REBEKAH AND ABIGAIL.

WE adore God's grace and condescension in presenting to us what most intimately concerns our interests, as well as His own glory, portion by portion, "here a little, and there a little," so that notwithstanding our lowliness, yea, in our lowliness, we may enjoy communion with Him. "We know in part." The lamb in Egypt, the Red Sea, and the Jordan, combinedly illustrate in type His blessed salvation. The shepherd, the diligent woman, and the father of Luke xv., give us the seal of the Godhead, that this salvation should be the portion of the lost, and His joy when it becomes so. The sacrifices also unfold to us even now the manifold glories of the cross of the Son of God. No one thing could serve as a perfect illustration of the truth, and no one person could manifest it, however devoted to God, save the One in whom all foreshadowings blend, and on whom the most attenuated rays of divine light converge, even Jesus, who is the Truth. Whatever of true zeal, love, devotedness to God, or glory according to God, is manifest in man down here, it is but the feeble reflection of what is in Him. Wherever there has been acquiescence in God's evident arrangements, it but pointed forward to Him who lived "by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God." We have two beautiful examples of such acquiescence in the subjects of this paper-Rebekah's acceptance of God's arrangements for Abraham's son through his aged servant, as well as Abigail's determined acknowledg

ment of David's royalty, then seen only by faith. This enhances the circumstances recorded in Gen. xxiv. and 1 Sam. xxv., and throws a beam of divine light upon both cases, enabling us to perceive in each a precious type of the Church.

It is our joy to own that when God would form a Bride for His Son, His love to Him is the pledge that she will worthily occupy the marvellous position to which she is called. We read of her "prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband," as "having the glory of God;" and we are instructed that " He who hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God." (2 Cor. v.) Even now "the body" on earth reflects the glory of the Head above. He says, "I am glorified in them." (Compare 1 John iv. 17.) When therefore we consider an Isaac, or a David, typically, not only do we read in a Rebekah or an Abigail his natural complement, even as the Church is "the fulness of Christ" (Eph. i. 23); but we may justly expect to find something premonitory of the grace of Christ in themselves also, which we have seen to be the case. This makes a study of our subjects directly profitable to our souls. In a consideration of the moral features displayed in Rebekah's history we find those doubtless which link her case with Abigail's; but the former presents more the ardent zeal manifested at the opening of the wilderness journey; the latter, the intelligent apprehension of the supreme worth of the bride's object, gained amid the vicissitudes of the journey, in immediate view of the close.

Abraham will not seek a wife for his son among the nations around him, upon whom the judgment of God rested because of their iniquity (Gen. xv. 16-21), and whose destruction would be concurrent with the estab

lishment of his seed in the glory which God had promised. God moreover had called him into a pilgrimship, away from country, kindred, and father's house, which, as he realized the call, extended to "his household after him." When therefore Abraham's servant suggested the compromise, by which Isaac's true place on earth would be ignored, to meet the contingency of the woman's hesitation or dislike, to leave country, kindred, and father's house, and to become a pilgrim with him, the servant receives reiterated caution that Isaac's place on earth should be maintained at all cost. The standard should not be lowered under any circumstances. How many adopt the suggestion just referred to, and lower the gospel standard, to make grace palatable to those who naturally shrink from the claims of such glory as God offers, involving identification with the lowly Jesus in the scene of His rejection! How few work from the apostolic point of view, in which Christ's glory is supreme, and the gospel the means of gathering "from among the nations a people for His name!" (Acts xv. 14.)

The servant goes forth, the bearer of glad tidings, and proves the truth of the scripture: "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." He "rolls his way upon the Lord, and He brings it to pass." (Psalm xxxvii. 5, marg.) Forth comes Rebekah before he had done speaking, who brings him to her father's house. He will not eat until he has told his errand, in which the glories of the heir, his separate place in the scene of his pilgrimage, and the uncompromising character of that pilgrimage, are set forth. He dwells upon the tokens by which the Lord God authenticated His servant Abraham's messenger.

This being accepted, Rebekah receives from the

*

messenger's treasures (Matt. xiii. 52), tokens of Isaac's glory-a foretaste of what she is called to share. Her relations also profit through the overflowing abundance of the source which is henceforth to be at her command. It is worthy of notice that as yet she knows nothing of Isaac himself. She has not even heard his name. The parents see the advantage offered, but though appealed to, on the ground of God's hand being so manifest in the whole matter, to let Rebekah go at once away, they hesitate, saying, "Let the damsel abide with us a few days" (a full year, marg.). She however, like Paul in other days," immediately, conferring not with flesh and blood," says, "I will go." She yields herself implicitly to that in which God's hand is so plainly seen, and enters upon the vicissitudes of a dreary journey, leaving country, kindred, and father's house for a land and circumstances yet unknown, except through belief in the message. Arrived at Gerah, though she has met Isaac, and learned his name from himself, she has not reached the termination of her pilgrimage. It now assumes a new and characteristic phase, in which Rebekah learns how much is still to be endured in fellowship with Isaac, and how much he is to her in the midst of it all. Thus we have typified in her the commencement of the Church's wilderness journey, the start for and with Christ of a new-born soul. Such zeal! Everything laid aside and counted dead weight in the ardour of first love. It was so with early Christians. They "took joyfully the spoiling of their

* Thus it ever is with "flesh and blood." (Gal. i. 16.) Abraham could leave country and kindred; but not until his father's death set him free from the influences of flesh and blood, did he leave his "father's house at Charran.

goods, knowing that in heaven they had a better and an enduring substance."

"All for Him content to leave."

Turning now to 1 Sam. xxv., Rebekah's pilgrimage passed on to her children in a manner too truly sorrowful, and they had not as yet entered into rest, God saying in David, “To-day . . . for if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day." But in David, a man after His own heart, God offers rest to His people. Abigail owns David as God's anointed, whose soul should be "bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord God," realizes what God was offering to Israel, if they would hear his voice, and thus morally reaches the end of the journey upon which Rebekah entered. Historically, we know, Israel did not then attain to God's rest. The rest remains, and will be secured through mercy to Israel in the blessed antetype. Meantime God's king is in rejection. Dark times have fallen upon David since the women of Israel sang, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands." Hunted as a partridge on the mountains, with but few followers, those whom distress, poverty, and bitterness of soul (xxii. 2, marg.) had gathered around him, God takes occasion by these circumstances to test Israel, and to gather out a company, who should receive a distinguished place in the coming glory with their leader, and amongst these we find Abigail. Wherever faith exists, the trials which test it but manifest its character to the glory of God. (Compare Deut. xxxiii. 8,9.) Abigail's faith is equal to the test. Nabal, though her husband, fails altogether. His heart is set upon present advantage, and this blinds him alike to David's