But Abraham"s faith excelled. Abel was prompted to offer sacrifice by natural religiousness and an awakened conscience; Abraham sternly resolved to obey a command of G.o.d. He prepared to do that against which nature revolted, yea that which conscience forbade. Had not the story of Abel"s faith itself loudly proclaimed the sacredness of human life?
Would not Abraham, if he offered up Isaac, become another Cain? Would not the dead child speak, and his blood cry from the ground to G.o.d for vengeance? It was the case of a man to whom "G.o.d is greater than conscience." He resolved to obey at all hazards. Hereby he a.s.sured his heart-that is, his conscience-before G.o.d in that matter wherein his heart may have condemned him.[275] We, it is true, in the light of a better revelation of G.o.d"s character, should at once deny, without more ado, that such a command had been given by G.o.d; and we need not fear thankfully and vehemently to declare that our absolute trust in the rightness of our own moral instincts is a higher faith than Abraham"s.
But he had no misgiving as to the reality of the revelation or the authority of the command. Neither do the sacred historian and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews question it. We also need not doubt. G.o.d met His servant at that stage of spiritual perception which he had already attained. His faith was strong in its realisation of G.o.d"s authority and faithfulness. But his moral nature was not sufficiently educated to decide by the character of a command whether it was worthy of G.o.d or not. He calmly left it to Him to vindicate His own righteousness. Those who deny that G.o.d imposed such a hard task on Abraham must be prepared to solve still greater difficulties. For do not we also, in reference to some things, still require Abraham"s faith that the Judge of all the earth will do right? What shall we say of His permitting the terrible and universal sufferings of all living things?
What are we to think of the still more awful mystery of moral evil?
Shall we say He could not have prevented it? Or shall we take refuge in the distinction between permission and command? Of the two it were easier to understand His commanding what He will not permit, as in the sacrifice of Isaac, than to explain His permission of what He cannot and will not command, as in the undoubted existence of sin.
But let us once more repeat that the greatest faith of all is to believe, with Abel, that G.o.d is righteous, and yet to believe, with Abraham, that G.o.d can justify His own seeming unrighteousness, and also to believe, with the saints of Christianity, that the test which G.o.d imposed on Abraham will nevermore be tried, because the enlightened conscience of humanity forbids it and invites other and more subtle tests in its place.
We must not suppose that Abraham found the command an easy one. From the narrative in the Book of Genesis we should infer that he expected G.o.d to provide a subst.i.tute for Isaac: "And Abraham said, My son, G.o.d will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering; so they went both of them together."[276] But the Apostle gives us plainly to understand that Abraham offered his son because he accounted that G.o.d was able to raise him from the dead. Both answers are true. They reveal to us the anxious tossings of his spirit, seeking to account to itself for the terrible command of Heaven. At one moment he thinks G.o.d will not carry matters to the bitter end. His mind is pacified with the thought that a subst.i.tute for Isaac will be provided. At another moment this appeared to detract from the awful severity of the trial, and Abraham"s faith waxed strong to obey, even though no subst.i.tute would be found in the thicket.
Another solution would then offer itself. G.o.d would immediately bring Isaac back to life. For Isaac would not cease to be, nor cease to be Isaac, when the sacrificial knife had descended. "G.o.d is not G.o.d of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him."[277] Besides, the promise had not been withdrawn, though it had not yet been confirmed by an oath; and the promise involved that the seed would be called in Isaac, not in another son. Both solutions were right. For a ram was caught in a thicket by the horns, and Abraham did receive his son back from the dead, not literally indeed, but in a parable.
Most expositors explain the words "in a parable" as if they meant nothing more than "as it were," "so to speak;" and some have actually supposed them to refer to the birth of Isaac in his father"s old age, when Abraham was "as good as dead."[278] Both interpretations do violence to the Greek expression,[279] which must mean "even in a parable." It is a brief and pregnant allusion to the ultimate purpose of Abraham"s trial. G.o.d intended more by it than to test faith. The test was meant to prepare Abraham for receiving a revelation. On Moriah, and ever after, Isaac was more than Isaac to Abraham. He offered him to G.o.d as Isaac, the son of the promise. He received him back from G.o.d"s hand as a type of Him in Whom the promise would be fulfilled. Abraham had gladly received the promise. He now saw the day of Christ, and rejoiced.[280]
FOOTNOTES:
[258] 1 Peter iii. 20.
[259] Chap. xi 8.
[260] Chap. xi. 9.
[261] Acts vii. 5.
[262] Chap. xi. 10.
[263] Rev. xxi. 10.
[264] te???t??.
[265] d????????.
[266] ?spas?e??? (xi. 13).
[267] Chap. xi. 14.
[268] ????? ?a? pa?ep?d???.
[269] pat??da.
[270] Chaps. xi. 16; ii. 11.
[271] Gen. iv. 3.
[272] 1 John iii. 12.
[273] James ii. 19.
[274] Chap. xii. 24.
[275] 1 John iii. 19, 20.
[276] Gen. xxii. 8.
[277] Luke xx. 38.
[278] Chap. xi. 12.
[279] ?a? ?? pa?a???.
[280] John viii. 56.
CHAPTER XII.
_THE FAITH OF MOSES._
"By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were not afraid of the king"s commandment. By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh"s daughter; choosing rather to be evil entreated with the people of G.o.d, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible.
By faith he kept the pa.s.sover, and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the first-born should not touch them."-HEB. xi.
2328 (R.V.).
One difference between the Old Testament and the New is the comparative silence of the former respecting Moses and the frequent mention of him in the latter. When he has brought the children of Israel through the wilderness to the borders of the promised land, their great leader is seldom mentioned by historian, psalmist, or prophet. We might be tempted to imagine that the national life of Israel had outgrown his influence.
It would without question be in a measure true. We may state the same thing on its religious side by saying that G.o.d hid the memory as well as the body of his servant, in the spirit of John Wesley"s words, happily chosen for his and his brother"s epitaph in Westminster Abbey, "G.o.d buries His workmen and carries on His work." But in the New Testament it is quite otherwise. No man is so frequently mentioned. Sometimes when he is not named it is easy to see that the sacred writers have him in their minds.
One reason for this remarkable difference between the two Testaments in reference to Moses is to be sought in the contrast between the earlier and later Judaism. During the ages of the old covenant Judaism was a living moral force. It gave birth to a peculiar type of heroes and saints. Speaking of Judaism in the widest possible meaning, David and Isaiah, as well as Samuel and Elijah, are its children. These men were such heroes of religion that the saints of the Christian Church have not dwarfed their greatness. But it is one of the traits of a living religion to forget the past, or rather to use it only as a stepping-stone to better things. It forgets the past in the sense in which St. Paul urges the Philippians to count what things were gain a loss, and to press on, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before. Religion lives in its conscious, exultant power to create spiritual heroes, not in looking back to admire its own handiwork. The only religion among men that lives in its founder is Christianity. Forget Christ, and Christianity ceases to be. But the life of Mosaism was not bound up with the memory of Moses. Otherwise we may well suppose that idolatry would have crept in, even before Hezekiah found it necessary to destroy the brazen serpent.
When we come down to the times of John the Baptist and our Lord, Mosaism is to all practical ends a dead religion. The great movers of men"s souls came down upon the age, and were not developed out of it. The product of Judaism at this time was Pharisaism, which had quite as little true faith as Sadduceeism. But when a religion has lost its power to create saints, men turn their faces to the great ones of olden times.
They raise the fallen tombstones of the prophets, and religion is identical with hero-worship. An instance of this very thing may be seen in England to-day, where Atheists have discovered how to be devout, and Agnostics go on a pilgrimage! "We are the disciples of Moses," cried the Pharisees. Can any one conceive of David or Samuel calling himself a disciple of Moses? The notion of discipleship to Moses does not occur in the Old Testament. Men never thought of such a relation. But it is the dominant idea of Judaism in the time of Christ. Hence it was brought about that he who was the servant and friend appears in the New Testament as the antagonist. "For the Law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."[281] This is opposition and rivalry. Yet "this is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel, A Prophet shall G.o.d raise up unto you from among your brethren, _like unto me_."[282]
The notable difference between the Moses of New Testament times and the Moses delineated in the ancient narrative renders it especially interesting to study a pa.s.sage in which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews takes us back to the living man, and describes the att.i.tude of Moses himself towards Jesus Christ. Stephen told his persecutors that the founder of the Aaronic priesthood had spoken of a great Prophet to come, and Christ said that Moses wrote of Him.[283] But it is with joyous surprise we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that the legislator was a believer in the same sense in which Abraham was a believer. The founder of the old covenant himself walked by faith in the new covenant.
The references to Moses made by our Lord and by Stephen sufficiently describe his mission. The special work of Moses in the history of religion was to prepare the way of the Lord Jesus Christ and make His paths straight. He was commissioned to familiarise men with the wondrous, stupendous idea of the appearing of G.o.d in human nature,-a conception almost too vast to grasp, too difficult to believe. To render it not impossible for men to accept the truth, he was instructed to create a historical type of the Incarnation. He called into being a spiritual people. He realised the magnificent idea of a Divine nation.
If we may use the term, he showed to the world G.o.d appearing in the life of a nation, in order to teach them the higher truth that the Word would at the remote end of the ages appear in the flesh. The nation was the Church; the Church was the State. The King would be G.o.d. The court of the King would be the temple. The ministers of the court would be the priests. The law of the State would have equal authority with the moral requirements of G.o.d"s nature. For Moses apparently knew nothing of the distinction made by theologians between the civil, the ceremonial, and the moral law.
But in the pa.s.sage before us we have something quite different from this. The Apostle says nothing about the creation of the covenant people out of the abject slaves of the brick-kilns. He is silent concerning the giving of the Law amid the fire and tempest of Sinai. It is plain that he wishes to tell us about the man"s inner life. He represents Moses as a man of faith.
Even of his faith the apparently greatest achievements are pa.s.sed over.
Nothing is said of his appearances before Pharaoh; nothing of the wonderful faith that enabled him to pray with uplifted hands on the brow of the hill whilst the people were fighting G.o.d"s battle in the valley; nothing of the faith with which, on the top of Pisgah, Moses died without receiving the promise. Evidently it is not the Apostle"s purpose to write the panegyric of a hero.
Closer examination of the verses brings out the thought that the Apostle is tracing the growth and formation of the man"s spiritual character. He means to show that faith has in it the making of a man of G.o.d. Moses became the leader of the Lord"s redeemed people, the founder of the national covenant, the legislator and prophet, because he believed in G.o.d, in the future of Israel, and in the coming of the Christ. The subject of the pa.s.sage is faith as the power that creates a great spiritual leader. But what is true of leaders is true also of every strong spiritual nature. No lesson can be more timely in our days. Not learning, not culture, not even genius, makes a strong doer, but faith.
The contents of the verses may be cla.s.sified under four remarks:-
1. Faith gropes at first in the dark for the work of life.