The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews Part 13

The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews Part 13

But faith is this a.s.surance concerning things hoped for because it is a proof[255] of their existence, and of the existence of the unseen generally. The latter part of the verse is the broad foundation on which faith rests in all the rich variety of its meanings and practical applications. Here St. Paul, St. James, and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews meet in the unity of their conception. Whether men trust unto salvation, or develop their inner spiritual life, or enter into communion with G.o.d and lift the weapon of unflinching boldness in the Christian warfare, trust, character, confidence, all three derive their being and vitality from faith, as it demonstrates the existence of the unseen.

The Apostle's language is a seeming contradiction. Proof is usually supposed to dispense with faith and compel us to accept the inference drawn. He intentionally describes faith as occupying in reference to spiritual realities the place of demonstration. Faith in the unseen is itself a proof that the unseen world exists. It is so in two ways.

_First_, we trust our own moral instincts. Malebranche observes that our pa.s.sions justify themselves. How much more is this true of intellect and conscience! In like manner, some men have firm confidence in a world of spiritual realities, which eye has not seen. This confidence is itself a proof to them. How do I know that I know? It is a philosopher's enigma.

For us it may be sufficient to say that to know and to know that we know are one and the same act. How do we justify our faith in the unseen? The answer is similar. It is the same thing to trust and to trust our trust.

Scepticism wins a cheap victory when it arraigns faith as a culprit caught in the very act of stealing the forbidden fruit of paradise. But when, like a guilty thing, faith blushes for its want of logic, its only refuge is to look in the face of the unseen Father. He who has most faith in his own spiritual instincts will have the strongest faith in G.o.d. To trust G.o.d is to trust ourselves. To doubt ourselves is to doubt G.o.d. We must add that there is a sense in which trust in G.o.d means distrust of self.

_Second_, faith fastens directly on G.o.d Himself. We believe in G.o.d because we impose implicit confidence in our own moral nature. With equal truth we may also say that we believe all else because we believe in G.o.d. Faith in G.o.d Himself immediately and personally is the proof that the promises are true, that our life on earth is linked to a life above, that patient well-doing will have its reward, that no good deed can be in vain, and ten thousand other thoughts and hopes that sustain the drooping spirit in hours of conflict. It may well happen that some of these truths are legitimate inferences from premises, or it may be that a calculation of probabilities is in favour of their truth. But faith trusts itself upon them because they are worthy of G.o.d. Sometimes the silence of G.o.d is enough, if an aspiration of the soul is felt to be such that it became Him to implant it and will be glorious in Him to reward the heaven-sent desire.

An instance of faith as a proof of the unseen is given by our author in the third verse. We may paraphrase it thus: "By faith we know that the ages have been constructed by the word of G.o.d, and that even to this point of a.s.surance: that the visible universe as a whole came not into being out of things that do appear."

The author began in the previous verse to unroll his magnificent record of the elders. But from the beginning men found themselves in the presence of a mystery of the past before they received any promise as to the future. It is the mystery of creation. It has pressed heavily on men in all ages. The Apostle himself has felt its power, and speaks of it as a question which his readers and himself have faced. How do we know that the development of the ages had a beginning? If it had a beginning, how did it begin? The Apostle replies that we know it by faith. The revelation which we have received from G.o.d addresses itself to our moral perception and our confidence in G.o.d's moral nature. We have been taught that "in the beginning G.o.d created the heaven and the earth," and that "G.o.d said, Let there be light."[256] Faith demands this revelation. Is faith trust? That trust in G.o.d is our proof that the framework of the world was put together by His creative wisdom and power. Is faith the inner life of righteousness? Morality requires that our own consciousness of personality and freedom should be derived from a Divine personality as the Originator of all things. Is faith communion with G.o.d? Those who pray know that prayer is an absolute necessity of their spiritual nature, and prayer lifts its voice to a living Father. Faith demonstrates to him who has it, though not to others, that the universe has come to its present form, not by an eternal evolution of matter, but by the action of G.o.d's creative energy.

The somewhat peculiar form of the clause seems certainly to suggest that the Apostle ascribes the origin of the universe, not only to a personal Creator, but to that personal Creator acting through the ideas of His own mind. "The visible came into being, not out of things that appear."

We catch ourselves waiting till he finishes the sentence with the words, "but out of things that do not appear." Most expositors fight shy of the inference and explain it away by alleging that the negative has been misplaced.[257] But is it not true that the universe is the manifestation of thought in the unity of the Divine purpose? This is the very notion required to complete the Apostle's statement concerning faith as a proof. If faith demonstrates, it acts on principles. If G.o.d is personal, those principles are ideas, thoughts, purposes, of the Divine mind.

So long, therefore, as our spiritual nature can trust, can unfold a morality, can pray, the simple soul need not much bewail its want of logic and its loss of arguments. If the famous ontological argument for the being of G.o.d has been refuted, we shall not, on that account, tremble for the ark. We shall not lament though the argument from the watch has proved treacherous. Our G.o.d is not a mere infinite mechanician. Indeed, such a phrase is a contradiction in terms. A mechanician must be finite. He contrives, and as the result produces, not what is absolutely best, but what is the best possible under the circ.u.mstances and with the materials at his disposal. But if we have lost the mechanician, we have not lost the G.o.d that thinks. We have gained the perfectly righteous and perfectly good. His thoughts have manifested themselves in nature, in human freedom, in the incarnation of His Son, in the redemption of sinners. But the intellect that knows these things is the good heart of faith.

FOOTNOTES:

[246] Chap. iii. 12.

[247] Chaps. iii. 19; iv. 11.

[248] Chap. vi. 12.

[249] Chap. x. 19.

[250] 2 Cor. iii. 17; 1 Cor. ii. 16.

[251] James ii. 17, 18.

[252] pa???s?a.

[253] p????f???a.

[254] ?p?stas??.

[255] ??e????.

[256] Gen. i. 1, 3.

[257] As if ? ?? fa??????? were for ?? ? fa???????.

CHAPTER XI.

_THE FAITH OF ABRAHAM._

"By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose Builder and Maker is G.o.d.

By faith even Sarah herself received power to conceive seed when she was past age, since she counted Him faithful Who had promised: wherefore also there sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of heaven in mult.i.tude, and as the sand, which is by the sea-sh.o.r.e, innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore G.o.d is not ashamed of them, to be called their G.o.d: for He hath prepared for them a city. By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac: yea, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only-begotten son; even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that G.o.d is able to raise up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a parable receive him back."-HEB. xi. 819 (R.V.).

We have learned that faith is the proof of the unseen. We must not exclude even from this clause the other thought that faith is an a.s.surance of things hoped for. It is not stated, but it is implied. The conception of a personal G.o.d requires only to be unfolded in order to yield a rich harvest of hope. The author proceeds to show that by faith the elders had witness borne to them in G.o.d's confession of them and great rewards. He recounts the achievements of a long line of believers, who as they went handed the light from one to another. In them is the true unity of religion and revelation from the beginning. For the poor order of high-priests the writer subst.i.tutes the glorious succession of faith.

We choose for the subject of this chapter the faith of Abraham. But we shall not dismiss in silence the faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah. The paragraph in which Abraham's deeds are recorded will most naturally divide itself into three comparisons between their faith and his. We venture to think that this was in the writer's mind and determined the form of the pa.s.sage. From the eighth to the tenth verse the Apostle compares Abraham's faith with that of Noah; after a short episode concerning Sarah, he compares Abraham's faith with Enoch's, from the thirteenth verse to the sixteenth; then, down to the nineteenth verse, he compares Abraham's faith with that of Abel. Noah's faith appeared in an act of obedience, Enoch's in a life of fellowship with G.o.d, Abel's in his more excellent sacrifice. Abraham's faith manifested itself in all these ways. When he was called, he obeyed; when a sojourner, he desired a better country, that is, a heavenly, and G.o.d was not ashamed to be called his G.o.d; being tried, he offered up Isaac.

Two points of surpa.s.sing worth in his faith suggest themselves. The one is largeness and variety of experience; the other is conquest over difficulties. These are the const.i.tuents of a great saint. Many a good man will not become a strong spiritual character because his experience of life is too narrow. Others, whose range is wide, fail to reach the higher alt.i.tudes of saintliness because they have never been called to pa.s.s through sore trials, or, if they have heard the summons, have shrunk from the hardships. Before Abraham faith was both limited in its experience and untested with heaven-sent difficulties. Abraham's religion was complex. His faith was "a perfect cube," and, presenting a face to every wind that blows, came victorious out of every trial.

Let us trace the comparisons.

_First_, Noah obeyed a Divine command when he built an ark to the saving of his house. He obeyed by faith. His eyes saw the invisible, and the vision kindled his hopes of being saved through the very waters that would destroy every living substance. But this was all. His faith acted only in one direction: he hoped to be saved. The Apostle Peter[258]

compares his faith to the initial grace of those who seek baptism, and have only crossed the threshold of the spiritual life. It is true that he overcame one cla.s.s of difficulties. He was not in bondage to the things of sense. He made provision for a future belied by present appearances. But the influence of the senses is not the greatest difficulty of the human spirit. As the lonely ship rode on the heaving waste of waters, all within was gladness and peace. No heaven-sent temptations tried the patriarch's faith, He overcame the trials that spring out of the earth; but he knew not the anguish that rends the spirit like a lightning-stroke descending from G.o.d.

With Abraham it was otherwise. "He went out, not knowing whither he went."[259] He leaves his father's house and his father's G.o.ds. He breaks for ever with the past, even before the future has been revealed to him. The thoughts and feelings that had grown up with him from childhood are once for all put away. He has no sheltering ark to receive him. A homeless wanderer, he pitches his tent to-day at the well, not knowing where his invisible guide may bid him stretch the cords on the morrow. His departure from Ur of the Chaldees was a family migration.

But the writer of this Epistle, like Philo, describes it as the man's own personal obedience to a Divine call. Submitting to G.o.d's will, possessed with the inspiration and courage of faith, obeying daily new intimations, he bends his steps this way or that, not knowing whither he goes. True, he went right into the heart of the land of promise. But, even in his own heritage, he became a sojourner, as in a land not his own.[260] G.o.d "gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on."[261] Possessor of all in promise, he purchased a sepulchre, which was the first ground he could call his own. The cave of Machpelah was the small beginning of the fulfilment of G.o.d's promise, which the spirit of Abraham is even now receiving in a higher form. It is still the same. The bright dawn of heaven often breaks upon the soul at an open grave. But he journeyed on, and trusted. For a time he and Sarah only; afterwards Isaac with them; at last, when Sarah had been laid to rest, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the three together, held on bravely, sojourning with aching hearts, but ever believing. The Apostle brings in the names of Isaac and Jacob, not to describe their faith-this he will do subsequently,-but to show the tenacity and patience of "the friend of G.o.d."

His faith, thus sorely tried by G.o.d's long delay, is rewarded, not with an external fulfilment of the promise, but with larger hopes, wider range of vision, greater strength to endure, more vivid realisation of the unseen. "He looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose Architect and Maker is G.o.d."[262] In the promise not a word is said about a city. Apparently he was still to be a nomad chief of a large and wealthy tribe. When G.o.d deferred again and again the fulfilment of His promise to give him "this land," His trusting servant bethought him what the delay could mean. This was his hill of difficulty, where the two ways part. The worldly wisdom of unbelief would argue from G.o.d's tardiness that the reality, when it comes, will fall far short of the promise. Faith, with higher wisdom, makes sure that the delay has a purpose. G.o.d intends to give more and better things than He promised, and is making room in the believer's heart for the greater blessings.

Abraham cast about to imagine the better things. He invented a blessing, and, so to speak, inserted it for himself in the promise.

This new blessing has an earthly and a heavenly meaning. On its earthly side it represents the transition from a nomadic life to a fixed abode.

Faith bridged the gulf that separates a wandering horde from the cultured greatness of civilization. The future grandeur of Zion was already held in the grasp of Abraham's faith. But the invented blessing had also a heavenly side. The more correct rendering of the Apostle's words in the Revised Version expresses this higher thought: "He looked for the city which hath the foundations"-_the_ city; for, after all, there is but one that hath the eternal foundations. It is the holy city,[263] the heavenly Jerusalem, seen by the faith of Abraham in the early morning of revelation, seen again in vision by the Apostle John at its close. The expression cannot mean anything that comes short of the Apostle's description of faith as the a.s.surance of things hoped for in the unseen world. Abraham realised heaven as an eternal city, in which after death he would be gathered to his fathers. A sublime conception!-eternity not the dwelling-place of the solitary spirit, the joy of heaven consisting in personal fellowship for ever with the good of every age and clime. There the past streams into the present, not, as here, the present into the past. All are contemporaries there, and death is no more. Whatever makes civilization powerful or beautiful on earth-laws, arts, culture-all is there etherealised and endowed with immortality. Such a city has G.o.d only for its Architect,[264] G.o.d only for its Builder.[265] He Who conceived the plan can alone execute the design and realise the idea.

Of this sort was Abraham's obedience. He continued to endure in the face of G.o.d's delay to fulfil the promise. His reward consisted, not in an earthly inheritance, not in mere salvation, but in larger hopes and in the power of a spiritual imagination.

_Second_, Abraham's faith is compared with Enoch's, whose story is most sweetly simple. He is the man who has never doubted, across whose placid face no dark shadow of unbelief ever sweeps. A virgin soul, he walks with G.o.d in a time when the wickedness of man is great in the earth and the imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually, as Adam walked with G.o.d in the cool of the evening before sin had brought the hot fever of shame to his cheek. He walks with G.o.d, as a child with his father; "and G.o.d takes him" into His arms. Enoch's removal was not like the entrance of Elijah into heaven: a victorious conqueror returning into the city in his triumphal car. It was the quiet pa.s.sing away, without observation, of a spirit of heaven that had sojourned for a time on earth. Men sought him, because they felt the loss of his presence among them. But they knew that G.o.d had taken him.

They inferred his story from his character. In Enoch we have an instance of faith as the faculty of realising the unseen, but not as a power to conquer difficulties.

Compare this faith with Abraham's. "These,"-Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,-"all _died_ in faith," or, as we may render the word, "according to faith,"-according to the faith which they had exhibited in their life. Their death was after the same pattern of faith. Enoch's contemplative life came to a fitting end in a deathless translation to higher fellowship with G.o.d. His way of leaving life became him.

Abraham's repeated conflicts and victories closed with quite as much becomingness in a last trial of his faith, when he was called to die without having received the fulfilment of the promises. But he had already seen the heavenly city and greeted it from afar.[266] He saw the promises, as the traveller beholds the gleaming mirage of the desert.

The illusiveness of life is the theme of moralists when they preach resignation. It is faith only that can transform the illusions themselves into an incentive to high and holy aspirations. All profound religion is full of seeming illusions. Christ beckons us onward. When we climb this steep, His voice is heard calling to us from a higher peak.

That height gained reveals a soaring ma.s.s piercing the clouds, and the voice is heard above still summoning us to fresh effort. The climber falls exhausted on the mountain-side and lays him down to die. Ever as Abraham attempted to seize the promise, it eluded his grasp. The Tantalus of heathen mythology was in Tartarus, but the Tantalus of the Bible is the man of faith, who believes the more for every failure to attain.

Such men "declare plainly that they seek a country of their own."[267]

Let not the full force of the words escape us. The Apostle does not mean that they seek to emigrate to a new country. He has just said that they confess themselves to be "strangers and pilgrims on the earth." They are "pilgrims," because they are journeying through on their way to another country; they are "strangers," because they have come hither from another land.[268] His meaning is that they long to return home. That he means this is evident from his thinking it necessary to guard himself against the possibility of being understood to refer to Ur of the Chaldees. They were not mindful of the earthly home, the cradle of their race, which they had left for ever. Not once did they cast a wistful look back, like Lot's wife and the Israelites in the wilderness. Yet they yearned for their fatherland.[269] Plato imagined that all our knowledge is a reminiscence of what we learned in a previous state of existence; and Wordsworth's exquisite lines, which cannot lose their sweet fragrance however often they are repeated, are a reflection of the same visionary gleam,-

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star.

Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From G.o.d, Who is our home."

Our author too suggests it; and it is true. We need not maintain it as an external fact in the history of the soul, according to the old doctrine, resuscitated in our own times, of Traducianism. The Apostle represents it rather as a feeling. There is a Christian consciousness of heaven, as if the soul had been there and longed to return. And if it is a glorious attainment of faith to regard heaven as a city, more consoling still is the hope of returning there, storm-tossed and weather-beaten, as to a home, to look up to G.o.d as to a Father, and to love all angels and saints as brethren in the household of G.o.d, over which Christ is set as a Son. Such a hope renders feeble, sinful men not altogether unworthy of G.o.d's Fatherhood. For He is not ashamed to be called their G.o.d, and Jesus Christ is not ashamed to call them brethren.[270] The proof is, that G.o.d has prepared for them a settled abode in the eternal city.

_Third_, the faith of Abraham is compared with the faith of Abel. In the case of Abel faith is more than a realisation of the unseen. For Cain also believed in the existence of an invisible Power, and offered sacrifice. We are expressly told in the narrative[271] that "Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord." Yet he was a wicked man. The Apostle John says[272] that "Cain was of the Evil One." He had the faith which St. James ascribes to the demons, who "believe there is one G.o.d, and shudder."[273] He was possessed with the same hatred, and had also the same faith. It was the union of the two things in his spirit that made him the murderer of his brother. Our author points out very clearly the difference between Cain and Abel.

Both sacrificed, but Abel desired righteousness. He had a conscience of sin, and sought reconciliation with G.o.d through his offering. Indeed, some of the most ancient authorities, for "G.o.d bearing witness in respect to his gifts," read "he bearing witness to G.o.d on the ground of his gifts;" that is, Abel bore witness by his sacrifice to G.o.d's righteousness and mercy. He was the first martyr, therefore, in two senses. He was G.o.d's witness, and he was slain for his righteousness.

But, whether we accept this reading or the other, the Apostle presents Abel before us as the man who realised the great moral conception of righteousness. He sought, not the favours of an arbitrary Sovereign, not the mere mercy of an omnipotent Ruler, but the peace of the righteous G.o.d. It was through Abel that faith in G.o.d thus became the foundation of true ethics. He acknowledged the immutable difference between right and wrong, which is the moral theory accepted by the greater saints of the Old Testament, and in the New Testament forms the groundwork of St.

Paul's forensic doctrine of the Atonement. Moreover, because Abel witnessed for righteousness by his sacrifice, his blood even cried from the ground unto G.o.d for righteous vengeance. For this is unquestionably the meaning of the words "and through his faith he being dead yet speaketh;" and in the next chapter[274] the Apostle speaks of "the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh a better thing than that of Abel." It was the blood of one whose faith had grasped firmly the truth of G.o.d's righteousness. His blood, therefore, cried to the righteous G.o.d to avenge his wrong. The Apostle speaks as if he were personifying the blood and ascribing to the slain man the faith which he had manifested before. The action of Abel's faith in life and, as we may safely a.s.sume, in the very article of death, retained its power with G.o.d. Every mouthing wound had a tongue. In like manner, says the writer of the Epistle, the obedience of Jesus up to and in His death made His blood efficacious for pardon to the end of time.