command to Abram was no mere arbitrary test of obedience. God could
not have done what He meant with him, unless He had got him by
himself. So Isaiah (li. 2) put his finger on the essential when he
says, 'I called him alone.' God's communications are made to
solitary souls, and His voice to us always summons us to forsake
friends and companions, and to go apart with God. No man gets speech
of God in a crowd. If you desired to fill a person with electricity,
you used to put him on a stool with glass legs, to keep him from
earthly contact. If the quickening impulse from the great magnet is
to charge the soul, that soul must be isolated. 'He that loveth
father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.'

The vagueness of the command is significant. Abram did not know
'whither he went.' He is not told that Canaan is the land, till he
has reached Canaan. A true obedience is content to have orders
enough for present duty. Ships are sometimes sent out with sealed
instructions, to be opened when they reach latitude and longitude
so-and-so. That is how we are all sent out. Our knowledge goes no
farther ahead than is needful to guide our next step. If we 'go out'
as He bids us, He will show us what to do next.

'I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.'

Observe the promise. We may notice that it needed a soul raised
above the merely temporal to care much for such promises. They would
have been but thin diet for earthly appetites. 'A great nation'; a
divine blessing; to be a source of blessing to the whole world, and
a touchstone by their conduct to which men would be blessed or
cursed;--what was there in these to fascinate a man, unless he had