^ To refuse sacrifice is to refuse the love that is one aspect of God's being. Love lays down its life unceasingly, but so it transcends time, and conquers death. It is the fulfilling of the law, but its necessity is perfect freedouL And it dies to the finite self ; but it has found the universal self, and life eternal.*
4 Bedemption is by blood. — Viewed as a part of the Divine teaching of the world, we find in this history the wisdom of God, We find an answer to that first and deepest of questions that the human heart can ask, " Wherewith shall I come before the Lord ? " We do not find it indeed in doctrine or even in words at all. But we do find it in fact. We find it just in that mode of revela- tion which was best suited to the wants and capacities of those to whom it was addressed. Precisely as we ourselves teach csbildren by pictures, whose meaning, however, they cannot them- selves fully understand, so God taught the childhood of the world. Not till the great act had itself been accomplished on Calvary could all its interpretation be given. First came the picture, then, so to speak, the comments on the picture in the mouth of prophets and holy men of old. Then the great fact itself was exhibited ; and then from the hallowed lips of the Apostles of the Lord came the eloquent interpretation of the fact. It is one truth throughout. Christ Jesus came " to do the Father's wiU," and " to give his life a ransom for many " ; "by his obedience we are made righteous," " he hath redeemed us by his blood " — what are words like these but the filling in, so to speak, of the fainter lines of that ancient picture ?
6. God spared not His own Son. — At this point the wonderful story begins to burn inwardly with the fire of prophecy. It grows prophetic of the transcendent sacrifice on the cross, not through ingenious accommodation, or making the most of any accidental surface resemblances, but because at its very core it was an inspiration of the same self-subduing love that inspired
> J. B. Mozley, Ruling Idem in Early Ages. 60. ' May Kendall.
198 THE PROVING OF ABRAHAM
and glorified the ofifering of Golgotha. Abraham's beat praise is found in this, that his act can be described in those identical terms which were to be selected by the noblest spokesman of the New Testament Church as the most fitting to describe the supreme act of eternal love : " He spared not his own son." With perfect justice, therefore, has the Christian Church delighted since the beginning of her history to place the sacrifice of Isaac over against the mysterious and adorable sacrifice of her Lord, as its most splendid Old Testament prefiguration.
IT God's true children must climb their mount of sacrifice. When our own hour shall have come, may we arise forthwith, cleave the wood for the burnt-offering, and go unflinching up the path by which our Heavenly Father shall lead us. So shall the mount of trial become the mount of blessing. We shall have a wider horizon ; we shall breathe a purer atmosphere ; we shall set our affection more entirely upon things above; we shall walk more closely with Gi3d. And so when He asks something very dear to us, let us think not only of Moriah, but of Calvary, where He Himself gave infinitely more than He can ever ask
of UB.
The dearest offering He can crave His portion in thy soul to prove, What is it to the gift He gave, The only Son of His dear love?
T In the moral significance of this history the Jew and the Christian are agreed. Even to the present day the Jew, though he has rejected the true propitiation, sees in the binding of Isaac on the altar a meritorious deed which still pleads on behalf of Israel with God. And whilst the Christian Church prays to God for pardon and blessing on account of the merits and death of Jesus Christ, the Jewish synagogue beseeches Him to have compassion upon it for the sake of the binding of Isaac
How seemed it to the lad, As down Moriah's slope they slowly went. They who had glimpsed th* eternal plan of God ? Behind, the pressure of encircling cords. The vision of a sacrificial knife. And dying ashes upon altar stones. Before, a life that nevermore might be The glad, free life of sunny-hearted youth— For he had looked into the face of death.
GENESIS XXII. I, 2 199
How seemed it to the lad, When at the mountain's base they ran to meet And welcome back the chieftain and his son? Marked they upon his brow a graver shade ? Within his eyes a stronger, clearer light, As panoplied with power beyond his own ? And said they, under breath, from man to man, The while they passed along the homeward way, " The prince has seen — has seen and talked with God " ?
How seemed it to the lad, When for his mother's greeting low he knelt, And felt her welcoming kiss upon his cheek? Oh, did she see, with tender mother sight, A change had come? And think you that he told The tale to her ? Or did he hold it close. Too sacred for the common speech of earth, While dimly seeing through the mist of years, In one great Sacrifice, the type fulfilled?