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tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And He said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee to the land of Moriah; and offer him for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. A very easy explanation, critics assure us, is to be found for this narration. It was a process in the mind of the patriarch. The thought occurred to him, 'It would be acceptable to God 'that I should slay my son;' accordingly he determined to do so. Of course we are indebted to any one who reminds us that this process took place in the mind of Abraham; but if we had not received that instruction, we should have been at some loss to know where else it could have taken place. It was precisely because such deep and tremendous thoughts were presented to the mind and spirit of Abraham, that he referred them to God. He knew that an invisible Being had held converse with his spirit. He knew that this was the Being to whom he owed obedience. He knew that He was a righteous Being. But how could he know if that command came from this righteous Being? Might it not come from some darker source? He was certain of this, that the impulse to self-sacrifice,-the feeling that he owed all to God, and was bound to devote all to God,was not from any dark source. That was assuredly from above. He could no more doubt it than he could doubt his own existence. What then had he to do? The Judge of the whole earth would do right, and would not suffer him to do wrong. He would cast himself upon Him; he would make himself ready to do the thing which would be most agonising to him; he would not try, by any act of his, to save the child which God had given him. If the promises to his race were dependent upon him, the Author

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of those promises could take care of him; if not, he could put the cause into His hands. To argue upon what Abraham did or did not do, should or should not have done, without considering him as a subject of Divine education, is simply to argue about another Abraham, not the one of which the book of Genesis speaks. If we take the whole story just as it stands, we shall believe that God did tempt Abraham,—as He had been all his life tempting him,-in order to call into life that which would else have been dead; in order to teach him truths which he would else have been ignorant of. Of all truths, the most precious for himself and for his race, was to know that the first-born of the body was not to be slain for the sin of the soul, or as any token of devotion to God. And yet if that negative truth could not be brought into union with the positive one, that a man is to sacrifice his child, himself, everything that he has, to God, then would there be a perpetual contradiction in the hearts of the best, the wisest, and the most simple; such a contradiction as sometimes would lead to the death of an Iphigenia; sometimes to the rejection of sacrifice altogether, as a mere barbarous impiety. Frightful as the first result is, I believe it is the less terrible alternative. For there is in deed and truth no middle path. The life of the individual, the life of society, must come at last to make selfindulgence, self-seeking, self-will, its foundation, or else Sacrifice. The one was that upon which Sodom stood, and by which it fell; and that which must,—by a fire from heaven, such as appealed to the sense and conscience of the elder world, or by the withering up of powers, energies, hopes,-involve all cities and nations, which yield to it, in a like ruin. The other was the basis

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which God laid for the commonwealth, of which Abraham was the beginner: for that wider commonwealth which was to comprehend all the families of the earth.

And surely in doing so, He did not intend a departure from His own primary law. He did not intend that a man should be called upon to make a sacrifice, without feeling that in that act he was, in the truest sense, the image of his Maker. Abraham, returning from the slaughter of the kings, found there was a priest in Salem who could bless him in God's name; who was higher than he was, though he was to be father of many nations. Abraham, returning from the offering of the lamb which was caught in the thicket, felt that there must be a higher sacrifice than that which he had intended to offer. To ascertain how it was possible that the Lord of all could make a sacrifice,—the greatest, most transcendent of all,-was the deepest problem with which the souls of righteous men could be exercised. But if it was hard to conceive the possibility; it was harder still to think that anything which was right in man could be other than a reflex of something in God. It was monstrous, and horrible to believe, that the best offerings of man could be meant to change the will of his Maker,instead of being the fulfilment of it.

They had this story to guide them in their meditations. Abraham and Isaac went both of them together; Abraham prepared the wood and the fire. He said that God himself would provide the lamb for the burnt-offering. The experiences of a nation's sins and degeneracies, deeper anguish still in the hearts of individual men, helped to expound that riddle. At last the full light dawned upon the mind of one who had found himself sinking in deep mire, where no ground was. "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest

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not; but a body hast thou prepared me. Lo, I come, (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do Thy will, O God; yea, thy law is within my heart. I am content to do it.' A filial sacrifice was seen to be the only foundation on which the hearts of men, the societies of earth, the kingdom of heaven, could rest.

SERMON V.

ESAU AND JACOB.

(Lincoln's Inn, Second Sunday in Lent, March 16, 1851.)
Lessons for the day, Gen. xXVII. and XXXIV.

GENESIS XXVIIL 10-17.

And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the outh; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

I HOPE the selection of the lessons for to-day will have shown you that the Church, at least, does not wish us to regard the lives of the Patriarchs as the lives of grand and heroic men. The specimens of the history of Isaac and

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