p. 11Ladies and Gentlemen,—
I am now to take the Bible histories to pieces in a simple sort of way, for the purpose of shewing that they are histories whose rationality and cohesion depend upon the truth of their representations as to the part God took in them, and that if you take that part out, they would crumble to nothing, and become impossibilities as matters of narrative.
You have all heard of Abraham’s migration from Chaldea to the land of Canaan. This we might call the root of Jewish history. So simple an incident as this comes within the category of what I have said. Abraham must have had a strong reason for leaving kith and kin and fatherland. Where shall we find it? There was no inducement in Canaan. The land was small, and occupied from north to south in every inch by powerful tribes. When he arrived, he found himself a portionless stranger. During all the time he stayed, which was to the end of his life, p. 12 (lasting over 100 years), he was “a stranger and sojourner”—(Gen. xxiii. 4). No natural object was served. If you say he was perhaps fond of change, a hundred years of stable settlement in the land is against you. If you say perhaps he had heard tempting reports of prospects in the land, and was disappointed, you indulge in a mere guess, which you cannot reconcile with the fact of his remaining in the land. Because, if he was disappointed, he would be sure to want to go back to his native Chaldea. He had the opportunity to return, and did not go (Heb. xi. 15). And he warned his steward when he sent him to his kindred to get a wife for his son Isaac: “Beware that thou bring not my son thither again.” (Gen. xxiv. 6).
Take the Bible account, and everything falls into its place. “God said to Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, and come into a land that I will shew thee.” If God commanded Abraham to go, we understand his going; we understand his staying; and we understand his care that his son Isaac should not go back to his country.
The words, then, are natural that we read: viz.: “The Lord God of heaven, which took me from my father’s house, and from the land of my kindred, and that spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land . . . .” (Gen. xxiv. 7).
If Abraham left his native country because God ordered him to do so, then a good many other things are explained, which, on any other view, are inexplicable. It cannot be denied that Abraham became a great nation. It cannot be denied that, in the line of his posterity, mankind has already attained the greatest p. 13 blessings they enjoy in the civilization springing from the influence of Christianity,—to put it no higher. And it cannot be denied that when Abraham came into the land, one of the first things said to him was, “I will make of thee a great nation, and in thee and in thy seed shall all families of the earth be blessed.” How is it that this foreshadowing has been so signally realized? Take God out of it, and there is no explanation. Leave God in it, and all is clear. You cannot take God out of the narrative without destroying it, and as for getting rid of it, that you cannot do. The proverbial ostrich, sticking his head in the sand, does not get rid of the foes which it only conceals from its own sight.
Then take the offering of Isaac. The narrative is perfectly intelligible as it stands. To prove Abraham, God commanded him, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (Gen. xxii. 2). Abraham does as commanded, and at the last moment, is arrested in the act of slaying Isaac. This we can understand; but take God out of it, what have we? Abraham going against every natural instinct without a reason. If you say he took it into his head that he ought to do this thing: or that he did it in imitation of the idolatrous people around him in the land, how do you account for his stopping short in the act? The vagary that would have led him to Mount Moriah, would certainly have led him to complete the business he went for. How could it be a vagary? Vagary would have been much more likely to take the opposite form. He loved Isaac: it is so written: and is it not according to your experience that a father would p. 14 love his son? Not only did he love him, but he looked to him as his hope of posterity. Whichever way you may account for it, you are obliged to admit that he expected to become a nation through Isaac. Would not such love and such expectation have tended to stop the way against all ideas of sacrifice? Yet here he goes a three days’ journey to do this very thing, in violation of all a father’s affection towards an only son, and in violation of all the expectations he had formed concerning the future. How do you explain it? You cannot explain it if you take God out of it. If you try to explain it without God in it, the story crumbles to pieces. It cannot hold together. With God in it, all is light, clear, rational, and intelligible. God is in it—you cannot take Him out. Everything is in harmony with it. Isaac became the channel of Abraham’s posterity; and Abraham’s character, which would degenerate to that of an impulsive fanatic with the No-God view, rises in the stature and dignity of that reasonable man of faith, which the Bible declares he was, and his whole history shews.
Ladies and Gentlemen,—If God was in the history of Abraham, the Bible is true, and true throughout. Prove one part, you prove all.