were in love with Christ and love cares little for the smiles and sneers of others. The kingdom came first with us and no sacrifice was too great to make for it. And now? We are inclined to smile rather cynically at the enthusiasm of our own youth and the youth around us. We are older now, and wiser, we think. We take things more calmly and let others, if they like, put passion and zeal into the work of the kingdom.
I could, if I wanted, make a parable of Abram’s experience. In Egypt, he had come into touch with an older and higher culture that would astonish him and make his own simple ways seem old fashioned and out of date. How crude and mean his altar would seem after the elaborate Egyptian temples. And we too have traveled and come into contact with more elaborate schemes of life and worship. We have elaborated our theology into philosophy and really you cannot expect educated men and women to believe the things that are sufficient for ignorant men and women. We want something weightier, more elaborate in ritual, more exquisite in music. Even the old chapel with its old enthusiasm does not now attract us.
Or it may be that just a mood of sloth and indifference has settled down on us. It did the old monks and they called it accidie.2 We cannot explain it any more than they could. We only know that in utter contrast to the happy and abounding zest of earlier days we are like physical invalids who don’t know what is the matter, but they have no appetite and no strength, no joy in life. I cannot put the clock back, I do not want to try to. I thank God for the riches of knowledge, the wider experience, and the new methods. But if the new knowledge lacks the old passions, if what you call a broad religion has become very thin, there is only one thing to do, and that is to go back to the old altar and lay yourself and your gifts upon it.
RECONSECRATION AMID THE VARYING EXPERIENCES OF LIFE
Very often when we ought to make a special pilgrimage to the altar, we forget God. Life brings us not only expansion of thought, but enrichment of life. Some new joy comes to us as God’s gift. Love comes into life and someone is prepared to take us for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, until death do us part. That is a wonderful experience and ought to lead us to another altar besides the marriage altar. Too often falling in love is the beginning of neglect of the house and the service of God. God lays a little child in our arms and that brings wonderful joy. That ought to make us raise our Ebenezer and kneel in reconsecration, but often in our enjoyment of the gift we pass by the altar. It may be that to us, as to Abram, success and wealth come and it gives opportunity for a happier life. Abram rebuilt the altar, but we all know men whose spiritual degeneration began when they began to increase in the world’s goods. It need not be so, it ought not to be so. It will not be so if you take your wealth to the altar.
Sometimes the experience is of another color. Pain, bereavement, sorrow come into our lives. Often, they lead only to repining and retirement. We nurse our griefs in silent mercy. Bring your griefs to the altar and find consolation through reconsecration. That is the way into peace. When John Bright was left sad and lonely by the death of the wife who had gladdened his life for two brief years he dedicated his life to the repealing of the laws through whose operation wives, mothers, and little children were starving. Anna Waring did a similar thing. She received the sentence that she must spend her few remaining years in seclusion from the interests and happy activities of life. Retiring to her room, she came out next morning with the poem that is one of our favorite hymns. “Father, I know that all my life is portioned out for me, and the changes that are now to come I do not ask to see, but I ask Thee for a present mind intent on pleasing Thee.”3 And if the circumstances of our life are less dramatic, let us make each new experience the occasion of a new consecration.
NEED FOR RECONSECRATION AS WE FACE NEW TASKS
New ways of life bring new temptations and fresh opportunities. It is a great and altogether helpful thing to kneel before God as you face untrodden ways and new duties. A new life at a new school, starting out in business, joining the forces, bring us to a parting of ways and reconsecration is our duty and our safeguard. When God calls us to some new task in the church, to some new service, to some fresh adventure for the kingdom, let us give ourselves afresh to Him. Apart from Him we can do nothing, but all things are possible to dedicated men and women. You can put a sublime meaning into the simple words, “Consecrate me now to Thy service, Lord.”
Here is our great and gracious opportunity. Before us are the symbols of our Lord’s unchanging love. Here is the reminder of the cross where we first saw the light and the burden rolled away. Let the Communion Table stand for the altar and before it let us kneel in adoring love, singing gratitude, and utter consecration to our Lord.
2. This is the Middle English spelling of the Latin word acedia and ultimately it is a transliteration of the Greek word that means “negligence.” The spelling here is actually the Anglo-French spelling and goes back to the Medieval Latin form of the word.
3. This is a line from the hymn “Father I Know That All My Life” that Anna Waring wrote.
“MOUNT MORIAH, THE HILL OF TESTING”—Genesis 22.2
(Preached twice at Spring Head Mission 3/7/37 and Bishop Street 3/7/48)
Genesis 22.2 “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”
Of all the hills of God, with but one exception, Mount Moriah is the setting of the most poignant scene. The one exception is “The Green Hill Far Away.” Few, certainly no parent, can read the trial on Moriah without being deeply and harmfully marred in spirit. Probably, at first, we are moved to call this a hill of the devil. We shall badly miss our way unless, through careful study, we allow this scene to move us to admiration, faith, and love. Let us begin by facing—
TWO PERPLEXING QUESTIONS
The question of temptation. We are troubled, at the outset, by the words “God did tempt Abraham.” In modern English the word “tempt” has acquired the meaning of “enticing in the direction of evil.” The difficulty is easily averted if we substitute, as the Revised Version does, the word “prove.” “God did prove Abraham.” Or taken still with Moffatt’s translation, “God did put Abraham to the test.”
There is the question of the morality of the test. This is a more difficult question to answer. As we read the story we feel that the test was not fair, that it ought not to have been asked. Read through the text slowly, “take now thine only son, whom thou lovest.” Think not only of the love, but of the promise centered on Isaac. What of a God who would be the one to say, “Take the son of your love and promise, and slay him as a sacrifice?” There is nothing irreverent in asking such a question. Indeed, it ought to be asked and faced lest we libel God, as we do when we suggest that those we dearly love, we love more than Him. Is there an answer to the second question?
I think that there is. For one thing, let us read to the end of the story. “All is well that ends well,” we say. Reading on to the end we find that this is not the story of a human sacrifice, but the story of the arresting of a human sacrifice. Now our judgment is that God never intended that Isaac should be slain. But that is not a final answer. Abraham thought his son was to be offered on the altar.
THERE WAS NOTHING IN THE CUSTOMS OR CONSCIENCE OF THE TIME AGAINST SUCH AN OFFERING
This story must be read in light of the times in which it is set. In our day, if a man slew his son he would be hanged. He would avail nothing to say in his defense that the deed had been done at the bidding of a verse or vision. But in Abraham’s day a man had the absolute right of life and death over his son. It was a common custom to offer one’s firstborn as a sacrifice to one’s god. There would have been no conscience against the act and Abraham would have been commended for it.