en given to the earnest soul
and the perfect man.[112] It is to Abraham when he has achieved his
supreme victory of faith that God vouchsafes to make oath that He will
fulfil His promise. This gives us the clue to the purport of the words.
Up to this final test of Abraham's faith God's promise is, so to speak,
conditional. It will be fulfilled if Abraham will believe. Now at length
the promise is given unconditionally. Abraham has gone triumphantly
through every trial. He has not withheld his son. So great is his faith
that God can now confirm His promise with a positive declaration, which
transforms a promise made to a man into a prediction that binds Himself.
Or shall we retract the expression that the promise is now given
unconditionally? The condition is transferred from the faith of Abraham
to the faithfulness of God. In this lies the oath. God pledges His own
existence on the fulfilment of His promise. He says no longer, "If thou
canst believe," but "As true as I live." Speaking humanly, unbelief on
the part of Abraham would have made the promise of God of none effect;
for it was conditional on Abraham's faith. But the oath has raised the
promise above being affected by the unbelief of some, and itself
includes the faith of some. St. Paul can now ask, "What if some did not
believe? Shall their unbelief make the _faith_" (no longer merely the
promise) "of God without effect?"[113] Our author also can speak of two
immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie. The one is
the promise, the immutability of which means only that God, on His part,
does not retract, but casts on men the blame if the promise is not
fulfilled. The other is the oath, in which God takes the matter into His
own hands and puts the certainty of His fulfilling the promise to rest
on His own eternal being.

The Apostle is careful to point out the wide and essential difference
between the oath of God and the oaths of men. "For men swear by the
greater;" that is, they call upon God, as the Almighty, to destroy them
if they are uttering what is false. They imprecate a curse upon
themselves. If they have sworn to a falsehood, and if the imprecation
falls on their heads, they perish, and the matter ends. And yet an oath
decides all disputes between man and man.[114] Though they appeal to an
Omnipotence that often turns a deaf ear to their prayer against
themselves; though, if the Almighty were to fling retribution on them,
the wheels of n