The fruit of his faith is found in Abraham's character. Now character, to be truly great, needs to be uniform and consistent; it is that which is habitual; that which is seen to prompt and preside in ordinary duty as well as in remarkable emergencies. And character, to be complete, requires the beautiful and the soft as well as the imposing; it should have grace in combination with strength; it should display the attractive and the lovely as well as the sublime. Let it have the devotion inspired by faith, the firmness prescribed by principle, the noble attitude of a high-toned and unimpeachable honour; let it have all this, and we will give it the tribute of our homage, and acknowledge its obvious superiority, but still we want something more-we want something to engage the heart as well as to secure the understanding; something to love as well as to respect; we want the bland and courteous demeanour; we want “grace poured into the lips”; we want to lose the awe inspired by the strength of virtue, while listening to the voice and luxuriating in the view of her tenderness. We want, in short, the union of all that is firm in principle, and all that is fervent in piety, and all that is commanding in worth, with whatever is attractive in manners or amiable in feeling; and with all that can sweeten, and soothe, and satisfy, in the contact of ordinary intercourse.
Now, we do not say that we shall find all this in the moral portrait of Abraham; but we do say that we shall find a great deal of it. That he committed errors and had his faults is only saying that he was a man; but that these bore no proportion to the diversified excellence of his character, and the eminent purity of his life, is manifest from the whole tenor of his history. He deserves distinction, not only for that faith from which such a strong and steady light is cast upon his memory, but for various delicacies of mind and feeling which surround it with a beautiful and softened effulgence. These, indeed, were the fruits of his faith. They were the displays of the principle which rendered him “the friend of God,” called forth by the contact of its possessor with men. It was an active and practical power, prompting to universal obedience. It did not consist in speculative notions about the Divine attributes, or in mere mental acquiescence in the Divine procedure, or in selfish acceptance of the Divine promises, or in any other exclusively intellectual or internal act; it consisted in the carrying out of every pulsation of the heart and every conclusion of the understanding into the vigorous and conscientious discharge of whatever it became him to regard, either as a servant of the true God or as a man related to other men, to whom he owed, therefore, the diversified expressions of social morality.
It is recorded of a famous French statesman, that when any man whom he did not know was recommended to him, he would ask: “Is he anything?” His purpose, of course, was to find whether the man had individuality and character; and the form of his question implied that he regarded those who did not possess individuality as nonentities. This question is a most necessary one; and it should be applied to every man. “Is he anything?” In regard to a very large portion of men in the present age the answer would have to be, “No; he is nothing.” Their lives are not based in reality.1 [Note: R. H. Hodgson, Glad Tidings, 28.]
1. He was pious towards God.-That Abraham was a devout man; and that this was displayed, both by his regard to positive acts of worship accompanied by external expressions of devotion and by the prevailing habit of his mind, is evident from the general tenor of his life. He is expressly and beautifully denominated “the friend of God”; a title which implies congeniality and intercourse. He was a man of prayer. With what inimitable simplicity is the fact stated by the historian, when he says, and says so often, “then did Abraham call upon the name of the Lord.” It was thus that he both acknowledged his obligations to the protecting Power and received supplies of invigorating strength. It was by these exercises that faith was nourished and preserved.
The Hebrews had a dislike for abstract terms. Their profoundest thoughts on religion were vivid pictures. They did not speak of cultivating godliness, or of deepening spiritual life, but of walking before God. To live in the realized presence of God, to order their thoughts and acts so as to harmonize with His character, to rejoice in His company, to look up to Him with a smile of loving recognition in the work and warfare of life-this was to walk before God. It was the Psalmist's ideal to set the Lord always before him, to walk in the light of His countenance; Micah's, to walk humbly with his God. It was Milton's ideal to live ever in the Taskmaster's eye; Brother Lawrence's, to practise the presence of God. “God and the angels are spectators,” said Bacon. It is the thought of God's presence which makes men serious, devout, earnest, trustful, consecrated, holy. Agnostics preach an independent morality; they would have men do their duty without a thought of God, who, they say, is in any case unknowable. But common men find, and history proves, that the morality which goes without God soon grows limp and tired, while the righteousness which stays itself on God has an unquenchable ardour and energy. “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.” God is the indispensable moral dynamic, and walking before God is the highest ethics. The everlasting goodness is after all godliness-a living before, with, in, for, and like God.1 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 98.]
2. He was courteous and yet courageous with men.-He was certainly respected, if not loved, by those who surrounded him and with whom he came in contact in the ordinary intercourse of life; and this respect on their part could have been excited only by corresponding behaviour on his. It was the respect, not of fear, but of admiration and affection; there was a good deal of tenderness about it. He and his neighbours entered into leagues of amity, and, when differences arose between them in consequence of the conduct of their servants, there was no seizing upon them to vent smothered feelings of pride or animosity, but a candid and open explanation; both sides were ready to act with a desire to excel each other in respect, and to display a confidence inspired by esteem. But this courtesy, on the part of the patriarch, never led to compliances or compacts inconsistent with his religious profession. He was all that man could be, and all that man ought to be, to his fellows. Whatever was honourable, whatever was attractive appeared in Abraham towards his idolatrous neighbours. There was cordiality and kindness; there was the friendly and familiar interchange of good offices; but there was not the sanction of what was sinful, or the formation of such intimate confederacies, as might lead either himself or his son to disobey the Supreme law. Hence, though he lived on such terms as we have described with the people of the land; though his devotion had nothing about it like morbid moroseness; though, when necessary, he could mix and mingle in the world, without betraying anything like the proud feeling of personal degradation; yet he would not on any account permit that Isaac should take from among its families the wife of his bosom. His servant was solemnly commanded to prevent this, and was sent to secure a more suitable alliance.
Courtesy is really doing unto others as you would be done unto, and the heart of it lies in a careful consideration for the feelings of other people. It comes from putting one's self in one's neighbour's place, and trying to enter into his mind, and it demands a certain suppression of one's self, and a certain delicate sympathy with one's neighbour. So far as our abounding egotism reigns, we are bound to be discourteous, because we shall be so blindly immersed in our own affairs that we cannot even see the things of others. So far as we break the bonds of self and project ourselves into the life of our brother man, we are bound to be courteous, because we shall now be interested in what is dear to him. Surely there is no one who does not desire to live after the rule of courtesy, and there is no way of attaining this fine spirit except by keeping high company. Just as we live in the atmosphere of nobility, where people are generous, and chivalrous, and charitable, and reverent, shall we learn the habit of faultless manners, and acquire the mind which inspires every word and deed with grace. And the highest fellowship is open unto every man, and he that walks therein catches its spirit. For the very perfect knight of human history, who carried Himself without reproach from the cradle to the grave, was our Lord and Master Christ, and the rudest who follow Him will take on the character of His gentleness.1 [Note: John Watson, The Homely Virtues, 167.]
His great strength of will was doubtless one of the sources from which he drew the courage that was among his most pronounced characteristics. In that heroic virtue he was unsurpassed, and might unfalteringly have taken his stand beside men of the stuff of Martin Luther and John Knox. He feared nothing and nobody in his championship of right and truth as he saw them clear before him, or in his denunciation of what he deemed to be error and wrong. On occasion, his courage touched the level of the magnificent. He spoke and acted “in scorn of consequence.” To be in a minority never troubled him, he knew that “one and God always constitute a majority.” He was only a young man of twenty-nine when, at the annual meeting of the local branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society, he rose from his seat in the audience, and protested against the occupancy of the chair by one of the great London brewers, who was drawing his wealth from his five hundred “tied houses,” scattered over the city, that were open every Sunday throughout the year. “Sir,” he cried to the agitated secretary, standing aghast at the chairman's side, “how was it possible for you and your committee to invite as president over a meeting such as this one of the greatest Sabbath-breakers in the metropolis?” The courage displayed in that protest remained with him to the end of life, inflexible and unimpaired. As an old man of seventy-three he took the lead in denouncing the visit to Australia, for the purposes of his brutalizing profession, of a notorious English prize-fighter. “I do this,” said he, “in the defence of righteousness, and in the interests of all that is humane, moral, and peaceable in the Commonwealth.1 [Note: H. Varley, Henry Varley's Life Story (1913), 233.]
Of Courtesy it is much less
Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,
Yet in my Walks it seems to me
That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.
On Monks I did in Storrington fall,
They took me straight into their Hall;
I saw Three Pictures on a wall,
And Courtesy was in them all.
The first the Annunciation;
The second the Visitation;
The third the Consolation,
Of God that was Our Lady's Son.
The first was of Saint Gabriel;
On Wings a-flame from Heaven he fell;
And as he went upon one knee
He shone with Heavenly Courtesy.
Our Lady out of Nazareth rode-
It was Her month of heavy load;
Yet was Her face both great and kind,
For Courtesy was in Her Mind.
The third it was our little Lord,
Whom all the Kings in arms adored;
He was so small you could not see
His large intent of Courtesy.2 [Note: Hilaire Belloc, Verses, 20.]
