It is most important that this great text should be approached from the right side. There is a moral difficulty in it — God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son — which' arrests the attention so strongly that it usually occupies the mind almost entirely. Accordingly the common title is " the Sacrifice of Isaac." But the subject is the testing or proving of faith; the sacrifice of Isaac being the special manner in which, for Abraham, faith was tested. If we begin with the proving of faith we shall come to the sacrifice of Isaac when we have understood the reason for it. It will then fall into its proper place, and we shall be able to see the moral difficulty in the light of an eternal truth.
The Proving of Faith.
1. First of all, take the general statement that Faith needs to he tried or proved. Ewald says: "That only is a spiritual and therefore true and abiding blessing which we are able to make our own in the strife and wrestling of a faithful spirit." That is to say, God's gifts are not in the best sense our own till we have been taught by experience that they continue to be His still. It may even be questioned whether in the unthreatened secure enjoyment of a great joy, there does not always mingle some dash of sin. It may be doubted whether a hot trial does not always find its occasion in some moral need of the tried soul. At all events, as Augustine reminds us, there is no way to self-knowledge but through trial, through what he calla "some kind of
' J. J. S, Perowne.
GENESIS XXII. I, 2 185
experimental and not merely verbal self-interrogation," lu other words, God's stern providence must step in to test the latent capabilities of the soul. No scrutiny of our own, however honest, will ascertain what is really in us. When He takes in hand to try us, because He loves us, it is that He may discover, not to Himself who sees all hearts, but to us and to our brethren, that which His grace has planted deep within. Moreover, He designs, by lending to our unfledged virtue scope and a call to exercise itself, to train its strength of wing for bolder flights to follow.
False gold says to true gold every moment,
"Wherein, brother, am I less than you?"
True gold in reply but maketh comment,
"Wait, 0 brother, till the touch-stone come in view."*
2. Not only does Faith need to be tried but Faith needs to he tried all through life. And trials do not become lighter as we go m. The text says, " And it came to pass, after these things, that God did tempt Abraham." What, no repose? No place of honourable quiet for the "friend of God," full of years? No. There are harder and yet harder trials even to the end. The last of Abraham's trials was the hardest of all to bear. And this is the history of our existence. For the soldier engaged in this world's warfare, there is an honourable asylum for his declining years ; but for the soldier of the Cross there is no rest except the grave. Conquer, and fresh trials will be yours, followed by fresh victories. Nay, even Abraham's last victory did not guarantee the future.
^ There is a deep truth contained in the fabled story of old, where a mother, wishing to render her son invulnerable, plunged him into the Styx, but forgot to dip his heel by which she held him. We are baptized in the blood and fire of sorrow that temptation may make us invulnerable; but let us remember that trials will assail us in our most vulnerable part, be it the head, or heart, or heel. Let us therefore give up the idea of any moment of our lives coming when we may lay aside our armour and rest in perfect peace.*
3, But there is usually in our life one trial, one crisis, to which great issues are attached. As we pass along the path of life there
' Jalaluddin Runii, in A Little Book of JSastem Wisdom, 11, « F. W. Robertson.
i86 THE PROVING OF ABRAHAM
may come to us, in some form or other, the Divine command, to give up something very dear, because God wills it. And we must learn to do it, to do it cheerfully and willingly, as Abraham did, — to do it without murmuring, with a calm confiding trust in our Father's Love and in His Wisdom, that what He wills is surely good, what He orders must be for the best.
^ This was not the first time that God had tried Abraham, He had tried him all his life. He tried him when He commanded him to leave his native land. He tried him in suffering him to wander as a stranger in the land given him by promise. He tried him in the peril of Sarah in Egypt and in the peril of Lot in Sodom. He tried him in causing him to wait twenty-five long years before Isaac was born. He tried him severely when He bade him thrust out his son Ishmael from his home. But here it is said in marked phrase that God did try Abraham, because it is the crucial instance of his life, the hardest trial, perhaps, of all history.^