even with a merciful God. They were to learn also the importance of keeping the cities pure which they might build in the future that evil is aggravated and runs riot where people are herded together within narrow confines.

A stern lesson was also taught Lot, for in the destruction of Sodom he beheld the fruits of his self-seeking swept away in a few hours. Nothing remained of all the wealth he had so laboriously gained. He had imperiled his own soul and those of his family to amass a fortune, and now he had nothing to show for it. He had lived for this world and lost all. What befell Lot will also happen to all who, like him, are seeking merely earthly good. Some day the vanity of their gains will be felt. Let us hope it will not be too late.

Edward Sampson Tead.

TRIAL OF ABRAHAM'S FAITH.

GENESIS 22:1-13.

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham," etc. I. The command. The difficulties involved in this divine command to offer Isaac have been easily overcome by some students by their denial of the fact. Either the voice was not from God or it was misunderstood. But it is impossible with any reverence for the record thus to dismiss the case. On its face it asserts a divine command, understood and obeyed, and then a countermand in which the spirit of obedience was accepted and a less painful duty substituted in place of that originally imposed. Let us put ourselves back so far as we can into that early time and see what this trial meant to the man who was most concerned in it.

We need to remember first of all that Abraham was tested by the standards of his day and not of ours. The rite of sacrifice was evidently one of the earliest forms of worship. It appears with the first men born into the world, a thank-offering or a sin-offering, or both combined. There is no intimation in the Bible that it was commanded or its duty revealed before Abraham's time; no explanation of its meaning had been given in foregoing revelations, so far as we can tell. "Sacrifice is recorded as having been offered at the very gate of Eden, but who or what prompted it we are not told, and though inferences have been drawn as to its divine appointment, they are only inferences. The fact of its being offered is recognized, but it is recognized as a fact which arose. beyond the sphere of revelation. It is no more an exclu

sively biblical fact than is the moral law." 1 Abraham was accustomed to the idea and practice of it, but it was a traditional form of worship with him as with those who had gone before him. The only recorded reference to it in his previous life was in the ordering of the animals which were to be slain and divided as a covenant seal of the promise of a seed and of a land. Sacrifice as an offering of a life was a familiar thought to the patriarch.

Nor was the idea of the sacrifice of a human life startling and revolting to his moral sense as it is to ours: for it was the custom of all the nations around, even of that from which he had just been called out that he might learn and know a better way. The moral standards of every age are largely set by custom. Human life has not always been invested with the sacredness with which it is regarded in our day. Nor indeed now is it held of much account in some of the barbarous, or even civilized, nations of the East. To Abraham's age the sacrifice to the deities of a life was held to be its most sacred use. We have no record of any teaching up to this hour by which his view of it should have been largely different from that of his contemporaries.

Nor is there any reason to believe that Abraham mistook the meaning of the voice from heaven, that God intended by this command a moral sacrifice, the dedication of this son of promise to God in a spiritual sense. There is no suggestion of this in the staying of the uplifted hand; no word of reproof or correction. Only approval is given to the man of faith, as a substitute is provided for the designated victim. If Abraham had misinterpreted the Lord's command, so that when he bade him dedicate the life of his only son to the service of God he proceeded to devote that life to a bloody death, surely he would have been corrected as well as set right. 1 The Bible: its Revelation, Inspiration, and Evidence. By John Robson, D.D.

It seems evident then that this was, as the record says, a trial of Abraham's faith. A trial, not for God's information as to the real character of this called man, but a bringing his inward life and motive to the test of outward action, that it might be manifest to others, and especially to Abraham himself. The simple question to him was whether he should obey the God whose call he had followed from his father's house and land, as those who trusted other gods obeyed them. A man is greatly strengthened when he has borne such a test well; when he has proved his faith by some act of self-denial or self-sacrifice and knows that he did not weaken at the supreme testing moment. "The proof of faith worketh patience," and it is worth much to have that patience and to know that it is ours.

So it has seemed good to God in every age to put his chosen servants to the proof, to refine his silver in the fire, to certify them to themselves and to the world as truly his. Thus he brought Abraham up to the severest test of devotion according to the standards of the age.

II. The obedience. How well that ancient father stood the test the story tells in simple words. The very simplicity of it all is most touching. Abraham rises early in the morning, — no word is told us of the sleepless night, -prepares the wood, and takes Isaac with him to the place of which God had told him. He leaves his servants and goes on alone, he and the lad. He lays the wood in

order and lays his son-apparently his unresisting sonupon it. He takes the knife in his hand and raises his arm to strike the fatal blow.

There is no account given of Abraham's agonized heart, no census of his tears or sighs. Perhaps he did not feel as keenly as a father of our day would, so many centuries later. But he could not have failed to be shaken and distressed at the deed he was ordered to do. He could not have forgotten the promise that centered on this son

and that the descending of that uplifted arm would bring the frustration of it all.

The emphasis which the story lays is not upon the excess or lack of emotion which accompanied it, but simply on the fact of a prompt and exact obedience to the heavenly voice and vision. He stood the test — the most searching that could be applied; whatever else was true or not about it, he obeyed Jehovah as faithfully as any worshiper of idols obeyed what was understood to be the command of his god. It was the obedience which was accepted, and the prophet's saying emphasized in anticipation, "To obey is better than sacrifice." So repeatedly the assurance is given him of the future blessings upon his seed and upon the world through them, and repeatedly he is assured that it is because he has obeyed God's voice.

That is what is asked of any child of God in all the ages. Obedience is not a conspicuous virtue, not a grand acquirement--but it is not a virtue which belongs to slaves. It is rather the mark of sonship.

Shall we then

But some one says many perhaps obey God, or what we think to be the command of God, whatever it may be? whether it be according to the standards of morality right or wrong? If God should bid a man to murder or to steal, should he do it on that authority? We answer, first, that one must be absolutely sure that it is a divine command, and the test is given to us in the Bible and for a similar purpose. "To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them."

Abraham had no written book of revelation to appeal to. While there is doubtless an absolute standard of morality, it is largely among men a conventional matter. The command to Abraham, as has been said, did not shock his moral sense as it would ours. That father who a few years ago obeyed what was to him a call of God to