The Value of Sacred Biography-Faith the Distinguishing Quality of the Lives Recorded in the Eleventh Chapter of Hebrews-The Influence which a contemplation of their Character is fitted to exert-The Stately Procession-AbelEnoch-Noah-Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-Joseph-Moses.

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T is an old saying, and one of very wide application, that "Example is better than precept." It is more becoming in the giver, and more valuable to the receiver. How much less powerfully are we impressed by any verbal or written illustration and enforcement of a principle, than we are when we see that principle embodied in a life. We can better do a difficult work from seeing it done by another, than from any verbal direction, however explicit. We are less repelled by the most forcible denunciation of error, less attracted by the most eloquent enforcement of the truth, than we are by a practical exhibition of their pernicious or beneficial results. Vice and virtue manifested in character and in connection with their consequences are seen in their true light. The most illiterate, looking upon the living embodiment, may learn what to practise and what to avoid. They are fools who wait to learn the truth from their own dear-bought

experience, when so many lessons of wisdom may be gathered from the faithfully-recorded experience of other men.

are.

Nor is it a disadvantage that the lives which we contemplate are somewhat removed from our own time; character being not dependent on, and its results not determined by, local or temporary peculiarities, the distant on-looker is in the most favourable position for being rightly impressed by it. Our contemporaries cannot always be seen as they Their character does not yet appear in its true light. The consequences of their conduct are as yet undeveloped and unknown; hence faithful biography may be more important even than observation as a guide to life. Having the whole of a man's course spread, like a chart, before us, and having had sufficient time to develop and discover the results in which it issued, we are at no loss to discover the various lessons with which such is fraught.

For such biography, we are almost exclusively indebted to God's Word. It is not often that a man can worthily and candidly portray the life of his fellows. Prejudices, favourable or unfavourable, bias his judgment, and colour the portrait. Partiality paints in too glowing tints; dislike in too sombre shades. In the one case undue prominence is given to excellences, while faults and defects are carefully concealed; and, in the other, the faults occupy nearly all the canvas, while virtues are either suppressed, or misconstrued, until they bear the semblance of vice.

There

No such faults mar the biographies of Scripture. the portrait is the exact counterpart of the man. Every feature is true to the life, every separate touch at once adds to the effect, and increases the accuracy of the likeness. Every line is drawn correctly. There is no suppression, and no exaggeration. Every feature is there, and they are all in due proportion. The lights and shades are balanced and

Scripture Biography.

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blended as truth requires; friendship does not flatter, nor does enmity detract. Thus we can study it, not only with safety, but with advantage. The wrong is made to appear so hideous, and the right so attractive, that the inclination harmonises with the moral sense, and our likings and dislikings are excited as conscience approves or condemns. And though some of the characters which appear on the page of Scripture disappear from view almost immediately, and a sentence or two contains all that we know of them, yet these short sketches, so far as they go, vie in truthfulness with the most finished portraits. They supply, indeed, fewer materials, yet will they equally well repay our most careful study.

The men whose names are brought before us in the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, are among the noblest whose lives the Scripture records. They are singled out by the apostle as the heroes of the early Church, as patterns to succeeding generations; and especially are they presented to our notice because of the one quality from which their greatness springs-the faith which is at once the source and the foundation of all true moral excellence. Nowhere could we find a list of names more worthy, or better fitted to awaken in us desires and aspirations after the higher and nobler life which they exhibit, and to which the study of their history enables us to attain.

The character of our times-so materialistic in their tendencies, so eager in the pursuit of the visible, so insensible to the unseen-renders such a study peculiarly appropriate and desirable; whilst there is everything to foster the spiritual life under all conditions, and in all the stages of its progress, in contact with men to whom the visible was as nothing, and the invisible was all, who made sacrifices and braved dangers, and with patient martyr's spirit suffered loss, and

scorn, and pain, and wrought wonders, and rose to greatness, because they had faith in the Divine promises, and endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

The passage in which the apostle has enrolled the names of these spiritual heroes, forms part of an exhortation to perseverance in the Christian course. Having, in the previous chapter, finished his argument for the superiority of the Christian to the Mosaic dispensation, he, as the result and summing up of the whole, addresses to his readers the following appeal:-"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having an high priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering (for he is faithful that promised); and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching."*

In support of this exhortation he urges various motives, one of which is the historical demonstration of the power of faith which extends throughout the eleventh chapter. They are brought forward as witnesses to testify to the fact that faith enabled them to endure trials, and perform difficult, heroic, and acceptable works. They are illustrious examples of what faith can achieve. They pass before us in stately and solemn procession, "a glorious company," "a goodly fellowship," "a noble army." And, although they occupy but little space in the apostle's story, yet are the deeds in

Heb. x. 19-25.

The Antediluvians.

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which their faith appears so graphically described that they seem to live before us again, until towards the close they press upon his mind so thickly, and threaten to occupy so much of his page, that, without attempting any description of their individual acts, he is constrained to crowd their names and performances together in the group with which the grand procession terminates. We are carried back to

the olden time, and we look on while the various actors perform their parts. We are made to feel the essential oneness of the spiritual life throughout all ages. We are taught that we, too, may possess the spirit, and imitate the prowess of those "who through faith wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens."

Foremost in the illustrious group comes Abel, in contrast with his brother Cain, both in the sacrifice he offered and the reward he received-the protomartyr-the first man to whose acceptable worship the Bible bears testimony, a pattern to us though so far removed; the dead speaking to us through the intervening ages in favour of the faith without which no religious service is acceptable to God. Next to him comes Enoch, his brief biography testifying to his blameless life, to his glorious translation from earth to heaven, the former the result, the latter the reward, of the faith for which "before his translation he had received this testimony that he pleased God." Noah follows, exercising that faith in the Divine warning which led him to toil for so many years at his difficult but sublime work, by which he condemned the world while he saved his family, and became the second father of the race. Abraham appears next in all his greatness as the "Father of the Faithful," and the