“THE INHERITANCE PROMISED TO ABRAHAM.”

BY ROBERT S. CANDLISH, D. D.

            “The Lord appears to Abraham, and makes him expressly the Heir of the Land; saying,

‘Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward, eastward and westward; for all the land which thou seeth; to thee will I give it, and to thy Seed FOR EVER.’

And again still more pointedly,

‘Arise, walk through the land in the length of it, and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.’—

He is, we may say, enfeoffed in the land. It can scarcely be doubted that there is something more here than the promise of the earthly Canaan to Abraham’s Seed after the flesh. Twice the Lord repeats the express personal assurance to Abraham individually—‘To thee will I give it.’ That the hope of an inheritance for himself individually did actually form a part of the faith of Abraham, as also of the faith of Isaac and Jacob, the apostle Paul most expressly testifies. ‘He looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God;’ and this was the promise of which he was the heir. And the same is said of Isaac and Jacob, of Sarah and of all the ‘strangers and pilgrims’ of that olden time. Such a city, and such a country, the apostle Paul distinctly assures us, Abraham looked for and desired at a time when, as Stephen says, ‘God gave him none inheritance in Canaan, no, not so much as to set his foot on.’ He died in the faith of that city and country being his. It is plain, therefore, from the apostle’s statement, that Abraham had promises given to him of a country and a city, since he died in the faith of these promises. But no such promises are on record in the Old Testament, unless we hold such an assurance as this. Nowhere does Abraham receive any promise whatever of future good, or of a future inheritance for himself, if it be not in the announcement, ‘I will give thee this land.’ That this announcement does convey such a promise, may be argued from an expression used by the apostle when speaking of Abraham’s call, he says, ‘he was to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance;’ for it is to be remarked, the apostle makes no reference in this whole passage to Abraham’s posterity as inheriting the land: he speaks throughout of Abraham as an individual. Abraham ‘sojourned,’ as he says, ‘in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles as did Isaac and Jacob;’ but it was in the land of promise still. He had been called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance; and this was that place. He knew and recognised it as such. On this ground alone he had to rest his personal and individual hope for eternity. This was his warrant for expecting and looking for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. (The kingdom which the God of heaven shall set up in the land. —Editor.) Thus we learn to connect the promise of a heavenly city and a heavenly country, which Abraham undoubtedly had, with the declaration respecting the place to which he was called to go out, that it was the very place which he should afterwards receive for an inheritance. And with this inspired commentary, we cannot now hesitate to understand the words, ‘I will give thee this land,’ as conveying to himself, personally, the promise of a country and a city.

            “Still further, the apostle’s reasoning would lead us to place the fulfilment of the promise now before us after the resurrection: for he says, ‘Wherefore,’ by reason, or in consequence of this promise, ‘God is not ashamed to be called their God.’ When he consents and condescends to be called ‘their God,’ it is because he has some great things in store for them—something worthy of himself to bestow, something corresponding to so near a connection as is implied in his being ‘their God,’ and their being his people, his sons, and therefore, his heirs. But according to our Lord, this same title, ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob,’ conveys also a promise of the resurrection. It is only of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not dead, but living, that he is, or can be, the God. The promise, or preparation of a city, in respect of which he alone assumes that title, was secured to them, not as disembodied spirits, but as living men in the body. It was with Abraham in the body, that God graciously dealt in the way of becoming his God. Whatever privilege or whatever promise that relation or title implies, belongs to Abraham in the body: and hence, if the Lord is still his God, it must be with reference to his living again in the body; since ‘God is not the God of the dead,’ he never assumed this name, or gave any of the pledges or promises which it implies, in relation to the dead or disembodied spirits. ‘He is the God of the living;’ it is with the living, with men alive in the body, that he has to do. Such is the import of our Lord’s argument. God was not merely the God of Abraham while he sojourned as a pilgrim upon the land; he is his God still. But this cannot mean that he is the God of Abraham’s disembodied soul only; for he never constituted himself the God of Abraham in that sense. It was of Abraham in the body that he condescended to become the God; that is, of Abraham in the body that he is the God still; and it is to Abraham in the body, that he is pledged to make good all that that name denotes. Abraham must therefore yet live in the body to receive the fulfilment of the promise which God gave him in the body, and in respect of which God says not I was, but ‘I am the God of Abraham.’”

            Dr. Candlish concludes thus, “there may be a risk of making the eternal state, in one conception of it, too gross and material; but there is danger also in the dreamy and ideal spiritualising which would refine away all matter, and which ultimately comes very near the notion of absorption into the infinite spirit. The personal reality of hope, as well as the personal responsibility of sense, is turned into a dim abstraction. But the resurrection of the body, and the renewal of the earth, realised as events still to come, stamp a present value and importance upon both: and the reflection that the very body I now wear is to rise again, and the very earth on which I tread, is to be my habitation hereafter, arrests me when I am tempted to make my body the instrument, or the earth the scene of aught that would but ill accord with the glorious fashion of the one, or the renewed face of the other.”

            After reading this it might be inquired, ‘what place is there in Dr. Candlish’s system for immortal-soulism?’ It is probable he would reply ‘the intermediate state’—or, that soul-existence which is supposed to be mediate between the death of the body and its resurrection to life eternal. Hiss reasoning, however, which is excellent, leads to the conclusion that God, on the supposition of Abraham’s disembodied existence, in the spirit-world, is not now his God; and that consequently Abraham has been living ‘without God’ since he died, and will continue to do so, till he lives again in the body. Dr. Candlish truly says, It is only of Abraham living in the body that God is or can be God. And again, He never assumed the name, ‘God of Abraham,’ or gave any of the pledges or promises it implies, in relation to disembodied spirits. It is clear then, that between God, and the ghosts called Abraham and so-forth, by immortal-soulists, there exists no affinity or relationship whatever. Dr. Candlish’s adhesion, therefore to Platonism serves not to assist him in his interpretations, but rather to preserve his orthodoxy from being mobbed by craftsmen, whose zeal for their inventions is inflamed in proportion to the intensity of the selfism jeopardised by the prevalence of the truth.

EDITOR.

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