The training of the Chosen people

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The Training of the Chosen People

BY

PROF. GEORGE E. HORR, D. D.

Professor of Church History in *he Newton Theological Institution

BIBLE STUDY PUBLISHING COMPANY Boston, Massachusetts

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H* lUdNARY of CONGRESS.

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SEP 21 iwa by the

Bible Study Publishing Co., Boston

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PREFACE. -

The chapters that make up this volume were published on successive weeks, during 1907, in a number of weekly and daily papers. They were designed to interpret the Bible Study Union Course of Sunday School lessons on Old Testament History.

The purpose of this volume is to interpret the moral and spiritual significance of the history in the light of the providential training of the Chosen People for their mission to the race.

The point of view is that of a student of history, who, on the one hand, does not believe that the conception of Jehovah and of His righteous law, against which Israel was always fighting as a spirited horse fights against a curb bit, was simply the product of the life and experience of Israel ; nor, on the other hand, that the history of Israel was uninfluenced by the processes which explain the evolution of other nations.

In prosecuting these studies the impression has deepened, in the mind of the author, that the wellestablished results of modern critical investigations of the Scriptures do little to weaken the spiritual significance or authority of the narratives. Indeed, in many instances their effect is the reverse.

Another conviction has taken solidity in writing this book, namely, that not only was there a divine Hi iv Preface

element in the events which make up the history itself, but that the men who wrote the history were, in a large sense, divinely guided in their choice and setting of material. It would require omniscience to describe every factor and feature of the most insignificant event. It requires a high type of genius, such as we see in a Goethe or a Carlyle, to present the typical aspect of an ordinary happening. The authors or editors of the Old Testament historical narratives write throughout from the point of view of Jehovah. They do not by any means tell us all that we would like to know, but whatever they tell us is typical of the significance of the epoch or character in the eye of Jehovah. They give us the perspective of God. That a vast literature, embracing the events of fifteen hundred years, should have been composed by many writers with faithfulness to this difficult plan is a unique fact, which suggests important inferences.

GEORGE E. HORR.

Newton Centre, Mass.

Table Of Contents

Chapter

I. The Vision of Creation

II. The Vision of Sin

Chapter I. The Vision Of Creation

Gen. chs. 1, 2.

A careful reader can hardly miss the spiritual significance of the Biblical narrative of the creation.

The origin of the universe is traced back to God. It is the product of His volition. When our souls respond to the loveliness of the springtime, or are moved by the sublimity of the mountains or the ocean, or are hushed in awe by the majesty and splendor of the starry heavens, we are answering to the manifestations of the thought of God. The universe brings us into contact with God in the same way that a mechanism, a picture, or a poem brings us into relation with the inventor, the artist or the poet, and interprets something of his personality. Or, to suggest a closer analogy, just as the child, whose life sprang from his father, and in whose veins and spirit his father's blood and temper pulsate, manifests and interprets his father, so creation reveals and interprets God. Wordsworth's immortal lines express the Christian feeling as to the created world :

I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity.

* * * * *

And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

Our theories of the process of creation do not, in the least, affect the rich implications of this truth.

We may conceive that the universe, including the higher forms of life, came into being by direct creative acts, or that it is the result of a process of evolution continued through ages. The method and process of creation are unimportant. The significant thing is that God did the act or is behind and within the process, as the hand is within the glove. The universe, culminating in the life of man, manifests, just so far as the nature of the material permits, the thought and will and character of God.

The narrative also clearly involves an affirmation of the inherent dignity and worth of men. Neither Sophocles, nor Shakespeare, nor Pascal in their noble and famous encomiums of man approach the majestic appreciation of the dignity of man uttered by the author of this narrative when he declares that man was made "in the image of God." It is not possible to put a higher estimate on man than that. If some one says that we cannot define the great phrase with precision, we reply that it is enough to know that man is so like God as to justify the description. Theologians have differed greatly as to the extent in which man lost the divine image by his transgression. But is it not certain that, however defaced it may be by an evil heredity or by vicious choices, it is not wholly obliterated? There is that in man to which God can appeal; there is that in man which God supremely values; there is that in man which Christ came to redeem.

And we are warranted in seeing in the creation of the world by God a pledge of the triumph of moral forces. The world as it came from His hands was "good." It reflected the divine character. It is still easy to discern goodness in creation. The evidences of it are all about us. But the world as we know it, especially the world of human life, is not wholly good. Evil exists. It is an insoluble problem, but it is not the controlling factor in the universe.

St. Peter speaks of God as "a faithful Creator"

Chapter i. The Vision of Creation 3

(1 Pet. 4: 19). He sees that the creation of the world involves an obligation on the part of the Creator to make sure that good shall finally triumph in it. Origen, the early Christian father, asserted that there was "a gospel of creation." He meant that if the Creator possesses the character of goodness that we attribute to Him, He could not create a world that would be permanently hostile to His own nature and destructive of His own purposes because of the dominance of evil in it. Such an idea is contrary to the deepest instincts of the human soul.

Therefore, no matter how much we may be tempted to pessimism and despondency, we may always be confident that good will finally vanquish evil, because the world was made by a good God. The creation of the world is a pledge of God's redemptive purpose for the world that He has made. The promise and triumph of righteousness are woven into the very structure of the universe.

Chapter II. The Vision Of Sin

Our lesson this week brings before us a narrative that, more than any other passage in literature, furnishes the background of Christian thought. In symbolical language it portrays the entrance of moral evil into human life. Throughout, it is marked by singular clearness of spiritual insight. Two or three out-standing truths demand special attention.

One is that evil is not involved in the original endowment of human nature. God did not exclude man from the things that at the creation He pronounced "good." Sin enters the human soul from without, it is not there as an essential part of human nature. When man admits evil into the citadel of his heart, it is there as a foreign element hostile to his true and natural experience. He cannot perfectly fraternize with it, or be wholly at peace with it.

And this statement is not vitiated by the fact that the soul's assimilation of evil has gone so far as to justify the stern language about the wickedness of the human heart used by the Biblical writers and the nobler pagan moralists. Still, man has not ceased to be man. If there is "a call of the wild" and "a call of the blood" there is a call of the image of God which we cannot escape. In the deepest sense the natural man is not the sinful man. When the prodigal son "came to himself," he returned to his father. Augustine uttered a universal conviction when he said, "Our heart is at unrest, until it find rest in Thee, O God." When Horace Bushnell described sin as "man's acting as he was not made to act," he gave a definition of sin that has hardly been surpassed.

No one ever acted more consistently upon this view of human nature than Jesus Christ. He confidently appealed to the man within the man. He absolutely trusted the intuitions and promptings of man's better

Chapter 2. The Vision of Sin 5

self. The life to which He called men was the normal life for which they were made. He looked at sin as an enemy from which He would deliver men.

The narrative also gives us a suggestion as to the nature of the law of God. It is restrictive that it may be protective. "Ye shall not eat . . . lest ye die." We are apt to look upon divine laws as so many hindrances to the enjoyment of the fullest and largest life; we put the law of God and the love of God into sharp contrast. There is no such opposition. The goodness of God is superlatively manifest in His law. The present writer will not soon forget an evening drive down a mountain side in the West Indies. We had been overtaken by the sudden coming of the tropical night, and the journey in the dark, along the edge of steep abysses, seemed full of peril, but we were assured when we thought of the strong iron rails that ran along the edge of the road that skirted the precipice. We regarded that parapet with gratitude. That was the feeling that moved the writer of the magnificent "Praise of the Law," known to us as the Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm.

Great peace have they that love thy law; And they have no occasion of stumbling.

***** Oh how love I thy law!

It is my meditation all the day.

The law of God, instead of being an arbitrary and harsh requirement to lessen human enjoyment or to dwarf human development, is a safeguard and guide to the richest and largest experience. It shows us, what the Sixteenth Psalm so beautifuly calls, "the path of life." The law of God is an evidence of God's love and care for man.

The entrance for sin was prepared by a skilfully suggested misconception of the purpose of God's law. The tempter fastened attention upon the prohibition, and ignored the loving, protective aim. He construed the law as an arbitrary diminution of human power and blessedness, and it was simply man's lack of faith in the wisdom and goodness of God that opened the way for the first sin. In the light of this is it strange that the Gospel should make faith the condition of salvation ?

Still further, this ancient record touches, as with the point of a needle, the gravest results of sin. One was personal, the other social. The most serious personal result was not being shut out of the garden, or the necessity of labor, but the breaking of fellowship between God and man. After the sin there sweeps into the souls of the man and the woman the sense of alienation from God, of fear and shame. We make the secondary primary when we make salvation consist in anything less than fellowship with God. No reliefs from external penalties, no blessedness of outward condition can constitute salvation, if the grave result of sin is not done away with, and the sinner restored to loving sympathy with God.

But the effects of sin are propagated in widening circles in the lives of others. The sin of the first parents registers itself in the crime of Cain. You cannot restrict and fence in evil. It perpetuates itself along every channel made by human contacts. The most sobering reflections come to mature men when they see the evil to which they yielded coming to new fruitage in their children. In all of Phillips Brooks' sermons there is no such tremendous passage as the paragraph in his Lenten Discourses in which he asks, What about the lives to which our misdeeds have given a fatal direction, though we ourselves have turned to God? What about our guilt for their sin? The slightest reflection upon such questions throws a vivid light on the sinfulness of sin.

Chapter 3. The Vision of Judgment CHAPTER III

THE VISION OF JUDGMENT.

Several traditions of the deluge come down to us from different sources, and, if we need to do so, we may use them to confirm our confidence in the Biblical narrative. The physical aspects of the flood, of course, raise many interesting- questions, but its moral features are much more important. Three great truths especially demand our attention : the fruitage of sin, the new start of the race, and the new tutelage.

Are the forces for righteousness that are symbolized in the declaration that man was made "in the image of God" sufficient to overcome the power of the sin which our first parents admitted into their hearts ? Antecedently, perhaps, we might say that they were. But as the Biblical narrative declares, the early history of the race was a story of progressive deterioration. "And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." In an exceptional man, like Noah, the inherent forces of goodness are strong enough to overcome bad tendencies, for a time; but, taking the race as a whole, the evil bent is overwhelming. And, as we shall see later, even Noah, the exceptional man, is not immune

Babylonian Flood Tablet.

from the common taint. The deluge was God's judgment upon the self -corruption of the race. It witnesses to the need of other forces than those involved in man's original endowment, if the race is to come into fellowship with God.

The result of the deluge was that human life made a new start in the earth on the basis of the very best that had been previously developed. A divinely ordered catastrophe, rather than an evolutionary process brought about a survival of the fittest. Noah stands for a new humanity starting from a new center.

At this point one naturally asks why God did not completely annihilate the race, and by another creative act repeople the earth with beings who would be righteous. The answer to that question is plain. If the new beings were endowed with the majestic prerogative of_free-will they would be as much exposed to the peril of an evil choice as the race of Adam. Here we touch some of the ultimate problems of existence, and the region is full of mystery; but it is reasonable to suppose that free-will is such a splendid endowment of being that God confers it in full view of the peril it involves.

And this freedom is not only the supreme glory of man, but it is the basis of the supreme glory of God. God's highest glory could not be revealed in automata that could not sin, but in beings who, though they can sin, are responsive to the motives to righteousness, and by these motives are led, even out of sin, into vital fellowship with Himself. How beautifully this is brought out in our Lord's interpretation of the Eighth Psalm! That Psalm, which perhaps is more frequently alluded to in the New Testament than any other passage in the entire Old Testament, is a description of God's glory as seen in creation. Jesus, in quoting it, gives the Hebrew phrase a delicate turn, and makes it read : "Out of the mouths of babes comes the perfect praise" (Mt. 21:16). In other words, the tribute of a human heart to God, even of a babe,

Chapter 3. The Vision of Judgment 9

is a greater manifestation of the glory of God than all the wonders of the heavens. That is so because the human heart is free. The creation of a new race would not have changed the problem, if that race was to be endowed with freedom of choice.

But, reading between the lines, it is easy to see that the new start of the race, after the deluge, was accompanied by a new tutelage. The inherent capacity of man to overcome evil has been disproved. Now God brings new motives to bear upon human life. We cannot possibly imagine a more impressive object lesson as to the evil desert of sin than the tremendous catastrophe that had overtaken the corrupt race. At the same time the marvelous deliverance of the survivors must have aroused in their hearts the deepest convictions as to the mercy of God. The promise that the flood should not be repeated ; the assurances as to the stability of the course of nature ; the removal of the curse upon the ground, and the safeguards thrown about human life are tokens that mankind is entering upon a new period. The goodness of the Noachian stock is not the sole factor for a better humanity. A new set of moral forces is brought to bear upon human souls. Human history now enters upon a new dispensation, which has as its characteristic mark the revelation of motives that appeal directly to the moral nature of man. We shall see, as we continue the study of the book of Genesis, how steadily this moral factor is made prominent until it clearly points forward to the supreme revelation in Jesus Christ.

io Old Testament History

Chapter IV. The Way Of Faith

Gen. 11 : 27—15 : 21.

The migration of Abraham from Chaldea to Canaan ranks as one of the most important events in the history of the race. If we except the fall of Adam and the crucifixion of Jesus, probably it Is the most important, for it marks the beginning of a new spiritual order in the world. From the call of Abraham and his response to it came the separation of the Chosen People from the rest of mankind. To this people God imparted those large and vital conceptions of religious truth upon which Christianity^rests. It is impossible to understand Christianity without Judaism, or Judaism without Abraham. In studying the call of Abraham, therefore, we stand at the fountain head of mankind's spiritual history. This Mesopotamian sheik was the progenitor and forerunner of all those who live the life of faith.

Haran, in Mesopotamia.

In its superficial aspects the migration of Abraham does not differ from that series of migrations which for thousands of years poured westward from the Euphrates valley. The leaders of these movements had substantially the same hopes that Abraham had — opportunity for agricultural expansion and for founding a prosperous, homogeneous race. We must seek the distinctive feature of the Abrahamic movement in

Chapter 4. The Way of Faith 11

its inner temper and motive. What set Abraham going was something deeper than the spirit of adventure, or the secular attractions of the enterprise." To this man had come the conviction of the existence of the one^true God. Relatively to the conceptions of his time he had formed an exceedingly noble conception of the divine character. , He had become convinced that it was God's will that he should undertake this enterprise. From this point of view the migration of Abraham, though it had its secular aspects, was not at heart a secular movement at all, but a witness in the sphere of the secular to one man's belief in the one true God, and in his loyalty to Him.

And because belief in God and loyalty to Him inspired this migration, it is used so frequently by the Bible writers as a rather salient illustration of faith. The elements of belief and affection and obedience are so interwoven in faith that we fall into grievous error the moment we attempt to define it in the terms of one of these factors alone. It is a belief, but not a belief that is an end in itself, or that fails to control action; it is obedience, but not the servile compliance with a command ; it is affection, but not an unintelligent emotion, or one ineffective for good.

The faith of Abraham, as shown in this migration, combined these three elements. First of all there was that marvelous conviction that somehow 1 had arisen in his soul as to the existence of one God, and the excellence of His character. Then~there was his obedience to the command of God, but it was not an obedience to a military order, which makes no human appeal except to the recognition of authority. Through great promises Abraham's love and confidence had been elicited and his view of the divine nature enlarged. That is why throughout the Scriptures commands are linked almost invariably to promises. Even the ten commandments, that may seem like a series of prohibitions, are not an exception to this statement, for we do not understand them in their reach and far outlook until we read them in the light of the promises connected with them in the book of Deuteronomy. The promises of God evoke in us something deeper and more vital than a sense of authority, they awaken in our souls the rich human response of gratitude and love and trust.

Thus we see this great man of old, moved by a sense of God coming to him in command and promise, going forth whole-heartedly to do the thing that corresponded with his spiritual conviction. The surrenders of intellect and affection and will to the sufficiently attested revelation of God are the component parts of faith.

And, in leading Abraham to this rich, large faith, God did not scruple to address the whole man. A motive may be good, but not the highest, and we have

-^to be trained to respond to the highest motives. God appeals to Abraham's desire for posterity and influ-

Aence. "I will make of thee a great nation and make thy name great.' ' He appeals to a higher motive still — his desire to serve^others : "In thee shall all the families of the earth bej)lessed." And, later, He appeals to the noblest motive of which we can conceive — the desire for fellowship with Himself: "I will be thy exceeding great reward." God's promises touched the whole range of his interests. But gradually the motives to which God appealed took their proper place in his life, as they do in every obedient life. There are few more interesting studies than to analyze the experiences of Abraham, which developed in him an increasing susceptibility to the highest motives. After the self-denial, following the rescue of Lot, he was ready for the supreme appeal and promise, and his whole life came to rest on it: "Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward" (Gen. 15:1).

Chapter 5. The Life of Faith 13 CHAPTER V

THE LIFE OF FAITH.

It is one thing to undertake an enterprise, another to prosecute it to a successful end ; one thing to make a high resolve, another to be faithful in all emergencies. The career of Abraham, "the Father of the Faithful," is not throughout perfectly consistent with fidelity to God. The journey into Egypt looks like a token of infirmity of purpose, while the prevarication to Pharaoh and the distrust of the fulfilment of the promise of posterity seen in the episode of Ishmael, disclose the man in his weaker moods. But we must not mistake the eddies in the current for the main stream. Taken as a whole, the career of Abraham is a resplendent illustration of a life upon a very high level. The man was tenacious of spiritual realities ; he was controlled by his moral convictions ; he believed in God ; he lived the life of faith. His biographer gives us several interesting "proofs of this.

One is his magnanimous attitude toward his nephew, Lot. There are men who, without any great natural capacity, become very prosperous, because they happen to be associated by blood relationship or by marriage with really able men. It was probably because Lot "went with Abram" that he had "flocks, and herds, and tents" (Gen. 13 : 5). Such men are apt to be quite insistent on their rights. The quarrel of the shepherds put Abraham in a delicate position. If he surrendered the best of the country to Lot, it looked as if he were subjecting the promise of God that he should inherit the land to a long postponement. But Abraham believed in_God so thoroughly that he did not take that view of the case at all. To his mind the fulfilment of God's promises did not depend upon his sharpness in a bargain, or a close insistence onjiis rights, at the cost of a quarrel. He believed in God so much that he could cheerfully adopt the most magnanimous course, certain that

God's promise would not fail in the evolution of

events.

A more striking proof of the same faith is given in

the story of his conduct after the death of Sarah.

Among the Orientals the desire to be buried with

their kin is very strong. The sons of Jacob brought the body of their father back from Egypt to Palestine. The hosts of the exodus brought back the bones of Joseph to the fatherland. About half a century had passed since Abraham first entered the country that God promised

dans, who will allow no (Jnristians to see it. l'ne l ij r i • An A above cut is from a stereograph copyrighted by SnOUia De mS. AnU Underwood & Underwood, N. f. yet he d j d noy^

sess a foot of ground in it. The long delay migh"T well awaken distrust of the promise. In these circumstances the natural thing would be to carry the body of Sarah back to Chaldea — the land of their common kin. But Abraham believed God. He did not possess the land yet, but he believed that it would be his — the home of his race — and so he bought "the field of Machpelah before Mamre" for a burying place.

There is something indescribably fine about this. It is a comparatively simple thing to obey a command. The precept marks out the path. But to be as true to the inevitable sequences of your faith as if they were embodied in commands, requires an honest soul, moved by deep and noble insights. Many a man to-day fails to live the life of faith because he does not see

Mohammedan Mosque over the Cave of Machpelah.

This cave was the burial place of the patriarchs. It is guarded very jealously by the Mohamme dans, who will allow no Christians to see it. The

Chapter 5. The Life of Faith 15

that the legitimate sequences of his faith are quite as binding on his conscience as any command of God.

And then, too, the faith of this man was revealed by his attitude toward the command to sacrifice Isaac. The moral difficulty that some have felt in connection with this incident is resolved when we realize that God did not command Abraham to do something repugnant to his moral ideas. For, at this time, Abraham, like the heathen around him, believed that human sacrifices were the most acceptable offerings that could be made to the Deity. And it is to be observed that in accommodating His command to the moral status of the man to whom it was given, God used it as a means of lifting the ideas of Abraham and his posterity to a higher level. Through this experience, in a flash, the sacredness of human life was revealed to Abraham and his raceT The lesson was never forgotten. Henceforth the climax of apostasy from God was the worship of Molech by human sacrifices (Deut. 12: 31; Jer. 7: 31).

The shock this command gave to Abraham was not to his moral ideas, but to his ambition, his affections, his faith in God's promises. Against the hopes and trusts of a lifetime there was arrayed a command which he believed to be morally right, and he chose the way of obedience. He absolutely surrendered himself to the will of God. The sacrifice that God demanded was not the sacrifice of Isaac, but the spiritual sacrifice of Isaac's father, and, by Abraham's heroic willingness to sacrifice the hopes of a lifetime, he demonstrated the royal quality of his faith in God.

To-day the divine command is constantly running athwart our pleasures, our ambitions and the things upon which we have set our hearts. The man of faith is not the one who simply adheres to a statement of belief, but the man who subordinates his advantage and himself to a knowledge of God's will. Faith is the stuff out of which heroism is made. The men of faith are the heroes of the world.