and His Providence. ing love of God for man, which the fulness of times has to think of-that it could go on even to the giving up of an only-begotten son-Abraham was called to measure and learn to think upon with the ever-present thinking of faith, by passing through the same heart's experience himself. The surrender in faith, unhelped by any sight, of our all of this world's possessions for Christ's sake which is directed in His words by the severe trial, "He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me," Abraham, and no believer of the fulness of times, was the great Scriptural example of, when "he that had received the promises offered up his only-begotten son, of whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called." And where shall faith in Jesus' own promise of His comfort in "a little while," when the forewarned tribulation for His sake is accepted in meekness, find so assuring facts of that promise to dwell upon as concluded the story of that sore tempting-the hasting call of the relieving comforter when Abraham was about to break his heart in obedient faith and slay his promised son-the hasting cry of the unseen watching Saviour, "Abraham, Abraham! lay not thine hand upon the lad, nor do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me"? (Gen. xxii.) 17. Faith in the eternal love of Christ Jesus, that it will overflow with all sufficiency of temporal mercies, has to take as the measure of its peaceful dependence His words, "Take no thought for your life," "your heavenly Father knoweth what ye have need of ;" and His disciples were once appealed to by Him after a trial of that faith, "Lacked ye anything?" That education to all-confiding faith, the Christian faith in Providence, was but a repetition of a human experience of the self-same care which lights up to our instructed eyes the longback yesterday of Abraham's days with the light of the same Saviour's countenance. Abraham's whole wanderings in the land he never saw till he came to it in faith's blindest following of the divine impulse, and in which he was never to possess more than room to bury his dead, were a life lived by faith in all the richness of very present love in which they that trust in Jesus' promise have peace; and his sojournings in Egypt and Gerar, stained by unbelief strangely reproved, humbled 18. With what invisible figure is it that we are to fill up He that the narrative of Jacob's exile-coming to him in the vision Himself. of Bethel, frustrating ten times Laban's oppressive bargains, enriching the worldling for Jacob's sake, restraining his avaricious designs when pursuing Jacob on his escape, turning Esau's vindictive heart back again to his timid brother? Who was "the God that fed him all his life long, the Angel which redeemed him from all evil"? (Gen. xlviii. 15, 16.) That Angel" wrestling as a man with Jacob at the brook, and letting Himself be overcome by the believing clinging patriarch, is an anomalous sight in Old Testament representations of God. But the whole history of that exile is like a passage from the fulness of times regarding Him who knew the willing spirit and the weak flesh of His best disciples, who "suffered how long" their slowness of heart to believe, and the worse contradiction of perverse sinners, and who "being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, and took the form of a servant." thou mine 19. Do we think of the prayer, "Lord, I believe; help Thou "Help mine unbelief," as not only the very accent of needy man's unbelief." most fully instructed seeking unto God, but as expository of the very genius of Christian grace-that sympathising tender help which knows our need before we ask, and works in us to will and to do? and do we think of that grace as a thing of the latter days, when the Spirit, causing men to walk in God's ways, was to be poured out? Moses sorely needed such grace when he stood before the burning bush to receive the commission which the Saviour of Israel had chosen him for; and he The Sav iour proclaiming Himself on Sinai, received the very help which we recognise as the befitting help Jesus would have given in the latter days, who had a fellow-feeling of our infirmities-help not in the almighty inspiration of God's command, but in the form of his own brother's companionship sharing the necessary enterprise and difficulties of the service. It was just as Jesus afterwards sent forth His disciples to their first mission of preaching and doing miracles, not singly, but two and two together. The same manner of Saviour helping to believe in Himself stood in a later generation by Gideon, and tenderly met all his desires of assurance. That yielding, without reproof or reproving instruction to the young man's timid and ashamed request for a repetition of the test of the fleece, has much of the softened colouring that warms faith's picture of Thomas's Lord, who did not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax (Jud. vi. 39).—Compare His help of Paul and of Elijah (Acts xviii. 9, 10; 1 Kings xix. 13-18). 20. Thus richly in the visible works of the invisible Jehovah of the patriarchs can we see the lineaments of the human-hearted Saviour of the Gospels Jesus, Immanuel, God with us—as if the eye of faith needed but to be accustomed to look into the imagined obscurity of the times of lesser revelation to see Him whom we should see there, since His love is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever-who is the creator, the providence, and the heir of all human things. The long patriarchal and Jewish ages which brought on the times of full manifestation were not obscure. They are called "times of ignorance at which God winked." Their darkness was a darkness in the eyes of men, not upon the countenance of God. Some, as Abraham and Moses, saw even then the light that lightened the fulness of times. And bright heavenly lights broke at times through the comparative darkness. Such was the revelation that passed little noticed over the minds of Israel-a brightness afar off, above their earthward eyeswhich was given to Moses to put new strength of faith into his soul when, depressed and despairing for Israel, he went up into the mountain to receive the second time a writing of Jehovah's commandments. "The Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty" (Exod. xxxiv. 5-7). liar grace of Moses, Samuel, &c. 21. Unappreciated by the demoralised people as that revela- His pecution was, we, with the light of Jesus' life, can see even then the in the lives living working of its grace, afterwards the very grace of God manifest in the flesh, evermore enduring, pitying, loving, helping, seeking to save. The holy but unfearing daily intercourse of Moses with Jehovah in the tabernacle of the wilderness is like the near communion, almost that of equals, to which John and Peter and the family of Bethany were admitted. It is in the language of human happiness in man, not of one far off from man, that Jehovah speaks of His servant Caleb, and Job, and David the man after His own heart. The history of the wilderness was a history of richer human-like forbearance with sinful man, though not with sin, than even Moses' faith was prepared for, even as Jesus' love of Lazarus astonished the Jews. The sorely-needed salvations given to the times of the judges were the peculiar help which Jesus gave promise of as His giving of rest-the help which the wearied and heavy-laden needed, and were drawn and driven by their afflictions to seek and trust to get a help which showed how near them in all their afflictions He was, and how surely Himself afflicted in them. How like the considerateness of Jesus' compassion, making the stripes of correction as gentle and persuasive as might be, was the sending of the child Samuel to tell Eli, the weak but blameworthy old man, His words of reproof and threatening! So considerate of the best way to save, like the fellow-feeling thoughtfulness which the court of the temple (John viii. 7-11), the well of Sychar (iv. 16), the upper room (xiii. 22-27) in Jerusalem, beheld, was the reproof of David by the mouth of Nathan, and afterwards the choice of punishment given to him, and the help to choose correction by the Lord's hand, and not by the hand of man. There is something greatly suggestive of Jesus' manner with Footprints of Jesus sowing words of faith, little children in the narrative of Jehovah's voice in the chamber of the tabernacle waking little Samuel night after night, until the child got the explanation of the call from his kind old friend telling him, with awestruck reverence, that God had spoken to him, and bidding him, when called again, say, "Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth" (1 Sam. iii.) When the chosen people became a nation, and Jehovah's dealings with them became general, we cannot gather so frequently this food of the peculiar manner of faith in which we think of Jesus of Nazareth; which is a faith that thinks much upon incidents of His near communion with individuals. In that period He necessarily came to be more as one behind a veil, though near and watchful and helpful as abundantly. 22. Another class of anticipatory manifestations of the Saviour of the latter days then began to be laid up in the instructive writings of the times, to be choice food of faith as to the long-back earliness of His love, when His disciples should come upon them in after-times in their searching of the Scriptures that testify of Him. Numerous revelations, unveilings of Himself, are scattered over the Psalms and the prophets-expressions descriptive of the earthly condition, or some incident of it, in which He was to appear, or of His own peculiar moral character, or of the spiritual life which He was to bring to man's earthly habits-expressions which were not prophecies, and are not claimed as prophecies in the New Testament, but which to the eye of faith, now instructed by the Gospels and by the spirit of Christian religiousness, appear as early footprints of our own Saviour, Jesus of Nazareth. They show Him, as it were, walking concealed by the side of man in those early generations, and, in His desire towards them, all but betraying His presence ever and again; they show Him as if He were dropping tokens by the way, thinking of how they would be found by His own afterwards, and they would more abundantly believe in His love and rejoice in it, seeing by these how it was of old from everlasting. Examples of these sown words, living seeds of future fruit, language lying for generations in ambush, to lay hold on faith when the full time should come, and draw its glad eyes back |