(1:) His path. (11:io-14:)-The life of Abraham is the well-known pattern-life of faith, as far as the Old Testament could furnish this. It connects, as already noticed, in the closest way, with the story of Noah which precedes it, and alone makes it possible. For the essential characteristic of the life of faith is strangership, but this founded upon citizenship elsewhere. Faith dwells in the unseen, substantiating to itself things hoped for. This is exemplified in Abram, called to Canaan, his possession in hope alone. He dwells there, but in tabernacles, the bringing together of two things typically-the heavenly calling and its earthly consequence. Canaan is here Noah's new world beyond" the flood, and, as we all know, heaven; but the earthly aspect of this is, as all through Genesis, the prominent one. We must wait for Joshua be-fore we get a distinct type of how faith lays hold even now, of the inheritance in heaven. Here, tent and altar are as yet the only possession.

The introduction to this history is the record of Abraham's descent from Shem. It is a record of failure, of which the whole story is not told here, for we know that his line whose God Jehovah was were worshiping other gods when the Lord called Abraham from the other side of Euphrates (Josh. 24:2.). The genealogy itself may tell us something, however,-in Peleg, how men were possessing themselves more than ever of the earth, and at the same time the days of their tenure of it shortening rapidly,-by half, in this very Peleg's time (comp. ch. 10:25.). Reu lives two hundred and thirty-nine years; Serug, two hundred and thirty; Nahor, but one hundred and forty-eight; Terah, again, two hundred and five; but Haran dies before his father Terah. God yet numbers the fleeting years of those who have forgotten Him.

Now we find a movement in Terah's family, the full explanation of which we must look for outside of Genesis. Here, it seems to originate with Terah, for we read that " Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife ; and they went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan :and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." Terah fulfills his name (" delay "), and ends his days at Haran, so called from his dead son. Natural things hold him fast, though death be written on them, and memory but perpetuates his loss. "Haran" means "parched," yet there he abides (and Abram with him) tin he dies. Then we find that whom he had led he had been holding back ; and Abram rises upon the power of a divine call which had come to him and to him alone in the first place, and by which he was separated from country, kindred, and father's house alike, to be blessed and a blessing in the land pointed out of God for his abode. And now there is no further delay :" they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came."

Which of us does not know something of these compromises, which seem to promise so much more than God and to exact so much less, but in which obedience to God goes overboard at the start, and which end but in Haran, and not Canaan? Who would not have thought it gain to carry our kindred with us, instead of a needless and painful separation from them? Why separate, when their faces can be set in the same way as ours? and why not tarry for them and be gentle to their weakness, if they do linger on the road? [ How hard to distinguish from self-will or moroseness and unconcern for others, the simplicity of obedience and a true walk with God! But the lesson of this is too important to end here, and Lot's walk with Abraham is yet to give us full-length instruction upon a point which is vital to the life of faith.

But now Abram is in the land. We hear of the first halt at Sichem (Shechem), at the oak of Moreh. The first of these words means " shoulder," the second, " instructor;" and it is in bowing one's shoulder to bear that we find instruction. He that will do God's will shall know of the doctrine:he that will learn of Christ must take His yoke. This is the "virtue" in which still is " knowledge " (2 Pet. 1:5.). The oak of Moreh grows at Shechem still.

And it is surely "in the land" we find it:power for full obedience in those heavenly places, where we are " blessed with all spiritual blessings," and where "to the principalities and powers are made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God." It is as Canaan-dwellers the secrets of God's heart are opened to us; and Christ, in whom we are, becomes the key of knowledge as of power. In Him,"in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," we are "filled up."

Jehovah now appears to Abram, and confirms the land to his seed as their inheritance; and here for the second time in Genesis we read of an " altar," the first that Abram builds. He worships in the fullness of blessing, and then first also his "tent" comes into view:" he removed from thence into a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east.""Hai" means "a heap of ruin," and is the city which in Joshua resists the power of Israel, after Jericho falls to the ground. It is as if the very ruins of Jericho had risen up against those who had lost the victorious presence of God their strength. Typically, Hai is no doubt the ruined old creation, and thus between a judged world and the "house of God" Abram's tent is pitched, in view of both. Here, too, once more he builds an altar, and calls upon Jehovah's name.

But Canaan is a dependent land. It is contrasted with Egypt as not being like it watered with the foot, but drinking directly of the rain of heaven.* *Egypt of course must needs be dependent also, but not so immediately. Its river was its boast, and the sources of supply were too far off to be so easily recognized:a vivid type of the world in its self-sufficiency and independence of God. They are yet sending scientific expeditious to explore the sources of their unfailing river; and by searching yet have not found out God.* And although the eyes of the Lord are there continually, that does not exclude the trial which a life of faith implies and necessitates. Thus Abram finds a famine in the land to which God has called him, and to avoid it goes down to Egypt. There it becomes very evident that he is out of the path of faith, and he fails openly.

But we must note that the secret failure had begun before, and the famine itself had followed, not preceded this. A famine in Canaan cannot be mere sovereignty on God's part-sovereign though He be. And thus we find that when Abram, fully restored in soul, returns to the land, it is "to the place of the altar, which he made there at the first." There, between Bethel and Hai, he had been at the beginning; but there he had not been when the famine came, but in the south-his face toward Egypt, if not yet there. This border-land is ever a dry land, and Abram found it so. Famine soon comes for us in our own things when we get into this border-land. But who that;, has known what God's path is but has known the trial of a famine there? And when we find such, how Egypt tempts-how the world in some shape solicits to give up the separate place which we have taken. Few, perhaps, but have made some temporary visit to Egypt in the emergency. But the price of Egypt's succor is well known. Abram's fall there has been bat too constantly repeated, and its repetition upon the largest scale has been one great step in the failure of the whole dispensation. Sarai in Pharaoh's house is but the commencement of that which reaches its full development in the guilty commerce of the harlot-woman with the kings of the earth. But the germ is yet very different from the development, and Sarai is of course by no means the apocalyptic woman. She is, as the epistle to the Galatians tells us, the covenant contrasted with the Sinaitic, as grace with law. The grace in which we stand God has linked with faith, and with faith alone. It belongs not to the world in any wise. We are not of the world:"we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."But who can maintain that testimony, when the world's help is wanted, and association with it sought? It is evident some form of universalism must be preached. Sarai (grace) must not be held as Abraham's exclusive possession, but the world allowed to believe it can obtain what divorced from faith is sufficiently attractive to it. Give Sarai up, and you shall have wealth and honors-be the king's brother-in-law; and by simony such as this has the Church bought peace and prosperity in the world; but the world will yet learn by judgment (as did Pharaoh) that Sarai is "not its own. This manifest, its favors cease, and Abram is sent away.

And now the true character of Lot comes out. His story (one of the saddest in Genesis) is most important to be noticed in a day when, God having revealed to us the truth of our heavenly calling, it is but even too plain that there are many Lots. The word "Lot" means "covering," and I under a covering he is ever found. With Abraham I outwardly, he is not at heart what Abraham is; and with the men of Sodom outwardly, he is not after all a Sodomite either. He is a saint and therefore not a Sodomite, though in Sodom. He is a saint untrue to his saintship, and herein Abraham's contrast, even of his companion. His is, however, alas! a downward course. First, with Abraham, a pilgrim; then, a dweller in Sodom; finally, he falls under deeper personal reproach, and his life ends as it began-under a covering. There is no revival, no effort even upward, throughout nothing but mere gravitation, dragging down into still deeper ruin lives associated with his. His wife's memorial is a pillar of salt; his daughters', a more abiding and perpetual infamy, linked with his own shame forever. How terrible this record! How emphatic an admonition to remember, in him, how near two roads may be at the beginning which at the end lie far indeed apart! Reader, may none who read this trace this by-path, save here where God has marked out for us the end from the beginning, that with Him we may see it; not, as having trod it, the beginning from the end.

The beginning is found here:-

" And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son … to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there."

Nature, taking in hand to follow a divine call, which, it had never understood nor heard for itself; leading without being led; settling down short al-together of the point for which it started, to dwell) in a scene of death to which it clings spite of dis-satisfaction:-these are the moral elements amid which many a Lot is nurtured. Terah shines out in him when, having under taken to walk with Abram, the plain of Jordan fixes his eyes and heart:once again, when in the presence of judgment, the messengers of it laid hold upon his hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and brought him forth and set him without ,the city,-because " he lingered.."

But there is another beginning, after this; for now-

"Abram took Sarai his wife,, and Lot his brother's son, . . . and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came." Not nature now, but the man of faith leads, and they no longer linger on the road; but Lot merely follows Abram, as before he had followed Terah. Abram walks with God; Lot only with Abram. How easy even for a believer to walk where another's bolder faith leads and makes the way practicable, without exercise of conscience or reality of faith as to the way itself! How many "such there are, practically but the camp-followers of the Lord's host, adherents of a cause for which they have no thought of being martyrs, nearly balanced between what they know as truth and a world which has never been seen by them in the light of it. For such, as with Lot, a time of sifting comes, and like dead leaves they drop off from the stem that holds them.

Egypt had acted thus for Lot. The attraction it had for him comes out very plainly there where the coveted plain of Jordan seems in his eyes " like the land of Egypt."But beside this, it is easy to understand how Abram's failure there had loosened the moral hold he had hitherto retained upon this nephew. Yet still true to the weakness of his character, Lot does not propose separation, but Abram does, after it was plain they could no longer happily walk together. Their possessions, increased largely in Egypt, separate them, but Abram manifests his own restoration of soul by the magnanimity of his offer. Lot, though the younger, and dependent, shall choose for himself his portion; and he, not imitating the unselfishness by which he profits, lifts up his eyes and beholds the fertility of the plain of Jordan, and he chooses there.

The names unmistakably reveal what is before us here. Jordan ("descending") is the river of death, flowing in rapid course ever down to the sea of judgment, from which there is no outlet-no escape.* *The Dead Sea, it is well known, lies in a deep hollow, twelve hundred and ninety-two feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and there is no river flowing out of it.* There, in a plain soon to be visited with fire and brimstone from the Lord, he settles down, at first still in a tent though among the cities there, but soon to exchange it for a more fixed abode in Sodom, toward which from the first he gravitates.

Lot-like, even this he covers with a vail of piety. The plain of Jordan is " like the garden of the Lord "-like paradise:why should he not enjoy God's gifts in it? He forgets the fall, and that paradise is barred from man, argues religiously enough, while under it all the real secret is found in this:It is "like the land of Egypt." How much of man's reasoning comes from his heart and not his head -a heart too far away from God! It is significantly added, '.' As thou comest unto Zoar;" and thus indeed Lot came to it.

But Abram dwells in the land of Canaan, and God bids him walk through it as his own. Thereupon he removes and dwells in Madre (" fatness ") which is in Hebron ("companionship, communion"). The names speak for themselves again sufficiently. May we only know, and live in, the portion of Abram here.

In the next chapter things are greatly changed. Abram himself is in connection with Sodom, as well as with another power, which we may easily identify as essentially Babylonish. The names are difficult to read, and two at least of the confederated countries are just as doubtful.* *For the attempt to make Ellasar Hellas, or Greece, though favored by the Septuagint, can scarcely be maintained. It is more probably Larsa. Nor is Tidal, king of nations, a very satisfactory representative of the Roman power, as some take it.* But in the first enumeration Amraphel, king of Shinar, stands first, the undoubted representative of the kingdom of Nimrod, although Chedorlaomer appears the most active and interested. They all seem but divisions of this Babylonish empire however, though changed no doubt into a confederacy of more or less equal powers.

These four kings-and our attention is specially called to the number here (ver. 9.)-are at war with the five petty kings of the plain of Jordan. Typically, these last represent the world in its undisguised* and sensual wickedness; the Babylonish kings, the religious world-power, always seeking to hold captive (and in general successfully) the more open form of evil. *Undisguised indeed, if Gesenius is right as to Bera being equivalent to Benra," son of evil," and Birsha to Ben-resha," son of wickedness."* Indeed the Sodom of heathenism never yielded but to a spiritual Babylon which had already obtained supremacy over the Christianity of Scripture and the apostles; and in no way was this last ever really established, nor could it be. But the world craves some religion; and nothing could suit it better than one which with external evidences to accredit it, such as undeniably historical Christianity had, linked its blessings with a system of ordinances by which they could be dispensed to its votaries. This exactly was the character of Nicene Christianity, and hence its conquest of the Roman empire. The leaven was already in the meal:the adulteration of the gospel had already advanced far; but leaven (evil as in Scripture its character undoubtedly is) has certainly the power of rapid diffusion, and rapidly the popularized gospel spread.

These, then, are the powers represented here. The portion of Abram lies outside the whole field of conflict. Lot, on the other hand, is already in Sodom, and of course is carried captive in the captivity of Sodom. It is the spiritual history of those who, having known the truth, fall under the power of the world-church which Babylon represents. It is their link with the world by which they are. sucked in. And such is the secret of all departure, from the truth. The Lord is top faithful to allow mere honest ignorance to be deceived; and although men may credit Him with it, the record still stands:"Whosoever willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."

The secret of Abram's power is revealed in one pregnant word, which as here used of him flashes light upon the scene before us:" There came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew." That word, patronymic as it may be, is yet significant:it means " the passenger." So Peter exhorts us, "as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts "-the destruction of Sodom, while to the pilgrim, Babylon, claiming her kingdom now in the yet unpurged earth, can only be the persecutor, "red with the:blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus." Here may seem a difference between Abram and the spiritual sons whom he represents; but typically he none the less may rep-resent those who, after their Lord's example, conquer by suffering. There never were more real conquerors than were the martyrs.

So Abram brings back his brother Lot and all the other captives; whose deliverance indeed was, as we see, merely incidental. For as between Sodom and Shinar how could Abram interfere, or what deliverance would it be for a mere child of Sodom to be delivered from the power of Babylon ? Even as to Lot it is once more solemnly made manifest that not circumstances have made him what he is, and that change of circumstances do not change him. Freed by God's hand working by another, he is not really free; and soon we shall find him needing once more to be delivered from what, having escaped judgment, falls under God’s.

But if Lot's eyes are still on Sodom, those of his pilgrim-brother find another object. For as he returned from the slaughter of the kings, "Melchisedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the Most High God." The type is explained to us by the apostle in the epistle to the Hebrews; and we all know in Christ the Priest after the order of Melchisedek. The apostle's words are remarkable for the way in which they bring out and insist upon the perfection of Scripture, in what it omits as well as what it inserts. " Without father, without mother, without beginning of days or end of life," are words which have been thought to show that the mysterious person before us was no other than Christ Himself ; but this the apostle's very next words disprove; for "made like unto the Son of God" could not be of the Son of God Himself. It is simply of the omissions of the narrative that the apostle is speaking; these omissions being necessary to the perfection of the type. He is our High-Priest, not finding His place among the ephemeral generations of an earthly priesthood, but subsisting in the power of ah endless life; Priest and King in one. Whilst, however, the Lord is thus even now a Priest after the order of Melchisedek, it is not after Melchisedek's pattern that He is now acting. Here, His type is rather Aaron. It is at a future time – a time, as we say, millennial – that He will fulfill the type before us, as many of its features clearly show. Thus. Melchisedek is priest of the Most High God,-a title always used of God in the coming; day of manifested supremacy. This Melchisedek's own words show:" Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth." The interpretation of his name, and the name of his city, confirms this:" First of all,' King of Righteousness'; and after that,' King of Salem which is, ' King of Peace.' " This is the order in which the prophet gives the same things,' when speaking of millennial times:"Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field; and the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever."

His place in this chapter is in perfect and beautiful keeping with all this. For we find the timeliness of Melchisedek's appearance to the vic-tor over the kings, when the king of Sodom says to Abram, " Give me the. persons, and take the goods to thyself." It is to the " Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth "-the One of whom Melchisedek has spoken to him,-that Abram declares he has lifted up the hand, not to take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet.' Christ seen thus by the pilgrim man of faith claiming on God's part all that is his own, is the true antidote to the world's offers. If Christ could not accept the kingdoms of the world at the hands of Satan, but from His Father only, no more can His followers accept enrichment at the hands of a world which has rejected Christ for Satan. And that bread and wine which we receive from our true Melchisedek, the memorial of those sufferings by which alone we are enriched, for him who has tasted it, implies the refusal of a portion here.