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DISCIPLINE.

Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, February 27, 1887.

"And he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together."-GEN. xxii. 6.

OLD Testament history gives us more than one glimpse of a pair of kindred souls, walking side by side on a journey with vast issues, knowing that they must soon say farewell, and dreading unspeakably the moment of saying it; the one to be taken, and the other left. Moses and Aaron go up Mount Hor. The elder brother is to die there, and there is a penalty in his dying. The younger and the greater is to strip him of his high priest's garment, and to put it on Eleazar his son, and then to watch him die; and to go down the mountain without him, soon to be laid in a lonely grave of his own. Two prophets stand together by Jordan. The elder has striven in vain to be alone in his last moments; the younger, divining what he must presently lose, will see the last of his master Elijah, and so catches on his own eager and yet reverent spirit the glow of the heavenly fire in which the mighty prophet passes up to God. Here are father and son. The father is he in whom all the families of the earth are to be blessed. The son is the child of promise, so long waited for, welcomed with such passionate delight. They are

walking side by side, and the mystery of an awful secret divides them. My friends, was there ever journey like that journey; ever a trial like that which, as with the piercing of a sword, searched Abraham? Saint he was, but still a man; servant of God, if ever there was one, yet at once husband and father. To Sarah, in that doubtless indivulged errand, he must have been tempted to feel guilty of a great treachery. The very sight of the son, who so absolutely trusted him with an unsuspecting love, and happy face, and buoyant step, under that cruel load, must have stirred in his heart an untold anguish.

Divines, some of them men whose writings have made an epoch in theology, have loved to formulate with more or less acuteness and research the doctrinal value of this pathetic incident.

Some observe in it the striking concurrence, such as never could happen again, of the recognized absoluteness of parental authority, the ever-present vivid sense of the supernatural, as a constant reasonable factor in human affairs, and of the supreme majesty of the divine will when once distinctly asserting itself over every other consideration whatever, whether of moral law, civil enactment, or human love. That heroic obedience has been at once a unique and unparalleled revelation to mankind of the power of faith and the glory of sacrifice.

One thought inspired Abraham-he was doing his duty. One principle underlaid his life-the absolute sovereignty of God. One assurance supported him-" Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" One hope kept his heart from breaking-"He accounted that God was able to raise him from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure."

Others, again, have seen in the incident-what, of course, is there—a beautiful though imperfect illustration of that great atoning sacrifice, in which the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Imperfect, however, for our Redeemer clearly foresaw from the beginning of His ministry the death which was to meet Him at the end; imperfect also, for Abraham offered Isaac in will, but not in deed. Our Redeemer not only approached His cross, but died on it.

To some of us, however, it may perhaps be found most instructive as a very real and solemn parable of the constant and blessed discipline of our daily human life, in which, moment by moment, each separate soul, whether conscious of it or unconscious, caring for it or not caring, is being made to pass through the crucible of inexorable circumstance, with a separate life-plan for each to fulfil, and a divine ideal for each to consummate, constantly and separately encompassed by an awful, tender, holy, invisible Presence, waiting to guide, watching to comfort, asking to bless, and able to love.

Let me proceed to expound this truth a little more fully, in some of the ideas which it may be thought to contain.

Every soul has its own road to travel, which no one else travels, or ever can travel. Occasionally it may seem to be in company with others; in a sense it is. Often it is solitary. Yet never quite solitary; for ever there stands at its side one to guide and to strengthen and his form is like the Son of God.

Each human soul is on its way to its own Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem has its own appointed Moriah.

On each of us God lays and fastens, as Abraham laid and fastened on Isaac, the burden of our future, which,

whatever it may be, and for as long as He bids us, we must be content to bear. We cannot change it; it would be a great folly to wish to change it. We may not drop it; for in carrying it is at once the fulfilment of our destiny and the training for our eternity.

Our character and our circumstances shape its career, develop its activities, and mature its capacity. Each man

is himself, and need not feebly desire to be any other man. God has His own thought of him, and will help him to accomplish it.

As Abraham walked with Isaac, Christ our Lord walks with us. But, perhaps most solemn thought of all, in His hand, as in Abraham's hand, is the fire and the knife for the burnt offering. We remember that it is the pierced hand, and we know it will be gentle with us, touched by the recollection of His own experience. He felt the fire, and the sharpness of the knife. In all our afflictions He is afflicted. He lays no burden on us that He has not first borne Himself-He, our Prince and Saviour. But the fire and the knife mean pain; and though sometimes the sacrifice at the last moment is spared us, as Abraham at the last moment was spared the awful misery of slaying his son to look at it, and come up to it, and make up our mind for it, is to drain the cup of half of its bitterness. Nay, after having once steadily faced it, we never are quite the same afterwards.

Again, each soul is continually to offer itself to God— as Isaac offered himself to Abraham-as a living sacrifice, and as a burnt sacrifice; not for expiation, but in selfconsecration; not to pay a debt, but to confess it. St. Paul calls it our "reasonable service." The essence of the sacrifice, and the secret of it, is in the will.

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