CHAPTER VIII
The Sacrifice of Isaac
Gen. 22
Agnes M. Lawson
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The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
We grow into
true knowledge of God by obedience to the
highest that we know. The highest that we
know may be a false concept, but
sincerity and aspiration are always seen
of Him who looks not upon the outward
act, but the inward intention. There
existed for centuries among Semitic races
the custom of sacrificing children to
their gods. This may seem to the one who
does not look beneath the surface hideous
and loathsome. It is the thing that we do
not understand that we condemn; charity
always comes with comprehension.
The central
impulse in the heart of man is to find
his God and be united to him. Man is
“incurably religious” the
philosopher tells us. He is always
seeking God and endeavoring to propitiate
Him and enlist His favor. Man is
dependent and has always felt this
dependence, so he makes sacrifices in
order to gain favor. The dearest
possession of man is his children, and
when he came to see that his best must be
given to his god he was groping for the
ideal.
This idea of
child sacrifice was Abraham’s
inheritance from his age. We have to grow
out of the beliefs we are born into. When
the child of promise came, he was
Jehovah’s gift to him. Could he
keep from Jehovah that which was his?
“God commanded Abraham to sacrifice
Isaac.” Do we believe this? Abraham
who called himself the friend of God,
meditating on what he could do to please
Him, had the inward conviction that he
must give his best, and the dearest thing
in life to him was Isaac. Great men never
hesitate, the act follows the conviction,
and Abraham obeyed immediately.
Here are
three of the highest qualifications of
the soul of man: Obedience to his highest
concept, instant action upon it, and
neither condemnation of the God who
demanded it nor self-pity for himself who
must give. Self-sacrifice is the supreme
test of faith, and Abraham was not found
wanting. Willingness to give our highest
and best opens the way for God to give
His highest and best to us. It is
impossible to take anything out of life
that we have not first put into it. An
old concept was lost to Abraham, but a
new one was born--God demanded the
sacrifice of his son in another way than
the one which Abraham knew. We never
possess anything until we lose it, that
is, we never get into right relationship
to it. Human love must always be passed
through the sacrificial fires before it
is acceptable to God.
Sacrifice
means to make sacred, and the one we have
given to God has been made sacred to us.
This is adjustment, an adjustment that we
must make with everyone, our loved ones
and unloved ones alike, for the human
consciousness is chaos and the spiritual
is order. Perfect adjustment would be
eternal life, we have been told by one of
the best thinkers that this planet has
produced. We are always making
adjustments, we must continue to do it
until we get into right relationship with
the universe and everything in it.
God does
demand of us that we sacrifice our sons
and daughters, our husbands, wives,
lovers and friends, aye and our own lives
also. It is not a mere humorist that
exclaimed, “God save me from my
friends, I can protect myself from my
enemies.” We instinctively protect
ourselves from our enemies, we are always
on guard against them. Yet they can never
injure us in the sense that our
unconsecrated lovers can injure us. The
unwise parents who indulge their
children, the foolish lover who flatters
our mediocre efforts and thereby fails to
stimulate us to better accomplishment are
far more injurious than enemies would be.
Our enemies often stimulate us to
endeavor, for a definite determination to
succeed often follows another’s
criticism or condemnation. It takes God
to protect us from our friends, and He
does it; He commands us to sacrifice
them, and sacrifice them we must.
We give
freedom when we have given up, we gain
freedom as we are given up. Every life
must come out and be its individual self,
and the restrictions laid upon us by our
mistaken lovers must be broken, as Samson
broke the ropes bound around him by
Delilah. Our genius is innate and
solitary and must be worked out from
itself and not deflected by
another’s desire for us. The mother
who would help her children must give
them up. A mother of five children, four
of whom died in infancy, sadly told me:
“I have killed four of my children,
and if my daughter had not fought me
every inch of the way, she would not be
alive.” The truth had enabled this
woman to see that the fear constantly
held over her children had actually
crushed their lives out. This woman is
from the world’s standpoint a model
mother.
It is
impossible to heal the sick and erring
but by giving them up. We have not
created them nor are we responsible for
them. Turn them over to the One who did
and Who is always responsible for them.
Hold this responsibility up to God
constantly and you will find that He
always measures up to it. Time after time
when in my blind human way a feeling of
responsibility for my patients would
creep over me, I have been enabled to
give them up by repeating the words of
that great seer, Robert Browning,
“Would I fain in my impotent
yearning do all for this man; and doubt
He alone will help him, who yet alone
can?” Peace comes with sacrifice,
and we can give no healing treatment that
does not come from the deep conviction
that the life of everyone, no matter what
the seeming, is always hid with Christ in
God.
God has
nothing better to offer us than the love
of a friend who has given us up. We have
been given to God and, held in this, we
have the required stimulus. We need this
love as the tiny crocus needs the spring
sunshine. We expand in it, we reach out
in endeavor to measure up to it.
“God never made a great man but He
confided the secret to another.”
This stimulus is an actual necessity. No
soul ever arrived at the goal without
it.
The love
which has passed through the sacrificial
fire alone is true. There is only one
love and that is Love. Love always sees
our possibilities and believes in us
until we believe in ourselves. In the
mirror of another’s love we find
our real life. Let us pray with Hamilton
Wright Mabie, “Send someone, Lord,
to love the best that is in me and to
accept nothing less from me.” For
those, who accept from us anything less
than God, will take from us, they are not
an aid but a detriment.
I give the
following experience as it was related in
a class recently: “The youngest
members of our family were two daughters,
of which I was the elder. My mother was
very sympathetic and had spoiled the
family baby by indulging her in her
belief in invalidism. The girl had no
thought of anyone but herself and had
enslaved our mother. She had alienated
the affections of the whole family by her
selfishness and uselessness, and when my
mother died I was the only one who had
compassion for her. For years I carried a
deep-seated pain in my heart for her. I
felt that she was not as intelligent as
myself, nor as competent, and she was a
trust left me by my mother that I could
neither evade nor shirk.
“One
of the greatest trials of my life were
her letters; everything was hopeless from
her standpoint. Her only diversion was
trying new physicians; her letters were
pleas for money to pay her bills. One day
a peculiar vision came to me. I was in a
large body of water bending over my
sister as I held her head under the water
waiting for her to drown. As I had been
studying Divine Science for some time I
knew that I was actually doing that.
There could be no mistaking its meaning.
I was holding her fast in my positive
thought, and I must free her. I jumped up
and, standing in the middle of the room,
I positively threw her at God. I
passionately exclaimed: ‘God, I did
not create her nor am I responsible for
her. I absolutely refuse to carry her any
longer.’ From that moment my
pocketbook was closed for her. She had
the necessities, the luxury of physicians
she must forgo. She is a self-supporting
woman today, she who never did a thing in
her life to amount to anything until
after she was thirty-five years
old.”
GOD DID
COMMAND ABRAHAM TO SACRIFICE ISAAC. And
He commands every one of us to do the
same, and we shall know no peace until we
place in God’s care all those whom
we love, and as we do it we gain
them.
* * * * *
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