If God speak to thee in the summer air, The cool soft breath thou leanest forth to feel Upon thy forehead; dost thou feel it God? Nay, but the wind : and when heart speaks to heart, And face to face, when friends meet happily, And all is merry, God is also there; — But thou perceivest but thy fellow's part; And when out of the dewy garden green Some liquid syllables of music strike A sudden speechless rapture through thy frame. Is it God's voice that moves thee? Nay, the bird's, — Who sings to God, and all the world and thee. But when the sharp strokes flesh and heart run through. For thee, and not another; only known. In all the universe, through sense of thine ; Not caught by eye or ear, not felt by touch, Nor apprehended by the spirit's sight. But only by the hidden, tortured nerves, And all their incommunicable pain, — God speaks Himself to us, as mothers speak To their own babes, upon the tender flesh With fond familiar touches close and dear; — Because He cannot choose a softer way To make us feel that He Himself is near. And each apart His own Beloved and Known.* ' J. J. S. Perowne. ' Harriet Eleanor Hamilton Kintr.
GENESIS XXII. I, 2 187
4. Qod sends us no trial, Jiowever, whether great or small, without first preparing us. He " will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Cor. x. 13). Trials are, therefore, God's vote of confidence in us. Many a trifling event is sent to test us, ere a greater trial is permitted to break on our heads. We are set to climb the lower peaks before being urged to the loftiest summits with their virgin snows ; are made to run with footmen before contending with horses; are taught to wade in the shallows before venturing into the swell of the ocean waves. So it is written : " It came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham."
^ The trial of faith is the greatest and heaviest of all trials. For faith it is which must conquer in all trials. Therefore, if faith gives way, then the smallest and most trifling temptations can overcome a man. But when faith is sound and true, then all other temptations must yield and be overcome.^
5, And now, lastly, let us remember that our experience is that filial obedience on our part has ever been followed by special tokens of God's approval. We have something more than mere Hebrew redundancy of language in the promise made to Abraham by the Almighty. Hear how that promise reads. It reads like a river full to overflowing : " Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore ; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed ; because thou hast obeyed my voice." Is there a more striking realization of the promise, " I will open the windows of heaven, and pour out a blessing until there shall not be room enough to receive it"? Have we not ourselves, in appropriate degrees, realized this same overflowing and all-comforting bless- ing of God, in return for our filial obedience? Have we ever given money to the poor without repayment from the Lord? Have we ever given time to God's cause without the sun and the moon standing stiU until we had finished the fight, and made up for the loss ? " Verily I say unto you. There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he
1 Luther, Watchwords /or the Warfare of Life, 46.
i88 THE PROVING OF ABRAHAM
shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houBes, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life" (Mark x. 29, 30). Exceeding great and precious are the promises of God ! He is able to do very exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.
^ " Unless above himself he can erect himself, how mean a thing is man." He that sets himself with his whole heart on this task, will find at some stage or other of the work, that, like Abraham, he has to offer up his first-born, his dearest possession, his "ruling love," — whatever that may be. He must actually lift the knife, — not so much to prove his sincerity to God as to himself ; for no man who has not thus won assurance of himself can advance surely. But he will find that he has killed a ram, and that his first-born is safe, and exalted by this offering to be the father of a great nation; and he will understand why God called the place in which this sacrifice was offered " The Land of Vision." 1
I stood and watched my ships go out, Each, one by one, unmooring free,
What time the quiet harbour filled With flood-tide from the sea.