Gen. xxii. 12. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.
THERE are in the Holy Scriptures many expres- sions, which, if taken in the strictest and most literal sense, could convey to us very erroneous conceptions of the Deity. God is often pleased to speak of him- self in terms accommodated to our feeble apprehen- sions, and properly applicable to man only. For
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instance ; in the passage before us, he speaks as if from Abraham's conduct he had acquired a knowledge of something which he did not know before : whereas he is omniscient : there is nothing past, present, or future, which is not open before him, and distinctly viewed by him in all its parts. Strictly speaking, he needed not Abraham's obedience to discover to him the state of Abraham's mind : he knew that Abraham feared him, before he gave the trial to Abraham : yea, he knew, from all eternity, that Abraham would fear him. But it was for our sakes that he made the discovery of Abraham's obedience a ground for acknowledging the existence of the hidden principle from which it sprang : for it is in this way that we are to ascertain our own character, and the characters of our fellow-men. And this is the point which it is my intention chiefly to insist upon at this time. I shall not enter upon the circumstances of the history, but confine myself rather to the consideration of two points ; namely,
I. The general importance of evidences for ascer- taining our state before God —
Many are ready to pour contempt on marks and evidences, as though they were legal. They imagine that the direct agency of the Spirit on the souls of men is quite sufficient to satisfy our minds respecting our real state. Now, though we deny not that there is a direct agency of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men, and that " God's Spirit does witness with our spirits, that we are hisa," yet is this not of itself suffi- cient; because it may easily be mistaken, and can never, except by its practical effects, be discovered from the workings of our own imagination. Indeed, the greater our confidence is, when independent of evidences, the more questionable it is ; because there is the more reason to suspect that Satan has made the impression in order to deceive us. Evidences in confirmation of this persuasion are necessary,
1. For the satisfaction of our own minds —
a Rom. viii. 16.