THE HOPE OF ABRAHAM

by Joseph Addison Alexander

(Continued from Page 298)

“He looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Heb. 11: 10.

And who are its inhabitants? “The nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it.” And are none to be excluded? Ah, yes! “There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” And no names are found there but the names of those who wash their robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb. This is the grand distinction of the city for which Abraham looked. It is a city free from sin. In this it differs from all earthly cities. It is hard to conceive of one of our great cities without the associated images of filth, riot, drunkenness, debauchery and wretchedness. But if we ever reach the city of Abraham, and rest upon his bosom at its sumptuous feasts, we shall know how to separate these hateful concomitants from our conceptions of a city.

And why is it called a city? Because with a city we associate ideas of substantial strength, immense wealth, regular government, social intercourse, refinement of manners, and external splendour. But what are all these, in the cities of the earth, to the surpassing glories of that city for which Abraham looked, and where the saints shall be enthroned as kings and priests unto God? No wonder, then, that Abraham, forgetting things around him, looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

1. Here, then, we begin to see a marked resemblance between his case and our own. However foreign and remote from our experience what has hitherto been said of his condition, yet at last we are alike, we are all sojourners and strangers upon earth, we seek the same city as the patriarch. However well we may be pleased with it, however fully satisfied with what it can afford, we know that our abode in it is only for a time: it is not the place of our rest. And of this we are receiving constant admonitions. If man’s relations to his fellow-man remained unaltered during the present life, he might be tempted to believe that this was his final resting-place. But Providence has left no room for such an illusion. The cords that bind us to the world are breaking one after another, and the very ground on which we stand seems to slide away from under us; so that, in middle life and old age, we appear to tread no longer the green and smiling earth we trod in childhood. We have within us also abundant indications that we are mere sojourners. The sense of a hereafter, the instinctive stretching of the thoughts towards it, teach us the same lesson; while the voice of conscience sometimes shrieks, and sometimes whispers, Arise and depart hence: this is not your rest. You may, perhaps, have heaped up wealth, and used various methods, in order to persuade yourself that you are here at home, and you may be ready to exclaim, What! am I a mere sojourner, surrounded as I am by all this permanent prosperity? You are like a man upon a journey homeward, who should tarry at a wayside inn, and expend his time and money in furnishing and decking his temporary lodging. And do you not at times feel yourself that it is so? Have you not often an uneasy sense of present insecurity and approaching change? And is not this sufficient to obscure the brightness of your precious metals, and to impair the verdure of your pleasant fields? And you, O men of pleasure, have not you the same experience? In the midst of your exciting and degrading pastimes, have you not paroxysms of alarm and restlessness? Amidst your voluntary madness, have you not your lucid intervals, in which you feel you are mere sojourners in a foreign country? All feel it; all know though all will not allow themselves to act as if they knew that they are not at home, and that a journey is before them.

2. Now, this feeling of uneasiness, this sense of homelessness, is, as you well know, incompatible with happiness. In order to be happy, you must have a home, either present or in prospect. Have you such a home? Remember that earthly homes, in reference to eternity, are nothing worth. Look at the households breaking up around you, and say whether these can be your solace and your stay for ever. What will you do, then? Will you waste yourselves in misanthropic discontent? No! do as Abraham did: look forward to the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. The more unsatisfactory you find this world, look the more eagerly and steadfastly on that which is to come. Are you just beginning life, and have you, as yet, experienced no vicissitudes? Oh, then, be wise beforehand. Do not wait till your heart is sickened and your temper soured by disappointment. But now, when your feelings are elastic, and your affections ardent, even now, look for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

If, on the other hand, experience has taught you the treacherous hollowness of sinful pleasures, and your heart is almost breaking with defeated hopes, unsatisfied desires, and a sense of want, then have you the less excuse for looking any longer at those objects which you have already proved and found unsatisfactory. Oh, begin at last to look away from this world, with its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces — look away from the baseless fabric of a vision, to a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

1. But here let us guard against a fatal error — the error of imagining that mere expectation is alone required. Believe me, multitudes have looked for that city who have never reached it. There is but one path to it through the wilderness of life, and that path is a narrow one. It was by that path that the Father of the Faithful gained the object of his faith and hope. If you would gain it likewise, you must walk in the footsteps of the Friend of God. Do you ask what path he travelled? I reply, the path of humble, childlike faith. We know from the lips of Christ himself, that Abraham desired to see his day, and saw it, and was glad. It was faith in God’s mercy, and that was counted to him for righteousness. It was a firm belief that God would set forth a propitiation for the sins of men, and a hearty acceptance of the pardon thus provided for himself.

These are the footsteps of the Father of the Faithful. If, then, you are merely looking forward to the happiness of heaven, without knowing or caring how it is to be obtained, learn from the example of Abraham that you must renounce all sin and self-reliance, and believe in Jesus Christ for the salvation of your souls, if you would look with any well-grounded hope, for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

1. And now let me turn to you who have your faces turned to Zion, and are already looking for that city to which Abraham aspired, and where he reigns in glory. It is said that when the caravan of pilgrims to the sepulchre of Christ cross the mountains of Judea, worn with hunger and fatigue, they are sometimes ready to relax their efforts and despair of safe arrival. They may even repent of their own folly in attempting so adventurous a journey, and wish themselves in safety at their own distant firesides. But these thoughts all vanish when the summit is attained, and from the mountain’s brow they catch a glimpse of Olivet and Zion, and the Forsaken City seated in her widow’s weeds upon her throne of hills. That sight reanimates their courage and renews their strength. With simultaneous energy they rise and hasten onward, and the roughness of the journey is forgotten in the presence of Jerusalem. O brethren, we are also strangers and pilgrims, and our way through the world may be precipitous and rugged, and so long as we look only at the things around us, our hearts may well grow faint and our knees feeble. But amidst these trials and discouragements, look upward to the heavenly hills, and through the dust and smoke of this world’s troubles, keep the Eternal City steadfastly in view. That sight will make your hearts beat with new vigour. It will nerve your arm for battle and your bosom for resistance. It will enable you to look down with contempt upon the pleasures and temptations of the world; it will preserve you from illusions, painful even to the Christian, and ah! how often fatal to the unbeliever. With such illusions, we may rest assured the world, the Church, the experience, and the souls of men are ever teeming.

Upon one or two such I may dwell for a moment in conclusion. If the scenes which I describe are but ideal, they may serve, at least, as types of a most solemn reality. Let us imagine that we see one standing, even now, upon an eminence, a rising ground in life, and looking forwards. He sees nothing but green fields and waving forests — all is fresh and all is smiling — an unruffled stream of pleasure rolls through his imaginary landscape, and the distinctions which he hopes for rise like mountains in the distance. Upon these delightful and inspiring objects his eye rests and feeds. He has no desire to look beyond them. At times, indeed, he may catch a momentary glimpse of something bright, and towering above the highest of the heights before him. Sometimes, when the sun breaks out with sudden splendour from behind a cloud, it seems to be reflected, for an instant, from a thousand glittering points, as though there were a city in the sky. But in a moment it is gone, and he forgets it, or congratulates himself that he is no enthusiast, to give up the real and substantial splendours of the scene before him in exchange for cloud-built palaces and castles in the air.

This proud reflection brings him back, with new complacency, to the Elysian fields which lie before him, and he drinks in with new pleasure the delightful sights and sounds presented to his senses. No wonder then that he refuses to listen, or listens only with incredulous contempt, to the fanatic who would tell him that his fairy prospect is a cheat, a mere illusion — that its colours fade and its music ceases on a near approach, and that the city in the clouds, which he supposed he saw, is not only real, but the only refuge from approaching dangers. He turns with pity or disgust from such forebodings, and then passes on, until he stands upon the verge of the eminence from which he has been gazing. He looks down into the valley, and beholds with fresh delight its verdure and its fruits, its sunshine and its shade. He envies the retirement of its peaceful hamlets, and listens with awe to the distant murmur of its populous cities. All seems delightful — all substantial — and above all, near at hand.

Enchanted with the prospect, he contemplatively lifts his eyes to yonder dim horizon, as if to satisfy himself that there is nothing there to lure him onward. And nothing does he see but fleecy clouds, or “the body of the heavens in its clearness.” Or if he does for an instant see again that strange unearthly gleam, and catch a faint sound like the dying swell of distant music, the flash is transient, and the sound no sooner heard than it is hushed. He pauses for a moment at the point where the upward and the downward paths diverge; he looks up the narrow winding way into the mountains, and then plunges into that which leads him gently down through groves and gardens into the deep valley. Once and again he may stand still to listen as a voice of warning comes again upon his ear. But his election has been made. He passes downward and still downward, guided by the hum of distant voices, and the gentle rush of water far below.

He observes with surprise that as he passes on, the distant prospect still seems bright and beautiful, but objects near at hand have no such charms. However far he journeys, the green fields are still as far off as at first; the fields around him appear parched and barren. Flowers are in the distance, but at hand are thorns and briers. Gardens like that of the Hesperides are yonder, but here a garden like that of the sluggard, full of weeds and unenclosed. He begins to imagine that all nature droops and fades at his approach. The grass seems to wither where his footsteps fall; his breath seems to poison vegetation and the atmosphere. The healthful airs of heaven become hot winds of the desert when they touch his cheek; and the glassy streams which were to slake his thirst dry up as he bends over them, and leave a putrid slime in their forsaken channels. The birds whose song allured him, become owls or vultures, or drop lifeless from the branches. Hamlets and cities turn to rocks and sandhills; and the shadowing trees, now leafless, leave his head exposed to scorching rays from an unclouded sun. As he looks up to tell him how he hates his beams, his torment is enhanced by another passing glimpse of that mysterious city in the clouds above the mountain tops, and another dying echo of its music. In despairing spite he stops his ears and hastens onwards, and the heat soon grows more tolerable, for the sun is hidden and the sky is overcast. Winds begin to howl and whistle; thunders mutter angrily, and a thousand echoes from the hills around proclaim the coming tempest. The very earth beneath him quakes, and the illusions of the fairy landscape cease, and cease for ever. All, all is desolate, not even a shelter from the driving rain. The traveller looks desperately around for refuge from the storms of life, and then madly plunges into some dark cavern of pre-eminent iniquity; and now unable to arrest his progress, passes furiously onwards in the midst of darkness and strange noises, till he suddenly comes forth into the light of day upon the margin of a precipice. With convulsive energy he pauses on the brink; for nature sickens at the gulf below, and the instinct of self-preservation gives him strength to stop, but only for a moment. The impulse of his downward progress is too strong to be resisted, and a fierce wind from behind still pursues him. Forced to look down, his brain begins to swim; he loses his balance; he falls in; he sinks; he catches with the strength of desperation at a twig or a projecting point, and looks up from the mouth of that devouring chasm with a piercing shriek for mercy. And in that last, dying, and despairing upward look, he is entirely and for ever undecieved. He knows what he has done, and oh, unutterable anguish! he knows to a degree which plants a thousand daggers in his dying soul, he knows what he has lost. For there, far above him, at the end of the narrow path which he despises, is the city in the sky which he had learned to laugh at as a baseless vision. But he sees it no longer as a shadowy pile of clouds. Its walls and battlements are of adamant; its deep foundations reach beyond the view of the lost sinner, as he loses his last hold upon the upper world, and after unavailing and convulsive struggles, sinks, sinks, like lead in the mighty waters, his eye still fixed upon that city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God, until it is withdrawn to be fixed for ever upon sights which, God forbid that you or I should ever see.

Let me for one moment shift the scene, and show you another instance of illusion equally powerful, but oh, how different in its nature and its end! Let me show you a small company of pilgrims who have chosen the rough, narrow, upward path which leads away from the green valley into the recesses of the bleak and barren mountains. Some you might see passing onwards with alacrity, forgetting all below them and behind them, or remembering it only to accelerate their progress towards that city with foundations, upon which their eyes are fastened. It is not of these that I would speak.

Others I might show you pressing on in the same course as long as sunshine lasts, or moonlight gilds the pinnacles of yonder city; but when black clouds hide the sky, and thick mists veil the earth, they avert their faces, they begin to linger, and to cast a longing glance into the depth below them, where the world and its temptations are arrayed in fatal splendour, and from which the voice of mirth and business constantly ascends, until sooner or later they hang over the edge with too intense a curiosity, and what follows is only known by the sound of a heavy plunge in some depth below.

But it is not of these that I would speak. It is of one who neither lingers nor looks back, nor gazes down into the valley, but whose face is still turned Zionward, whose progress, though now faster and now slower, is perceptible and constant. I wish to show you one who, while he thus moves onward in the right direction, is no less the subject of illusion than the wretch whose end I have described to you.

He journeys towards the heavenly city, but he sees it not. Jerusalem is in his heart, but not before his eyes. He even dreams that he has taken the wrong path. Imagination magnifies the dangers of the journey. Every step appears to lead into some hidden snare, and every stone to be the mark of some deep pitfall. Every thicket is an ambush; every dark spot an expected place of conflict. The hardy plants that bloom along the rugged path seem poisonous; the springs provided by the Master for his pilgrims are passed by in timid and suspicious thirst. And when at length the body sinks exhausted and in need of slumber, all seems lost; and the man of little faith sleeps in the belief that he shall never wake. And when he does awake, it is only to a repetition of the same illusion. He is still afraid that he shall never reach the city. He is still unable to discover it in the distance; he will not look for it, but keeps his eyes fixed on the ground; or if he looks, he will not look to the right point; or if he looks to the right point, he finds the mist too dense, or the light too bright for his diseased vision. Or if he sees the object, he refuses to believe his senses, and suspects delusion on the only point where he is free from it.

Thus goes the doubter on, often ready to lie down and die, and sometimes tempted to go back or turn aside, but still moving onward because Christ is in his heart, and the secret hope that, notwithstanding all his fears, he shall yet appear in Zion before God. But see, the prospect changes. Real dangers now arise. The storm which deluges the valley sweeps across the mountain also. The doubting Christian gives up all for lost. But the very dangers which alarm his fears, quicken his footsteps, and although he may believe that he is going wrong, the tempest and the earthquake drive him on and up, until the last ascent is gained, until the last cloud breaks away, and he who thought himself approaching to the verge of an abyss, finds himself standing on an everlasting rock, and at the threshold of an everlasting door. If shame can then be felt, he blushes as he looks back for a moment at the scene of his imaginary terrors, which now seems so sweet; the sun breaks out upon the path which he has trodden, and gladdens every dark spot where he wept or trembled; the noises which once terrified him and have still pursued him, now begin to blend with shouts and songs of triumph within; the everlasting doors lift up their heads, and with one farewell look at earth’s baseless fabrics, the emancipated soul enters, never to return, the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.