Glorification

By Nathaniel Dandridge Pendleton
1941

Part I
The Ancient Truth

I. THE WELLS OF ABRAHAM

And Isaac returned and digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them up, after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names which his father had called them. (Genesis 26: 18.)

The reason for the Lord's Coming into the world is found in the need of man. This need first arose with the beginning of the decline of the race. When the fall was complete, His Advent became imperative. Yet its actuality was delayed for many ages by the power of prophecy. The point involved in the necessity of His Coming was that the fall of man was so complete that restoration could be effected only by the personal presence of God in the world. This was true of the fall in its utmost finality, that is, after the power of prophecy ceased to be effective, which occurred at the end of the Jewish Church.

The consummation of the Most Ancient Church marked the first period. There followed a series of temporary restorals, brought about, in the first instance, by a radical alteration of state, both mental and physical. These restorals were signalized by a succession of Churches, whose spiritual power was derived from successive promises of the Lord's birth into the world. These Ancient Churches were therefore Messianic, in that they worshipped the Lord Who was yet to come. Prophecy was their reliance, and therein they found the power of salvation. Yet with each Church of this character, there was a lowering of the capacity to respond to this spiritual influence, until finally there was no response.

Then it was that a Man was born into the world, the Seed of woman, Who by His presence brought the Divine face to face with the world of men. This resulted in a fundamental change in the relation of God to man. Externally, it was more powerful.

The added power was needed because the old relation had failed. The time had come when prophecy could no longer serve in place of actuality - the actuality of personal presence and contact, even as of man with man. Prophecy was not actuality; it was a representation thereof. This characterized all the pre-Christian Churches. Representation was given by angelic intermediation. Even the Most Ancient Church belongs to the series of representative Churches. Its representations were, however, of the highest order, almost purely spiritual, and they were celestially perceived and not yet turned into external rituals. These representations, while of heavenly derivation, yet fell into natural forms, but into those that were purely natural, not artificial. Hence the spiritual regeneration of the men of that first Church was figured in the bold outline of the creation of the world, and this in a series representing the sevenfold ascent in the regeneration of man. It is said of this Church that its members spoke with God, face to face; but this was a converse with the angelic God Jehovah, by angelic mediation or representation. It was not face to face with the God-Man in the world of nature. Their eyes were opened when they saw Him. Hence this first and inmost of the Ancient series of Churches must be classed as a representative Church. It was not so in a ritualistic sense; but ritual had its origin thence.

The tendency existed to make their representations ever more formal. This tendency increased with the decline. Their high perceptions were collected and formulated, not in rational statements, but in symbolic expressions. These were inherited by succeeding Churches, and by them diversified and added to, the complex of which, at length, found final and authentic concentration in the Jewish law and ceremonials. Yet at the new thing, condemned by the upright Ancients and altogether unknown to the men of the Most Ancient Church, namely, the sacrificial altar. This altar, in its historic significance, stood for the appeasement of God through the shedding of blood.

While the Coming of the Lord into the world was the only means whereby the decline of man could be reversed; yet the pre-Christian promises of His Advent, in the service of delay, fulfilled the history of the racial development and gave to the world the sacred Scripture. That Scripture embodied the promises of His Advent and made possible His Coming in the fullness of time; it enabled Him to comprise in the Human assumed the effects of all the past ages. Each of these ages was a definite step in this preparation, and all of them, in the wisdom of Providence, were called for. When at the last He came, it was as the outcome of human history. In Him the whole of it was embodied. In Him life's full promise was fulfilled, and in Him the life, as of the race, was glorified.

The past ages, in their varied and rich development, produced a vast accumulation of ancient truth like unto angelic wisdom in its nature, all of which was His inheritance, even as it was embodied in the Jewish ritual. This ancient truth, once open and free, i.e. transparent, was now closed in a code and a ritual, in part quite alien to that truth. This truth, while gradually closed, was yet inclosed in forms of forgotten meaning, of a lost spiritual significance, which called for a reopening in order that a living contact might be established between the series of the ages. Thus a binding of those ages together might be effected livingly in Himself, whereby alone could the ground be given for the full effect of His glorification. This body of ancient truth, bound up In words and in rituals of lower quality, became meaningless; but In Him it comes forth in light. Thus He became the Divine Isaac who opened the ancient wells of Abraham which the Philistines had closed.

He was a man born of woman, and the things that went forward in Him have their likeness in others of the race of men. Human values come out of the past and give color and richness to life. A thing in its beginning is as an untold story. It must unfold until the seed of its beginning is woven into a full form of life. Then the beginning and the end meet and join; then the beginning flows into the end, and the end reacts in fullness to its beginning. When the end is reached the past becomes a storehouse of gathered riches. The wisdom of the ages lies therein. Ancient truth is garnered and a feast proclaimed.

The Lord, after His resurrection, expounded to two of His disciples, "in all the Scripture the things concerning Himself"; and all things of the Scripture were written concerning Him. That writing, the focus of the truth of the Ancient Churches, was formed, of Providence, to be all inclusive, and so ordered that a full representation of the Divine mysteries was presented to the eyes of the angels. Yet it was expressed in words which recounted the outward religious history of the race, from the time when there was inmost communion with God and a perfect perception of His will, down to the period of blind representations - so blind, indeed, that while the Divine mysteries were signified to the angels, they were concealed from the apperception of men.

This concealment easily came to pass through racial forgetfulness. The rituals concerned, without any change, concealed that which, in origin, they manifestly revealed. Yet rituals themselves underwent change, for it was needful that all that had gone before in the history of the race should be recorded and represented in them; that is, it was provided that not only the purely Divine mysteries and the high perceptions of the Most Ancient Church should be contained in them, but all of the strange history of man, from his first celestial state and through his entire decline and fall, down to the revitalizing point of the Lord's Advent and redemption.

This ancient truth, like unto the wisdom of the angels, concealed in many and sometimes trivial rites and codes of traditional law, was, at the Coming of the Lord, opened by Him. This He could do because it was embodied in Him as His racial inheritance, derived from the song and story, the law and prophecy of His people.

Life's treasures ever come out of the past, and the deeper the past, the greater the treasure. An especial sanctity pertains to the early store of life's impressions, and also a high degree of power. Childhood memories are the man's holy of holies. The worst fate that can befall arises from the destruction of man's first born affections. If they cannot be recalled to later service the loss is a grievous one; but if they can, the mind, in certain states of recollection, is flooded with a peculiar tenderness and a vivifying influence. This stream of life the Lord released in Himself, from the sacred memories of His childhood-memories of the rites and symbols of the Church into which He was born. The man whose past is cut off is denied this vital humanizing influence upon which depends his living contact with the days of his innocence, - days given to every man born into the world even though he be born in sin and surrounded by iniquity. These days the Lord provides despite all evil. They represent and indeed embody man's hope of eternal life. They are days of peace and delight, of tender affections, of gratitude and happiness with little - days before life is touched by the poison of self consciousness, and before the greed of self has become calculating.

It is in these early days that the wells of Abraham are dug, which later are closed by the Philistines - by the pessimism of manhood; and yet these wells of water may and must be reopened. It was so done by the Lord, for Himself and the whole human race, when He opened the wisdom of the Ancients concealed in His childhood learning from the Scriptures. He passed through and recalled the states of His childhood, and in so doing, repeated in Himself the life history of the race from its beginning, and so glorified it in Himself. With us His birth has become the most sacred of all memories. Around the story of the Nativity and its repeated memorials are gathered affections which, if not impugned by later destructive influences, go with us through life and become in us sources from which inmost spiritual blessings spring. These memories bring to us something that is immortal from our age of innocence. They are our wells of Abraham, containing deep and sweet water which flood the parched areas of our life.

The saying is true that "truth lies in a well," so deeply is it hidden. The reference is to that tender truth of childhood which springs up into everlasting life, the ultimate source of which lies hidden in the past, whether of the race or of the individual - whether in the rituals of ancient religions or in the symbolism of childhood. No truth is so sacred or more in touch with the Divine - none so yielding of highest loves in later life. But this only in case the ancient rites and the childhood symbols are touched and awakened by the divining power of the rational mind. Then only does that ancient truth reveal its mysteries and childhood symbols yield their inmost content of love.

"Isaac returned and digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them up, after the death of Abraham: and he called them after the names which his father had called them." This also is revealing - that he called them after the names which his father had called them. The rational mind must interpret the representatives of the Ancients and the dreams of childhood, but not in the hard light of natural reason. This would be to destroy them. The spiritual rational interprets them perceptively, sympathetically, and with reverence, maintaining their integrity and their sanctity. Only so will they yield their content of ancient truth and their wisdom of life's beginnings; only so will they become wells of living water in man, as they were in the Lord when He expounded to His disciples "in all the Scripture the things concerning Himself." For the Scripture, as a record of history, was written concerning Him. He was its outcome, and it was bound up in HIM. He repeated its course in Himself from its beginning, and fulfilled it, and in the end by His glorification He transcended it. And yet it remained, even as the bush in the wilderness which burned with fire and was not consumed. The letter of Scripture remains in full sanctity after its internal sense is revealed. The vessels of ancient wisdom are not destroyed when their spiritual meaning is made manifest. Infancy and childhood retain their sacred symbols after the rational mind has extracted their spiritual content. Isaac reopened the wells of Abraham and be called them after the names which his father had called them.