And Abraham was all this to the very end--as these closing chapters show us. The character which he took up at the beginning, under the call of God, that character he maintained to the end. He fails in the power of faith along the road, again and again, but he is the same heavenly stranger to the end of his journey.¹³ ¹³ In the mystic history of the earth given to us in Lev. xxiii. the Church is brought in as the "poor" and the "stranger" gleaning in another man’s field, in ver. 22. But as she entered that field so she left it. She was the poor one, and the stranger, and the gleaner in another’s field, to the end. The field never becomes her property. Looked at in the light of this beautiful figure, what is Christendom under God’s eye? And strangership of this order is ours, I am deeply assured. Ours is to be strangership in the earth, because of conscious and well-known citizenship in heaven; separation from the world, because of oneness with an already risen Christ. Nothing can alter this while we are on the earth. We ought so to look in the face of a _rejected_ Christ as to maintain this strangership in power. And so we do, as far as Christ is of more value to us than all our circumstances. It is for want of this that we take up with the world as we do. We have not learnt the lesson that Moses learnt--that the reproach of Christ was greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Hard but blessed. Abraham knew something of it in power. He was the stranger to the end. He might have returned to Mesopotamia. He had not forgotten the road, as we observed before; and the constant respect and friendliness of all his neighbours proved that there was no enemy to hinder the journey. But the call of God had fixed his heart, and he looked only where it led him.¹⁴ ¹⁴ The Lord Jesus, in the days of His flesh, acted as the God who, of old, had called Abraham. _For He put in the supreme claims of such an one._ "He that loveth father or mother more than Me," says He, "is not worthy of Me." And again, "Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead." Who but God can step in between us and such relationships, such obligations and services? Duties and affections like these are more than sanctioned by nature; they are enforced by law--law of God Himself. But the call of God is supreme, and Jesus asserted it in the day of His humiliation here. Would that the soul held these things in increased power! Little indeed does the heart know of this, if one may speak for others. But they are real--the prized fruit of divine energy in the elect of God. After all this we find another and distinct matter in the history of Abraham. I mean his marriage with Keturah, and his family by her.