The Patriarchs: Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.Bellett, J. G. (John Gifford)
Religion
The Patriarchs: Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.
Bellett, J. G. (John Gifford)
Bible -- Biography; Patriarchs (Bible)
This will be the touching of an instrument of still finer workmanship.
The system around the vegetable and animal world is susceptible of such
forms of beauty and of order as may make it all the vivid, happy
reflection of divine goodness and wisdom; but in the renewed mind of man
there lie latent powers and affections of nothing less than the divinest
texture. In its present condition it has to struggle with nature, and to
suffer sore let and hindrance from the flesh. It is oppressed and
encumbered by a gross atmosphere. But it has capabilities of acting,
judging, and feeling of the highest order. And let but the due
influences reach it in power, those sensibilities and faculties will be
all awakened, and forms of moral beauty throughout all personal and
social life will show themselves. What a hope for the spirit tried in
conflict with the flesh! It will be the same "new creature" that now is:
only in other conditions. Not oppressed and clouded, but, as it were,
breathing its native air.
Scripture gives us many a witness of such moral virtue and enjoyment in
the millennial age. It is one of the most delightful occupations of the
mind of Christ in us, to hear these witnesses, in their mystic language,
deliver their testimony.
The Father of Israel and the Gentiles are seen together, for a moment,
in Genesis xxi. And their communion was a sample of the holy, happy
intercourse of Israel and the nations, in the coming days of the
kingdom. Questions which before had divided and disturbed them are now
all settled. The well of water, which had been the occasion of strife,
is now a witness of the oath or covenant. All pure social affections
adorn this communion of Abraham and Abimelech; and they part under
pledged and plighted friendship. Abraham’s grove, in principle, makes
the desert to bloom, and his altar makes the earth a sanctuary; but his
way with Abimelech, and Abimelech’s with him, give that bright moment
its dearest and highest character. For there are no enjoyments like
_moral_ enjoyments, no pleasures like those of the _heart_.
So in Exodus xviii. The heavenly and the earthly families are seen
together, under the type of Jethro and the ransomed tribes, at the mount
of God. And all is full of moral beauty. And yet the materials which
make up the scene had been, in other and earlier days, very differently
minded towards each other. Moses and Zipporah had parted in anger, the
last time they had met, and the congregation had been murmuring again
and again. But now the mount of God has influences for them, and from
the highest to the least, from Jethro down to the most distant parts of
the camp, all is in the power of godly order, subjection, and
fellowship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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