' J. W. Colenso.
GENESIS XXII. I, 2 193
idolater himself. He must often have witnessed the cruel rites, the impure and debasing practices, associated with idol worship. He may not have been free from temptation to fall back into idolatry. On all the high places, by sacred rock, and in sacred grove, fathers shed the blood of their sons and of their daughters to the idols of Canaan, and the land was defiled with blood. When he saw or heard of these awful sacrifices, do we suppose he could see or hear of them unmoved ? Do we think they stirred in him no searchings of heart ? The triumph of religious faith, how- ever mistaken, over natural affection must surely have moved him to serious and painful reflection. Abraham was a man, as all his history shows, of the tenderest affection — a man who loved his children with no common love. He was also a man, as all his history shows, conspicuous for his faith and obedience to God. Trusting in God, then, and loving Him with all his heart, and feeling, too, that his child was dearer to him than life itself, must he not have asked himself the question, forced upon him by the scenes which he saw around him, " What if my love to God and my love to my child should ever be brought into this painful conflict ? Can I give Him my son ? Can I give Him, if He asks it, the child who has been the light of my home, the music of my life, the stay and hope of my falling years ? " Such questions, we say, must have forced themselves upon Abraham; and we may see in this temptation, this trial, God's answer to such thoughts. God showed His servant what was in his heart; He showed him that he could do all this, that he could do more than the heathen did; for he yielded a sacrifice no less costly, and he yielded it not out of fear, but in simple, unquestioning, childlike obedience.
^ In contrast with the heathen sacrifices, Abraham's sacrifice, as Philo long ago argued, shines by its moral superiority. " It was not offered," he says, "from any selfish motive, under the compulsion of a tyrant, or through fear of man, from desire of present glory or hope of future renown. He did not offer his son to win a battle, or to avert a famine or a pestilence, or to obtain some coveted gift of the gods. Nor did he give up one child out of many. He was ready to sacrifice his only son, his beloved son, ' the son of his old age, and he did this simply because God com- 1 manded it. His sacrifice in itself went far beyond all heathen | Bacrifices, as in its motives it infinitely surpassed them. He gave !
GEN.-NUM. — 13
194 THE PROVING OF ABRAHAM
all that he had, and he gave it not from fear, or from interest, but out of love to Grod."^
^ The practical test of faith is obedience, and such obedience has to be learned through suffering. But how rarely does it happen that any bystander can guess what tragedies are being enacted in human bosoms ! A little excursion by the pious chief and his son for purposes of devotion may have been too ordinary an incident to do more than gently stir the monotony of their pastoral life. Yet few passages in literature carry a deeper pathos than the words which tell how, in the fresh dawn, the aged lord of that camp crept away on foot out of the midst of his retainers' tents, while the cattle, marshalled with merry call and tinkling bell, were going forth in long strings to their several grazing- grounds, and all the landscape grew busy with cheerful stir.*
^ When one asked what was that service of God which pleased Him best, Luther said, " To hear Christ, and be obedient to Him. This is the highest and greatest service of God. Beside this, all is worth nothing. For in heaven He has far better and more beautiful worship and service than we can render. As it was said to Saul, ' To obey is better than to sacrifice.' As also soldiers say in time of war ; obedience and keeping to the articles of war — this is victory."
^ It is recorded of the Emperors of Eussia and Austria and the King of Prussia that they were one day discussing the relative unquestioning obedience of their soldiers. Each claimed the palm, of course, for his own soldiers. They agreed to test the matter at once. They were sitting in a room on the second storey in a house, and they determined each to call up a soldier, and to order him to leap out of the window. The Prussian monarch first called his man. " Leap out of that window," he said to him. " Your Majesty, it would kill me," was the reply ; and he was sent down. Then an Austrian soldier was called, and the emperor ordered him to leap out of the window. "I will," said the man, "if your Majesty really means it." He was sent down, and the Czar of Eussia called his man, and gave him the same order. Without a word the man crossed himself, and started for the window to do it. Of course, he was stopped ere he could leap out — but to all intents and purposes he did make the leap ; and whatever there was of agony of feeling connected with that leap, he felt*