"Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace;
to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is
of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the
father of us all, (as it is written, I have made thee a father of many
nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and
calleth those things which be not as though they were. Who against hope
believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to
that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he
considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old,
neither yet the deadness of Sara's womb: he staggered not at the promise of God
through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully
persuaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform. And therefore
it was imputed to him for righteousness." VER 16. You may
here remark, that faith is not a meritorious work in the business of our
salvation. It does not stand in the place of obedience, as the term of a new
bargain, that has been substituted in room of an old one. It is very natural to
conceive, that, as under the old covenant we had salvation for our works - so,
under the new, we have salvation for our faith ; and that therefore faith is
that which wins and purchases the reward. And thus faith is invested, in the
imagination of some, with the merit and character of a work; and Heaven's
favour is still looked upon as a premium, not a premium for doing, it is true,
but a premium for believing: And this, as we have already said, has just the
effect of infusing the legal spirit into the letter and expression of our
evangelical system and thus, not merely of nourishing the pride and the
pretension of its confident votaries, but of prolonging the disquietude of all
earnest and humble enquirers.
For, instead of looking broadly out on
the gospel as an offer, they look as anxiously inward upon themselves for the
personal qualification of faith, as they ever did upon the personal
qualification of obedience. This transfers their attention from that which is
sure, even the promises of God - to that which is unsure, even their own fickle
and fugitive emotions. Instead of thinking upon Christ, they are perpetually
thinking upon themselves - as if they could discover Him in the muddy recesses
of their own heart, without previously adrnitting Him by the avenue of a direct
and open perception. They ought surely to cast their challenged and their
invited regards on Him, who is the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever, when
He calls them by His word, to look upon Him from all the ends of the earth and
be saved. but no, they cast their eyes with downward obstinacy upon their own
minds ; and there toil for the production of faith in the spirit of bondage;
and perhaps, after they are satisfied with the fancied possession of it,
rejoice over it as they would over any other meritorious acquirement in the
spirit of legality. This is not the way in which the children of Israel looked
out upon the serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness. They did not pore
upon their wounds to mark the progress of healing there; nor did they reflect
upon the power and perfection of their seeing faculties; nor did they even
suffer any doubt that still lingered in their imaginations, to restrain them
from the simple act of lifting up their eyes: And when they were cured in
consequence, they would never think of this as a reward for their looking, but
regard it as the fruit of Heaven's gracious appointment.
Do in like
manner. It will make both against your humility and your peace, that you regard
faith in the light of a meritorious qualification ; or that you attempt to draw
a comfort from the consciousness of faith, which you ought primarily and
directly to draw from the contemplation of the Saviour. If salvation be given
as a reward for faith, then it is not of grace. But we are told in this verse
that it is of faith, expressly that it might be by grace. And therefore be
assured, that there is an error in all those conceptions of faith which tend to
vitiate or to destroy this character; which make the good things of the gospel
come down upon you as a payment, and not as a present ; which make the
preaching of eternal life through Christ any thing else than simply the offer
of a gift, and faith any thing else than simply the discerning of this offer to
be true, and reeeiving it accordingly. In the one way, you can only be as sure
of the promise as you are sure of yourself; and what a frail and fluctuating
dependence is this, we would ask? In the other way, you are as sure of the
promise, as you are sure of God; and thus your confidence has a rock to repose
upon; and the more firmly you adhere and are rivetted to this foundation, the
less chance is there of your ever being moved away from the hope of the gospel;
and though this be established, not on what is within but on what is without
you, let us not thereby imagine that all the securities for personal worth and
personal excellence are thereby overthrown - for it is in the very attitude of
leaning upon God, that man is upheld not only in hope but in holiness. It is in
the very position of standing erect upon the foundation of the promises, that
the promised strength as well as the promised righteousness is fulfilled to
him. It is in the very act of looking unto Jesus, that the light of all that
grace and truth and moral lustre which shine upon him from the countenance of
the Saviour is let in upon the soul; and is thence reflected back again in the
likeness of this worth and virtue from his own person.
We have no fear
whatever of a simple dependence on the grace of the gospel, operating as an
impediment to the growth of the holiness of the gospel. We believe that it is
the alone stay of our deliverance from the power of sin, just as it is the
alone stay of our deliverance from the fears of guilt: And, meanwhile, go not
to obscure the aspect of this free and generous ministration, by regarding the
gospel in any other light, than as an honestly announced present of mercy to
all who will; or by regarding the faith of the gospel in any other light, than
you would the ear that heard the communication of the present, or than you
would the hand that laid hold of it.
But, to return from this digression.
Ver. 16, 17. The inheritance is of faith, that it might be by
grace, which can be extended to many nations; and not of the law, which would
confine it to one nation. This makes it sure to the whole seed of Abraham, not
merely to his seed by natural descent, but to that seed which stands related to
him from being believers. It is in this sense that it is written of him - he is
the father of many nations. It was his faith which introduced him into a filial
relationship with God; and in the eyes of God, on whom he believed, all who
believed after him were regarded as his children. It was very unlikely that
Abraham should in any sense be blest with an offspring. But God calleth out
from nonentity such things as be not - and He also sees such an analogy between
natural and spiritual things, that he gives to a spiritual relationship the
name of a natural relationship., He did both in the case of Abraham. In the
face of a very strong unlikelihood, He conferred a real posterity on Abraham.
And He constituted him in a mystical sense the father of a still more extended
posterity, by making him the father of all who believed.
Ver. 18.
Abraham, perhaps, had no suspicion, at the utterance of this promise, of any
deep or spiritual meaning that lay under it. he certainly apprehended it in its
natural sense, and perhaps in this sense alone. Looking forward to it with the
eye of experience, he could have no hope; but looking forward to it with the
eye of faith in the divine testimony, he might have a confident ex pectation.
It is this which is meant by against hope believing in hope.' The
stronger the improbability in nature, the stronger was the faith which overcame
the impression of it. He suffered not himself to be staggered out of his
reliance on that which was spoken. He thus rendered an homage to the truth of
God; and an homage proportional to the unlikelihood of the thing which God
testified. It was also an homage to His power as well as to His truth. It
proved that he thought Him able to arrest and to turn nature; and if He
promised to do so, that what He promised He was able also to perform. And this
faith was counted to him for righteousness. God was pleased with I the
confidence that was placed in Him; and His pleasure in it was enhanced by the
trials and difficulties which it had to contend with.
It is thus that
God's honour, and man's interest are at one. We honour Him by believing. By
believing we are saved. The fuller and firmer our persuasion in His truth, the
greater is the homage that we render Him, and the more abundant are both the
present peace and the future glory which we bring down upon ourselves. To hope
against hope - to believe in the midst of violent improbabilities - to realize
the future things which are addrest to faith, and are so unlike those present
things with which nature surrounds us - to maintain an unshaken confidence
because God hath spoken, though the besetting urgencies of sense and experience
all tend to thwart and to dislodge it - These are the trials which, if faith
overcome, make that faith more precious than gold in the sight of our heavenly
witness; and it will be found to praise and honour and glory at the appearing
of Jesus Christ.
The following is the paraphrase of this passage.
"Therefore the promised inheritance is of faith, that it might be by
grace, which can be extended to all - so as to ensure the promise to the whole
generation of believers, not only to those who are of the law, but to those who
have the faith of Abraham, the father and the forerunner of us all. Agreeably
to the scripture, "I have made thee a father of many nations," which he is in
the eye and estimation of Him on whom he believed - even God, who, by
quickening that which is dead and dormant, both called forth a real posterity
to Abraham, and also constituted him the spiritual father of a posterity far
more extended than that of which he was the natural progenitor. This looked
most unlikely to the eye of nature and experience; but, in the face of all the
improbabilities which would have darkened the hope of other men, did he with
confidence hope, that he should become the father of many nations - according
to the word that was spoken to him about what his posterity should be. And
being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was
yet about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He
staggered not at God's promise through unbelief, but was strong in faith,
thereby giving glory to God' s faithfulness. And being fully persuaded, that
what He had promised He was able also to perform. And therefore was it reckoned
unto him for righteousness." The lessons we shall try to enforce
from this passage, are all founded on the consideration, that Abraham, in
respect of his faith, was set up as a model to us - that, in like manner as he
believed in the midst of difficulties and trials, so ought we - that we ought
to hold fast our confidence in the midst of apparent impossibilities, even as
he did - that with us the eye of faith should look above and beyond all that is
seen by the eye of flesh, even as with him - and that we should not only set
out on the life of faith after his example, hut should also walk in the
footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham. The first thing that strikes us
in our great pattern, is his tenacious and resolute adherence to the truth of
God's testimony. " Let God be true," says the apostle, "and every man a liar "
- If God have spoken, said the patriarch by his conduct, let us abide by it -
though all nature and all experience should depone to the contrary. Amid all
the staggering appearances by which he was surrounded, he kept by his firm
persuasion in God's truth; and it was this which inwardly upheld him. His heart
was fixed, trusting in God. He knew that it was His voice which first called
him forth, and he was fully assured of its faithfulness; and that it was His
promise which first allured him from the abode of his fathers, and he held it
to be certain that what God had promised He was able to perform; and when all
that was visible to sense looked unlikelihood upon his expectations, they were
kept in full buoyancy and vigour by his unfaltering reliance on the word of Him
who is invisible. All tile agitations of his varied history, could not unfasten
his soul from the anchor of its fixed and unalterable dependence. And it was
truly noble in him, who obedient to the heavenly vision, had torn himself away
from the endearments of the place of his nativity; and, at the call of what he
deemed a voice of rightful authority, went forth he knew not whither, and
exchanged the abode of domestic serenity and bliss for the mazes of a toil-
some and uncertain pilgrimage; and amid all that was fitted to dismay his heart
when travelling in countries that were before unknown, made the will of God the
ruling impulse of his history, and the promise of God the presiding star which
cheered and conducted him on his way - it was a truly noble triumph of faith in
this great patriarch, who, when a stranger in a strange land, looked around
him, and beheld nothing in the verge of this lower world that did not lowr upon
his destinies - yet could rejoice both in the safety that encompassed him, and
in the glory that was before him - upheld singly but surely on this one
consideration, that God hath said it, and shall He not do it?
It was
against hope, believing in hope, for him to sustain with so much confidence the
expectation, that to him a son should be born. But the most striking display of
his thus hoping against hope, was when told, that unto his son and his seed
after him, God should establish an everlasting covenant, and at the same time
bidden to offer him up in sacrifice, he proceeded to do what God ordered; and
yet retained in his heart the belief of what God said - when he lifted against
him the meditated blow of death, knowing, that, even from death God, could
revive him - when he simply betook himself to his prescribed task; and kept by
a purpose of obedience, with which he not only overcame all the relentings of
nature, but threw a darkening shroud over prophecies that stood linked with the
life of Isaac in the world. He knew that God would find a way of His own to
their accomplishment; and it was this which bore him onward to the full proof
and vindication of his faith: And should we be at a loss to comprehend what is
meant by against hope believing in hope, we see in this trial that was laid
upon Abraham, and in the acquittal he made of himself, the most plain and
picturesque exhibition of it.
Now to be strong in faith as he was, to
cherish the full persuasion that he did, to believe with him in the midst of
obstacles, to make the glory of God's truth carry it over the appearances of
nature, so as to stagger not in the face of them, but to hope against hope -
this is still the exercise of every Christian mind, and it were well to be
guided therein by the example of this venerable patriarch. Such is the way in
which the message of the gospel is constructed - such are the terms of that
embassy with which its ministers are charged, that the promise of God as a
shield, and of God as an exceeding great reward, is as good as laid down at the
door of every individual who hears it. It is true that the promise thus laid
down will not be fulfilled upon him, unless he take it up; or, in other words,
unless he believe it. Now there is a difficulty in the way of nature believing
any such thing. There is a struggle that it must make with its own fears and
its own suspicions, ere it can admit the credibility of a holy God thus taking
sinners into acceptance. There is an unlikelihood here, which is ever obtruding
itself on the apprehensions of the guilty, and which tends to keep the offered
peace and pardon and reconciliation of the gospel at an exceedingly hopeless
distance away from them. Can it indeed be true that God is at this moment
beseeching me to enter into agreement with Him? Can it indeed be true that a
way of approach has been devised, open for admittance to myself; and on which,
if I am found, I am met by the loving kindness and tender mercies of Him who
looks so fearful to my imagination Can it be true of that lofty and tremendous
Being who sits on a throne of majesty; and with whom I have been wont to
associate the characters of jealousy, and wrath, and a sacredness so remote and
inflexible, that none may draw nigh unto it - can it be true that He is now
bending compassionately over me, and entreating my return from those paths of
alienation in which I have all along wandered? We indeed read of an adjusted
ceremonial, by which sinners may be brought within the limits of His august
sanctuary; and we read of a Mediator who hath made the rough places plain, and
levelled the otherwise impassable mountains of iniquity which stood between us
and God: But can it indeed be true, that Christ is wooing and welcoming our
approach towards Him, and if we only come with reliance to Him as to the
mercy-seat, then to us there will be no condemnation? Nature may strongly
desire such a consummation; but nature strongly doubts its possibility. And it
takes a struggle to surmount her apprehensions; and it is against hope if she
believe in hope; and there is a contest here to be gone through, ere our fears
of that inflexible truth which has proclaimed in the hearing of our conscience
the curses of a violated law, shall be overcome by our faith in that truth,
which proclaims in Scripture the blessings of a free and offered gospel.
And here then let the example of Abraham be proposed to cheer our way
over this barrier of unbelief. Let us stoutly imitate him in the resolute
combat he held with the misgivings of nature. Let even the very chief of
sinners face the unlikelihood that such as he can be taken into friendship with
the God, before whom his profaneness and profligacy have hitherto risen as a
smoke of abomination. Let even him buoy up his expectations, against the whole
weight and burden of this despondency. Improbable as it may look to the eye of
nature, that an outcast so polluted and so loathsome can be admitted into the
honours of righteousness; and that though onward to the point of his present
history he be crimsoned over with the guilt of ungodliness, can not only be
forgiven, but be justified - yet let him against this hope believe in hope, and
the stronger his faith the more abundant to him will be the imputation of
righteousness. In that very proportion in which he has heretofore trampled on
the glory of God by his disobedience, will he render a glory to His truth by
now believing in Him who justifieth the ungodly. Let him consider the faith of
Abraham, and let the expressions which the apostle emplova to characterize it
now crowd upon his observation, and carry all doubt and timidity before them.
It is just by standing on the truth of the gospel, and then bearing up under
the sense of the guilt that hangs over us - it is just by firmly and
determinedly persisting in this attitude of confidence on the word of God, even
in the midst of all which without that word should sink us into despair - it is
just by so doing, that like Abraham we stagger not because of unbelief; and
like him we against hope believe in hope; and like him we are not weak in the
faith, but by being strong in it give glory to God; and like him are fully
persuaded that what God hath promised, He is able to perform; and like him be
assured, the guiltiest of you all, that if such be your faith, held firm and
fast even unto the end - like as unto him so will this faith be imputed unto
you for righteousness.
There is another great unlikelihood in the matter of
Christianity, to call forth the exercise of against hope believing in hope -
not merely that God's disposition towards us should be so changed as that He
shall regard us with an eye of acceptance, but that our disposition toward God
shall be so changed as to make us happy in the fellowship of a common character
and of a congenial intercourse with Him. This we are not by nature. Our
delighted converse is with the things that are made, and not with the Maker of
them. In reference to Him there is the insensibility of spiritual death; and
the great transition that we have to undergo ere Heaven can to us be a place of
kindred enjoyment, is to be made alive again. For this purpose there must be a
revival, which no putting forth of any constitutional energy in man can at all
accomplish - a process of quickening, which nature cannot originate, and nature
cannot carry forward - a resurrection of the soul, that is as far beyond the
bidding of any human voice, as is the egress of a reanimated body from the
grave. The man who knows how steeped all his feelings and all his faculties are
in ungodliness, knows the moral and spiritual birth that we are now adverting
to, to be against the current of all his former experience, and beyond the
achievement of all his present most strenuous exertions. And if against hope he
believe in the hope, that such a regeneration shall be begun or perfected in
him, it will be on the footing of some such promise as sustained the
expectations of the patriarch.
This unfolds to us the link which
connects our faith with our sanctification. God hath promised the clean heart
and the right spirit to all who are in Christ Jesus; and, according to the
firmness of our reliance upon this promise, will be the fulness of its
accomplishment upon our persons. Believest thou that I am able to do this says
the Saviour to the man who looked to Him for a miraculous cure; and according
to his faith so was it done unto him. The apostle Paul looked upon another man
under disease, and perceived that he had faith to be healed. Peter affirmed of
the cripple whom he restored to the use of his limbs in the temple, that the
name of Christ through faith in His name had made this man strong - yea the
faith which is by Him, had given him this perfect soundness in the presence of
them all. And thus do we recover our spiritual health. And thus are the
blindness and the paralysis and the impotency that have so benumbed our moral
faculties done away. The full and firm persuasion of the patriarch, that what
is impossible with man is possible with God, will bring down this possibility
in living demonstration upon our own characters. He who promises also says,
that for this I must be enquired after; and the prayer of faith brings down the
fulfilment; and the man who asks for what is so consonant to the will of God,
as that he shall be made alive unto Himself, has only like Abraham to believe
Him able to call from the womb of nonentity that power into being, by which he
is made a new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord. A creature from the depths of
his conscious depravity, thus knocking at the door which he cannot open, but
who believes that one is standing there to hear and to answer him - a humble
aspirant after the character of heaven, who prays in faith for the love to God
which he has never yet felt, and for the charity to man with which he has
vainly tried to animate his own cold and selfish bosom - the labouring disciple
of revelation, whose ear has taken up the promise of our eternal inheritance,
but who knows that it is only through the medium of a birth in his own heart as
preternatural as that of Isaac that he ever can arrive at it - Let him imitate
the father of the faithful in his confident reliance on the promise of God; and
like him let him believe in the power that quickeneth from above; and like him
who was not weak in faith, let him consider not the deadness of his own moral
and spiritual energies, but give to God the whole glory of the renovation he
aspires after - and he will most assuredly experience with all Christians, that
when weak then is he strong, and that what God hath promised He is able also to
perform.
But the habit of against hope believing in hope, is not
restricted to the great and general promises of Christianity. It extends to all
the promises of the book of revelation - to those for example, in which God has
condescended even on the passing affairs of our pilgrimage in this world; and
affirmed that He will not leave us destitute of such things as are needful for
the body; and hath admonished us to cast this care upon Him, on the assurance
of daily bread to us and our little ones. Amid the reelings of this eventual
period, we doubt not that the aspect of the times has borne upon it a hard and
a lowring expression towards many a family; and that, standing on the eve of a
fearful descent into the abyss of poverty, great has been the distress and
great has been the disquietude; and that while the present and the visible
dependence was fast melting away, and every successive arrival had for months
together called to the ear of the mercantile world a still more dismal futurity
that was coming -
(In 1820 - when commercial distress, and
political discontent, threatened a violent outbreaking in the manufacturing
districts of the West of Scotland.) many have been the hearts among you
that were failing for fear, and to the eye of nature was it against all hope,
that you ever could be borne through the dark spaces of uncertainty that lay
before you. And yet even here the Christian has ground against hope to believe
in hope. The promise of daily bread is to him and to his children.
Let
him but have the faith of the patriarch, and he will not be afraid of evil
tidings; and while there be others, who, in the rush of a great commercial
storm, are melted in their soul because of trouble; and reel to and fro, and
stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits end - he believeth and is
calm, and at length finds himself in the desired haven. And we appeal to this
worst of seasons; we appeal to a period from the crash and the turbulence and
the fearful despondency of which we are yet scarcely emerging - when society
has been heaving under the burden of a commerce greater than it can bear, and
the surfeited and overladen world has been rolling back upon its authors the
produce of their own frenzied speculations - when the proudest of our great
trading establishments have toppled to an overthrow, and strewed the face of an
ocean that is still labouring with the ruins and the fragments of shipwrecked
ambition - We are confident that even in the very midst of such a history as
this, there is not a house we can enter, nor a family from which we can obtain
the record of all their vicissitudes and all their vexations, where we shall
not find a trophy of the faithfulness of God - where up to the extent of His
own engagement, which are what things we absolutely stand in need of - and why
care we for the rest - He has not ministered subsistence and safety to all who
put their trust in Him. So that here is an ever recurring topic for the
exercise of faith; and in behalf of God do we affirm, even in the unhikehiest
and most threatening of all periods, that as the faith so will be the
fulfilment.
And upon this very theme of our present remarks, does the
offering up of Isaac admit of a most powerful and pertinent application. It was
through him, that Abraham saw afar off the glory that was promised; and yet him
was he required by God to sacrifice with his own hands; and, even against hope
believing in hope, he proceeded to render an unfaltering compliance with the
order; and while he made full proof of his obedience on the one hand, did God
on the other make full proof of His faithfulness. There is a time when
adversity brings a man so low, as to strip him of more than his all; and when
it places him before the tribunal of his assembled creditors; and when justice
bids a faithful account and a full surrender of all that belongs to him; and
when nevertheless, by an act of dexterous and unseen appropriation, he may
retain a something with which he links the future revival of his business, or
the future subsistence of his family. Now this is his appointed sacrifice.
This, in despite of all fond anticipation in behalf of his prospects, and of
all rclentings on behalf of his children, it is his duty to give up. His
business is to discharge himself of every item of God's will, and to embark
himself with full reliance on God s promises. This is the trial both of his
integrity and of his faith; and on the altar of truth it is his part to deposit
an entire offering, and to bring forward every secret and untold article to the
light of an open manifestation. This we would call the triumph of faith over
vision, and of trust in God over the apprehensions of nature; and the unseen
witness, who all the while is most intently looking on, can out of the infinity
of resources which lie has at command, again bring sufficiency to his door -
can at least fill him with that peace of contentment, which with godliness is
great gain; and bless with the light of His approving countenance that humbler
walk to which he has descended - can throw a sweetness and a shelter around him
that perhaps he never felt in the loftier exposures of society; and irradiate
his more modest and homely dwelling place, with a hope that beams beyond the
grave, and soars above all the changes of this fleeting and uncertain
pilgrimage.
There is still another lesson that remains to be drawn and
enforced from the example of Abraham, beside the strength of his faith; and
that is the practical movement which it imprest upon him. To be the children of
him who is called the father of the faithful, it is not enough that we imitate
him in the principle of his faith - we must also, according to the language of
the apostle, walk in the footsteps of it. It is very true that it was the
belief of Abraham which was counted to him for righteousness. He believed what
the Lord had spoken; and had there not been another communication to him from
Heaven, than simply that he was to have a son through whom all the families of
the earth were to be blessed, we can conceive a firm persuasion of the truth of
this announcement, resting in the mind of the patriarch, without stimulating
him to one deed or to one movement in consequence. It might have found ingress
there, and taken up a most inviolable lodgment in his heart, and he be reckoned
with as righteous because of it; and yet he may have occupied the very station,
and lived the very life that he would have done, though no such message had
ever come to his door, and no such promise had ever been addrest to him. But,
instead of this, we find that his faith in the heavenly visitation was
instantly followed up by a change in the whole course and habit of his
pilgrimage; and a painful abandonment of all that was naturally dear to his
heart was the very first fruit of it; and he forthwith put himself under a
control which maintained an authoritative guidance over the whole of his future
history; and in the full attitude of service and subordination, did he wait the
bidding of that master's voice, who prescribed to him the conduct of all his
journeyings through the world, and often laid upon him the most arduous tasks
of obedience: And nothing can be more completely passive and resigned, than the
posture of him who has been styled the father of all who do believe - in that,
when the commandment came forth upon him from God, he never once imagined that
there was any thing else for him to act in the affair, but just to render an
instantaneous compliance therewith.
We have heard belief and obedience
contrasted the one with the other, and in such a way as if these two terms
stood in practical opposition. In the case of Abraham we see them standing in
sure and immediate succession, so that the one emanated from the other; and
just in proportion to the strength of his faith, and to the glory which he
rendered unto God for His faithfulness, and to the unstaggering reliance that
he had upon His assurances, and to the thoroughness of his persuasion that what
God had promised He was able also to perform - just in that very proportion,
did he commit himself to the authority of God; and amid all the uncertainties
incident to one who was going he knew not whither, did he take counsel and
direetion from Him who was his master in heaven; and nothing can be more
evident than that character of devotedness to the whole will of God which stood
imprest on the subsequent doings of his life upon earth; and, instead of a mere
contemplative persuasion with which lie looked forward to the country that was
promised to him, did he shape his measures with all the preparation and
activity of a man who had been set upon the enterprise of travelling towards
it. So that faith, instead of lulling him out of his activity, was the very
principle which both set it agoing and kept it agoing. It was the moving force
which first tore him away from those scenes and from that society to which
nature so adhesively cleaves; and after he had been loosed from all that was
dear to him, did the same force act upon him with that continued impulse, which
made him just as exemplary for his works of obedience as he was for the
strength and determination of his faith.
It is most true, as Paul says
to the Romans, that by faith Abraham was justified, and not by obedience. But
it is just as true what he says to the Hebrews, that it was by faith that
Abraham obeyed - when he was called to go out into a place which he should
after receive for an inheritance; and he went out not knowing whither he went.
By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country,
dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same
promise. For he looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and
maker is God. And he walked as a stranger and pilgrim upon earth, and declared
plainly that he had gone forth in quest of a country.
The truth is,
that God did not confine His utterance with Abraham to a bare promise, on the
truth of which it was his part to rely. The very first utterance that is
recorded was a precept, on the authority of which it was his part to proceed.
"Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father's house,
into a land that I will show thee." It is very true that ere he would obey
there was something to believe. He had to believe that it was God who spake
unto him. He must have believed in the land of which he had been told, he must
have believed in the truth of the promise, that came immediately on the back of
the commandment. He must, in fact, have given an entire and unexcepted glory to
the truth of God - and must therefore have had a faith reaching to the whole
extent of God's testimony. Had God simply said "I will make of thee a great
nation," the belief of such an announcement did not essentially lead to any
movement on the part of our patriarch. Bat when God said - " Get thee out of
thy country, and I will make of thee a great nation" - the belief of the
announcement, extended in this manner, would lead Abraham to perceive, that the
act of his leaving home was just as essential to the fulfilling of it, as the
act of his becoming a great nation was essential. And the joy he felt in the
latter part of the communication, would just be in proportion to the prompt
obedience that he rendered to the former part of it. It was his faith in the
first address of God to him, that led him to the first step of his obedience;
and it was his faith in God's future addresses, where precepts and promises are
intermingled together, that led him on to future steps of obedience: And it is
just by walking in the same path of obedience that he did, that we walk in the
footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham.
An article of belief may
lie up in our minds, without any change or any transition; and such a belief
can have no footsteps. But when it is a belief that carries movement along with
it - when it is a belief in one who both bids and blesses with His voice at the
same time - when it is a belief that is conversant with such an utterance as
the following - " Arise, walk through the land in the length and in the breadth
of it: for I will give it unto thee ;" or with such an utterance as the
following - " I am the Almighty God; walk before me and be thou perfect, and I
will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly"
- when it is belief in a God who so manages his intercourse with His creatures,
as to cheer them by His promises, and guide them by His directions at the same
instant - there is a dependence that will issue from such a faith, but there is
an obedience also; and the successive parts of that practical history which it
originated at the first, and animates throughout afterwards, are the footsteps
of the faith.
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