." He learned in the multitude of his

debatings about God's promise and the delay of its fulfilment, that God

was more than all His gifts. He had started as a mere hopeful colonist

and founder of a family; these twenty-five years of disappointment made

him the friend of God and the Father of the Faithful. Slowly do we also

pass from delight in God's gifts to delight in Himself, and often by a

similar experience. From what have you received truest and deepest

pleasure in life? Is it not from your friendships? Not from what your

friends have given you or done for you; rather from what you have done

for them; but chiefly from your affectionate intercourse. You, being

persons, must find your truest joy in persons, in personal love,

personal goodness and wisdom. But friendship has its crown in the

friendship of God. The man who knows God as his friend and is more

certain of God's goodness and wisdom and steadfastness than he can be of

the worth of the man he has loved and trusted and delighted in from his

boyhood, the man who is always accompanied by a latent sense of God's

observation and love, is truly living in the peace of God that passeth

understanding. This raises him above the touch of worldly losses and

restores him in all distresses, even to the surprise of observers; his

language is, "There may be many that will say, Who will show us any

good? Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. _Thou_

hast put gladness in my heart more than in the time that their corn and

their wine increased."

But evidently there was still another feeling in Abram's heart at this

particular point in his career. He could not bear to think he was to

miss that very thing which God had promised him. The keen yearning for

an heir which God's promise had stirred in him was not lost sight of in

the great saying, "_I_ am thy exceeding great reward." When he was

journeying back to his encampment not a shoestring richer than he left,

and while he heard his men, disappointed of booty, murmuring that he

should be so scrupulous, he cannot but have felt some soreness that he

should be set before his little world as a man who had the enjoyment

neither of this world's rewards nor of God. And here must have come the

strong temptation that comes to every man: Might it not be as well to

take what he could get, to enjoy what was put fairly within his reach,

instead of waiting for what seemed so uncertain as God's gift? It is

painful to be exposed to the observation of others or to our own

observation, as persons who, on the one hand, refuse to seek happiness

in the world's way, and yet are not finding it in God. You have possibly

with some magnanimity rejected a tempting offer because there were

conditions attached to which conscience could not reconcile itself; but

you find that you are in consequence suffering greater privations than

you expected and that no providential intervention seems to be made to

reward your conscientiousness. Or you suddenly become aware that though

you have for years refused to be mirthful or influential or successful

or comfortable in the world's way and on the world's terms, you are yet

getting no substitute for what you refuse. You will not join the world's

mirth, but then you are morose and have no joy of any kind. You will not

use means you disapprove of for influencing men, but neither have you

the influence of a strong Christian character. In fact by giving up the

world you seem to have contracted and weakened instead of enlarging and

deepening your life.

In such a condition we can but imitate Abram and cast ourselves more

resolutely on God. If you find it most weary and painful to deny

yourself in these special ways which have fallen to be your experience,

you can but utter your complaint to God, assured that in Him you will

find consideration. He knows why He has called you, why He has given you

strength to abandon worldly hopes; He appreciates your adherence to Him

and He will renew your faith and hope. If day by day you are saying,

"Lead Thou me on," if you say, "What wilt Thou give me?" not in

complaint but in lively expectation, encouragement enough will be yours.

The means by which Abram's faith was renewed were appropriate. He has

been seeing in the tumult and violence and disappointment of the world

much to suggest the thought that God's promise could never work itself

out in the face of the rude realities around him. So God leads him out

and points him to the stars, each one called by his name, and thus

reminds the Chaldaean who had so often gazed at and studied them in

their silent steady courses, that his God has designs of infinite sweep

and comprehension; that throughout all space His worlds obey His will

and all harmoniously play their part in the execution of His vast

design; that we and all our affairs are in a strong hand, but moving in

orbits so immense that small portions of them do not show us their

direction and may seem to be out of course. Abram is led out alone with

the mighty God, and to every saved soul there comes such a crisis when

before God's majesty we stand awed and humbled, all complaints hushed,

and indeed our personal interests disappear or become so merged in God's

purposes that we think only of Him; our mistakes and wrong-doing are

seen now not so much as bringing misery upon ourselves as interrupting

and perverting His purposes, and His word comes home to our hearts as

stable and satisfying.

It was in this condition that Abram believed God, and He counted it to

him for righteousness. Probably if we read this without Paul's

commentary on it in the fourth of Romans, we should suppose it meant no

more than that Abram's faith, exercised as it was in trying

circumstances, met with God's cordial approval. The faith or belief here

spoken of was a resolute renewal of the feeling which had brought him

out of Chaldaea. He put himself fairly and finally into God's hand to be

blessed in God's way and in God's time, and this act of resignation,

this resolve that he would not force his own way in the world but would

wait upon God, was looked upon by God as deserving the name of

righteousness, just as much as honesty and integrity in his conduct with

Lot or with his servants. Paul begs us to notice that an act of faith

accepting God's favour is a very different thing from a work done for

the sake of winning God's favour. God's favour is always a matter of

grace, it is favour conferred on the undeserving; it is never a matter

of debt, it is never favour conferred because it has been won. To put

this beyond doubt he appeals to this righteousness of Abram's. How, he

asks, did Abram achieve righteousness? Not by observing ordinances and

commandments; for there were none to observe; but by trusting God, by

believing that already without any working or winning of his, God loved

him and designed blessedness for him, in short by referring his prospect

of happiness and usefulness wholly to God and not at all to himself.

This is the essential quality of the godly; and having this, Abram had

that root which produced all actual righteousness and likeness to God.

It is sufficiently obvious in such a life as Abram's why faith is the

one thing needful. Faith is required because it is only when a man

believes God's promise and rests in His love that he can co-operate with

God in severing himself from iniquitous prospects and in so living for

spiritual ends as to enter the life and the blessedness God calls him

to. The boy who does not believe his father, when he comes to him in the

midst of his play and tells him he has something for him which will

please him still better, suffers the penalty of unbelief by losing what

his father would have given him. All missing of true enjoyment and

blessedness results from unbelief in God's promise. Men do not walk in

God's ways because they do not believe in God's ends. They do not

believe that spiritual ends are as substantial and desirable as those

that are physical.

Abram's faith is easily recognised, because not only had he not wrought

for the blessing God promised him, but it was impossible for him even

to see how it could be achieved. That which God promised was apparently

quite beyond the reach of human power. It serves then as an admirable

illustration of the essence of faith; and Paul uses it as such. It is

not because faith is the root of all actual righteousness that Paul

describes it as "imputed for righteousness." It is because faith at once

gives a man possession of what no amount of working could ever achieve.

God now offers in Christ righteousness, that is to say, justification,

the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God with all the fruits of

this acceptance, the indwelling Divine Spirit and life everlasting. He

offers this freely as he offered to Abram what Abram could never have

won for himself. And all that we are asked to do is to accept it. This

is all we are asked to do in order to our becoming the forgiven and

accepted children of God. After becoming so, there of course remains an

infinite amount of service to be rendered, of work to be done, of

self-discipline to be undergone. But in answer to the awakened sinner's

enquiry, "What must I do to be saved," Paul replies, "You are to _do_

nothing; nothing you can do can win God's favour, because that favour is

already yours; nothing you can do can achieve the rectification of your

present condition, but Christ has achieved it. Believe that God is with

you and that Christ can deliver you and commit yourself cordially to the

life you are called to, hopeful that what is promised will be

fulfilled."

Abram's faith cordial as it was, yet was not independent of some

sensible sign to maintain it. The sign given was twofold: the smoking

furnace and a prediction of the sojourn of Abram's posterity in Egypt.

The symbols were similar to those by which on other occasions the

presence of God was represented. Fire, cleansing, consuming, and

unapproachable, seemed to be the natural emblem of God's holiness. In

the present instance it was especially suitable, because the

manifestation was made after sundown and when no other could have been

seen. The cutting up of the carcases and passing between the pieces was

one of the customary forms of contract. It was one of the many devices

men have fallen upon to make sure of one another's word. That God should

condescend to adopt these modes of pledging Himself to men is

significant testimony to His love; a love so resolved on accomplishing

the good of men that it resents no slowness of faith and accommodates

itself to unworthy suspicions. It makes itself as obvious and pledges

itself with as strong guarantees to men as if it were the love of a

mortal whose feelings might change and who had not clearly foreseen all

consequences and issues.

The prediction of the long sojourn of Abram's posterity in Egypt was not

only helpful to those who had to endure the Egyptian bondage, but also

to Abram himself. He no doubt felt the temptation, from which at no time

the Church has been free, to consider himself the favourite of heaven

before whose interests all other interests must bow. He is here taught

that other men's rights must be respected as well as his, and that not

one hour before absolute justice requires it, shall the land of the

Amorites be given to his posterity. And that man is considerably past

the rudimentary knowledge of God who understands that every act of God

springs from justice and not from caprice, and that no creature upon

earth is sooner or later unjustly dealt with, by the Supreme Ruler. In

the life of Abram it becomes visible, how, by living with God and

watching for every expression of His will, a man's knowledge of the

Divine nature enlarges; and it is also interesting to observe that

shortly after this he grounds all his pleading for Sodom on the truth he

had learned here: "Shall not the Judge of _all the earth_ do right?"

The announcement that a long interval must elapse before the promise was

fulfilled must no doubt have been a shock to Abram; and yet it was

sobering and educative. It is a great step we take when we come clearly

to understand that God has a great deal to do with us before we can

fully inherit the promise. For God's promise, so far from making

everything in the future easy and bright, is that which above all else

discloses how stern a reality life is; how severe and thorough that

discipline must be which makes us capable of achieving God's purposes

with us. A horror of great darkness may well fall upon the man who

enters into covenant with God, who binds himself to that Being whom no

pain nor sacrifice can turn aside from the pursuance of aims once

approved. When we look forward and consider the losses, the privations,

the self-denials, the delays, the pains, the keen and real discipline,

the lowliness of the life to which fellowship with God leads men,

darkness and gloom and smoke darken our prospect and discourage us; but

the smoke is that which arises from a purifying fire that purges away

all that prevents us from living spiritually, a darkness very different

from that which settles over the life which amidst much present

brightness carries in it the consciousness that its course is downwards,

that the blows it suffers are deadening, that its sun is steadily

nearing its setting and that everlasting night awaits it.

But over all other feelings this solemn transacting with God must have

produced in Abram a humble ecstasy of confidence. The wonderful mercy

and kindness of God in thus binding Himself to a weak and sinful man

cannot but have given him new thoughts of God and new thoughts of

himself. With fresh elevation of mind and superiority to ordinary

difficulties and temptations would he return to his tent that night. In

how different a perspective would all things stand to him now that the

Infinite God had come so near to him. Things which yesterday fretted or

terrified him seemed now remote: matters which had occupied his thought

he did not now notice or remember. He was now the Friend of God, taken

up into a new world of thoughts and hopes; hiding in his heart the

treasure of God's covenant, brooding over the infinite significance and

hopefulness of his position as God's ally.

For indeed this was a most extraordinary and a most encouraging event.

The Infinite God drew near to Abram and made a contract with him. God as

it were said to him, I wish you to count upon Me, to make sure of Me: I

therefore pledge Myself by these accustomed forms to be your Friend.

But it was not as an isolated person, nor for his own private interests

alone that Abram was thus dealt with by God. It was as a medium of

universal blessing that he was taken into covenant with God. The

kindness of God which he experienced was merely an intimation of the

kindness all men would experience. The laying aside of unapproachable

dignity and entrance into covenant with a man was the proclamation of

His readiness to be helpful to all and to bring Himself within reach of

all. That you may have a God at hand He thus brought Himself down to men

and human ways, that your life may not be vain and useless, dark and

misguided, and that you may find that you have a part in a well-ordered

universe in which a holy God cares for all and makes His strength and

wisdom available for all. Do not allow these intimations of His mercy to

go for nothing but use them as intended for your guidance and

encouragement.

XII.

_BIRTH OF ISHMAEL._

GENESIS xvi.

In this unpretending chapter we have laid bare to us the origin of one

of the most striking facts in the history of religion: namely, that from

the one person of Abram have sprung Christianity and that religion which

has been and still is its most formidable rival and enemy,

Mohammedanism. To Ishmael, the son of Abram, the Arab tribes are proud

to trace their pedigree. Through him they claim Abram as their father,

and affirm that they are his truest representatives, the sons of his

first-born. In Mohammed, the Arabian, they see the fulfilment of the

blessing of Abram, and they have succeeded in persuading a large part of

the world to believe along with them. Little did Sarah think when she

persuaded Abram to take Hagar that she was originating a rivalry which

has run with keenest animosity through all ages and which oceans of

blood have not quenched. The domestic rivalry and petty womanish spites

and resentments so candidly depicted in this chapter, have actually

thrown on the world from that day to this one of its darkest and least

hopeful shadows. The blood of our own countrymen, it may be of our own

kindred, will yet flow in this unappeasable quarrel. So great a matter

does a little fire kindle. So lasting and disastrous are the issues of

even slight divergences from pure simplicity.

It is instructive to observe how long this matter of obtaining an heir

for Abram occupies the stage of sacred history and in how many aspects

it is shown. The stage is rapidly cleared of whatever else might

naturally have invited attention, and interest is concentrated on the

heir that is to be. The risks run by the appointed mother, the doubts of

the father, the surrender now of the mother's rights,--all this is

trivial if it concerned only one household, important only when you view

it as significant for the race. It was thus men were taught thoughtfully

to brood upon the future and to believe that, though Divine, blessing

and salvation would spring from earth: man was to co-operate with God,

to recognise himself as capable of uniting with God in the highest of

all purposes. At the same time, this long and continually deferred

expectation of Abram was the simple means adopted by God to convince men

once for all that the promised seed is not of nature but of grace, that

it is God who sends all effectual and determining blessing, and that we

must learn to adapt ourselves to His ways and wait upon Him.

The first man, then, whose religious experience and growth are recorded

for us at any length, has this one thing to learn, to trust God's word

and wait for it. In this everything is included. But gradually it

appears to us all that this is the great difficulty, to wait; to let God

take His own time to bless us. It is hard to believe in God's perfect

love and care when we are receiving no present comfort or peace; hard to

believe we shall indeed be sanctified when we seem to be abandoned to

sinful habit; hard to pass all through life with some pain, or some

crushing trouble, or some harassing anxiety, or some unsatisfied

craving. It is easy to start with faith, most trying to endure patiently

to the end. It is thus God educates His children. Compelled to wait for

some crowning gift, we cannot but study God's ways. It is thus we are

forced to look below the surface of life to its hidden meanings and to

construe God's dealings with ourselves apart from the experience of

other men. It is thus we are taught actually to loosen our hold of

things temporal and to lay hold on what is spiritual and real. He who

leaves himself in God's hand will one day declare that the pains and

sorrows he suffered were trifling in comparison with what he has won

from them.

But Sarah could not wait. She seems to have fixed ten years as the

period during which she would wait; but at the expiry of this term she

considered herself justified in helping forward God's tardy providence

by steps of her own. One cannot severely blame her. When our hearts are

set upon some definite blessing, things seem to move too slowly and we

can scarcely refrain from urging them on without too scrupulously

enquiring into the character of our methods. We are willing to wait for

a certain time, but beyond that we must take the matter into our own

hand. This incident shows, what all life shows, that whatever be the

boon you seek, you do yourself an injury if you cease to seek it in the

best possible form and manner, and decline upon some lower thing which

you can secure by some easy stratagem of your own.

The device suggested by Sarah was so common that the wonder is that it

had not long before been tried. Jealousy or instinctive reluctance may

have prevented her from putting it in force. She might no doubt have

understood that God, always working out His purposes in consistency

with all that is most honourable and pure in human conduct, requires of

no one to swerve a hair's breadth from the highest ideal of what a human

life should be, and that just in proportion as we seek the best gifts

and the most upright and pure path to them does God find it easy to

bless us. But in her case it was difficult to continue in this belief;

and at length she resolved to adopt the easy and obvious means of

obtaining an heir. It was unbelieving and foolish, but not more so than

our adoption of practices common in our day and in our business which we

know are not the best, but which we nevertheless make use of to obtain

our ends because the most righteous means possible do not seem workable

in our circumstances. Are you not conscious that you have sometimes used

a means of effecting your purpose, which you would shrink from using

habitually, but which you do not scruple to use to tide you over a

difficulty, an extraordinary device for an extraordinary emergency, a

Hagar brought in for a season to serve a purpose, not a Sarah accepted

from God and cherished as an eternal helpmeet. It is against this we are

here warned. From a Hagar can at the best spring only an Ishmael, while

in order to obtain the blessing God intends we must betake ourselves to

God's barren-looking means.

The evil consequences of Sarah's scheme were apparent first of all in

the tool she made use of. Agur the son of Jakeh says: "For three things

the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear. For a

servant when he reigneth, and a fool when he is filled with meat; for an

odious woman when she is married, and an handmaid that is heir to her

mistress." Naturally this half-heathen girl, when she found that her

son would probably inherit all Abram's possessions, forgot herself, and

looked down on her present, nominal mistress. A flood of new fancies

possessed her vacant mind and her whole demeanour becomes insulting to

Sarah. The slave-girl could not be expected to sympathize with the

purpose which Abram and Sarah had in view when they made use of her.

They had calculated on finding only the unquestioning, mechanical

obedience of the slave, even while raising her practically to the

dignity of a wife. They had fancied that even to the deepest feelings of

her woman's heart, even in maternal hopes, she would be plastic in their

hands, their mere passive instrument. But they have entirely

miscalculated. The slave has feelings as quick and tender as their own,

a life and a destiny as tenaciously clung to as their God-appointed

destiny. Instead of simplifying their life they have merely added to it

another source of complexity and annoyance. It is the common fate of all

who use others to satisfy their own desires and purposes. The

instruments they use are never so soulless and passive as it is wished.

If persons cannot serve you without deteriorating in their own

character, you have no right to ask them to serve you. To use human

beings as if they were soulless machines is to neglect radical laws and

to inflict the most serious injury on our fellow-men. Mistresses who do

not treat their servants with consideration, recognising that they are

as truly women as themselves, with all a woman's hopes and feelings, and

with a life of their own to live, are committing a grievous wrong, and

evil will come of it.

In such an emergency as now arose in Abram's household, character shows

itself clearly. Sarah's vexation at the success of her own scheme, her

recrimination and appeal for strange justice, her unjustifiable

treatment of Hagar, Abram's Bedouin disregard of the jealousies of the

women's tent, his Gallio-like repudiation of judgment in such quarrels,

his regretful vexation and shame that through such follies, mistakes,

and wranglings, God had to find a channel for His promise to flow--all

this discloses the painful ferment into which Abram's household was

thrown. Sarah's attempt to rid herself with a high hand of the

consequences of her scheme was signally unsuccessful. In the same

inconsiderate spirit in which she had put Hagar in her place, she now

forces her to flee, and fancies that she has now rid herself and her

household of all the disagreeable consequences of her experiment. She is

grievously mistaken. The slave comes back upon her hands, and comes back

with the promise of a son who should be a continual trouble to all about

him. All through Ishmael's boyhood Abram and Sarah had painfully to reap

the fruits of what they had sown. We only make matters worse when we

endeavour by injustice and harshness to crush out the consequences of

wrong-doing. The difficulties into which sin has brought us can only be

effectually overcome by sincere contrition and humiliation. It is not

all in a moment nor by one happy stroke you can rectify the sin or

mistake of a moment. If by your wise devices you have begotten young

Ishmaels, if something is every day grieving you and saying to you,

"This comes of your careless inconsiderate conduct in the past," then

see that in your vexation there is real penitence and not a mere

indignant resentment against circumstances or against other people, and

see that you are not actually continuing the fault which first gave

birth to your present sorrow and entanglement.

When Hagar fled from her mistress she naturally took the way to her old

country. Instinctively her feet carried her to the land of her birth.

And as she crossed the desert country where Palestine, Egypt and Arabia

meet, she halted by a fountain, spent with her flight and awed by the

solitude and stillness of the desert. Her proud spirit is broken and

tamed, the fond memories of her adopted home and all its customs and

ways and familiar faces and occupations, overtake her when she pauses

and her heart reacts from the first excitement of hasty purpose and

reckless execution. To whom could she go in Egypt? Was there one there

who would remember the little slave girl or who would care to show her a

kindness? Has she not acted madly in fleeing from her only protectors?

The desolation around her depicts her own condition. No motion stirs as

far as her eye can reach, no bird flies, no leaf trembles, no cloud

floats over the scorching sun, no sound breaks the death-like quiet; she

feels as if in a tomb, severed from all life, forgotten of all. Her

spirit is breaking under this sense of desolation, when suddenly her

heart stands still as she hears a voice utter her own name "Hagar,

Sarai's maid." As readily as every other person when God speaks to them,

does Hagar recognise Who it is who has followed her into this blank

solitude. In her circumstances to hear the voice of God left no room for

disobedience. The voice of God made audible through the actual

circumstances of our daily life acquires a force and an authority we

never attached to it otherwise.

Probably, too, Hagar would have gone back to Abram's tents at the

bidding of a less authoritative voice than this. Already she was

softening and repenting. She but needed some one to say, "Go back." You

may often make it easier for a proud man to do a right thing by giving

him a timely word. Frequently men stand in the position of Hagar,

knowing the course they ought to adopt and yet hesitating to adopt it

until it is made easy to them by a wise and friendly word.

In the promise of a son which was here given to Hagar and the prediction

concerning his destiny, while there was enough to teach both her and

Abram that he was not to be the heir of the promise, there was also much

to gratify a mother's pride and be to Hagar a source of continual

satisfaction. The son was to bear a name which should commemorate God's

remembrance of her in her desolation. As often as she murmured it over

the babe or called it to the child or uttered it in sharp remonstrance

to the refractory boy, she was still reminded that she had a helper in

God who had heard and would hear her. The prediction regarding the child

has been strikingly fulfilled in his descendants; the three

characteristics by which they are distinguished being precisely those

here mentioned. "He will be a wild man," literally, "a wild ass among

men," reminding us of the description of this animal in Job: "Whose

house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwelling. He

scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of

the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth

after every green thing." Like the zebra that cannot be domesticated,

the Arab scorns the comforts of civilized life, and adheres to the

primitive dress, food, and mode of life, delighting in the sensation of

freedom, scouring the deserts, sufficient with his horse and spear for

every emergency. His hand also is against every man, looking on all as

his natural enemies or as his natural prey; in continual feud of tribe

against tribe and of the whole race against all of different blood and

different customs. And yet he "dwells in the presence of his brethren;"

though so warlike a temper would bode his destruction and has certainly

destroyed other races, this Ishmaelite stock continues in its own lands

with an uninterrupted history. In the words of an authoritative writer:

"They have roved like the moving sands of their deserts; but their race

has been rooted while the individual wandered. That race has neither

been dissipated by conquest, nor lost by migration, nor confounded with

the blood of other countries. They have continued to dwell in the

presence of all their brethren, a distinct nation, wearing upon the

whole the same features and aspects which prophecy first impressed upon

them."

What struck Hagar most about this interview was God's presence with her

in this remote solitude. She awakened to the consciousness that duty,

hope, God, are ubiquitous, universal, carried in the human breast, not

confined to any place. Her hopes, her haughtiness, her sorrows, her

flight, were all known. The feeling possessed her which was afterwards

expressed by the Psalmist: "Thou knowest my down-sitting, and mine

uprising, Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my

path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Thou

tellest my wanderings; put Thou my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in

Thy book?" Even here where I thought to have escaped every eye, have I

been following and at length found Him that seeth me. As truly and even

more perceptibly than in Abram's tents, God is with her here in the

desert. To evade duty, to leave responsibility behind us, is impossible.

In all places we are God's children, bound to accept the

responsibilities of our nature. In all places God is with us, not only

to point out our duty but to give us the feeling that in adhering to

duty we adhere to Him, and that it is because He values us that He

presses duty upon us. With Him is no respect of persons; the servant is

in his sight as vivid a personality as the mistress, and God appears not

to the overbearing mistress but to the overborne servant.

Happy they who when God has thus met them and sent them back on their

own footsteps, a long and weary return, have still been so filled with a

sense of God's love in caring for them through all their errors, that

they obey and return. All round about His people does God encamp, all

round about His flock does the faithful Shepherd watch and drive back

upon the fold each wanderer. Not only to those who are consciously

seeking Him does God reveal Himself, but often to us at the very

farthest point of our wandering, at our extremity, when another day's

journey would land us in a region from which there is no return. When

our regrets for the past become intolerably poignant and bitter; when we

see a waste of years behind us barren as the sand of the desert, with

nothing done but what should but cannot be undone; when the heart is

stupefied with the sense of its madness and of the irretrievable loss it

has sustained, or when we look to the future and are persuaded little

can grow up in it out of such a past, when we see that all that would

have prepared us for it has been lightly thrown aside or spent

recklessly for nought, when our hearts fail us, this is God besetting us

behind and before. And may He grant us strength to pray, "Show me Thy

ways, O Lord, teach me Thy paths. Lead me in Thy truth and teach me:

for Thou art the God of my salvation; on Thee do I wait all the day."

The quiet glow of hopefulness with which Hagar returned to Abram's

encampment should possess the spirit of every one of us. Hagar's

prospects were not in all respects inviting. She knew the kind of

treatment she was likely to receive at the hands of Sarah. She was to be

a bondwoman still. But God had persuaded her of His care and had given

her a hope large enough to fill her heart. That hope was to be fulfilled

by a return to the home she had fled from, by a humbling and painful

experience. There is no person for whom God has not similar

encouragement. Frequently persons forget that God is in their life,

fulfilling His purposes. They flee from what is painful; they lose their

bearings in life and know not which way to turn; they do not fancy there

is help for them in God. Yet God is with them; by these very

circumstances that reduce them to desolateness and despair He leads them

to hope in Him. Each one of us has a place in His purpose; and that

place we shall find not by fleeing from what is distressing but by

submitting ourselves cheerfully to what He appoints. God's purpose is

real, and life is real, meant to accomplish not our present passing

pleasure, but lasting good in conformity with God's purpose. Be sure

that when you are bidden back to duties that seem those of a slave, you

are bidden to them by God, Whose purposes are worthy of Himself and

Whose purposes include you and all that concerns you.

There are, I think, few truths more animating than this which is here

taught us, that God has a purpose with each of us; that however

insignificant we seem, however friendless, however hardly used, however

ousted even from our natural place in this world's households, God has a

place for us; that however we lose our way in life we are not lost from

His eye; that even when we do not think of choosing Him He in His

Divine, all-embracing love chooses us, and throws about us bonds from

which we cannot escape. Of Hagar many were complacently thinking it was

no great matter if she were lost, and some might consider themselves

righteous because they said she deserved whatever mishap might befall

her. But not so God. Of some of us, it may be, others may think no great

blank would be made by our loss; but God's compassion and care and

purpose comprehend the least worthy. The very hairs of your head are all

numbered by Him. Nothing is so trivial and insignificant as to escape

His attention, nothing so intractable that He cannot use it for good.

Trust in Him, obey Him, and your life will yet be useful and happy.

XIII.

_THE COVENANT SEALED._

GENESIS xvii.

According to the dates here given fourteen years had passed since Abram

had received any intimation of God's will regarding him. Since the

covenant had been made some twenty years before, no direct communication

had been received; and no message of any kind since Ishmael's birth. It

need not, therefore, surprise us that we are often allowed to remain for

years in a state of suspense, uncertain about the future, feeling that

we need more light and yet unable to find it. All truth is not

discovered in a day, and if that on which we are to found for eternity

take us twenty years or a life's experience to settle it in its place,

why should we on this account be overborne with discouragement? They who

love the truth and can as little abstain from seeking it as the artist

can abstain from admiring what is lovely, will assuredly have their

reward. To be expectant yet not impatient, unsatisfied yet not

unbelieving, to hold mind and heart open, assured that light is sown for

the upright and that all that is has lessons for the teachable, this is

our proper attitude.

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum

Of things for ever speaking,

That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking?

We appreciate the significance of a revelation in proportion as we

understand the state of mind to which it is made. Abram's state of mind

is disclosed in the exclamation: "Oh, that Ishmael might live before

Thee!" He had learned to love the bold, brilliant, domineering boy. He

saw how the men liked to serve him and how proud they were of the young

chief. No doubt his wild intractable ways often made his father anxious.

Sarah was there to point out and exaggerate all his faults and to

prognosticate mischief. But there he was, in actual flesh and blood,

full of life and interest in everything, daily getting deeper into the

affections of Abram, who allowed and could not but allow his own life to

revolve very much around the dashing, attractive lad. So that the

reminder that he was not the promised heir was not entirely welcome.

When he was told that the heir of promise was to be Sarah's child, he

could not repress the somewhat peevish exclamation: "Oh, that Ishmael

might serve Thy turn!" Why call me off again from this actual attainment

to the vague, shadowy, non-existent heir of promise, who surely can

never have the brightness of eye and force of limb and lordly ways of

this Ishmael? Would that what already exists in actual substance before

the eye might satisfy Thee and fulfil Thine intention and supersede the

necessity of further waiting! Must I again loosen my hold, and part with

my chief attainment? Must I cut my moorings and launch again upon this

ocean of faith with a horizon always receding and that seems absolutely

boundless?

We are familiar with this state of mind. We wish God would leave us

alone. We have found a very attractive substitute for what He promises,

and we resent being reminded that our substitute is not, after all, the

veritable, eternal, best possession. It satisfies our taste, our

intellect, our ambition; it sets us on a level with other men and gives

us a place in the world; but now and again we feel a void it does not

fill. We have attained comfortable circumstances, success in our

profession, our life has in it that which attracts applause and sheds a

brilliance over it; and we do not like being told that this is not all.

Our feeling is Oh, that this might do! that this might be accepted as

perfect attainment! it satisfies me (all but a little bit); might it not

satisfy God? Why summon me again away from domestic happiness,

intellectual enjoyment, agreeable occupations, to what really seems so

unattainable as perfect fellowship with God in the fulfilment of His

promise? Why spend all my life in waiting and seeking for high spiritual

things when I have so much with which I can be moderately satisfied? For

our complaint often is not that God gives so little but that He offers

too much, more than we care to have: that He never will let us be

content with anything short of what perfectly fulfils His perfect love

and purpose.

This being Abram's state of mind, he is aroused from it by the words: "I

am the Almighty God; walk before Me and be thou perfect." I am the

Almighty God, able to fulfil your highest hopes and accomplish for you

the brightest ideal that ever My words set before you. There is no need

of paring down the promise till it square with human probabilities, no

need of relinquishing one hope it has begotten, no need of adopting some

interpretation of it which may make it seem easier to fulfil, and no

need of striving to fulfil it in any second-rate way. All possibility

lies in this: I am the Almighty God. Walk before Me and be thou perfect,

therefore. Do not train your eye to earthly distances and earthly

magnitudes and limit your hope accordingly, but live in the presence of

the Almighty God. Do not defer the advices of conscience and of your

purest aspirations to some other possible world; do not settle down at

the low level of godless nature and of the men around you; do not give

way to what you yourself know to be weakness and evidence of defeat; do

not let self-indulgence take the place of My commandments, indolence

supplant resolution and the likelihoods of human calculation obliterate

the hopes stirred by the Divine call: Be thou perfect. Is not this a

summons that comes appropriately to every man? Whatever be our

contentment, our attainments, our possessions, a new light is shed upon

our condition when we measure it by God's idea and God's resources. Is

my life God's ideal? Does that which satisfies me satisfy Him?

The purpose of God's present appearance to Abram was to renew the

covenant, and this He does in terms so explicit, so pregnant, so

magnificent that Abram must have seen more distinctly than ever that he

was called to play a very special part in God's providence. That kings

should spring from him, a mere pastoral nomad in an alien country, could

not suggest itself to Abram as a likely thing to happen. Indeed, though

a line of kings or two lines of kings did spring from him through Isaac,

the terms of the prediction seem scarcely exhausted by that fulfilment.

And accordingly Paul without hesitation or reserve transfers this

prediction to a spiritual region, and is at pains to show that the many

nations of whom Abram was to be the father, were not those who inherited

his blood, his natural appearance, his language and earthly inheritance,

but those who inherited his spiritual qualities and the heritage in God

to which his faith gave him entrance. And he argues that no difference

of race or disadvantages of worldly position can prevent any man from

serving himself heir to Abram, because the seed, to whom as well as to

Abram the promise was made, was Christ, and in Christ there is neither

Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, but all are one.

In connection then with this covenant in which God promised that He

would be a God to Abram and to his seed, two points of interest to us

emerge. First that Christ is Abram's heir. In His use of God's promise

we see its full significance. In His life-long appropriation of God we

see what God meant when He said, "I will be a God to thee and to thy

seed." We find our Lord from the first living as one who felt His life

encompassed by God, embraced and comprehended in that higher life which

God lives through all and in all. His life was all and whole a life in

God. He recognised what it is to have a God, one Whose will is supreme

and unerringly good, Whose love is constant and eternal, Who is the

first and the last, beyond Whom and from under Whom we can never pass.

He moved about in the world in so perfectly harmonious a correspondence

with God, so merging Himself in God and His purpose and with so

unhesitating a reliance upon Him, that He seemed and was but a

manifestation of God, God's will embodied, God's child, God expressing

Himself in human nature. He showed us once for all the blessedness of

true dependence, fidelity and faith. He showed us how that simple

promise 'I will be a God to thee,' received in faith, lifts the human

life into fellowship with all that is hopeful and inspiring, with all

that is purifying, with all that is real and abiding.

But a second point is, that Jesus was the heir of Abram not merely

because He was his descendant, a Jew with all the advantages of the

Jew, but because, like Abram, He was full of faith. God was the

atmosphere of His life. But He claimed God not because He was Jewish,

but because He was human. Through the Jews God had made Himself known,

but it was to what was human not to what was Jewish He appealed. And it

was as Son of man not as son of Israel or of Adam that Jesus responded

to God and lived with Him as His God. Not by specially Jewish rites did

Jesus approach and rest in God, but by what is universal and human, by

prayer to the Father, by loving obedience, by faith and submission. And

thus we too may be joint-heirs with Christ and possess God. And if we

think of ourselves as left to struggle with natural defects amidst

irreversible natural laws; if we begin to pray very heartlessly, as if

He who once listened were now asleep or could do nothing; if our life

seems profitless, purposeless, and all unhinged; then let us look back

to this sure promise of God, that He will be our God: our God, for, if

Christ's God, then ours, for if we be Christ's then are we Abram's seed

and heirs according to the promise. How few in any given day are living

on this promise: how few attach reality to God's continuous revelation

of Himself, the reality in this world's transitory history: how few can

believe in the nearness and observance and love of God, how few can

strenuously seek to be holy or understand where abiding happiness is to

be found; for all these things are here. Yet who knocks at this door?

Who makes, as Christ made, his life a unity with God, undismayed,

unmurmuring, unreluctant, neither fearful of God nor disobedient, but

diligent, earnest, jubilant, because God has said, "I will be thy God."

Do you believe these things and can you forbear to use them? Do you

believe that it is open to you, whosoever you are, to have the Eternal

and Supreme God for your God, that He may use all His Divine nature in

your behalf; have you conceived what it is that God means when He

extends to you this offer, and can you decline to accept it, can you do

otherwise than cherish it and seek to find more and more in it every day

you live?

Two seals were at this time affixed to the covenant: the one for Abram

himself, the other for every one who shared with him in his blessings of

the covenant. The first consisted in the change of his own name to

Abraham, "the father of a multitude," and of his wife's to Sarah,

"princess" or "queen," because she was now announced as the destined

mother of kings. And however Abraham would be annoyed to see the hardly

suppressed smile on the ironical faces of his men as he boldly commanded

them to call him by a name whose verification seemed so grievously to

lag; and however indignant and pained he may have been to hear the young

Ishmael jeering Sarah with her new name, and lending to it every tone of

mockery and using it with insolent frequency, yet Abraham knew that

these names were not given to deceive; and probably as the name of

Abraham has become one of the best known names on earth, so to himself

did it quickly acquire a preciousness as God's voice abiding with him,

God's promise renewed to him through every man that addressed him, until

at length the child of promise lying on his knees took up its first

syllable and called him "Abba."

This seal was special to Abraham and Sarah, the other was public. All

who desired to partake with Abraham in the security, hope, and happiness

of having God as their God, were to submit to circumcision. This sign

was to determine who were included in the covenant. By this outward mark

encouragement and assurance of faith were to be quickened in the heart

of all Abraham's descendants.

The mark chosen was significant. It was indeed not distinctive in its

outward form; so little so that at this day no fewer than one hundred

and fifty millions of the race make use of the same rite for one purpose

or other. All the descendants of Ishmael of course continue it, but also

all who have their religion, that is, all Mohammedans; but besides

these, some tribes in South America, some in Australia, some in the

South Sea Islands, and a large number of Kaffir tribes. The ancient

Egyptians certainly practised it, and it has been suggested that Abraham

may have become acquainted with the practice during his sojourn in

Egypt. It is however uncertain whether the practice in Egypt runs back

to so early a time. If it were an established Egyptian usage, then of

course Hagar would demand for her boy at the usual age the rite which

she had always associated with entrance on a new stage of life. But even

supposing this was the case, the rite was none the less available for

the new use to which it was now put. The rainbow existed before the

Flood; bread and wine existed before the night of the Lord's Supper;

baptisms of various kinds were practised before the days of the

Apostles. And for this very reason, when God desired a natural emblem of

the stability of the seasons He chose a striking feature of nature on

which men were already accustomed to look with pleasure and hope; when

He desired symbols of the body and blood of the Redeemer He took those

articles which already had a meaning as the most efficacious human

nutriment; when He desired to represent to the eye the renunciation of

the old life and the birth to a new life which we have by union with

Christ, He took that rite which was already known as the badge of

discipleship; and when He desired to impress men by symbol with the

impurity of nature and with our dependence on God for the production of

all acceptable life, He chose that rite which, whether used before or

not, did most strikingly represent this.

With the significance of circumcision to other men who practise it, we

have here nothing to do. It is as the chief sacrament of the old

covenant, by which God meant to aid all succeeding generations of

Hebrews in believing that God was their God. And this particular mark

was given, rather than any other, that they might recognise and ever

remember that human nature was unable to generate its own Saviour, that

in man there is a native impurity which must be laid aside when he comes

into fellowship with the Holy God. And these circumcised races, although

in many respects as unspiritual as others, have yet in general perceived

that God is different from nature, a Holy Being to Whom we cannot attain

by any mere adherence to nature, but only by the aid He Himself extends

to us in ways for which nature makes no provision. The lesson of

circumcision is an old one and rudely expressed, but it is vital; and no

abhorrence of the circumcised for the uncircumcised too strongly,

however unjustly, emphasizes the distinction that actually subsists

between those who believe in nature and those who believe in God.

The lesson is old, but the circumcision of the heart to which the

outward mark pointed, is ever required. That is the true seal of our

fellowship with God; the earnest of the Spirit which gives promise of

eternal union with the Holy One; the relentings, the shame, the

softening of heart, the adoration and reverence for the holiness of God,

the thirst for Him, the joy in His goodness, these are the first fruits

of the Spirit, which lead on to our calling God Father, and feeling that

to be alone with Him is our happiness. It is this putting aside of our

natural confidence in nature and absorption in nature, and this turning

to God as our confidence and our life, which constitutes the true

circumcision of the heart.

Believing as Abraham was, he could not forbear smiling when God said

that Sarah would be the mother of the promised seed. This incredulity of

Abraham was so significant that it was commemorated in the name of

Isaac, the laugher. This heir was typical of all God's best gifts, at

first reckoned impossible, at last filling the heart with gladness. The

smile of incredulity became the laughter of joy when the child was born

and Sarah said, "God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will

laugh with me." It is they who expect things so incongruous and so

impossible to nature unaided that they smile even while they believe,

who will one day find their hopes fulfilled and their hearts running

over with joyful laughter. If your heart is fixed only on what you can

accomplish for yourself, no great joy can ever be yours. But frame your

actual hopes in accordance with the promise of God, expect holiness,

fulness of joy, animating partnership with God in the highest matters,

the resurrection of the dead, the life everlasting, and one day you will

say, "God hath made me to laugh." But Abraham prostrating himself to

hide a smile is the symbol of our common attitude. We profess to believe

in a God of unspeakable power and goodness, but even while we do so we

find it impossible to attach a sense of reality to His promises. They

are kindly, well-intentioned words, but are apparently spoken in neglect

of solid, obstinate facts. How hard is it for us to learn that God is

the great reality, and that the reality of all else may be measured by

its relation to Him.

Sarah's laughter had a different meaning. Indeed Sarah does not appear

to have been by any means a blameless character. Her conduct towards

Hagar showed us that she was a woman capable of generous impulses but

not of the strain of continued magnanimous conduct. She was capable of

yielding her wifely rights on the impulse of the brilliant scheme that

had struck her, but like many other persons who can begin a magnanimous

or generous course of conduct, she could not follow it up to the end,

but failed disgracefully in her conduct towards her rival. So now again

she betrays characteristic weakness. When the strangers came to

Abraham's tent, and announced that she was to become a mother, she

smiled in superior, self-assured, woman's wisdom. When the promise

threatened no longer to hover over her household as a mere sublime and

exalting idea which serves its purpose if it keep them in mind that God

has spoken to them, but to take place now among the actualities of daily

occurrence, she hails this announcement with a laugh of total

incredulity. Whatever she had made of God's word, she had not thought it

was really and veritably to come to pass; she smiled at the simplicity

which could speak of such an unheard-of thing.

This is true to human nature. It reminds you how you have dealt with

God's promises,--nay, with God's commandments--when they offered to make

room for themselves in the everyday life of which you are masters,

every detail of which you have arranged, seeming to know absolutely the

laws and principles on which your particular line of life must be

carried on. Have you never smiled at the simplicity which could set

about making actual, about carrying out in practical life, in society,

in work, in business, those thoughts, feelings and purposes, which God's

promises beget? Sarah did not laugh outright, but smiled behind the

Lord; she did not mock Him to His face, but let the compassionate

expression pass over her face with which we listen to the glowing hopes

of the young enthusiast who does not know the world. Have we not often

put aside God's voice precisely thus; saying within us, We know what

kind of things can be done by us and others and what need not be

attempted; we know what kind of frailties in social intercourse we must

put up with, and not seek to amend; what kind of practices it is vain to

think of abolishing; we know what use to make of God's promise and what

use not to make of it; how far to trust it, and how far to give greater

weight to our knowledge of the world and our natural prudence and sense?

Does not our faith, like Sarah's, vary in proportion as the promise to

be believed is unpractical? If the promise seems wholly to concern

future things, we cordially and devoutly assent; but if we are asked to

believe that God intends within the year to do so-and-so, if we are

asked to believe that the result of God's promise will be found taking a

substantial place among the results of our own efforts--then the

derisive smile of Sarah forms on our face.

To look at the crowds of persons professing religion, one would suppose

nothing was commoner than faith. There is nothing rarer. Devoutness is

common; righteousness of life is common; a contempt for every kind of

fraud and underhand practice is common; a highminded disregard for this

world's gains and glories is common; an abhorrence of sensuality and an

earnest thirst for perfection are common--but faith? Will the Son of man

when He comes find it on earth? May not the messengers of God yet say,

Who hath believed our report? Why, the great majority of Christian

people have never been near enough to spiritual things to know whether

they are or are not, they have never narrowly weighed spiritual issues

and trembled as they watched the uncertain balance, they say they

believe God and a future of happiness because they really do not know

what they are talking about--they have not measured the magnitude of

these things. Faith is not a blind and careless assent to matters of

indifference, faith is not a state of mental suspense with a hope that

things may turn out to be as the Bible says. Faith is the firm

persuasion that these things are so. And he who at once knows the

magnitude of these things and believes that they are so, must be filled

with a joy that makes him independent of the world, with an enthusiasm

which must seem to the world like insanity. It is quite a different

world in which the man of faith lives.

XIV.

_ABRAHAM'S INTERCESSION FOR SODOM._

GENESIS xviii.

The scene with which this chapter opens is one familiar to the observer

of nomad life in the East. During the scorching heat and glaring light

of noon, while the birds seek the densest foliage and the wild animals

lie panting in the thicket and everything is still and silent as

midnight, Abraham sits in his tent door under the spreading oak of

Mamre. Listless, languid, and dreamy as he is, he is at once aroused

into brightest wakefulness by the sudden apparition of three strangers.

Remarkable as their appearance no doubt must have been, it would seem

that Abraham did not recognise the rank of his visitors; it was, as the

writer to the Hebrews says, "unawares" that he entertained angels. But

when he saw them stand as if inviting invitation to rest, he treated

them as hospitality required him to treat any wayfarers. He sprang to

his feet, ran and bowed himself to the ground, and begged them to rest

and eat with him. With the extraordinary, and as it seems to our colder

nature extravagant courtesy of an Oriental, he rates at the very lowest

the comforts he can supply; it is only a little water he can give to

wash their feet, a morsel of bread to help them on their way, but they

will do him a kindness if they accept these small attentions at his

hands. He gives, however, much more than he offered, seeks out the

fatted calf and serves while his guests sit and eat. The whole scene is

primitive and Oriental, and "presents a perfect picture of the manner in

which a modern Bedawee Sheykh receives travellers arriving at his

encampment;" the hasty baking of bread, the celebration of a guest's

arrival by the killing of animal food not on other occasions used even

by large flock-masters; the meal spread in the open air, the black tents

of the encampment stretching back among the oaks of Mamre, every

available space filled with sheep, asses, camels,--the whole is one of

those clear pictures which only the simplicity of primitive life can

produce.

Not only, however, as a suitable and pretty introduction which may

ensure our reading the subsequent narrative is it recorded how

hospitably Abraham received these three. Later writers saw in it a

picture of the beauty and reward of hospitality. It is very true,

indeed, that the circumstances of a wandering pastoral life are

peculiarly favourable to the cultivation of this grace. Travellers being

the only bringers of tidings are greeted from a selfish desire to hear

news as well as from better motives. Life in tents, too, of necessity

makes men freer in their manners. They have no door to lock, no inner

rooms to retire to, their life is spent outside, and their character

naturally inclines to frankness and freedom from the suspicions, fears,

and restraints of city life. Especially is hospitality accounted the

indispensable virtue, and a breach of it as culpable as a breach of the

sixth commandment, because to refuse hospitality is in many regions

equivalent to subjecting a wayfarer to dangers and hardships under

which he is almost certain to succumb.

"This tent is mine," said Yussouf, "but no more

Than it is God's; come in, and be at peace;

Freely shalt thou partake of all my store,

As I of His Who buildeth over these

Our tents His glorious roof of night and day,

And at Whose door none ever yet heard Nay."

Still we are of course bound to import into our life all the suggestions

of kindly conduct which any other style of living gives us. And the

writer to the Hebrews pointedly refers to this scene and says, "Let us

not be forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have

entertained angels unawares." And often in quite a prosaic and

unquestionable manner does it become apparent to a host, that the guest

he has been entertaining has been sent by God, an angel indeed

ministering to his salvation, renewing in him thoughts that had been

dying out, filling his home with brightness and life like the smile of

God's own face, calling out kindly feelings, provoking to love and to

good works, effectually helping him onwards and making one more stage of

his life endurable and even blessed. And it is not to be wondered at

that our Lord Himself should have continually inculcated this same

grace; for in His whole life and by His most painful experience were men

being tested as to who among them would take the stranger in. He who

became man for a little that He might for ever consecrate the dwelling

of Abraham and leave a blessing in his household, has now become man for

evermore, that we may learn to walk carefully and reverentially through

a life whose circumstances and conditions, whose little socialities and

duties, and whose great trials and strains He found fit for Himself for

service to the Father. This tabernacle of our human body has by His

presence been transformed from a tent to a temple, and this world and

all its ways that He approved, admired, and walked in, is holy ground.

But as He came to Abraham trusting to his hospitality, not sending

before him a legion of angels to awe the patriarch but coming in the

guise of an ordinary wayfarer; so did He come to His own and make His

entrance among us, claiming only the consideration which He claims for

the least of His people, and granting to whoever gave Him _that_ the

discovery of His Divine nature. Had there been ordinary hospitality in

Bethlehem that night before the taxing, then a woman in Mary's condition

had been cared for and not superciliously thrust among the cattle, and

our race had been delivered from the everlasting reproach of refusing

its God a cradle to be born and sleep His first sleep in, as it refused

Him a bed to die in, and left chance to provide Him a grave in which to

sleep His latest sleep. And still He is coming to us all requiring of us

this grace of hospitality, not only in the case of every one who asks of

us a cup of cold water and whom our Lord Himself will personate at the

last day and say, "_I_ was a stranger and ye took Me in;" but also in

regard to those claims upon our heart's reception which He only in His

own person makes.

But while we are no doubt justified in gathering such lessons from this

scene, it can scarcely have been for the sake of inculcating hospitality

that these angels visited Abraham. And if we ask, Why did God on this

occasion use this exceptional form of manifesting Himself; why, instead

of approaching Abraham in a vision or in word as had been found

sufficient on former occasions, did He now adopt this method of

becoming Abraham's guest and eating with him?--the only apparent reason

is that He meant this also to be the test applied to Sodom. There too

His angels were to appear as wayfarers, dependent on the hospitality of

the town, and by the people's treatment of these unknown visitors their

moral state was to be detected and judged. The peaceful meal under the

oaks of Mamre, the quiet and confidential walk over the hills in the

afternoon when Abraham in the humble simplicity of a godly soul was

found to be fit company for these three--this scene where the Lord and

His messengers receive a becoming welcome and where they leave only

blessing behind them, is set in telling contrast to their reception in

Sodom, where their coming was the signal for the outburst of a brutality

one blushes to think of, and elicited all the elements of a mere hell

upon earth.

Lot would fain have been as hospitable as Abraham. Deeper in his nature

than any other consideration was the traditional habit of hospitality.

To this he would have sacrificed everything--the rights of strangers

were to him truly inviolable. Lot was a man who could as little see

strangers without inviting them to his house as Abraham could. He would

have treated them handsomely as his uncle; and what he could do he did.

But Lot had by his choice of a dwelling made it impossible he should

afford safe and agreeable lodging to any visitor. He did his best, and

it was not his reception of the angels that sealed Sodom's doom, and yet

what shame he must have felt that he had put himself in circumstances in

which his chief virtue could not be practised. So do men tie their own

hands and cripple themselves so that even the good they would take

pleasure in doing is either wholly impossible or turns to evil.

In divulging to Abraham His purpose in visiting Sodom, it is enounced

here that God acted on a principle which seems afterwards to have become

almost proverbial. Surely the Lord will do nothing but He revealeth His

secret unto His servants the prophets. There are indeed two grounds

stated for making known to Abraham this catastrophe. The reason that we

should naturally expect, viz. that he might go on and warn Lot is not

one of them. Why then make any announcement to Abraham if the

catastrophe cannot be averted, and if Abraham is to turn back to his own

encampment? The first reason is: "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing

which I do? _Seeing that Abraham_ shall surely become a great and mighty

nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him." In

other words, Abraham has been made the depository of a blessing for all

nations, and account must therefore be given to him when any people is

summarily removed beyond the possibility of receiving this blessing. If

a man has got a grant for the emancipation of the slaves in a certain

district, and is informed on landing to put this grant in force that

fifty slaves are to be executed that day, he has certainly a right to

know and he will inevitably desire to know that this execution is to be,

and why it is to be. When an officer goes to negotiate an exchange of

prisoners, if two of the number cannot be exchanged, but are to be shot,

he must be informed of this and account of the matter must be given him.

Abraham often brooding on God's promise, living indeed upon it, must

have felt a vague sympathy with all men, and a sympathy not at all

vague, but most powerful and practical with the men in the Jordan valley

whom he had rescued from Chedorlaomer. If he was to be a blessing to any

nation it must surely be to those who were within an afternoon's walk of

his encampment and among whom his nephew had taken up his abode.

Suppose he had not been told, but had risen next morning and seen the

dense cloud of smoke overhanging the doomed cities, might he not with

some justice have complained that although God had spoken to him the

previous day, not one word of this great catastrophe had been breathed

to him.

The second reason is expressed in the nineteenth verse; God had chosen

Abraham that he might command his children and his household after him

to keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment that the Lord

might fulfil His promise to Abraham. That is to say, as it was only by

obedience and righteousness that Abraham and his seed were to continue

in God's favour, it was fair that they should be encouraged to do so by

seeing the fruits of unrighteousness. So that as the Dead Sea lay

throughout their whole history on their borders reminding them of the

wages of sin, they might never fail rightly to interpret its meaning,

and in every great catastrophe read the lesson "except ye repent ye

shall all likewise perish." They could never attribute to chance this

predicted judgment. And in point of fact frequent and solemn reference

was made to this standing monument of the fruit of sin.

As yet there was no moral law proclaimed by any external authority.

Abraham had to discover what justice and goodness were from the dictates

of his own conscience and from his observation upon men and things. But

he was at all events persuaded that only so long as he and his sought

honestly to live in what they considered to be righteousness would they

enjoy God's favour. And they read in the destruction of Sodom a clear

intimation that certain forms of wickedness were detestable to God.

The earnestness with which Abraham intercedes for the cities of the

plain reveals a new side of his character. One could understand a strong

desire on his part that Lot should be rescued, and no doubt the

preservation of Lot formed one of his strongest motives to intercede,

yet Lot is never named, and it is, I think, plain that he had more than

the safety of Lot in view. He prayed that the city might be spared, not

that the righteous might be delivered out of its ruin. Probably he had a

lively interest in the people he had rescued from captivity, and felt a

kind of protectorate over them as he sometimes looked down on them from

the hills near his own tents. He pleads for them as he had fought for

them, with generosity, boldness and perseverance; and it was his

boldness and unselfishness in fighting for them that gave him boldness

in praying for them.

There has come into vogue in this country a kind of intercession which

is the exact reverse of this of Abraham--an obtuse, mechanical

intercession about whose efficacy one may cherish a reasonable

suspicion. The Bible and common sense bid us pray with the Spirit and

with the _understanding_; but at some meetings for prayer you are asked

to pray for people you do not know and have no real interest in. You are

not told even their names, so that if an answer is sent you could not

identify the answer, nor is any clue given you by which if God should

propose to use you for their help you could know where the help was to

be applied. For all you know the slip of paper handed in among a score

of others may misrepresent the circumstances; and even supposing it does

not, what likeness to the effectual fervent prayer of an anxious man has

the petition that is once read in your hearing and at once and for ever

blotted from your mind by a dozen others of the same kind. Not so did

Abraham pray: he prayed for those he knew and had fought for; and I see

no warrant for expecting that our prayers will be heard for persons

whose good we seek in no other way than prayer, in none of those ways

which in all other matters our conduct proves we judge more effectual

than prayer. When Lot was carried captive Abraham did not think it

enough to put a petition for him in his evening prayer. He went and

_did_ the needful thing, so that now when there is nothing else he can

do but pray, he intercedes, as few of us can without self-reproach or

feeling that had we only done our part there might now be no need of

prayer. What confidence can a parent have in praying for a son who is

going to a country where vice abounds, if he has done little or nothing

to infix in his boy's mind a love of virtue? In some cases the very

persons who pray for others are themselves the obstacles preventing the

answer. Were we to ask ourselves how much we are prepared to do for

those for whom we pray, we should come to a more adequate estimate of

the fervency and sincerity of our prayers.

The element in Abraham's intercession that jars on the reader is the

trading temper that strives always to get the best possible terms.

Abraham seems to think God can be beaten down and induced to make

smaller and smaller demands. No doubt this style of prayer was suggested

to Abraham by the statement on God's part that He was going to Sodom to

see if its iniquity was so great as it was reported; that is, to number,

as it were, the righteous men in it. Abraham seizes upon this and asks

if He would not spare it if fifty were found in it. But Abraham knowing

Sodom as he did could not have supposed this number would be found.

Finding, then, that God meets him so far, he goes on step by step

getting larger in his demands, until when he comes to ten he feels that

to go farther would be intolerably presumptuous. Along with this

audacious beating down of God, there is a genuine and profound reverence

and humility which at each renewal of the petition dictate some such

expression as: "I who am but dust and ashes," "Let not my Lord be

angry."

It is remarkable too that, throughout, it is for justice Abraham pleads,

and for justice of a limited and imperfect kind. He proceeds on the

assumption that the town will be judged as a town, and either wholly

saved or wholly destroyed. He has no idea of individual discrimination

being made, those only suffering who had sinned. And yet it is this

principle of discrimination on which God ultimately proceeds, rescuing

Lot. Yet is not this intercession the history of what every one who

prays passes through, beginning with the idea that God is to be won over

to more liberal views and a more munificent intention, and ending with

the discovery that God gives what we should count it shameless audacity

to ask? We begin to pray,

"As if ourselves were better certainly

Than what we come to--Maker and High Priest"

and we leave off praying assured that the whole is to be managed by a

righteousness and love and wisdom, which we cannot plan for, which any

love or desire of ours would only limit the action of, and which must be

left to work out its own purposes in its own marvellous ways. We begin,

feeling that we have to beat down a reluctant God and that we can guide

the mind of God to some better thing than He intends: when the answer

comes we recognise that what we set as the limit of our expectation God

has far over-stepped, and that our prayer has done little more than show

our inadequate conception of God's mercy.

Not only in this respect but throughout this chapter there is betrayed

an inadequate conception of God. The language is adapted to the use of

men who are as yet unable to conceive of one Infinite, Eternal Spirit.

They think of Him as one who needs to come down and institute an inquiry

into the state of Sodom, if He is to know with accuracy the moral

condition of its inhabitants. We can freely use the same language, but

we put into it a meaning that the words do not literally bear: Abraham

and his contemporaries used and accepted the words in their literal

sense. And yet the man who had ideas of God in some respects so

rudimentary was God's Friend, received singular tokens of His favour,

found His whole life illuminated with His presence, and was used as the

point of contact between heaven and earth, so that if you desire the

first lessons in the knowledge of God which will in time grow into full

information, it is to the tent of Abraham, you must go. This surely is

encouraging; for who is not conscious of much difficulty in thinking

rightly of God? Who does not feel that precisely here, where the light

should be brightest, clouds and darkness seem to gather? It may indeed

be said that what was excusable in Abraham is inexcusable in us; that we

have that day, that full noon of Christ to which he could only, out of

the dusky dawn, look forward. But after all may not a man with some

justice say: Give me an afternoon with God, such as Abraham had; give me

the opportunity of converse with a God submitting Himself to question

and answer, to those means and instruments of ascertaining truth which I

daily employ in other matters, and I will ask no more? Christ has given

us entrance into the final stage of our knowledge of God, teaching us

that God is a Spirit and that we cannot see the Father; that Christ

Himself left earth and withdrew from the bodily eye that we might rely

more upon spiritual modes of apprehension and think of God as a Spirit.

But we are not at all times able to receive this teaching, we are

children still and fall back with longing for the times when God walked

and spoke with man. And this being so, we are encouraged by the

experience of Abraham. We shall not be disowned by God though we do not

know Him perfectly. We can but begin where we are, not pretending that

that is clear and certain to us which in fact is not so, but freely

dealing with God according to the light we have, hoping that we too,

like Abraham, shall see the day of Christ and be glad; shall one day

stand in the full light of ascertained and eternal truth, knowing as we

are known.

In conclusion, we shall find when we read the following chapter, and

especially the prayer of Lot that he might not be driven to the wild

mountain district, but might occupy the little town of Zoar which was

saved for his sake--we shall find, that much light is reflected on this

prayer of Abraham. Without trenching on what may be more fitly spoken of

afterwards, it may now be observed that the difference between Lot and

Abraham, as between man and man generally, comes out nowhere more

strikingly than in their prayers. Abraham had never prayed for himself

with a tithe of the persistent earnestness with which he prays for

Sodom--a town which was much indebted to him, but towards which for

more reasons than one a smaller man would have borne a grudge. Lot, on

the other hand, much indebted to Sodom, identified indeed with it, one

of its leading citizens, connected by marriage with its inhabitants, is

in no agony about its destruction, and has indeed but one prayer to

offer, and that is, that when all his fellow-townsmen are destroyed, he

may be comfortably provided for. While the men he has bargained and

feasted with, the men he has made money out of and married his daughters

to, are in the agonies of an appalling catastrophe and so near that the

smoke of their torment sweeps across his retreat, he is so disengaged

from regrets and compassion that he can nicely weigh the comparative

comfort and advantage of city and rural life. One would have thought

better of the man if he had declined the angelic rescue and resolved to

stand by those in death whose society he had so coveted in life. And it

is significant that while the generous, large-hearted, devout pleading

of Abraham is in vain, the miserable, timorous, selfish petition of Lot

is heard and answered. It would seem as if sometimes God were hopeless

of men, and threw to them in contempt the gifts they crave, giving them

the poor stations in this life their ambition is set upon, because He

sees they have made themselves incapable of enduring hardness, and so

quelling their lower nature. An answered prayer is not always a

blessing, sometimes it is a doom: "He sent them meat to the full: but

while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon

them and slew the fattest of them."

Probably had Lot felt any inclination to pray for his townsmen he would

have seen that for him to do so would be unseemly. His circumstances,

his long association with the Sodomites, and his accommodation of

himself to their ways had both eaten the soul out of him and set him on

quite a different footing towards God from that occupied by Abraham. A

man cannot on a sudden emergency lift himself out of the circumstances

in which he has been rooted, nor peel off his character as if it were

only skin deep. Abraham had been living an unworldly life in which

intercourse with God was a familiar employment. His prayer was but the

seasonable flower of his life, nourished to all its beauty by the

habitual nutriment of past years. Lot in his need could only utter a

peevish, pitiful, childish cry. He had aimed all his life at being

comfortable, he could not now wish anything more than to be comfortable.

"Stand out of my sunshine," was all he could say, when he held by the

hand the plenipotentiary of heaven, and when the roar of the conflict of

moral good and evil was filling his ears--a decent man, a righteous man,

but the world had eaten out his heart till he had nothing to keep him in

sympathy with heaven.

Such is the state to which men in our society, as in Sodom, are brought

by risking their spiritual life to make the most of this world.

XV.

_DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN._

GENESIS xix.

While Abraham was pleading with the Lord the angels were pursuing their

way to Sodom. And in doing so they apparently observed the laws of those

human forms which they had assumed. They did not spread swift wings and

alight early in the afternoon at the gates of the city; but taking the

usual route, they descended from the hills which separated Abraham's

encampment from the plain of the Jordan, and as the sun was setting

reached their destination. In the deep recess which is found at either

side of the gateway of an Eastern city, Lot had taken his accustomed

seat. Wearied and vexed with the din of the revellers in the street, and

oppressed with the sultry doom-laden atmosphere, he was looking out

towards the cool and peaceful hills, purple with the sinking sun behind

them, and letting his thoughts first follow and then outrun his eye; he

was now picturing and longing for the unseen tents of Abraham, and

almost hearing the cattle lowing round at evening and all the old sounds

his youth had made familiar.

He is recalled to the actual present by the footfall of the two men, and

little knowing the significance of his act, invites them to spend the

night under his roof. It has been observed that the historian seems to

intend to bring out the quietness and the ordinary appearance of the

entire circumstances. All goes on as usual. There is nothing in the

setting sun to say that for the last time it has shone on these rich

meadows, or that in twelve hours its rising will be dimmed by the smoke

of the burning cities. The ministers of so appalling a justice as was

here displayed enter the city as ordinary travellers. When a crisis

comes, men do not suddenly acquire an intelligence and insight they have

not habitually cultivated. They cannot suddenly put forth an energy nor

exhibit an apt helpfulness which only character can give. When the test

comes, we stand or fall not according to what we would wish to be and

now see the necessity of being, but according to what former

self-discipline or self-indulgence has made us.

How then shall this angelic commission of enquiry proceed? Shall it call

together the elders of Sodom--or shall it take Lot outside the city and

cross-examine him, setting down names and dates and seeking to come to a

fair judgment. Not at all--there is a much surer way of detecting

character than by any process of examination by question and answer. To

each of us God says:

"Since by its _fruit_ a tree is judged,

Show me thy fruit, the _latest act_ of thine!

For in the _last_ is summed the first, and all,--

What thy life last put heart and soul into,

There shall I taste thy product."

It is thus these angels proceed. They do not startle the inhabitants of

Sodom into any abnormal virtue nor present opportunity for any unwonted

iniquity. They give them opportunity to act in their usual way. Nothing

could well be more ordinary than the entrance to the city of two

strangers at sunset. There is nothing in this to excite, to throw men

off their guard, to overbalance the daily habit, or give exaggerated

expression to some special feature of character. It is thus we are all

judged--by the insignificant circumstances in which we act without

reflection, without conscious remembrance of an impending judgment, with

heart and soul and full enjoyment.

First Lot is judged. Lot's character is a singularly mixed one. With all

his selfishness, he was hospitable and public-spirited. Lover of good

living, as undoubtedly he was, his courage and strength of character are

yet unmistakable. His sitting at the gate in the evening to offer

hospitality may fairly be taken as an indication of his desire to screen

the wickedness of his townsmen, and also to shield the stranger from

their brutality. From the style in which the mob addressed him, it is

obvious that he had made himself offensive by interfering to prevent

wrong-doing. He was nicknamed "the Censor," and his eye was felt to

carry condemnation. It is true there is no evidence that his opposition

had been of the slightest avail. How could it avail with men who knew

perfectly well that with all his denunciation of their wicked ways, he

preferred their money-making company to the desolation of the hills,

where he would be vexed with no filthy conversation, but would also find

no markets? Still it is to Lot's credit that in such a city, with none

to observe, none to applaud, and none to second him, he should have been

able to preserve his own purity of life and steadily to resist

wrong-doing. It would be cynical to say that he cultivated austerity and

renounced popular vices as a salve to a conscience wounded by his own

greed.

That he had the courage which lies at the root of strength of character

became apparent as the last dark night of Sodom wore on. To go out among

a profligate, lawless mob, wild with passion and infuriated by

opposition--to go out and shut the door behind him--was an act of true

courage. His confidence in the influence he had gained in the town

cannot have blinded him to the temper of the raging crowd at his door.

To defend his unknown guests he put himself in a position in which men

have frequently lost life.

In the first few hours of his last night in Sodom, there is much that is

admirable and pathetic in Lot's conduct. But when we have said that he

was bold and that he hated other men's sins, we have exhausted the more

attractive side of his character. The inhuman collectedness of mind with

which, in the midst of a tremendous public calamity, he could scheme for

his own private well-being is the key to his whole character. He had no

feeling. He was cold-blooded, calculating, keenly alive to his own

interest, with all his wits about him to reap some gain to himself out

of every disaster; the kind of man out of whom wreckers are made, who

can with gusto strip gold rings off the fingers of doomed corpses; out

of whom are made the villains who can rifle the pockets of their dead

comrades on a battlefield, or the politicians who can still ride on the

top of the wave that hurls their country on the rocks. When Abraham gave

him his choice of a grazing ground, no rush of feeling, no sense of

gratitude, prevented him from making the most of the opportunity. When

his house was assailed, he had coolness, when he went out to the mob, to

shut the door behind him that those within might not hear his bargain.

When the angel, one might almost say, was flurried by the impending and

terrible destruction, and was hurrying him away, he was calm enough to

take in at a glance the whole situation and on the spot make provision

for himself. There was no need to tell him not to look back as his wife

did: no deep emotion would overmaster him, no unconquerable longing to

see the last of his dear friends in Sodom would make him lose one second

of his time. Even the loss of his wife was not a matter of such

importance as to make him forget himself and stand to mourn. In every

recorded act of his life appears this same unpleasant characteristic.

Between Lot and Judas there is an instructive similarity. Both had

sufficient discernment and decision of character to commit themselves to

the life of faith, abandoning their original residence and ways of life.

Both came to a shameful end, because the motive even of the sacrifices

they made was self-interest. Neither would have had so dark a career had

he more justly estimated his own character and capabilities, and not

attempted a life for which he was unfit. They both put themselves into a

false position; than which nothing tends more rapidly to deteriorate

character. Lot was in a doubly false position, because in Sodom as well

as in Abraham's shifting camp he was out of place. He voluntarily bound

himself to men he could not love. One side of his nature was paralysed;

and that the side which in him especially required development. It is

the influence of home life, of kindly surroundings, of friendships, of

congenial employment, of everything which evokes the free expression of

what is best in us; it is this which is a chief factor in the

development of every man. But instead of the genial and fertilising

influence of worthy friendships, and ennobling love, Lot had to pretend

good-will where he felt none, and deceit and coldness grew upon him in

place of charity. Besides, a man in a false position in life, out of

which he can by any sacrifice deliver himself, is never at peace with

God until he does deliver himself. And any attempt to live a righteous

life with an evil conscience is foredoomed to failure.

And if it still be felt that Lot was punished with extreme severity, and

that if every man who chose a good grazing ground or a position in life

which was likely to advance his fortune were thereby doomed to end his

days in a cave and under the darkest moral brand, society would be quite

disintegrated, it must be remembered, that in order to advance his

interests in life, Lot sacrificed much that a man is bound by all means

to cherish; and further, it must be said that our destinies are thus

determined. The whole iniquity and final consequences of our disposition

are not laid before us in the mass; but to give the rein to any evil

disposition is to yield control of our own life and commit ourselves to

guidance which cannot result in good, and is of a nature to result in

utter shame and wretchedness.