Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

GENESIS
the road winds around yonder knoll,. hopes like these be;
guile the weary traveler on. So our heavenly Father leads
us on, educating us day by day, and hour by hour, to walk
in faith, ever holding up the seen as an incentive to the
unseen. So He deals with us, luring us on by means of
life’s unsatisfactory and illusive rewards, ever schooling us
in the art of waiting, of enduring as. seeing Him who is
invisible. Canaan first; then the hope of a Redeemer;
and finally the Better Land. It was in this manner that
the ancient saints ifiterpreted this mysiery of the illusive-
ness of life. They did not regard li€e as a dream, nor as
a bubble, nor as a delusion. Though they no doubt felt
as keenly as any moralist could feel; the brokenness of its
promises, yet by faith they pressed on, confessing that they
were pilgrims and strangers here, that they had no con-
tinuing city, never mournfully moralizing about it, but
admitting it cheerfully and even rejoicing that it was so.
They felt that all was right; they knew that the promise
had a deeper than material significance; so they looked for
the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker
is God. They even died in faith, not having received the
promises, not expecting to receive them here, but hereafter.
Now observe the glorious result that comes from the in-
destructible power of believing and continuing on, in spite
of apparefit failure. The primitive Christians, for instance,
believed in their day that the millenium was at hand. They
had heard the apostolic warning, brief and clear, to
“watch.” Now suppose, instead of this, they had been
able to look into the future and see all the dreary pages of
church history unfolded, with its heresies, its apostasy and
divisions; suppose they could have known that even after
two thousand years the world would scarcely know the
alphabet of the Christian religion; knowing all these things,
what would have become of their gigantic and heroic
efforts, their sacrifices, their persecutions and their martyr-
doms? With such knowledge of the future, do you sup-
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