That is G.o.d"s way always. Up to the very edge we are driven, before His hand is put out to help us. Such is the law, not only because the next moment is always necessarily dark, nor because G.o.d will deal with us in any arbitrary fashion, and play with our fears, but because it is best for us that we should be forced to desperation, and out of desperation should "pluck the flower, safety." It is best for us that we should be brought to say, "My foot slippeth!" and then, just as our toes are sliding upon the glacier, the help comes and "Thy mercy held me up."
"The Lord is her helper, and that right early." When He delays, it is not to trifle with us, but to do us good by the sense of need, as well as by the experience of deliverance. At the last moment, never before it, never until we have found out how much we need it, and never too late, comes the Helper.
So "it is provided" for the people that quietly and persistently tread the path of duty, and go wherever His hand leads them, without asking anything about where it does lead. The condition of the provision is our obedience of heart and will. To Abraham doing what he was commanded, though his heart was breaking as he did it, the help was granted--as it always will be.
3. And so, lastly, note what we are to do with the provision when we get it.
Abraham christened the anonymous mountain-top, not by a name that reminded him or others of his trial, but by a name that proclaimed G.o.d"s deliverance. He did not say anything about his agony or about his obedience. G.o.d spoke about that, not Abraham. He did not want these to be remembered, but what he desired to hand on to later generations was what G.o.d had done for him. Oh! dear friends, is that the way in which we look back upon life? Many a bare, bald mountain-top in your career and mine we have got our names for. Are they names that commemorate our sufferings or G.o.d"s blessings? When we look back on the past what do we see? Times of trial or times of deliverance? Which side of the wave do we choose to look at, the one that is smitten by the sunshine or the one that is all black and purple in the shadow? The sea looked at from the one side will be all a sunny path, and from the other dark as chaos. Let us name the heights that lie behind us, visible to memory, by names that commemorate, not the troubles that we had on them, but the deliverances that on them we received from G.o.d.
This name enshrines the duty of commemoration--ay! and the duty of expectation. "The Lord will provide." How do you know that, Abraham?
and his answer is, "Because the Lord did provide." That is a shaky kind of argument if we use it about one another. Our resources may give out, our patience may weary. If it is a storehouse that we have to go to, all the corn that is treasured in it will be eaten up some day; but if it is to some boundless plain that grows it that we go, then we can be sure that there will be a harvest next year as there has been a harvest last. And so we have to think of G.o.d, not as a storehouse, but as the soil from which there comes forth, year by year and generation after generation, the same crop of rich blessings for the needs and the hungers of every soul. If we have to draw from reservoirs we cannot say, "I have gone with my pitcher to the well six times, and I shall get it filled at the seventh." It is more probable that we shall have to say, "I have gone so often that I durst not go any more"; but if we have to go, not to a well, but to a fountain, then the oftener we go, the surer we become that its crystal cool waters will always be ready for us. "Thou hast been with me in six troubles; and in seven thou wilt not forsake me," is a bad conclusion to draw about one another; but it is the right conclusion to draw about G.o.d.
And so, as we look back upon our past lives, and see many a peak gleaming in the magic light of memory, let us name them all by names that will throw a radiance of hope on the unknown and un-climbed difficulties before us, and say, as the patriarch did when he went down from the mount of his trial and deliverance, "The Lord will provide."
GUIDANCE IN THE WAY
"I being in the way, the Lord led me."--GENESIS xxiv. 27.
So said Abraham"s anonymous servant when telling how he had found Rebekah at the well, and known her to be the destined bride of his master"s servant. There is no more beautiful page, even amongst the many lovely ones in these ancient stories, than this domestic idyll of the mission of the faithful servant from far Canaan across the desert.
The homely test by which he would determine that the maiden should be pointed out to him, the glimpse of old-world ways at the well, the gracious courtesy of the fair damsel, and the simple devoutness of the speaker, who recognises in what to others were trivial commonplaces G.o.d"s guidance to the end which He had appointed, his recognition of the divine hand moving beneath all the nothings and littlenesses of daily life--may teach us much.
1. The first thing that these words seem to me to suggest is the conditions under which we may be sure that G.o.d leads--"I being in the way."
Now, of course, some of you may know that the words of our text are, by the Revised Version and others, rendered so as to obliterate the clause telling where the speaker was when the Lord led him, and to make the whole a continuous expression of the one fact--"As for me, the Lord hath led me in the way to the house of my master"s brethren." The literal rendering is, "I in the way, Jehovah led me." No doubt the Hebrew idiom admits of the "I" being thus emphatically premised, and then repeated as "me" after the verb, and possibly no more is to be made of the words than that. But the fuller and more impressive meaning is possible, and I venture to retain it, and to see in it the expression of the truth that it is when we are "in the way" that G.o.d will certainly lead us.
So that suggests, first, how the people that have any right to expect any kind of guidance from G.o.d are those who have their feet upon a path which conscience approves. Many men run into all manner of perplexities by their own folly and self-will, and never ask whether their acts are right or wrong, wise or foolish, until they begin to taste the bitter consequences. Then they cry to G.o.d to help them, and think themselves very religious because they do. That is not the way to get G.o.d"s help.
Such folk are like Italian brigands who had an image of the Virgin in their hats, and sometimes had the Pope"s commission in their pockets, and therefore went out to murder and ravish, in sure and certain hope of G.o.d"s favour and protection.
But when we are "in the way," and know that we are doing what we ought to do, and conscience says, "Go on; never mind what stands against you," it is then, and only then, that we have a right to be sure that the Lord will lead us. Otherwise, the best thing that can happen to us is that the Lord should thwart us when we are on the wrong road.
Resistance, indeed, may be guidance; and it is often G.o.d"s manner of setting our feet in the way of His steps. We have no claim on Him for guidance, indeed, unless we have submitted ourselves to His commandments; yet His mercies go beyond our claims. Just as the obedient child gets guidance, so the petulant and disobedient child gets resistance, which is guidance too. The angel of the Lord stands in front of Balaam, amongst the vines, though the seer sometimes does not see, and blocks the path for him, and hedges up the way with his flaming sword. Only, if we would have the sweet, gracious, companionable guidance of our Lord, let us be sure, to begin with, that we are "in the way," and not in any of the bypaths into which arrogance and self-will and fleshly desires and the like are only too apt to divert our feet.
Another consideration suggested by these words, "I being in the way,"
is that if we expect guidance we must diligently do present duty. We are led, thank G.o.d, by one step at a time. He does with His child, whom He is teaching to read His will, as we sometimes do with our children, when we are occupied in teaching them their first book-learning: we cover the page up, all but the line that we want them to concentrate their eyes upon; and then, when they have got to the end of that, slip the hand down, low enough to allow the next line to come into view. So often G.o.d does with us. One thing at a time is enough for the little brains. And this is the condition of mortal life, for the most part--though there do come rare exceptions. Not that we have to look a long way ahead, and forecast what we shall do this time ten years off, or to make decisions that involve a distant future--except once or twice in a lifetime--but that we have to settle what is to be done in this flying minute, and in the one adjacent to it. "Do the duty that lies nearest thee," and the remoter duty will become clearer. There is nothing that has more power to make a man"s path plain before his feet than that he should concentrate his better self on the manful and complete discharge of the present moment"s service. And, on the other hand, there is nothing that will so fill our sky with mists, and blur the marks of the faint track through the moor, as present negligence, or still more, present sin. Iron in a ship"s hull makes the magnet tremble, and point away from its true source. He that has complied with evil to-day is the less capable of discerning duty to-morrow; and he that does all the duty that he knows will thereby increase the probability that he will know all that he needs. "If any man wills to do His will, he shall know of the teaching"--enough, at any rate, to direct his steps.
But there is another lesson still in the words; and that is that, if we are to be guided, we must see to it that we expect and obey the guidance.
This servant of Abraham"s, with a very imperfect knowledge of the divine will, had, when he set out on his road, prayed very earnestly that G.o.d would lead him. He had ventured to prescribe a certain token, nave in its simplicity: "If the girl drops her pitcher, and gives us drink gladly, and does not grudge to fill the troughs for the cattle, that will show that she is of a good sort, and will make the right wife for Isaac." He had prayed thus, and he was ready to accept whomsoever G.o.d so designated. He had not made up his mind, "Bethuel"s daughter is a relation of my master"s, and so she will be a suitable wife for his son." He left it all with G.o.d, and then he went straight on his road, and was perfectly sure that he would get the guidance that he had sought. And when it came the good man bowed and obeyed.
Now there is a picture for us all. There are many people that say, "O Lord! guide me." when all the while they mean, "Let me guide Thee."
They are perfectly willing to accept the faintest and moat questionable indications that may seem to point down the road where their inclination drives them, and like Lord Nelson at Copenhagen, will put the telescope to the blind eye when the flag is flying at the admiral"s peak, signalling "Come out of action," because they are determined to stay where they are.
Do not let us forget that the first condition of securing real guidance in our daily life is to ask it, and that the next is to look for it, and that a third is to be quite willing to accept it, whether the finger points down the broad road that we would like to go upon, or through some tangled path amongst the brushwood that we would fain avoid. And if you and I, dear brethren, in the littlenesses of our daily life, do fulfil these conditions, the heavens will crumble, and earth will melt, before G.o.d will leave His child untaught in the way in which he should go.
Only, let us be patient. Do you remember what Joshua said to the Israelites? "Let there be a good s.p.a.ce of vacant ground between you and the guiding ark, that you may know by which way you ought to go." When men precipitately press on the heels of half-disclosed providences, they are uncommonly apt to mistake the road. We must wait till we are sure of G.o.d"s will before we try to do it. If we are not sure of what He would have us do, then, for the present, He would have us do nothing until He speaks. "I being in the way, the Lord led me."
2. Now a word about the manner of the guidance.
There was no miracle, no supernatural voice, no pillar of cloud or fire, no hovering glory round the head of the village maiden. All the indications were perfectly natural and trivial. A thousand girls had gone to the wells that day all about Haran and done the very same things that Rebekah did. But the devout man who had prayed for guidance, and was sure that he was getting it, was guided by her most simple, commonplace act; and that is how we are usually to be guided.
G.o.d leaves a great deal to our common sense. His way of speaking to common sense is by very common things. If any of us fancy that some glow at the heart, some sudden flash as of inspiration, is the test of a divine commandment, we have yet to learn the full meaning of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. For that Incarnation, amongst all its other mighty influences, hallowed the commonest things of life and turned them into ministers of G.o.d"s purposes. So remember, G.o.d"s guidance may come to you through so insignificant a girl as Rebekah. It may come to you through as commonplace an incident as tipping the water of a spring out of an earthen pot into a stone trough. None the less is it G.o.d"s guidance; and what we want is the eye to see it. He will guide us by very common indications of His providence.
3. And now, the last thing that I would say a word about is the realisation in daily life of this guidance as a plain actual fact.
This anonymous trusted servant of Abraham"s, whose name we should like to have known, had a mere segment of the full orb of the knowledge of G.o.d that shines upon our path. With true Oriental freedom to speak about the deepest matters, he was not afraid nor ashamed to stand before Bethuel and Laban, and all these other strangers that crowded round the doorway, and say, "The Lord led me." There is a pattern for some of us tongue-tied, shamefaced Christians. Whatever may be the truth about the degradations of which heathen religion is full, there is a great deal in heathen religion that ought to teach, and does teach, Christendom a lesson, as to willingness to recognise and to confess G.o.d"s working in daily life. It may be very superficial; it may be very little connected with high morality; but so far as it goes it is a thousand-fold better than the dumb religion that characterises such hosts of Christian people.
A realisation of the divine guidance is the talisman that makes crooked things straight and rough places plain; that brings peace and calmness into our hearts, amid all changes, losses, and sorrows. If we hold fast by that faith, it will interpret for us the mysterious in the providences concerning our own lives, and will help us to feel that, as I said, resistance to our progress may be true guidance, and thwarting our wills may be our highest good. For the road which we travel should, in all its turnings, lead us to G.o.d; and whatsoever guides us to Him is only and always blessed.
May I, for one moment, turn these words in another direction, and remind you, dear friends, of how the sublimest application of them is still to be realised? As a climber on a mountain-peak may look down the vale up which he had painfully toiled for many days and see the dusty path lying, like a sinuous snake, down all along it, so, when we get up yonder, "Thou shalt remember all the way by which the Lord thy G.o.d hath led thee these many years in the wilderness," and shalt see the green pastures and the still waters, valleys of the shadow of death, and burning roads with sharp flints, which have all brought thee hither at last. We shall know then what we believe now, that the Lord does indeed go before them who desire to follow Him, and that the G.o.d of Israel is their reward. Then we shall say with deepened thankfulness, deepened by complete understanding of life here, seen in the light of its attained end, "I being in the way, the Lord led me," and "I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."
THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM
"Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people."--GENESIS xxv. 8.
"Full of years" does not seem to me to be a mere synonym for longevity.
That would be an intolerable tautology, for we should then have the same thing said three times over--"an old man," "in a good old age,"
"full of years." There must be some other idea than that in the words.
If you notice that the expression is by no means a usual one, that it is only applied to one or two of the Old Testament characters, and those selected characters, I think you will see that there must be some other significance in it than merely to point to length of days.
It may be well to note the instances. In addition to our text, we find it employed, first, in reference to Isaac, in Genesis x.x.xv. 29, where the words are repeated almost _verbatim_. That calm, contemplative life, so unlike the active, varied career of his father, also attained to this blessing at its close. Then we find that the stormy and adventurous course of the great king David, with its wonderful alternations both of moral character and of fortune, is represented as being closed at last with this tranquil evening glory: "He died in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honour." Once more we read of the great high priest Jehoiada, whose history had been crowded with peril, change, brave resistance, and strenuous effort, that with all the storms behind him he died at last, "full of days." The only other instance of the occurrence of the phrase is at the close of the book of Job, the typical record of the good man suffering, and of the abundant compensations given by a loving G.o.d. The fair picture of returning prosperity and family joy, like the calm morning sunshine after a night of storm and wreck, with which that wonderful book ends, has this for its last touch, evidently intended to deepen the impression of peace which is breathed over it all: "So Job died, being old and full of days." These are all the instances of the occurrence of this phrase, and I think we may fairly say that in all it is meant to suggest not merely length of days, but some characteristic of the long life over and above its mere length. We shall, I think, understand its meaning a little better if we make a very slight and entirely warranted change, and instead of reading "_full_ of years," read "_satisfied_ with years." The men were satisfied with life; having exhausted its possibilities, having drunk a full draught, having nothing more left to wish for. The words point to a calm close, with all desires gratified, with hot wishes stilled, with no desperate clinging to life, but a willingness to let it go, because all which it could give had been attained.
So much for one of the remarkable expressions in this verse. There is another, "He was gathered to his people," of which we shall have more to say presently. Enough for the present to note the peculiarity, and to suggest that it seems to contain some dim hint of a future life, and some glimmer of some of the profoundest thoughts about it.
We have two main things to consider.
1. The tranquil close of a life.
It is possible, then, at the end of life to feel that it has satisfied one"s wishes. Whether it does or no will depend mostly on ourselves, and very slightly on our circ.u.mstances. Length of days, competence, health, and friends are important; but neither these nor any other externals will make the difference between a life which, in the retrospect, will seem to have been sufficient for our desires, and one which leaves a hunger in the heart. It is possible for us to make our lives of such a sort, that whether they run on to the apparent maturity of old age, or whether they are cut short in the midst of our days, we may rise from the table feeling that it has satisfied our desires, met our antic.i.p.ation, and been all very good.
Possibly, that is not the way in which most of us look at life. That is not the way in which a great many of us seem to think that it is an eminent part of Christian and religious character to look at life. But it is the way in which the highest type of devotion and the truest goodness always look at it. There are people, old and young, who, whenever they look back, whether it be over a long tract of years or over a short one, have nothing to say about it except: "Vanity of vanities! all is vanity and vexation of spirit"; a retrospect of weary disappointments and thwarted plans.
How different with some of us the forward and the backward look! Are there not some listening to me, whose past is so dark that it flings black shadows over their future, and who can only cherish hopes for to-morrow, by giving the lie to and forgetting the whole of their yesterdays? It is hard to paint the regions before us like "the Garden of the Lord," when we know that the locusts of our own G.o.dless desires have made all the land behind us desolate. If your past has been a selfish past, a G.o.dless past, in which pa.s.sion, inclination, whim, anything but conscience and Christ have ruled, your remembrances can scarcely be tranquil; nor your hopes bright. If you have only "prospects drear," when you "backward cast your eye," it is not wonderful if "forwards though you cannot see," you will "guess and fear." Such lives, when they come towards an end, are wont to be full of querulous discontent and bitterness. We have all seen G.o.dless old men cynical and sour, pleased with nothing, grumbling, or feebly complaining, about everything, dissatisfied with all which life has thus far yielded them, and yet clinging desperately to it, and afraid to go.
Put by the side of such an end this calm picture of the old man going down into his grave, and looking back over all those long days since he came away from his father"s house, and became a pilgrim and a stranger.
How all the hot anxieties, desires, occupations, of youth have quieted themselves down! How far away now seem the warlike days when he fought the invading kings! How far away the heaviness of heart when he journeyed to Mount Moriah with his boy, and whetted the knife to slay his son! His love had all been buried in Sarah"s grave. He has been a lonely man for many years; and yet he looks back, as G.o.d looked back over His creative week, and feels that all has been good. "It was all for the best; the great procession of my life has been ordered from the beginning to its end, by the Hand that shapes beauty everywhere, and has made all things blessed and sweet. I have drunk a full draught; I have had enough; I bless the Giver of the feast, and push my chair back; and get up and go away." He died an old man, and satisfied with his life.
Ay! And what a contrast that makes, dear friends, to another set of people. There is nothing more miserable than to see a man, as his years go by, gripping harder and tighter at this poor, fleeting world that is slipping away from him; nothing sadder than to see how, as opportunities and capacities for the enjoyment of life dwindle, and dwindle, and dwindle, people become almost fierce in the desire to keep it. Why, you can see on the face of many an old man and woman a hungry discontent, that has not come from the mere wrinkles of old age or care; an eager acquisitiveness looking out of the dim old eyes, tragical and awful. It is sad to see a man, as the world goes from him, grasping at its skirts as a beggar does at the retreating pa.s.ser-by that refuses him an alms. Are there not some of us who feel that this is our case, that the less we have before us of life here on earth, the more eagerly we grasp at the little which still remains; trying to get some last drops out of the broken cistern which we know can hold no water? How different this blessed acquiescence in the fleeting away of the fleeting; and this contented satisfaction with the portion that has been given him, which this man had who died willingly, being satisfied with life!
Sometimes, too, there is satiety--weariness of life which is not satisfaction, though it looks like it. Its language is: "Man delights me not; nor woman neither. I am tired of it all." Those who feel thus sit at the table without an appet.i.te. They think that they have seen to the bottom of everything, and they have found everything a cheat. They expect nothing new under the sun; that which is to be hath already been, and it is all vanity and striving after the wind. They are at once satiated and dissatisfied. Nothing keeps the power to charm.
How different from all this is the temper expressed in this text, rightly understood! Abraham had had a richly varied life. It had brought him all he wished. He has drunk a full draught, and needs no more. He is satisfied, but that does not mean loss of interest in present duties, occupations, or enjoyments. It is possible to keep ourselves fully alive to all these till the end, and to preserve something of the keen edge of youth even in old age, by the magic of communion with G.o.d, purity of conduct, and a habitual contemplation of all events as sent by our Father. When Paul felt himself very near his end, he yet had interest enough in common things to tell Timothy all about their mutual friends" occupations, and to wish to have his books and parchments.
So, calmly, satisfied and yet not sickened, keenly appreciating all the good and pleasantness of life, and yet quite willing to let it go, Abraham died. So may it be with us too, if we will, no matter what the duration or the externals of our life. If we too are his children by faith, we shall be "blessed with faithful Abraham." And I beseech you to ask yourselves whether the course of your life is such as that, if at this moment G.o.d"s great knife were to come down and cut it in two, you would be able to say, "Well! I have had enough, and now contentedly I go."