XL
Israel's Failure to Eeach Eest.
The history of Israel from the beginning consists of continued renewals of the promise on the part of God and persistent rejections on the part of Israel, ending in the hardening of their
^ John Brash : Memorials and Correspondence, 218. * R. Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest, chap. i.
324 THE SABBATH REST
hearts. Every time the promise is renewed, it is presented in a higher and more spiritual form. Every rejection inevitably leads to grosser views and more hopeless unbelief. So entirely false is the fable of the Sibyl ! God does not burn some of the leaves when His promises have been rejected, and come back with fewer offers at a higher price. His method is to offer more and better on the same conditions. But it is the nature of unbelief to cause the heart to wax gross, to blind the spiritual vision, until in the end the rich spiritual promises of God and the earthly dark unbelief of the sinner stand in extremest contrast.
1. At first the promise is presented in the negative form of rest from labour. Even the Creator condescended thus to rest. But what such rest can be to God it were vain for man to try to conceive. We know that, as soon as the foundations of the world were laid and the work of creation was ended, God ceased from this form of activity. But when this negative rest had been attained, it was far from realizing God's idea of rest either for Himself or for man. For, though these works of God, the material universe, were finished from the laying of the world's foundations to the crowning of the edifice, God still speaks of another rest, and threatens to shut some men out for their un- belief. Our Lord told the Pharisees, whose notion of the Sabbath was the negative one, that He desired His sabbath-rest to be like that of His Father, who " worketh hitherto." The Jewish Sabbath, it appears, therefore, is the most elementary form of God's promised rest.
2. The promise is next presented as the rest of Canaan. This is a stage in advance in the development of the idea. It is not mere abstention from secular labour, and the consecration of in- activity. The rest now consists in the enjoyment of material prosperity, the proud consciousness of national power, the growth of a peculiar civilization, the rise of great men and eminent saints, and all this won by Israel under the leadership of Joshua (their Jesus, who was in this respect a type of ours). But even in this second garden of Eden, Israel did not attain to God's rest. World- liness became their snare. But God still called to them by the mouth of the Psalmist, long after they had entered on the posses-
HEBREWS IV. 9, lo 325
sion of Canaan. This only proves that the true rest was still un- attained, and God's promise not yet fulfilled. The form which the rest of God now assumed is not expressly stated in this passage. But we have not far to go in search of it. The 1st Psalm, which is the introduction to all the Psalms, declares the blessedness of contemplation. The Sabbath is seldom mentioned by the Psalm- ist. Its place is taken by the sanctuary, in which rest of soul is found in meditating on God's law and beholding the Lord's beauty. The call has become urgent. " To-day ! " It is tlie last invitation. It lingers in the ears in ever fainter voice of prophet after prophet, until the prophet's face turns towards the east to announce the break of dawn and the coming of the perfect rest in Jesus Christ.
3, God's promise was never fulfilled to the Israelites, because of their unbelief. But shall their unbelief make the faithfulness of God of none effect ? God forbid. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance. The promise that has failed of fulfilment in the lower form must find its accomplishment in the higher. Even a prayer is the more heard for every delay. God's mill grinds slowly, but for that reason grinds small. What is the inference ? Surely it is that the sabbath-rest still remains for the true people of God. This sabbath-rest St. Paul prayed that the true Israel, who glory, not in their circumcision but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, might receive : " Peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God."
^ I have just returned from the "Morning Lands" of history. I have visited Eome, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo, Memphis, and all these cities of the dead. Egypt is in ruins, Greece is in ruins, Eome is in ruins. Oh, what terrible evidence has passed before my own eyes, since the first of last January, that all human empires decay and die ! These were the great cities of wealth, art, philosophy, commerce and empire, but they are now in ruins, which alone makes them objects of human interest to inquisitive pilgrims in these days. They all cry to me, " Your rest is not in these things, your rest is not here." ^
II There is a way (which the vulture's eye hath not seen) in which a man may pursue what the pursuers of fame pursue, and yet find neither purgatory nor the worst alternative; but that ^ Hugh Price Hughes.