Abraham's looks on that morning. I do not suppose that on many mornings Abraham looked better than he did when he stepped out in the third verse. He looked wonderfully fresh, wonderfully calm, wonderfully self-possessed, wonderfully whole-hearted. No wonder. That was his resurrection morning. Overnight Abraham had died, and risen again. Had you ever a night like that? O man, you have gone to bed for little purpose if you have not had a solemn hour, when you became dead to self, and dead to the world, and dead to sin, and dead to self-seeking, and dead to pleasure, and come to life again with a new life of resignation to God and to God's purpose. I say that Abraham died overnight, and had his resurrection.

I think that he is a type and picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Read the Gospels over, and thread your way along carefully, so as to come to the actual spot, the actual place where Christ made the offering up of Himself a whole burnt-offering to the Father's will. I feel that, just like Abraham, it was not altogether and only on the cross, I think that it was away yonder in the agony of the garden. There He died. There He rose again. There He gave Himself up to His Father, body, soul and spirit, and after He came out of the agony in the garden men and devils might leap and dance upon Him-He was dead to them. He was living again with a life that they could not touch, that no lash, or mockery, or insult, or driven nail could reach. When He said, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Then, then was the offering up. And I think that, coming back again to our narrative, in his own measure it was the same with Abraham. He, too, between night and morning, had his Gethsemane, and he came out

of it calm, collected, ready to be offered up, and the time of his departure just at hand.

When Abraham rose up early that morning Isaac was as good as dead. All the loves, and hopes, and ambitions that centred round Isaac, he had stabbed them all to the heart fifty times on his bed, he had killed them all :-hear the hammer and nail going into them. And he rose up one of the grandest men who ever lived. He entered into grips, like his son Jacob long after, with God, and found out that to be flung by God, to be crushed by Him, is to be ennobled and strengthened for ever and ever. And then we think that we will find salvation by going to evangelistic meetings, and listening to a warm-hearted preacher, and starting off"I feel like singing all the time,

My tears are wiped away!"

Now, just think of it. Take your own bonny boy there in front of you, and then remember all that would gather round Isaac's head when Abraham looked upon him—his son, his only son. His very name was sunshine-Isaac means laughter. Isaac, the child of promise, the child round whom gathered all God's promises. Remember how long he had waited for him, how long he had wearied for him, and how, at last, he had come by a sheer miracle of God's power. And now there is to be this marring, this jarring, this cutting of the marble column into shivers just when it is rising in all its shapely beauty. Have not some of you been tried in that way? Let all of us keep very close to God, for we may be tried like that before another twentyfour hours. This God who loves us-this God who so loves us that we are never to question His love-is a God who, notwithstanding His love, is coming to His people every day, and taking away the desire of their eyes from before

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THE TRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH."

them. Every day He is taking away what seems to be the
very life of our hearts, what seems to be the very indispens-
able condition of our having any joy, and any comfort, and
any brightness here below. To-day He is doing it all
through the household of faith-taking the husband from
the wife, and the wife from the husband, with all this bare,
cruel, crushing, unexplained severity. "Thy son, thine only
son, Abraham. You know the one I mean-not your other
son, but this one, Abraham. It is not Ishmael—it is Isaac,
thy son, thine only son. Stand from before him. Bring
him to the front." ""
But-but, my God, the child I love?"
"Yes, whom thou lovest. Take him-'tis he I want." God
does that yet. The thing you love, your darling-He takes
it, and seems to fling it out of your sight; your son, your
daughter, your one ewe lamb-that. He will seem to be a
devourer, He will seem to be ruthless-this God who so loves
us that, if we are wise, we are never to question Him!
Ah! there are some hearts here that, even while I am
speaking, will know what God's finger is pointing at. You
are trying to look at some other thing, and you say,
"Here, O God, I will give Thee this." "Oh no, for it is
this-this-that I want." Oh how we try to give Him
something else, anything but this; and God says, “No,
this, this thine Isaac, thine only son whom thou lovest,
take him and offer him up for a burnt-offering.
wife, your husband, your daughter, your son, your money."
But, my Father, think of what I can do with it. Think
of the possibilities and the prospects that it opens out to
me." No, no, it is that. Give it to Me. Offer it up.”
There are people of God living

Your

God is doing it every day.
near to God who wake up to-day wealthy, and to-night they
are as poor as Job. Ah! do we understand Him, and do
we understand that this is a trial that all God's people
have to expect just because He loves them?

and

"Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, saw the place afar off." I have explained to you that, of

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66

"" THE TRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH."

225

course, the severe trial would be when the word came to him first, and that he had his battle in the secret place of his own soul; but still, how prolonged it was. Does it not look as if God were just torturing this poor dear man? If it had been brief and then done with, it would have been bad enough, but it was so long-lengthened out-day after day, day after day; and on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and knew that this was the place afar off of which God had spoken to him. I think that we need to learn that lesson. It is not in a day or in an hour. It is in a much longer time. Many times, many times, ay, to the best of His saints, God gives this prolonged trial. What for? Oh, as I have often said, not to destroy us, but to build us up, to see whether we really love Him or no, to see whether we really know Him, and have made Him so much our portion and our heart's desire that we have no fear of Him, but can love Him and believe in Him when His ways are utterly crucifying to flesh and blood.

Isaac would be looking up into his face, and talking about the bright morning, and about his future prospects, and every word going like a stab to the heart of Abraham. Now, that is how Abraham got to heaven. I say that is how he got to heaven, with every fine sensibility of his soul made to twang like a bow-string; and then we think to "sit and sing ourselves away, to everlasting bliss." No, scarcely. I trust we shall all get to heaven; but this is the road-self-renunciation, laying one's self on the altar. "If any man take not up his cross, and deny himself daily, and follow Me, he cannot be My disciple." He may do for a church-goer, or a chapel-goer, or an office-bearer, or a preacher, or a great many things in this ongoing called "religion," but "he cannot be My disciple." He refuses the furnace, the cleansing fires, the cross.

"On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off." Only learn, then, it will not be for ever. To-day and to-morrow will be trial, like our Master's; but,

like Him, on the third day we shall be perfected. God won't
keep us in the furnace to burn us up, but only long enough
to do us the highest good. On the third day the sore strain
in one sense came to an end. Then I want you to notice
further how God's grace sustains us with the one hand
while it lays on the burden with the other. There was a
great deal in that word in the fifth verse: "Abraham said
unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I
and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to
you." See the sustaining power of God's grace in time of
trial. With the one hand God seeming to crush us,
and with the other hand undergirding us. He delighted to
see that this Abraham, whom He had formed for Himself,
and whom He is touching finely to fine issues, He delighted
to see him standing the trial. I looked the other day with
admiration at a street porter carrying what would crush soft
people like us. I could not gather my strength below the
burden and put the burden just over me on the strength as
he did a man not nearly my weight, but trained; don't
you see? And that is what God is wanting to do with all
of us.
God likes to see a big load well carried. Now,
my dear troubled brother or sister-you, a widow, lost
your husband, five children, and you don't know how they
are to be fed, and you think everybody has left
you-believe me, God has not more interest in any-
body in London than in a widow with five children, and not
a friend. It will add to the joy of heaven if He sees you
carrying that burden well, back straight, shoulders firm, the
burden on, and your strength gathered well, and tight in
below. God likes to see it; it is the grandest sight on His
earth. When He sees you, He looks at Jesus beside Him
on the throne, and Jesus looks at Him, because you down
on the earth are bravely going along Christ's own path, the
great predestined, foreordained track through this world,
the track of suffering and trial borne in faith, giving glory to
God, "staggering not through unbelief."