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THE 
 
 PILLOW OF STONES 
 
 DIVINE ALLEGORIES IN THEIR 
 SPIRITUAL MEANING. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. FRANK SEWALL. 
 
 Which things are an allegory." — Gal. iv. 24. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA.* 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 LONDON: 16 SOUTHAMPTON ST., COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 1876. 
 

 i%'\' 1 
 .S*** 
 
 $ IS ~ v?S 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT. 
 
 SPIRITUAL LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF OUR LORD. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 £?-£> 
 
 c fj. b.ikpVi mc or t fc -c o / p 
 
 v&r-^; 
 
TO 
 
 CHARLES HENRY AND MARY ALLEN 
 
 Affectionately Dedicated. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — The Pillow of Stones; or, How to Obtain a 
 
 Trust in the Divine Providence ... 7 
 
 II.— The Temptation of Eve; or, The Beguilements 
 
 of the Sensual Man 23 
 
 III. — Noah's Dove ; or, The Soul set Free . . -45 
 
 IV.— Melchizedek's Oblation; or, The Sacrament of 
 
 the Supper of the Lord 64 
 
 V. — Abraham and Sarah in the Land of Abime- 
 lech ; or, The Divine Adaptations of Truth 
 to Men 82 
 
 VI. — Hagar's Return to her Mistress; or, The Sub- 
 mission of the Rational 107 
 
 VII. — Ishmael Restored to Life; or, The Spiritual 
 
 Reason . . . 125 
 
 VIII.— The Eternal Lamp; or, How Faith is to be 
 
 Preserved 144 
 
 IX. — The Altar of Incense; or, The Faculty of 
 
 Worshiping God 160 
 
 1* 5 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 X. — The Shepiikrd-Boy made King; or, The Lord's 
 
 Choice versus Man's Choice . . . .176 
 
 XL — The Armor-Bearer made Harp-Player; cr, The 
 
 Divine Truth protecting against Evil Spirits 194 
 
 XII. — The Money in the Sack ; or, How the Truth 
 
 makes Free 210 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES 
 
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 i\w §xvm l&%M%&tXLtt. 
 
 And he took of the stones of that place, and put them fot 
 his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.— -Gen. 
 xxviii. ii. — 
 
 OUR Lord, when He was on earth as the 
 Son of Man, "had not a place where to 
 lay his head." Jacob of old, when he jour- 
 neyed away from his fathers house, lay his 
 head, when night came, upon a pillow of stones. 
 In the divine words of Scripture, "Jacob went 
 out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. 
 And he lighted upon a certain place, and tar- 
 ried there all night, because the sun was set; 
 and he took of the stones of that place, and 
 
 (7) 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES. 
 
 put them for his pillows, and lay down in that 
 place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold 
 a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it 
 reached to heaven: and behold the angels of 
 God ascending and descending on it. And, 
 behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am 
 the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the 
 God of Isaac : the land whereon thou liest, to 
 thee will I give it, and to thy seed." 
 
 Jacob was a man like ourselves, journeying 
 on his earthly road. What occurred to him 
 was a token that we are all here in some way 
 connected with heaven and with the angels 
 and with the Lord. The Lord was watching 
 over Jacob, and, as he slept upon his hard bed, 
 the angels were seen by him ascending and 
 descending above him. What is here related 
 of Jacob as a visible and external event, is 
 truly taking place with all men, more or less, 
 not in a visible and external way, but in a hid- 
 den spiritual way, in the course of their jour- 
 neying from a natural to a heavenly state of 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES. 
 
 life. Since God's Word is true, and since it 
 tells us of the spiritual life, the life of the soul, 
 it must be that in some hidden, unconscious, 
 spiritual way, we who live and toil, who believe 
 and doubt, who pray and trust, who are now 
 anxious and fearful, and now at peace and 
 filled with thankfulness and rest, — that we, in 
 this day, are making our journey from a place, 
 a state of life, in which we have been, to one 
 before us yet unknown. There comes for us a 
 "going down of the sun," the time of night 
 and the time of rest. We, too, must find our 
 pillow; and if it be such a pillow for us spirit- 
 ually as was Jacob's naturally, we shall see 
 the ladder reaching to heaven, and over us 
 will ascend and descend the angels of God. 
 
 Jacob, in this divine narrative, stands for a 
 large class of men, — those, namely, who know 
 a little truth in an outward way — some few 
 facts of religion and faith, and who are in the 
 effort on the whole to live according to what 
 they know. May we not take Jacob as the 
 
 A* 
 
IO THE PILLOW OF STONES. 
 
 representative of the vast majority of religious 
 people in the world at this day? Natural 
 men, we may say, because they think but little 
 and know but little consciously about spiritual 
 things as such. Their life and affections are 
 chiefly in natural and external things. But a 
 man's life and love may be in outward things, 
 — of his family, or his business or his life in the 
 world, — and yet may he be a good man. Every- 
 thing depends on whether he remembers God 
 or not in his daily life, and tries, in the life that 
 he leads, and that he loves, to keep God's 
 commandments. If he does this, even though 
 his knowledge of divine and interior things be 
 not extensive, and his life as yet a natural 
 life, — that is, a life consisting chiefly in willing 
 and thinking and working in the outward con- 
 cerns of the body and the world, — yet, if he 
 keep sacredly and religiously in mind the few 
 plain precepts of his religion which he has 
 learned, and tries to let these control his life, he 
 is then such a man as Jacob represents, a man 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES. II 
 
 who is in a good life from the truth residing in 
 his natural mind. A man may read a very few 
 books, and forget what litrie he reads in them, 
 but if he reads one book, — that of God's own 
 Word, — and remembers a few plain precepts 
 of this book, those plain commandments which 
 are the laws of eternal life, of which our God 
 says, "This do and thou shalt live," then has 
 such a man enough of the truth to make him, if 
 he will be, a religious man, yea, a regenerate, — 
 that is, a new-born man, a man so " born again" 
 that he may " enter the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 That place whereon Jacob lighted and passed 
 the night, as he journeyed, is just this state 
 or condition of life which I have described, — 
 the state of the natural man as to its dark- 
 ness of mind and the obscurity of its vision of 
 divine things. The night that comes on at the 
 going down of the sun is the doubt and uncer- 
 tainty which comes over our minds at times in 
 the course of our ordinary life, when some 
 old evil desires take hold of us and w T e are 
 
12 THE PILLOW OF STONES. 
 
 tempted either to sin and to rebel against our 
 heavenly Father, or to mistrust his love and 
 mercy, to reject his Word, to deny his truth, 
 to question his wisdom, yea, to lose sight of 
 Him altogether, and to stand alone in our own 
 dark world, with the sun gone down. 
 
 Such extreme states of shaken belief, of 
 sudden anxieties, and of miserable distrust and 
 foreboding, are the results of the evils of our 
 natural mind getting control over us for a 
 season ; but at the beginning of the religious 
 life we are more or less frequently in such a 
 night. The world lies in a darkness just 
 streaked with a little daylight. Our doubts 
 and our blindness as to spiritual things may 
 not trouble us much, because we are contented 
 with the life of the world and its pleasures 
 and goods ; but the soul is nevertheless really 
 in the dark, it is overtaken by the night, its sun 
 is hidden. We must tarry ; we see no way to 
 go farther on. For good or bad, in this place 
 we must tarry all night. 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES. 1 
 
 j 
 
 That means until God gives us light again, 
 which He will do if we pray to Him earnestly 
 and really for it. 
 
 Meanwhile, what shall a man do ? 
 
 Shall he give himself up to dissatisfaction, 
 to gloom and discontent and unrest? Shall 
 he say there is nothing certain, nothing strong 
 and sure, nothing but chance or fate ? Shall 
 he say there is no happiness to be found in this 
 life? Everywhere is failure and disappoint- 
 ment? That the rewards of a pious, dutiful, 
 religious life are but vain delusions? that the 
 struggle against evil in one's self or in others 
 is after all a vain and hopeless thing ? Shall 
 he do this ? 
 
 Let us see what Jacob did. 
 
 Let us note carefully these Divine words: 
 " And he took of the stones of that place and 
 put them for his pillows, and lay down in that 
 place to sleep." 
 
 Benighted as he was on his way, unable to 
 go farther, to turn right or left, did he think 
 
1 4 THE PILLOW OF STONES, 
 
 what he might do if he were elsewhere, and 
 vainly stumble on to find a better resting-place? 
 No ; he took the stones of that place, just 
 where he was, and made of them a pillow for 
 him to rest upon in that place. 
 
 Herein lies the lesson. of " Jacob's Pillow/' 
 " He took the stones of that place and made 
 himself a pillow, and lay down in that place to 
 sleep." What we want is a pillow in the 
 place where we are, — present help, present 
 security, and rest. 
 
 Tired of wandering in the midst of our doubt 
 and darkness, we seek now for some real 
 repose, surety, faith, and strength. If there is 
 a God, if there is a heaven, if there is a com- 
 munication of our inner life with the better 
 world, and with better, healing, strengthening 
 influences; if faith can cheer us, if charity and 
 good works can strengthen us, if conflict with 
 our besetting sins be really not in vain, we 
 would now know it, and in some strong con- 
 viction and unflinching resolve find stability, 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES. 1 5 
 
 repose, and peace in our lives. How shall we 
 do this? How shall we, in this place, lay our- 
 selves down in quietness, under the calm and 
 protecting face of Heaven, and find the rest 
 we need for our long life-journey ? 
 
 Shall we now wish we were something else 
 than what we are, or somewhere else than 
 where we are ? 
 
 Shall we say to ourselves, If I were only 
 differently situated; if I had this and that in- 
 cumbrance removed, this or that burden off my 
 shoulders ; if, being poor, I was rich ; if, being 
 rich and immersed in all the cares of large 
 estates and the responsibilities of business and 
 society, — if I were poor and living a quiet, 
 humble, obscure life ; if, being ill, I were well 
 and strong ; if, being in vigor of health, and 
 with all the pleasures of a gay and worldly 
 career open before me, I were obliged by ill 
 health to lead a retired and more thoughtful 
 and serious life ; if, in a word, I were some- 
 where else, in some other state, and had other 
 
1 6 THE PILLOW OF STONES. 
 
 duties placed before me than just these amid 
 which I am, then I could easily combat my 
 evils, could easily walk in the straight path of 
 happy content and success. But here I am ; 
 here has Providence placed me. If I am in 
 doubt, trouble, anxiety, uncertainty, aimless- 
 ness, unhappiness, the Lord of my life above 
 me has permitted me to come into this state. 
 He has permitted it to prevent worse evils. 
 He is not unmindful of my condition. He is 
 watching over me, and if I can do as Jacob did, 
 I shall know that from where I lie there is a 
 ladder reaching to heaven, and that his own 
 merciful angels are ascending and descending 
 over where I am. 
 
 But to see this, and know this, we must first 
 do as Jacob did ; we must in this place lie 
 down, and for our pillow we must take of the 
 stones of this place. 
 
 Those who know something of the inner 
 meaning of the words of the Bible, who know 
 what the things there mentioned correspond 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES. 1 7 
 
 to spiritually, will remember that stones corre- 
 spond to truth, — truth in its plainer, visible, 
 outward forms, such as we see it in the literal 
 precepts of God's Word ; the truths of the 
 Ten Commandments for instance, or the truths 
 which teach us to fight against self-love and all 
 its sins, to strive to obey God, to love our 
 fellow-man, to do our duty in that station 
 where the Divine Providence has placed us. 
 For to do our duty is to love our neighbor as 
 ourselves ; to love our neighbor is to endeavor 
 to serve him, to be useful to others both in 
 natural and spiritual works, to live for others 
 and not for ourselves. And this we cannot do 
 except as we remember always that it is God 
 who makes this our duty, and that the power 
 and the love to do it can come only from Him. 
 Now, these are the stones of which we must 
 make our pillow. The stones of that place 
 are the duties of to-day. To obey God's 
 Word in the place or condition where it finds 
 us, this is to take for our pillow " the stones of 
 
1 8 THE PILLOW OF STONES, 
 
 that place." But the stones of one place are 
 not just the same as the stones of some other 
 place. The duties that belong to one person 
 are not just like the duties belonging to 
 another. And the peculiar duties, whether of 
 evil things to be put away, or of good things 
 to be done, these are not the same in one state 
 of our life, one place or period of our life's 
 journey, as are the duties belonging to some 
 other state in our own life. What we have to 
 do is to " take the stones of that place" where 
 we are, the duties or the Divine commands 
 which belong to just that state of mind or 
 condition of life where Providence has per- 
 mitted us to be placed. We are to take those 
 stones, the divine truth as applying to our 
 present needs, and make of them a pillow 
 whereon we may rest. 
 
 What a firm, sure, safe pillow ! What a 
 blessed rest ! Oh ! what a heavenly repose is 
 that for our souls, when we shall see the ladder 
 reaching from the ground, the hard, low 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES. 1 9 
 
 ground whereon we have laid ourselves down 
 confiding in God's love and care, — reaching 
 from this ground far up to heaven, and the 
 Lord standing above it, and his angels ascend- 
 ing and descending over us, in their missions 
 of truth and mercy ! 
 
 A pillow of stones ! A hard pillow, do you 
 say ? Yes, and often it is indeed a hard one. 
 But except upon that pillow there is no rest 
 for us, no vision of the helping angels, or of 
 our redeeming Lord and heavenly Father. 
 It is a hard pillow in the sense that duties are 
 laborious, our evils hard to resist, our circum- 
 stances in life trying, resignation to them 
 difficult, — in a word, in the sense that our 
 selfish, depraved, natural man makes hard and 
 persists in making us think hard any spiritual 
 work, any work of repentance and reformation, 
 any duties of genuine religion, any acting upon 
 the principles of the Church, any ceasing to 
 act on theprinciples of selfish and worldly love. 
 It is our evils that make the pillow hard. But 
 
20 THE PILLOW OF STONES. 
 
 when once in the performance of those duties 
 which are the stones whereon we lie down to 
 rest, when once we have opened a way for the 
 light, the comfort, the peace of heavenly 
 influences within our souls, then how easy do 
 these duties become, how upon that pillow of 
 stones does our soul glide away into the 
 peaceful sleep and the dream of angels ! 
 
 Reader, as I said at the outset, " our Lord 
 had no place whereon to lay his head." " Jacob 
 had a pillow of stones." And you and I and 
 all men have now, through the Lord's redeem- 
 ing mercy, a pillow of stones whereon to lie. 
 The Lord had no place whereon to lay his 
 head, because there was no truth left in the 
 Church, or in the world, whereinto his divine 
 life might flow down to restore the union 
 of earth to heaven, of lost men to their Crea- 
 tor and Saviour. His Word was falsified and 
 denied, from beginning to end. Therefore He 
 came as the Divine, real Word himself, and 
 was born a man on earth, that the Divine Life, 
 
THE PILLOW OF STONES. 21 
 
 which is the Father, might be made manifest in 
 Him and might through Him give light and life 
 to the world once more. So He became our 
 Rock, our Corner-stone, our Foundation, our 
 Strength, our Rest. In Him, as the Divine 
 Word revealed to us, taught us, read by us, 
 hidden in our hearts, in Him we have the truth 
 where in every place and condition of our life's 
 journey we may lay ourselves down and take 
 our rest. In his truth, which speaks daily in 
 our hearts and in our consciences, has He given 
 us our pillow of stones. Let us not, heedlessly, 
 ungratefully, and in our blind complaining, re- 
 ject this precious gift. 
 
 1 ' Rest of the weary, 
 
 Joy of the sad ; 
 Hope of the dreary, 
 
 Light of the glad ; 
 Home of the stranger, 
 
 Strength to the end ; 
 Refuge from danger, 
 
 Saviour and Friend ! 
 
22 THE PILLOW OF STONES. 
 
 Pillow where, lying, 
 
 Love rests its head; 
 Peace of the dying, 
 
 Life of the dead ; 
 When my feet stumble, 
 
 To thee I'll cry, 
 Crown of the humble, 
 
 Cross of the high : 
 When my steps wander, 
 
 Over me bend, 
 Truer and fonder, 
 
 Saviour and Friend ! ' ' 
 

 And the woman said, The serpent beguiled nie> and I did 
 eat. — Gen. in. 13. 
 
 IN these words we have the beginning of 
 the sins and the sorrows of our race. Up 
 to this deed of transgression, the Garden of 
 Eden was a paradise, a heaven upon earth. 
 Man's condition was one of celestial inno- 
 cence ; the Divine favor beautified our world 
 and the whole inner and outer life of man. 
 The benediction of the Creator was pronounced 
 upon our earth and all it contained. Man and 
 woman were created in the glorious and per- 
 fect image of their Maker, and they were inno- 
 cent before God and were not ashamed. 
 
 For how many years, or centuries, or ages 
 this reign of heavenly innocence and happiness 
 
 23 
 
24 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 continued, we have no means of learning, nor 
 is it needful to inquire. The important thing 
 to know is, and it is a most grateful and con- 
 soling thought, that our race did not begin 
 its history in sin and wickedness ; that the 
 dawn of man's life upon earth was fair and 
 radiant with heavenly beauty ; and that only 
 after a period perhaps ages in duration did 
 the cloud of evil bring the first gloom upon 
 the human life. 
 
 It is commonly said that our first parents 
 sinned, and that evil and its miseries thus be- 
 gan with the human race itself. But this is 
 only an inference drawn from a literal state- 
 ment in the chapter in Genesis which describes 
 the transgression of Adam and Eve. But 
 already in the first chapter we have the literal 
 statement that God created man male and 
 female: "male and female created he them;" 
 and God said, Let them have dominion over the 
 lower things of creation. 
 
 Thus the man called Adam unquestionably 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 25 
 
 means the human race, the word itself mean- 
 ing man as a race. And after this account of 
 the creation of the race, including male and 
 female, there follows as a separate history the 
 account of the Garden of Eden and its inmates. 
 But no sooner is this account at an end than we 
 read of Cain going to the land of Nod, taking 
 a wife and building a city. Now if Adam and 
 Eve, who transgressed and ate of the forbidden 
 fruit, were the first and only two human beings 
 on this earth, then who inhabited the land of 
 Nod whither their son Cain afterwards went? 
 And whom could he have taken for a wife ? 
 Who inhabited the city which he built ? If the 
 letter of the Bible is to be adhered to in this 
 sense, then there were but five persons in ex- 
 istence on our earth, and one of these, the wife 
 of Cain, could hardly have been at the same 
 time his sister. Hence, Adam and Eve were at 
 least not her parents. And, notwithstanding 
 that there were but five persons living, yet, one 
 of these already built a city. Such an incon- 
 » 3 
 
26 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 sistency only shows very plainly that the names 
 Adam and Eve do not refer to the two first 
 human beings created on our earth, but rather 
 to the whole race, and that what is said of 
 them describes in a figurative manner what 
 took place among the most ancient peoples. 
 We do not here dispute the holy letter of the 
 Scriptures, but we dispute that inference which 
 some have drawn from the letter, and which 
 the letter itself proves to be untenable. What 
 is said of the man and the woman in the Gar- 
 den of Eden may, indeed, be understood as 
 applying to two persons only ; but there is no 
 authority, even in the literal statement of the 
 Bible, for declaring these to be the first and 
 only parents of our race. In a figurative 
 sense we may properly speak of them as such, 
 knowing that Adam means man and Eve 
 woman, and knowing also that what is 
 recorded of them in the Holy Word is, when 
 spiritually understood, a most perfect and 
 truthful history of what occurred in the inte- 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 27 
 
 rior or spiritual life of those ancient peoples 
 from whom the nations of the earth now 
 living are descended. 
 
 But knowing as the church does at this day 
 from revelation that the Holy Word is divine, 
 and treats therefore of spiritual things under 
 the clothing and imagery of natural things, we 
 shall look to the spiritual contents of this 
 history of the fall of our race for that spiritual 
 and saving knowledge which the Lord designs 
 to offer us through his Word. He has spoken 
 these things concerning the creation of the 
 world and the sin of our race in a parable ; 
 but He does not design that we should remain 
 ever in the parable, the enigma, only ; and at 
 length that time has come when, by unfolding 
 to the church the spiritual sense of the sacred 
 Scriptures, " He speaks to us no longer in 
 proverbs," and He tells us those many things 
 which the minds of men, in past ages, were not 
 ready to receive. In a word, according to the 
 spiritual sense of these first chapters of Gene- 
 
28 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 sis, the history of the creation of the world and 
 Adam describes really the new creation, the 
 regeneration of man's soul from being chaos 
 and darkness to attaining the image and like- 
 ness of God. The Garden of Eden is an 
 image in natural things of the celestial and 
 blessed state of the human race while yet in 
 their primitive innocence and order. By Adam 
 is meant this celestial or heavenly mind as to 
 its rational or intellectual faculty ; by woman, 
 or Eve, is meant that sense of one's own self- 
 hood, or distinct existence, which comes from 
 our being a free agent, capable of leading our- 
 selves or being led by another. This self- 
 hood of man, denoted by Eve, when filled with 
 innocence from the Lord, and when freely 
 determined to follow the Lord, is that which 
 makes man's spiritual nature complete, and 
 enables him to follow the Lord from love and 
 choice, instead of being compelled thereto. 
 From this heavenly and better self man serves 
 the Lord, and is yet in the enjoyment of the 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE, 29 
 
 highest freedom. He does not act, like a 
 machine, solely from a power communicated 
 from without, but as if from his own self, as the 
 motive power, although this very self-hood, or 
 free will itself, is equally the gift of God. 
 
 When man from this heaven-inspired self 
 wills freely to obey the Lord and live accord- 
 ing to the Divine laws, he is enjoying the 
 freedom of heaven itself; for the very blessed- 
 ness and liberty of heaven consists solely in 
 the harmony between it and those laws which 
 have their origin in the infinite love and per- 
 fect wisdom of the Lord. 
 
 So long as this seemingly independent self- 
 hood of man looks up to the Lord and desires 
 to be wholly governed and led by Him, so long 
 is it innocent ; and even self-love, being sub- 
 ordinate to the love of God, and being itself 
 the condition of man's freely loving others, is 
 so far good and holy. And this is what is 
 meant by the innocence in which Adam and 
 his Eve were before their transgression. They 
 
 3* 
 
30 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 were not ashamed. No ! for as yet there was 
 nothing sinful in this self-hood, — this free will 
 of man ; the Lord kept it in innocence. But 
 when man, from his independent self-hood, 
 began to look downward to the things of 
 nature and the appetites of the senses for 
 motives of conduct, then this same self-hood 
 was the instrument or medium of his being 
 tempted, and of his committing sin. Man's 
 free, voluntary nature, the moment it turns 
 away from the Lord and the guidance of the 
 interior motives of love and faith, and looks 
 out to the world and its attractions, that mo- 
 ment it makes a way for evil to come into and 
 darken and poison the human life. For man's 
 external and sensuous life should be controlled 
 by the inner, and not the outer man. So long 
 as the Lord rules from within, through love 
 and faith, so long is the selfish nature of man 
 kept subordinate and made useful and con- 
 ducive to his true freedom and happiness. For 
 to be free and happy is to live according to 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 3 1 
 
 God's truth. But so soon as the external and 
 corporeal nature of man is ruled by the things 
 of the world, then it assumes a power which 
 brings the internal or heavenly man into sub- 
 jection ; the love of self and the love of the 
 world become predominant, and the whole life 
 becomes gradually more and more sensual 
 and earthly. 
 
 The fall of man consists, therefore, in this 
 sin : that his self-hood, signified by the woman, 
 by virtue of its freedom, which was God's holy 
 gift, turned away from the inner guidance of 
 God to the outer seductions of the senses and 
 the w T orld ; and thus self-love, from being the 
 innocent medium by which man could serve 
 God and his neighbor, became the medium by 
 which he not only served, but became a slave 
 to, the world and to the evil passions and 
 miserable lusts of his carnal nature. 
 
 The woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, 
 and I did eat." 
 
 The ancients, when they desired to represent 
 
32 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 a quality of the human mind, did not compare 
 it to an animal or other object, but called it 
 directly by the name of the animal or thing 
 which corresponded to it. The same practice 
 is adhered to in much of the writings of the 
 Holy Word. Thus is our Lord named by the 
 prophets and by the Evangelists the lion, and 
 also the lamb. The lion evidently represents 
 his Divine power ; the lamb his perfect inno- 
 cence. So our Lord Himself, speaking of 
 Herod, calls him "that fox," by which He would 
 indicate his selfish, human cunning, as opposed 
 to the heavenly wisdom of love and faith. 
 Now the serpent, spoken of in our text as 
 tempting the woman, is also the representative 
 of a quality in the human mind ; and it is easy 
 to see what this quality is. 
 
 The serpent here mentioned is the sensual 
 principle in man. It lies close to the earth, as 
 the sensual things of the mind are closely con- 
 nected with the body. Those who depend upon 
 the evidence of the senses alone, whose confi- 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 33 
 
 dence is only in material, tangible things, whose 
 whole mind is, as it were, in their eyes, mouth, 
 and organs of touch, whose reasoning is only 
 from sensuous or visible things, — such persons 
 are called serpents in the Holy Scriptures, and 
 their natures do so truly correspond to the 
 serpent that the creature itself may better 
 represent the quality than any verbal definition 
 depict it. The serpent is wary, cunning, cir- 
 cumspect, swift, agile, deceitful, and armed with 
 a deadly sting. It may properly symbolize, 
 therefore, qualities both good and bad. For 
 prudence and acuteness and careful discrimi- 
 nation are very desirable qualities, and neces- 
 sary for all to have who would walk safely the 
 ways of this w r orld. The intelligence which 
 man derives from science and from experience 
 with men, all those good and useful things 
 which we acquire through the use of the bodily 
 senses, — these find also their symbol in the 
 serpent. These are a necessary part of every 
 man's nature, even the most pure and heavenly; 
 
34 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 consequently our Lord warned his disciples to 
 be wise as serpents ; and the serpent lifted up 
 in the wilderness was the divinely-chosen 
 prophecy of our Lord's suffering upon the 
 cross, and the elevation and glorification in 
 divine purity of the very lowest principles of 
 that flesh and nature which He put on in this 
 world. 
 
 And it is easy to see that while man's 
 rational and voluntary nature are devoted to 
 following the heavenly dictates of love and 
 faith, then the bodily senses and their knowl- 
 edge will only tend to the growth of heavenly 
 intelligence in the soul ; for all external knowl- 
 edge and experience will be made use of to 
 high and spiritual ends. But let the love of 
 self and of the world for their own sake get the 
 mastery ; let not the inmost soul, but the life 
 of the body, be consulted ; then is the evidence 
 of the senses brought in to contradict that of 
 faith ; then are the pleasures of the world and 
 the gratification of natural desires more de- 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 35 
 
 lightful than those of the inner life ; then self- 
 love leads the reason, and the senses lead self- 
 love, and the power and the cunning of the 
 senses and sensual things are able to lead man 
 wholly away from the freedom of heaven into 
 the bondage of hell. Thus it is that the man 
 said, "The woman beguiled me;" and the 
 woman said, " The serpent beguiled me, and I 
 did eat." 
 
 It is wonderful when we reflect what are the 
 four characters introduced in this scene in the 
 Garden of Eden. They are the Lord, man, 
 woman, and the serpent. It is a perfect pic- 
 ture of the human mind at all times. That 
 scene is repeated again and again in the 
 interior life of us all, whether we be con- 
 sciously aware of it or not. The Lord is in 
 the inmost, in the highest, heavenly degree of 
 the mind, speaking by his Holy Spirit, warning 
 us by the voice of conscience, moving us 
 secretly, restraining us gently, leading us, if 
 possible, in the heavenly way. Beneath, or 
 
36 THE TEMPTATION OE EVE. 
 
 next in order to this celestial plane, through 
 which the Lord exerts the influence of his 
 Holy Spirit, is the rational or spiritual plane 
 of the mind, represented by Adam. Beneath 
 this again is the external man in which one 
 realizes consciously one's self-hood, in which 
 one seems to think, to feel, to act, to live of 
 one's self. This is Eve, the woman. And 
 beneath this plane still is the most external or 
 sensual degree of the mind, which is closely 
 connected with the body and the outer world, 
 and which is made up of thoughts, knowl- 
 edges, and appetites, directly connected with 
 the bodily senses. This plane of the mind, or 
 of the human life, is the serpent that is ever 
 beguiling the woman to eat of the tree of 
 the knowledge of good and evil, and to be as 
 God. The true heavenly order of the mind is 
 that wherein the Lord not only rules and pro- 
 vides, but is looked up to as the way and the 
 source of all blessing and happiness. The 
 rational faculty filled with love and faith then 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 37 
 
 leads the lower, selfish nature to look upward 
 to pure and heavenly pursuits and delights, to 
 serve not self for the sake of self, but to live 
 for the delights of charity ; and the lower, the 
 sensual mind, brings in all its treasures of see- 
 ing and hearing, and all the experiences of the 
 outer life, to prove the goodness of God and 
 his wisdom, and to enrich the mind with ma- 
 terials for useful and happy labor. Controlled 
 by a pure love of God, and illumined by the 
 light of heaven, the reason directs the external 
 will, and thus brings the senses into subjection 
 to the laws of true order and usefulness. 
 Those things which pertain to man's happiness 
 and his relations to God, and also the mysteries 
 of the future life, man, while in this orderly 
 condition, views from an interior perception. 
 The substance of the spiritual life, its reality 
 and its happiness, are revealed to him from 
 within. The world without corresponds to 
 and fulfills all this inward experience. Man is 
 content thus to obey the Lord, to be clepend- 
 
 4 
 
38 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 ent on Him, and to know and believe that which 
 is thus interiorly verified to him. 
 
 But when man begins to desire to depend on 
 himself, and to be led by himself, then he appeals 
 to self for evidence of duty, of right and wrong, 
 of happiness and unhappiness, and self looks 
 out to the world and its sensuous experiences, 
 and thus the whole order of life is inverted. 
 The celestial or heavenly mind is made subor- 
 dinate, and the sensual mind is placed supreme. 
 The voice which dictates and teaches is now no 
 longer the voice of God, but the voice of the 
 serpent. The delight of man is no longer in 
 being led by the Lord, and feeling one's de- 
 pendence upon Him, and confiding in his re- 
 vealed truth for all knowledge of duty antl 
 of happiness, but is rather in touching that 
 forbidden fruit which the serpent holds out, in 
 appealing to the senses and the world for a 
 test of what is good and not good, in being 
 one's own master and one's own teacher, in 
 verifying by visible and tangible proof the 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 39 
 
 things of faith and revelation, thus, in a word, 
 in " eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, 
 and in being as God, knowing good and evil." 
 It was in this inversion of the mind that sin, 
 disorder, and all the sorrows of the world had 
 their beginning. It was in looking to self 
 rather than to the Lord, and consulting the 
 senses and earthly science rather than Divine 
 revelation for the rule of faith and of duty. 
 The story is ever the same to this day, the sin 
 is the same, the miserable consequences are 
 the same. Man's soul, subjecting reason to 
 self-love, and self-love to the dictates of sensual 
 pleasure and sensual evidence, is become a 
 slave to the world and the victim to its deceits. 
 The love of self and of the world has for its 
 inevitable result, if cultivated and willingly 
 indulged, to make a man believe in himself 
 and not in the Lord and his Word, and to sup- 
 pose that what he cannot apprehend sensu- 
 ously and scientifically has no existence. Men 
 thus become, says Swedenborg, " altogether evil 
 
40 THE TEMPTATION OE EVE. 
 
 and false, and thus see all things perversely ; 
 they regard evil as good, and good as evil ; 
 falses as truths, and truths as falses ; realities 
 as nothing, and nothing as everything. They 
 call hatred, love ; darkness, light ; death, life. 
 They are denominated in the Word, the lame 
 and the blind." 
 
 This, then, is the self-love of man which, 
 turned away from the Lord, and relying on 
 itself or on the evidence of the senses rather 
 than on the truths of revelation, and following 
 the enticements of the senses rather than the 
 dictates of religion, is infernal and accursed. 
 
 Look out upon the world, and behold the 
 vices, the foolish and insane pleasures, the 
 wars, the ruin and iniquity in which men do in 
 our day run riot. Listen to what the so-called 
 learned say and write, turning God's Holy 
 Word into ridicule and a lie, and resolving the 
 Deity itself into a mere reflection of our own 
 miserable humanity, — and then say if the ser- 
 pent has not beguiled the woman, and the 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 4 1 
 
 woman the man, and they together eaten the 
 forbidden fruit and become as gods,* knowing 
 good and evil The rejection of faith and 
 contempt of God's Word is proving in our 
 day the truth of that warning word of the 
 Lord : " In the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall 
 surely die." For, says Swedenborg again, "a 
 desire to investigate the mysteries of faith by 
 the senses and science is the cause of the fall 
 of every church; for hence come not only 
 false opinions, but also evils of life. 
 . . . "Those who consult the senses and 
 science respecting what is to be believed, not 
 only precipitate themselves into doubt, but 
 also into denial and thus into darkness, and 
 into every kind of cupidity. For when they 
 believe the false, they practice the false. And 
 when they believe there is nothing spiritual 
 and celestial, they believe that only the cor- 
 poreal and worldly exists, and, accordingly, they 
 love what is of self and the world ; and, hence, 
 from this falsity come lusts and evils. At this 
 
 4* 
 
42 . THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 day the evil is much greater than at former 
 times, because men can now confirm the incre- 
 dulity of the senses by scientific reasonings 
 unknown to the ancients, which have given 
 birth to an indescribable degree of darkness 
 at which men would be astounded did they 
 know its extent!" — [Arcana Ccelestia, 232, 
 
 233-] 
 
 The serpent of our sensual nature is ever 
 
 beguiling us to taste the pleasures of sin, and 
 to rely upon external rather than internal 
 evidence as to what is good, enjoyable, and 
 enduring ; and if we yield to self-love, we 
 shall, before we are aware, have lost our faith 
 in the truths of God's Word, and shall be able 
 no longer to bring our perplexities and our 
 doubt to that sure and final arbiter, but shall 
 be left to be tossed and driven about by the 
 fluctuating passions and whims of a worldly- 
 heart and infidel mind. 
 
 Faith dies within us the moment we place 
 sensual evidence and sensual good over Divine 
 
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 43 
 
 revelation and the duties of religion. And as 
 faith dies the soul dies. 
 
 Driven from Paradise, and shut out from its 
 pure delights by our actual sins, let us look to 
 Him who, according to the prophecy, has come 
 to bruise the serpent's head, and to open 
 those blessed gates once more to a sinful and 
 sorrowful world. He has said to the children 
 of men, " Come unto me, all ye that labor, and 
 I will give you rest." He is the way, the truth, 
 and the life. He it is who, like the serpent 
 in the wilderness, being Himself " lifted up," is 
 drawing unto Himself all those who believe 
 in Him and do the work of repentance. 
 
 " Thou strong and loving Son of man, 
 Redeemer from the bonds of sin, 
 1 Tis Thou the living spark dost fan 
 That sets the breast on fire within. 
 
 "Thou openest heaven once more to men, 
 The soul's true home, thy kingdom, Lord, 
 And I can trust and hope again 
 And feel myself akin to God. 
 
44 THE TEMPTATION OF EVE. 
 
 "In Thee I find a nobler birth, 
 A glory o'er the world I see, 
 And Paradise returns to earth, 
 
 And blooms again for us in Thee." 
 
III- 
 
 gjj0ali'tf Qovt; tax, i\xt gmx\ $tt &xtt. 
 
 And he stayed yet other seven days ; and sent forth the 
 dove, which returned not again unto him any more. — 
 Gen. viii. 12. 
 
 THE students of the Bible and of nature 
 have had much to say about the Flood, 
 querying as to when and where it occurred, 
 and how widely it prevailed. I do not know 
 that they have advanced much beyond the 
 plain narrative given in Genesis ; and if they 
 had established all the natural facts concerning 
 it to their own and everybody's satisfaction, I 
 do not know that we would be spiritually much 
 wiser than we may be on reading this simple 
 narration in God's Holy Word, But it is 
 quite certain that if men would give an equal 
 amount of attention and care to the study 
 of that Flood which is now and at all times 
 prevailing in some degree over their mental 
 
 45 
 
46 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 
 
 world ; if they would watch the rise and fall 
 of its waters, and be on the lookout for 
 its mountain-tops, and for the happy rest in 
 Ararat, the mountain of Light; then would this 
 be no longer a vain study of what is merely 
 temporary and local, but a pursuit of what 
 belongs to the immortal, spiritual life of our 
 race. This would be a study indeed of the 
 Bible account of the Flood in its genuine and 
 true sense. For all things in the outer world 
 are pictures of things in the soul's world. And 
 the Bible everywhere, in relating what seem 
 to be natural occurrences, is describing really 
 the things which take place in our souls, or in 
 the inner, spiritual world. So it is with the 
 story of the Flood. The waters of the Flood 
 are the temptations and desolations which come 
 over the immortal souls of men. The earth 
 which is covered is the depraved will, with its 
 evil lusts and passions ; for over these rise 
 higher and higher the waters of conflict and 
 temptation. 
 
THE SOUL SET FREE. 47 
 
 The ark, with its contents, is the church in 
 the soul ; that is, the remnant of whatever is 
 good and holy and saving preserved by the 
 Divine mercy from entire destruction, laid up 
 within the conscience, or the higher part of 
 man, there to be the means of his enduring, 
 unhurt, the time of tribulation, and of his 
 coming finally to the place of his soul's rest 
 and salvation. All those who are drowned by 
 the Flood are those who have not the elements 
 of the church in them, who have not preserved 
 a good and pure conscience intact even amid 
 the rising waters of false persuasions and evil 
 seduction. These are drowned ; their souls 
 are carried away to hell by the overwhelming 
 tide of evils and false persuasions, the cunning 
 voices of secret, sinful desire, the constant 
 drawing of evil habits too long indulged in. 
 
 But those in the ark are saved. They are not 
 a single family only, but they are the thousands 
 of faithful souls of whom Noah and his family 
 are the symbol or representative. They are 
 
4^ NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 
 
 all who are of the spiritual church, — the church 
 of faith ; they are all, that is, who have the 
 church with its faith and its charity in their souls. 
 These are borne safely over the waters of the 
 flood ; these rise as the waters rise ; these see 
 the old, the corrupted, and evil world disappear 
 before their eyes, and at length see again the 
 mountain-tops as of a new earth, and behold 
 over them the rainbow as in new heavens of 
 light and beauty and everlasting peace. 
 
 The first idea that comes to the mind of a 
 child or grown person, in reading of the Flood 
 and the ark, is, no doubt, that it was a fine 
 thing to be Noah, floating securely in the ark 
 over all the wide waste of waters under which 
 his fellow-men had perished, and to have with 
 him there his own family, and a pair of all the 
 fowl and cattle and creeping things. 
 
 Well, it was indeed a good thing, but not 
 pleasant after our earthly way of judging. 
 It was the means of salvation, but its way a 
 hard and tiresome way. Noah longed to see 
 
THE SOUL SET FREE. 49 
 
 the waters abate and the land appear again. 
 He longed for the dry land, the blooming fields, 
 the wide, free earth, wherein to range abroad. 
 His ark was a prison ; the endless, dreary 
 waste of waters was like a vast wall, shutting 
 in his steps, his gaze, his whole life, to the 
 narrow world of self. The heavens above 
 were dark with the clouds of rain. He longed 
 again for the sun, the smell of the earth, the 
 sound of the cattle in the pastures, and the 
 pursuits of the busy, homely life. 
 
 The landsman who has made a long voyage 
 at sea, knows how refreshing and heart-restor- 
 ing is the first sight of land ; and when the 
 land-gales bring him the sweet odors of woods 
 and the sounds of the lowing cattle, or of the 
 farmer s scythe, or of the church-bell ringing in 
 a distant hamlet, his bosom swells with a new 
 and nameless emotion. He thanks God, whose 
 are the seas and who made them, that he has 
 been preserved while upon deep waters ; but 
 again he thanks God, whose hands did form 
 c 5 
 
50 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 
 
 the dry land, that on the dry land is his home 
 and that the harbor is nigh. 
 
 Thus Noah longed to go forth from the 
 ark. He rejoiced when, at the end of forty 
 days, he " opened the window of the ark he 
 had made" and beheld the tops of the moun- 
 tains. And he sent out first a raven, " which 
 went forth to and fro, until the waters were 
 dried up." And then he sent forth a dove 
 from him, to see if the waters were abated. 
 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her 
 foot, and returned unto him into the ark, for 
 the waters were on the face of the whole 
 earth ; and he put forth his hand and took her, 
 and pulled her unto him in the ark. And he 
 stayed yet other seven days ; and again he 
 sent forth the dove out of the ark; and the 
 dove came in to him in the evening ; and, 
 lo, in her mouth was an olive-leaf, plucked 
 off: so Noah knew that the waters were 
 abated from off the earth. And he stayed 
 yet other seven days ; and again he sent 
 
THE SOUL SET FREE. 5 I 
 
 forth the dove, which returned not again unto 
 him any more. 
 
 The story of the ark, of the long and dreary 
 confinement, of the raven and the dove sent 
 forth, and of the dove's finding at last a rest 
 for the sole of her foot and returning no more, 
 — this is at once a beautiful and a true story of 
 the life of the soul which is being regenerated. 
 We have not here an allegory merely that we 
 can apply at random to anything we wish to 
 illustrate, but an accurate history of those 
 states of the soul which do actually succeed 
 each other in the course of spiritual birth and 
 progress. Let us for a moment reverently 
 and carefully explore the inner meaning of 
 this wondrous narrative. The recollection of 
 these sacred mysteries of the Divine wisdom 
 hidden in the depths of the Word of God, of 
 which we may obtain, indeed, but a poor and 
 imperfect glimpse, may be in some future 
 hour a source of strength and consolation to 
 the soul. 
 
52 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 
 
 I have called the life in the ark an imprison- 
 ment, and, therefore, said that it was no pleas- 
 ant condition to be in, after our worldly way 
 of thinking. But it is the true and only con- 
 dition of security in the time when the floods 
 of infernal evil are sweeping over our soul's 
 world. The way of life is elsewhere called a 
 straight and narrow way into which few enter. 
 So with the ark, it is a narrow place for the 
 abode of the soul. We seek rather the free, 
 open land ; and our efforts toward this life of 
 true spiritual liberty are described by the 
 sending forth of the dove three times from 
 the ark. 
 
 This, then, is to be borne in mind, that the 
 ark represents that bondage to which we 
 are committed ; that involuntary confinement 
 within the laws of our religion, while the 
 world's temptations surge about the soul, and 
 when our first step from the limits which our 
 conscience has set up is a step into the deep 
 and perilous waters of evil and the soul's 
 
THE SOUL SET TREE. 53 
 
 ruin. The mountain-tops appearing are as 
 the dawn of faith, which promises us freedom 
 at last, which says the land is near, — that good 
 land where we may go in and out and find 
 pasture, — that is, where we shall live freely, 
 where, our hearts being impelled by the love 
 of what is good and in accordance with the 
 holy will of God, we may act out those im- 
 pulses of the renewed will, and find in the 
 service of God the only real and true liberty. 
 And we send forth the dove, as did Noah, 
 every time we explore our lives by the light 
 of the Divine Word, to see if genuine, un- 
 selfish goodness and the truth which we in- 
 wardly honor and are compelling ourselves 
 to obey, with much difficulty, perhaps, and 
 with frequent failure, if these, the elements of 
 the church within, are taking root and actually 
 growing up in our lower and external man ; 
 if the low and brutal passions and desires of 
 the flesh, if selfish and unbelieving worldliness 
 are giving way in reality to sentiments of true 
 
 5* 
 
54 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 
 
 charity, to the higher and angelic affections for 
 what is purely true and good. 
 
 In the narrative it is said that after forty 
 days the mountain-tops appeared, and Noah 
 opened the window and looked out; and he first 
 sent a raven out, which went forth to and fro. 
 It is not said that the raven came back. We 
 are not told where the raven rested, but it did 
 not come back. But the dove which Noah 
 sent forth came back, finding no rest for the 
 sole of her foot. 
 
 And it is so with every one who, after a long 
 period of his life, spent amid the tumults of 
 temptation, of inward conflict and struggle 
 between the evil desires of the heart and the 
 religious restraints of the conscience, begins at 
 last to behold the reality of a spiritual faith, to 
 feel assured of final victory, to believe that 
 God's truth, firmly adhered to in the conscience, 
 will at last be the stronger, and will enable him 
 to master his evil inclinations. The waters 
 seem to abate ; the dawn appears ; the moun- 
 
THE SOUL SET FREE. 55 
 
 tain-tops are seen. With the eye of faith and 
 trust the penitent and long-tried soul looks out 
 upon the dreary waste of this world's life. 
 
 Through the opened window of the soul the 
 light of heaven pours in ; a sense of rest and 
 hope and confidence comes over him. The 
 flood is past; now he will go forth bold and 
 strong upon the new and better life. 
 
 But it is only a raven that is sent out to 
 explore the land, — a raven which flies to and 
 fro. and comes not back. The raven is a bird 
 of darkness, an image of the false imaginings 
 that spring from the evil heart. So long as 
 the will is not purified of its evil desires and 
 likings, the thoughts which it puts forth are but 
 false and deceitful. The survey of life, made 
 by the first dim light of faith, is apt to be 
 a false and deceptive one. The life of re- 
 ligion looks easy and practicable enough, but 
 there lies selfishness at the bottom of our 
 motives after all. This our religion, so readily 
 put on, is but a cloak to hide our real infidel 
 
56 NOAH'S DOVE; 0A\ 
 
 nature from the world and those whose judg- 
 ment we fear, or whose favor we seek ; and 
 our faith thus outwardly professed, is but the 
 flatterer of some selfish love,, some hidden 
 pride, some secret desire to be rewarded for 
 our goodness in another world, to be thought 
 better than our neighbors in this. But this is 
 not the rest and peace and liberty of the 
 spiritual life. This is not the life of genuine 
 religion brought down to the natural will, 
 entering into all the motives and affections of 
 external man. The raven flies to and fro. 
 There is still unrest, still the seeking and not 
 finding, still the unsatisfied longing for real 
 freedom and final repose. The internal vision 
 is obscured by the false ideas of the unregen- 
 erate reason. The old law of the flesh — the 
 notion that this and that is good, and to be 
 sought after, because the natural will desires 
 it — still asserts its sway. The false principle, 
 represented by the raven, although finding no- 
 where rest, and bringing no real peace and 
 
THE SOUL SET FREE. S7 
 
 quiet to the soul, continues to invade even 
 the believing mind so long as the earth is 
 submerged; that is, so long as the natural will 
 is still inspired with its inherited affections of 
 evil. Happy is he whose first glance at his 
 life from the window of faith sees fluttering 
 about this bird of falsehood, this omen of evil ; 
 for he then knows that the heart is not pure, 
 the mind is not full of light, but that he has 
 still to rid himself of much that is evil and 
 false. Happy for him that the raven goes to 
 and fro, and comes not back again ; the ques- 
 tionings, the doubts, the anxieties of mind 
 caused by the presence of this conflicting 
 element of unbelief and falsity, will only tend, 
 in the end, to purify the mind and establish it 
 the more surely in the truths of saving faith. 
 
 But the dove is next sent forth. The dove 
 is the spirit of goodness and truth, going 
 forth from the faith which is in man's interior 
 nature. The Lord resides in the inmost soul ; 
 it is from his presence there that man has con- 
 
5 8 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 
 
 science or preserves any remnant of goodness 
 and truth and can exercise any faith. In this 
 plane of the life, signified by sending forth the 
 dove from the ark, it is the Lord that in reality 
 gives us the knowledge to detect our sins and 
 the spirit to overcome them. The dove being 
 the symbol of all that is innocent and holy in 
 our faith, its going forth naturally typifies the 
 desire on the part of the holy principle in the 
 inner man to implant itself in the outer man, 
 to be made actual in the daily life. It is a 
 desire that the will of God, as understood and 
 revered in the interior mind, may descend and 
 be carried out in the life of the body in all the 
 lower and outermost details of man's life in the 
 world ; that thus the Divine petition may be 
 fulfilled, " Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
 heaven. " 
 
 But what is the result of this desire on the 
 part of the faithful soul thus to bring its 
 religion down to the external, daily life ? The 
 dove goes forth indeed, but it returns again, 
 
THE SOUL SET FREE. 59 
 
 11 having- found no rest for the sole of her foot." 
 Thus, in that ground of the natural will, there 
 is still no room for the heavenly principles of 
 goodness and truth. Religion is still only a 
 thing of belief, an exalted state of thought and 
 feeling occasionally experienced in the soul, 
 but as yet having no real rest and basis in the 
 external, actual conduct of life. No ; leaving 
 the intellect, the memory, the occasional excite- 
 ment of the purer and more refined emotions 
 of the soul out of sight, — for in these such like 
 religion of faith finds its abode, — and coming 
 down to the body with its passions, the natural 
 heart with its tastes and desires, its purposes 
 and plans, its hopes and its ambitions, we shall 
 find little room there for the real influence 
 of spiritual motives, of genuine love of good- 
 ness and truth for their own sake, or for the 
 sake of the Holy Father and giver of them to 
 the soul. It is not that a man is leading a 
 voluntary evil life, for he has already for a long 
 time perhaps been ruled in his outward actions 
 
6o 
 
 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 
 
 by the dictates of his conscience ; but still 
 this life of outward goodness and order is dis- 
 cordant to his heart's real affections ; and there- 
 fore it is said that in the ground, that is, in the 
 affections of the will, the dove, or the holy spirit 
 of faith, finds no rest for the sole of her foot. 
 
 But another seven days go by, another 
 week, or spiritual season of trial ; and again 
 the seventh, a holy day of rest, is come. 
 Advanced through renewed temptations and 
 newly-gained victories to a higher state of life, 
 again the holy things of religion seek escape 
 from the narrow chambers of the inner mind 
 into the broad realm of the actual life. 
 
 And now the dove, sent forth again, returns 
 in the even-time, and, lo, an olive-leaf pluckt 
 off. This, the olive-leaf, is the first harbinger 
 of peace, the promise of the holy fruit of reli- 
 gion which shall yet be borne on the redeemed 
 and enlivened soil of the heart. The olive- 
 tree is the good of charity : the leaf is the 
 truth which teaches this goodness. The olive- 
 
THE SOUL SET FREE. 6 1 
 
 leaf brought back by the dove at even-time is 
 the first dawn of that perception of truth which 
 comes from good affections in the heart. For 
 there are two sorts of truth known in men : 
 The truths learned and retained in the intel- 
 lect, and the truths that tell themselves, as it 
 were, out of the depths of pure religious love 
 and actual charity of daily life. 
 
 The latter truths are called perceptions. 
 They are the highest consciousness of truth 
 we have. They are like the voice of the 
 Holy Spirit speaking softly and secretly in the 
 inner man. When thus we begin to know the 
 truth from the love of that goodness which the 
 truth teaches, then we may know that land is 
 near ; that the long, wearisome journey over 
 temptation's rough waters is well-nigh ended ; 
 that our foot shall soon find rest on the broad 
 lands of free and peaceful and happy living. 
 
 Yea, and when yet another seven days are 
 ended, when the last trials necessary for the 
 soul's purification and victory over its evils are 
 
62 NOAH'S DOVE; OR, 
 
 undergone to the end, and the blessed Sabbath 
 of heavenly rest dawns upon us, then shall we 
 send forth the dove, never to return again. 
 
 The dove shall find at last its rest upon 
 the refreshed and blooming land ; the waters 
 shall have left the earth ; the fountains of the 
 abyss shall be dried up. With our wills 
 cleansed by the waters of temptation from 
 every evil thing and ready to bear the fruits 
 of our faith in the lowest as in the highest 
 relations and duties of life, we shall go forth 
 at length from the place of bondage into the 
 broad land of spiritual freedom. No longer 
 shall the gulf of the evil and the false threaten 
 us on every side ; no longer shall the infernal 
 abyss send forth its wretched crew to infest 
 our souls, to overwhelm us with their false 
 and deathly persuasions. We shall have 
 learned to live in and by the truth of God's 
 Word ; and the truth shall make us free. 
 
 Such is the liberty, such the peace of heaven. 
 Is it not worth the long and tedious voyage 
 
THE SOUL SET TREE. 63 
 
 to come to such a land at last? Is it not 
 the wiser part here to govern our lives by 
 the straight though often trying and irksome 
 rule of our religion, seeing that thus only shall 
 we rise above those desolating evils and fatal 
 delusions under which so many souls have 
 gone down, than to mistake for freedom the 
 bondage to our evil passions and appetites, 
 those chains which Satan is ever trying to 
 forge around our souls? 
 
 The true freedom in this life is the render- 
 ing of careful service and obedience to God's 
 holy laws. This may be involuntary, and thus 
 arduous and difficult, and the way of indul- 
 gence seem the only broad, free way. But 
 all that makes God's service arduous is the 
 unwilling, the unconverted heart. When the 
 heart's affections are for heavenly things, 
 when the heart is ready to enjoy the happiness 
 of heaven, then will its delight be in the law 
 of the Lord ; and we shall walk at liberty 
 seeking his precepts. 
 
rv". 
 
 
 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and 
 wine : and he was the priest of the most high God. — 
 Gen. xiv. 18. 
 
 MANY centuries have passed over the earth 
 since the event here described took place. 
 And yet in this simply but forcibly portrayed 
 picture we see the true pattern of that which 
 to-day is done before our own eyes. Now, 
 too, upon the altars of our churches, are the 
 bread and wine brought forth by the Lord's 
 priest and offered for the blessing of every 
 soul that, like Abraham, comes home victorious 
 from the battle with the enemy. What sublime 
 meaning lay hid in that bread and wine brought 
 forth by the king of Salem and offered unto 
 Abraham, a refreshment and a blessing in the 
 64 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 65 
 
 midst of the arduous conflicts of his life ! 
 Long ages passed away, and in the same city 
 of Salem again are those wondrous symbols, 
 bread and wine, brought forth for the refresh- 
 ment of man. Again is it Melchizedek, the 
 true King of Righteousness, yea, it is Salem's 
 rightful and eternal King, who now on the night 
 of his own betrayal, after eating the pass- 
 over with his disciples, takes bread and wine 
 and distributes to them, saying of the bread, 
 " this is my Body," and of the wine, " this is 
 my Blood." And so doing, He, who is verily 
 a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, 
 enjoins upon his human followers the perpetual 
 offering of the same bread and wine, saying, 
 " This do in remembrance of me!" 
 
 And now, when we see before us, upon the 
 Lord's table, the same sacred symbols conse- 
 crated by the worship of ages, forever distin- 
 guished from all other created substance by 
 being chosen by our blessed Saviour as the 
 emblems of his own Divine Body and Blood, 
 
 6* 
 
66 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 
 
 when, in obedience to his solemn command, 
 we come into the presence of our eternal Priest 
 and King to receive, under the figure of these 
 material elements, that heavenly refreshment 
 of which our souls are in need, and reflect how, 
 before the abiding statutes of our Divine re- 
 ligion, the ages, the nations, the monuments of 
 earth pass away and are as nothing, shall we 
 not recognize in this most holy Sacrament that 
 which is forever above man's devising, that 
 which could only have been conceived by Him 
 whose eye beholds eternity, "whose command- 
 ments stand fast for ever and ever, and are 
 done in truth and uprightness"? Yea, well 
 may we exclaim in the presence of this per- 
 petual memorial of the Divine mercy, in the 
 presence of those symbols w r hich for many 
 ages prophesied, and which for evermore shall 
 recall, the Divine incarnation, the eternal Word 
 made flesh, the Bread of heaven come down to 
 be the food of man, — " The works of the Lord 
 are great, sought out of all them that have 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 67 
 
 pleasure therein. He sent redemption unto 
 his people ; He hath commanded his covenant 
 forever; holy and reverend is his name !" 
 
 " Therefore we, before Him bending, 
 
 This great Sacrament revere ; 
 Types and shadows have their ending, 
 
 For the newer rite is here ; 
 Faith, our outward sense befriending, 
 
 Makes our inward vision clear." 
 
 In Melchizedek's offering of bread and wine 
 we behold an early type of the Holy Supper of 
 the Christian Church. The occasion and the 
 circumstance of this offering will, therefore, be, 
 in a figurative manner, analogous to those 
 states of worship which are proper to the 
 celebration by the Christian of this most holy 
 solemnity. 
 
 Abraham, we read, returned from his wars 
 with King Chedorlaomer, who had conquered, 
 together with many other lands, also Sodom, 
 the land wherein Abraham's brother Lot dwelt, 
 and had taken Lot captive. Abraham returned 
 
68 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 
 
 victorious, having liberated his brother and 
 destroyed this invading king and his host. 
 Now, as he returns to his home, it is written, 
 "And Melchizedek king of Salem brought 
 forth bread and wine : and he was the priest 
 of the most high God." And he blessed 
 Abraham. 
 
 We may behold in this history of Abraham 
 a twofold representative. On the one hand, 
 Abraham may be regarded as the prophetic 
 type of our Saviour, and all that is recorded of 
 Abraham is, in its spiritual meaning, a descrip- 
 tion of the interior life of our Lord in assuming 
 and glorifying his humanity. It is to this inte- 
 rior reference to Himself, contained in the 
 spiritual sense of the Old Testament, that our 
 Lord referred when He said, " Search the Scrip- 
 tures, for they testify of me," and also when 
 He explained unto his disciples, in the books 
 of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms, "things 
 concerning Himself.'' But our Saviour's life in 
 the humanity was itself a pattern of what ours 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 69 
 
 should be in becoming truly his followers. 
 Therefore the spiritual things contained in 
 Abraham's history may also have reference to 
 the experience of all men alike in becoming 
 regenerate. 
 
 In the midst of a life of war and disquietude 
 behold, then, a season of temporary victory and 
 rest, a peaceful return to one's home, the 
 greeting of one who is both priest and king, 
 and the refreshment and blessing tendered by 
 his hand in the name of the most high God. 
 Can we not in this outline behold some dearly- 
 remembered scene out of the life we have 
 lived ? Or may we not at least have this 
 before us as that which is promised to every 
 Christian by the Divine mercy and wisdom 
 which ordained the sacrament of the Holy 
 Supper ? For what is this but a feast of re- 
 freshment and blessing by the way-side of a 
 weary and toilsome life ? When do we appre- 
 ciate this so fully as after a season of bitter 
 temptations and internal warfare ? Who alone 
 
70 MELCHIZEDEICS OBLATION; OR, 
 
 is it who meets us at the gates of Salem, the 
 eternal city of Peace ? Who stills the conflict 
 of the soul and fills our hearts with new vigor, 
 with happy hopes and fresh courage, but the 
 same Giver of all Peace, the true Melchizedek, 
 the King of Righteousness, the eternal Priest? 
 Like Abraham, we have our battles to fight. 
 We must expect at times to have the quiet, 
 the happy security of our inner life disturbed, 
 and to have to go down to fight the invaders 
 of Sodom and Gomorrah, where our brother is 
 being taken captive. In other words, we must 
 endure temptations from the things of the 
 lower and outer man. We are drawn into all 
 kinds of snares and enticements by the appe- 
 tites and the persuasions of the senses and the 
 reasonings of the depraved will. This lower 
 and sensual degree of the nature is that brother 
 Lot which we are to rescue. With the light 
 of Divine truth and with all the high motives 
 of our religion we must go down into the fray. 
 Faith, perseverance, self-denial, and brotherly 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 7 1 
 
 love must be brought into hand-to-hand con- 
 flict with doubt and denial of God and religion, 
 with a weak, self-indulgent, self-excusing mo- 
 rality, with a mighty, almost irresistible impulse 
 to have one's own way, to accomplish one's own 
 purposes, let what will stand between. For 
 our better nature, our conscience, the seat of 
 our faith, and of our truly good and upright 
 motives, so far as we have any, stands in the 
 relation of a brother to the lower, carnal, and 
 self-willed part of our being. Abraham is the 
 representative of the internal, and consequently 
 the higher and heavenly plane of the mind. 
 Lot, that of the external, the worldly, or natural 
 plane. The war of Abraham for the deliverance 
 of Lot is, therefore, only a figure descriptive 
 of every conflict which goes on in the human 
 heart between the higher and the lower motives 
 and principles of conduct. Conscience, revela- 
 tion, religion, against appetite, infidelity, self-in- 
 dulgence ; the angels of heaven arrayed against 
 Satan ; the spirit warring against the flesh. 
 
72 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 
 
 Nor as a man advances in Christian life does 
 this conflict, this occasional anxiety and distress 
 of soul, become less intense and severe, but 
 rather more so. Like the young warrior, the 
 better he is skilled in the use of arms the farther 
 he is sent to the front into the heat of the conflict. 
 Many souls pass through the world in a state 
 of sluggish sleep, hardly knowing at all what 
 that temptation of spirit, what that tribulation 
 is through which man enters the kingdom 
 of heaven. They purposely dull their hearts 
 that they may not feel the cuts of remorse. 
 They blind their eyes that they may not see, 
 and make themselves deaf that they may not 
 hear. They are like Lot in his captured land 
 of Sodom, without a brother Abraham dwell- 
 ing at Hebron who may come down and 
 rescue him. 
 
 But if the Christian's conflict is more severe 
 as he advances in the life of religion, if temp- 
 tations multiply, and, in growing more interior 
 and refined and subtle, become thereby all the 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 73 
 
 more intense in their power and insidious in 
 their attacks, on the other hand he is supplied 
 with ever-increasing strength from the Al- 
 mighty defender and protector of the faithful ; 
 he is nearer to the Lord, and receives more 
 immediately and constantly the inflowings of 
 the Divine life. 
 
 In whatever resistance we can offer to 
 an evil enticement, in whatever endurance, 
 patience, courage, and hope we maintain in 
 seasons of intense anguish of spirit, and when 
 we are tempted by a thousand things, within 
 and without, to give way to despair and tears 
 and the overwhelming sorrows of the heart, in 
 our every conflict with evil in whatever form, 
 the Lord is present with us, and gives to us all 
 the power we have to resist, to endure, and to 
 overcome. He is never nearer, never more 
 abundantly affording us the goodness and the 
 truth we need, than just when we are in our 
 most grievous temptations, when we seem most 
 forsaken and alone. But these secret affec- 
 d 7 
 
74 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 
 
 tions of good and truth, the genuine love and 
 faith we receive from Him, the source of all 
 our soul's life and strength, — these at such 
 times are not perceived in us in their own 
 quality. Coming at once into conflict with 
 the evils so violently roused within us, they 
 add only to the distress and confusion of our 
 minds, even as the arrival of fresh troops on 
 the field of battle, although the harbinger of 
 final victory and peace, does yet at first only 
 make the contest more fierce and desperate. 
 
 But it is of the Divine Providence that this 
 inner strife between good and evil should not 
 have to be constantly maintained, and that man 
 should enjoy occasional seasons of seeming 
 victory and peaceful repose. Like the regu- 
 larly recurring Sabbaths, the days of rest, and 
 like the cities of refuge set apart in times of 
 old, wherein a man, whatever wickedness he 
 may have done, was for a time secure from his 
 pursuers, so do the occasional intervals of 
 peaceful, quiet, harmonious life serve to re- 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 75 
 
 fresh, enliven, and encourage the soul of man. 
 In these seasons of rest a man is not rid of or 
 cleansed from his old evils, but the affections 
 and thoughts of evil are, as it were, put to 
 sleep in his mind ; they give over for awhile 
 their combat against what is good, heavenly, 
 and peaceful ; they cease to trouble and tor- 
 ment the soul with their innumerable tempta- 
 tions ; though not wholly conquered, they do 
 for a season keep^ the peace. And it is in 
 those times that man feels the blessings of the 
 Divine presence, and learns something of the 
 nature of that heavenly food with which the 
 Lord is constantly nourishing our immortal 
 souls. Though in reality no nearer now than 
 in more troubled and unquiet hours, though 
 affording us no more directly the food and aid 
 we need than when we are in the midst of the 
 fray, still, now in the hour of tranquil and 
 exalted rest the Lord reveals Himself more 
 clearly to us as the bringer of peace and of 
 every spiritual blessing, and we know the near- 
 
76 MELCHIZEDEK' S OBLATION; OR, 
 
 ness of heaven not by the discord between it 
 and the evils of our hearts, but by the sweet 
 harmony into which it draws all our better feel- 
 ings and thoughts. So, indeed, at the gate of 
 Salem meets the soul after temptations its true 
 Priest Melchizedek, both King and Priest, who 
 brings forth bread and wine and blesses it in 
 the Divine name. This true eternal Priest, who 
 alone can refresh and bless the soul, is the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. He is called^the Priest after the 
 order of Melchizedek, for Melchizedek, who 
 is both Priest and King, signifies the giver and 
 dispenser of all heavenly goodness and of all 
 heavenly truth. And those two elements of 
 spiritual life — goodness and truth, or love and 
 wisdom — are what make up the food of the 
 soul ; they are the spiritual bread and wine 
 with which the soul is refreshed by the Lord at 
 the gate of Salem, the city of peace. 
 
 Salem, afterwards called Jerusalem, and for 
 evermore to be known to the Church as the New 
 Jerusalem, means " Peace" ; and Abraham's 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 77 
 
 return to Salem is the soul's entrance after a 
 time of spiritual temptation into a state of 
 heavenly peace and consolation. Melchizedek 
 means " the king of righteousness/' and he 
 is king of Salem ; therefore he represents 
 the Lord as ruling over and abiding in this 
 peaceful state of the soul by his Divine wis- 
 dom ; or, in other \rords, by Melchizedek, the 
 king of righteousness and of peace, is meant 
 that peaceful and comforting influence of the 
 Spirit of Truth as felt in the rational mind, that 
 calm reliance, that firm and abiding faith in 
 the Divine Truth, that clear perception of the 
 goodness and beauty of the religious life. And 
 by Melchizedek the Priest is meant the presence 
 of the Lord in the mind as the dispenser of all 
 heavenly love and goodness. For the Priest 
 is the representative of the Lord as to the 
 Divine goodness and mercy, while the King 
 represents Him as to the Divine wisdom and 
 justice. And, finally, by Melchizedek bringing 
 forth bread and wine we have pictured to us 
 
 7* 
 
78 MELCHIZEDEK'S OBLATION; OR, 
 
 the actual nourishment which our souls, in 
 those states of internal peace, receive chiefly 
 from the Lord, as the Giver of all goodness 
 and truth, of all charity and faith, thus of our 
 spiritual bread and wine. 
 
 Bread and wine are the natural elements 
 corresponding to the two kinds of nourishment 
 essential to the soul. The soul actually lives 
 upon love and truth, or goodness and wisdom, 
 in some of their various forms ; it lives upon 
 these as derived from some source without 
 itself, — from God, their only Giver. The soul 
 does not live of itself any morethan the body 
 has its nourishment in itself. 
 
 By the Priest and King bringing forth bread 
 and wine is clearly figured forth, therefore, the 
 Lord as the Giver of all goodness and truth, 
 feeding the human soul with these the elements 
 of spiritual and immortal life. It is in the same 
 sense that the Lord is called the Bread of life, 
 the Bread of heaven, and also the Vine, and his 
 Blood the cup. 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 79 
 
 It is in this sense that even to-day the Lord 
 our Saviour comes forth here at the gate of 
 peace, our true Melchizedek, our everlasting 
 Priest and King, and offers us the Bread of 
 heaven and the Cup of salvation. 
 
 It is his own Blood that He offers us as the 
 wine of the soul, his own Body as the bread 
 of eternal life. Because the Lord's glorious 
 Divine Body is itself, in its primary and very 
 substance, the essential Love and Wisdom from 
 which are the life, substance, form, and exist- 
 ence of all created things in heaven and on 
 earth. 
 
 This life-giving, soul-refreshing substance 
 the Lord offers us for our actual appropriation, 
 for our voluntary acceptance here amid the 
 warfare and toil of our earthly bodily life. He 
 condescends to come down into the plane of 
 visible, tangible substance to offer these his 
 Divine gifts under the form of earthly bread 
 and wine, and Himself, the true Priest, to be 
 represented by those his human servants who 
 
80 MELCHIZEDEICS OBLATION; OR, 
 
 minister at the altar of his Church on earth. 
 In this way, in the Sacrament of his own ap- 
 pointment, He would declare to our natural 
 senses, if necessary, the great truth that He 
 alone is the Source of all Life and Blessing, 
 and He would enable us, by actual partici- 
 pation in this Holy Supper, to show forth in an 
 equally real, visible manner our faith in Him 
 as our Redeemer, our reliance upon Him as 
 our Father, our remembrance of Him as our 
 Saviour, our love for Him as our Priest, and 
 our obedience to Him as our King. For when 
 as the eternal Priest He had instituted his Holy 
 Supper, then as our everlasting King He com- 
 manded us, saying, "This do in remembrance 
 of me." 
 
 Let Christians, then, thankfully and with rev- 
 erent hearts receive this spiritual bread and 
 wine offered them under the form of a Sacra- 
 ment by the true Jerusalem's Lord and King. 
 It may be that we, too, come from the midst 
 of conflict, our hearts soiled by too close com- 
 
THE SUPPER OF THE LORD. 8 1 
 
 mingling with the world, our spiritual energies 
 faint and weary after long struggle against our 
 besetting sins ; or, perhaps, slow and sluggish 
 from long indifference and careless yielding to 
 the evil. 
 
 In any case, let us come with sober, thought- 
 ful minds, carefully searching our hearts and 
 secretly confessing our unworthiness to God. 
 We must put the shoes from off our feet, for 
 the place we are about to enter is a holy place. 
 We must leave aside the cares of the world, 
 and all earthly affections and thoughts. We 
 must banish all warring anxieties from our 
 minds and approach in heart the heavenly 
 Salem, the city of peace. There thankfully 
 and gladly let us wait upon the Lord ; confident 
 that through the outward form of the Sacra- 
 ment will be communicated to us that inward, 
 invisible, but real grace which is the Bread and 
 Wine of the soul, and in receiving which we are 
 truly blessed in the name of the Lord. 
 
"V- 
 
 «palum mx& ^Mnft in the 'gmA *f %Yxm\u\x\ m, 
 ttoe Qxvxnt &&wUtx0\x$ of ®vutb U P*m 
 
 And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and mens erv ants, and 
 w omens erv ants, and gave them unto Abraham, and re- 
 stored hi)n Sarah his wife. — Gen. xx. 14. 
 
 THAT the Bible is man's only guide to faith 
 and to salvation is a doctrine generally ac- 
 knowledged among Christians. With too many 
 professing to be Christians the whole matter 
 ends with this acknowledgment ; neither faith 
 nor salvation being with them concerns of such 
 weighty and practical importance as to induce 
 them often to resort to the only guide, however 
 unquestioned its authority may be. Others, 
 devout and earnest readers of the Divine Book, 
 while entertaining a general belief in its sanc- 
 tity and plenary inspiration, yet find in their own 
 
 experience that it is only certain portions that 
 
 82 
 
ABRAHAM AND SARAH, 83 
 
 really afford them much direct information on 
 spiritual subjects, and that even this much is 
 of a nature quite different from the kind of 
 instruction considered necessary in other de- 
 partments of knowledge. It neither resembles 
 the transcendental theories of the philosophers 
 nor the angular and matter-of-fact dogmas of 
 the theologian ; and the benefit derived from 
 perusing this holy book of God's Truth is, ac- 
 cordingly, experienced by most of this class of 
 readers as being rather that which attends a 
 devout and humble state of mind in waiting on 
 the Lord than any definable amount of doc- 
 trinal information. These persons, too, believe, 
 and most rightly, that in having the merciful 
 providence of God recalled to their minds by 
 the histories of his wonderful dealings with 
 his chosen people of old, and by the far more 
 touching and eloquent record of his own 
 blessed life on our earth and of the glorious re- 
 demption wrought for all the children of men, 
 the soul of the Christian is encouraged in its 
 
84 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 reliance upon the Divine mercy and in its hope 
 for final deliverance from evil. Now, this out- 
 side view of the Holy Word is not to be re- 
 garded as a trivial one or as without its own 
 degree of usefulness. The truth is, that far 
 more depends upon the state of mind in which 
 one comes to that Divine Fountain of Living 
 Waters, than the amount of knowledge con- 
 cerning its great depths of truth which one 
 has, for the time being, stored safely up in 
 the intellect. The hungry are filled with good 
 things, and the rich are sent empty away. 
 
 The sacred narrative relates how Abraham 
 once journeyed southward with his wife Sarah 
 until they came to Gerar. Arriving and so- 
 journing here, Abraham fears that the men 
 of that land desiring his wife, who was a 
 woman fair to look upon, would slay him, her 
 husband ; and, accordingly, he instructs Sarah 
 to pass for his sister, and not his wife. Now, 
 Abimelech, hearing that Sarah is the sister of 
 Abraham, sends for her, meaning to take her 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH 85 
 
 to wife ; but the Lord warns him in a dream in 
 the night that Sarah is already Abraham's wife, 
 and commands that she be restored to her 
 husband. Abimelech, rising up early in the 
 morning, expostulates w T ith Abraham, and asks 
 him why he allowed Sarah to go for his sister 
 when she was his wife ; Abraham replies that 
 he thought, " Surely the fear of God is not in 
 this place ; and they will slay me for my wife ;" 
 and, therefore, he begged his wife to say of 
 him, into whatever place they should come, 
 " He is my brother." Now, this was, indeed, 
 true ; for Sarah was the daughter of Abraham's 
 father, but not of his mother. And then fol- 
 low these words, " And Abimelech took sheep, 
 and oxen, and menservants, and womenser- 
 vants, and gave them unto Abraham, and re- 
 stored him Sarah his wife." 
 
 Read in the sense of the letter, as the Chris- 
 tian Church has hitherto alone been able to 
 read this narrative, it appears in every way 
 remarkable. As a guide to our conduct, 
 
 8 
 
86 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 we would in nowise be justified in adopting it. 
 As an instance of God's wise providence, it is, 
 in its many literal aspects, utterly beyond our 
 comprehension. Yet this is surely a part of 
 that Word of God which alone can make us 
 wise unto salvation. Just as much a part, just 
 as essentially the Divine Word, the heaven- 
 sent lamp to our feet, as the Lord's Sermon 
 on the Mount, or the Parables of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. And when the diligent reader 
 finds that the remarkable conduct displayed in 
 this narrative is presented to us not once only, 
 but three times in God's Word ; that Abraham 
 when he sojourned in Egypt likewise published 
 that Sarah was his sister and allured Pharaoh 
 to take her from him, and that Isaac in the 
 land of Abimelech did also suffer his wife Re- 
 becca to be regarded as his sister, — when 
 these three similar instances of such remark- 
 able conduct are thus distinctly set before us, 
 how can we account for the fact except on 
 the hypothesis that there is a deeper signifi- 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 87 
 
 cance contained therein than appears in the 
 mere literal account ; that there is a spirit 
 within which truly "maketh alive ,, this dead 
 letter of historical narrative ? What a marvel- 
 ous and at the same time most satisfying truth 
 is that, then, which teaches us that one of the 
 sublimest and holiest, and at the same time 
 most practical, doctrines of Christianity is here, 
 under the veil of history, presented to our 
 minds ! Who can but wonder, and feel as one 
 dazzled by the break of day upon a world of 
 darkness, when he learns that in this narrative 
 is minutely described a passage of the inner his- 
 tory of our Saviour's life in the flesh ? I say 
 " inner history," for it pictures that development 
 of his mind, that gradual changing of his spir- 
 itual nature by which He was casting off the 
 material and mortal and putting on the pa- 
 ternal and the Divine which was to glorify 
 Him fully with the Father's glory. These 
 things, deep and mysterious, in our Saviour's 
 history are nowhere told in the letter of the 
 
88 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 Holy Word, whether in Gospel, in Psalm, in 
 Moses, or the Prophets. But in the spiritual 
 sense of all these books is recorded for our 
 edification and our guidance to heaven all 
 the marvelous history of our Lord's inner life 
 while in the world. 
 
 Now, if we would read this narrative in its 
 spiritual sense, we must know what is the sig- 
 nificance of the persons and places mentioned 
 therein. As regards the persons, Abraham rep- 
 resents the Lord Himself as the Divine Good 
 and also the Divine Humanity ; accordingly, 
 both the essential Divinity and the humanity 
 assumed by it for the purpose of Redemption. 
 Sarah, as his wife, represents Divine Truth con- 
 joined with Divine Good, made one with it in 
 the Divine Life, which is the Divine Proceed- 
 ing. Sarah, as Abraham's sister, represents 
 rational truth, or truth entertained from the 
 reason only, and accordingly not in its essence 
 conjoined and made one with the life of love. 
 Abimelech, the king of Gerar, represents one 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 89 
 
 receptive of the doctrine of faith ; and Gerar, 
 or the land of the Philistines southward, signi- 
 fies a state of intelligence in matters of faith 
 and doctrine. Abraham's journeying south- 
 ward, then, and abiding in the land of the 
 Philistines, in Gerar, denotes the Lord in his 
 assumed humanity while receiving instruction 
 in spiritual doctrine, which instruction was 
 alone from the Divinity within Him. 
 
 Seeing now the spiritual significance of those 
 persons and places, let us read the narrative 
 anew, and observe what lesson in spiritual 
 matters is here imparted to us. Our Lord, we 
 thus learn, when He comes into the perception 
 of spiritual truth, and is storing his mind with 
 the doctrine of faith, although as the Divine 
 Father He knows that all truth must be of celes- 
 tial origin, and can live only when ultimated in 
 charity; still, as the Son born into the world in 
 our nature, in order that his mind may be devel- 
 oped in truly human order, He first regards 
 truth merely as rational truth, — that is, as truth 
 
9° ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 that can be reasoned out, be constructed in 
 man's own intelligence, and thus belong to the 
 intellect as its own. While in the doctrines of 
 faith, that is to say, in a believing, receptive 
 state of mind, He as Abimelech sends for 
 Sarah. But Sarah is no longer the wife, that 
 is, truth married to goodness ; but, on the con- 
 trary, she is regarded simply as the sister, as 
 truth, to be rationally received in the mind, 
 and there to remain unmarried to any good, 
 and related to good only as a sister to a brother. 
 And thus Sarah — rational truth — comes to and 
 is received in his mind. But the truth of faith 
 is not thus always held as mere rational truth 
 in the Lord's mind. The Divinity within Him 
 after a season warns Him that this truth prop- 
 erly belongs to charity, and should be united 
 to charity as its lawful mate; that it is a crime 
 and an offense against the heavenly law of 
 marriage that Divine truth should be held apart 
 in the mind as mere rational intelligence, and 
 not united to the affections of the will, and thus 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 9 1 
 
 become one Divine and perfect life, fruitful in 
 the offspring of righteousness and good works. 
 The Lord, warned in this manner, as Abime- 
 lech is described as being warned in the night 
 in a dream, comes now into a state wherein He 
 clearly perceives that truth of faith is of celes- 
 tial and not merely intellectual origin ; that it 
 really comes from the Divine Love, in its origin, 
 and must be restored to unity with it; that 
 while it seemed, when first received, to be 
 merely the outgrowth of the human intellect, 
 and thus quite independent of the will, now 
 it proves to be verily Sarah, the married wife 
 of Abraham, or that celestial truth which exists 
 only in union with the Divine Love, and thus 
 alone brings forth the offspring of charity and 
 good works. Then the Lord, still as Abimelech 
 in the doctrine of faith, takes oxen, and sheep, 
 and menservants, and womenservants, and 
 gives them unto Abraham, and restores to 
 him Sarah his wife. Perceiving as He does, 
 through his Divine enlightenment, that all the 
 
92 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 truths in his intellect come from the love of 
 God as their source, He willingly restores 
 them to their owner, regards them as one w T ith 
 and inseparable from the life of charity, and, 
 together with this acknowledgment, He renders 
 up to this Supreme Love, to the control of this 
 marriage union of goodness and truth, all the 
 lower and subservient qualities of his mind; 
 all his natural affections and natural thoughts, 
 all the goodness He possesses, all the truth He 
 possesses, whether natural or rational, He now 
 gratefully renders up to that Divine and Su- 
 preme Master, his own Divinity, the indwelling 
 Father, and thus from being human He be- 
 comes Divine, and by this process of his glori- 
 fication He is made not only our Saviour in 
 time, but our great Pattern and Guide to all 
 eternity in the work of our regeneration. 
 
 A remarkable illustration occurs in this nar- 
 rative of the correspondence, or signification, 
 of Scripture names. We have seen that Abra- 
 ham represents the Lord when receiving in- 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 93 
 
 struction in spiritual doctrine. So far as He is 
 regarded as journeying into the southern land 
 and abiding there this is the case ; but when his 
 first rational reception of doctrinal truths is 
 referred to, the signification is at once trans- 
 ferred from Abraham to Abimelech. Abraham 
 then represents the Lord God in his celestial 
 degree, or as to the Divine Good ; Abimelech 
 the king represents the Lord first receiving 
 the truths in matters of doctrine as merely 
 rational, while He was on earth and his hu- 
 manity not yet glorified. And so again Sarah, 
 as we have seen, represents, as the wife of 
 Abraham, the Divine Truth united to Divine 
 Love, or the spiritual and celestial natures of 
 God conjoined. As the sister of Abraham, in 
 which character she was sought by Abimelech 
 for his wife, Sarah represents rational truth, 
 which is addressed to the intellect only, and 
 not yet conjoined with any affection of the will. 
 We may now, too, gain some idea of the mean- 
 ing of those other narratives which describe 
 
94 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 the similar conduct of Abraham with his wife 
 in Egypt, and of Isaac with his wife in this same 
 land of Gerar. Why did Abraham twice deny 
 his wife Sarah and allow her to be regarded as 
 his sister, once in Egypt and once in Gerar ? 
 And why, again, is Isaac related to have once 
 done the same ? The answer to these ques- 
 tions is, in brief, thus: that our Lord, in assum- 
 ing our human nature, underwent, as to his 
 humanity, the same kind of mental and spiritual 
 development that man undergoes ; conse- 
 quently, the various degrees of his mind were 
 opened not all at once, but successively, and 
 according to an eternally established Divine 
 Order. Now, all the truth that the mind re- 
 ceives may be distinguished into various grades 
 or kinds, and so, likewise, is the mind itself 
 capable of a corresponding progressive devel- 
 opment, each degree of the mind being fitted 
 to the reception of its own degree of truth. 
 These degrees we may call in their order, be- 
 ginning at the lowest, the sensual, or scientific, 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 95 
 
 the rational, the spiritual, and the celestial. 
 Now, because this is the Divine order, — that 
 order into which man is created, and by which 
 he alone can become regenerated, — therefore, 
 when our Lord assumed our common humanity 
 that He might glorify it and make it Divine, 
 his own mind underwent this same gradual 
 and successive development His being first 
 instructed in mere sensual knowledge, or 
 scientifics, is what is meant by Abraham's so- 
 journing in Egypt ; and that He, who in his 
 indwelling Divinity was all Truth and all 
 Goodness Himself, might yet, in this assumed 
 humanity, enter into the experience of our 
 common boyhood and, as a boy, learn, with 
 avidity, and for the mere sake of learning, 
 without any regard to the uses of charity, the 
 knowledge of material science, — therefore is 
 Abraham said to deny his wife and to give 
 Sarah as his sister to Pharaoh, king of Egypt. 
 Thus is that universal law of Divine Providence 
 illustrated, that, although all truth, even in the 
 
96 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 degree of sensuous or scientific knowledge, is 
 truly Divine, and exists in its origin in eternal 
 marriage with the Divine Love ; still, in order 
 that it may be adapted to our as yet unregen- 
 erate and natural minds, it takes for the time 
 the appearance of being merely sensual and 
 material, the demonstration of our five senses, 
 and neither Divine nor human, but simply 
 " matter of fact," as we say, and capable of 
 being learned by us regardless of any motive 
 of charity or use, and solely for our selfish 
 gratification. So, after the law of his own 
 merciful providence, did our Saviour, when a 
 boy, refuse to learn sensuous truth as spiritual, 
 but rather made his humanity like ours by 
 learning the truths of science in the Egyptian 
 land, just as we must, from purely natural 
 ends, and receiving it in the natural, scientific 
 plane of the mind only. Nevertheless, Pharaoh 
 did not take Sarah to wife, but restored her to 
 Abraham, no longer as his sister, but as his 
 married wife. This teaches that our Lord, 
 
THE LAND OF A BLUE LECH 97 
 
 when He had fully acquired his instruction in 
 scientific things, perceived, by intuition from 
 the Divinity within Himself, that the truth He 
 had learned was not given for its own sake, 
 but that it truly belonged, as a spouse, to the 
 love of use in the will, that to this love it should 
 be given up, and thus rendered fruitful and a 
 living good to all mankind ; and also by this 
 recognition of Sarah as Abraham's wife is 
 implied the acknowledgment that all truth, 
 even the scientific, has its celestial origin in the 
 Divine Mind alone. But in the narrative which 
 we are to-day considering, the Lord is described 
 as being instructed in another higher kind of 
 truth. It is no longer in Egypt, but in the 
 land of the Philistines, that Abraham and Sarah 
 now sojourn. That the Divine Love and the 
 Divine Wisdom are now contemplated no 
 longer in things of science, but in the doc- 
 trinals of faith ; for the land of the Philistines 
 represents those who are in those doctrinals ; 
 and here again Sarah, or the spiritual Truth 
 e 9 
 
98 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 of God, is not at first regarded as the wife of 
 Abraham, — that is, as the Divine Truth in con- 
 junction with the Divine Love, and forming- 
 one with it, — but rather as only the sister, as 
 mere rational truth, the outgrowth of the intel- 
 ligence and the possession of the understand- 
 ing alone, independent altogether of the heart. 
 But here, again, Abimelech is warned of God 
 in a dream, and gives up Sarah, restoring her 
 to Abraham as his wife ; teaching us that the 
 Lord, in this stage of his education, after once 
 imbibine the truths of faith as mere rational 
 truths, then, by the intuition from the Divinity 
 within Him, comes into clear perception that 
 these truths also, the matters of spiritual 
 doctrine, of faith, and of religion, are only 
 barren and dead when entertained in the in- 
 tellect as rationalities alone, and that in order 
 that they may bring forth the fruits of good 
 living, they must first be restored to their 
 marriage-union with the affections of the will, 
 and at the same time their celestial origin 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 99 
 
 acknowledged to be the very Divine Will 
 itself. 
 
 In regard to Isaac, who, in the land of Abim- 
 elech, passed off his wife Rebecca as his sister, 
 we are taught that he represents the Lord, not 
 like Abraham as to his celestial nature, but as 
 to his rational nature. Now, Isaac did not, 
 like Abraham, go down into Egypt, and, con- 
 sequently, only once presented his wife as 
 his sister, and that in the land of the Philis- 
 tines ; and this means that the rational plane 
 of the Lord's mind was kept above and distinct 
 from the sensuous or scientific plane (repre- 
 sented by Egypt), and yet that this rational 
 plane receives Divine Truth, first, only as ra- 
 tional, and that afterwards, by perception, it 
 acknowledges that it is spiritual, that is, that it 
 forms one with the Divine Love. In these 
 three instances, then, we see the following pro- 
 gression of spiritual states : First, Pharaoh, in 
 Egypt, takes Sarah as Abraham's sister, mean- 
 ing to make her his wife ; this is the natural de- 
 
100 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 sire in the youthful mind for sensuous or scien- 
 tific knowledge, without regard to its celestial 
 origin or its true use ; by the wife restored to 
 Abraham is meant the acknowledgment of the 
 Divine Truth and of the holy use of charity in 
 the plane of scientific learning. Secondly, Abim- 
 elech desires Sarah as the sister, not the wife, 
 of Abraham, in the land of the Philistines. 
 Here the spiritual man, in the doctrines of faith, 
 desires rational truth, and accepts truth only as, 
 or because it is, rational, But Abimelech also 
 restores Sarah the wife to her husband, denot- 
 ing that all the truths of faith, although received 
 first as rationalities, must yet, in the end, be 
 acknowledged to be Divine, and to belong only 
 to charity in the will as their proper vivifier and 
 counterpart. Finally, Abimelech, discovering 
 Rebecca to be the wife, and not the sister, of 
 Isaac, in the land of the Philistines, denotes that 
 those in the doctrines of faith perceive ulti- 
 mately that even in the rational plane of the 
 mind rational truth is not sufficient of itself, 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. IOI 
 
 but must be conjoined to rational goodness, 
 and these both acknowledged to be Divine. 
 
 These are profound mysteries ; so profound 
 that it is almost in vain that we venture to ex- 
 plore them ever so slightly, for at most we can 
 obtain but a glimpse into these vast expanses 
 and fathomless depths of Divine wisdom which 
 lie concealed beneath the letter of God's Holy 
 Word. But we should take care not only lest 
 we regard the entire narrative as in itself trivial 
 and unprofitable, but also that when we learn 
 of all these subtle distinctions and nice grades 
 of meaning in the internal sense, we do not 
 also look upon these with indifference and deem 
 them too obscure and too profound for our 
 daily wants in this mundane life. 
 
 Says Swedenborg regarding the important 
 teachings contained in these and similar pas- 
 sages, " To the man whose interest and whose 
 heart are engrossed in worldly and fleshly 
 things these truths seem trivial, and as if con- 
 ducive to no good whatever ; but to the angels, 
 
 9* 
 
102 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 whose interest and affections are in celestial 
 and spiritual things, these truths are most 
 precious ; their ideas and perceptions of them 
 are ineffable. Wherein it appears that many 
 things trivial to man because transcending his 
 intelligence are most highly esteemed by the 
 angels, because they enter into the light of 
 the angels' wisdom. " (A. C. 2540.) And now 
 if any one, acknowledging the profundity of 
 this narrative, is yet inclined in his own mind 
 to ask what is the practical lesson addressed, in 
 it, to us in the midst of our various worldly 
 pursuits and labors, I think the question may be 
 answered in a few words. The lesson is this : 
 that in the natural and unregenerate state with 
 which we are born we are not capable of re- 
 ceiving any truth from the Lord at once as 
 spiritual or Divine truth ; and if we were 
 capable of receiving it in its holy and celestial 
 character, while we remain the wicked beings 
 that we are, we should only be constantly pro- 
 faning and adulterating it, and thus closing our 
 
THE LAND OF AB1MELECH. 1 03 
 
 minds against all heavenly and divine influ- 
 ences, and accordingly turning this precious 
 gift of God into the very instrument of our 
 spiritual ruin. This being the case, the Lord 
 mercifully provides that inasmuch as we cannot 
 learn truth in its real nature, we may learn it 
 under appearances adapted to our low states. 
 In youth, we learn the sensuous or scientific 
 truths, which, indeed, are only apparent and de- 
 ceptive, but still are all the truths that we are 
 capable of receiving. We have to regard our 
 senses as the only reliable guides to knowledge: 
 we have to think of God as a King or Father, 
 ruling a kingdom, somewhere in space, and as 
 feeling kindly toward us when we do well, and 
 angry when we do wickedly ; we cannot yet 
 conceive of any real spiritual attributes, or of 
 spiritual existence ; consequently, our ideas of 
 God and of heaven are only sensuous ones, — 
 that is, formed after the nature of the knowl- 
 edges obtained through our senses. Now, 
 supposing that these apparent truths were 
 
IC4 ABRAHAM AND SARAH IN 
 
 taken away from the child and he had only to 
 conceive of God as He really is in his spir- 
 itual nature and Divine infinity and perfection, 
 what would become of the child's notion of 
 God, and consequently of religion, of obed- 
 ience, of heaven, and the life to come ? And 
 so, also, when we come to mature age and be- 
 gin to look at things from the rational plane of 
 our minds, then the truths of faith are presented 
 first as rational truths ; they are regarded, 
 studied, received, or rejected, only as rational, 
 or as addressed to the reason, and not to the 
 will of man. As yet we have no perception 
 of them as spiritual truths. This perception 
 comes only from a life of obedience to the 
 truths of doctrine after they have been intel- 
 lectually received and approved. Supposing 
 that no one of these holy truths of the Lord's 
 own wisdom were implanted in our minds, or 
 obtainable by our intellectual effort until we 
 could perceive its Divine origin and nature, and 
 could at once receive it with our affections and 
 
THE LAND OF ABIMELECH. 1 05 
 
 act it out in the life from a pure love of the 
 truth itself, how many truths could we in 
 our sinful earthly condition thus receive? 
 
 Therefore it is that God in his mercy pro- 
 vides that w r e may learn truths before we love 
 them, that we may accept intellectually or 
 rationally the doctrines of religion, and live in 
 accordance with them, from simple motives of 
 obedience, or for the sake of honor and gain, 
 while yet we have little or no perception of 
 their spiritual character and of the holy mar- 
 riage which must exist between these truths 
 and the affections of our wills before they can 
 bring us into the heavenly life. Thus the 
 Lord, as Abraham, allows the Divine Truth, 
 which in Him exists only in heavenly marriage 
 with the Divine Love, to appear to our minds 
 not as Sarah the wife, but as Sarai the sister, — 
 that is, not as the spiritual truth which it really 
 is, but as the rational truth which it apparently 
 is. But like Pharoah and like Abimelech, if 
 we will not be utterly destroyed for the great 
 
lo6 ABRAHAM AND SARAH. 
 
 crime of profanation of that which is holy and 
 belongs to the Lord alone, we must, in due 
 time, restore this truth to its celestial origin, in 
 the ackowledgment of its spiritual and real 
 nature ; and holding all our sensual, all our 
 rational knowledges and affections in obedience 
 and in subjection to this truth, now perceived 
 to be Divine, we must make it our living faith, 
 by uniting with it all the purposes and motives 
 of our life, and thus render it one with charity. 
 Thus, like Abimelech, we shall have followed 
 the Divine instruction ; we shall have taken 
 " sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and 
 womenservants, and given them unto Abra- 
 ham, and restored to him Sarah his wife." And 
 then, too, offering up to our heavenly Father, 
 the Giver of all goodness and truth, our whole 
 hearts and minds in a life of devout and faith- 
 ful obedience to his commands, we may say 
 unto Him in grateful prayer, as said Abimelech 
 unto Abraham, " Behold, my land is before 
 thee : dwell where it pleaseth thee. " 
 
"VI. 
 
 Sxipnfri &tiu™ ** \ttx QMgkutt; ox, i\\t £tibvc&»fAtt\\ 
 oi the 3Uti0ttal. 
 
 And the angel of the Lord said -unto her, Return to thy 
 mistress, and submit thyself under her hands. — Gen. 
 xvi. 9. 
 
 THE woman who talked with the Saviour by 
 the well in Samaria, when she went thence, 
 said to her acquaintance that she had seen a 
 man who had told her all the things that ever 
 she did, and asked, Is not this the Christ ? 
 
 In like manner we come in our day to draw 
 water from the deep well of Divine truth. We 
 open the sacred volume which we call holy 
 and regard as holy more from custom, perhaps, 
 than from genuine appreciation of its character. 
 We read a simple, ancient tale, savoring of a 
 far-distant clime and of an age long past. In 
 the literal story itself, majestic even to the 
 
 107 
 
ioS HA GAR'S RETURN 
 
 sublime as is its sad and touching style, there 
 is yet nothing that distinctly marks it as Divine, 
 or that conveys to the superficial reader any 
 spiritual lesson. And yet if, searching its 
 interior depths, we should come upon a revela- 
 tion of the things of our own heart ; if we should 
 find here unfolded those secrets of our inner 
 experience which no human eye has ever 
 penetrated, no human ear heard uttered ; if 
 within this Holy Scripture, beneath the natural 
 imagery of the letter, we should find a record 
 telling, indeed, of our spiritual or inward life, 
 all the things that ever we did, then, astonished 
 at this more than human wisdom and insight 
 into the heart of man, shall we not say, with the 
 Samaritan woman, Come and see ! is not this 
 the Christ ? Shall we not behold, in the won- 
 drous truth revealed out of the depths of the 
 sacred Scriptures, that Word which, in the Be- 
 ginning, was with God and was God, — that 
 Word, indeed, which, now being unfolded to 
 man in its interior and its spiritual meaning, is 
 
TO HER MISTRESS. 109 
 
 none other than the Christ, the Messiah which 
 was for to come ? 
 
 It goes for little, in this our day of daring 
 speculation and unreined denial and dispute, 
 to declare to men that the Bible is indeed true, 
 and the very Word of God ; that it is the con- 
 necting link between the minds of all rational 
 beings in the natural and spiritual worlds; that it 
 contains three senses, — the natural, or earthly, 
 which is the sense of the letter ; the inner, or 
 spiritual, which treats of spiritual substances, 
 experiences, and states; and, lastly, a celestial, 
 or inmost sense, treating of the Lord, and the 
 purest essence or end of being. One word of 
 doubt or denial from the external sensuous 
 reason of man is more powerful than all the 
 arguments which can be brought to him on the 
 plane in which he reasons. So no mere rumor 
 or announcement of the Divinity of Christ 
 affected the belief of either Jew or Samaritan 
 regarding Him. The Samaritan woman doubt- 
 less mistook her Redeemer for a common way- 
 
 10 
 
IIO HAGARS RETURN 
 
 farer. The secret He told her out of her own 
 life declared to her his Divine omniscience; and 
 she went away, asking, Is not this the Christ? 
 And when men at this day, even they who 
 treat the sacred volume familiarly, with the air 
 of truth-seekers at life's wayside, examining 
 with a kind of condescension this wayfaring 
 Son of man, when they are told the thing which 
 no human voice could speak, no discrimination 
 of human friend, or foe, could pry out of the 
 secret depths of the actual experience of life, 
 then may these do well to pause reverently in 
 this mysterious presence, to remember that it 
 is alone the Messiah which is to come, which is 
 called Christ, who will thus tell us all things ; 
 and not a few have felt the Divine voice say- 
 ing, by a powerful intuition, which they cannot 
 resist, "I that speak unto thee am He." 
 
 It is, indeed, true that the whole Bible tells 
 in its inner sense the experiences of the human 
 soul. But there are few passages that appeal 
 so directly to the mind of so-called rationalistic 
 
TO HER MISTRESS. Ill 
 
 or free-thinking men as does this same strik- 
 ingly beautiful figure presented in the story of 
 Haear. How little would the reader of the 
 mere letter imagine what a depth of the human 
 experience of our day lies concealed in this 
 picture of Hagar sitting by a fountain in the 
 wilderness, in the way to Shur ! 
 
 Let us take a hasty glance at the literal 
 narrative itself. 
 
 Sarai, Abram's wife, has borne him no child. 
 She gives him her Egyptian handmaid, Ha- 
 gar, to be his wife. But Hagar, when she 
 had conceived, despised her mistress ; and 
 Sarai seeing that she is despised in the eyes 
 of the handmaid, sends Hagar away into the 
 wilderness. And there Hagar, sitting by a 
 fountain of waters, is comforted by the angel 
 of the Lord, who commands her to return to 
 her mistress and submit herself to her. He 
 promises that she shall bear a son, whose name 
 shall be Ishmael. And this one shall be a wild 
 man. His hand will be against every man, 
 
112 HA GAR'S RETURN 
 
 and every man's hand against him. And 
 Hagar called that place the " Well of Him that 
 liveth and seeth me," — " Beer-lahai-roi." 
 
 And now let us as hastily glance at the 
 spiritual meaning of these personages. 
 
 Abram signifies the internal man, or that 
 part of our human nature which draws its life 
 directly from the Divine source of all life, and 
 which is separated by a discreet degree from all 
 merely natural, bodily sense and thought. In 
 a good sense, therefore, Abram represents the 
 spiritual man as to his will or affection of 
 good ; and Sarai the internal man as to faith or 
 affection of truth ; especially does Sarai, as 
 contrasted with Hagar, represent that faith or 
 firm belief in spiritual and revealed truths 
 which comes from a love of such truths and 
 the good they teach ; for this is the union with 
 Abram which Sarai his wife enjoys. Sarai, 
 the wife of Abram, is that truth which is ad- 
 joined to the goodness of this internal or spir- 
 itual man. She represents, therefore, spiritual 
 
TO HER MISTRESS. 1 1 3 
 
 or intellectual truth as distinct from mere sen- 
 suous or scientific knowledge. And Hagar, 
 the Egyptian handmaid, represents the life of 
 the external or natural man, and its affections 
 for natural, materialistic science, or those kinds 
 of knowledge which we derive through the 
 senses from the external world. We have in 
 these three characters, therefore, a representa- 
 tion of the powers and agencies of every man's 
 mind. For every man's mind, or intellectual na- 
 ture, possesses an internal, or spiritual part, and 
 external, or sensuous part ; and between these 
 a third plane or degree, which partakes of both 
 the spiritual and sensuous and in a sense unites 
 them, and this is the rational faculty, or the 
 plane of the reason. And as we have seen 
 Abram and Sarai typify the spiritual plane of 
 the mind, in which reside the affections of good 
 and the truths of faith, Hagar, as a hand- 
 maid, represents the natural, or sensuous plane 
 of the mind, whose office is to serve the higher 
 faculties by the acquisition of scientific knowl- 
 
 10* 
 
114 HAGARS RETURN 
 
 edge. She personifies the love of sciences 
 and knowledges. Egypt itself represents the 
 whole plane of scientific knowledge. That land 
 has always been regarded in secular history 
 as the mother of the physical and exact 
 sciences. 
 
 But what shall we say of the intermediate, 
 or rational plane of the mind ? What is it 
 that typifies this ? It is precisely to the origin 
 and office of the rational plane of the mind 
 that the narrative we are considering mainly 
 refers. For nothing else is treated of in the 
 internal sense of this passage in the story of 
 Haear than the birth or formation in the mind 
 of the rational faculty. It is easy to see that 
 the reason stands midway between the mere 
 senses of the body and the knowledge they 
 acquire on the lower side, and, above, the per- 
 ceptions or spiritual knowledges of the soul. 
 Now, all life, properly speaking, comes from 
 within. Life descends as love or affection from 
 the inmost chamber of our being, and inspires 
 
TO HER MISTRESS. I I 5 
 
 and animates the lower planes of the mind, 
 all our sensuous and bodily faculties and all 
 the ideas or knowledges we take in from the 
 outer world. It is by the union of the internal 
 life, the spiritual principle of the internal man, 
 with the bare and otherwise lifeless acquisitions 
 of the outer mind, that there is formed what 
 we call the reason. Mere knowledge, mere 
 facts, stored up in the memory is not reason. 
 But the love of knowledge and of acquiring 
 scientific truths, which belongs to every man 
 by nature, and which resides in the outermost 
 part of the mind, — almost in the senses them- 
 selves, — this love of knowing must be infused 
 with the higher and interior principles of the 
 spiritual mind in order for a truly rational 
 faculty to be produced. And this union be- 
 tween the life of the spiritual and that of the 
 external, or scientific mind is what is typified 
 by the union of Abram and Hagar, his Egyp- 
 tian handmaid. From this union there pro- 
 ceeds that rational faculty, which is also typified 
 
Il6 HAGAR' S RETURN 
 
 by Ishmael, the son which Hagar bore to 
 Abram. 
 
 We see now what elements of our common 
 human nature are here placed before us as in 
 an allegory, and personified by the various 
 actors upon this stage of ancient and divinely 
 constructed history. How eagerly and with 
 what delight have men traced in the writing 
 of a Shakspeare, a Dante, or a Bunyan, the un- 
 derlying portrayal of our common human attri- 
 butes and internal experience ! But what shall 
 we, in comparison, say of a sublime allegory 
 like the one here presented to us in the story 
 of Hagar and Ishmael, — an allegory which 
 ceases to be allegory, and becomes veritably 
 eternal reality and truth, — when we find that 
 it is conceived by no mere human imagination, 
 but by that wisdom of Him only who search- 
 eth the heart and veins, from whom no secrets 
 are hid, and to whom every thought and emo- 
 tion of every human soul stands out in clear 
 daylight, and is spoken as upon the house-top ! 
 
TO HER MISTRESS. 1 17 
 
 The first experience of the mind after ac- 
 quiring the common facts pertaining to mere 
 bodily existence, is the formation of the reason. 
 The infant, the child, does not reason, but acts 
 like the animal, from instinct. Gradually with 
 the increase of knowledge there develops this 
 higher faculty in which man is, as it were, to 
 become master of his knowledge and of all his 
 faculties ; thus to be no longer impelled by 
 mere animal impulse or automatic instinct, but 
 to choose, determine, and act from his own 
 free judgment. It is evident that man's 
 freedom consists in this, his having a reason 
 whereby he may form his own conclusions and 
 judgments. The brute has no freedom really, 
 because it is impelled only by an instinct 
 implanted in its nature. Man having free- 
 dom, can yield to or resist these similar animal 
 impulses at his pleasure or will. And when 
 the child grows to the years of discretion, or 
 mature reason, then we call him free, and no 
 longer a child, but a man. We see here the 
 
Il8 HAGAR'S RETURN 
 
 wisdom of the Creator, in that He has provided 
 for the birth and growth of the rational faculty 
 in man as the essential condition to all progress 
 and happiness. But there is not a single gift 
 of God to man which man may not, if he will, 
 pervert and apply to improper ends. It is so 
 with this sublime, this noble gift of reason. 
 And since the will of man is what gives direc- 
 tion to all his conduct and what determines 
 the use he will make of all his faculties, and 
 since the will is, in our present condition, 
 selfish, earthly, and inclined to sin, therefore 
 the reason has become enslaved with the rest 
 of the faculties, and instead of being the bold, 
 courageous torch -bearer, leading us up to 
 higher light and liberty, it plays the cowardly 
 part of excusing our fleshly weaknesses and 
 endeavoring to glorify the miserable creatures 
 of our depravity and our spiritual blindness. 
 The reason was given us to be indeed the step 
 from earthly to spiritual science, to be the fruit 
 of the marriage between Abram and Hagar, 
 
TO HER All STRESS. 119 
 
 between the soul and the bodily sense. But, 
 alas ! the inner affection of the will which gives 
 the reason its life is no longer pure and 
 heavenly. It is fallen and corrupt. It is the 
 father of lies, and the reason languishes under 
 its tyranny. There is but one deliverance 
 possible, and this does not lie in the mere 
 facts of earthly science, the so-called " positive 
 science," which men nowadays are so set upon 
 acquiring. All this is dead and useless unless 
 inspired by some higher, nobler end or motive 
 of the heaven-born soul, — unless it becomes 
 one with the faith and religion which makes up 
 the life of the spiritual man. And for this all- 
 enlivening, all-comprehending, all-reconciling 
 spirit, this ransomer of our reason from the 
 bonds of sensualism, this deliverer of our im- 
 mortal souls from the grave of mere dead 
 science, we must look to God, the Source of 
 all Truth, and to his Revelation, and thus we 
 shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall 
 make us free. 
 
120 HA GAR'S RETURN 
 
 So soon as Ishmael is conceived Hagar be- 
 gins to despise her mistress. The first and 
 natural impulse of the rational faculty on com- 
 ing to consciousness in the mind is, to de- 
 spise the things of faith and the facts of spiritual 
 existence. The reason rejoices in independ- 
 ence, in absolute self-direction. Like the 
 youth just entering upon manhood, it rejoices 
 in its sense of freedom from all parental re- 
 straint ; it is proud in its ability and its right 
 to judge and determine for itself. Hagar de- 
 spises her mistress Sarai. The age of the 
 world we now live in would seem to be that of 
 this newly-conceived, proud and defiant reason. 
 The shackles of traditional faith, the tutelage 
 of the past in things not of politics and physi- 
 cal science only, but in matters of religious 
 faith as well, seem to have been thrown off. 
 The human race would seem to be entering a 
 new, vigorous stage of early manhood. Science 
 and a love of science is now the chief object 
 of its favor. Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid, 
 
TO HER MISTRESS. 121 
 
 is installed in the place of Sarai, the rightful 
 mistress of the household. And Sarai is de- 
 spised in her eyes. Not only are the things 
 of traditional faith lightly esteemed by the 
 popular opinion of our day, but spiritual mo- 
 tives and principles of any kind, yea, the ex- 
 istence of a spiritual or supernatural world, 
 is regarded by many as only the fancy of 
 dreamers and sentimentalists, and as things of 
 little or no practical importance, whether real 
 or not. The incipient reason released from 
 the shackles of ignorance and superstition 
 begins with despising the things of faith and 
 religion. Happy is he in whom the reason, 
 having thus begun, does not also end with this! 
 And what is the character of this Ishmael 
 when born ? " He will be," says the sacred 
 text, " a wild man ; his hand will be against 
 every man, and every man's hand against 
 him." How truly does this describe the newly 
 born, unfettered reason of man ! Its nature 
 is to combat ; to contest commonly accepted 
 
 F II 
 
122 HA GAR'S RETURN 
 
 theories ; to deny, to argue, to dispute. Its 
 first attitude toward any truth it meets is hos- 
 tile, defiant. It stands with a drawn sword 
 at the entrance of the mind to ward off mere 
 dogmatic or traditional assertions. Its hand is 
 against every man's, and ever)' man's hand is 
 regarded with suspicion, as if directed against 
 its own freedom. It is as a wild man. 
 
 But it is of the Divine Providence that the 
 reason, when first developed in man, should 
 thus be left to its free and independent course. 
 It must learn by experience what is its true 
 use and position in the mind. And if it reaps 
 desolation and unhappy, selfish solitude as the 
 reward of its universal doubting and deny- 
 ing of what others believe, and are happy in 
 believing, then will- it the more freely and 
 earnestly seek the protection and the guidance 
 of some higher authority, of some higher faculty 
 than itself. This higher faculty is faith ; the 
 higher authority is the spiritual truth residing 
 in the internal man. It is Sarai, Hagar's 
 
TO HER MISTRESS. 1 23 
 
 rightful mistress. And the voice of the Lord 
 uttered in the still depths of the stricken con- 
 science is that of the angel, saying to Hagar 
 at the fountain, " Whither wilt thou go ? Re- 
 turn to thy mistress, and submit thyself under 
 her hands. " 
 
 For the natural mind having rejected its 
 faith in spiritual truth and despised it, will be 
 found like Hagar, sitting at the fountain in the 
 wilderness, in the way to Shur. Shur is a land 
 bordering on Egypt, and the fountain of water 
 is that kind of merely natural or scientific 
 knowledge in which the mind of the unbeliever 
 seeks to stay itself. But it is a fountain in 
 the wilderness at best, and he who sits there is 
 an afflicted one. Mere science without faith is 
 as dead as the body of man without the soul ; 
 it is a universe without God ; it may give meat 
 and drink to mere bodily appetite, but leaves 
 the immortal soul famishing for food. 
 
 O desolate and troubled soul ! who hast 
 rejected in scorn thy faith in God's Word and 
 
124 HA GAR'S RETURN TO HER MISTRESS. 
 
 Kingdom, and sought to live upon the poor 
 crusts of merely earthly lore and riches, return 
 to thy mistress, and submit thyself to her ! 
 Return to that faith which is the only light and 
 enduring comfort of all that is truly human 
 and immortal in thee ! Think not that this is 
 to sacrifice thy reason. It is alone what will 
 make the reason free in the eternal truth, and 
 make it the master rather than the mere slave 
 of a corrupt and fallen will. For the voice 
 that said to Hagar " Return/' uttered also the 
 sure promise that " Ishmael shall be born, and 
 his seed shall multiply exceedingly." And 
 for a perpetual memorial of this voice of the 
 Spirit warning thee out of the still but aw T ful 
 depths of the Divine Word, call this place in 
 thy life's history Beer-lahai-roi, — u The well of 
 Him that liveth and seeth me," 
 
"VII- 
 f#ttffl?t*l tttiwcA to i^ife; ox, the ^irmtnal iUaflm. 
 
 And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water ; 
 and she went, and Jilted the bottle with water, and gave 
 the lad drink. — Gen. xxi. 19. 
 
 THE story of Hagar and Ishmael is one 
 of those Divine allegories with which the 
 sacred Scripture abounds. It is remarkable 
 as being that one which the Apostle Paul es- 
 pecially designates as such, indicating at the 
 same time in a brief but grand outline some- 
 thing of the spiritual meaning underlying the 
 literal narrative. " For it is written, that Abra- 
 ham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, 
 the other by a freewoman. But he who was 
 of the bondwoman was born after the flesh ; 
 but he of the freewoman was by promise. 
 Which things are an allegory : for these are 
 
 11* 125 
 
126 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 the two covenants ; the one from the mount 
 Sinai which gendereth to bondage, which is 
 Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Ara- 
 bia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, 
 and is in bondage with her children. But Jeru- 
 salem which is above is free, which is the 
 mother of us all." — Gal. iv. 22-26. 
 
 Viewed in the light of the spiritual sense, 
 we behold here certain persons acting out as 
 in a drama what goes on in the mind of every 
 religious man. Hagar is the type of the 
 purely natural love of knowledge, or that af- 
 fection for learning which is born with every 
 one, and which shows itself among the first 
 traits developed in early childhood. Ishmael, 
 the son which Hagar bore to Abram, repre- 
 sents the reason ; for this faculty is born of the 
 union of the natural love of knowledge with 
 the interior or spiritual life of the soul. Ani- 
 mals know a great many things as perfectly 
 as men do, but their knowledge remains only 
 knowledge ; it does not become reason, as it is 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 27 
 
 itself never the result of any analytical thought, 
 and this because it is not united with any 
 spiritual desire or purpose. Man has two 
 natures, or two planes of the mind, in which 
 he receives life from God, and is conscious of 
 it as his own life. The higher plane is the 
 spiritual, the lower the natural. Thus he lives 
 two lives, — one in the spiritual world, the other 
 in the natural world. In his spiritual mind 
 he is aware of spiritual things, — such as the 
 truth of revelation ; for instance, he knows and 
 thinks about God, about his duty, about the 
 life after death, about heaven and hell ; in his 
 natural mind he is aware of natural earthly 
 things, — thus, his bodily wants, earthly riches 
 and comforts, and the various occupations and 
 sciences which relate to getting these things. 
 Now when the knowledges of the spirit and the 
 knowledges of the senses are united they give 
 birth to another, middle plane of the mind, 
 which is the rational. Here resides the rea- 
 son, — midway, we may say, between soul and 
 
128 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 body, between religious faith and natural 
 science. The reason is intended to unite the 
 two, or is rather the effect of these being united. 
 Through the reason the light of religion, of 
 our spiritual nature, — thus, of faith and of con- 
 science, — may come down into the acts and 
 motives of our bodily life. 
 
 We have seen that when Ishmael is first 
 conceived then Hagar his mother despises 
 Sarai, Abram's true wife and her own right- 
 ful mistress. Sarai is faith, or the spiritual 
 truth, and by her being despised by her hand- 
 maid Hagar is represented the light esteem, 
 yea, the contempt, in which the things of faith 
 are held when the reason, typified by Ishmael, 
 is first being developed. And Ishmael, too, is 
 a wild man, whose hand is against every man ; 
 which description applies equally to this rea- 
 son, which brings to the mind a sense of inde- 
 pendence and self-reliance, and a disposition 
 to combat, to deny, to argue about whatever is 
 presented as an object of belief. We have 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 29 
 
 seen, too, in tracing the story of Hagar and 
 Ishmael, how at a fountain of water in the 
 wilderness the angel of the Lord appears to 
 Hagar and warns her to return to her mis- 
 tress, and submit herself under her hands. 
 And in this event we have seen typified the 
 mind of man which has relied on its own rea- 
 son and has sought to look to natural science 
 alone for all truth, now warned by the Spirit 
 of God to return to its rejected faith, and to 
 seek in the doctrines of revealed religion 
 those truths which alone can have authority in 
 the soul and can bring it any enduring re- 
 freshment and comfort. 
 
 But let us pursue this wonderful narrative 
 with a view to further instruction, contained in 
 its spiritual meaning, concerning the place and 
 office of the reason in relation to faith. 
 
 Ishmael is born, and Hagar returns with 
 this her son to the house of Sarai her mistress. 
 But after a time Sarai also bears to Abram a 
 son, whose name is called Isaac. And we 
 
130 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 read that Sarah saw the son of Hagar the 
 Egyptian, which she had borne unto Abraham, 
 mocking; and she said unto Abraham, " Cast 
 out this bondwoman and her son: for the son 
 of this bondwoman shall not be heir with 
 my son, even with Isaac. And the thing was 
 very grievous in Abraham's sight because of 
 his son. And God said unto Abraham, Let it 
 not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, 
 and because of thy bondwoman ; in all that 
 Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her 
 voice ; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. 
 And also of the son of the bondwoman 
 will I make a nation, because he is thy seed. 
 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, 
 and took bread, and a bottle of water, and 
 gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, 
 and the child, and sent her away : and she 
 departed, and wandered in the wilderness of 
 Beer-sheba. And the water was spent in the 
 bottle, and she cast the child under one of the 
 shrubs. And she went, and sat her down over 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON, 131 
 
 against him a good way off, as it were a bow- 
 shot : for she said, Let me not see the death 
 of the child. And she sat over against him, 
 and lift up her voice, and wept. And God 
 heard the voice of the lad ; and the angel of 
 God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said 
 unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; 
 for God hath heard the voice of the lad where 
 he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in 
 thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. 
 And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well 
 of water ; and she went, and filled the bottle 
 with water, and gave the lad drink. And God 
 was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in 
 the wilderness, and became an archer." 
 
 Out of this beautiful narrative, as from a 
 casket of rare jewels, we would venture to 
 pluck but one gem from its infinite store of 
 heavenly truths. And this is the truth herein 
 contained concerning the regeneration of man 
 as to his rational mind, or in other words, 
 his advance from natural to spiritual reason ; 
 
132 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 which is none other, when rightly understood, 
 than the progress from the natural bondage 
 under the law, which the apostle discerned, or 
 the mere external recognition of the Divine 
 commandments as to be obeyed through vio- 
 lent self-compulsion, to that higher willing ser- 
 vice of the free spirit "whose delight is in the 
 law of the Lord." 
 
 For man has one kind of reason before he 
 is regenerate, and another kind after he is 
 regenerate. The first may be called the 
 natural reason, and the second the spiritual. 
 For before a man has arrived at adult age and 
 by a knowledge of his evils as sins, and by re- 
 sisting temptation, he has begun to be actually 
 a religious man, he has a reason, it is true, 
 but a reason which regards nature as first and 
 uppermost, and spiritual things only as in the 
 second place. This natural reason admits the 
 truths of the Bible, and the authority of the 
 Divine law, and the religious doctrine, which 
 have been taught by one's parents ; but it 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 33 
 
 receives them at the bidding of another, and 
 on outward evidence, and not yet from that 
 interior conviction which comes from having 
 tested in real life and proved what these 
 things really mean and are. This natural 
 reason abides, therefore, in apparent rather 
 than in real truths; it sees things in the decep- 
 tive, often false, lights of nature and the bodily 
 senses. But so far as it does not deny these 
 truths of doctrine, even its gross natural con- 
 ception of them is useful, as affording a basis 
 for that higher and truer knowledge which 
 will come by the spiritual trials to be endured 
 as one advances in years. 
 
 The first thing to be observed in this nar- 
 rative is the fact of Ishmael's mocking at the 
 birth of Isaac. For Isaac represents the higher 
 reason, which is distinct from that born of 
 man's external sensuous knowledge.* And 
 
 * In the Lord Himself, that Divine rational which from 
 the indwelling Father replaced the merely human rational 
 
 T2 
 
134 1SHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 there is at first a discordance and want of 
 sympathy between this reason of faith, as we 
 may call it, and the reason of the senses. Ish- 
 mael representing still the unregenerate natural 
 reason, is true to his defiant, skeptical, neg- 
 ative character. He mocks at Isaac, even as 
 Hagar his mother once despised her mistress 
 Sarai. The same antagonism is here repre- 
 sented, between that sort of knowledge and the 
 reasoning based thereon which comes in from 
 our contact with, and study of, the natural 
 world about us, and that other sort of knowl- 
 edge and its reasoning which comes directly 
 from heaven by revelation through the Divine 
 Word and the doctrines of the Church thence 
 derived; or which springs from a certain intui- 
 tive perception of the truth which accompanies 
 a life of actual goodness. This mockery of 
 Isaac by Ishmael is like the senses of the body 
 
 derived through the body born of Mary, is what is sig- 
 nified by Isaac. 
 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON. ■ 1 35 
 
 mocking the mind because it believes in a 
 world which it cannot see, and because it says 
 that the body does not live of itself but only 
 from the invisible spirit within. Or it is like 
 our selfish and carnal appetites, which seek to 
 get and to enjoy the utmost present gratifica- 
 tion, and our ambition to acquire riches and 
 distinction by whatever means will not out- 
 wardly disgrace us, mocking at those silent 
 warnings of the conscience which speak of 
 those evils which are sins, which tell us of God, 
 of our higher obligations to Him, of our spir- 
 itual peril, and the awful future that awaits the 
 willful transgression of the Divine command- 
 ments. Such is the mockery with which Ish- 
 mael, or the natural reason, saluted Isaac, 
 which is the reason of faith. 
 
 Probably there are few persons who have 
 made any experience in the religious life who 
 have not at times felt very distinctly this antag- 
 onism between the reason of the spirit and 
 that of the senses; or, as we would rather say, 
 
136 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 the reason of the regenerated and that of the 
 unregenerated mind. Often in our own con- 
 sciousness we are aware of the two opposite 
 modes of thought existing almost simulta- 
 neously. We see in a certain clear light, as 
 from the spiritual world, the great truths of 
 our faith ; we have a clear conception of God ; 
 we hold the Bible to be his Divinely-inspired 
 Word ; we believe in the existence, close 
 around us, of the spiritual world, and in the 
 guardianship of angels, and the temptations of 
 evil spirits ; we believe in the judgment we 
 must undergo after death, and in the eternal 
 life of heaven which awaits us if we have faith- 
 fully borne our cross in this life to the putting 
 away of our evils as sins against God. But 
 at the same time a voice out of this material 
 realm of nature seems to cry out in mockery, 
 " What do you know of all this ? Have you 
 ever seen or touched or tasted any of these 
 spiritual things ? How do you know that of 
 which the senses give you no knowledge? 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 37 
 
 What is the Bible but a history like any other? 
 and what are religion and the doctrines of faith 
 but certain inventions of the human mind, which 
 are transmitted from one generation to another, 
 and which, like civil laws and institutions, are 
 preserved for the sake of the good order they 
 promote, and their rules observed because cus- 
 tom or respectability requires it?" If we had to 
 resort to external evidence — to the evidence 
 of our senses — to prove that there is a God, a 
 Divine law of life, a revealed Word of God, 
 and a future life in a spiritual world inhab- 
 ited by spiritual beings, we surely would find 
 it difficult to bring satisfactory proof to .the 
 merely natural reason. Consequently, what- 
 ever we know of these spiritual things we know 
 by a higher kind of sense, and by the convic- 
 tions of a higher kind of reason. We know 
 the things of faith not by ocular demonstration, 
 not by handling and seeing, but by a direct 
 light poured in from heaven upon the soul, 
 enabling us to believe the things which we have 
 
 12* 
 
138 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 learned, and in light to see light. Those re- 
 ceive this light who are already in the endeavor 
 to bring forth that which they know of the 
 truth in a holy and useful life. With these the 
 reason itself becomes enlightened from heaven, 
 and thus earthly and spiritual knowledge be- 
 come conjoined and harmonized in the mind, 
 and religion is no longer mocked by science, 
 but reverently and lovingly served by her, and 
 made in many ways more delightful and more 
 beautiful and more powerful by this gladly- 
 rendered service of her earthly handmaid. 
 
 But to return to the narrative once more. 
 Ishmael and Hagar are sent forth again into 
 the wilderness, and then, w T hen on the point of 
 perishing, the water in the bottle being spent, 
 and Hagar having removed herself from her 
 child in order that she may not see him die, 
 again the angel of the Lord comforts her ; he 
 directs her to a well of water, and she, filling 
 the bottle, gives the lad to drink. 
 
 And Ishmael grows up in the wilderness, and 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 39 
 
 God is with him ; and he becomes an archer. 
 Now, we cannot fail to remark that the Divine 
 Providence seems to be specially extended over 
 Hagar and Ishmael. For this is the second 
 time that in their desolation they have been 
 comforted by the angel of the Lord. This 
 evidently typifies that protection and preser- 
 vation which the Lord provides for even the 
 natural reason of man, and for this, too, when 
 it is in enmity to spiritual truth, and in discord- 
 ance with the faith entertained in the soul. 
 The purpose of the mercy of God is not to 
 destroy our reason as a bad and mischievous 
 agent in the mind, but to elevate it into spiritual 
 light, so that with a clear and justly-discerning 
 eye it may look up and behold the things that 
 are in heaven, or the world of spiritual knowl- 
 edge, as well as to look down and see the 
 things of the earth and material science. 
 
 But for the reason thus to be reconciled with 
 faith, or, which is the same thing, for it to be 
 receptive of any spiritual light, man must will- 
 
T40 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 ingly and deliberately renounce his self-depend- 
 ence and look up to the Lord, who alone gives 
 spiritual truth to the mind and gives faith to 
 the soul. And yet so proud, so self-reliant, so 
 confident of its own sufficiency is the natural 
 reason of man, that it is only through periods 
 of bitter trial and desolation, through seasons 
 of doubt and the apparent destitution of all 
 truth, that man is brought to a sense of his own 
 helplessness and blindness, and of his need of 
 a Divine light and guidance. Many, indeed, 
 there are whose souls are too weak to with- 
 stand the desolation of these dark and hungry 
 wanderings in the wilderness. The Lord pro- 
 tects all souls from temptations greater than 
 they can bear. Those who know nothing of 
 these trials of soul remain still on that level of 
 mere natural reason, accepting appearances for 
 truth, and abiding by the statements and the 
 authority of others. But to prove the reality 
 of the spiritual reason, and know what is the 
 confidence of a spiritual faith, these are fruits 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 141 
 
 which can be earned only by the bitter lessons 
 of temptation and desolation. 
 
 These minds must be strong enough to 
 withstand long days and seasons of famishing 
 for truth, to feel the little spiritual strength, 
 with which they prided themselves, as belong- 
 ing to their own selfhood, vanishing away like 
 the water and the bread which failed Hagar 
 and her child in the wilderness. And as Hagar 
 hid her child Ishmael under a shrub, and sitting 
 down a good way off, lest she should see him 
 dying, lifted up her voice and wept, so must 
 these souls have strength to see passing away 
 all that was most dearly prized, all earthly com- 
 forts and delights, it may be, but more surely 
 all those spiritual riches and merits in which 
 they had prided themselves ; and chiefly must 
 they witness the utter abnegation and rejection 
 of all that merely natural reason which would 
 oppose itself to spiritual truth and would defy 
 its authority. 
 
 When the mind is thus cleansed of its delu- 
 
142 ISHMAEL RESTORED TO LIFE; OR, 
 
 sions and stripped of its pride, and, feeling its 
 destitution, actually thirsts for the refreshing 
 waters of Divine truth, then the Holy Spirit 
 descends into the soul, bringing with itself its 
 own peace, light, and comfort. Guided by this 
 inward monitor, the humbled and chastened 
 soul turns to the spiritual truths revealed from 
 God out of heaven in his Holy Word, and finds 
 therein that wherewith to revive and strengthen 
 and refresh the whole man. So " God opened 
 the eyes of Hagar, and she saw a well of water; 
 and she went, and filled the bottle with water, 
 and gave the lad drink/' Led thus from re- 
 liance on our own human prudence to put our 
 main trust in the providence of God, and from 
 the uncertain guidance of our self-will and its 
 cunning persuasions to the sure and constant 
 lamp of the Divine Word, our whole mind is set 
 right, and we are prepared with firm foot and 
 courageous heart to enter upon the conflicts 
 and the toils of our heavenward pilgrimage. 
 And Ishmael, who grows strong in the pres- 
 
THE SPIRITUAL REASON. 1 43 
 
 ence of God, shall become our archer. That 
 enlightened spiritual reason which God now 
 gives to the soul, armed with the truths of our 
 holy faith and mighty in their Divine strength, 
 shall be our defender against all assaults of 
 falsity and unbelief. Of him it shall be said as 
 of the Divine Prototype, " Thine arrows are 
 sharp in the heart of the king's enemies; where- 
 by the people fall under thee." 
 
"VIII. 
 &\\t f&tttuxl Stamp ; w f gjtow JmtU i$ U kt gxmxvtA, 
 
 And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they 
 bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause 
 the lamp to burn always. In the tabernacle of the con- 
 gregation without the vail, which is before the testimony, 
 Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morn- 
 ing before the lord. — Ex. xxvii. 20. 
 
 THIS is the ordinance of the eternal lamp. 
 In the Tabernacle of the true Israel the 
 Lord commands that a lamp, fed with pure oil, 
 be kept forever burning before the vail of the 
 Testimony. From evening to morning it shall 
 ever be fed and trimmed, and kept burning 
 before the Lord. 
 
 The pattern of the Tabernacle was seen in 
 heaven. The Tabernacle is itself an image or 
 a picture of heaven, built upon earth, erected 
 144 
 
THE ETERNAL LAMP. 145 
 
 by men's hands, and dwelt in by men ; it repre- 
 sents also the life of heaven brought down to 
 the life of this world. It is the true picture of 
 the Lord's Church upon earth ; for the true 
 Church on earth is a reflection of heaven, of 
 its order, and beauty, and glory, in the life of 
 men upon earth. 
 
 All those affections, thoughts, and states of 
 our life which make up in us the life of the 
 Church, or of heaven, are completely and un- 
 erringly portrayed by the Divine hand in the 
 descriptions of the Tabernacle furnished us in 
 the Bible. This carefully detailed account of 
 the Tabernacle is preserved to us after so many 
 centuries to this end, that it may ever speak to 
 us of the heavenly life, and guide us continually 
 toward that eternal House of God, not made 
 with hands, but prepared for our abode by our 
 Father in heaven. This Tabernacle of which 
 we read so much in the book of Exodus is, 
 like all the rest, a symbol of those unseen 
 and interior things of our actual life concern- 
 ed J 3 
 
146 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 
 
 ing which the Divine Word is intended to in- 
 struct us. It is not the mere structure itself 
 that is of spiritual interest to us, but rather 
 the meaning of it all ; and this is not difficult for 
 those to arrive at who look for a Divine mean- 
 ing and cause in not only the outward and 
 visible things of God's creation, but equally in 
 his written Word. Words are useful to us 
 only as we get at their meaning, — that is, 
 when we get at the mind that is in them. So 
 a picture is not of value to us as so much 
 crude matter, but as representing something 
 which the mind sees and enjoys.- The Taber- 
 nacle of the Jews, were it now to be rebuilt, 
 would neither be a heaven or a church ; and, 
 therefore, as we build it in our imagination 
 while reading about it, we should remember 
 that the real heaven and the real church here 
 described is something which belongs to the 
 mind, and to the states and conditions of our 
 spiritual life. 
 
 The Tabernacle is the Church of the Lord 
 
 
HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 47 
 
 upon earth. In the inmost part of the Taber- 
 nacle was the Sanctuary, or the Holy of Holies. 
 Here was the Word of God, called the Testi- 
 mony and the Covenant. It was kept in a 
 sacred depository called the Ark of the Cov- 
 enant ; and over it were the golden Cherubim, 
 which represented the protecting mercy and 
 providence of God. Before this Holy of 
 Holies hung a vail, and without the vail 
 were the place and the utensils of worship. 
 There stood the altar of incense, the table of 
 shewbread, and the golden lamp or candle- 
 stick. This was called the holy place. It was 
 in this holy place, outside of the vail of the 
 Testimony, that the perpetual lamp was or- 
 dained. 
 
 Now, when we think of the Church, not as 
 a building of wood or stone, but as a state of 
 truth and of life, — for the real Church consists 
 in this, — we shall not have much difficulty in 
 reading the spiritual meaning of this account 
 of the Tabernacle. The Holy of Holies is 
 
148 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 
 
 where the Lord dwells most interiorly, secretly, 
 and permanently with man. It is the highest, 
 purest region of the soul ; it is in the good 
 and holy affections which the Lord inspires 
 into man from Himself. It corresponds in the 
 mind of man with the highest of the three 
 heavens, or that heaven which is nearest the 
 Lord. It is named the celestial heaven. The 
 angels who dwell there are called the celestial 
 angels, and love, which is the highest and most 
 divine of all activities, is what most distin- 
 guishes their nature and life. The Lord dwells 
 in the Holy of Holies when he dwells in the 
 love or the pure affections of a man's soul. 
 He dwells there not in a circumscribed per- 
 sonal sense, but even as He dwells in the Tent 
 of Israel, namely, in the Ark of the Cov- 
 enant and the Mercy-seat. For it is in the 
 Covenant, Testimony, or written Word of 
 God, that the Lord is approached, known, 
 seen, and worshiped by man ; and when this 
 revealed Word, which is the Divine Truth 
 
HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 49 
 
 itself, is hidden in the heart, is treasured in the 
 soul's best affection, then is the mind verily a 
 church or a tabernacle with its Holy of Holies, 
 its place of the Lord's chosen abode. Then, 
 too, may the Lord be approached and wor- 
 shiped in his Mercy-Seat, or the Ark of the 
 Covenant. For the man who believes and 
 loves the Word of God, cannot but feel and 
 know that there is constantly hovering over 
 him an all-wise, all-loving Divine Providence, 
 and in this perpetual providence of God he 
 will feel that the Lord is ever dwelling near 
 him, yea, in him, in the Mercy-seat. 
 
 But our best and purest affections are known 
 to us only through our thoughts, and are proved 
 and tested by our thoughts and our works. 
 Although the Lord dwells most nearly and 
 interiorly with man, in the abode of the affec- 
 tions, still is this to us all a secret abode. It 
 is the secret place of the Most High : a place, 
 like the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle, into 
 which none but the high-priest shall be per- 
 
 13* 
 
ISO THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 
 
 mitted to enter. And while we believe that 
 the Lord is interiorly present with all men, and 
 that He is especially conjoined with those who 
 know, love, and do the Word of His Cove- 
 nant, yet is it not for us, with our finite and 
 human vision, to penetrate into the secret 
 modes of the Divine indwelling and operation 
 in the soul. There, within the vail, is the Ark 
 and the Mercy-seat. Within and beyond the 
 reach of our thought and knowledge is the 
 perpetual presence of the Lord within the 
 hearts of men, and the constant inflowing of 
 Life from Him. But without the vail we come 
 down to the plane of our conscious, think- 
 ing, reflecting, voluntary and seemingly inde- 
 pendent life. Here is the place where we in 
 free deliberate choice bring our offerings and 
 bow down and worship before the Lord, who 
 is above all things in heaven and earth. Here 
 is where our affections must put on the shape 
 of thought and reason, and here is where the 
 perpetual lamp is to burn, — and that lamp is 
 
HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 151 
 
 the lamp of Faith. Here is the place where 
 our mortal steps may tread ; the plane of our 
 free, spiritual agency, of our independent and 
 responsible human life as distinguished from 
 the Divine Life within, in which all alike live, 
 move, and have being. That should, indeed, 
 be a holy place. It should be furnished by 
 every believer in God with its altar of in- 
 cense, its table of shewbread, and its ever- 
 burning lamp. From this, the plane of our 
 daily life before God, should go up daily the 
 incense of our prayer and worship. It should 
 present its offering of the good affections of 
 charity, its daily deeds of mutual love and 
 usefulness, and be ever illumined with the 
 light of a right and lively faith, — as with a 
 lamp of pure beaten oil to burn forever before 
 the Lord. 
 
 To derive more practical instruction from 
 this beautiful symbol of the Divine Word, let 
 us look more carefully to the purpose of this 
 lamp, and the way it is to be provided and 
 
152 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 
 
 maintained. All these furnishings of the " holy 
 place," the place before the vail, are indicative 
 of worship offered up to the Lord. They are 
 representatives of the acts of man's life, as 
 these are accompanied by a recognition of the 
 Lord and by obedience to Him ; for worship 
 consists in the regard a man has for the Lord 
 in whatever he wishes, thinks, or does. Wor- 
 ship is not in the acts of life, but in the feeling 
 and acknowledgment and purpose in which 
 the acts are done. Now, this place called the 
 holy place represents the spiritual mind ; that 
 is, a mind which is lighted up with the Divine 
 Truth, which acts from faith in the truth, and 
 which, consequently, is in a state of constant 
 worship toward God. 
 
 The Lamp is the constant Faith of such a 
 mind. It is only while such Faith in the Lord 
 lasts that there can be any worship of Him ; 
 that there can be any good offerings brought 
 before Him out of the fruits of life. The 
 Lamp must burn constantly, day and night. 
 
HO W FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 53 
 
 The Lamp ceasing to burn would be the ex- 
 tinction of Faith in the soul : it would be a 
 man's ceasing to believe any more in God and 
 in his revealed Word. The consequence of 
 this would be not only mental darkness and 
 universal uncertainty, doubt, and, at the ap- 
 proach of death, or of any earthly misfortune, 
 despair and dread, but it would be also the end 
 of all real goodness in a man's life. For his 
 whole devotion, aspiration, and desire would 
 now be thrown back upon himself, and self 
 would become the idol now set up for worship, 
 and the oracle to which he must resort for all 
 natural and spiritual wisdom ; since if there 
 be no absolute and revealed Divine Will and 
 Wisdom, then is human will and its wisdom 
 the highest to which we can look, and which, 
 as a guide, we can follow. And let those who 
 seek and follow this as the only true and safe 
 guide, learn from short experience the extent 
 of its ability to promote, unaided by Divine 
 Truth, the good or the happiness of mankind. 
 
154 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 
 
 The man who lives not for God lives for himself; 
 and he lives not for God who does not believe in 
 God and seek to know God's will. But to live 
 for God is to live believing in God, and ordering 
 our life, in every condition, calling, and act, by 
 the light of revealed Truth. To live for God 
 is to have forever burning before the Holy of 
 Holies in our souls the Lamp of Faith fed with 
 the pure beaten oil of charity and good works. 
 
 And we have now to consider further these 
 three points : Who are to feed this Lamp ? 
 With what shall it be fed ? And who are to 
 order it or keep it forever burning ? 
 
 The people of Israel are commanded to 
 bring the oil for the Lamp. This oil is to be 
 pure and of beaten olive. And Aaron and his 
 sons, the priests, are to order and maintain it. 
 
 Aaron, the high-priest, and his sons repre- 
 sent primarily the Lord as the giver of all faith 
 and love. But they also represent in a sec- 
 ondary and finite sense the 'ministry of the 
 Lord's Church on earth as that instrumentality 
 
HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. I 55 
 
 by which Divine truth, and thereby Divine 
 good, is administered to men. It is the office 
 of the ministers of the Church to instruct the 
 people in the things of Faith, and thereby to 
 lead them to good of life. They do not minis- 
 ter of their own, but of the Lord's truth, and 
 so far as they do this they, like Aaron of old, 
 represent the Lord, who is alone the Truth 
 itself. In all the duties of their office the min- 
 isters by teaching the truth and leading men 
 to believe, love, and do it, do verily order and 
 keep burning the perpetual Lamp of Faith in 
 the holy place. The preaching of the gospel, 
 the baptizing into the Divine name of Father, 
 Son, and Holy Spirit, the teaching to observe 
 all things commanded to the first Apostles 
 by our Lord upon earth, these duties are all 
 ordained for the one great purpose of im- 
 planting and cultivating in the minds of men 
 a true and living Faith in the Lord. The office 
 of Aaron is perpetuated in the true and ever- 
 lasting Church of Jesus Christ. The Lamp is 
 
156 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 
 
 ordained for all generations, and it is now as 
 ever the duty of the ministry of the Church to 
 see that it be kept burning with a clear and 
 certain light from evening to morning, — that 
 is, through all the various states of life in the 
 minds of men. 
 
 But more than this, more than to keep the 
 Lamp lighted and in order, to keep the truth 
 which is given from above ever shining before 
 the minds of men, the priests cannot. It is 
 not the priests who are to bring the oil where- 
 with to feed this Lamp ; and if the oil shall fail 
 the Lamp will go out. It is the children of 
 Israel who are to bring the oil. Faith, which 
 is the perpetual Lamp, cannot live without 
 charity, or the works of obedience and love, 
 any more than can a lamp burn without oil. 
 Oil is the good of charity in the daily life, and 
 it is only by living the truth, by bringing it 
 into the acts and relations of the every-day life, 
 that members of the Church really have Faith. 
 For Faith is not alive, it is not Faith, so long 
 
 
BOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 57 
 
 as it consists in a mere knowledge of what is 
 true, and a mere thinking of true precepts ; but 
 Faith is the truth in us when it is obeyed and 
 actually performed in the life we lead from day 
 to day. It is plain that the priests can no more 
 supply this actual goodness or charity of life 
 wherewith to keep Faith alive in the Church 
 than they can live and act as substitutes for the 
 people. The priest can present the truth to a 
 man's mind, but the man himself, with the Di- 
 vine aid, does the rest. The priest may teach 
 the truth given to him ; the man must bring it 
 into actual life, must learn it, love it, obey it. 
 Obedience to the truth in the acts of a good life, 
 this is what both priest and people, as alike 
 members of one Church, must furnish if Faith 
 is to be preserved in the world, and if the Di- 
 vine ordinance of the perpetual Lamp is to be 
 obeyed by the generation of this day. Are 
 there not too many, alas ! who forget this ordi- 
 nance requiring the children of Israel them- 
 selves to bring the oil for the Lamp, and who 
 
 14 
 
158 THE ETERNAL LAMP; OR, 
 
 think that the ministers are appointed not only 
 to keep the Lamp burning, but to furnish the 
 oil as well ; not only to teach the truth of the 
 Church, but as substitutes for the people to 
 practice it, and so to keep Faith alive not 
 only for themselves but for others ? It is a 
 fatal error to suppose that any man's Faith 
 is to be preserved by his minister ; no priest 
 ever did or ever shall give to a man belief in 
 God or in religion. He can tell a man the 
 truth out of God's Word, but belief in this 
 truth must be acquired by the man himself 
 through a constant prayerful endeavor to 
 obey it in actual life. And this obedience to 
 the truth, this bringing it into contact with all 
 the motives, affections, and purposes of our 
 life in the world ; this scrutinizing and dis- 
 criminating between good and evil; yea, this 
 crushing and grinding of our heart's purposes, 
 of our life's motives, under the hard rule of 
 absolute truth and duty, — this is what yields 
 that material with which we can alone keep 
 
 
HOW FAITH IS TO BE PRESERVED. 1 59 
 
 Faith alive ; this is the pure oil of the olive 
 beaten for the light which we, as children of 
 the Lord's Israel, are to bring constantly to 
 feed the eternal Lamp ; with this, the rich fruit 
 of our daily experience in endeavoring each 
 one for himself to practice the holy doctrine 
 which the Church teaches, with this, we are to 
 keep forever burning and shining before the 
 Lord a true, reasonable, and living Faith. The 
 light of such a Lamp will make bright and 
 beautiful the holy place before the vail of the 
 Testimony. Fed with such oil, it shall never go 
 out: evening and morning, in the hour of de- 
 pression as in the hour of gladness and confi- 
 dence, it shall burn bright before the Lord. 
 In its light we shall come to the Holy of Ho- 
 lies with our worship, our prayers and thanks- 
 giving, to our Father in heaven. Its shining 
 shall ever point out to us, in the midst of the 
 confusion, the doubts, the troubles and fears of 
 this life, where is the Ark of God's Covenant 
 and the Mercy-seat. 
 
IX. 
 ®he §*\Ux of $nmx$t ; m, the Janttty irf Ww^iping 
 
 ^^/ //w& jvW/ make an altar to burn incense upon : of 
 shittim wood shalt thou make it. And Aaron shall burn 
 thereon sweet incense every morning : when he dresseth 
 the lamps, he shall burn incense upo?i it. And when Aaron 
 lighteth the la?7ips at even, he shall burn incense upon it, 
 a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your gen- 
 erations. — Ex. xxx. i, 7, 8. 
 
 AN altar of perpetual incense before the 
 Lord is here ordained for all generations 
 by the Divine Law. It forms a part of that 
 perfect order and form of the Church which 
 reflects its own image in the order and form 
 of heaven. As a literal, external ordinance, 
 the Altar of Incense is no longer obligatory, 
 because the Lord has now made known its 
 
 nature as a spiritual and internal ordinance. 
 160 
 
THE ALTAR OF INCENSE. l6l 
 
 As such, it is forever to be observed. Like 
 every jot and tittle of the Divine Law de- 
 livered to Moses and recorded in the Old 
 Testament, this ordinance of the Altar of In- 
 cense is still in force, in its true and spiritual, 
 but no longer in its mere representative sense. 
 
 The Altar of Incense is a part of the fur- 
 nishing of the Tabernacle, or Tent of the 
 Children of Israel. The Tabernacle is the 
 Church of the Lord ; the Altar of Incense is a 
 part of the actual life of every man in whom 
 the Church is. 
 
 There is a spiritual meaning in the order in 
 which the various parts of the Tabernacle are 
 in the Divine Word ordained and described. 
 
 First in order is mentioned the Testimony, 
 or the Law; this represents the Lord Himself. 
 Then the Ark, or the inmost heaven, where the 
 Lord dwells ; then the table on which were the 
 breads, by which are signified all good things 
 of love which come from heaven ; then the 
 candlestick with the lamps, which represent 
 
 14* 
 
1 62 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 
 
 all the good things of faith ; then is described 
 the Tent itself, or the Tabernacle, which is the 
 Church as constructed out of this love and 
 faith in the mind ; thereupon is described the 
 altar of burnt-offerings, which represents the 
 regeneration of man as effected in the Church ; 
 and last of all is mentioned the Altar of In- 
 cense ; and this represents that which crowns 
 and completes the life and character of man 
 as a spiritual being, namely, the worship of 
 the Lord. 
 
 The worship of the Lord is what is spiritu- 
 ally meant by the Altar of Incense. The lift- 
 ing or sending up to the Lord the faith and 
 the love which we have derived from Him, — 
 this is the spiritual ordinance of the perpetual 
 incense to be burned before the Lord in all 
 generations. Worship is all that proceeds 
 from love and faith with man, and is elevated 
 to the Lord. Man does not elevate anything 
 from himself to the Lord, but the Lord Him- 
 self elevates these things of faith and love to 
 
THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 63 
 
 Himself; and so lifts man up nearer to Him- 
 self, and more into the life of heaven. Wor- 
 ship itself is a faculty given us by the Lord : 
 we can only worship the Lord from the Lord 
 Himself dwelling in us. But this faculty of 
 worship, — a faculty given to man during his 
 efforts to be regenerated, — is one to which 
 we should all give the most careful heed. It 
 is because this faculty of worshiping God forms 
 so essential a part of heavenly and eternal 
 life that God commanded Aaron to make an 
 Altar of Incense, and to burn incense thereon 
 perpetually. There were, as we have seen, 
 other things ordained in the Tabernacle, things 
 which teach us the need of faith in the Lord, 
 of the affections of goodness which He alone 
 can give us to be the food of our souls, of the 
 constant purifying of our hearts by the fires 
 of temptation, and by the laver of the Divine 
 Truth. But all these are insufficient to make 
 our inner man an image of heaven and fit for 
 eternal life in heaven if there be not erected 
 
1 64 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 
 
 before the Holy of Holies in our hearts an 
 Altar of Incense, whereon morning and even- 
 ing a sweet odor of true and sincere worship 
 shall be offered up to the Lord. 
 
 The faculty of worshiping God, so far as it 
 belongs to man's voluntary and seemingly in- 
 dependent life, consists briefly in this : in think- 
 ing of God, acknowledging and adoring Him. 
 All thought of God, and all love and acknowl- 
 edgment and veneration of Him, come from 
 the faith and the love which God gives us from 
 Himself. But our own thoughts of God, ac- 
 companied by the acknowledgment of Him, 
 by reverence and obedience to Him, and hu- 
 miliation before Him, — these thoughts seem to 
 us to be voluntary on our part ; and these are 
 what make up, we may rightly say, the faculty 
 of worshiping God. 
 
 All true worship, like all true faith, must be 
 grounded in love to the Lord. By this we 
 mean, in a constant desire and effort to do the 
 Lord's commandments, — for our Lord says, 
 
THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 65 
 
 " He that hath my commandments, and keepeth 
 them, he it is that loveth me." (St. John xiv. 2 1 .) 
 And this doing the commandments of the 
 Lord is what constitutes the life of charity, — 
 of doing what is right and good. But we can 
 see how a man, having learned the Divine 
 commandments, might, without acknowledging 
 them to be Divine, obey them from selfish and 
 worldly motives, in an outward manner, and 
 be really worshiping the idol of self, and not 
 loving God at all. 
 
 Therefore all good works, in order to be 
 truly good, must be accompanied by faith in 
 God, — that is, they must be done because God 
 has required them, and the goodness that is in 
 them must be seen to be the goodness of God 
 and not of man. 
 
 Now, if love be the willingness to do what 
 is right, and faith the teacher and guide in 
 doing it, worship is that faculty whereby all 
 the good works of faith and love are referred 
 to the Lord as their only source, and whereby 
 
1 66 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 
 
 alone we can do good unselfishly, and from that 
 love of goodness itself, which is love in the 
 Lord. While faith and charity are, therefore, 
 both, the necessary elements of all real wor- 
 ship, — since without faith we would have no 
 God to worship, and without love toward God 
 we would be wholly lovers and worshipers of 
 self, — yet, love and faith are incomplete with- 
 out the worship of the Lord. In other words, 
 love or charity is not charity, nor is faith faith, 
 without the spirit of worship. For charity 
 without worship becomes mere self-righteous- 
 ness, or external morality ; and faith without 
 worship becomes mere intellectual culture and 
 ability to do things that are right and seem- 
 ingly holy from having learned them. But 
 the principle, or spirit of worship, is what 
 blends charity and faith into a holy, heavenly, 
 and truly blessed union. This inspires the 
 good deeds that are done and the holy truths 
 that are remembered with continual recog- 
 nition of the Lord, and, therefore, makes these 
 
THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 67 
 
 continually receptive of new life from Him. 
 It is only when the good affections and true 
 thoughts of man are conjoined with their 
 source, the Lord, that they remain good and 
 true. Dissevered once from Him, they be- 
 come turned into their opposites, — thus, into 
 what is selfish, evil, and false. Worship is that 
 connecting link that binds our souls to the 
 Lord ; that keeps the golden chain of our 
 thoughts, motives, affections, and desires al- 
 ways suspended high up in the bright abyss 
 of heaven, enabling us to feel ever fresh im- 
 pulses to do good, and to see ever brighter 
 and surer gleams of the light of truth. 
 
 We see, then, that while the essence and 
 life of worship consists in love toward God 
 and faith in Him, yet that it is a faculty distinct 
 from both loving and believing, and as a dis- 
 tinct faculty it must have its distinct exercise 
 in outward act. For worship, like love and 
 faith, must have not only its substance but its 
 form. There can be no love without some 
 
1 68 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 
 
 exercise in good and loving deeds ; there can be 
 no faith without the learning and knowing of 
 some positive doctrines of truth ; so neither can 
 there be any worship, any lifting up of the things 
 of our heart and life toward God, without some 
 distinct, formal, conscious act of worship. The 
 faculty of worshiping God can only be pre- 
 served and cultivated by actual exercise ; and 
 this exercise is performed whenever a man, 
 by a voluntary act of his mind, — accompanied, 
 it may be or may not be, by words of the 
 mouth and gesture of the body, — places himself 
 in God's presence and personally addresses 
 Him in the emotions of thankfulness, of ado- 
 ration, of confession, of supplication, or of 
 praise. In a word, worship is the intercourse 
 which a man seeks between himself as a person 
 and his Maker. It is the expression in per- 
 sonal language and act of those general prin- 
 ciples of charity and faith which should con- 
 stantly find expression in the daily life. Thus, 
 in doing the duty of one's calling, in laboring to 
 
THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 69 
 
 overcome temptations to sin, in remembering 
 the Word of God to do it, in all this there is as 
 a general principle both of love to God and of 
 faith, and in this there is the material, so to 
 speak, the unspoken soul of worship. But, 
 like thoughts which burn to be uttered on the 
 lips, like purposes which impel the body to 
 deeds, so this inward life of love and faith 
 seeks and demands its utterance in words. It 
 seeks its human, personal form, wherein it can 
 address its Divine Author in the language 
 of love, of praise, of confession, and prayer. 
 That such worship may be enjoyed by man, 
 and that this important need of our human 
 nature might be met, God has mercifully re- 
 vealed Himself to us men, in Human Form, 
 and has enabled us to approach and worship 
 Him, in a Divine Humanity, as a known God, 
 as very God and Man ; and He says to all his 
 children, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
 are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 " Cast your burden on the Lord, He will sustain 
 
 H 15 
 
170 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 
 
 you." " Pray and faint not." "Ask and ye shall 
 receive." " After this manner pray ye : ' Our 
 Father, who art in the heavens, hallowed be thy 
 name/ " and so on through the Divine prayer. 
 Without the acts of external worship as out- 
 ward formal expressions of our personal rela- 
 tions to God as a Divine Man, and as verily 
 that Father in heaven on whom w r e actually 
 depend for our daily bread as well as for all 
 our spiritual life, we are in danger of losing, 
 practically, all idea and sentiment of God as 
 a Being to be worshiped ; of ignoring all per- 
 sonal relations to Him, and of thus resolving 
 Him, in our habits of thought, into a kind of 
 abstract principle in nature, somewhat like the 
 Deity of the pantheists or deists. Worship is 
 the personal address of the soul to its known, 
 revealed God, Saviour, Protector, Preserver, 
 and Father in heaven. In the Arcana Ccelestia, 
 Num. 10,177, we find this terse and striking 
 definition of worship : 
 
 " When mention is made of worship, thereby 
 
THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 171 
 
 is meant that holy principle which is wrought 
 by prayers, adorations, confessions, and the 
 like, w T hich proceed from the internal principles 
 that are of love and charity." These things 
 constitute the worship which is meant by 
 burning of incense, as is manifest by the fol- 
 lowing passages. In the Psalms, we read, 
 " My prayers are accepted : they are as in- 
 cense before Thee." In the Apocalypse, v. 8, 
 "The four animals and the four and tw r enty 
 elders fell down before the Lamb, having each 
 of them harps, and golden vials full of incense, 
 which are the prayers of the saints." Again, 
 "An angel having a golden censer : and there 
 was given to him much incense, that he should 
 offer it with the prayers of all the saints on the 
 golden altar which is before the throne. The 
 smoke of the incense ascended with the 
 prayers of the saints." And in Malachi, " From 
 the rising of the sun unto the going down 
 thereof incense shall be offered unto my 
 name, and a pure offering." i. 11. 
 
172 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 
 
 Here let us carefully observe this defini- 
 tion of worship, which may be regarded as 
 authoritative doctrine. First: "It is a holy 
 principle" of our life and conduct ; thus a 
 faculty and an experience distinct from all 
 others. Second: It is not natural or innate, 
 but rather comes by practice; for "it is 
 wrought by prayers, adorations, and confes- 
 sions, and other like acts." And Third : It is 
 only wrought by these acts " when they pro- 
 ceed from an interior principle of love and 
 faith." 
 
 Love to God, or the Divine good which 
 flows into this love in our hearts, is the very 
 precious shittim wood itself of which the Altar 
 of Incense is built. The incense smoking on the 
 altar, sending up its fumes of delicious odor, is 
 the perfect symbol of the sincere worship of 
 man before the Lord. Man lights the incense 
 from the fire of his own desire to approach, to 
 adore, and supplicate the Lord. The fumes 
 rise of themselves ; man does not lift them up. 
 
THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 73 
 
 So do the prayers of a sincere heart rise to 
 God, because God draws them to Himself. 
 For, as the great central Sun of all that is 
 good and true, He attracts to Himself all 
 the really holy and pure emotions of our 
 hearts. 
 
 And, finally, the perfume of the burning in- 
 cense is grateful to our senses, even as the 
 sincere prayers and thanksgivings of our 
 hearts are truly grateful to the Lord. The 
 incense of spices signifies, we are taught, the 
 grateful hearing and reception by the Lord of 
 that which is elevated to Him out of genuine 
 faith and love in the life of man. How beau- 
 tiful, then, and how striking is this primeval 
 symbol of the burning incense ! The fumes 
 rising from the altar are, indeed, like the 
 thoughts and affections of a worshiping soul 
 soaring above all mortal and earthly things 
 into the pure, bright presence of God ; and 
 their sweet, clean odor tells of that Divine 
 perception of the real quality of the worship 
 
 15* 
 
174 THE ALTAR OF INCENSE; OR, 
 
 offered up, and the Divine approval and joyful 
 reception of all that is good and true therein. 
 Says the Psalmist, in the language which 
 may worthily form a part of the Christian's 
 ritual : " Let my Prayer be set for me before 
 Thee as Incense, and the lifting up of my 
 hands as the evening sacrifice. ,, Our prayers 
 and the uplifting of our hands are the eleva- 
 tion of our souls to the Lord ; first, in the holy 
 principles of life, and thence in the word and 
 gestures of Divine worship. And not only in 
 the evening, but both morning and evening 
 was Aaron, the priest, ordered to burn incense 
 on the Altar of Incense, before the Holy of 
 Holies, the presence of God in the sanctuary. 
 Well will it be for the Christian if, not only in 
 a spiritual way, he offers up the worship of 
 thought and affection to the Lord in all the 
 varying states and experiences of life, but, 
 especially, if he seek and strives earnestly, by 
 the regular exercise of daily prayer, confession, 
 and adoration before God, to cultivate that 
 
THE FACULTY OF WORSHIPING GOD. 1 75 
 
 holy principle of worship which the Altar of 
 Incense represents. For if we would realize 
 that God is with us to protect and bless us, 
 we must make real our personal relation, our 
 approach and address to Him. If we forget 
 that we are ever in the presence of Him, be- 
 fore whom all things in heaven and earth must 
 bow down, then shall we forget that He is a 
 God who is near to us, who cares for us, who 
 will hear us when we call unto Him. Rather, 
 by collecting the thoughts and coming rever- 
 ently before Him, to lift the heart directly to 
 Him in prayer and worship, let the Christian 
 make it his daily habit to place himself spirit- 
 ually in the holy place of the Tabernacle, there 
 to burn a perpetual incense before God ; yea, 
 there, in the solemn but peaceful conscious- 
 ness that "tHe -Lord is in his holy Temple," to 
 let all the earth keep silence before Him. 
 
2£. 
 
 Mt gftttv'htx&-U$ mart* Pttg; ox, the %,*%&'# (&Um 
 xtv$u# Pau'tf (SMwir*. 
 
 But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his counte- 
 nance, or on the height of his stature ; because L have 
 refused him : for the Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for 
 man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord 
 looketh o?t the heart. — I. Sam. xvi. 7. 
 
 THUS was Samuel, the Lord's Prophet, in- 
 structed in making his choice of a king, 
 that should be anointed to rule over Israel as 
 the successor of Saul, who had disobeyed the 
 Divine Word. 
 
 The Lord had sent Samuel to Jesse, the 
 Bethlehemite, saying that He had provided a 
 king from among his sons. And when Sam- 
 uel had come to Jesse, he called him and his 
 sons together to the sacrifice which he would 
 176 
 
THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING. 1 77 
 
 make unto the Lord. And Jesse came, and 
 seven of his sons with him ; but one son, the 
 youngest, was left behind to tend the sheep. 
 And Samuel looked on these sons of Jesse, 
 one after another, to see which it should be 
 that the Lord had chosen to be anointed king. 
 And when he looked on the first, Eliab, he 
 thought that the Lord's anointed was surely 
 before him. We suppose he judged this from 
 the face and imposing stature of Eliab. For 
 when he so determined, the Lord at once ad- 
 dresses Samuel, saying, Regard not the face, 
 nor the stature ; for him have I rejected : the 
 Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for man looketh 
 on the outward appearance, but the Lord 
 looketh on the heart. 
 
 And Samuel, being thus Divinely instructed, 
 proceeded to view the other sons of Jesse as 
 they passed before him one by one. But all 
 seven passed by, and yet Samuel said, "The 
 Lord hath not chosen these." And then, on 
 inquiry, he learned that there remained yet 
 
 H* 
 
178 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 
 
 the youngest son, who was tending the sheep'. 
 And Samuel said, " Send and fetch him : for 
 we will not sit down till he come hither.'' 
 And we read that Jesse " sent, and brought 
 him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of a 
 beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. 
 And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him: for 
 this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil, 
 and anointed him in the midst of his brethren : 
 and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David 
 from that day forward. " 
 
 Thus was David chosen by the Lord and 
 anointed king over Israel But it is not as a 
 part of the civil history of the Jews that this 
 event is of interest to the Christian, but as a 
 part of the history of the inner life of us all. 
 For, while the letter of the Holy Bible treats 
 of outward and earthly things in the language 
 of a parable, its spiritual or inner meaning 
 everywhere relates to the religious experience 
 of man and to the history of the soul. 
 
 Now, the first general maxim or moral which 
 
THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 79 
 
 we derive from this narrative is that which is 
 so forcibly stated in its very words : " The 
 Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for man looketh 
 on the outward appearance : the Lord looketh 
 on the heart." This is a truth everywhere ad- 
 mitted and frequently urged in our relations 
 one with another. We cannot too carefully 
 bear it in mind when it comes to applying it 
 to ourselves. We are all ready enough to 
 urge it upon others for their adoption. Let 
 us remember to apply it to our own conduct 
 as rigidly when we are formimg our own judg- 
 ments of those around us. "The Lord seeth 
 not as man seeth ; man looketh on the outward 
 appearance : the Lord looketh on the heart." 
 
 It is true that we are not to blame for not 
 being able to judge as God judges, for we can- 
 not read the interior motives of another ; we 
 cannot look directly on the heart of another. 
 This power belongs to Him who is All-seeing, 
 who alone can look through outward appear- 
 ance to the inward reality. For this state 
 
180 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 
 
 of things we are not to blame ; and all that 
 God requires of us is, that we remember that 
 what we see is only the appearance, and, re- 
 membering this, that we obey his command, 
 " judge not, that ye be not judged.'' And, 
 moreover, if we remember this, that God 
 alone, and not man, sees the heart, then we 
 shall know where to look for the only justi- 
 fication and approval of what we ourselves 
 are and do. Whatever men think and say of 
 us will be of less importance while we remem- 
 ber that they judge only of the appearance ; 
 but it will be all the more important, yea, the 
 one all-important thing, that before Him " who 
 looketh on the heart" we can present a con- 
 science void of offense. How many miseries 
 grow out of our forgetting and our misapply- 
 ing this Divine rule of judgment! On the 
 one hand we allow all kinds of ill will and 
 hatred to grow up between ourselves and our 
 neighbor, by judging that which we cannot see 
 and know, — his motives, his heart. Since we 
 
THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. l8l 
 
 cannot see his motive, we immediately con- 
 struct one for him to suit ourselves ; we lend 
 him a motive out of our own evil will, and in 
 this way the judgment we form surely falls back 
 upon ourselves. We see things done that are 
 unjust, distasteful to us ; wrong, as it seems, 
 beyond any question. We cannot regard 
 such things as right, w r e cannot make them 
 seem right to us by any ever so friendly re- 
 gard for him who did them. And it is not re- 
 quired of us that we should do so. Wrong 
 which seems wrong to us must remain wrong, 
 and be treated as wrong. But thus far we 
 may go and no farther. We dare not, cannot, 
 say that the same thing which seems wrong, 
 and is wrong to us, is equally wrong to him 
 who did it ; because the motive of the deed is 
 what determines its quality of right or wrong, 
 and this motive lies in the heart, which God 
 only can see. The deed may truly be as 
 wrong for the doer as it is in our eyes ; but 
 of this real guilt of the deed there is one 
 
 16 
 
1 82 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 
 
 judge only, that is God, who alone sees the 
 heart, and who alone can judge the motive of 
 the deed. Another evil which we make to 
 ourselves out of this false mode of judging is, 
 that we allow ourselves to be influenced far 
 too much by what we think will be the judg- 
 ment of men, and far too little by what we 
 feel to be the Divine judgment. There should 
 be no higher satisfaction, no more perfect 
 peace of mind, than the approval which our 
 own conscience gives to a deed done in the 
 fear of God. But how prone we are to think 
 that this will be a poor reward, to have God's 
 approval only, while all the world's opinion is 
 against us ! And so we often choose to sacri- 
 fice all the blessed quiet and peace of a heart 
 pure in its intention, before the eyes of the 
 Most Holy, for the temporary approval of 
 those about us, who are so short-sighted as 
 that we can make fools of them by the false 
 part we are playing. I say by the false part 
 we play, for whenever we disobey our con- 
 
THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 83 
 
 science in order to please men then we play a 
 false part. For to please men we pretend 
 and appear to be and do w T hat they love. 
 Now, if this be what our conscience tells us is 
 wrong, then we know that we are really doing 
 wrong to those whom we pretend to be loving 
 and serving. We know that we are doing 
 that which they are simple enough to believe 
 is out of pure love or integrity of heart, but 
 which we, on the contrary, know comes from 
 mere love for ourselves, the entire disregard 
 of their good, and the worst perversion of 
 reason, which is cunning. But there is also a 
 way of pleasing others and doing them kind 
 deeds which conscience approves, and this is 
 real charity, real honesty. For then that 
 which appears in our deeds, and which men 
 love us for, is the same as that which is in our 
 hearts, and which God sees and approves. 
 And this is to do to others as we would that 
 others should do to us ; this is to be perfect, 
 even as our Father in heaven is perfect. 
 
1 84 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 
 
 Having learned this very needful lesson 
 from the literal narrative, let us look deeper 
 into its spiritual meaning, and see what par- 
 ticular experience or duty of the religious life 
 is here described under the figure of David 
 being chosen king. 
 
 Since all the personages here represent 
 things of the mind, the choice of a king evi- 
 dently symbolizes the selection of some prin- 
 ciple in the mind to which we will subject 
 ourselves, the elevation and consecration of 
 something in the heart to bear rule over all 
 our inw r ard and outward life. 
 
 There is in each of us some affection, dispo- 
 sition, or some general motive which rules 
 over our whole life. Generally speaking, we 
 are all ruled over either by love to God and 
 the neighbor, or by the love of self and the 
 world ; and under this general ruler there are 
 many subordinate rulers : such as the love we 
 have for our various pursuits in life ; the love 
 of wealth or fame or applause, or of sensual 
 
THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 85 
 
 things ; love of friends and kindred. All 
 these latter affections may be made to serve 
 and promote either the one or the other general 
 or supreme love. But our hearts are not con- 
 trolled directly by our love or affection for a 
 thing, but always by means of a certain power, 
 which we call the truth. This comprises all 
 things of thought and of the intellect. The 
 heart rules by means of our thoughts, our 
 reasonings, our conclusions. And when we 
 set up over our life any fixed rule of think- 
 ing, judging, reasoning, and planning, this 
 we call our principle, be it religious, moral, or 
 civil. We say a man is a man of principle 
 not because he has such and such affections or 
 motives, but because he has chosen his king ; 
 he has established a certain fixed rule of judg- 
 ing and determining how to act. He has a 
 principle to refer to, — that is, some fixed stand- 
 ard of the truth as he regards it, by which to 
 judge of the right or wrong of things. Now, 
 the great true principle for a religious man is 
 
 16* 
 
1 86 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 
 
 the principle of the Divine Truth revealed in 
 God's Word and taught in the Church. And 
 a man subjects himself to this principle when 
 he is a man of faith, when he is truly a be- 
 lieving Christian. 
 
 The very word Principle is almost the same 
 as Prince, and means much the same thing. 
 Therefore we can easily see how it is that the 
 choice of David to be a prince or king over 
 Israel is really, when spiritually understood, 
 the same as the choice of the Truth to be our 
 King, or the ruling Principle in the spiritual 
 Israel, of our inner man. 
 
 In obeying the truth we are obeying God as 
 our King, and because David represents the 
 Divine Truth, therefore, frequently in the 
 Scriptures, he represents the Lord; and when 
 our Saviour comes into the world as the Truth 
 or Word, it is with the declaration, " I am the 
 Root and offspring of David, the bright and 
 morning star." 
 
 An examination of our subject will give us 
 
THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 87 
 
 much light as to how men are to recognize or 
 know the Divine Truth, and how they are to 
 select the right and not the wrong kind of 
 principle to rule over their life's conduct. Let 
 the reader follow for a moment the events as 
 narrated. We find Samuel at the outset in 
 danger of making an improper choice, and just 
 so are we ourselves. For everything in our 
 present and our eternal life depends upon 
 what kind of a king we choose to govern our 
 thoughts and our acts. But this choice is left 
 wholly to ourselves to make when we come to 
 the age of discretion and see passing in re- 
 view before us the various candidates for 
 our adoption. How often is our mistake just 
 that which Samuel made when he saw Eliab, 
 Jesse's first son, pass before him ! He looked 
 on his stature and his countenance, and, with- 
 out inquiring further or seeking to learn any- 
 thing of the heart, or actual quality of the man, 
 said, " Surely the Lord's anointed is before 
 me." Such is our judgment of the motives or 
 
1 88 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 
 
 principles which present themselves to our 
 natural hearts for our adoption. We behold 
 the stature and the countenance, the outward 
 appearance, and if these be imposing and 
 pleasing, we exclaim readily, in our enthusiasm, 
 " Behold the anointed of the Lord." We look 
 for that which is imposing and conspicuous,, 
 which will make a sensation and attract atten- 
 tion. We are pleased with that which is new; 
 we w r elcome the first-comer ; we will do this or 
 that thing just because no one ever did it be- 
 fore us. Or else, to take a deeper view, we 
 are delighted at the intellectual grandeur of a 
 system of doctrine ; the form and stature, the 
 outward appearance of the system of religious 
 belief we adopt is, we think, such as the world 
 will admire, and we admire ourselves in it ; we 
 think, too, that because as a system of truth it 
 is so complete and entirely convincing to the 
 reason, that therefore it will, without doubt, 
 of itself make right the heart and the life. 
 We think that merely believing such a doc- 
 
THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 1 89 
 
 trine, merely recognizing such principles as 
 ours, merely choosing such a Prince, is the 
 very salvation itself of our souls. Whereas, 
 on the other hand, we have little taste for what 
 is old and commonplace, what others have 
 tried before us, what is neither noisy nor con- 
 spicuous, nor in any way calculated to reflect 
 any splendor upon ourselves. Deeper still, 
 we ask not ourselves what effect will this or 
 that principle of conduct, or this or that re- 
 ligious doctrine, have on my heart and thus on 
 my life, but rather what will men think of it, 
 and what will they think of my judgment and 
 my morality if I adopt it. In a word, in select- 
 ing a principle to rule over us, it may be the 
 Divine Truth, the Decalogue itself, — we are 
 inclined to make the most important consider- 
 ation that of intellectual belief and outward 
 profession, and to forget almost wholly that 
 power which they are to have over the heart 
 and life for good, and which makes them 
 to be truly the anointed of the Lord. And 
 
190 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 
 
 many there are in this day who, in their zeal 
 for a new and imposing Prince over the uni- 
 verse of mind, 'do not hesitate to ridicule the 
 old and venerated instrumentalities of faith, of 
 piety, and of religion, — of those things, in a 
 word, which engage the heart of man. They 
 declare that henceforth pure Reason or Positive 
 Science, or a perfect system of Social Econ- 
 omy, — some scheme at least of man's devising 
 which shall dispense with Divine Revelation 
 altogether, — that these are in the future to 
 take the place of religion and the Church. 
 How many a vain and pernicious system of 
 Philosophy and Morals is paraded in this cen- 
 tury, like a tall and handsome Eliab, before 
 the wondering eyes of a world craving the ex- 
 citement of some new thing ! How many on 
 hearing of this or that new project for the en- 
 lightenment and advancement of the world, 
 caught by the glitter of some intellectual 
 sophistry which hides the corrupt and demor- 
 alizing spiritual tendency hidden beneath, are 
 
THE- LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAN'S. 191 
 
 ready to cry out, "Surely the Lord's anointed 
 is here !" Have we not seen one relieious 
 sect after another spring up with its enthusi- 
 astic throng, gathering numbers rapidly for a 
 time, and crying out to all passers-by, " Be- 
 hold, the Lord's anointed is here ;" and 
 yet learning by sad experience that to re- 
 generate a man, to make him from being 
 natural and self-loving to be spiritual and 
 truly charitable, something more is needed 
 than the adoption and profession of any sys- 
 tem of faith and doctrine, be it ever so true 
 and ever so enlightened. " Man looketh on 
 the outward appearance : the Lord looketh on 
 the heart." And when Samuel so judged, lo ! 
 all the seven sons passed by and yet none was 
 chosen. 
 
 And then did they send for that one, the 
 youngest, who was tending the sheep ; for him 
 whose thoughts were not on ruling over men, 
 and making a fair appearance. And David 
 was brought in, and in the presence of his 
 
192 THE SHEPHERD-BOY MADE KING; OR, 
 
 brethren he was anointed the chosen of the 
 Lord. 
 
 David tending the sheep is the truth which 
 guards the innocent and holy affections of the 
 heart from corruption and violence. To such 
 remains of holy truth stored up in the mind 
 by God's gracious providence must we all 
 come for that which He has anointed to rule 
 over and save us. Whatever principle of con- 
 duct, whatever doctrine of faith, is present for 
 our adoption or our confidence, this must be 
 the main and only consideration which shall 
 determine our submission to it : does it guard, 
 preserve, and nourish those affections which 
 are innocent, which are of disinterested love 
 to our neighbors, and of reverence and sub- 
 missive love to the Lord ? It is only the shep- 
 herd-boy who can receive the Lord's anointing. 
 
 In choosing such for a king over us we shall 
 find this truth to be more and more the re- 
 cipient of the Divine goodness. Our hearts 
 will by means of such truth become anointed 
 
THE LORD'S CHOICE VERSUS MAWS. 193 
 
 with the holy oil of the Divine love. From 
 
 the obscure and retired place in the mind 
 
 where, half ignored and forgotten, the holy 
 
 precepts of faith still kept watch over some 
 
 heaven-implanted affections of what is good 
 
 and true, these same precepts are to be 
 
 brought forth and elevated into their proper 
 
 position of authority, and rule over all the 
 
 thoughts, affections, and acts of our life. He 
 
 who looketh on the heart will abundantly bless 
 
 those who from the heart have chosen the 
 
 Word of God to be their Ruler, and this not 
 
 because they are convinced of its truth merely, 
 
 nor because to believe it and profess it is the 
 
 way of the world and what men approve, but 
 
 rather because it and it alone can teach them 
 
 how to cleanse their lives from sin, and how 
 
 to keep themselves unspotted from the world. 
 
 Such is the meaning of David being called 
 
 from the sheep-folds and the tending of flocks 
 
 to be anointed in the midst of his brethren 
 
 and made kino- over Israel. 
 
 I 17 
 
2CI. 
 
 She g^rmcrv-trenuv mjx&t Stefp-ptxgtf ; av t the ^ivittje 
 Svuth pratectttt0 against tfvil £i>irit#. 
 
 upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his 
 hand : so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the 
 evil spirit departed from him. — I. Sam. xvi. 23. 
 
 A SCENE in the court of ancient Israel, 
 of that kingdom which was established in 
 the world, and whose history is written in the 
 pages of sacred Scripture, that it might be 
 the representative of a kingdom which is not 
 of this world, — the kingdom of the spiritual 
 Israel, the kingdom of the Church of the Lord. 
 In this beautiful narrative of the troubled 
 king sending for the young man, recently from 
 the sheep-folds, to come and play the harp in 
 his presence, so to bring quiet and rest to his 
 194 
 
THE ARMOR-BEARER. 1 95 
 
 soul, we see depicted a hidden experience of 
 many a Christian heart, which seldom finds its 
 expression in words, except in that wonderful 
 Book which alone reveals to the soul its own 
 secrets. 
 
 David is comforting King Saul, playing the 
 harp in his presence, and driving away the 
 troublesome spirit of evil 
 
 Who and what are these persons, that the 
 Word of God, given for the instruction and 
 edification of our souls, should tell us so mi- 
 nutely about them ? 
 
 All kings, representing as they do the gov- 
 erning wisdom and power, stand for the Truth, 
 or the Law by which all things are to be or- 
 dered, and the stability and welfare of all main- 
 tained. The Lord, the one true and eternal 
 King, because He is the Truth itself, and there- 
 fore the Law itself; by his wisdom He gov- 
 erns the world : and all power in heaven and 
 earth belongs to Him also. Therefore all kings 
 mentioned in the Scriptures are typical of the 
 
196 THE ARMOR-BEARER 
 
 Lord as to his Divine Truth. And the Lord 
 is King and is called a King, and represented 
 by the kings mentioned in the Scriptures on 
 account of his being the Truth itself; for by 
 his Truth, which proceeds from and is the 
 form of his Goodness, the Lord rules the 
 world. Therefore it is that to Pilate's ques- 
 tion, Art thou a King, then ? our Lord replied, 
 Thou sayest that I am a King. To this end 
 was I born, and for this cause came I into 
 the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
 truth. 
 
 It is a turning-point in the history of Saul 
 and of David at which occurs the incident 
 before us. 
 
 It is as truly a picture of what afterwards 
 took place in the Humanity of our Lord, when 
 He as the Truth and as the King stooped to 
 earth and to our corrupt nature, and in Him- 
 self made that nature Divine by making the 
 Truth to reign in it, and so bringing it into 
 harmony with his infinite Divine Goodness. 
 
MADE HARP-PLAYER. 1 97 
 
 Hitherto is Israel divided from Judah. Saul 
 is king over Israel, but Judah is in the hands 
 of the Philistines. 
 
 The king chosen of God, called from the 
 sheep-folds, anointed by the prophet Samuel 
 with the holy oil, to be the successor of Saul, 
 to subdue the Philistines, and to unite the two 
 kingdoms in one is the youthful David, the 
 son of Jesse the Bethlehemite. 
 
 And because thus chosen and called away 
 from the sheep-folds of Bethlehem to receive 
 the holy anointed oil, to be king in place of 
 Saul, and to unite Israel and Judah into one 
 glorious kingdom, whose citadel should be at 
 Jerusalem, whose Temple and King's house is 
 Zion, therefore does David pre-eminently rep- 
 resent the Lord Jesus Christ, and his career 
 is the great prophecy which in symbolic lan- 
 guage describes the growth and the glory 
 of the reign of the Messiah. Therefore is 
 David so frequently mentioned in the Psalms 
 and the Prophets when the great King of 
 
 17* 
 
198 THE ARMOR-BEARER 
 
 heaven — the Lord in his Divine Truth — is 
 meant ; therefore also is our Lord in the gos- 
 pel called the son of David, and his spiritual 
 kingdom called the kingdom of our father 
 David. For, as remarked above, David, his 
 calling and anointing, and his ruling over the 
 united kingdoms, Israel and Judah, represents 
 the Truth in the Divine Humanity of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 When our Lord came to earth, He came as 
 God to put on the nature of man, that He thus 
 might come to men to rescue and redeem 
 them. He could come to us only by becoming 
 as we were ; He could become as we were not 
 by a change in his own Divine nature, for as 
 God He cannot change, but by making our 
 nature more like to Himself, and thus enabling 
 us to draw nearer to Him. He came in his 
 own Divine Unity and Perfectness as the one 
 only Good and the only Truth. But by his 
 Truth He entered into our flesh and nature, 
 and so illumined it and purged it of evil that 
 
MADE HARP-PLAYER. 1 99 
 
 then his Divine Good could also flow into it, 
 and thus humanity be restored once more to 
 that Divine Image in which it was created. 
 Because the Lord entered into our human 
 nature to drive out the devils that held it in 
 bondage, and to wash out its stains by means 
 of the Truth which is his own eternal Word 
 and Wisdom, therefore it is said that the Word 
 — that is, the Truth — was made flesh, and hence 
 our Lord is called the Incarnate Word. By 
 this is not meant that the Lord as to his 
 Love and Goodness, which is the Father, did 
 not also, as well as the Divine Word or Truth, 
 come to inhabit and glorify that humanity 
 which is the Son, but that first the Truth puri- 
 fied and rendered worthy the human nature 
 as its dwelling-place and tabernacle, and that 
 then came the Divine Good to dwell in it. 
 For when the Lord, as the Word or the Son, 
 had purified his human nature through his 
 victories over all the evils common to man- 
 kind and inherited from the Virgin Mary, then 
 
200 THE ARMOR-BEARER 
 
 the Father, which is the Divine Good, dwelt in 
 Him and was one with Him. 
 
 First, then, was to be established the king- 
 dom of Truth before, in the whole mind, love 
 could reign. First must the truth, finding a 
 foothold in the memory, the understanding, 
 and the belief of a man, do its cleansing work 
 in driving out the enemy, in discovering and 
 overcoming- the errors and the evils of life. 
 Then comes the reign of love and goodness, 
 when the regenerated will has the control, 
 and the two kingdoms of the intellect and the 
 heart — of the belief and the affections, of 
 knowledge and of inclination — are no longer 
 divided, but are united in one under the peace- 
 ful sway of " the Law that is written in the 
 heart."- This is the reign of David over Israel 
 and Judah in the holy city Zion. It is the reign 
 of the glorified Lord Jesus, in whom Goodness 
 and Truth, the Father and Son, are forever 
 united, and who is " the one King over all the 
 earth, the one Lord, whose name is One." 
 
MADE HARP-PLAYER. 201 
 
 Israel and Judah are the two kingdoms of 
 the Holy Land, which under Saul were sepa- 
 rated and at war, under David were united 
 and at peace. They represent the two king- 
 doms in every mind, which by nature and in- 
 herited evil are divided, and which by regener- 
 ation of the Holy Spirit become more and 
 more united and reconciled, — the kingdoms of 
 the intellect and the will. 
 
 Saul lived in troublous times. He was 
 king over the Israelites, but Judah was in the 
 hands of the Philistines. He represents the 
 Truth ruling in the intellect, in the beliefs and 
 opinions of a man, while yet his heart is in- 
 vaded by w T icked affections. The Truth should 
 not only be believed in the intellect, but it 
 should be loved also in the will. But Saul, the 
 king, was never to rule over the two king- 
 doms ; and why ? 
 
 Because Saul, when the Lord sent him out 
 to battle with Agag, the heathen king, instead 
 of destroying his enemy and his spoil, saved 
 
202 THE ARMOR-BEARER 
 
 the best part of the spoil and spared the 
 life of Agag. Therefore said the Lord's 
 prophet to Saul, "Thou hast rejected the 
 Word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected 
 thee from being king over Israel." Saul 
 saved the best part of the enemy's sheep and 
 oxen, instead of destroying all, as the Lord 
 had commanded. So does the man who, 
 knowing the truths and the duties of religion, 
 uses them only partially in destroying the 
 enemy of his soul, condemning and regulating 
 only the lesser faults of his life, and still cher- 
 ishing to himself his greater and his dearer 
 evils. When the truth is thus false to its 
 stern, heaven-given mission, it becomes the 
 unworthy, the rejected king. It holds the 
 intellect in its power for awhile, but it 
 can never reform the will, wherein the real 
 evils of a man's life are rooted, because it 
 spares what the Lord commands it to utterly 
 root out and destroy. For a time the truth, 
 thus false to its work, thus putting on the 
 
MADE HARP-PLAYER. 203 
 
 semblance of faith, but void of charity and the 
 real religion of life, may seem to be the prin- 
 ciple of a man's belief and opinions ; but at 
 length it is turned into cunning falsities, hy- 
 pocrisy, and craft. Like Saul, it not only fails 
 to unite the two kingdoms in one, but it loses 
 its power over its own. Truth without good- 
 ness, faith without charity, becomes the rejected 
 king. There must be a successor, who will 
 be the truth-believer from the love of good- 
 ness, or faith warmed and quickened with 
 charity of life. So Saul must yield the king- 
 dom to David. And Saul, representing the 
 truth actuated and employed from selfish aims, 
 ceases now to represent the Lord ; whereas 
 David, as the Truth ruling from the love of 
 Good, becomes the true representative of Him. 
 Therefore is the Lord called the Son, the 
 Heir of David ; and the throne and kingdom 
 of David are frequently mentioned when the 
 spiritual and eternal kingdom of the Lord is 
 meant. Truth loved and believed, not simply 
 
204 THE ARMOR-BEARER 
 
 as intellectual stimulus, but as the law, the 
 form, the moulding principle of the will and 
 its affections, — such truth will battle manfully 
 with the Philistines, will conquer the holy land 
 of the affections from the hold of the wicked 
 and idolatrous lusts, and will bring the heart 
 and the mind, the affections and the beliefs, 
 of a man into a harmonious subjection to the 
 Divine Truth, as the Law of God's goodness, 
 and will own as its King, the eternal Word, 
 the very Messiah or Anointed One whom 
 David typified, — Jesus Christ, the Lord. 
 
 Saul is the truth separated from the good 
 of life, ruling for a time in the intellect of man. 
 David, his successor, is the Truth believed in 
 from love, obeyed in the will and its affections, 
 and thus set up as king over the whole domain 
 of the soul. David was called from the sheep- 
 folds to be anointed king in place of the false, 
 the hypocritical, the unworthy Saul For so 
 does the Truth, which shall save us, occupy 
 itself in guarding the holy and innocent affec- 
 
MADE HARP-PLAYER. 205 
 
 tions of good, represented by the sheep of Jesse 
 the Bethlehemite ; and out of the remains of 
 heavenly affection implanted by the Lord in 
 every soul during infancy and childhood comes 
 forth the desire to believe, the willingness to 
 learn, to understand, and to obey the law of 
 truth which God reveals. Thus from some in- 
 nocent affections of the will, enlivened by God's 
 Holy Spirit, as by his call of the prophet, even 
 while the heart is still held in the bonds of 
 sin and death, comes that germ of faith, that 
 young but mighty principle of heaven-born 
 truth, — David the beautiful youth, the valiant 
 warrior, the anointed king of both Israel and 
 Judah. He is the faith which shall struggle 
 with all the sins of self-love and spare none, 
 and which rules finally in heavenly and peace- 
 ful sway over the undivided kingdom of the 
 soul. 
 
 How often do men find themselves in the 
 condition of the melancholy and troubled 
 King Saul! — possessed of the mighty weapons 
 
 18 
 
206 THE ARMOR-BEARER 
 
 of truth, and all the valiant equipments of 
 reason, learning, and argument ; well taught 
 in God's Word ; knowing well their duty, and 
 knowing well their sins and the strength of 
 their foes ; and yet, from faint-heartedness, 
 fearing to struggle with them; even in time of 
 temptation and actual combat, only half resist- 
 ing, only half conquering ; that is, thinking it 
 very wrong, but yielding nevertheless in act ; 
 condemning the whole host as from hell, and 
 yet saving to themselves Agag the chief evil 
 of all, and the choicest of his sheep and oxen ! 
 How should we not be troubled like King 
 Saul in such a time ? And how could it be 
 otherwise than that the evil spirits will draw 
 near to us and torment us, entering into the 
 evil affections which we still secretly cherish, 
 and there striving for dominion in our heart 
 and making our conscience and our sense of 
 duty and our faith only troublesome and an- 
 noying to us ? How often are our minds thus 
 divided and disturbed ! and how often does the 
 
MADE HARP-PLAYER, 20J 
 
 Lord permit the evil spirits from hell to draw 
 near and rouse this inward unrest, in order to 
 teach us that true rest and peace is to be 
 found not in a house divided against itself, 
 but in the holy Zion, the kingdom of the good 
 King and Lord, where not Israel alone, but 
 Judah also, not the intellect only, but the 
 heart as well, is obedient to the one Law of 
 Truth and Goodness, — the rule and kingdom 
 of Jesus Christ! 
 
 Well will it be for thee, reader, if in such 
 states thou dost as did King Saul. For he 
 made David to be his armor-bearer, and he 
 called him before him. And when the evil 
 spirit from God was upon Saul, David took 
 an harp and played with his hand : so Saul 
 was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit 
 departed from him. And so make David, the 
 truth believed from the desire of goodness, 
 thy armor-bearer; let thy knowledge and be- 
 lief of true doctrine, which is the soul's armor 
 and weapon, let this be animated and sup- 
 
208 THE ARMOR-BEARER 
 
 ported and carried into action by the desire to 
 be better, to conquer evils, to bring the whole 
 mind into subjection to God's kingdom ; and 
 then, when thou art troubled in soul and 
 vexed by the presence and the insinuating 
 spell of evil spirits, call to thee this youthful 
 David, this harp-player, this heaven-anointed 
 truth of good, this fearless, this calm and 
 peace-bringing faith of charity. Pray to God 
 that the innocent and holy affections of good 
 may be revived in thee, that so all holy truth 
 and doctrine may be valiant in driving away 
 the evil counsel and the anxious forebodings 
 and doubts which invade thy peace. Recall 
 some wholesome truth of practical duty and 
 use, and strive, with the Lord's help, to per- 
 form it ; and, if it be at first coldly, unwill- 
 ingly, still pray that the Lord make thee 
 willing ; that He give thee the love of per- 
 forming it ; that He send into thy heart the 
 heavenly delight of doing his holy law. And 
 this He will surely do. For his yoke is easy, 
 
MADE HARP-PLAYER. 209 
 
 and his burden is light. And David, who 
 was a valiant warrior and bore the armor 
 of the king into battle, also knew how to play 
 the harp so sweetly that the king's troubled 
 soul was at peace and the evil spirit departed 
 from him. So indeed shall every holy truth 
 which we faithfully use in battling off and de- 
 stroying the evils of our life come to us in 
 our troubled moments freighted with heavenly 
 comfort. It shall bring with it sometimes the 
 harp, as w r ell as the implements of war. The 
 holy states of innocence, the good affections, the 
 peaceful thoughts awakened in us by the truth 
 thus present in our minds as the ruling prin- 
 ciple of our lives, will be to us, sometimes, as 
 a strain of unutterable music floating down 
 from the depths of heaven, where the hand of 
 Him whom David only typified strikes a harp 
 of celestial harmonies. 
 
 18* 
 
$lw Poncjj in tht ^arit; 0t, gjtow tfc* ©nttto mafe*£ Jm, 
 
 And he said. Peace be to you, fear not : your God, and the 
 God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks : 
 I had your money. And he brought Simeon out unto 
 them. — Gen. xliii. 23. 
 
 THESE words occur in the story of Joseph. 
 To understand something of their spir- 
 itual meaning it is necessary that we first see 
 their connection with that interesting narrative. 
 The leading facts of this story are easily re- 
 called to mind : how that having been sold by 
 his brethren and carried down into Egypt, 
 Joseph was there after a time exalted by Pha- 
 raoh to be ruler over the whole land ; how that 
 he stored up corn in great abundance, so that 
 when at length a famine prevailed the people 
 of all the countries round about were obliged 
 
 to come to him to buy corn ; how at length 
 
 210 
 
THE MONEY IN THE SACK. 211 
 
 even his brethren, the sons of Israel, or 
 Jacob, came down also to buy corn, and how 
 they were treated kindly by Joseph, who knew 
 them but did not make himself known to them, 
 and how, on returning with their corn, they 
 found their money returned to them, each man 
 his money in his sack. Then they go down a 
 second time for more corn, and this time take 
 back with them their younger brother, Ben- 
 jamin, whom they had not taken before, and 
 whom Joseph had commanded them to bring. 
 
 And now arriving in Egypt, they are brought 
 to Joseph's house, and they begin to fear on 
 account of the money which they have found 
 in their sacks ; for they think they have been 
 suspected of not having paid for their corn, 
 and that therefore they are now to be taken 
 captive and made bondmen to the ruler of 
 Egypt. So when they come to the door of 
 Joseph's house they say to the steward, " In- 
 deed, sir, we came down the first time to buy 
 food : and it came to pass, when we came to 
 
212 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 
 
 the inn, that we opened our sacks, and, behold, 
 every man's money was in the mouth of his 
 sack, our money in full weight: and we have 
 brought it ao-ain in our hand. And other 
 money have we brought down in our hands to 
 buy food: we cannot tell who put our money 
 in our sacks/' And the steward answers them 
 in these words : " Peace be to you, fear not : 
 your God, the God of your father, hath given 
 you treasure in your sacks : I had your money." 
 Now, this story describes in its spiritual 
 meaning the experience of every religious 
 man, — that is, of every man who believes in 
 the truth which God has revealed, and is try- 
 ing in some degree to obey it, and thus to re- 
 form his life. The truth itself, — that which 
 makes up the substance of our faith, — this is 
 what is described by the silver, or the money 
 which the brethren of Joseph brought with 
 them wherewith to buy corn ; and the corn of 
 which they w T ere in need represents the bread 
 of the soul, that which sustains our spiritual 
 
HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 213 
 
 life, namely, good affections, or the will to do 
 that which the truth teaches. 
 
 The instruction we derive from this narra- 
 tive, as spiritually viewed, is, then, something 
 concerning the use we are to make of the 
 truth. How is the truth we know going to 
 procure for us that goodness of heart of which 
 we are in need, — without which, indeed, the soul 
 will die of famine ? The answer is a brief one : 
 we must give up bare truth, or the knowledge 
 of what is right, in exchange for the desire 
 and will of doing it, of acting it, of living by it. 
 By giving up the truth, like so much money 
 given in exchange for the corn, is not meant 
 to abandon it or to depart from it, and to cease 
 to believe in it, but it is meant to give it up as 
 our own, to cease to believe in it, or to obey it 
 as coming from man, and not from God. We 
 give back the truth to Him who first gave 
 it us ; we bring back the money found in 
 our sacks when we submit ourselves to the 
 authority of the truth as to God's authority ; 
 
214 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 
 
 when we obey the truth, no longer because 
 it is ours, but because it is God's. 
 
 This is what is meant by the sons of Jacob 
 bringing back their money with them into 
 Egypt when they came the second time to 
 buy corn. And, therefore, it will be observed, 
 their experience resembles that of any, at any 
 time, who have tried to do this thing spiritu- 
 ally. They are brought to Joseph's house, and 
 there they begin to be anxious and afraid, and 
 to think that some great loss and misery is to 
 befall them. They begin to fear lest, on ac- 
 count of that money which was found in their 
 sacks, Joseph will seek occasion against them, 
 and will fall upon them and take them for 
 bondmen and their beasts with them. For 
 when a man has been taught the truths of 
 Christian doctrine, — that he must obey God, 
 must keep the commandments, must examine 
 himself and find out what are his besetting sins, 
 and give himself no rest until he has resisted 
 and conquered them; that he must act from 
 
HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 21 5 
 
 spiritual and not from natural motives ; that 
 he must be willing to suffer persecution and 
 worldly adversities rather than to disobey the 
 voice of his conscience, which is the holy Spirit 
 of God dwelling in him, — when a man, I say, 
 has been taught these things, and, moved by 
 the Divine Mercy and Grace, has begun to 
 think of putting them to practice and reso- 
 lutely set his face toward heaven and the Lord, 
 in the desire to do that which is needful to save 
 his soul, what is his first experience in this 
 new casting about for spiritual life, for the 
 food of his immortal nature? He knows that 
 life means something more than mere eating 
 and drinking and clothing the body, and that 
 at the best this corporeal and earthly life is 
 only a thing of a few years' duration. Chris- 
 tian doctrine tells him that his soul is to live 
 forever ; that after death there is eternal life ; 
 that beyond the grave there is an eternal 
 world ; that there is heaven and there is hell ; 
 that to one of these abodes the soul must go ; 
 
2l6 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 
 
 and that he is himself responsible as to which 
 it shall be. He knows, too, that God holds 
 him to strict account for the deeds of this life, 
 — not in any caprice or merciless power, but 
 because of the laws of his own Divine Order, 
 and of man's existence, which require that 
 man, in order to live, must act in freedom, and 
 that as his acts are good or evil, pure or im- 
 pure, truthful or untruthful, such must his 
 whole nature become ; and such as it has be- 
 come in this world, such must it remain to 
 eternity. 
 
 Now, all these truths, when not only well 
 learned and remembered, but when grounded 
 a little in the heart and become really the belief 
 of a man's mind, begin then to exercise a kind of 
 compulsion over the outward life and the nat- 
 ural thoughts and inclinations, which compul- 
 sion is in nowise agreeable or welcome. These 
 stern and solemn truths of God's Word are a 
 little too much believed in to be hastily dis- 
 missed the mind ; for they have led us on a 
 
HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 217 
 
 little way toward reforming our life, and so far 
 they have struck their roots down into the heart, 
 and begun to work a change in our inner affec- 
 tions, to form a new will within us. So, even 
 if we should determine in some evil moment 
 of temptation to cast off at one stroke all 
 these sacred and warning thoughts within us, 
 we find that even this is not so easily done ! 
 In a word, the truth we know has sent us on 
 its mission ; it has compelled us to go out and 
 procure some actual good, some real charity, 
 and purity of life. We are sent down to the 
 land of plenty to buy corn for our hungering 
 souls ; we are brought by compulsion to the 
 door of Joseph's house. We are come into 
 that state of life when our external man is 
 ready to be united with the internal man ; 
 when we are, in some degree, ready to let 
 the interior affections of truth and goodness 
 come down into and control the deeds of 
 our life in the world. And here at the very 
 door of this conjunction, — just here where the 
 
 k 19 
 
2l8 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 
 
 question arises as to which is better, to let 
 the world and the body — the natural man, in a 
 word — have dominion, or the spiritual man 
 within, with its holy precepts of religion and 
 of eternal life, — here is where the first real 
 anxiety and difficulty arises. We think of the 
 money in our sack which is not ours, which 
 does not belong to us, and which is now per- 
 haps only going to be the means of our losing 
 our own liberty and all that belongs to us. 
 We shrink back with a kind of dread from 
 that power and authority which we see that the 
 truth and religion must have over us, if we 
 acknowledge it to be Divine! We see that if 
 the truth is not ours, not the dictate of our 
 own will, but of a higher Will, to which ours 
 must be submitted, then we have nothing left 
 that we can call our own. This internal, spir- 
 itual nature will have entire authority or none! 
 Everything of selfish and of worldly love must 
 be given up. We have to deny ourselves, 
 to substitute for our human preference the 
 
HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 219 
 
 direction of God's revealed command, and to 
 have no wishes, no delights, no attachments, 
 no hopes of our own, but only wait for God to 
 send us that pure affection for what is true and 
 good,*\vhich the angels have. 
 
 This is the prospect of the religious life, which 
 will present itself at the outset of our efforts 
 after goodness, and which, at the door of 
 Joseph's house, will send anxiety and dread 
 into our hearts. "It is all," we say, "to be 
 laid to that silver which was given to us as 
 a free gift. Yea, all this comes of those 
 Divine, those holy truths which have sunk 
 down into our memories and hearts, and which 
 we cannot root out now if we would. There 
 they remain warning us, counseling us, direct- 
 ing us, bidding us seek the true way of life, 
 pointing unmistakably at our more secret evils, 
 and allowing no peace to our wounded con- 
 sciences. If they were truths of our invent- 
 ing, things that we had constructed out of our 
 own fancies and imagination to as easily over- 
 
220 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 
 
 turn again and forget; if it, indeed, were our 
 own money, then it would be otherwise, — then, 
 indeed, had we perhaps never set out on this 
 search after the bread of life. But, as it is, 
 the truth has not only shown us the way to 
 satisfying our souls' need, but compels us by 
 a kind of silent authority of its own to go seek 
 this food, and even at the risk, as we at length 
 discover, of our natural freedom and all that 
 the selfish heart holds dear. ,, 
 
 Thus does religion put on at the outset a 
 certain dreary and dreaded aspect ; such for a 
 time seems the spiritual life when viewed from 
 the position of mere natural affection and 
 worldly wisdom. But this being the appear- 
 ance only, how is it with the facts of the case ? 
 Do we really lose our freedom when we sub- 
 mit ourselves to the law of Divine truth ? Do 
 we really lose our happiness, the best things 
 of heart and life, when we make our natural 
 man subordinate to the spiritual ? How was it 
 with Joseph's brethren ? Did Joseph, then, fall 
 
HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 221 
 
 upon them and take them captive and treat 
 them harshly ? Far otherwise : he gave them 
 corn and made them come in to the feast he 
 had prepared for them, and made himself 
 known to them as their own brother. And 
 in reality we find in our experience that in- 
 stead of losing our freedom and our happi- 
 ness, the only way to preserve it is to obey the 
 truth, not as our own but as God's, and to let 
 the faith of the internal man be the ruler of 
 our outward life. 
 
 For, even thus far, in obeying the truth, in 
 doing whatever single act of repentance, have 
 we not acted freely ? I have said above 
 that the will compels us ; that it brings us to 
 Joseph's door and there threatens to make us 
 captive. We have perhaps been driven, in 
 obeying the commandment, by fear of punish- 
 ment hereafter, by fear of losing heaven, and 
 this fear has thus in some degree compelled us. 
 But, still, when it has come to a matter of 
 acting in any particular crisis ; when a tempta- 
 
 19* 
 
222 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 
 
 tion to do wrong has come in our way, and 
 we have resolutely resisted and overcome it, 
 where was the compulsion in that instance? 
 Hard as the struggle was, have we not volun- 
 tarily chosen our part ? Did it not lie before 
 us to do this way or that, precisely as we of 
 ourselves determined ? This is certainty the 
 experience of every one w T ho has ever resisted 
 temptation. No man in temptation feels him- 
 self to be a machine, a mere unthinking tool, 
 to be handled by another's will and intention 
 than his own. He knows that his own will 
 and intention is what alone will determine his 
 action. So I say a man acts freely in thus 
 obeying the truth, in thus making the truth 
 to be law over him. Our Lord says, u Ye 
 shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
 you free." 
 
 And how as it regards happiness? Will our 
 submission to God's law as over against the 
 law of our selfish and sinful hearts render us 
 happy? In the end it will, for this is the very 
 
HO IV THE TRUTH MAKES FREE. 223 
 
 kingdom of heaven which we all pray for. But 
 even in this world where there is almost a con- 
 stant combat between truth and error, where the 
 evils of others are always adding to the misery 
 caused by our own, — even in this world, I 
 doubt if there be anything that gives the soul 
 such a sweet, refreshing draught of pure happi- 
 ness as the consciousness of having resisted an 
 evil, having overcome a temptation by our own 
 free, resolute choosing to obey the command- 
 ment of God. 
 
 And so it proves, in the result, that the life 
 of religion is the freest life we can lead, and 
 the happiest. We cannot but feel in every step 
 we take forward in spiritual life that we have 
 become just so much more free, and have been 
 real gainers, not losers, of all that is worth 
 possessing. We find the more we strive to 
 obey God's truth as. Divine and not our own, 
 just so much the more do we seem to act of 
 ourselves, yea, as if it were our own ; for the 
 truth seems to be ever more and more in ac- 
 
224 THE MONEY IN THE SACK; OR, 
 
 cord with our own will, — not with our depraved, 
 carnal, and selfish will ; against this, indeed, 
 ever clashing with this, and showing up its 
 enormities, but ever more and more in accord 
 with that new will which, by the grace of God, 
 has been secretly and gradually forming in 
 our inner man. 
 
 The freest beings in the universe are the 
 highest angels of heaven, whose only will it is 
 to do God's will ; yet it is their will, their willing- 
 ness, their desire to do God's will, and hence 
 they do it in the fullest delight of heart. They 
 do it feeling conscious that they act from their 
 own will, not from compulsion, not as a lifeless 
 machine. The truth of God is become their 
 faith, it is their truth, because they have con- 
 firmed it in their life, and because they love it 
 in their hearts; and yet they know it always to 
 be God's truth, and as such they love to do it. 
 
 And it will be the experience of every man, 
 that the more he attains to real goodness of 
 life the more he will seem to act freely as of 
 
HOW THE TRUTH MAKES TREE. 225 
 
 himself, untrammeled by any outward influ- 
 ences or circumstances. And this is illustrated 
 by what we further read in our story, that 
 Joseph's brethren said, " We have come again 
 to buy food, and other money we have brought 
 wherewith to buy it." That is, they do not ask 
 now the corn in return for that money which 
 they found returned to them in their sacks, but 
 for that other money which is their own. And 
 the steward seeing that they both acknowledge 
 the money given them, and at the same time 
 are willing to pay other money which is their 
 own for their food, bids them fear not, for God 
 had given them their money in their sacks, 
 and, moreover, their money had come to him. 
 He recognizes their willingness to pay for 
 their food, and at the same time tells them 
 that God has restored to them the same that 
 they gave. And this is the whole lesson : that 
 if we will give up our nahiral freedom to God, 
 He will give us back spiritual freedom, and zvith 
 this, natural freedom, too. If we obey the Di- 
 
 K* 
 
226 THE MONEY IN THE SACK. 
 
 vine truth in opposition to our sinful will, God 
 will enable us to obey it afterwards willingly, 
 as our own and because we love it and take 
 delight in doing it. In a word, the whole story 
 goes to confirm that great doctrine of the 
 Church, that we must Shun evil, because it is of 
 the devil and from the devil; and we must do good 
 because it is of God and from God; and that in 
 thus doing the truth we must act freely of our 
 own choice and from our own hearts ; but at the 
 same time acknowledging and believing that all 
 our will, understanding, and power to do this is 
 in us and through us from the Lord alone. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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