"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.

"And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

"And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

"Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.

"And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and land the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.

"And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.

"And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

"And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

"And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

"And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

"And the angel of the Lord called "unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.

"And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.

"And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

"And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.

"And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,

"And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:

"That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies:

"And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice." — Gen. 22:1-18.

In the earlier years of my ministry, I used to take a very short text and preach a very long sermon from it; take a very short text as a kind of motto, and then work a week in laboring to manufacture a sermon. But since it pleased the Lord to take the film from my eyes by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, by the fulfillment of a certain -prophecy made in Isaiah that He would baptize us with the Holy Ghost and take the mist from our eyes, or the veil, I have quit making sermons and gone to preaching God's sermons already made. I find that God made more sermons and better sermons than all the preachers can make in all the ages. So I have dropped my old factory business, and often take for a text just simply one of God's sermons. And here is one reported in the twenty-second chapter of Genesis, on the offering up of Isaac. Now doubtless you are familiar with this interesting narrative, which has thrilled so many millions and will thrill more when more thoroughly understood. This is one of God's sermons that He has been preaching to us. I simply call your attention to some of the points, which are in the nature of an exegesis. Without losing any time, and touching upon only the salient points, I remark, in the first place, the distinction between being a servant of God and a son. When they were going toward the place Mount Moriah, where he was to offer up his only son, he came within sight of the mountain afar off. There are no forest trees in Palestine; at all events, very few. It is like Mexico and Southern California. You can see a great way off. The atmosphere is clear and there is not much brush, not much timber. You can see a man riding on horseback ten or fifteen miles away in Colorado, just as clearly as you can see a man a mile in this country. And so he came, and afar off he saw the mountain. When he discovered the locality he said to the servants, "Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you."

This incident, like all the incidents in the Bible, is a teaching incident. God has caused His word to be so recorded that all the minutiae and all the incidents that are put into His Book are in the nature of instruction. And so, always and forever, it turns out that there are those who follow God, who are with God's family, who worship with God's people, who are mingled with God's numbers, and yet they are in the nature of the office of servants, not sons. When God has special revelations, special manifestations, wonderful trials and wonderful. joys, transfigurations on the one hand and Gethsemane sorrows on the other, when God has a great crisis at hand, and some great event is to transpire, whether of great joy or great sorrow, the truth holds equally good, that the hirelings in the service of God must retire at a distance, and only those who are in true, intimate spiritual fellowship with God have access to these inner scenes in the life of Christ.

And so these servants, these hired men, were the real worshipers of God, doubtless, in Abraham's family; for Abraham had a godly family, and doubtless had all the family collected at family prayers, and had all the servants. But they did not sustain the covenant relation with God, that deep and intimate union that Abraham and his son did; so when the time came to offer up Isaac, he and the lad went on up the mountain into their Gethsemane, and into what was to be their transfiguration from that time onward.

It was thus in the life of Jesus. Sometimes in Christ's ministry, those who had no faith, those who served God from fear, those who hoped that they had a hope, — people who had that kind of religion, who are the hirelings in the kingdom of God, sometimes on the outskirts of the Holy Ghost realm, — they were not allowed to go in and see Christ raise the dead and perform His wonderful work. But Peter, James, and John formed a sort of inner circle around Christ's life, and had access to the deeper things in His ministry.

So it is to-day. It is so in Boston to-day. There are a great many who attend the Church of God, who doubtless give of their means in the support of the ministry, in all missionary causes and enterprises of the Church, and people who believe in a religion of good works and good deeds, — Christians who fear God and, to a certain extent, work righteousness, — but have not yet received the witness of the Spirit, have not yet learned to love God, have not had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost. They may be servants of God, and they may do many things which are religious and churchly and orderly and proper and commendable; and yet they are not in such relation to Jesus, in such union with the Father, as that God can reveal things unto them as He can unto babes. They are the wise ones. They are the prudent ones. They are the thoughtful ones, — it may be, sometimes too thoughtful for God; sometimes too wise for God; sometimes too prudent for the Holy Ghost. God loves these great ones, these wise ones. Many of the philosophers are God's hired men, and many a babe is taken into the inner chamber where God reveals deep things; for He has hid these things from the wise and the prudent and the hired men, and revealed them unto babes, — unto those who have been crucified with Christ, and whose wisdom and self-learning and self-esteem and self-honor and their own pride of intellect have been utterly crucified, — and they go into the kingdom of God heart foremost, and find things that the others cannot find.

Not because God is a respecter of persons, for God is not a respecter of persons. But God is a respecter of character. It does not depend on Peter or James or Mary or Matthew, or anybody else; God has no respect for a man's mere personality. But God will go a long ways to find a true character, like His own; for God does respect character.

Now that is the first lesson here. Are we so related to God? Are we like Abraham and Isaac? Can God talk to us? If God calls us to go to Gethsemane; if God calls us to undergo some trial or some crucifixion or some abasement, or calls us to- a great joy, are we willing to go? Sometimes God has as much difficulty to make people really happy as to make them really sad. There are a lot of people who are afraid God will make them happy. They are afraid to shout. They never said hallelujah in their lives, and they are afraid to say it. So God has as much difficulty to make us willing to be blessed as to make us willing to be afflicted. There are a great many persons who are willing to go moping and mourning and weeping all their days, but they are never willing to get really happy for God. Thus it does not matter whether it be some great crisis of sorrow or great crisis of joy, God will call us to some mountain top; and the place or the mountain top where we suffer the most will turn out to be the mount of joy in the end. But if we are God's hired servants, if we are God's philosophers and on the outskirts of this great empire of salvation — why, we must stand out in the vestibule while God reveals Himself to His bosom friends within. Let us next look into the offering up of Isaac as a type, first of Jesus and then of ourselves. The offering up of Isaac is a type of the offering of Jesus Christ. This is so plain that it is recognized by all readers of God's Word. Jesus Himself uses this as an emblem; and we find that the analogy between the offering up of Isaac and of Christ is very close. He was his only son, his only true legal heir: Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God the Father. He was the son whom he loved: Jesus is emphatically the Son of the Father's love. He was offered up to die: and so God the Father gave His own Son to die, a ransom for us. The very mountain upon which Isaac was offered, or near there, is the very spot where Christ was offered up; or, at least, where He was betrayed, and where the transaction virtually took place.

I need not discuss this very much, because we want to get the application. There is a fact which we find the farther we advance into God's Word and our experiences: that whatever truth can be affirmed of Jesus, apart from His vicarious sufferings, apart from His divinity, nearly all can be made in a limited sense about the followers of Christ. The believers in Jesus are so to be united in heart, mind, and spirit, that the same prophecies that were made concerning Christ are made concerning the members of His mystical body, and the same statements that are made about Jesus are made about His followers. Many of the prophecies where David was speaking of himself are like that which the Ethiopian asked Philip, " Did Isaiah speak of himself or some other man? " There are a great many prophecies in which David spoke of himself and of Christ in a sort of double affirmative. Like a person standing between two mirrors, the same image will be reflected back and forth, down a long avenue or vista of reflected images. So the same truth about Jesus and the believer may be affirmed in hundreds of instances. " Out of Egypt have I called my son." That referred to the calling of the Jews out of Egypt, but preeminently to the calling of Christ out of Egypt; in a still deeper or truer sense, to the calling of God's believers and followers out of the bondage of Egypt. Jesus prayed that we might be one with each other and one with Him, as He was one with the Father. Now this offering up of Isaac is as applicable to us, really and spiritually, as it was to Jesus. Not in the same sense. He was offered up as a vicarious sacrifice: we are offered up in order to obtain the merits of His offering. Jesus gave Himself, — He was given up to die vicariously, but we can never get the full benefit of His offering until we are offered up. It is by our being crucified that we get the benefits of His crucifixion, and He was crucified in order that we might be crucified. He declares, — for this purpose I offer myself, or, I sanctify myself, that they may be thoroughly sanctified. And Jesus gave Himself an offering that we might offer up ourselves and get the benefit of His great sacrifice.

Now, we must offer our Isaac, our darling, our idol, our heart. You may go to work and name a thousand and one things that constitute the Isaac of different persons; and when you have boiled the foam all off, and boiled the water all out, and have nothing left but the pure juice, you will find out that our Isaac is s-e-l-f. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." And that corn of wheat is self. You can take a grain of corn and varnish it and hang it over the mantelpiece, and it will stay there five hundred years. These grains have been known to live in mummies three thousand years. Keep the air away, keep out insects, and you can just preserve old self in the gilded, varnished, mummy state clear on through eternity. The devil has been nursing himself and coddling himself, and he is not dead yet; he is living on self. But Jesus said that, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone."

Now, my friends, except we take our Isaac — self — and offer him up as Abraham did Isaac, we remain alone. When Abraham offered up Isaac, his only son, and gave him to die, right there on the spot God came down and declared: You have given up the grain of corn, you have given up the only grain of corn that was likely to produce any corn for this world and the world to come; and inasmuch as you have thus consented to die, to give up your only child and heir, in multiplying I will multiply you as the stars in heaven, that cannot be numbered.

Now that is applicable to us to-day. Christian people that refuse to give up themselves, — they remain only one little individual self; but those Christians who consent to die, who consent to give up themselves as thoroughly to die as Abraham gave Isaac, then God will multiply that seed that was put into the ground a thousand-fold. That is true of every true servant of God. And the small man and the little woman that are big in their own eyes, and are always gilding and varnishing themselves, and wrapping bandages around themselves, and trying to mummify themselves and preserve themselves like the old Egyptian kings did, — they live on, but they will never multiply. But men and women who agree to die and be buried out of sight are the ones that multiply themselves spiritually a thousand-fold; and the same covenant God made with Abraham on Mount Moriah He will make with you to-day here. Men are on the wrong track when they are running for popularity. If a man wants fame, if he will just consent to die God will insure his fame.

In this dying process there were three things mentioned: the wood, the knife, and the fire. Isaac was a lad. He may have been nearly grown, but his father took the very wood that was to burn him up and put it upon the lad's shoulder. When Jesus went out to His crucifixion He bore His own cross, as Isaac did. He carried the wood on which he should die. Every one of us that comes into the deeper life and into the more intimate fellowship with God must carry the wood on which we are to die. No angel can carry your bundle of wood for you; no creature.

What is the wood? The wood in the case of Isaac was a bundle of dry sticks that would make a fire to burn him up. The wood in the case of Jesus Christ was a heavy cross on which His arms were to be bound and His feet pinned. What is your piece of wood? Your piece of wood, the cross on which you are to die, the altar on which you are to undergo this death of selfishness, of unbelief and sin, may be one of a thousand things. It is some trial, some duty, some point in your life's history, some one thing that is to be the cross on which you are to die. You may kneel at a thousand camp meetings or a thousand altars, and pray all around and all over, but every time you pray there is always one stick of wood that stands right in front of your eyes. You pray straight up against it every time. It is something that you must consent to do, or consent to be, or consent to suffer. Some people will do anything, but they don't want to be anything. Other persons want to he but they do not want to suffer. There are some people willing to work themselves to death provided God will let them off that they may not "be" something. They do not want to "be holy." They do not want to "be tender-hearted." They do not want to "be merciful." They do not want to "be perfect." Some time ago a preacher was preaching about if you want to be holy go to work and do something; take a basket and go and help somebody. A man back in the congregation said, " The Lord knows I would take two baskets if I thought it would do any good." He would do anything, but he wouldn't consent to come down and just be a small man for God,

Your neighbor or your friend could not guess what your stick of wood is. God alone knows. If you agree to harmonize with God on that last point, that is the piece of wood on which you die. That is carrying your own cross. So that in coming to God, in coming up into this holy mountain, you draw nigh to Him by taking up your cross and following Christ to Mount Moriah.

Next is the knife. The knife was the instrument in the hand of Abraham for slaying his son. Throughout the Bible the sword, or the knife, is an emblem of the Word of God. Just as Abraham took that knife to slay his son, God has a knife, sharper than a two-edged knife, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is God's Word that cats our heart in pieces. Just as Abraham and the priest many years before took a sharp knife to slay the lamb, and then divided the lamb in pieces, God takes His own Word, cuts our hearts all to pieces, and divides our hearts as they divided the old sacrifices.

The word "contrite" means to cut in two. A contrite heart means a heart that has been cut in pieces with God's sharp knife. The, knife was the instrument in the hand of the father, and so God's Word is the instrument in the hand of God by which He crucifies our nature. It is the Word of God that pierces the heart. It is the Word of God that arouses the sinner. It is the Word of God, applied by the.- Holy Ghost, that makes us mad and then makes us glad. It is the sharp knife of circumcision by which God eliminates. the fleshly mind from the soul, and then we are said to be circumcised in the heart. When you are seeking a clean heart, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and when you have carried the wood, — whatever the thing may be upon which is your death test, — you will find right away there will come some Scripture, some word of God will be handled by the Holy Ghost, more deathly than any executioner ever handled a sword. It comes to you, — some promise you have heard a hundred times, that you have read in the Bible over and over, which you have quoted, and never saw much meaning in it. But when that word comes to your heart it has an edge to it, and somehow you are amazed at the sharpness of it. "I will, be thou clean." "This is the will of God, your sanctification." "Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." "Reckon yourselves dead to sin." Some word like that comes and transpierces your whole moral nature, so that you can feel the tingling sensation of the mighty truth go through your inner heart.

What is that? It is the Father wielding the sharp knife by which He slays the self of unbelief and sin.

And then the fire, the Holy Ghost. The fire in this case was to have consumed Isaac, and the Holy Ghost will consume our offering. That fire was a type of the Holy Spirit's work upon earth. I have not time to elaborate that point.

The next thought in this lesson comes from the conversation they had when they were going up the mountain: " Father, behold here is the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb for sacrifice? " I want to call your attention to the peculiarly beautiful manner in which Abraham put this tremendous truth upon his son's mind. If Abraham had gone to work and preached to that yonng man as we have done at times in the years when we were rash and unwise, he would have scared Isaac and caused him to have drawn back. Suppose he had said this to him: " Well, Isaac, you have asked me a hard question. It is breaking my heart to tell you, but the fact is, you will have to be the lamb to-day, and you must make up your mind to die. God has told me to kill you and I am going to do it." What anguish would have come to the mind of Isaac at the presentation of the awful, bloody tragedy, of the thought he was thus to die in his youth, and away from his mother; and Abraham would have utterly defeated the whole enterprise.

But that is the way many times God's truth is put unwisely. People go to work and they present consecration in such a horrible, miserable manner. They begin on the Isaac side and teach about what Isaac must do. He must bleed, he must die in his youth, away from his mother; they pile it on, until they simply and utterly scare everybody away from giving themselves to God. Now note the Holy Ghost wisdom in his reply: "My son, God will provide." He did not say "Isaac" once. It was all on God's side, so that by the time Isaac reached the spot of death the Holy Ghost had worked in him the marvelous transformation by which he was willing to die.

That is just the way God wants to deal with us to-day.. If I go to a man who is using tobacco or to a woman who is wearing jewelry or to some person that takes a little pleasure trip on Sunday, and picture to them that they must give up this and that; or to another that he must be willing to go to Africa and die in the sand; or to another that she must stay at home and wash dishes all her life, — that is the wrong side. Bless you, there are a great many persons nowadays that are willing to go to Mexico or China or anywhere, except to stand and work for God right where they are. You can present consecration from your own standpoint until the whole soul revolts and backs down. Whereas, if Christian people would only get around on God's side of the house and hear Him talk, and this man hold in silence for awhile, and let this thought come, Why, God is your Father, and God is planning for you; God wants you to do this or that in order that He may get you where He can bless you, — if God can get in His presentation and you can see what entire abandonment is, and you can see what entire death to self is from God's standpoint, by the time God has talked His side of the question into your soul, like Isaac you will be willing to die anywhere and be tied and laid on your piece of wood.

There is a way to drive people from consecration by preaching the bare, cold, bloody bones side of the question. But when you once get over on God's side, and get hold of the fact that " God loves me and God is making plans for my eternity; God takes more interest in me than my own parents take"; with that thought in your heart of the Godside, you will find that your heart will yield and yield, and you will give up, and the first thing you know the tobacco is gone and you too-, without intending they should go.

Why? Because God has got the inside track on you; that is why. Now if somebody had drawn a photograph of all the things that the Lord has put you through since you have got sanctified, and had simply held them out by themselves without any of the divinity in them, you would have backslidden long ago and gone to hell, whole crowds of you. You would have said, "Lord, I can't stand that: the Lord doesn't call on me to make these sufferings and sacrifices." When the Lord got you over to Himself and showed you His side, you have gone right along, giving up here and giving up there, suffering here and suffering there, launching out here and launching out there, crossing mountains and crossing high seas, going through poverty and persecutions, and not paying much attention to it at all. God puts a velvet lining into every rough shell; God puts a gilding into every thunderstorm; and God has put the sweetness of His music into every clattering crash of the world's hard tones. And if it had not been that God was always giving you His side of the interpretation, you would have backed down long ago. Glory be to God! He did not call us to raw, ugly, bloody bones. The call is to His loving breast. " My son, God will provide. Dry up your tears, my boy. I am not going to tell you now about the butcher knife and the fire; it will scare you. I will talk to you about God awhile." He got that child over on to God's side, and then he was ready to die.

If we could get the Church to-day on to God's side, it would die. If you stand out of doors and hear a man preach, most any preacher will irritate you; his voice will sound harsh; and a great many persons get just near enough to God for that. If they would get near enough to hear God talk, without any walls between, close up into His loving breast, they would understand the divine mind better and then they would lie down and die for Jesus.

Just one more thought. He stretched forth his hand to take the knife. I have seen pictures of the knife raised. It does not say so. Jesus Christ, the Angel Jehovah, spoke to him out of heaven, "Abraham, Abraham — " and he stopped right there. He did not say, " I have commenced now and may just as well go through," but he stopped, and gave a chance for God to talk a little to him.

God's Word is full of fine points. It is a wonderful thing to go when God tells you to go. It is just as wonderful to stop when God says stop. You will all understand this. You know that when God calls us to some work or sacrifice, and we once make up our minds to go and really get started, it is so hard to stop. You know that we easily become attached to our own work. When God tells us to get out and run on an errand for Him, and we do not want to go at first, but after awhile, having made up our minds to go, are all full of enthusiasm and once commenced, the errand becomes attached to us, and we to it; so that we then want to go, and we do not want to stop. How many there are that have been rash enough to just go too far. It requires more wisdom not to go too far than not to go at all. And so Abraham had that wonderful union with the divine mind — I think that is the way to call it — that he could start his machinery when God turned on the steam, and he could stop when God turned on the air brake.

In this great matter of full salvation it requires entire consecration to start, and it requires a more thorough consecration and wisdom and divine prudence — not foolish man's prudence — to know when to stop. It takes more grace to walk than it does to fly or run. Isaiah represents the young Christians as flying, the middle-aged Christians as running, but the old Christians come down to a walk. "They shall mount up with wings as eagles." Some people think that is wonderful, to fly. Well, the first effect of the Holy Ghost will be to make you fly. The second effect is to make you run, and then to come down to a walk with God. They shall fly, then they shall run, and then they shall walk and not faint.

It is just on this point that has occurred all the fanaticism and all the outlandish nonsense that has been attached to the modern movement of full salvation. Some man killed his own child, you remember, following Abraham. He did not follow Abraham at all, for Abraham heard God. When he lifted his knife God stayed his hand. And you will find a great deal of fanaticism here and yonder, everywhere, and you will find that all these fanatics, every one, begin here at this point. They have made a consecration at the start; they have yielded and consented to obey God. They climbed some mountain, but they failed to have the Abrahamic style of faith. They did not possess that Abrahamic solidity of repose in God, so that they could know just when God said, "My child, stop right along there: halt! halt!" I tell you, it takes as thorough a consecration to save us from fanaticism after we are sanctified, as it does to sanctify us before we are sanctified. Do we find here a lesson for the children of God? If you want to be God's child you must consent to come into more intimate relationship. Look at how the lesson of entire consecration must be made. Look at your life, your death, your eternity from God's standpoint, instead of mustering up the horrible ghouls that would frighten you from God. Turn the picture that way, behold God's way, and you will abandon yourself to God to-day, to be His forever; you will consent to have the sharp knife cut away the depravity from your nature and have the precious Holy Ghost baptize you with fire from on high.

If you are seeking this experience, right where you are and just as you are, can you consent, right now, and say: I will lay down my struggles, my doubts, my fears, and I will consent here and now that the Lord may take me and cleanse me, and fill me with the Holy Ghost?