feeling of one to whom the telling of the tale revived real and awful experiences of human hearts, and to whom the dramatic issue of the pathetic struggle was big with historic significances.

The use of the names of God, "Elohim" and “Jehovah,” in this narrative—which is usually the sign of two hands, separated by several generations and by wider chasms of thought-gives us the clue to the historic aspect of the story. "Elohim" calls Abraham to the sacrifice of Isaac [verses 1-10]; i.e., the earlier religion of Israel saw nothing wrong in such offerings. The angel of "Jehovah " arrests the hand of Abraham [verse II, etc.]; i.e., the later and higher religion, worshipping God under this name, forbade such offerings; substituting animal sacrifice for the sacrifice of human life.

And thus we are guided to read the riddle of the story. Of course we do not think of any outward audible voice speaking to the patriarch. Within his soul was heard the whisper which resolved itself into the call of Jehovah. Jehovah asked for the life of his son, "thine only son, whom thou lovest," as the father's agony goes over it again and again. How could he obey? How dare he disobey? Could such a deed be asked in the name of Jehovah? But who was he that he should question the voice of Jehovah? So, through a struggle that we may dimly trace in the story, the poor human heart nerved itself to obey the voice from on high, and to slay an "only son."

Through such an experience of anguish, of torturing suspense, of awful questionings, of agonized resolve, hosts of Hebrew fathers passed, finding, alas! no blessed culmination in a rescue from on high. It is hard for us to realize that human beings like ourselves ever offered their children's lives in sacrifice; but such, we know too well, was the abhorrent rite of many peoples, through long ages. They felt that they must needs placate their gods, whose natures they read in the whirlwind and the volcano, in the earthquake and the flood, in the deadly power of the pestilence and the blasting heat of the summer's sun. They gave that which such gods seemed to relish - life. They gave their choicest lives. Such awful rites crept into Israel, as we know from its histories; crept even under the shadow of Jehovah himself.

The religion of the early Hebrews appears to have been, like that of their kindred races, a Natureworship; broken into the various forms which the manifoldness of Nature's powers suggested, and characterized, in some of those forms, by the gross and cruel spirit that breathed through certain physical forces. Nature's reproductive energy, when deified, developed sacraments of licentiousness; and Nature's destructive forces, when personified, as in the summer sun, developed a ritual of death. have many reasons for believing that one of the forms of Nature's forces chiefly worshipped by the

We

early Hebrews, was the personification of pitiless power, familiar to us in the religion of other Semitic peoples, which was fashioned by the scorching heat of the midsummer sun.1 Even after the revelation which came through Moses, and the dedication of the people to Jehovah, the old Nature-worship reasserted itself; and the sublime vision of the SelfExistent One, the source and norm of the Moral Law, clouded over the souls of the common people and was lost to sight; the new name, Jehovah, remaining as the title of the fierce and dreaded power which was their highest conception of the divine. Jehovah was long worshipped by the lower strata of the people, as was the Canaanitish Moloch, with offerings of human lives. In some hour of sore need, when everything went wrong with a man, and when the resistless forces of nature appeared to be leaguing to crush him utterly, he would hear the whisper-The gods are angry; they must be placated; they call for blood. And then the voice would articulate itself in horror-"Take now thy son, thine only son whom thou lovest, and offer him." And again and again, in myriad instances, led by this voice which seemed to come from on high, man did actually offer up the son of his love. At last the time came when the growing conscience revolted against such religious crime, and the growing intelligence saw that Jehovah could not really 'See Note 8 to Chapter V.

desire such frightful oblations. And then in the awful silence that followed an agony of struggle, was heard the voice calling unto him "out of heaven "Lay not thine hand upon the lad."

Some commanding soul must have first gone through this experience; heard, as he thought, Elohim bidding him to this frightful sacrifice; and then heard, as he knew, Jehovah restraining him forever from such a wrong. Hebrew tradition assigned this memorable experience to the Father of the Faithful. But that lofty soul in whose " abysmal depths of personality" this problem of sacrifice first resolved itself, questioned, agonized and triumphed for the people; receiving a revelation in his spirit which was not for himself alone but, as souls were prepared to receive it, for all tortured fatherhood and motherhood. Thus, around the tradition of the patriarch, this story wove itself out of the heart of a people. It vibrates with the quiverings of a nation's agony, and thrills with the joy of a race freed from the ghastly fear that shrouded homes in horror, and that made the very charms of a beautiful child sicken a mother's heart. It marks the victory of the most beneficent reform ever achieved in the progress of religion-the abolition of human sacrifices. Sacrifice of life continued still for ages; for man moves slowly, step by step, toward the truth of religion. The ram in the thicket took the place of Isaac; the blood of poor dumb brutes flowed instead of human

blood, in propitiation of the Heavenly Power. And - still conscience and reason grew in man, under the Spirit of God which was nurturing him, until at length came forth the lofty strain of pure religion.

"Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord,

And bow myself before the high God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offering,
With calves of a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good;
And what doth the Lord require of thee,
But to do justly, and to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with thy God." 1

The ancient instinct was right. We are called of God to sacrifice; but as the Lord Christ has perfectly shown us—ourselves; to withhold not our very lives from duty, from humanity, from God.

The twenty-third chapter leads the story of Abraham into the shadows of the end. Sarah dies; and the old man bethinks himself of a resting-place in which to lay the dear dust. He therefore buys the field of Ephron, with its cave of Machpelah; his one possession in the land of promise, the final real estate investment of every man-a burying-ground.

1 See Note 9 to Chapter V.