This is a chapter of very deep interest to the spiritual mind. It records two great facts, namely, the building of Babel, and the call of Abraham; or, in other words, man's effort to provide for himself, and God's provision made known to faith; man's attempt to establish himself _in the earth_, and God's calling a man _out of_ it, to find his portion and his home _in heaven_.
"And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.... And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." The human heart ever seeks a name, a portion, and a centre in the earth. It knows nothing of aspirations after heaven, heaven's God, or heaven's glory. Left to itself, it will ever find its objects in this lower world; it will ever "build beneath the skies." It needs God's call, God's revelation, and God's power, to lift the heart of man above this present world, for man is a grovelling creature,--alienated from heaven, and allied to earth. In the scene now before us, there is no acknowledgment of God, no looking up to, or waiting on, him; nor was it the thought of the human heart to set up a place in which God might dwell,--to gather materials for the purpose of building a habitation for him,--alas! no; his name is never once mentioned. To make a name for himself was man's object on the plain of Shinar; and such has been his object ever since. Whether we contemplate man on the plain of Shinar, or on the banks of the Tiber, we find him to be the same self-seeking, self-exalting, God-excluding creature, throughout. There is a melancholy consistency in all his purposes, his principles, and his ways; he ever seeks to shut out God and exalt himself.
Now, in what light soever we view this Babel confederacy, it is most instructive to see in it the early display of man's genius and energies, regardless of God. In looking down along the stream of human history, we may easily perceive a marked tendency to confederacy, or association. Man seeks, for the most part, to compass his great ends in this way. Whether it be in the way of Philanthropy, Religion, or Politics, nothing can be done without an association of men regularly organized. It is well to see this principle,--well to mark its incipient working,--to see the earliest model which the page of inspiration affords of a human association, as exhibited on the plain of Shinar, in its design, its object, its attempt, its overthrow. If we look around us at the present moment we see the whole scene filled with associations. To name them were useless, for they are as numerous as are the purposes of the human heart. But it is important to mark that the first of all these was the Shinar association, for the establishment of the human interests, and the exaltation of the human name,--objects which may well be set in competition with any that engage the attention of this enlightened and civilized age. But, in the judgment of faith, there is one grand defect, namely, God is shut out; and to attempt to exalt man, without God, is to exalt him to a dizzy height only that he may be dashed down into hopeless confusion and irretrievable ruin. The Christian should only know _one_ association, and that is, the Church of the living God, incorporated by the Holy Ghost, who came down from heaven as the witness of Christ's glorification, to baptize believers into one body, and constitute them God's dwelling-place. Babylon is the very opposite of this, in every particular; and she becomes at the close, as we know, "the habitation of devils." (See Rev. xviii.)