The Patriarchs

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Bellett John Gifford. The Patriarchs

ENOCH

NOAH. GENESIS VI. – XI

ABRAHAM. GENESIS XII. – XXV

ISAAC. GENESIS XXV. – XXVII

JACOB. GENESIS XXVIII. – XXXVI

JOSEPH. GENESIS XXXVII. – L

THE BOOK OF JOB. JAMES v. 11

THE CANTICLES

HEAVEN AND EARTH

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How changed is the whole condition of things since the day of Genesis!

Were I to read the opening of this fine scripture, and just expose my heart to the simpler earliest impression of what I get there, it is this thought which would engage my mind; and yet with all ease we can account for this strange and wondrous revolution. In chapter i. God was alone, producing the fruit of His own handiwork, in wisdom, goodness, and skill; and then all was good and desirable. On the return of every evening and morning the divine delights lingered over what the divine hand was working out, and behold all was very good; and the seventh day was sanctified for the celebration of this rest and enjoyment. But now, it is not God's hand presenting a perfect work to God's thoughts and affections, but it is man, the apostate artificer, spreading out a wide scene of corruption and violence for the grief and repentings of the divine mind. The secret of the change lies there. Man has been at work; man has been fashioning and furnishing the scene, and not the living, blessed God. The earth is therefore filled with violence; giants there are, mighty men, men of renown; and the imaginations of that heart which was now making "this present evil world" are only evil, and that continually.

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That blood, now under the eye of the Lord God, had moved His heart. Do I speak as a man? No, the word is, "The Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground." As the Saviour Himself says (in spirit bound for the altar), "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life." The heart of the Lord God has sealed the acceptance of the sacrifice. It did so here, in the times of Noah.

This word that broke from the heart of the Lord God in Noah's day, the passage of the burning lamp in Abraham's day (Gen. xv.), and the answer of God to Solomon (2 Chron. i.), all witness to the value of the cross of Christ with God established. The rending of the veil from top to bottom, the breaking of the rocks, and the bursting of the graves, witness the same, when the true offering was once and for ever accomplished. In rich variety of form and character is the acceptance of the work done in "the place that is called Calvary" testified and published-in every tongue and language, as it were, in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.

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