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By Patrick Fairbairn
Published by Smith & English, 1854
Adapted from scan available at:
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VOLUME II, CHAP. VI, SECTION FIFTH
While we class the whole of these together, on account of their being alike covenant heads to the children of Israel, who became in due time the covenant-people, we are not to lose sight of the fact, that Abraham was more especially the person in whom the covenant had its original root and representation. It is in his case, accordingly, that we might expect to find, and that we actually have, the most specific and varied information respecting the nature of the covenant, and the manner in which it was to reach its higher ends. We shall therefore look, in the first instance, to what is written of him, coupling Isaac, however, with him; since what is chiefly interesting and important about Isaac concerns him as the seed, for which Abraham was immediately called to look and wait; so that, as to the greater lines of instruction, which are all we can at present notice, the lives of the two are knit inseparably together. And the same is, to a considerable extent, the case also with Jacob and the twelve patriarchs. The whole may be said to be of one piece, viewed as a special instruction for the covenant-people, and through them for the church at large, in respect to her calling and position in the world.
I. Abraham, then, is called to be in a peculiar sense the possessor and dispenser of blessing; to be himself blessed, and through the seed that is to spring from him, to be a blessing to the whole race of mankind. A divine-like calling and destiny! for it is God alone who is properly the source and giver of blessing. Abraham, therefore, by his very appointment, is raised into a supra-natural relationship to God; he is to be in direct communication with heaven, and to receive all from above; God is to work, in a special manner, for him and by him; and the people that are to spring out of him, for a blessing to other peoples, are to arise, not in the ordinary course of nature, but above and beyond it, as the benefits also they should be called to diffuse belong to a higher region than that of nature. As a necessary counterpart to this, as the indispensable condition of its accomplishment, there must be in Abraham a principle of faith, such as might qualify him for transacting with God, in regard to the higher things of the covenant. These were not seen or present, and were also strange, supernatural, to the eye of flesh unlikely or even impossible--yet were not the less to be anticipated as certain on the testimony of God, and looked, waited, or, if need be, also striven and suffered for. This principle of faith must evidently be the fundamental and formative power in Abraham's bosom--the very root of his new being, the life of his life--at once making him properly receptive of the divine goodness, and readily obedient to the divine will--in the one respect giving scope for the display of God's wonders in his behalf, and in the other prompting him to act in accordance with God's righteous ends and purposes. So it actually was. Abraham was pre-eminently a man of faith---so preeminently as to gain the title of the Father of the Faithful. And faith in him proved not only a handle to receive, but a hand also to work; and is scarcely less remarkable for what it brought to his experience from the grace and power of God, as for the sustaining, elevating, and sanctifying influence which it shed over his life and conduct. There are particularly three stages, each rising in succession above the other, in which it is important for us to mark this.
1. The first is that of the divine call itself, which came to Abraham while still living among his kindred in the land of Mesopotamia. (Gen. xii. 1-3.) Even in this original form of the divine purpose concerning him, the supernatural element is conspicuous. To say nothing of its more general provisions, that he, a Mesopotamian shepherd, should be made surpassingly great, and should even be a source of blessing to all the families of the earth--to say nothing of these, which might appear incredible only from their indefinite vastness and comprehension, the two specific promises in the call, that a great nation should be made of him, and that another land--presently afterwards determined to be the land of Canaan--should be given him for an inheritance, both lay beyond the bounds of the natural and the probable. At the time the call was addressed to Abraham, he was already seventy-five years old, and his wife Sarah, being only ten years younger, must have been sixty-five. (Gen. xii. 5, xvii. 17.) For such persons to be constituted parents, and parents of an offspring that should become a great nation, involved at the very outset a natural impossibility, and could only be made good by a supernatural exercise of divine omnipotence--a miracle. Nor was it materially different in regard to the other part of the promise; for it is expressly stated, when the precise land to be given was pointed out to him, that the Canaanite was then in the land. (Gen. xii. 6.) It was even then an inhabited territory, and by no ordinary concurrence of events could be expected to become the heritage of the yet unborn posterity of Abraham. It could only be looked for as the result of God's direct and special interposition in their behalf.
Yet, incredible as the promise seemed in both of its departments, Abraham believed the word spoken to him; he had faith to accredit the divine testimony, and to take the part which it assigned him. Both were required--a receiving of the promise first, and then an acting with a view to it; for, on the ground of such great things being destined for him, he was commanded to leave his natural home and kindred, and go forth under the divine guidance to the new territory to be assigned him. In this command was discovered the inseparable connection between faith, and holiness; or between the call of Abraham to receive distinguishing and supernatural blessing, and his call to lead a life of supernatural and distinguishing holiness. He was singled out from the world's inhabitants to begin a new order of things, which were to bear throughout the impress of God's special grace and almighty power; and he must separate himself from the old things of nature, to be in his life the representative of God's holiness, as in his destiny he was to be the monument of God's power and goodness.
It is this exercise of faith in Abraham which is first exhibited in the epistle to the Hebrews, as bespeaking a mighty energy in its working; the more especially as the exchange in the case of Abraham and his immediate descendants did not prove by any means agreeable to nature. "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place, which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; 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." It may seem, indeed, at this distance of place and time, as if there were no great difference in the condition of Abraham and his household, in the one place as compared with the other. But it was quite otherwise in reality. They had, first of all, to break asunder the ties of home and kindred, which nature always feels painful, especially in mature age, even though it may have the prospect before it of a comfortable settlement in another region. This sacrifice they had to make in the fullest sense; it was in their case a strictly final separation; they were to be absolutely done with the old and its endearments, and to cleave henceforth to the new. Nor only so, but their immediate position in the new was not like that which they had before in the old; settled possessions in the one, but none in the other; in their stead mere lodging-room among strangers, and a life on providence. Nature does not love a change like that, and can only regard it as quitting the certainties of sight for the seeming uncertainties of faith and hope. These, however, were still but the smaller trials which Abraham's faith had to encounter; for, along with the change in his outward condition, there came responsibilities and duties altogether alien to nature's feelings, and contrary to its spirit. In his old country he followed his own way, and walked after the course of the world, having no special work to do, nor any calling of a more solemn kind to fulfil, But now, by obeying the call of heaven, he was brought into immediate connection with a spiritual and holy God, became charged, in a manner, with his interest in the world, and bound, in the face of surrounding enmity or scorn, faithfully to maintain his cause, and promote the glory of his name. To do this was in truth to renounce nature, and rise superior to it. And it was done, let it be remembered, out of regard to prospects which could only be realized, if the power of God should forsake its wonted channels of working, and perform what the carnal mind would have deemed it infatuation to look for. Even in that first stage of the patriarch's course, there was a noble triumph of faith, and the earnest of a life replenished with the fruits of righteousness.
It is true, the promise thus given at the commencement was not uniformly sustained; and Abraham was not long in Canaan till there seemed to be a failure on the part of God toward him, and there actually was a failure on his part toward God. The occurrence of a famine leads him to take refuge for a time in Egypt, which was even then the granary of that portion of the east, and he is tempted, through fear for his personal safety, to equivocate regarding Sarah, and call her his sister. The equivocation is certainly not to be justified, either on this or on the future occasion on which it was again resorted to; for, though it contained a half truth, this was so employed as to render "the half truth a whole lie." We are rather to refer both circumstances--his repairing to Egypt, and when there betaking to such a worldly expedient for safety--as betraying the imperfection of his faith, which had strength to enable him to enter on his new course of separation from the world and devotedness to God, but still wanted clearness of discernment and implicitness of trust, sufficient to meet the unexpected difficulties that so early presented themselves in the way. Strange indeed had it been otherwise. It was necessary that the faith of Abraham, like that of believers generally, should learn by experience, and even grow by its temporary defeats. The first failure on the present occasion stood in his seeking relief from the emergency that arose by withdrawing, without the divine sanction, to another country than that into which he had been conducted by the special providence of God. Instead of looking up for direction and support, he betook to worldly shifts and expedients, and thus became entangled in difficulties, out of which the immediate interposition of God alone could have rescued him. In this way, however, the result proved beneficial. Abraham was made to feel, in the first instance, that his backsliding had reproved him; and then the merciful interposition of Heaven, rebuking even a king for his sake, taught him the lesson, that with the God of heaven upon his side, he had no need to be afraid for the outward evils that might beset him in his course. He had but to look up in faith, and get the direction or support that he needed.
The conduct of Abraham, immediately after his return to Canaan, gave ample evidence of the general steadfastness and elevated parity of his course. Though travelling about as a stranger in the land, he makes all around him feel, that it is a blessed thing to be connected with him, and that it would be well for them if the land really were in his possession. The quarrel that presently arose between Lot's herdsmen and his own, merely furnished the occasion for his disinterested generosity, in waiving his own rights, and allowing to his kinsman the priority and freedom of choice. And another quarrel of a graver kind, that of the war between the four kings in higher Asia, and of the five small dependent sovereigns in the south of Canaan, drew forth still nobler manifestations of the large and self-sacrificing spirit that filled his bosom. Regarding the unjust capture of Lot as an adequate reason for taking part in the conflict, he went courageously forth with his little band of trained servants, overthrew the conquerors, and recovered all that had been lost. Yet, at the very moment he displayed the victorious energy of his faith, by discomfiting this mighty army, how strikingly did he, at the same time, exhibit its patience in declining to use the advantage he then gained to hasten forward the purposes of God concerning his possession of the land, and its moderation of spirit, its commanding superiority to merely worldly ends and objects, in refusing to take even the smallest portion of the goods of the king of Sodom! Nay, so far from seeking to exalt self by pressing outward advantages and worldly resources, his spirit of faith, leading him to recognise the hand of God in the success that had been won, causes him to bow down in humility, and do homage to the Most High God in the person of his priest Melchizedea He gave this Melchizedec tithes of all, and as himself the less, received blessing from Melchizedec as the greater.
Viewed thus merely as a mark of the humble and reverent spirit of Abraham, the offspring of his faith in God, this notice of his relation to Melchizedec is interesting. But other things of a profounder nature were wrapt up in the transaction, which the pen of inspiration did not fail afterwards to notice (Ps. cx. 4; Heb. vii), and which it is proper to glance at before we pass on to another stage of the patriarch's history. The extraordinary circumstance of such a person as a priest of the Most High God, whom even Abraham acknowledged to be such, starting up all at once in the devoted land of Canaan, and vanishing out of sight almost as soon as he appeared, has given rise, from the earliest times, to numberless conjectures. Ham, Shem, Noah, Enoch, an angel, Christ, the Holy Spirit, have each, in the hands of different persons, been identified with this Melchizedec; but the view now almost universally acquiesced in is, that he was simply a Canaanite sovereign, who combined with his royal dignity as king of Salem [1] the office of a true priest of God. No other supposition, indeed, affords a satisfactory explanation of the narrative. The very silence observed regarding his origin, and the manner of his appointment to the priesthood, was intentional, and served to draw more particular attention to the facts of the case, as also to admit of a closer correspondence with the ultimate realities. The more remarkable peculiarity was, that to this person, simply because he was a righteous king and priest of the Most High God, Abraham, the elect of God, the possessor of the promises, paid tithes, and received from him a blessing--and did it, too, at the very time he stood so high in honour, and kept himself so carefully aloof from another king then present--the king of Sodom. He placed himself as conspicuously below the one personage as he raised himself above the other. Why should he have done so? Because Melchizedec already in a measure possessed what Abraham still only hoped for--he reigned where Abraham's seed were destined to reign, and exercised a priesthood which in future generations was to be committed to them. The union of the two in Melchizedec was in itself a great thing --greater than the separate offices of king and priest in the houses respectively of David and Aaron; but it was an expiring greatness; it was like the last blossom on the old rod of Noah, which thenceforth became as a dry tree. In Abraham, on the other hand, was the germ of a new and higher order of things; the promise, though still only the budding promise, of a better inheritance of blessing; and when the seed should come, in whom the promise was more especially to stand, then the more general and comprehensive aspect of the Melchizedec order was to reappear--and reappear in one who could at once place it on firmer ground, and carry it to unspeakably higher results. Here, then, was a sacred enigma for the heart of faith to ponder, and for the spirit of truth gradually to unfold: Abraham, in one respect, relatively great, and in another relatively little; personally inferior to Melchizedec, and yet the root of a seed that was to do for the world incomparably more than Melchizedec had done; himself the type of a higher than Melchizedec, and yet Melchizedec a more peculiar type than he! It was a mystery that could be disclosed only in partial glimpses beforehand, but which now has become comparatively plain by the person and work of Immanuel. What but the wonder-working finger of God could have so admirably fitted the past to be such a singular image of the future!
There are points connected with this subject that will naturally fall to be noticed at a later period, when we come to treat of the Aaronic priesthood, and other points also, though of a minor kind, belonging to this earlier portion of Abraham's history, which we cannot particularly notice. We proceed to the second stage in the developement of his spiritual life.
2. This consisted in the establishment of the covenant between him and God; which falls, however, into two parts--one earlier in point of time, and in its own nature incomplete; the other, both the later and the more perfect form.
It would seem, as if after the stirring transactions connected with the victory over Chedorlaomer and his associates, and the interview with Melchizedec, the spirit of Abraham had sunk into depression and fear; for the next notice we have respecting him represents God as appearing to him in vision, and bidding him not to be afraid, since God himself was his shield and his exceeding great reward. It is not improbable that some apprehension of a revenge on the part of Chedorlaomer might haunt his bosom, and that he might begin to dread the result of such an unequal contest as he had entered on with the powers of the world. But it is clear also, from the sequel, that another thing preyed upon his spirits, and that he was filled with concern on account of the long delay that was allowed to intervene before the appearance of the promised seed. He still went about childless; and the thought could not but press upon his mind, of what use were other things to him, even of the most honourable kind, if the great thing, on which all his hopes for the future turned, were still withheld? The Lord graciously met this natural misgiving by the assurance, that, not any son by adoption merely, but one from his own loins, should be given him for an heir. And to make the matter more palpable to his mind, and take external nature, as it were, to witness, for the fulfilment of the word, the Lord brought him forth, and, pointing to the stars of heaven, declared to him, "So shall thy seed be." "And he believed in the Lord," it is said, "and he counted it to him for righteousness."
This historical statement regarding Abraham's faith is remarkable, as it is the one so strenuously urged by the apostle Paul in his argument for justification by faith alone in the righteousness of Christ (Rom. iv. 18-22). And the question has been keenly debated, whether it was the faith itself which was in God's account taken for righteousness, or the righteousness of God in Christ, which that faith prospectively laid hold of. Our wisdom here, however, and in all similar cases, is not to press the statements of Old Testament Scripture so as to render them explicit categorical deliverances on Christian doctrine--in which case violence must inevitably be done to them--but rather to catch the general principle embodied in them, and give it a fair application to the more distinct revelations of the Gospel. This is precisely what is done by St Paul. He does not say a word about the specific manifestation of the righteousness of God in Christ, when arguing from the statement respecting the righteousness of faith in Abraham. He lays stress simply upon the natural impossibilities that stood in the way of God's promise of a numerous offspring to Abraham being fulfilled--the comparative deadness both of his own body and of Sarah's--and on the implicit confidence Abraham had, notwithstanding, in the power and faithfulness of God, that he would perform what he had promised. "Therefore," adds the apostle, "it was imputed to him for righteousness." Therefore--namely, because through faith he so completely lost sight of nature and self, and realised with undoubting confidence the sufficiency of the divine arm, and the certainty of its working. His faith was nothing more, nothing else than the renunciation of all virtue and strength in himself, and a hanging in childlike trust upon God for what he was able and willing to do. Not, therefore, a mere substitute for a righteousness that was wanting, an acceptance of something that could be had for something better that failed, but rather the vital principle of a righteousness in God--the beating of a soul in unison with the mind of God, and finding its life, its hope, its all in him. Transfer such a faith to the field of the New Testament--bring it into contact with the manifestation of Gocl in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of the world, and what would or could be its language but that of the apostle, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ,"--"not my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is of God through faith!"
To return to Abraham--when he had attained to such confiding faith in the divine word respecting the promised seed, the Lord gave him an equally distinct assurance respecting the promised land; and in answer to Abraham's question, "Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it," the Lord "made a covenant with him" respecting it, by means of a symbolical sacrificial action. It was a covenant by sacrifice; for in the very act of establishing the union, there must be a reference to the guilt of man, and a provision for purging it away. The very materials of the sacrifice have here a specific meaning; the greater sacrifices, those of the heifer, the goat, and the ram, being expressly fixed to be of three years old--pointing to the three generations which Abraham's posterity were to pass in Egypt; and these, together with the turtle-dove and the young pigeon, comprising a full representation of the animals afterwards offered in sacrifice under the law. As the materials, so also the form of the sacrifice was symbolical--the animals being divided asunder, and one piece laid over against another; for the purpose of more distinctly representing the two parties in the transaction--two, and yet one-- meeting and acting together in one solemn offering. Recognising Jehovah as the chief party in what was taking place, Abraham waits for the divine manifestation, and contents himself with meanwhile driving away the ill-omened birds of prey that flocked around the sacrifice. At last, when the shades of night had fallen, "a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between those pieces"--the glory of the Lord himself, as so often afterwards, in a pillar of cloud and fire. Passing under this emblem through the divided sacrifice, he formally accepted it, and struck the covenant with his servant (Jer. xxxiv. 18-19). At the same time also, a profound sleep had fallen upon Abraham, and a horror of great darkness--symbolical of the outward humiliations and sufferings through which the covenant was to reach its accomplishment; and in explanation the announcement was expressly made to him, that his posterity should be in bondage and affliction four hundred years in a foreign land, and should then, in the fourth generation, be brought up to it with great substance. [2] In justification also of the long delay, the specific reason was given, that "the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full,"--plainly importing, that this part of the divine procedure had a moral aim, and could only be carried into effect in accordance with the great principles of the divine righteousness.
The covenant was thus established in both its branches, yet only in an imperfect manner, if respect were had to the coming future, and even to the full bearing and import of the covenant itself. Abraham had got a present sign of God's formally entering into covenant with him for the possession of the land of Canaan; but it came and went like a troubled vision of the night. There was needed something of a more tangible and permanent kind, an abiding, sacramental covenant-signature, which by its formal institution on God's part, and its regular observance on the part of Abraham and his seed, might serve as a mutual sign of covenant-engagements. This was the more necessary, as the next step in Abraham's procedure but too clearly manifested, that he still wanted light regarding the nature of the covenant, and in particular regarding the supernatural, the essentially divine character of its provisions. From the prolonged barrenness of Sarah, and her now advanced age, it began to be imagined, that Sarah possibly might not be included in the promise, the rather so as no express mention had been made of her in the previous intimations of the divine purpose; and so despairing of having herself any share in the fulfilment of the promised word, she suggested, and Abraham fell in with the suggestion, that the fulfilment should be sought by the substitution of her bondmaid Hagar. This was again resorting to an expedient of the flesh to get over a present difficulty, and it was soon followed by its meet retribution in providence--domestic troubles and vexations. The bondmaid had been raised out of her proper place, and began to treat Sarah, the legitimate spouse of Abraham, with contempt. And had she even repressed her improper feelings, and brought forth a child in the midst of domestic peace and harmony, yet a son so born--after the ordinary course of nature, and in compliance with one of her corrupter usages--could not have been allowed to stand as the representative of that seed, through which blessing was to come to the world.
On both accounts, therefore--first, to give more explicit information regarding the son to be born, and then to provide a significant and lasting signature of the covenant, another and more perfect ratification of it took place. The word, which introduced this new scene, expressed the substance and design of the whole transaction : "I am Grod Almighty, walk before me, and be thou perfect" (Gen. xvii. 1):--On my part there is power amply sufficient to accomplish what I have promised, whatever natural difficulties may stand in the way--the whole shall assuredly be done; only see, that on your part there be a habitual recognition of my presence, and a steadfast adherence to the path of rectitude and purity. What follows is simply a filling up of this general outline--a more particular announcement of what God on his part should do, and then of what Abraham and his posterity were to do on the other. "As for me" (literally, I--i. e. on my part,) "behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations, Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God." This was God's part in the covenant, to which he immediately subjoined, by way of explanation, that the seed more especially meant in the promise was to be of Sarah, as well as Abraham; that she was to renew her youth, and have a son, and that her name also was to be changed in accordance with her new position. Then follows what was expected and required on the other side: " And God said unto Abraham, And thou," (this now is thy part) " my covenant shalt thou keep, thou and thy seed after thee: Every male among you shall be circumcised; and ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be for a covenant-sign betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised to you, every male in your generations; he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger that is not of thy seed. . . . And my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And uncircmncision" (i. e. pollution, abomination,) "is the male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin; and cut off is that soul from his people; he has broken my covenant."
There is no need for going into the question, whether this ordinance of circumcision was now for the first time introduced among men; or whether it already existed as a practice to some extent, and was simply adopted by God as a fit and significant token of his covenant. It is comparatively of little moment how such a question may be decided. The same principle may have been acted on here, which undoubtedly had a place in the modelling of the Mosaic institutions, and which shall be discussed and vindicated, when we come to consider the influence exercised by the learning of Moses on his subsequent legislation--the principle, namely, of taking from the province of religion generally a symbolical sign or action, that was capable, when associated with the true religion, of fitly expressing its higher truths and principles. The probability is, that this principle was recognised and acted on here. Circumcision has been practised among classes of people and nations, who cannot reasonably be supposed to have derived it from the family of Abraham--among the ancients, for example, by the Egyptian priesthood, and among the moderns by native tribes in America and the islands of the Pacific. Its extensive prevalence and long continuance can only be accounted for on the ground, that it has a foundation in the feelings of the natural conscience, which, like the distinctions into clean and unclean, or the payment of tithes, may have led to its employment before the time of Abraham, and also fitted it afterwards for serving as the peculiar sign of God's covenant with him. At the same time, as it was henceforth intended to be a distinctive badge of covenant-relationship, it could not have been generally practised in the region where the chosen family were called to live and act. From the purpose to which, it was applied, we may certainly infer, that it formed at once an appropriate and an easily-recognised distinction between the race of Abraham and the families and nations by whom they were more immediately surrounded.
Among the race of Abraham, however, it had the widest application given to it. While God so far identified it with his covenant, as to suspend men's interest in the one upon their observance of the other, it was with his covenant in its wider aspect and bearing---not simply as securing, either an offspring after the flesh, or the inheritance for that offspring of the land of Canaan. It was comparatively but a limited portion of Abraham's actual offspring, who were destined to grow into a separate nation, and occupy as their home the territory of Canaan. At the very outset Ishmael was excluded, though constituted the head of a great nation. And yet not only he, but all the members of Abraham's household, were alike ordered to receive the covenant-signature. Nay, even in later times, when the children of Israel had grown into a distinct people, and everything was placed under the strict administration of law, it was always left open to people of other lands and tribes to enter into the bonds of the covenant through the rite of circumcision. This rite, therefore, must have had a significance for them, as well as for the more favoured seed of Jacob. It spoke also to their hearts and consciences, and virtually declared that the covenant, which it symbolized, had nothing in its main design of an exclusive and contracted spirit; that its greater things lay open to all who were willing to seek them in the appointed way; and that if at first there were individual persons, and afterwards a single people, who were more especially identified with the covenant, it was only to mark them out as the chosen representatives of its nature and objects, and to constitute them lights for the instruction and benefit of others. There never was a more evident misreading of the palpable facts of history, than in the disposition so often manifested to limit the rite of circumcision to one line merely of Abraham's posterity, and to regard it as the mere outward badge of an external national distinction.
It is to be held, then, as certain in regard to the sign of the covenant, as in regard to the covenant itself, that its more special and marked connection with individuals was only for the sake of more effectually helping forward its general objects. And not less firmly is it to be held, that the outwardness in the rite was for the sake of the inward and spiritual truths it symbolized. It was appointed as the distinctive badge of the covenant, because it was peculiarly fitted for symbolically expressing the spiritual character and design of the covenant. It marked the condition of every one who received it, as having to do both with higher powers and higher objects than those of corrupt nature, as the condition of one brought into blessed fellowship with God, and therefore called to walk before him, and be perfect. There would be no difficulty in perceiving this, nor any material difference of opinion upon the subject, if people would but look beneath the surface, and in the true spirit of the ancient religion, would contemplate the outward as an image of the inward. The general purport of the covenant was, that from Abraham as an individual there was to be generated a seed of blessing, in which all real blessing was to centre, and from which it was to flow to the ends of the earth. There could not, therefore, be a more appropriate sign of the covenant, than such a rite as circumcision--so directly connected with the generation of offspring, and so distinctly marking the necessary purification of nature---the removal of the filth of the flesh---that the offspring might be such as really to constitute a seed of blessing. It is through ordinary generation that the corruption incident on the fall is propagated; and hence, under the law, which contained a regular system of symbolical teaching, there were so many occasions of defilement traced to this source, and so many means of purification appointed for them. Now, therefore, when God was establishing a covenant, the great object of which was, to reverse the propagation of evil, to secure for the world a blessed and a blessed-making seed, he affixed to it this symbolical rite--to shew, that the end was to be reached, not as the result of nature's ordinary productiveness, but of nature purged from its uncleanness--nature raised above itself, in league with the grace of God, and bearing on it the distinctive impress of his character and working. It said to the circumcised man, that he had Jehovah for his bridegroom, to whom he had become espoused, as it were, by blood (Ex. iv. 25), and that he must no longer follow the unregulated will and impulse of nature, but live in accordance with the high relation he occupied, and the sacred calling he had received. [3]
Most truly, therefore, does the apostle say, that Abraham received circumcision, as a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had (Rom. iv. 11)--a divine token in his own case that he had attained through faith to such fellowship with God, and righteousness in him---and a token for every child that should afterwards receive it, not indeed that he actually possessed the same, but that he was called to possess it, and had a right to the privileges and hopes, which might enable him to attain to the possession. Most truly also does the apostle say in another place (Rom, ii. 28, 29) "He is not a Jew which is one outwardly (i. e. not a Jew in the right sense, not such an one as God would recognise and own), neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." The very design of the covenant was to secure a seed with these inward and spiritual characteristics, and the sign of the covenant, the outward impression in the flesh, was worthless, a mere external concision--as the apostle calls it, when It came to be alone, Phil. iii. 2--excepting in so far as it was the expression of the corresponding reality. Isaac, the first child of promise, was the fitting type of such a covenant. In the very manner and time of his production he was a sign to all coming ages of what the covenant required and sought;--not begotten till Abraham himself bore the symbol of nature's purification, nor born till it was evident the powers of nature must have been miraculously vivified for the purpose; so that in his very being and birth Isaac was emphatically a child of God. But in being so he was the exact type of what the covenant properly aimed at, and what its expressive symbol betokened, viz. a spiritual seed, in which the divine and human, grace and nature, should meet together in producing true subjects and channels of blessing. But its actual representation--the one complete and perfect embodiment of all it symbolized and sought--was the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the divine and human met from the first, not in co-operative merely, but in organic union, and consequently the result produced was a Being free from all taint of corruption, holy, harmless, undefiled, the express image of the Father, the very righteousness of God. He alone fully realized the conditions of blessing exhibited in the covenant, and was qualified to be in the largest sense the seed-corn of a harvest of blessing for the whole field of humanity.
It is true---and those who take their notions of realities from appearances alone, will doubtless reckon it a sufficient reply to what has been said--that the portion of Abraham's seed, who afterwards became distinctively the covenant people--Israel after the flesh--were by no means such subjects and channels of blessing as we have described, but were to a large extent carnal, having only that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. What then? Had they still a title to be recognised as the children of the covenant, and a right, as such, to the temporal inheritance connected with it? By no means. This were substantially to make void God's ordinance, which could not, any more than his other ordinances, be merely outward. It arises from his essential nature, as the spiritual and holy God, that he should ever require from his people what is accordant with his own character, and that when he appoints outward signs and ordinances, it is only with a view to spiritual and moral ends. Where the outward alone exists, he cannot own its validity. Christ certainly did not. For, when arguing with Jews of his own day, he denied on this very ground that their circumcision made them the children of Abraham; they were not of his spirit, and did not perform his works; and so, in Christ's account, their natural connection both with Abraham and with the covenant went for nothing (John viii. 34-44.) Their circumcision was a sign without any signification. And if so, then it must equally have been so in former times. The children of Israel had no right to the benefits of the covenant merely because they had been outwardly circumcised; nor were any promises made to them simply as the natural seed of Abraham. Both elements had to meet in their condition, the natural and the spiritual; the spiritual, however, more especially, and the natural only as connected with the spiritual, and a means for securing it. Hence Moses urged them so earnestly to circumcise their hearts, as absolutely necessary to their getting the fulfilment of what was promised (Deut. x. 16); and when the people as a whole had manifestly not done this, circumcision itself, the sign of the covenant, was suspended for a season, and the promises of the covenant were held in abeyance, till they should come to learn aright the real nature of their calling (Josh. v. 3-9.) Throughout, it was the election, within the election, who really had the promises and the covenants; and none but those in whom, through the special working of God's grace, nature was sanctified and raised to another position than itself could ever have attained, were entitled to the blessing. If in the land of Canaan, they existed by sufferance merely, and not by right.
The bearing of all this on the ordinance of Christian baptism cannot be overlooked, but it may still be mistaken. The relation between circumcision and baptism is not properly that of type and antitype; the one is a symbolical ordinance as well as the other, and both alike have an outward form and an inward reality. It is precisely in such ordinances that the Old and the New dispensations approach nearest to each other, and, we might almost say, stand formally upon the same level. The difference does not so much lie in the ordinances themselves, as in the comparative amount of grace and truth respectively exhibited in them--necessarily less in the earlier, and more in the later. The difference in external form, was in each case conditioned by the circumstances of the time. In circumcision it bore respect to the propagation of offspring, as it was through the production of a seed of blessing that the covenant, in its preparatory form, was to attain its realisation. But when the seed in that respect had reached its culminating point in Christ, and the objects of the covenant were no longer dependent on natural propagation of seed, but were to be carried forward by spiritual means and influences used in connection with the faith of Christ, the external ordinance was fitly altered, so as to express simply a change of nature and state in the individual that received it. Undoubtedly the New Testament form less distinctly recognises the connection between parent and child--we should rather say, does not of itself recognise that connection at all: so much ought to be frankly conceded to those who disapprove of the practice of infant baptism, and will be conceded by all whose object is to ascertain the truth rather than contend for an opinion.
On the other hand, however, if we look, not to the form, but to the substance, which ought here, as in other things, to be chiefly regarded, we perceive an essential agreement--such as is, indeed, marked by the Apostle, when, with reference to the spiritual import of baptism, he calls it "the circumcision of Christ" (Col. ii, 11.) So far from being less indicative of a change of nature in the proper subjects of it, circumcision was even more so; in a more obvious and palpable manner it bespoke the necessity of a deliverance from the native corruption of the soul in those who should become the true possessors of blessing. Hence the Apostle makes use of the earlier rite to explain the symbolical import of the later, and describes the spiritual change indicated and required by it, as "a putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ," and "having the uncircumcision of the flesh, quickened together with Christ." It would have been travelling entirely in the wrong direction, to use such language for purposes of explanation in Christian times---if the ordinance of circumcision had not shadowed forth this spiritual quickening and purification even more palpably and impressively than baptism itself--and shadowed it forth, not prospectively merely for future times, but immediately and personally for the members of the old covenant. For, by the terms of the covenant, these were ordained to be, not types of blessing only, but also partakers of blessing. The good contemplated in the covenant was to have its present commencement in their experience, as well as in the future a deeper foundation and a more enlarged developement, And the outward putting away of the filth of the flesh in circumcision could never have symbolized a corresponding inward purification for the members of the new covenant, if it had not first done this for the members of the old. The shadow must have a substance in the one case as well as in the other.
Such being the case as to the essential agreement between the two ordinances, an important element for deciding in regard to the propriety of infant baptism, may still be derived from the practice established in the rite of circumcision. The grand principle of connecting parent and child together for the attainment of spiritual objects, and marking the connection by an impressive signature, was there most distinctly and broadly sanctioned. And if the parental bond and its attendant obligations be not weakened, but rather elevated and strengthened, by the higher revelations of the Gospel, it would be strange indeed if the liberty, at least the propriety and right, if not the actual obligation, to have their children brought by an initiatory ordinance under the bond of the covenant, did not belong to parents under the Gospel. The one ordinance no more than the other insures the actual transmission of the grace necessary to effect the requisite change; but it exhibits that grace--on the part of God pledges it--and takes the subject of the ordinance bound to use it for the accomplishment of the proper end. Baptism does this now, as circumcision did of old; and if it was done in the one case through the medium of the parent to the child, one does not see why it may not be done now, unless positively prohibited, in the other. But since this is matter of inference ratherthan of positive enactment, those who do not feel warranted to make such an application of the principle of the Old Testament ordinance to the New, should unquestionably be allowed their liberty of thought and action--if only, in the vindication of that liberty, they do not seek to degrade circumcision to a mere outward and political distinction, and thereby break the continuity of the church through successive dispensations. [4]
3. But we must now hasten to the third stage of Abraham's career, which presents him on a still higher moral elevation than he has yet reached, and view him as connected with the sacrifice of Isaac. Between the establishment of the covenant by the rite of circumcision, and this last stage of developement, there were not wanting occasions fitted to bring out the pre-eminently holy character of his calling, and the dependence on his maintaining this toward God of what God should be and do toward him. This appears in the order he received from Grocl to cast Ishmael out of his house, when the envious, mocking spirit of the youth too clearly shewed, that he had not the heart of a true child of the covenant, and would not submit aright to the arrangements of God concerning it. It appears also, in the free and familiar fellowship to which Abraham was admitted with the three heavenly visitants, whom he entertained in his tent on the plains of Mamre, and the disclosure that was made to him of the divine counsel respecting Sodom and Gomorrah, expressly on the ground that the Lord "knew he would command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment." And most of all it appears in the pleading of Abraham for the preservation of the cities of the plain--a pleading based upon the principles of righteousness, that the Judge of all the earth would do right: and would not destroy the righteous with the wicked--and a pleading that proved in vain only from there not being found the ten righteous persons in the place mentioned in the patriarch's last supposition. So that the awful scene of desolation which the region of those cities afterwards presented on the very borders of the land of Canaan, stood perpetually before the Jewish people, not only as a monument of the divine indignation against sin, but also as a witness that the father of their nation would have sought their preservation from a like judgment only on the principles of righteousness, and would have even ceased to plead in their behalf, if righteousness should sink as low among them as he ultimately supposed it might have come in Sodom.
But the topstone of Abraham's history as the spiritual head of a seed of blessing, is only reached in the divine command to offer up Isaac, and the obedience which the patriarch rendered to it. "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt- offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of." That Abraham understood this command rightly, when he supposed it to mean a literal offering of his son upon the altar, and not as Hengstenberg and Lange have contended, a simple dedication to a religious life, needs no particular proof. Had anything but a literal surrender been meant, the mention of a burnt-offering as the character in which Isaac was to be offered to God, and of a mountain in Moriah as the particular spot where the offering was to be presented, would have been entirely out of place. But why should such a demand have been made of Abraham? And what precisely were the lessons it was intended to convey to his posterity, or its typical bearing on future times?
In the form given to the required act, special emphasis is laid on the endeared nature of the object demanded: thine only son, and the son whom thou lovest. It was, therefore, a trial in the strongest sense, a trial of Abraham's faith, whether it was capable of such implicit confidence in God--such profound regard to his will, and such self-denial in his service, as at the divine bidding to give up the best and dearest--what in the circumstances must even have been dearer to him than his own life. Not that God really intended the surrender of Isaac to death, but only the proof of such a surrender in the heart of his servant; and such a proof could only have been found in an unconditional command to sacrifice, and an unresisting compliance with the command up to the final step in the process, This, however, was not all. In the command to perform such a sacrifice, there was a tempting as well as a trying of Abraham; since the thing required at his hands seemed to be an enacting of the most revolting rite of heathenism; and, at the same time, to war with the oracle already given concerning Isaac, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called." According to this word, God's purpose to bless was destined to have its accomplishment especially and peculiarly through Isaac; so that to slay such a son appeared like slaying the very word of God, and extinguishing the hope of the world. And yet, in heart and purpose at least, it must be done. It was no freak of arbitrary power to command the sacrifice, nor for the purpose merely of raising the patriarch to a kind of romantic moral elevation. It was for the purpose of exhibiting outwardly and palpably the great truth, that God's method of working in the covenant of grace must have its counterpart in man's. The one must be the reflex of the other. God in blessing Abraham triumphs over nature, and Abraham triumphs after the same manner in proportion as he is blessed. He receives a special gift from the grace of God, and he freely surrenders it again to Him who gave it. He is pre-eminently honoured by God's word of promise, and he is ready in turn to hazard all for its honour. And Isaac, the child of promise--the type in his outward history of all who should be proper subjects or channels of blessing--he also must concur in the act --on the altar must sanctify himself to God--as a sign to all who would possess the higher life in God, that it implies and carries along with it a devout surrender of the natural life to the service and glory of God.
We have no account of the workings of Abraham's mind, when going forth to the performance of this extraordinary act of devotedness to God; and the record of the transaction is, from the very simplicity with which it narrates the facts of the case, the most touching and impressive in Old Testament history. But we are informed on inspired authority, that the principle on which he acted, and which enabled him--as indeed it alone could enable him--to fulfil such a service, was faith: "By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that received the promises offered up his only begotten son; of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called; accounting that God was able, to raise him up, even from the dead--from whence also he received him in a figure" (Heb. xi. 17-19). His noblest act of obedience was nothing more than the highest exercise and triumph of his faith. It was this which removed the mountains that stood before him, and hewed out a path for him to walk in. Grasping with firm hand that word of promise which assured him of a numerous seed by the line of Isaac, and taught by past experience to trust its faithfulness even in the face of natural impossibilities, his faith enabled him to see light, where all had otherwise been darkness, to hope while in the very act of destroying the great object of his hope. I know--so he must have argued with himself--that the word of God, which commands this sacrifice, is faithfulness and truth; and though to stretch forth my hand against this child of promise is apparently destructive to my hopes, yet I may safely risk it, since He commands it who gave the promise. It is as easy for the Almighty arm to give me back my son from the domain of death, as it was at first to bring him forth out of the dead womb of Sarah; and what He can do, His declared purpose makes me sure that he will and must do. Thus nature, even in its best and strongest feelings, was overcome, and the sublimest heights of holiness were reached, simply because faith had struck its roots so deeply within, and had so closely united the soul of the patriarch to the mind and perfections of Jehovah.
This high surrender of the human to the divine, and holy self-consecration to the will and service of God, was beyond all doubt, like the other things recorded in Abraham's life, of the nature of a revelation. It was not intended to terminate in the patriarch and his son, but in them as the sacred roots of the covenant-people, to shew in outward and corporeal representation, what in spirit ought to be perpetually repeating itself in their individual and collective history. It proclaimed to them through all their generations, that the covenant required of its members lives of unshrinking and devoted application to the service of God--yielding to no weak misgivings or corrupt solicitations of the flesh-- staggering at no difficulties presented by the world; and also that it rendered such a course possible by the ground and scope it afforded for the exercise of faith, in tlie sustaining grace and might of God. And undoubtedly, as the human here was the reflex of the divine, whence it drew its source and reason, so inversely, and as regards the ulterior objects of the covenant, the divine might justly be regarded as imaged in the human. An organic union between the two was indispensable to the effectual accomplishment of the promised good; and the seed, in which the blessing of Heaven was to concentrate, and from which it was to flow throughout the families of the earth, must on the one side be as really the Son of God, as on the other he was to be the offspring of Abraham. Since, therefore, the two lines were ultimately to meet in one, and that one, by the joint operation of the divine and human, was once for all to make good the provision of blessing promised in the covenant, it was meet, and it may reasonably be supposed, was one end of the transaction, that they should be seen from the first to coalesce in principle; that the surrender Abraham made of his son, for the world's good, in the line after the flesh, and the consecration willingly made by the son of himself on the altar of God, was designed to foreshadow in the other and higher line the wonderful gift of God in yielding up his Son, and the free-will offering and consecration of the Son himself to bring in eternal life for the lost. Here, too, as the things done were in their nature unspeakably higher than in the other, so were they thoroughly and intensely real in their character. The representative in the Old becomes the actual in the New; and the sacrifice performed there merely in the spirit, passes here into that one full and complete atonement, which for ever perfects them that are sanctified. [4]
In the preparatory and typical line, however, Abraham's conduct on this occasion was the perfect exemplar of what should follow; he stood now on the highest elevation of the righteousness of faith; and to shew the weight God attached to that righteousness, and how inseparably it was to be bound up with the provisions of the covenant, the Lord consummated the transaction by a new ratification of the covenant. After the angel of Jehovah had staid the hand of Abraham from slaying Isaac, and provided the ram for a burnt-offering, he again appeared and spake to Abraham, " By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord; for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bliss thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed, as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of thine enemies; and in thy seed shall the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice." The things promised, it will be observed, are precisely the things which God had already of his own goodness engaged in covenant to bestow upon Abraham: these, indeed, to their largest extent, but still no more, no other than these--a seed numerous as the sand upon the sea-shore, or the stars of heaven, shielded from the malice of enemies, itself blessed, and destined to be the channel of blessing to all nations. But it is also to be observed, that while the same promises of good are renewed, they are now connected with Abraham's surrender to the will of God, and are given as the reward of his obedience. To render this more clear and express, it is announced both at the beginning and the end of the address: "Because thou hast clone this...because thou hast obeyed my voice." And even afterwards, when the covenant was established with Isaac, an explicit reference is made to the same thing. The Lord said, he would perform, the oath he had sworn to Abraham, "because he obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws" (Gen. xxvi. 5). What could have more impressively exhibited the truth, that though the covenant, with all its blessings, was of grace, on the part of God, and to be appropriated by faith on the part of men, yet the good promised should not be actually conferred by Him, unless there appeared in them the righteousness of faith! Their faith would otherwise be accounted dead, the mere semblance of what it should be. And as if to bind the two more solemnly and conspicuously together, the Lord takes this occasion to superadd his oath to the covenant---not to render the word of promise more sure in itself, but more palpably sure to the heirs of promise--and to imprint it upon their hearts, that nothing should fail of all that had been spoken, if only the future faith and obedience should accord with the present!
II. We must leave to the reflection of our readers the application of this to Christian times and relations, which is indeed so obvious as to need no particular explanation; and we proceed to take a rapid glance at the leading features of the other branch of the subject---that which concerns Jacob and the twelve patriarchs. This forms the continuation of what took place in the lives of Abraham and Isaac, and a continuation, not only embodying the same great principles, but also carrying them forward with more special adaptation to the prospective condition of the Israelites as a people. Towards the close of the patriarchal period, the covenant, even in its more specific line of operations, began to widen and expand, to rise more from the particular to the general, to embrace a family circle, and that circle the commencement of a future nation. And the dealings of God were all directed to the one great end of shewing, that while this people should stand alike outwardly related to the covenant, yet their real connection with its promises, and their actual possession of its blessings, should infallibly turn upon their being followers in faith and holiness of the first fathers of their race.
Unfortunately, the later part of Isaac's life did not altogether fulfil the promise of the earlier. Knowing little of the trials of faith, he did not reach high in its attainments. And in the more advanced stage of his history he fell into a state of general feebleness and decay, in which the moral but too closely corresponded with the bodily decline. Notwithstanding the very singular and marked exemplification that had been given in his own case of the pre-eminent respect had in the covenant to something higher than nature, he failed so ranch in discernment, that he was disposed only to make account of the natural element in judging of the respective states and fortunes of his sons. To the neglect of a divine oracle going before, and the neglect also of the plainest indications afforded by the subsequent behaviour of the sons themselves, he resolved to give the more distinctive blessing of the covenant to Esau, in preference to Jacob, and so to make him the more peculiar type and representative of the covenant. In this, however, he was thwarted by the overruling providence of God---not, indeed, without sin on the part of those who were the immediate agents in accomplishing it---but yet, so as to bring out more clearly and impressively the fact, that mere natural descent and priority of birth was not here the principal, but only the secondary thing, and that higher and more important than any natural advantage was the grace of God manifesting itself in the faith and holiness of men. Jacob, therefore, though the younges by birth---yet from the first the child of faith, of spiritual desire, of heart-felt longings after the things of God, ultimately the man of deep discernment, ripened experience, prophetic insight, wrestling and victorious energy in the divine life--he must stand first in the purpose of Heaven, and exhibit in his personal career a living representation of the covenant, as to what it properly is, and really requires. Nay, opportunity was taken from his case, as the immediate founder of the Israelitish nation, to begin the covenant history anew; and starting, as it were, from nothing in his natural position and circumstances, it was shewn how God, by his supernatural grace and sufficiency, could vanquish the difficulties in the way, and more than compensate for the loss of nature's advantages. In reference partly to this instructive portion of Jacob's history, and to deepen upon their minds the lesson it was designed to teach, the children of Israel were appointed to go to the priest in after times with their basket of first-fruits in their hand, and the confession in their mouth, A Syrian ready to perish was my father (Deut. xxvi. 5). It was clear, clear as noon-day, that all Jacob had to distinguish him outwardly from others, the sole foundation and spring of his greatness, was the promise of God in the covenant, received by him in humble faith, and taken as the ground of prayerful and holy striving. As the head of the covenant-people, he was not less really, though by a different mode of operation, tile child of divine grace and power, than his father Isaac. And as his whole life, in its better aspects, was a lesson to his posterity respecting the superiority of the spiritual to the merely natural element in things pertaining to the covenant of God, so when his history drew toward its close, there were lessons of a more special kind, and in the same direction, pressed with singular force and emphasis upon his family.
It was a time when such were peculiarly needed. The covenant was now to assume more of a communal aspect. It was to have a national membership and representation, as the more immediate designs, which God sought to accomplish by means of it, could not be otherwise effected. Jacob was the last separate impersonation of its spirit and character. His family in their collective capacity were henceforth to take this position. But they had first to learn, that they could take it, only if their natural relation to the covenant was made the means of forming them to its spiritual characteristics, and fitting them for the fulfilment of its righteous ends. They must even learn, that their individual relation to the covenant in these respects, should determine their relative place in the administration of its affairs and interests. And for this end Reuben the first-born, is made to lose his natural pre-eminence, because, like Esau, he presumed upon his natural position, and in the lawless impetuosity of nature broke through the restraints of filial piety, Judah, on the other hand, obtains one of the prerogatives Reuben had lost--Judah who became so distinguished for that filial piety as to hazard his own life for the sake of his father. Simeon and Levi, in like manner, are all but excluded from the blessings of the covenant on account of their unrighteous and cruel behaviour:--a curse is solemnly pronounced upon their sin, and a mark of inferiority stamped upon their condition---while, again, at a later period, and for the purpose still of shewing how the spiritual was to rule the natural, rather than the natural the spiritual, the curse in the case of Levi was turned into a blessing. The tribe was, indeed, according to the word of Jacob, scattered in Israel, and was thereby rendered politically weak; but the more immediate reason of the scattering was the zeal and devotedness which the members of that tribe had exhibited in the wilderness, on account of which they were dispersed as lights among Israel,--bearing on them the more peculiar and sacred distinctions of the covenant--and thus became morally strong. Most strikingly, however, does the truth break forth in connection with Joseph, who in the earlier history of the family was the only proper representative of the covenant. He was the one child of God in the family, though, with a single exception, the least and youngest of its members. God, therefore, after allowing the contrast between him and the rest to be sharply exhibited, ordered his providence so as to make liini preeminently the son of blessing. The faith and piety of the youth draw around him the protection and loving-kindness of heaven wherever he goes, and throw a charm around everything he does. At length he rises to the highest position of honour and influence--blessed most remarkably himself, and on the largest scale made a blessing to others--the noblest and most conspicuous personal embodiment of the nature of the covenant, as first rooting itself in the principles of a spiritual life, and then diffusing itself in healthful and blessed energy on all around. At the same time, and as a foil to set off more brightly the better side of the truth represented in him, while he was thus seen riding upon the high places of the earth, his unsanctified brethren were famishing for want; the promised blessing of the covenant has almost dried up in their experience, because they possessed so little of the true character of children of the covenant. And when the needful relief comes, they have to be indebted for it to the hand of him in whom that character is most luminously displayed. Nay, in the very mode of getting it, they are conducted through a train of humiliating and soul-stirring providences, tending to force on them the conviction that they were in the hands of an angry God, and to bring them to repentance of sin and amendment of life. So that, by the time they are raised to a position of honour and comfort, and settled as covenant-patriarchs in Egypt, they present the appearance of men chastened, subdued, brought to the knowledge of God, fitted each to take his place as a head of the future covenant-people, while the double portion, which Reuben lost by his iniquity, descends on him, who was, under God, the instrument of accomplishing so much good for them and for others.
And here, again, we cannot but notice, that when the chosen family were in the process of assuming the rudimentary form of that people, through whom salvation and blessing were to come to other peoples of the earth, the beginning was rendered prophetic of the end; the operations both of the evil and the good in the infancy of the nation, were made to image the prospective manifestation that was to be given of them when the things of the divine kingdom should rise to their destined maturity. Especially in the history of Joseph, the representative of the covenant in its earlier stage, was there given a wonderful similitude of him in whom its powers and blessings were to be concentrated in their entire fulness, and who was therefore in all things to obtain the pre-eminence among his brethren. Like Joseph, the Son of Mary, though born among brethren after the flesh, was treated as an alien; envied and persecuted even from his infancy, and obliged to find a temporary refuge in the very land that shielded Joseph from the fury of his kindred. His supernatural and unblemished righteousness continually provoked the malice of the world, and, at the same time, received the most unequivocal tokens of the divine favour and blessing. That very righteousness, exhibited amid the greatest trials and indignities, in the deepest debasement, and in worse than prison-house affliction, procured his elevation to the right hand of power and glory, from which he was thenceforth to dispense the means of salvation to the world. In the dispensation, too, of these blessings, it was the hardened and cruel enmity of his immediate kindred which opened the door of grace and blessing to the heathen; and the sold, hated, and crucified One becomes a Prince and Saviour to the nations of the earth, while his famishing brethren reap in bitterness of soul the fruit of their injurious treatment toward him. Nor is there a door of escape to be found for them until they come to acknowledge, in contrition of heart, that they are verily guilty concerning their brother; but then, looking unto him whom they have pierced, and owning him as by God's appointment the one channel of life and blessing, they shall be repaid with love for hatred, and shall be admitted to share in the inexhaustible fulness that belongs to him.
What a succession, then, of lessons for the children of the covenant in regard to what constituted their greatest danger--- lessons stretching through four generations--ever varying in their precise form, yet always bearing most directly and impressively upon the same point--writing out on the very foundations of their history, and emblazoning on the banner of their covenant the important truth, that the spiritual element was ever to be held the thing of first and most essential moment, and that the natural was only to be regarded as the channel through which the other was chiefly to come, and the safeguard by which it was to be fenced and kept! From the first the call of God made itself known as no merely outward distinction; and the covenant that grew out of it, instead of being but a formal bond of interconnection between its members and God, was framed especially to meet the spiritual evil in the world, and required as an indispensable condition, a sanctified heart, in all who were to experience Its blessings and to work out its beneficent results. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? How could the spiritual Jehovah, who has, from the first creation of man upon the earth, been ever manifesting himself as the Holy One, and directing his administration so as to promote the ends of righteousness, enter into a covenant of life and blessing on any other principle? It is impossible-- as impossible as it is for the unchangeable God to act contrary to his nature, that the covenant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-- the covenant of grace and blessing, which embraces in its bosom Christ himself, and the benefits of his eternal redemption--could ever have contemplated as its real members any but spiritual and righteous persons. And the whole tenor and current of the divine dealings in establishing the covenant seem to have been alike designed and calculated to shut up every thoughtful mind to the conclusion, that none but such could either fulfil its higher purposes, or have an interest in its more essential provisions.
What thus appears to be taught in the historical revelations of God connected with the establishment of the covenant, is also perpetually re-echoed in the later communications of the prophets. Their great aim, in the monitory part of their writings, is to bring home to men's minds the conviction, that the covenant had preeminently in view moral ends, and that in so far as the people degenerated from these, they failed in respect to the main design of their calling. Let us point, in proof of this, merely to the last of the prophets, that we may see how the closing witness of the Old Covenant coincides with the testimony delivered at the beginning. In the second chapter of his writings, the prophet Malachi, addressing himself to the corruptions of the time, as appearing first in the priesthood, and then among the people generally, charges both parties expressly with a breach of covenant, and a subversion of the ends for which it was established. In regard to the priests, he points to their ancestral holiness in the personified tribe of Levi, and says, " My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity. ... But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of Hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law." In a word, the covenant in this particular branch of it, had been made expressly on moral grounds and for moral ends, and in practically losing sight of these, the priests of that time had made void the covenant, even though externally complying with its appointments, and were consequently visited with chastisement instead of blessing. Then, in regard to the people, a reproof is first of all administered on account of the unfaithfulness, which had become comparatively common, in putting away their Israelitish wives, and taking outlandish women in their stead, "the daughters of a strange God." This the prophet calls "profaning the covenant of their fathers." And then pointing in this case, as in the former, to the original design and purport of their covenant-calling, he asks, in a question which has been entirely misunderstood, from not being viewed in relation to the precise object of the prophet. "And did not He make one? Yet had he the residue of the Spirit, And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth." The one, which God made, is not Adam, nor Abraham, to either of whom the commentators refer it, though the case of neither of them properly suits the point more immediately in question. The oneness referred to is that distinctive species of it, on which the whole section proceeds as its basis--Israel's oneness as a family, God had chosen them--them alone of all the nations of the earth--to be his peculiar treasure. If he had pleased, he might have chosen more; the residue of the Spirit was, with him, by no means exhausted by that single effort. He could have either left them like others, or chosen others besides them. But he did not; he made one--one alone, to be peculiarly his own, setting it apart from the rest; and wherefore that one? Simply that he might have a godly seed; that they might be an holy people, and transmit the true fear of God from generation to generation. How base, then, how utterly subversive of God's purposes concerning them, to act as if no such separation had taken place? to put away their proper wives, and by heathenish alliances bring into the bosom of their families the very defilement and corruption, against which God had especially called them to contend? Such was this prophet's understanding of the covenant made with the fathers of the Israelitish people; and no other view of it, we venture to say, would ever have prevailed, if its nature had been sought primarily in those fundamental rec6rds, which describe the procedure of God in bringing it originally into existence.
1. No stress is laid on the particular place of which he was king, excepting that in the epistle to the Hebrews, its meaning (Peace) is viewed as emphatic;--only, however,, for the purpose of bringing out the idea, that this singular person was really what his name and the name of his place imported. He was in reality a righteous king, and a prince of peace. But there seems good reason to believe the Jewish tradition well-founded, that it is but the abbreviated name of Jerusalem. Hence the name Salem is also applied to it in Ps. Ixxvi. 3. And the correctness of the opinion is confirmed by the mention of the king's dale, in Gen. xiv. 17, which from 2 Sam. xviii. 18 can scarcely be supposed to have been far from Jerusalem. The name also of Adonaizedec, synonymous with Melchizedec, as that of the king of Jerusalem in Joshua's time (Jos. x. 3), is a still farther confirmation.
2. The notes of time here given for the period of the sojourn in Egypt are somewhat indefinite. The 400 years is plainly mentioned as a round sum; it was afterwards more precisely and historically defined as 430 (Ex. xii. 40-41). From the juxtaposition of the 400 years and the fourth generation in the words to Abraham, the one must be understood as nearly equivalent to the other, and the period must consequently be regarded' as that of the actual residence of the children of Israel in Egypt, from the descent of Jacob--not, as many after the Septuagint, from the time of Abraham. For the shortest genealogies exhibit four generations between that period and the exodus. Looking at the genealogical table of Levi (Ex. vi. 16, sq.), 120 years might not unfairly be taken* as an average lifetime or generation; so that three of these complete, and a part of & fourth, would easily make 430. In Gal. iii. 17, the law is spoken of as only 430 years' after the covenant with Abraham; but the apostle merely refers to the known historical' period, and regards the first formation of the covenant with Abraham as all one with its- final ratification with Jacob.
3. It may also Be noted, tliat By this quite natural and fundamental view of the ordinance, subordinate peculiarities admit of an easy explanation. For example, the limitation of the sign to males--which in the circumstances eould not foe otherwise; though the special purifications under the law for women might Justly be regarded as providing for them a sort of counterpart. Then, the fixing on the eighth day as the proper one for the rite--that being the first day after the revolution of an entire week of separation from the mother, and when fully withdrawn from connection with the parentfe bloodj it began to live and breathe in its own impurity.
4. It is not necessary to do more than notice the statements of Coleridge regarding circumcision (Aids to Reflection, I. p. 296), in which, as in some others on purely theological subjects in his writings, one is even more struck with the unaccountable ignoring of fact displayed in the deliverance given, than with the tone of assurance in which it is announced. "Circumcision was no sacrament at all, but the means and mark of national distinction. . . Nor was it ever pretended that any grace was conferred with it, or that the rite was significant of any inward or spiritual operation." Belitssch, however, so far coincides with this view, as to deny (Genesis Ausgelegt, p. 281) the sacramental character of circumcision. But he does so on grounds that, in regard to circumcision, will not stand examination 5 and, in regard to baptism, evidently proceed on the idgh Lutheran view of the sacraments. He says, that while circumcision had a moral and mystical meaning, and was intended ever to remind the subject of it of his near relation to Jehovah, and his obligation to walk worthy of this, still it was "no vehicle of heavenly grace, of divine sanctifying power," "in itself a mere sign without substance,"--as if it were ever designed to be by itself! or, as if baptism with water by itself were anything more than a mere sign! Circumcision being stamped upon Abraham and his seed as the sign of the covenant, and so far identified with the covenant, in the appointment of God, must have been a sign on God's part as well as theirs--it could not otherwise have been the sign of a covenant, or mutual compact; it must, therefore, have borne respect to what God promised to be to his people, not less than what his people were to be to him. This is manifestly what the apostle means, when he calls it a seal which Abraham received--a pledge from God of the ratification of the covenant, and consequently of all the grace that covenant promised. It had otherwise been no privilege to be circumcised; since to be bound to do righteously, without being entitled to look for grace corresponding, is simply to be placed under an intolerable yoke.--We regret to find Mr Litton, in his recent, and, as a whole, admirable work on the Church of Christ, espousing the same view regarding circumcision, and disavowing any proper connection between it and baptism. He thinks "the parallel holds good only in the accidental, and fails in the essential properties of the ordinances. Baptism is a means of grace, circumcision was not; baptism is the rite of admission to the privileges connected with incorporation in Christ, circumcision was not to the Jewish infant an analogous ordinance" (p. 704). He means,' that circumcision was not to the Jew, as baptism is to the Christian, a properly initiatory ordinance, and that it was rather for securing his continuance in the possession of the blessings of the covenant, than the rite of admission to them. And distinguishing between the two ordinances in this respect, he says: "Whatever part we assign to the Word in the work of regeneration, no one would maintain that a believer is, by virtue of his faith merely, in Christ" (p. 704). Why, no one has said this more expressly than Mr Litton himself. At p, 226 he says, "If the recorded cases of Scripture are to decide tlie point, the first occasion of spiritual life to the soul does not come from visible union with the church. The church cannot, in the first instance, introduce Mm to Christ, who has already come to Christ; for he that believes upon Christ, has come to Christ." It might, therefore, on Mr Litton's own views, be affirmed as well regarding baptism, as regarding circumcision, that it is for confirmation, rather than for initiation, in the gifts and privileges of grace. In truth, it is not in respect to the soul's inward and personal state, that either ordinance can properly be called initiatory (for in that respect blessing might be had initially without the one as well as the other), but in respect to the person's recognised connection with the corporate society of those who are subjects of blessing. This begins now with baptism, and it began of old with circumcision; till the individual was circumcised he was not reckoned as belonging to that society, and if passing the proper time for the ordinance without it, he was to be held as ipso facto cut oif. Under both covenants there is an inward and an outward bond of connection with the peculiar blessing--the inward, faith in God's word of promise (of old, faith in God, now more specifically, faith in Christ); the outward, circumcision formerly, now baptism. Yet the two in neither case should be viewed as altogether apart, but the one should rather be held as the formal expression and seal of the other.
4. In my former edition I missed the typical connection between the
Old and the New here exhibited; missed it, from looking too
exclusively, on the one hand, to the merely formal resemblances usually
pressed by typological writers, and on the other, to the ostensible
differences. Presented as it is above, the typical relationship is both
quite natural, and easy of apprehension, if only one keeps distinctly
in view the necessary connection between the divine and the human for
accomplishing the ends of the covenant--a connection influential and
co-operative as regards the immediate ends--organic and personal, as
regards the ultimate. That the action was, as Warburton represents, a
scenical representation of the death and resurrection of Christ,
appointed expressly to satisfy the mind of Abraham, who longed to see
Christ's day, is to present it in a fanciful and arbitrary light; and
what is actually recorded requires to be supplemented by much that is
not. ISTor do we need to lay any stress on the precise locality where
the offering was appointed to be made. It must always remain somewhat
doubtful whether the " land of Moriah" was the same with. " Mount
Moriah," 011 which the temple was afterwards built, as the one, indeed,
is evidently a more general designation than the other. And the minor
circumstances, excepting in so far as they indicate the implicit
obedience of the father, and the filial submission and clevotedness of
the son, should be considered as of no moment.