He appears for a not far from the scene of the interview). moment, and then vanishes from our view altogether. It is this which wraps him round in that mysterious obscurity which has rendered his name the symbol of all such sudden, abrupt apparitions, the interruptions, the dislocations, if one may so say, of the ordinary even succession of cause and effect and matter of fact in the various stages of the history of the Church, 'without father, without mother, without descent, having neither 'beginning of days nor end of life.'1 No wonder that in Jewish times he was regarded as some remnant of the earlier world— Arphaxad2 or Shem. No wonder that when, in after times, there arose One whose appearance was beyond and above any ordinary influence of time or place or earthly descent, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews could find no fitter expression for this aspect of his character than the mysterious likeness of Melchizedek. But there is enough of interest if we merely confine ourselves to the letter of the ancient narrative. He was the earliest instance of that ancient, sacred, though long corrupted and long abused name, not yet disentangled from the regal office, but still of sufficient distinctness to make itself felt : 'Priest of the Most High God.' That title of Divinity also appears for the first time in the history; and we catch from a heathen author a clue to the spot of the earliest primeval sanctuary where that Supreme Name was honoured with priestly and regal service. Tradition 3 told that it was on Mount Gerizim Melchizedek ministered. On that lofty summit, from Melchizedek, even to the present day, when the Samaritans still maintain that 'on this mountain' God is to be worshipped, the rough rock, smoothed into a natural altar, is the only spot in Palestine, perhaps in the world, that has never ceased to be the scene of sacrifice and prayer. But what is now the last relic of a local and exhausted, though yet venerable religion, was in those Patriarchal times the expression of a wide, all-embracing worship, which comprehended within its range the ancient 1 Heb. vii. 3. Jerome, Epist. ad Evangelum, § 5: and Liber Hebr. Quæstionum in Gene sim, ad loc. 3 Eupolemus (Eus. Præp. Ev. ix. 17). chiefs of Canaan and the founder of the Chosen People. The meeting of the two in the 'King's Dale' personifies to us the meeting between what, in later times, has been called Natural and Revealed Religion; and when Abraham1 received the blessing of Melchizedek, and tendered to him his reverent homage, it is a likeness of the recognition which true historical Faith will always humbly receive and gratefully render when it comes in contact with the older and everlasting instincts of that religion which the Most High God, Possessor of Heaven ' and Earth,' has implanted in nature and in the heart of man, in 'the power of an endless life.' Abraham and the 6 4. There is yet another occasion on which Abraham appears in connexion, not indeed with the revolutions of armies or of empires, but with the more awful convulsions which alties of the agitate the fabric of the world itself. What were the plain. precise special means by which the fertile vale of Siddim was blasted with eternal barrenness,—how and to what extent the five guilty cities of the plain were overthrown, is still a vexed question equally with theologians and geologists.2 We need only here consider the aspect of the catastrophe, as it was presented to the Patriarch. I will not weaken by repetition the well-known words in which the 'Friend of God' and of man draws near to plead before the Judge of all the earth against the indiscriminate destruction of the righteous with the wicked. This union of the yearnings of compassion with the sense of justice and of profound resignation, this rare sympathy with the calamities, not only of his own countrymen but of a foreign and a detested race, must in that distant age be counted (to say the least) as a marvellous anticipation of a higher morality and religion, such as we are accustomed to think peculiarly our own. Read and study that chapter well; we may go much farther and fare much worse, even in modern and Christian times, in seeking a true justification of the ways of God to man. 'And ' on the morrow Abraham gat up early in the morning to the 1 1 Jerome, Epist. ad Evangelum, § 6, justly remarks that the narrative leaves it ambiguous whether Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek or Melchizedek to Abraham. 2 Sinai and Palestine, 289. 'place where he stood before the Lord.' The hill is still pointed out amongst the many summits near Hebron, commanding a view down into the deep gulf which parts the mountains of Judæa from those vast, unknown, unvisited ranges which, with their caves and wide table-lands, invite the fugitives from the plain below. The subsequent history of that chasm was like a perpetual memorial of Abraham's prayer. The guilty cities disappear for ever. The descendants of the innocent fugitives become the powerful nations, of mixed character and dark origin -Ammon and Moab. IV. Lastly, the history of the world and of the Church requires us to notice the act of faith which takes us back into Sacrifice of the innermost life of Abraham himself, and marks at Isaac. least one critical stage in the progress of the True Religion.2 There have been in almost all ancient forms of Religion, in most modern forms also, two strong tendencies, each in itself springing from the best and purest feelings of humanity, yet each, if carried into the extremes suggested by passion or by logic, incompatible with the other, and with its own highest purpose. One is the craving to please, or to propitiate, or to communicate with the powers above us by surrendering some object near and dear to ourselves. This is the source of all sacrifice. The other is the profound moral instinct that the Creator of the world cannot be pleased or propitiated or approached by any other means than a pure life and good deeds. On the exaggeration, on the contact, on the collision of these two tendencies, have turned some of the chief corruptions, and some of the chief difficulties, of Ecclesiastical History. The earliest of these we are about to witness in the life of Abraham. There came, we are told, the Divine intimation, 'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, 'whom thou lovest, and . . . . offer him for a burnt-offering ' on one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.' It was in 'Now called Beni-naim; probably the ancient Caphar-Barucha. See Jerome, Epit. Paula, § 11; and Robinson, i. 490. 2 See Arnold's Sermons, vol. ii. 394-396; Maurice, Doctrine of Sacrifice, 33; its spirit the exact expression of the feeling of self-devotion without which Religion cannot exist, and of which the whole life of the Patriarch had been the great example. But the form taken by this Divine trial or temptation 1 was that which a stern logical consequence of the ancient view of Sacrifice did actually assume, if not then, yet certainly in after ages, among the surrounding tribes, and which cannot therefore be left out of sight in considering the whole historical aspect of the narrative. Deep in the heart of the Canaanitish nations was laid the practice of human sacrifice; the very offering here described, of 'children passing through the fire,'' of their sons and of their daughters,' 'of the firstborn for their transgres'sions, the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul.' On the altars of Moab, and of Phoenicia, and of the distant Canaanite settlements in Carthage and in Spain, nay even, at times, within the confines of the Chosen People itself, in the wild vow of Jephthah, in the sacrifice of Saul's sons at Gibeah, in the dark sacrifices of the valley of Hinnom under the very walls of Jerusalem,-this almost irrepressible tendency of the burning zeal of a primitive race found its terrible expression. Such was the trial which presented itself to Abraham. his tents in the south he set forth at the rising of the sun, and went unto the place of which God had told him. It was not the place which Jewish tradition has selected on Mount Moriah at Jerusalem; still less that which Christian tradition shows, even to the thicket in which the ram was caught, hard by the church of the Holy Sepulchre; still less that which Mussulman tradition indicates on Mount Arafat at Mecca. Rather we must look to that ancient sanctuary of which I have already spoken, the natural altar on the summit of Mount Gerizim.2 On that spot, at that time the holiest in Palestine, the crisis was to take place. One, two, three days' journey from the 1 That this temptation or trial, through whatever means it was suggested, should in the Sacred narrative be ascribed to the overruling voice of God, is in exact accordance with the general tenor of the Hebrew Scriptures. A still more striking instance is contained in the history of David, where From the same temptation, which in one book is ascribed to God, is in another ascribed to Satan: The Lord 'moved David to say ""Go, number Israel" (2 Sam. xxiv. 1) 'Satan provoked David to number Israel' (1 Chron. xxi. 1). 2 Sinai and Palestine, 251. 'land of the Philistines'—in the distance the highest crest of the mountain appears. And,' Abraham lifted up his eyes and 'saw the place afar off.' 1 The sacrifice, the resignation of the will, in the Father and the Son was accepted; the literal sacrifice of the act was repelled. On the one hand, the great principles were proclaimed that mercy is better than sacrifice, and that the sacrifice of self is the highest and holiest offering that God can receive. On the other hand, the inhuman superstitions, towards which the ancient ceremonial of sacrifice was perpetually tending, were condemned and cast out of the true worship of the Church for ever.2 There are doubtless many difficulties which may be raised on the offering of Isaac: but there are few, if any, which will not vanish away before the simple pathos and lofty spirit of the narrative itself, provided that we take it, as in fairness it must be taken, as a whole; its close not parted from its commencement, nor its commencement from its close, the subordinate parts of the transaction not raised above its essential primary intention. And there is no difficulty which will not be amply compensated by reflecting on the near approach, and yet the complete repulse, of the danger which might have threatened the early Church. Nothing is so remarkable a proof of a Divine and watchful interposition, as the deliverance from the infirmity, the exaggeration, the excess, whatever it is, to which the noblest minds and the noblest forms of religion are subject. We have a proverb which tells us that 'Man's extremity is 'God's opportunity.' S. Jerome tells us that the corresponding proverb amongst the Jews was 'In the mount of the Lord 'it shall be seen,' or 'In the mountain the Lord will provide ' —that is, 'As he had pity on Abraham, so He will have pity 3 son' [so applied to Isaac, Gen. xxii. 2], on occasion of a great national calamity ' adorned him with royal attire, and sacrificed him on an altar which he had pre'pared.'-Sanchoniathon: see Kenrick's Phoenicia, 288. In his Quæstiones Hebraicæ on Gen. xxii. 14. |