FAITH*
By T. C.
EDWARDS D. D.
[* From CHAPTERS 10, 11 and 12 (pp198-256) in the author’s book: “THE
EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.”]
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PAGE 198
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of
things not seen. For
therein the elders had witness borne to them. By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by
the word of God so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which
appear.”- HEB.
11: 1-3 (R.V.).
199
CHAPTER 10
FAITH AN ASSURANCE AND A PROOF
IT
is often said that one of the greatest difficulties in
the Epistle to the Hebrews is to discover any real connection of ideas between
the author’s general purpose in the previous discussion and the splendid record
of faith in the eleventh chapter. The
rhetorical connection is easy to trace. His utterances throughout have been
incentives to confidence. “Let us hold fast
our confession.” “Let us draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace.”
“Show diligence
unto the full assurance of hope.” “Cast not away your boldness.” Any of these exhortations would sufficiently describe
the Apostle’s practical aim from the beginning of the Epistle. But he has just cited the words of Habakkuk, and the prophet speaks of faith. How, then, does the
prophet’s declaration that the righteous man of God will escape death by his
faith bear on the Apostle’s arguments or help his strong appeals? The first
verse of the eleventh chapter is the reply.
Faith is assurance, with emphasis on the verb.
200
But this
is only a rhetorical connection, or at best a justification of the use the
author has made of the prophet’s words. Indeed, he has
already in several places identified confidence with faith, and the
opposite of confidence with unbelief. “Take heed lest
there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief; ... for we are become
partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the
end.”* “They could not
enter in because of unbelief; … let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest,
that no man fall
after the same example of disobedience.”** “Be
not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit
the promises.”*** “Having therefore
boldness to enter into the holy place. ... let us draw near with
a true heart in fulness of faith.****
* Chap. 3: 12. ** Chaps. 3: 19; 4: 11. *** Chap.
6: 12. **** Chap. 10: 19.
Why, therefore, does the author formally state that
faith is confidence? The difficulty is a real one. We must suppose that, when
this Epistle was written, the word “faith” was
already a well-known and almost technical term among Christians. We infer as
much as this also from St. James’s careful and stringent correction of abuses in
the application of the word. It is unnecessary to say who was
the first to perceive the vital importance of faith in the life and theology 201
of Christianity. But in the preaching of
* 2
Cor. 3: 17; 1 Cor. 2: 16. ** James 2: 17, 18.
Our
author addresses men whose spiritual life was thus imperilled. Their condition
is not that of the heathen world in its agony of despair. He does not call his
readers, in the words of
If
so, it goes without saying that the writer does not
intend to give a scholastic definition of faith. The New Testament is not the
book in which to seek formal definitions. For his present purpose we require
only to know that, whatever else faith includes, confidence in reference to the objects of our hope must find a
place in it. Faith bridges over the chasm
between hope and the things hoped for. It
saves us from building castles in the air or living in a fool’s paradise. The
phantoms of worldliness and the phantoms of religion (for they too exist) will
not deceive us. In the course of his discussion in the Epistle
the author has used three different words to set forth various sides of the
same feeling of confidence. One refers to the freedom and boldness with which
the confidence felt manifests its presence in words and action. Another
signifies the fulness of conviction with which the mind when confident is
saturated. The third word, which we have in the present passage, describes
confidence as a reality, resting on an unshaken foundation, and 204 contrasted with illusions. He has urged Christians to
boldness of action and fulness of conviction. Now he adds that faith is that
boldness and that wealth of certitude in so far as
they rest upon reality and truth.
We
can now in some measure estimate the value the
Apostle’s description of faith as an assurance concerning things hoped for, and
apply it to give force to the exhortations of the Epistle. The evil heart of
unbelief is the moral corruption of the man whose soul is
steeped in sensual imaginations and never realises the things of the
Spirit. They who came out of
But faith
is this assurance concerning things hoped for because it is a proof of their
existence, and of the existence of the unseen generally. The latter part of the
verse is the broad foundation on which faith rests in all the rich variety of
its meanings and practical applications. Here
The
Apostle’s language is a seeming contradiction. Proof is usually supposed to
dispense with faith and compel us to accept the inference drawn. He
intentionally describes faith as occupying in reference to spiritual realities
the place of demonstration. Faith in the unseen is itself a proof that the
unseen world exists. It is so in two ways.
First, we trust our own moral instincts. Malebranche
observes that our passions justify themselves. How much more is this true of
intellect and conscience! In like manner, some men have firm confidence in a
world of spiritual realities, which eye has not seen. This confidence is itself
a proof to them. How do I know that I know? It is a philosopher’s enigma. For
us it may be sufficient to say that to know and to know that we know are one and the same act. How do we justify our faith in the
unseen? The answer is similar. It is the same thing to trust and to trust our
trust. Scepticism wins a cheap victory when it arraigns faith as a culprit
caught in the very act of stealing the forbidden fruit of paradise. But when, 206
like a guilty thing, faith blushes for its want of logic, its only refuge is to
look in the face of the unseen Father. He who has most faith in his own
spiritual instincts will have the strongest faith in God. To trust God is to
trust ourselves. To doubt ourselves is to doubt God. We must add that there is
a sense in which trust in God means distrust of self.
Second, faith
fastens directly on God Himself. We believe in God - [and
what He has said] - because
we impose implicit confidence in our own moral nature. With equal truth we may
also say that we believe all else because we believe in God. Faith in God
Himself immediately and personally is the proof that the promises are true,
that our life on earth is linked to a life [hereafter and] above, that patient well-doing will have its
reward, that no good deed can be in vain,
and ten thousand other thoughts and hopes that sustain the drooping spirit in
hours of conflict. It may well happen that some of these truths are legitimate
inferences from. premises, or it may be that a
calculation of probabilities is in favour of their truth. But
faith trusts itself upon them because they are worthy of God. Sometimes the
silence of God is enough, if an aspiration of the soul is
felt to be such that it became Him to implant it and will be glorious in
Him to reward the heaven-sent desire.
An
instance of faith as a proof of the
unseen is given 207 by our author in the third verse. We may paraphrase
it thus: “By faith we know that the ages have been
constructed by the word of God, and that even to this point of assurance: that
the visible universe as a whole came not into being out of things that do
appear.”
The
author began in the previous verse to unroll his magnificent record of the
elders. But from the beginning men found themselves in
the presence of a mystery of the past before they received any promise as to
the future. It is the mystery of creation. It has pressed heavily on men in all
ages. The Apostle himself has felt its power, and speaks of it as a question which his readers and himself have faced. How do we
know that the development of the ages had a beginning? If it had a beginning,
how did it begin? The Apostle replies that we know it by faith. The revelation which we have received from God addresses itself
to our moral perception and our confidence in God’s moral nature. We have been taught that “in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,”
and that “God
said, Let there be light.”* Faith demands this revelation. Is faith trust? That
trust in God is our proof that the framework of the world was
put together by His creative wisdom and power. Is faith the inner life
of righteousness? Morality requires that our own 208 consciousness of personality and freedom should be derived from a Divine personality as the
Originator of all things. Is faith communion with God? Those who pray know that
prayer is an absolute necessity of their spiritual nature, and prayer lifts its
voice to a living Father. Faith demonstrates to him who has it, though not to
others, that the universe has come to its present form, not by an eternal
evolution of matter, but by the action of God’s creative energy.
*Gen. 1: 1, 3.
The
somewhat peculiar form of the clause seems certainly to suggest that the
Apostle ascribes the origin of the universe, not only to a personal Creator, but to that personal Creator acting through the ideas of His own mind. “The visible came into being,
not out of things that appear.” We catch ourselves waiting till
he finishes the sentence with the words, “but out of things that do not appear.” Most expositors fight shy of the inference and
explain it away by alleging that the negative has been misplaced. But is it not true that the universe is the manifestation of
thought in the unity of the Divine purpose? This is the very notion required to
complete the Apostle’s statement concerning faith as a proof. If faith
demonstrates, it acts on principles. If God is personal, those principles are
ideas, thoughts, purposes, of the Divine mind.
209
So
long, therefore, as our spiritual nature can trust, can unfold a morality, can pray, the simple soul need not much
bewail its want of logic and its loss of arguments. If the famous ontological
argument for the being of God has been refuted, we shall not, on that account,
tremble for the ark. We shall not lament though the argument from the watch has
proved treacherous. Our God is not a mere infinite mechanician. Indeed, such a
phrase is a contradiction in terms. A mechanician must be finite. He contrives,
and as the result produces, not what is absolutely best, but what is the best
possible under the circumstances and with the materials at his disposal. But if we have lost the mechanician, we have not lost the
God that thinks. We have gained the perfectly righteous
and perfectly good. His thoughts have manifested themselves in nature, in human
freedom, in the incarnation of His Son, in the redemption of sinners. But the intellect that knows these things is the good heart
of faith.
* *
*
[Page 210 blank: 211]
THE FAITH OF ABRAHAM
212
“By faith Abraham, when he was
called, obeyed
to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing
whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner
in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac
and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. for he looked for the city which bath the foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. By faith even Sarah herself received power to conceive seed
when she was past age, since she counted Him
faithful Who had promised: wherefore also there
sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the sand, which is by
the sea-shore, innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on
the earth. For they that say such things make it
manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. And if indeed they had been mindful
of that country from which they went out, they
would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a
better Country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is
not ashamed of them, to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city. By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac: yea,
he that had gladly received the promises was offering
up his only begotten son; even he to whom it was
said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from
whence he did also in a parable receive him back.” - HEB. 11: 8-19 (R.V.).
213
CHAPTER 11
THE FAITH OF ABRAHAM
WE have learned
that faith is the proof of the unseen. We must not exclude even from this
clause the other thought that faith is an assurance of things hoped for. It is not stated, but it is implied. The conception of
a personal God requires only to be unfolded in order
to yield a rich harvest of hope. The author proceeds to show that by faith the
elders had witness borne to them in God’s confession of them and great rewards.
He recounts the achievements of a long line of believers, who as they went
handed the light from one to another. In them is the true unity of religion and
revelation from the beginning. For the poor order of high-priests
the writer substitutes the glorious succession of faith.
We
choose for the subject of this chapter the faith of Abraham. But
we shall not dismiss in silence the faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah. The
paragraph in which Abraham’s deeds are recorded will
most naturally divide itself into three comparisons between their faith 214 and his. We venture to think that this was in the
writer’s mind and determined the form of the passage. From the eighth to the tenth
verse the Apostle compares Abraham’s faith with that of Noah; after a
short episode concerning Sarah, he compares Abraham’s faith with Enoch’s, from
the thirteenth verse to the sixteenth; then, down to the nineteenth verse, he compares Abraham’s faith with
that of Abel. Noah’s faith appeared in an act of obedience, Enoch’s in a life
of fellowship with God, Abel’s in his more excellent sacrifice. Abraham’s faith
manifested itself in all these ways. When he was called, he obeyed; when a
sojourner, he desired a better country, that is, a heavenly*, and God was not ashamed to be called his God; being
tried, he offered up Isaac.
[*
NOTE: It will be a ‘heavenly’
or “better country” :
not a ‘country’ in heaven! The word ‘heavenly’ is an adjective, describing the nature of
the ‘country,’ yet future, when God will have
lifted the curse which He placed upon this earth because of Adam’s
disobedience! See Gen. 3: 17, 18; cf. Rom.
8: 19-24, R.V.).]
Two
points of surpassing worth in his faith suggest themselves. The one is largeness
and variety of experience; the other is conquest over difficulties. These are
the constituents of a great saint. Many a good man will not become a strong
spiritual character because his experience of life is too narrow. Others, whose
range is wide, fail to reach the higher altitudes of saintliness because they have never been called to pass through sore trials, or, if
they have heard the summons, have shrunk from the hardships. Before Abraham faith was both limited in its experience and
untested with heaven-sent difficulties. Abraham’s 215 religion was complex. His
faith was “a perfect cube,” and, presenting a
face to every wind that blows, came victorious out of every trial.
Let
us trace the comparisons.
First,
Noah obeyed a Divine command when he built an ark to the saving of his house.
He obeyed by faith. His eyes saw the invisible, and the vision kindled his
hopes of being saved through the very waters that
would destroy every living substance. But this was all.
His faith acted only in one direction: he hoped to be saved.
The Apostle Peter* compares
his faith to the initial grace of those who seek baptism, and have only crossed the threshold of the spiritual life.
It is true that he overcame one class of difficulties. He was not in bondage to
the things of sense. He made provision for a future belied by present
appearances. But the influence of the senses is not
the greatest difficulty of the human spirit. As the lonely ship rode on the
heaving waste of waters, all within was gladness and peace. No heaven-sent
temptations tried the patriarch’s faith. He overcame the trials that spring out
of the earth; but he knew not the anguish that rends the spirit like a
lightning-stroke descending from God.
*
1 Peter 3: 20.
With
Abraham it was otherwise. “He went out, 216
not knowing whither he went.”* He leaves his father’s house and his father’s gods.
He breaks for ever with the past, even before the
future has been revealed to him. The thoughts and feelings that had grown up with
him from childhood are once for all put away. He has
no sheltering ark to receive him. A homeless wanderer, he pitches his tent
to-day at the well, not knowing where his invisible guide may bid him stretch
the cords on the morrow. His departure from
* Chap. 11: 8. ** Chap. 11: 9. ***Acts 7: 5.
His
faith, thus sorely tried by God’s long delay, is rewarded,
not with an external fulfilment of the promise, but with larger hopes, wider
range of vision, greater strength to endure, more vivid realisation of the unseen.
“He looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose Architect and Maker
is God.”* In the
promise not a word is said about a
city. Apparently he was still to be a nomad chief of a
large and wealthy tribe. When God deferred again and again
the fulfilment of His promise to give him “this land,” His trusting servant
bethought him what the delay could mean. This was his hill of difficulty, where
the two ways part. The worldly wisdom of unbelief would argue from God’s
tardiness that the reality, when it comes, will fall
far short of the promise. Faith, with higher wisdom, makes
sure that the delay has a purpose. 218 God intends to give more and better things
than He promised, and is making room
in the believer’s heart for the greater blessings. Abraham cast about to imagine the better things. He
invented a blessing, and, so to speak, inserted it for himself in the promise.
*
Chap. 11: 10.
This
new blessing has an earthly and a heavenly meaning. On its earthly side it represents the transition from a nomadic life to a
fixed abode. Faith bridged the gulf that separates a wandering horde from the
cultured greatness of civilization. The
future grandeur of Zion was already held in the
grasp of Abraham’s faith. But the invented blessing
had also a heavenly side. The more correct rendering of the Apostle’s words in
the Revised Version expresses this higher thought: “He looked for the city
which hath the foundations” - the city;
for, after all, there is but one that hath the eternal - [i.e., ‘aionios’] - foundations. It is the holy city,* the heavenly
*
Rev. 21: 10. [*
See Ezek.
37: 19-28; cf. Rev. 2: 25, 26 and Rev. 11: 15, R.V.).]
Of
this sort was Abraham’s obedience. He
continued to endure in the face of God’s delay to fulfil the promise. His
reward consisted, not in an earthly inheritance, not in mere [initial] salvation, but in
larger hopes and in the power of a spiritual imagination.
Second, Abraham’s
faith is compared with Enoch’s, whose story is most sweetly
simple. He is the man who has never doubted, across whose placid face no dark
shadow of unbelief ever sweeps. A virgin soul, he walks with God in a time when the wickedness of man is great in the
earth and the imagination of the
thoughts of his heart is only evil continually, as Adam walked with God in
the cool of the evening before sin 220 had brought the hot fever of shame to his cheek. He
walks with God, as a child with his father; “and God takes him”
into His arms. Enoch’s removal was not like the entrance of Elijah into heaven:
a victorious conqueror returning into the city in his triumphal car. It was the quiet passing away, without observation, of a spirit of
heaven that had sojourned for a time on earth. Men sought him, because
they felt the loss of his presence among them. But
they knew that God had taken him. They inferred his story from his character.
In Enoch we have an instance of faith as the faculty
of realising the unseen, but not as a power to conquer difficulties.
Compare
this faith with Abraham’s. “These,” - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, - “all died in faith,” or, as we
may render the word, “according to faith,” - according to the faith which they had
exhibited in their [godly behaviour and] life. Their
death was after the same pattern of faith. Enoch’s contemplative life came to a
fitting end in a deathless translation to higher fellowship with God. His way
of leaving life became him. Abraham's repeated conflicts and victories closed
with quite as much becomingness in a last trial of his faith, when he was called to die without having received the fulfilment of
the promises. But he had already seen the heavenly
city and greeted it from afar.* He saw the
promises, 221 as the
traveller beholds the gleaming mirage of the desert. The illusiveness of life
is the theme of moralists when they preach resignation. It is faith only that can transform the illusions themselves into an
incentive to high and holy aspirations. All profound religion is full of
seeming illusions. Christ beckons us onward. When we climb this steep, His
voice is heard calling to us from a higher peak. That
height gained reveals a soaring mass piercing the clouds, and the voice is heard above still summoning us to fresh effort. The
climber falls exhausted on the mountain-side and lays
him down to die. Ever as Abraham attempted to seize the promise, it eluded his
grasp. The Tantalus of heathen mythology was in Tartarus, but the Tantalus of
the Bible is the man of faith, who believes the more for every failure to
attain.
*
Chap. 11: 13.
Such men “declare plainly that they seek a country of their own!”*
Let not the full force of the words escape us. The Apostle does not mean that
the seek to emigrate to a new country. He has just
said that they confess themselves to be “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” They are “pilgrims,” because they are journeying through on their way to
another country; they are “strangers,”
because they have come hither from another land.*
His meaning is that they long to 222
return home. That he means this is evident from his thinking it necessary to
guard himself against the possibility of being
understood to refer to
“Our birth is but a sleep and
a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s
star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, Who is our home.”
* Chapt. 11:
14.
Our
author too suggests it; and it is true. We need not maintain it as an external
fact in the history of the soul, according to the old doctrine, resuscitated in
our own times, of Traducianism. The Apostle
represents it rather as a feeling. There is a Christian consciousness of
heaven, as if the soul had been there 223 and longed to return. And if it is
a glorious attainment of faith to regard heaven as a city, more consoling still
is the hope of returning there, storm-tossed and weather-beaten, as to a home,
to look up to God as to a Father, and to love all angels and saints as brethren
in the household of God, over which Christ is set as a Son. Such a hope
renders feeble, sinful men not altogether unworthy of God’s Fatherhood. For He
is not ashamed to be called their God, and Jesus Christ is not ashamed to call
them brethren.* The proof is, that God has prepared for them a settled abode
in the eternal city.
Chaps. 11:
16; 2: 11.
Third, the faith of Abraham is compared
with the faith of Abel. In the case of Abel faith is
more than a realisation of the unseen. For Cain also believed in the existence
of an invisible Power, and offered sacrifice. We are expressly told in the
narrative t that “Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” Yet he was a wicked man. The Apostle John says* that “Cain was of the Evil One.” He had the faith which St.
James ascribes to the demons, who “believe there is one God, and
shudder.”** He was possessed with the same hatred, and had also the same faith. It was the union
of the two things in his spirit that made him the murderer of his brother.
Our 224 author points out very
clearly the difference between Cain and Abel. Both sacrificed, but Abel
desired righteousness. He had a conscience of sin, and sought reconciliation
with God through his offering. Indeed, some of the most ancient authorities,
for “God bearing
witness in respect to his gifts,”
read “he bearing witness to God on the ground of his
gifts;” that is, Abel bore witness by his sacrifice to God’s
righteousness and mercy. He was the first martyr, therefore, in two senses. He
was God’s witness, and he was slain for his
righteousness. But, whether we accept this reading or
the other, the Apostle presents Abel before us as the man who realised the
great moral conception of righteousness. He sought, not the favours of an
arbitrary Sovereign, not the mere mercy of an omnipotent Ruler, but the peace
of the righteous God. It was through Abel that faith in God thus became the
foundation of true ethics. He acknowledged the immutable difference between right and wrong, which is the moral theory accepted by the
greater saints of the Old Testament, and in the New Testament forms the
groundwork of
* Gen. 4: 3. ** 1 John 3: 12. *** James 2: 19. ****
Chapt. 12: 24.
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 God. 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 God
for vengeance? It was the case of a man to whom “God
is greater 226
than conscience.” He resolved to obey at all
hazards. Hereby he assured his heart - that is, his
conscience - before God in that matter wherein his heart may have condemned
him.*
We, it is true, in the light of a better revelation of God’s character, should
at once deny, without more ado, that such a command had been given by God; 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. God met His servant at that stage of spiritual perception which he had already attained. His faith was
strong in its realisation of God’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 God or not. He calmly
left it to Him to vindicate His own righteousness. Those who deny that God
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 227
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.
*
1 John 3: 19, 20.
But let us once more repeat that the greatest faith of
all is to believe, with Abel, that God is righteous, and yet to believe, with
Abraham, that God can justify His own seeming unrighteousness, and also to believe,
with the saints of Christianity, that the test which God 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 God to provide a substitute for Isaac: “And Abraham said, My son, God will provide
Himself a lamb for a burnt offering; so they
went both of them together.”* But the Apostle gives us plainly to understand that
Abraham 228 offered his son
because he accounted that God 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 God will not carry matters to the
bitter end. His mind is pacified with the thought that a substitute 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 substitute would be found in the thicket. Another
solution would then offer itself. God 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. “God is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all
live unto Him.”** 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.
* Gen. 21: 8. ** Luke 20: 38.
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 229 refer to the birth of Isaac in his father’s old age,
when Abraham was “as good as dead.”* Both interpretations do violence to the Greek
expression,**
which must mean “even in a parable.” It is a
brief and pregnant allusion to the ultimate purpose of Abraham’s trial. God 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
God as Isaac, the son of the promise. He received him back from God’s hand
as a type of Him in Whom the promise would be
fulfilled. Abraham had gladly
received the promise. He now saw the
[millennial] ‘day’ of Christ, and rejoiced.***
* Chap. 11: 12. ** [See Greek…] *** John
8: 56. [*2 Pet. 3:8, R.V.]
230
blank: 231
*
* *
THE
FAITH OF MOSES
232
“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 God, 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
233
CHAPTER 12
THE FAITH OF MOSES
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
234
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
When
we come down to the times of John the Baptist and our Lord, Mosaism is to all
practical ends 235
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
* John
1: 17. ** Acts
7: 37.
The notable difference between the Moses of New 236 Testament times and the Moses delineated in the
ancient narrative renders it especially interesting to study a passage in which
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews takes us back to the living man, and
describes the attitude 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.* 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 a the old covenant
himself walked by faith in the new covenant.
*
John 5: 46.
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 God 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 God appearing in the life 237 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 God. 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 God’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 passage 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
passed 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 God’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.
238
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 God. Moses became the leader of the
Lord’s redeemed people, the founder of the national covenant, the legislator
and prophet, because he believed in God, in the future of Israel, and in the
coming of the Christ. The subject of the passage 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 classified under four
remarks:-
1. Faith gropes at first in the dark for
the work of life.
2.
Faith chooses the work of life.
3. Faith is a discipline of the man for
the work of life.
4. Faith renders the man’s life and work
sacramental.
The
initial stage in forming the servant of God is always the same,- a vague, restless, eager groping in the dark, a putting
forth feelers for the light of revelation. This is often a time of childish
mistakes and follies, of which he is afterwards keenly ashamed, and at which 239 he can sometimes afford to smile. It often happens,
if the man of God is to spring from a religious family, that
his parents undergo, in a measure, this first discipline for him. So it was in the case of Moses. The child was
hid three months of his parents. Why did they hide him? Was it because
they feared the king? It was because they did not fear the king. They hid their
child by faith. But what had faith to do with the
hiding of him? Had they received an announcement from an inspired seer that their
child would deliver
* Exod. 2: 2; Acts 7: 20.
The
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews must admit that Jochebed’s faith was
unauthorised. But does not faith always begin in
folly? Is it not at first a blind instinct, fastening on what is nearest to
hand? Has not our belief in God sprung out of trust in human goodness or in
nature’s loveliness? To many a father has not the birth of his first-born been
a revelation of Heaven? Is not such faith as Jochebed’s
the true explanation of the instinctive rise and wonderful vitality of infant
baptism in the Christian Church? If Abraham’s faith dared to look for the city
which hath the foundations when God had promised only the wealth of a tented
nomad, was not the mother of Moses justified, since God had given her faith, in
letting the heaven-born instinct entwine with her earth-born love of her
offspring? It grew with its growth, and rejoiced with its joy; but it also
endured and triumphed in its sore distress, and justified its presence by
saving the child. Faith is God’s gift, no less than the testimony which faith
accepts. Sometimes the faith is implanted when no
fitting revelation is vouchsafed. But faith will live
on in the darkness, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in the heart.
241
A
wise teacher has warned us against phantom notions and bidden us interpret
rather than anticipate nature. But another great
thinker demonstrated that the clearest vision begins in mere groping.
Anticipations of God precede the interpretation of His message. The immense
space between instinct and genius is in religion traversed by faith, which
starts with mera palpatio,
but at last attains to the beatific vision of God.
2.
Faith chooses the work of life.
The Apostle has spoken of the faith that induced the parents of Moses to hide
their child three months. Some theologians have set much value on what they
term “an implicit faith.” The faith of Moses
himself would be said by them to be “enwrapped” in that of his parents. Whatever we may
think of this doctrine, there can be no question that the New Testament
recognises the idea of representation. The Church has always upheld the unity,
the solidarity, of the family. It sprang itself out of the family. Perhaps its
consummation on earth will be a return into the family relation. It retains the
likeness throughout its long history. It acknowledges that a believing husband
sanctifies the unbelieving wife, and a believing wife sanctifies the
unbelieving husband. In like manner, a believing parent sanctifies the
children, and no one but themselves can deprive them of their privileges. But they can do it. The time comes when they must 242
choose for themselves. Hitherto led
gently on by loving hands, they must now think and act for themselves, or be
content to lose the power of independent action, and remain always children.
The risk is sometimes great. But it cannot be evaded.
It oftentimes happens that the irrevocable step is taken
unobserved by others, almost unconsciously to the man himself. The decision has been taken in silence; the even tenor of life is not
disturbed. The world little weens that a soul has determined its own eternity
in one strong resolve.
But in
the case of a man destined to be a leader of his fellows, whether in thought or
in action, a crisis occurs. We use the word in its correct meaning of judgment.
It is more than a transition, more than a conversion. He judges, and is
conscious that as he judges he will be judged. If God
has any great work for the man to do, the command comes sooner
or later, as if it descended audibly from heaven, that he stand alone
and, in that first terrible solitariness, choose and reject. In an educational age we may often be tempted to sneer at the doctrine of
immediate conversion. It is true, nevertheless. A man has come to the parting
of the two ways, and choice must be made, because they
are two ways. To no living man is it given to walk the
broad and the narrow ways. Entrance is by different gates. The history of some
of 243 the most saintly men
presents an entire change of motive of character even, and of general life, as
produced through one strong act of faith.
When
the Apostle wrote to the Hebrew Christians, the time was critical. The question
of Christian or not Christian brooked no delay. The Son of man was nigh, at the
doors. Even after swift vengeance had overtaken the doomed city of
Moses
too refused and chose. This is the second scene in the history of the man.
Standing as he did at the fountain-head of
nationalism, the prominence assigned to his act of individual choice and
rejection is very significant. Before his days the
heirs of the promise were in the bond of God’s covenant in virtue of their
birth. They were members of the elect family. After the days of Moses every Israelite enjoyed the privileges of the covenant
by right of national descent. They were the elect nation. Moses stands at the
turning point. The nation now absorbs the family, 243 which
becomes henceforth part of the larger conception. In the critical moment
between the two, a great personality emerges above the confusion. The
patriarchal Church of the family comes to a dispensational end in giving birth
to a great man. That man’s personal act of refusing the broad and choosing the
narrow way marks the birth of the theocratic Church of nationalism. Before and
after, personality is of secondary importance. In Moses for a moment it is everything.
Do
we seek the motives that determined his choice? The Apostle mentions two, and they are really two sides of the same conception.
First, he chose to be evil-entreated with the people of
God. The work of his life was to create a spiritual nation. This idea had already been presented to his mind before he refused to
be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. “He was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; and he was mighty in his words and works.” * But
an idea had taken possession of him. That idea had already invested the
miserable and despised bondsmen with glory. Truly no
man will achieve great things who does not pay homage to an idea, and is not
ready to sacrifice wealth and position for the sake of what is as yet only a
thought. He who sells the world for an idea is not far from the
kingdom 245 of heaven. He
will be prepared to forfeit all that the world can give him for the sake of Him
in Whom truth eternally dwells in fulness and
perfection. Such a man was Moses. Had
not his parents often told him, when his mother was nourishing the child for
Pharaoh’s daughter, of the wonderful story of their hiding him by faith and
afterwards putting him in an ark of bulrushes by the river’s brim? Did not his
mother bring him up to be at once the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and the
deliverer of
Stephen continues the story: “When he was well-nigh forty
years old, it came into his heart to visit his
brethren the children of
* Acts 7: 22.
Our
author pierces still deeper into the motives that swayed his spirit. It was not
a selfish ambition, nor merely a patriotic desire to put himself at the head of
a host of slaves bent on asserting their rights. Simultaneous with the social
movement there was a spiritual work accomplished in the personal, inner life of
Moses himself. All true, heaven-inspired revolutions in society are accompanied by a personal discipline and trial of the
leaders. This is the infallible test of the movement itself. If the men who
control it do not become themselves more profound, more pure, more spiritual,
they are counterfeit leaders, and the 247 movement they advocate is not of God. The writer of
the Epistle argues from the decision of Moses to deliver his brethren that his
own spiritual life was become deeper and holier. When
he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,
he also rejected the pleasures of sin. He took his stand resolutely on the side
of goodness. The example of Joseph was before him, of whom the same words are
said “he refused” to sin against God.
As
the crisis in his own spiritual life fitted him to be the leader of a great
national movement, so also his conception of that movement became a help to him
to overcome the sinful temptations of
Second, he
accounted the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
Many
expositors strive hard to make the words mean something else than the reproach
which Christ Himself suffered. It is marvellous that the great doctrine of
Christ’s personal activity in the Church before His incarnation should have so
entirely escaped the notice of the older
We
cannot enter into the general question. 249 Confining ourselves to the subject in hand, the faith
of Moses, why may we not suppose that he had heard of the patriarch Jacob’s blessing on
250
The
lesson taught to the Hebrew Christians by the decision of Moses is loyalty to
truth and loyalty to Jesus Christ.
3.
Faith is a discipline for the work of
life. Moses has made his final
choice. Conscience is thoroughly awake, and eager aspirations fill his soul. But he is not yet strong. Men of large ideas are often found to be lacking in courage. A cloistered is
often a fugitive virtue. But, apart from want of
practical resolution to face the difficulties of the situation, special
training is needed for special work.
It
will be seen that we accept the explanation of the twenty-seventh verse given by all expositors down
to the time of De Lyra and Calvin. But
in modern times it has been customary to say that the Apostle refers to the
final departure of the children of
Let
us place ourselves in his position. He refuses the selfish luxury and worldly
glory of Pharaoh’s court, that he may rush to deliver
his brethren. He brings with him the consciousness of superiority, and at once
assumes the duty of composing their quarrels. Evidently
he is a believer in God, but a believer also in himself. Such men are not God’s
instruments. He will have a man be the one thing or the other. If the man is
self-confident, conscious of his own prowess, oblivious of God or a denier of
Him, the Most High can use him to do His work, to his own destruction. If the
man has no confidence in the flesh, knows his utter weakness and very nothingness,
and yields himself to God’s hand entirely, with no by-ends to seek, him too God
uses to do His work, to the man’s own salvation. But
Moses strove to combine faith in God and in himself. He was
at once thwarted. His brethren taunted him, when he expected to be
trusted and honoured. Despondency takes possession of his spirit. But his trepidation is on the surface. Beneath it is a great
deep of faith. What he now needs is discipline. God leads him to the back of
the wilderness. The courtier serves as a herdsman. Far removed from the
monumental 253
literature of
*
After penning the above the writer of
these pages saw that, in his view of the purpose of the sojourn in Midian, he had been anticipated by Kurtz (History
of the Old Covenant).
4. Faith renders the work of life
sacramental. The long period of
discipline has drawn to a close. The self-confidence
of Moses has been fully subdued.
254
“He supposed that his brethren understood how that God by his
hand was giving them deliverance.”
These, says Stephen, were his
thoughts before he fled from
The
Hebrews had been more than two hundred years in the house of bondage. So far as we know, the Lord had not once appeared or spoken to men for six generations.
No revelation was given between Jacob’s vision
at
*
Gen. 46: 2.
Such
a revolution must be inaugurated with sacrifice and
with sacrament. The sins of the past must be expiated and forgiven, and the
people, cleansed from the guilt of their too frequent apostasy from the God of
their fathers, must be dedicated anew to the service of Jehovah. The
patriarchal dispensation expired in the birth of a holy nation. The Passover
was both a sacrifice and a sacrament, an expiation and
a consecration. It retained its sacrificial character till
Christ, the true Paschal Lamb, was slain. As a sacrifice
it then ceased. But sacrament continues, and will
continue as long as the Church exists on earth.
256
Moses
had seen the invisible God. The burning bush had symbolized the sacramental
nature of the work which he had been called to do. God
would be in
*
* * *
* * *