In Calvary's awful scene, we behold the Divine Faithfulness. Clouds of sin have risen from the earth; a shoreless ocean of despair has covered, the life of man ; but God — the Faithful God, the Covenant-keeping God, the God who remembers that man is His child, and that in his very constitution and life He has left pledges and intimations that help him to look heavenward from some ark of hope — He has not forgotten, He is keeping His word of grace, and the clouds are shot through and through with the power of Christ, the Sun of Kighteousness. Sin is retreating like the flood, and peace, "My peace," as Christ says, hangs like a rainbow above the cross of Jesus and the life of man.
i8o THE RAINBOW
Not seldom, clad in radiant vest, Deceitfully goes forth the Mom; Not seldom Evening in the west Sinks smilingly forsworn.
The smoothest seas will sometimes prove, To the confiding Bark, untrue; And, if she trust the stars above, They can be treacherous too.
But thou art true, incarnate Lord, Who didst vouchsafe for man to die; Thy smile is sure, thy plighted word No change can falsify !
I bent before thy gracious throne, And asked for peace on suppliant knee; And peace was given, — nor peace alone, But faith sublimed to ecstasy!*
^ Wordsworth,
The Proving of Abraham.
>8<
Literature.
V Aglionby (F. K.), The Better Choice, 10.
Banks (L. A.), Hidden Wells of Comfort, 130. Brooks (Phillips), The More Abundant Life, 137. Colenso (J. W.), Natal Sermons, i. 356. Dykes (J. 0.), Abraham, the Friend of God, 243. Hessey (J. A.), Moral Difficulties connected vnth the Bible, i. 83. Horton (R. F.), Lyndhurst Road Pulpit, 103. Matheson (Q.), Times of Reti/rememJt, 184. Maurice (F. D.), The Doctrine of Sacrifice, 33. Meyer (F. B.), Abraham, 167. Morrison (G. H.), The Footsteps of the Flock, 67. Mozley (J. B.), RvMvtg Ideas in Early Ages, 31, 64. Parker (J.), Adam, Noah, and Abraham, 169. „ Studies in Texts, iv. 188 ; vi. 181. Perowne (J. J. S.), Sermons, 332. Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, x. 193. Robertson (F. W.), Notes on Genesis, 53. Smyth (N.), Old Faiths in New Light, 48. Spurgeon (0. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. Nos. 868, 869l
„ CorUemporary Pulpit Library, i, 144.
Waddell (R.), Behold the Lamb of God, 28. Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 228 (Hubbard). Expositor, Ist Ser., i, 314 (Cox) ; 2nd Ser., i. 305 (Godwin). Expository Times^ iii. 301 (Perowne).
t»»
The Proving of Abraham.
And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham; and he said, Here am I. And he said. Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah ; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. — Gen. xxii. i, 2.
Few scenes in the whole compass of the Bible are more familiar
than the sacrifice of Isaac. We knew the charm of it when we
were children, and as we recur to it, time and again, amid the
deepening experience of the years, we find that the story has not
lost the power and beauty that so arrested us in bygone days.
This indeed is one of the wonders of God's Word, that we never
leave it behind us as we travel. With all our growth through
activity and sorrow, it grows in richness of interpretation. There
are books which we very speedily outstrip ; we read them, and we
lay them aside for a period, and then we come back to them and
find them thin and inadequate. But with all our growth, the
Bible seems to grow ; coming back to it we do not find it empty ;
rather with the increasing knowledge of the years, and the crosses
and burdens they inevitably bring, new depths of Divine help and
wisdom open themselves before us in God's Word. It is peculiarly
so with such a passage as this. We can never exhaust its spiritual
significance. To our childish ears it is a delightful story; it
appeals as powerfully as any fairy-tale ; but gradually we come to
see beneath the surface, and to discern the mind of God within
the picture, untU at last we reach the sweet assurance that
underneath are the everlasting arms.
^ Looking at the whole chapter as we should at any merely
human composition, we must admit that for profound pathos, for
tragic force of description, it has never been surpassed. " Each
time that we hear it," says St. Augustine, " it thrills us afresh."
Compare it even with that exquisitely touching passage in the
"Agamemnon" of iEschylus, which describes in words of such
183
i84 THE PROVING OF ABRAHAM
wonderful beauty the anguish of the father constrained to sacrifice his child, and it vdll not suffer by the comparison. Listen to the brief dialogue: "My father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt-offering ? " " My son, God will provide himself the lamb for the burnt-offering." The heart's deepest grief was never more eloquently portrayed. No sobs, no tears, no words telling of the struggle within. The anguish lies too deep for utterance. The sculptor, when he would express a grief that he could not express, bowed and veiled the face of the mourner ; and the veiling of the agony here is in fact its most pathetic expression.^