The first that sailed, — her name was Joy ;
She spread a smooth and ample sail, And eastward strove, with bending spars,
Before the singing gale.
Another sailed, — her name was Hope;
No cargo in her hold she bore, Thinking to find in western lands
Of merchandise a store.
The next that sailed, — her name was Love;
She showed a red flag at the mast, — A flag as red as blood she showed.
And she sped south right fast.
The last that sailed, — her name was Faith;
Slowly she took her passage forth, Tacked and lay to — at last she steered
A straight course for the north.
' Coventry Patinore.
GENESIS xxii. I, 2 189
My gallant ships they sailed away
Over the shimmering summer sea; I stood at watch for many a day,
But only one came back to me.
For Joy was caught by Pirate Pain;
Hope ran upon a hidden reef; And Love took fire, and foundered fast
In 'whelming seas of grief.
Faith comes at last, storm-beat and torn;
She recompensed me all my loss, For as a cargo safe she brought
A Crown, linked to a Cross!
n.
The Proving of the Faith of Abraham.
1. TJie word " tempt."— " God did tempt Abraham" (E.V. " prove "). A better rendering might be, " God did put Abraham to the test." Satan tempts us that he may bring out the evil that is in our hearts ; God tries or tests us that He may bring out all the good. In the fiery trial through which the believer is called to pass, ingredients of evil which had counteracted his true develop- ment drop away, shrivelled and consumed ; whilst latent qualities — produced by grace, but not yet brought into exercise — are called to the front, receive due recognition, and acquire a fixity of position and influence which nothing else could possibly have given them. In the agony of sorrow we say words and assume positions which otherwise we should never have dreamt of, but from which we never again recede. Looking back, we wonder how we dared to do as we did ; and yet we are not sorry — because the memory of what we were in that supreme hour is a precious legacy, and a platform from which we take a wider view, and climb to the further heights which beckon us.
f "Tempt" in Old English, like the Latan tentare, was a neutral word, meaning to test or prove a person, to see whether he would act in a particular way, or whether the character which he bore was well established ; in modern English, it has come to mean to entice a person in order to do a particular thing, especially some thing that is wrong or sinful. God ** tests " or
I90 THE PROVING OF ABRAHAM
"proves" man, when He subjects him to a trial to ascertain whether his faith or goodness is real ; man is said to " test " or " prove " God, when he acts as if doubting whether His word or promise is true.^
2. The particular form of Abraham's trial. — The command given by God was fitted as perhaps no other command could have been to purify Abraham's faith. God had been training him from the first ta live-aiilx_b^His promise. He called him out of his own land, He promised him another land, but Abraham lived a stranger in it, and was never able to call it his own. He promised him a son in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed, and for many long years Abraham had lived by that promise, seeing no hope of its fulfilment. At last Isaac was bom, and he welcomed him as the child of promise. But years pass on. The child has grown up before him and twined himself about his heart, till at last he has almost forgotten the promise in the child of promise. Isaac, it has been strikingly said, the precious late- won gift, is still for Abraham too exclusively a merely natural blessing, a child like other children, though born of the true mother, Abraham's son only because he has been bom to him and been brought up in his house. Pangs, the pangs of a soul wrestling in faith, he has not felt for him since his birth, and yet that is the only spiritual and therefore the only really abiding blessing which we are able to make our own, through the fightings and wrestlings of the believing heart. Therefore, now that in Isaac the supreme blessing has been won, there must also take place the supreme trial of Abraham's faith and obedience.
*\ Abraham was in a special sense the creature of promise. His whole life rested upon the promise ; all his hopes centred in and were dependent upon the promise ; and the whole object of God's discipline and training seemed to be to isolate him from all else, and to make him hang only on the promise. The promise is all. Is God's promise enough for him ? Can he live by that ? Can he trust to it with unhesitating reliance in spite of all that seems contrary ? Can he trust even when God's own word seems to contradict it ? This was the exact nature of Abraham's trial.*