THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM
by Alexander Maclaren
'Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good
old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people.'
-- GENESIS xxv. 8.
'Full of years' does not seem to me to be a mere
synonym for
longevity. That would be an intolerable tautology,
for we should
then have the same thing said three times over--'an
old man,' 'in a
good old age,' 'full of years.' There must be some
other idea than
that in the words. If you notice that the expression
is by no means
a usual one, that it is only applied to one or two
of the Old
Testament characters, and those selected characters,
I think you
will see that there must be some other significance
in it than
merely to point to length of days.
It may be well to note the instances. In addition to
our text, we
find it employed, first, in reference to Isaac, in
Genesis xxxv. 29,
where the words are repeated almost _verbatim_. That
calm,
contemplative life, so unlike the active, varied
career of his
father, also attained to this blessing at its close.
Then we find
that the stormy and adventurous course of the great
king David, with
its wonderful alternations both of moral character
and of fortune,
is represented as being closed at last with this
tranquil evening
glory: 'He died in a good old age, full of days,
riches, and
honour.' Once more we read of the great high priest
Jehoiada, whose
history had been crowded with peril, change, brave
resistance, and
strenuous effort, that with all the storms behind
him he died at
last, 'full of days.' The only other instance of the
occurrence of
the phrase is at the close of the book of Job, the
typical record of
the good man suffering, and of the abundant
compensations given by a
loving God. The fair picture of returning prosperity
and family joy,
like the calm morning sunshine after a night of
storm and wreck,
with which that wonderful book ends, has this for
its last touch,
evidently intended to deepen the impression of peace
which is
breathed over it all: 'So Job died, being old and
full of days.'
These are all the instances of the occurrence of
this phrase, and I
think we may fairly say that in all it is meant to
suggest not
merely length of days, but some characteristic of
the long life over
and above its mere length. We shall, I think,
understand its meaning
a little better if we make a very slight and
entirely warranted
change, and instead of reading '_full_ of years,'
read '_satisfied_
with years.' The men were satisfied with life;
having exhausted its
possibilities, having drunk a full draught, having
nothing more left
to wish for. The words point to a calm close, with
all desires
gratified, with hot wishes stilled, with no
desperate clinging to
life, but a willingness to let it go, because all
which it could give
had been attained.
So much for one of the remarkable expressions in
this verse. There
is another, 'He was gathered to his people,' of
which we shall have
more to say presently. Enough for the present to
note the
peculiarity, and to suggest that it seems to contain
some dim hint
of a future life, and some glimmer of some of the
profoundest
thoughts about it.
We have two main things to consider.
1. The tranquil close of a life.
It is possible, then, at the end of life to feel
that it has
satisfied one's wishes. Whether it does or no will
depend mostly on
ourselves, and very slightly on our circumstances.
Length of days,
competence, health, and friends are important; but
neither these nor
any other externals will make the difference between
a life which,
in the retrospect, will seem to have been sufficient
for our
desires, and one which leaves a hunger in the heart.
It is possible
for us to make our lives of such a sort, that
whether they run on to
the apparent maturity of old age, or whether they
are cut short in
the midst of our days, we may rise from the table
feeling that it
has satisfied our desires, met our anticipation, and
been all very
good.
Possibly, that is not the way in which most of us
look at life. That
is not the way in which a great many of us seem to
think that it is
an eminent part of Christian and religious character
to look at
life. But it is the way in which the highest type of
devotion and
the truest goodness always look at it. There are
people, old and
young, who, whenever they look back, whether it be
over a long tract
of years or over a short one, have nothing to say
about it except:
'Vanity of vanities! all is vanity and vexation of
spirit'; a
retrospect of weary disappointments and thwarted
plans.
How different with some of us the forward and the
backward look! Are
there not some listening to me, whose past is so
dark that it flings
black shadows over their future, and who can only
cherish hopes for
to-morrow, by giving the lie to and forgetting the
whole of their
yesterdays? It is hard to paint the regions before
us like 'the
Garden of the Lord,' when we know that the locusts
of our own
godless desires have made all the land behind us
desolate. If your
past has been a selfish past, a godless past, in
which passion,
inclination, whim, anything but conscience and
Christ have ruled,
your remembrances can scarcely be tranquil; nor your
hopes bright.
If you have only 'prospects drear,' when you
'backward cast your
eye,' it is not wonderful if 'forwards though you
cannot see,' you
will 'guess and fear.' Such lives, when they come
towards an end,
are wont to be full of querulous discontent and
bitterness. We have
all seen godless old men cynical and sour, pleased
with nothing,
grumbling, or feebly complaining, about everything,
dissatisfied
with all which life has thus far yielded them, and
yet clinging
desperately to it, and afraid to go.
Put by the side of such an end this calm picture of
the old man
going down into his grave, and looking back over all
those long days
since he came away from his father's house, and
became a pilgrim and
a stranger. How all the hot anxieties, desires,
occupations, of
youth have quieted themselves down! How far away now
seem the
warlike days when he fought the invading kings! How
far away the
heaviness of heart when he journeyed to Mount Moriah
with his boy,
and whetted the knife to slay his son! His love had
all been buried
in Sarah's grave. He has been a lonely man for many
years; and yet
he looks back, as God looked back over His creative
week, and feels
that all has been good. 'It was all for the best;
the great
procession of my life has been ordered from the
beginning to its
end, by the Hand that shapes beauty everywhere, and
has made all
things blessed and sweet. I have drunk a full
draught; I have had
enough; I bless the Giver of the feast, and push my
chair back; and
get up and go away.' He died an old man, and
satisfied with his
life.
Ay! And what a contrast that makes, dear friends, to
another set of
people. There is nothing more miserable than to see
a man, as his
years go by, gripping harder and tighter at this
poor, fleeting
world that is slipping away from him; nothing sadder
than to see
how, as opportunities and capacities for the
enjoyment of life
dwindle, and dwindle, and dwindle, people become
almost fierce in
the desire to keep it. Why, you can see on the face
of many an old
man and woman a hungry discontent, that has not come
from the mere
wrinkles of old age or care; an eager
acquisitiveness looking out of
the dim old eyes, tragical and awful. It is sad to
see a man, as the
world goes from him, grasping at its skirts as a
beggar does at the
retreating passer-by that refuses him an alms. Are
there not some of
us who feel that this is our case, that the less we
have before us
of life here on earth, the more eagerly we grasp at
the little which
still remains; trying to get some last drops out of
the broken
cistern which we know can hold no water? How
different this blessed
acquiescence in the fleeting away of the fleeting;
and this
contented satisfaction with the portion that has
been given him,
which this man had who died willingly, being
satisfied with life!
Sometimes, too, there is satiety--weariness of life
which is not
satisfaction, though it looks like it. Its language
is: 'Man
delights me not; nor woman neither. I am tired of it
all.' Those who
feel thus sit at the table without an appetite. They
think that they
have seen to the bottom of everything, and they have
found
everything a cheat. They expect nothing new under
the sun; that
which is to be hath already been, and it is all
vanity and striving
after the wind. They are at once satiated and
dissatisfied. Nothing
keeps the power to charm.
How different from all this is the temper expressed
in this text,
rightly understood! Abraham had had a richly varied
life. It had
brought him all he wished. He has drunk a full
draught, and needs no
more. He is satisfied, but that does not mean loss
of interest in
present duties, occupations, or enjoyments. It is
possible to keep
ourselves fully alive to all these till the end, and
to preserve
something of the keen edge of youth even in old age,
by the magic of
communion with God, purity of conduct, and a
habitual contemplation
of all events as sent by our Father. When Paul felt
himself very
near his end, he yet had interest enough in common
things to tell
Timothy all about their mutual friends' occupations,
and to wish to
have his books and parchments.
So, calmly, satisfied and yet not sickened, keenly
appreciating all
the good and pleasantness of life, and yet quite
willing to let it
go, Abraham died. So may it be with us too, if we
will, no matter
what the duration or the externals of our life. If
we too are his
children by faith, we shall be 'blessed with
faithful Abraham.' And
I beseech you to ask yourselves whether the course
of your life is
such as that, if at this moment God's great knife
were to come down
and cut it in two, you would be able to say, 'Well!
I have had
enough, and now contentedly I go.'
Again, it is possible at the end of life to feel
that it is
complete, because the days have accomplished for us
the highest
purpose of life. Scaffoldings are for buildings, and
the moments and
days and years of our earthly lives are scaffolding.
What are you
building inside the scaffolding, brother? What kind
of a structure
will be disclosed when the scaffolding is knocked
away? What is the
end for which days and years are given? That they
may give us what
eternity cannot take away--a character built upon
the love of God in
Christ, and moulded into His likeness. 'Man's chief
end is to
glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.' Has your
life helped you to
do that? If it has, though you be but a child, you
are full of
years; if it has not, though your hair be whitened
with the snows of
the nineties, you are yet incomplete and immature.
The great end of
life is to make us like Christ, and pleasing to
Christ. If life has
done that for us, we have got the best out of it,
and our life is
completed, whatever may be the number of the days.
Quality, not
quantity, is the thing that determines the
perfectness of a life.
And like as in northern lands, where there is only a
week or two
from the melting of the snow to the cutting of the
hay, the whole
harvest of a life may be gathered in a very little
space, and all be
done which is needed to make the life complete. Has
your life this
completeness? Can you be 'satisfied' with it,
because the river of
the flowing hours has borne down some grains of gold
amidst the mass
of mud, and, notwithstanding many sins and failures,
you have thus
far fulfilled the end of your being, that you are in
some measure
trusting and serving the Lord Jesus Christ?
Again, it is possible, at the end of life, to be
_willing_ to
go as satisfied.
Most men cling to life in grim desperation, like a
climber to a
cliff giving way, or a drowning man clutching at any
straw. How
beautiful the contrast of the placid, tranquil
acquiescence
expressed in that phrase of our text! No doubt there
will always be
the shrinking of the bodily nature from death. But
that may be
overcome. There is no passion so weak but in some
case it has 'mated
and mastered the fear of death,' and it is possible
for us all to
come to that temper in which we shall be ready for
either fortune,
to live and serve Him here, or to die and enjoy Him
yonder. Or, to
return to an earlier illustration, it is possible to
be like a man
sitting at table, who has had his meal, and is quite
contented to
stay on there, restful and cheerful, but is not
unwilling to put
back his chair, to get up and to go away, thanking
the Giver for
what he has received.
Ah! that is the way to face the end, dear brethren,
and how is it to
be done? Such a temper need not be the exclusive
possession of the
old. It may belong to us at all stages of life. How
is it won? By a
life of devout communion with God. The secret of it
lies in obeying
the commandment and realising the truth which
Abraham realised and
obeyed: 'I am the Almighty God, walk before Me, and
be thou
perfect.' 'Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and
thine exceeding
great reward.' That is to say, a simple communion
with God,
realising His presence and feeling that He is near,
will sweeten
disappointment, will draw from it its hidden
blessedness, will make
us victors over its pains and its woes. Such a faith
will make it
possible to look back and see only blessing; to look
forward and see
a great light of hope burning in the darkness. Such
a faith will
check weariness, avert satiety, promote
satisfaction, and will help
us to feel that life and the great hereafter are but
the outer and
inner mansions of the Father's house, and death the
short though
dark corridor between. So we shall be ready for life
or for death.
2. Now I must turn to consider more briefly the
glimpse of the
joyful society beyond, which is given us in that
other remarkable
expression of our text: 'He was gathered to his
people'
That phrase is only used in the earlier Old
Testament books, and
there only in reference to a few persons. It is used
of Abraham,
Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Aaron, and once
(Judges ii. 10) of
a whole generation. If you will weigh the words, I
think you will
see that there is in them a dim intimation of
something beyond this
present life.
'He was gathered to his people' is not the same
thing as 'He died,'
for, in the earlier part of the verse, we read,
'Abraham gave up the
ghost and died ... and was gathered to his people.'
It is not the
same thing as being buried. For we read in the
following verse: 'And
his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of
Machpelah, in
the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the Hittite,
which is before
Mamre.' It is then the equivalent neither of death
nor of burial. It
conveys dimly and veiledly that Abraham was buried,
and yet that was
not all that happened to him. He was buried, but
also 'he was
gathered to his people.' Why! his own 'people' were
buried in
Mesopotamia, and his grave was far away from theirs.
What is the
meaning of the expression? Who were the people he
was gathered to?
In death or in burial, 'the dust returns to the
earth as it was.'
What was it that was gathered to his people?
Dimly, vaguely, veiledly, but unmistakably, as it
seems to me, is
here expressed at least a premonition and feeling
after the thought
of an immortal self in Abraham that was not there in
what 'his sons
Isaac and Ishmael laid in the cave at Machpelah,'
but was somewhere
else and was for ever. That is the first thing
hinted at here--the
continuance of the personal being after death.
Is there anything more? I think there is. Now,
remember, Abraham's
whole life was shaped by that commandment, 'Get thee
out from thy
father's house, and from thy kindred, and from thy
country.' He
never dwelt with his kindred; all his days he was a
pilgrim and a
sojourner, a stranger in a strange land. And though
he was living in
the midst of a civilisation which possessed great
cities whose walls
reached to heaven, he pitched his tent beneath the
terebinth tree at
Mamre, and would have nothing to do with the order
of things around
him, but remained an exotic, a waif, an outcast in
the midst of
Canaan all his life. Why? Because he 'looked for the
city which hath
the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.'
And now he has
gone to it, he is gathered to his people. The life
of isolation is
over, the true social life is begun. He is no longer
separated from
those around him, or flung amidst those that are
uncongenial to him.
'He is gathered to his people'; he dwells with his
own tribe; he is
at home; he is in the city.
And so, brethren, life for every Christian man must
be lonely. After
all communion we dwell as upon islands dotted over a
great
archipelago, each upon his little rock, with the sea
dashing between
us; but the time comes when, if our hearts are set
upon that great
Lord, whose presence makes us one, there shall be no
more sea, and
all the isolated rocks shall be parts of a great
continent. Death
sets the solitary in families. We are here like
travellers plodding
lonely through the night and the storm, but soon to
cross the
threshold into the lighted hall, full of friends.
If we cultivate that sense of detachment from the
present, and of
having our true affinities in the unseen, if we
dwell here as
strangers because our citizenship is in heaven, then
death will not
drag us away from our associates, nor hunt us into a
lonely land,
but will bring us where closer bonds shall knit the
'sweet
societies' together, and the sheep shall couch close
by one another,
because all are gathered round the one shepherd.
Then many a broken
tie shall be rewoven, and the solitary wanderer meet
again the dear
ones whom he had 'loved long since, and lost
awhile.'
Further, the expressions suggest that in the future
men shall be
associated according to affinity and character. 'He
was gathered to
his people,' whom he was like and who were like him;
the people with
whom he had sympathy, the people whose lives were
shaped after the
fashion of his own.
Men will be sorted there. Gravitation will come into
play
undisturbed; and the pebbles will be ranged
according to their
weights on the great shore where the sea has cast
them up, as they
are upon Chesil beach, down there in the English
Channel, and many
another coast besides; all the big ones together and
sized off to
the smaller ones, regularly and steadily laid out.
Like draws to
like. Our spiritual affinities, our religious and
moral character,
will settle where we shall be, and who our
companions will be when
we get yonder. Some of us would not altogether like
to live with the
people that are like ourselves, and some of us would
not find the
result of this sorting to be very delightful. Men in
the Dantesque
circles were only made more miserable because all
around them were
of the same sort as, and some of them worse than,
themselves. And an
ordered hell, with no company for the liar but
liars, and none for
the thief but thieves, and none for impure men but
the impure, and
none for the godless but the godless, would be a
hell indeed.
'He was gathered to his people,' and you and I will
be gathered
likewise. What is the conclusion of the whole
matter? Let us follow
with our thoughts, and in our lives, those who have
gone into the
light, and cultivate in heart and character those
graces and
excellences which are congruous with the inheritance
of the saints
in light. Above all, let us give our hearts to
Christ, by simple
faith in Him, to be shaped and sanctified by Him.
Then our country
will be where He is, and our people will be the
people in whom His
love abides, and the tribe to which we belong will
be the tribe of
which He is Chieftain. So when our turn comes, we
may rise
thankfully from the table in the wilderness, which
He has spread for
us, having eaten as much as we desired, and quietly
follow the dark-
robed messenger whom His love sends to bring us to
the happy
multitudes that throng the streets of the city.
There we shall find
our true home, our kindred, our King. 'So shall _we_
ever be
with the Lord.'
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