Verses 1-33
The Wells of Isaac
If you look at single verses of this chapter you might suppose that Isaac was a very excellent man. If you look at other verses in the same chapter you will find that he was guilty of express and abominable falsehood. Is it not the same chapter which records your life? mine? Our life is not one whole chapter in a solid paragraph, to be read through as if it were but one great sentence: our life-chapter is broken up into verses, punctuated sometimes very strangely and surprisingly. To pick out a single verse from that chapter and say "That is the man" might make us too good; shall I add that to pick out another kind of verse from the same chapter and to say "That is the man" might perhaps hardly do justice to the roundness and the inner most quality and meaning of our character? Believe me we are not quite so good as some little verse in our own life-chapter would seem to imply, and you will believe me when I say that, notwithstanding the blackness of some stinging verses the horrible blasphemy we did not altogether mean it exactly as if might be read by an elocution that was determined against us. Blessed be Heaven! it is not the business of any man to read my life-chapter, nor my business to read any other man's life-chapter. God will read all the writing a wondrous Reader: skilled in all the holy cunning of love which gets meanings and suggests emphases, and reads up into accents quite out of the way of mere scholarly reading and literary articulation. Jesus Christ has given us an instance of his way of reading, and when he read the chapter to the very people who were supposed to have dictated it by their action, they said "Well, well." That will be so in the last great reading. Comfort one another with these words. Great meanings will come out of little actions, as great trees come out of little bulbs. Spoken by the Lord, our life's speech will expand into a noble eloquence, and throb with inexpressible meanings, and heaven will begin in the surprise with which we shall listen to the testimony of him who is above our life. Never exclude the other side of the picture. Let us be frank with ourselves. Some of our neglects may be turned into impeachments; some of our omissions may be charged upon us as high treason against the law of love and trust and obligation. We do not recognise them; we have a way of over-leaping certain spaces in the life, and of referring to some things in whispers; but our neglects may be the beginning of our hell. Suppose we are not guilty of direct, overt, and nameable crimes, we may be charged with omissions you ought to have done this beauteous deed of charity; you ought to have spoken that tender word of comfort, you ought to have visited such and such solitude and turned it into sweet companionship. These are the things we make nothing of. Because we are not guilty of murder, therefore we think we are not guilty of heart-slaughter. God will read the life-chapter at last, and in the reading of it he will divide the universe of humanity into heaven and hell.
What a detestable man Isaac is when he tells lies to the king of the Philistines! Then he goes out well-hunting, as if he deserved to find water in the earth; and, secondly, calls the wells after the names which his father Abraham had given them. What contradictions we are! telling lies to a living king, and sentimentally honouring a dead father. Mean man! has Isaac left any posterity upon the earth? Do we look upon him as an ancient character, or as a modern instance? We are doing the same thing ourselves in some form or way. What if in the very middle of our life there be just one great black lie, and lying outside two or three beautiful touches of sentiment quite a skill in the drawing up of epitaphs, and quite a tearful and watery way of talking about old fathers and old associations? All these speeches make the lie the worse; when we see how little good we might be and might do, it aggravates the central evil of the life into overpowering and intolerable proportions. We never know how profane is the blasphemy until we catch ourselves in prayer. To think that the tongue blackened by that profanity could have also uttered that same prayer! Why, in the contrast is a new accusation and a fresh reproach. But let us follow Isaac in his well-digging. Man must have wells; man must go out of himself and pray to God in digging, if he will not pray in liturgy and uttered hymn and psalm in words. God lays his hand upon us at unexpected places: if we will not fall down upon our knees, we must still bend the proud back and dig in his earth in quest of water. At best we are dependants, seekers, always in quest of something which another hand alone can give us. Oh that men were wise! that in these true and inevitable providences we might see the beginning of inward and spiritual revelations, and that knowing the goodness of God in the gift of water and of bread, we might proceed to know that ineffable goodness which expressed itself in sacrificial and propitiatory blood. From the lower to the higher, I charge thee to go, or else thy reasoning is a base sophism and the beginning of an awful crime. Isaac's men are now in a little valley through which the summer torrent poured, and it is very dry, and they must seek water, and they dig and find the water of which they were in quest, and then the herdmen of the Philistines said, "The water is ours"; and Isaac called the well Strife Esek . We have dug that well ourselves; you have dug it in your business. Do not suppose that men can find wells and be let alone. If Isaac's men had found nothing but dust, the men of Gerar would never have spoken to them. It is what you find that excites the surprise, the envy, the opposition of those who are not in sympathy with you. If you sometimes take that view of life, it may help you. If you had plunged your hand into the wild wind and plucked nothing out of it, your unkindest neighbour would not have spoken harshly about you; he would have been rather pleased on the whole, and have treated himself to some new little luxury; but when you bring back news of wells, and mines, and fruit-fields, and harvests plentiful and golden, and then have to enter into contest, do not look so much at the contention as at the prize: take the broader, brighter view of things, even the divine aspect of life's reality, and remember that all life is after all, through all a contest, a strife, a controversy, a sharp friction.
Isaac took the right course: he said, "Pass on and find another well." His men "digged another well," and the men of Gerar "strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah " Hatred. Who can bear two successes? One might have been forgotten, but repetition is unpardonable. At first, mere strife, contradiction, contention of a worthy sort; and then a settled frown, the awful disgust, the virulent detestation. To that pass may human feeling be driven! Let us beware of it: it hinders prayer, it beclouds heaven, it dries up the beautiful well that springs in the middle of our own heart; or it turns the crystal water rising from that human fountain into a kind of poison. Hatred and love cannot live in the same house. Hatred may seem to expend itself upon the outer object, but in reality it is hurting you more than it is hurting your victim; it takes the angel out of you, it slays your very soul; it chokes the sweet song in your throat, and turns all the milk of human kindness into gall and bitterness. Hatred distorts the countenance into unbeautiful and hideous gnarls; hatred takes out of the voice its frank trustfulness and sympathetic music; hatred takes away the appetite, so that a man's bread becomes sour in his own mouth; hatred gives the hand a wrong twist in writing letters of love and friendship, so that the readers can see between the lines indications of an unhappy and undivine condition of mind. Hatred does not expend itself upon the victim: it expends itself in the ruin of the soul of the man who hates. He who hates cannot pray; he who hates can offer no sacrifice upon God's altar that shall be accepted. If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and then rememberest that thou hatest thy brother and hast not forgiven him, or hast been unkind to him, run back, and when thou hast spoken the true and noble word to thy brother, return, and thy mouth shall be opened in prevailing prayer, and God will say Amen in the uptaking of thy sacrifice and placing it in heaven.
Isaac had a sweet nature, too: he was not turned sour by all this, as some of us might have been. The worst issue that these arrangements can produce is an issue of souring the mind of the sufferer, turning him away from social paths as a disappointed and wounded man. Brother, I would I could speak comfortingly to thee herein! Surely, having dug two wells, and been driven away from both of them, there might be some excuse for a little pouting of the lip and hanging down of the head, and a groaning out of bitter words against men. Here I can but preach where I would gladly practise; but the right preaching would tell both you and me that, having been driven away from two wells, dug by our own industry, and secured, as we think, under God's blessing, by our own skill, we are not justified in complaining impiously; we ought to go straight on, and try to find another well. It is weary work. I do not like people to tell me in a jaunty and cheerful voice that I ought to carry my griefs and disappointments in an airy manner; I prefer the solemn tone that assures me that the grief is noted, is weighed, and is regarded as very serious; but that, after all, the world is bigger than any part of it; the globe is larger than any section of its crust the Lord reigneth, and perhaps I am only driven away from this place that I may find a larger; the disappointment which I now mourn may be the beginning of largess and fortune and benediction and heaven. I will up and go and dig again. Yes, that is the right preaching; and whoever alters his tone, the preacher must never alter his; whilst he stands in his pulpit, with God's book open before him, and the roof of the sanctuary over his head, he must speak the great word ay, even though in speaking it he be pleading against himself, and convicting his practical life of a breach of every word he has spoken before the bar of God. Our prayer must be right, whatever our life is; our speech must have in it the right tone and music, whatever our poor doing may be. It is our duty to lift up the life to the prayer, and the doing to the speech; meantime, prayer to God and speech to man must be of the royalest kind, imperially pure, inexorable in righteousness, most tender in charity, most radiant in hopefulness.
The leader being of sweet temper, the men went forward "removed from thence and digged another well; and for that the Philistines strove not." That is the way to wear out an enemy. Hatred does give in sometimes; black, hideous hatred, does sometimes exhaust itself. The Philistine herdmen strove no more, so Isaac said, "We will call this well Rehoboth " Room, space to live in; a place to stand upon. There is a place for every one of us, could we but find it; some have a long, long search in quest of the right place. Do not let us who stand in circumstances of comfort be the men to chide and sting such with reproaches; what have we that we have not received? It is easy for men who are in great prosperity to sneer at poor strugglers, against whose faces every door is shut and locked and bolted; let us show our refinement by abstaining from vulgar criticism on the difficulties of other men; let us show our gratitude by our sympathy, and let us prove our strength by the moderation of its exercise. The well you have found is God's gift: your beautiful home, your happy family, your prosperous business. You did not perhaps come to that estate of contentment and enjoyment all at once. Remember the first well you dug, and what a fight you had over it; the second, and how hatred turned you out of the place; and, remembering your own difficulties, have pity upon the fruitless exertions of other men. That may be the beginning of piety; to take a right view of such circumstances may be the dawn of prayer. I shall not despair of you if you have one kind, hopeful word for men who are still at the well of Strife, or at the fountain of Hatred.
After that another well was dug, and Isaac said, "We will call it Sheba " an oath, a covenant: a settled and unchangeable blessing. So the course of life runs Strife, Hatred, Room, striking of the hands in holy covenant. Happy is the consummation; it is possible to us all under the providence of God. It is a surprising thing that we should have all this friction to pass through, if we look at some aspects of our character; but if we look at other aspects, it is surprising that we have so little discipline to encounter and to endure. Looking at certain aspects of our nature and position we say, "Is it not surprising that we should be called upon to endure all this?" Thus we mistake ourselves for ill-used men of piety. The right speech would be: "This comes of that lie I told the Philistines; God is hurting me now for that base falsehood; this is John the Baptist risen from the dead; this is God's ghost sent to make 'night hideous.' Thanks be unto God that the discipline is so little, so attempered, so adapted to my weakness. When I remember the great lie, the awful deed, the plucking of fruit from the interdicted tree, the treachery, and then think that I have only been driven from two wells, how good is God! I will join the house of Aaron, and say, His mercy endureth for ever." That is the view I would take of my own life-course, and therefore would exhort other men to follow the same method of judgment. We are not so deeply pious, so supremely holy, that God ought to spare us the prick of a pin, or the thrust of a thorn. Dwelling upon one side of our excellences, we might wonder that God should allow one touch of the goad to disturb us; then we are self-deceivers. I will reckon up the prayers I ought to have prayed but never spoke, the deeds I have done that I ought not to have accomplished; I will reckon up all neglects, all offences against God and man, all the weaknesses of my character; and, adding these up, the wonder is that God has not struck me through and through not merely punctured me with a thorn here and there, but struck me with his seven lightnings, and utterly consumed me from the face of the earth. The trial has been severe, the disappointment has been acute; looked at from various standpoints we may have had too much to bear, but enclosing ourselves within the solemnity of God's holiness and our own deeds, we cannot but wonder that the men should have been men and not wolves that, springing from hidden places, might have devoured us because of our unrighteousness.
Then there is another and higher aspect It is not necessary that a man's parents should have sinned that he should be born blind, nor is it necessary to find a crime in order to explain a suffering. This is the course of Jesus Christ himself. He came unto his own, and his own received him not; he came again, and he was despised and rejected of men; he came again, and he is finding room; he is coming again, and he will realise the oath that he shall have the heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession. He was made perfect through disappointment and cruelty and wrong, through injustice and suffering. Both sides of this question, therefore, must be carefully looked at, and each man must determine for himself in the secrecy of his own consciousness to which side he ought to look for comfort or for warning.
Speaking of wells, I like the word; it is full of music, there is a plash in it as of the water which it represents. "With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation." "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." O ye poor well-diggers, digging where there is no water, how long will ye turn your back upon the right way, and be as gods unto your little selves? Why eat stones for bread? Why dig where there is no stream to be found? "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money." Whosoever will may come. We cannot explain these words: they are not to be treated exegetically, after the manner of analysis or vivisection; but they cannot be uttered sympathetically without touching something in us that tells us we are not earth-born or time-imprisoned, but arc made of God, and are meant for eternity.
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