The character and career of Isaac would seem to tell us that it is possible to have too great a father. It was his fortune to be the favoured son of Abraham, to live from his early days in the presence of majestic virtue, and he had the drawback of his privileges. Abraham did so grandly that it was almost useless for Isaac to do at all; he was so able that Isaac was not expected to think; his faith was so comprehensive that it sheltered Isaac and smothered him. Abraham overshadowed Isaac; while the father lived there was no room for the son.
1. We find that God claimed Isaac from the beginning as His own. He was the child of promise. The first call of God to Abraham in Chaldæa was accompanied by a magnificent promise of a posterity that was to bless all the earth. This was afterwards enlarged by the declaration that his seed was to be as numerous as the stars of heaven. Somewhat later the promise was narrowed to the child of Sarah, “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” Born out of due time, when his father was an hundred years old and his mother ninety, the parents themselves “laughed” with almost incredulous joy at the thought of such a wondrous event. The name “Isaac,” or “laughter,” was fitly chosen by God with reference to the supernatural nature of his birth-the laughing joy which it brought to his father's tent.
Great must have been the privilege, in those days, of close and continuous contact with one so deeply religious as Abraham. It was Isaac's happy lot to have in his father one of God's specially chosen ones, and to have him almost wholly to himself, to be the main object of his care, with one exception his best-beloved, and his most constant companion. Good men have an atmosphere of piety around them which affects all who come within the sphere of their influence. Isaac dwelt in this atmosphere. Naturally, and without effort, he became partaker of those high thoughts concerning God which filled the patriarch's soul, shared his spirit of faith and of obedience, shared probably with him whatever knowledge God had vouchsafed him of the scheme of Redemption.
2. After Isaac's birth we are told of his weaning feast, and of the dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael at Sarah's bidding, sanctioned by God on the ground that Isaac was to be the father of Abraham's true offspring. At the time, Abraham was living at Beersheba. Then follows immediately what may be called the one distinctive event in the otherwise somewhat colourless life of Isaac-the sacrifice begun but not consummated on the unnamed mountain in “the land of Moriah.”
There is no absolutely accurate date as to the birth of Isaac, but it is supposed, from the tenor of the narrative, that he was about twenty or twenty-five years old when he was led by his father to the summit of the mountain to be offered up as a sacrifice, as Abraham thought, in obedience to the will of God. The offering up of children was a common practice, growing out of superstition, in all the neighbouring nations, and in one way or another Abraham was made to believe that he was called of God to offer up his son Isaac.
Attention has been so much concentrated on Abraham's part in the tremendous scene, that Isaac's has scarcely attracted any great share of men's thought or consideration. But if the attitude of the father is grand, that of the son is not less so. Endurance is always more difficult than action. The father's faith and enthusiasm and zeal nerved him to an almost superhuman deed of devotion. But the son was set a harder task. He had to “suffer and be still.” The sacrifice could not have taken place without Isaac's own consent. Isaac was young, Abraham old. Very likely, if it had been a question of physical strength, Isaac could easily have broken away. He had at least equal power with his father. Isaac meekly allowed himself to be laid upon the altar; whatever he was thinking, there was no resistance, there was no misunderstanding. Whatever the sacrifice was for the father, it was certainly not less for the son: Abraham's heart was lacerated; but Isaac's life was in question.
None of you, who have the least acquaintance with the general tenor of my own teaching, will suspect in me any bias towards the doctrine of vicarious Sacrifice, as it is taught by the modern Evangelical Preacher. But the great mystery of the idea of Sacrifice itself, which has been manifested as one united and solemn instinct by all thoughtful and affectionate races, since the wide world became peopled, is founded on the secret truth of benevolent energy which all men who have tried to gain it have learned-that you cannot save men from death but by facing it for them, nor from sin but by resisting it for them. It is, on the contrary, the favourite and the worst falsehood of modern infidel morality, that you serve your fellow-creatures best by getting a percentage out of their pockets, and will best provide for starving multitudes by regaling yourselves. Some day or other-probably now very soon-too probably by heavy afflictions of the State, we shall be taught that it is not so; and that all the true good and glory even in this world-not to speak of any that is to come, must be bought still, as it always has been, with our toil, and with our tears. That is the final doctrine, the inevitable one, not of Christianity only, but of all Heroic Faith and Heroic Being; and the first trial questions of a true soul to itself must always be,-Have I a religion, have I a country, have I a love, that I am ready to die for? That is the Doctrine of Sacrifice; the faith in which Isaac was bound, in which Iphigenia died, in which the great army of martyrs have suffered, and by which all victories in the cause of justice and happiness have been gained by the men who became more than conquerors through Him that loved them.1 [Note: Ruskin, Art of England, i. 12, 18 (Works, xxxiii. 274).]
3. Isaac believed that his death would, in some way he did not understand, further the good of his house and God's Kingdom, and so without more ado and without even striking an attitude, he offered himself. Few men have lived a more uneventful life, but none could have done more bravely. Here, if nowhere else in his modest career, was manhood, and gentleness, That gentleness, Which, when it weds with manhood, makes a man.
He submitted to self-effacement for the sake of his family. That submission is the type of his whole life. He was always bound to a domestic altar. From first to last he was offered up in sacrifice to the will of his family. Isaac's sacrifice was the requisite condition of his succession to Abraham's place; it was the only suitable celebration of his majority. A true resignation of self, in whatever outward form this resignation may appear, is required that we may become one with God in His holy purposes and in His eternal blessedness. There could be no doubt that Abraham had found a true heir, when Isaac laid himself on the altar and steadied his heart to receive the knife. Dearer to God, and of immeasurably greater value than any service, was this surrender of himself into the hand of his father and his God.
Isaac might, had he so pleased, have resisted his father's will, and asserted his right to live and enjoy life. But he meekly allowed himself to be bound on the altar, and lay unresisting till the sacrificial knife was raised to slay him. In its great gallery of portraits, the Bible has nothing finer than this thoughtful, reverent, believing, obedient boy, so gentle and beautiful and innocent, yet in the grasp of God's grace so calm, so submissive, so strong to endure. Unless piety had struck its roots in him when he was a child, and grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength, he could never have endured his fiery trial. To find another instance of a Son voluntarily surrendering His life and laying Himself upon the altar at a Father's bidding, we have to go from Moriah to Calvary.1 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, i. 170.]
