MAKING VOID GOD’S PROMISES.
God promised Abraham that by his seed—a lawful seed presumably—all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Surely, said Abraham, as Sarah is barren, I must adopt this Eliezer, the Damascene. Not so, said the Lord; the promised seed shall be thine own. And then Abraham talked it over with Sarah, and the expedient was devised that Hagar should become Abraham’s concubine. In later years the fruit of the mistake was reaped when Abraham’s heart-strings were torn by separation from his son Ishmael; and the world reaped the result in the begetting of a race at war with all mankind. (See Genesis, chapters 15 to 17.) How many times since have the above expedients been repeated in various forms among the people of God! God has placed His church in the earth, His own divine, simple organization, so amply supplied with spiritual gifts as to meet every emergency, so flexible as to adapt itself to every need. But how many times its leaders, the representatives of the church’s Head, under the supposition that the church is barren, turn to the State, or some altar of Damascene pattern (2 Kings 16:10–13), and say, Surely this Christian State must do the work; or they make to themselves concubines of their own human organizations, which result in the persecution of the lawful wife, or final separation from associations and begettings which rupture human heart-strings! O, that men would believe God; that they would realize “that the church of Christ, enfeebled and defective as it may be, is the only object upon which He bestows His supreme regard.” She may seem to be barren, but power can be obtained only from God. Of every human expediency He says, “This shall not be the heir.” God has called His church to liberty, and to proclaim liberty from all sinful and earthly bondage.