(2.) The Individual Application.-We now come to the individual application. And here the apostle's words in the epistle to the Galatians are precise enough,-" We, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. …. We are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." As Ishmael represents the child of law then, so does Isaac rep-resent the child of grace. And this, as he has shown us in the beginning of the same chapter, is not merely the true child, but the child in the child's place It is simple that he who stands on the one hand for the Son of God should on the other represent the sons of God. It is sonship, then, that is presented to us in Isaac,-the place of the child.

In contrast with Ishmael, we find one born by divine power, not natural strength,-of grace, not law. His name, " Laughter," speaks of the father's joy in him,-for us, how precious a thought, the Father's joy! Our joy in such a place we naturally think of, and it may well be great; but how much greater, and how it deepens ours as we apprehend it, the Father's joy! The different interpretations of the parable of the pearl are in similar contrast. Who can wonder at the thought that a pearl of great price, precious enough to be bought with the surrender of all one has, must needs be Christ? But what a revelation to the soul that finds that under this strong figure is conveyed Christ's love or His Church! Thus Scripture, in its own unapproachable way, puts the arms of divine love about us.

How striking too is the fact of Isaac's persistent dwelling in Canaan, in this connection! Abraham is found outside, and Jacob for many years, while Joseph spends most of his life outside:Isaac, of all of them, is the only one who is never found any where but in the land of Canaan. If it be a question of a wife of his kindred, still he must not leave to seek her; when he is in the Philistines' land, and thus on the border, God interferes by a vision, and says, " Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I tell thee of; sojourn in this land, and I will bless thee." And to us, surely, the Church of the first-born ones, whom first of all among men God has claimed for Himself, the land in which we are to abide is marked out with all possible distinctness:we are claimed by Heaven, destined for the Father's house; and when revealed with Christ in the glory of heaven, then shall be the "manifestation of the sons of God." Meanwhile it is for us to remember the words to us so full both of warning and encouragement, " Go not down into Egypt; . . . sojourn in this land, and I will bless thee."

Isaac's life is indeed full of blessing, with little incident, a striking contrast to Jacob and his varying experiences; he sows and reaps, and digs his wells of water in a security little disturbed. He is thus the fitting type of the child of God abiding in the serene enjoyment of his unchanging portion. This is the real Beulah of Bunyan's allegory, " where the sun shines and the birds sing day and night;" or, as Scripture better says,"a land which the Lord thy God careth for; the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it." Bunyan's land, however, is at the close of his pilgrim's course; and there indeed it is too often found, if found at all. But it would be a sad mistake to suppose that one must wait till then to find it. Blessed be God, it is not so:the joy of our place with God is ours by indefeasible title, and cannot be lost, save by our own connivance. God's word for us all is, " Sojourn in this land, and I will bless thee."

Yet peaceful and full of blessing as is this life of Isaac, the entrance to all its blessedness is found by a narrow door-way of exquisite trial. Isaac's sacrifice is the true beginning of his history, and the key to all that follows. This we have seen when regarding him as the undoubted type of the Son of God. It is the self-surrender of the cross which explains all that after-history. And if here, at first sight, the application to us might seem to fail, it is only to a very superficial glance. Nay, the precise aspect of the cross here is such as to bring out the lesson for us in the most striking and beautiful manner. It is as self-surrender into a Father's hands that it is presented in the type we have been considering; and seen in this way, not only is there no difficulty in the application, but the whole becomes at once a vivid picture of significant and fruitful beauty.

" I beseech you therefore, brethren," says the apostle, " by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your intelligent service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." (Rom. 12:i, 2.) How admirably this expresses the meaning of the type before us! It is a sacrifice, a living sacrifice, we are called to,-a sacrifice in life, although as such it speaks of death:-how clearly Isaac's presents this thought to us! Here, what might seem a difficulty in the larger application becomes a special beauty in the individual one. Isaac, given up to death, does not really die. In will and intent he does; in fact, it is his substitute. So Israel, at an after-time, coming to pass through Jordan to the land of their inheritance, find Jordan all dried up, and a broad way made over its former bed. There is no need to interpret. Death in the reality of it we do not know:we do not die, but are dead, with Him who is "resurrection and life" to us. The sorrow, the bitterness, the sting, of death was His who is now, as the consequence of it, in the glory of God for us; but by virtue of it, our position is changed; our place is no more in the world; we belong to Him and to heaven, where He has gone for us. On the one side of it, this is in fact our salvation, our perfect blessing, our highest privilege; but it involves, on the other, the living sacrifice of our bodies, of that which links us with the world out of which we have passed. Alas! that we should have to speak of this as trial, but this is surely what all sacrifice implies, and "sacrifice" the apostle calls it. But it is a living sacrifice-a sacrifice, not in death, but life,-a holy offering, acceptable to God,-a surrender to Him, in which we prove what is His good and acceptable and perfect will. Trial there may be here, to such as we are; but to faith, only unspeakable privilege- the entrance upon a path which is perfect freedom. " God forbid that I should glory," says the apostle, " save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world."

Do you understand this, beloved reader? can you appropriate so strong and triumphant an expression? To glory in that which puts away one's sins is easy, and it is the cross which does this; but the apostle is not speaking of glorying in that which puts away his sins, but in that "which crucifies him to the world and the world to him! The joy which he manifests here is that alone which gives power for the path we are considering,- alone makes it really practicable. Joy is an essential element of the spirit in which alone God's path can be trodden. It is a Father's will to which we are called to surrender ourselves,-the will of One who alone has title to have one; His will by which we have been " sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ;" a self-surrender into a Father's hand, to whom we are far, far more than Isaac was to Abraham!

And yet, indeed, there is trial and sorrow in this path, as upon what path that man's feet have ever trodden is there not? Can the world give you one upon which it can insure you freedom from suffering for a moment? Do the "lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life " promise more to you ? and can you trust its promises better than those " exceeding great and precious ones by which we are made partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" ? No; if you be Christ's, you know you cannot. But then, beloved, if this be your decision, (and the Lord seeks deliberate, "intelligent " service,) let it be whole-hearted, and unwaveringly maintained. Surrender must be real:there must not be limitation and reserve. If God be worthy of trust, He is worthy of full trust; and full trust means full surrender,-nothing short!

Alas! it is the foxes, "the little foxes, that spoil the vines." It is the little compromises that destroy the vigor and freshness and reality of Christian life. It must be so, unless God could connive at His own dishonor. There is no such reserve with Isaac. He yields himself implicitly into his father's hand and will; and bitter as the cup presented to him may be, in result it is to find life in the place of death, and all the promises confirmed to him. For us, if in the world, there must be tribulation; not only is this the appointed way to the glory already revealed to faith, but even now we may with the apostle " glory in tribulation also, because tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us."

Thus Isaac's offering has the most pregnant meaning with reference to his after-life. In the two following chapters, the individual application seems to fail, and give place to the dispensational, as I have already remarked, although on the other hand it may be mere dimness of spiritual sight which cannot find it. Rebekah should at least have some significance here, and her taking her place in Sarah's tent seems to identify her as a form of that principle of grace which there can be no question Sarah represents. Her name also, " binding," seems in this way to add to the idea of grace that of assured perpetuity, as having found its justifying and abiding ground. Rebekah would remind us thus of that which the apostle tells us- that God hath " accepted us [the word is literally "graced"] in the Beloved." How this suits with the typical teaching of Isaac's life is plain enough, —-sonship implying, surely, the perpetuity here spoken of.

" And it came to pass, after the death of Abraham, that God blessed his son Isaac, and he dwelt by the well Lahairoi." These dwelling-places are certainly characteristic and distinctive, as Abraham's at Hebron, and Lot's in the valley of Jordan or at Sodom. A well, too, was a natural and suitable accompaniment for the tent of a pilgrim:water is a first necessity for the maintenance of life, and so is for us the " living water"-the Spirit acting through the Word. "The words that I speak unto you," says the Lord, "they are spirit and they are life."

The way that water ministers to life and growth is indeed a beautiful type of the Spirit's action. Without water, a plant will die in the midst of abundance of food in actual contact with its roots. Its office is to make food to be assimilated by the organism, and to give power to the system itself to take it up. Although the word may sometimes be otherwise used, yet in Proverbs 5:15 the well is distinct from the cistern as the place of " running," or " living," water. Such wells were those that Isaac digged, not mere artificial cisterns, as we find in chapter xxvi, " And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water." Such wells should not all the children of God covet to dwell by? where not only our energy is manifest, but much more-the energy of the Spirit of God. Our diligence depending absolutely on God for its success, but where nevertheless He meets without fail the heartfelt diligence that craves for its urgent need the living water. May not and should not every one of God's Isaacs be, in his measure and way; a well-digger? What blessedness for him who has thus not simply the ministry of others, but his own springing well!
Isaac's well, where above all he loved to be, was this Lahairoi.-the well that told to him, as once it had done to Hagar, of the gracious superintending care of an ever-living, ever-present God. What a world is this where sin has made Him a stranger, -which has made it necessary to seek God at all! How much stranger still a world that can do without Him! For the heart convinced of the desolation of His absence, what cry like that for the living God ? Sonship in Isaac speaks to us here of this cry answered and the heart's home found. And the very essence of Christianity is in this, that we are acknowledged sons.

To the realization of this living presence the Word is ever necessary. The word of God is that which (by the power of the Spirit) reveals to us the presence of God; and thus the apostle in the epistle to the Hebrews links the two together:"For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do."This, it is true, may seem to speak more of our manifestation than of His; but the one is the effect of the other, and how important it is to remember this! An exercised conscience and habitual self-judgment will be the sure results of a true walk with God. A profession of intimacy where laxity assumes the name of grace is the worst deception and dishonor to God's blessed name.

And now we find with Rebekah, as with Sarah, that fruitfulness cannot be according to nature, or by its power. Grace as a principle implies dependence and intervention of the power of God. More than this, that which is first is natural,-Esau is rejected and the younger is taken up (though himself no better) in the sovereignty of God alone.

Striking it is that Isaac's history ends (for in chapter 27:it is rather Jacob,) with a scene in the Philistines' land, the similarity of which, too, to that in Abraham's life must be plain to the dullest reader. The repetition of the lesson gives it emphasis, of course. The sin here must be one of special importance, and to which the believer must be specially prone, to be thus emphasized. We cannot but remember that these Philistines are the great enemies of Israel at an after-period, and that the history of the Judges ends really, leaving them captive to these. If we take Scripture,-the announcement of the sure word of prophecy, and remember the meaning which attaches to this Philistine power, is it not a decisive confirmation of the truth of the interpretation already given? For the history of the outward church does assuredly end in the prevalence of that worldly successional power which in our days is again with so much energy asserting itself. Into this it is not now the place to go; but prophecy is not for us the mere prediction of the future, but the warning for the present:we are taught to judge now beforehand what is then to meet God's judgment, and here Isaac's failure and Isaac's final superiority are alike instructive.

First, let us note that the Philistine's land is part of God's land for Isaac, but that it is famine drives him there, which recalls, and is meant to recall, that in Abraham's time which drove him down to Egypt. God interposes to prevent Isaac also going down there:"And the Lord appeared unto him, and said, 'Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I will tell thee of; sojourn in this land"-not necessarily or merely the Philistines'-" and I will be with thee and bless thee; for unto thee and unto thy seed will I give all these countries; and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; and I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries.'"
The Philistines' land, then, is included in this ground. It is part of the land, yet only the outside border toward Egypt, with the corresponding danger as a dwelling-place for the man of faith. This low border-land alone, as 1 have before remarked, could the Philistines occupy, although they might make their power felt far beyond. It will be evident the line of things we have to do with here, and that it is as we approach to this borderland of external truths that we reach the place where the traditional church has built her strongholds. She can parade her ceremonies and proclaim her mysteries, and make out the land to be her own; yet it is a land in which an Abraham may dig and an Isaac re-dig many a well of living water which the would-be possessors of it treat as the sign of a hostile claim, and contend for but to stop with earth. How effectually for ages did they do this! How much have the men of faith yielded for peace's sake, as did Isaac here, until God gave them a Rehoboth. Indeed this is a ground noted for the yielding of timid saints.

The practical title to the land is the possession of the well. With it you may still find wonderful harvests, for it is a place of abundant fertility. In the region of outward things, if we have diligence to dig beneath the surface, we may find the sweetest refreshment and the fullest satisfaction, and may sow and reap a hundredfold. Here Isaac gamed his riches and became great, for the Lord blessed him. And what is Judaism?-what is the Old Testament, but such a country as this Philistines' land, where men, seeing nothing but the letter, and misinterpreting that, have built up once more a system of carnal ordinances, darkening with shadows long since done away the blessed light which has visited them? And yet in this Philistines' land, which is Israel's really, (and which God's Israel has always been so slow to claim,) how much awaits an Isaac's diligence and care, to repay them with untold riches!

This final scene in Isaac's history closes with his altar at Beersheba, and with the acknowledgment, even by the Philistines themselves, that Jehovah is with the man of faith. To the angel of the church of Philadelphia saith the Lord, " Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee."