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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known
+Characters, by George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter
+F. Adeney, J. Morgan Gibbon, H. Elvet Lewis, D. Rowlands, and W. J.
+Townsend
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters
+
+Author: George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
+Adeney, J. Morgan Gibbon, H. Elvet Lewis, D. Rowlands, and W. J. Townsend
+
+Release Date: October 25, 2004  [eBook #13860]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN OF THE BIBLE; SOME
+LESSER-KNOWN CHARACTERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+MEN OF THE BIBLE; SOME LESSER-KNOWN CHARACTERS
+
+by
+
+  GEORGE MILLIGAN, D.D.
+  J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+  ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+  PRINCIPAL WALTER F. ADENEY, D.D.
+  J. MORGAN GIBBON.
+  H. ELVET LEWIS.
+  PRINCIPAL D. ROWLANDS, B.A.
+  W. J. TOWNSEND, D.D.
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  1. ENOCH
+     By W. J. TOWNSEND, D.D.
+
+  2. ELDAD AND MEDAD
+     By ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+  3. BARZILLAI
+     By GEORGE MILLIGAN, D.D.
+
+  4. ADONIJAH
+     By ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+  5. HIRAM
+     By W. J. TOWNSEND, D.D.
+
+  6. JEROBOAM
+     By ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+  7. ASA
+     By ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+  8. AHAZIAH
+     By J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+  9. GEHAZI
+     By J. MORGAN GIBBON
+
+ 10. HAZAEL
+     By J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+ 11. MANASSEH
+     By J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+ 12. AMAZIAH
+     By J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+ 13. JABEZ
+     By J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+ 14. SIMEON
+     By H. ELVET LEWIS
+
+ 15. PONTIUS PILATE
+     By Principal WALTER F. ADENEY, D.D.
+
+ 16. BARABBAS
+     By J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+ 17. JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA
+     By ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+ 18. PHILIP, THE EVANGELIST
+     By GEORGE MILLIGAN, D.D.
+
+ 19. ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA
+     By GEORGE MILLIGAN, D.D.
+
+ 20. DEMAS
+     By Principal D. ROWLANDS, B.A.
+
+
+
+
+ENOCH, THE DEATHLESS
+
+BY REV. W. J. TOWNSEND, D.D.
+
+
+Enoch was the bright particular star of the patriarchal epoch.  His
+record is short, but eloquent.  It is crowded into a few words, but
+every word, when placed under examination, expands indefinitely.  Every
+virtue may be read into them; every eulogium possible to a human
+character shines from them.  He was a devout man, a fearless preacher
+of righteousness, an intimate friend of God, and the only man of his
+dispensation who did not see death.  He sheds a lustre on the
+antediluvian age, and he shines still as an example to all generations
+of steady and lofty piety.
+
+It is difficult to realise the exact environment of the early
+patriarchs.  Human society was then in its making.  There were giants
+in those days, both physically and intellectually.  They lived long,
+and unfolded a vigorous manhood, by which civilisation was developed in
+every direction.  Some of them, also, were tenderly responsive to
+supernatural influences, and thus rose to a spiritual stature which
+enables them to bulk largely in sacred history.
+
+The guiding lines of Enoch's biography are clear though few.  "_He
+walked with God_"; "_he pleased God_"; "_he was translated that he
+should not see death_." These are the pregnant remnants of his history,
+from which we may construct a character and career of striking eminence.
+
+
+I.
+
+"He walked with God."
+
+
+Therefore he knew God.  The articles of his creed were not many, but he
+was fixed on this foundation-truth of all religion.  Further than this,
+he knew God as taking a living interest in His creatures, as one who
+could be approached by them in prayer and communion, and who was
+sympathetically responsive to their needs.  He somehow knew God, also,
+as being righteous and holy, and he must have had a rudimentary idea of
+the Christ, as it unfolded itself in the great promise of a deliverer
+from evil made to our first parents in Paradise.  However scanty in
+number were the articles of his creed, they were not scanty in results.
+They produced a great life and a great name.  The results were that "he
+walked with God."  Walking is the habitual exercise of a man's life.  A
+man runs sometimes.  Under great strain, or the demand of special
+circumstances, he runs, but finds that exhaustion follows; or if he
+runs too frequently, total collapse is the inevitable consequence.  Two
+of the most eminent ministers of our times recently died owing to
+overstrain and over-exertion.  But we have some now living who have
+done signal service for the Church during a ministry of fifty years,
+and who are still hale and having a green old age.  To walk at a steady
+pace, fulfilling life's responsibilities and the demands of duty, is to
+fulfil the will of God and serve our generation.  This rule refers to
+man's religious and spiritual life.  To walk onward and upward in the
+highest things is to grow in excellence and grace.
+
+As man is a social being, he must walk with someone in life.  Perpetual
+solitude dries up the springs of existence, and true manhood is
+shrivelled up.  Solitary confinement is the saddest and cruellest
+punishment that can be inflicted by man on his fellow.  The prisoner in
+the Bastille, when his reason reeled through prolonged silence and
+loneliness, was saved from mental collapse by the friendship of a rat;
+and a similar story is told of an English prisoner, who, under similar
+circumstances, found solace in the company of a pigeon.  Man craves for
+fellowship and friendship.  Happiest is he who has the noblest
+companion.  God alone fills the deep craving of the heart for a
+congenial and helpful presence, and Enoch "_walked with God_."  The
+words imply regular, unbroken, well-sustained communion with Him.  With
+a sublime and lofty aspiration Enoch had risen above shadows, idols,
+and pretences, and with simple, manly faith had grasped the unseen
+substance and reality, the personal God, the Father of us all.
+
+This "_walking with God_" may be fairly inferred to have been carried
+out in all the affairs of life.  The statement has no exceptions in it.
+Other saints have their failings and sins recorded with an admirable
+candour, but we are left to conclude that this was a saint of pure life
+and character.  In tending his flocks and herds, in carrying out the
+barter of the markets in the early world, in commanding his children
+and ordering his household, in preaching righteousness and foretelling
+judgment, the great law of his life was here, "_walking with God_."
+
+When such unbroken intercourse with God is maintained, all duty and
+labour have a new meaning, and are suffused with a new glory.  Every
+occupation or profession becomes a transparency by which divine truth
+and purity are translated to the world.  No man is then a menial or a
+slave, but a free man, living in love and by love.  He becomes an
+evangel, who, by words of holiness and deeds of sacrifice, adorns the
+doctrine of God and Christ in all things.  Nothing is common, nothing
+is unclean; all life is sanctified and beautiful; the man is a temple
+consecrated by and for God alone.
+
+In such habitual fellowship there is constant growth in familiarity and
+intimacy.  God becomes known more and more in the tenderness and
+considerateness of His love.  He unfolds Himself to the soul of His
+friend in such love-compelling charm as that the believer is
+constrained to ever-growing reverence, gratitude, and devotion.  The
+man is transfigured.  His thoughts, motives, desires, actions, are all
+inspired by the Divine Mind and framed after a Divine Pattern.  The
+limitations of human nature are relaxed, and the man expands into
+newness of life; he soars into heavenly places; he is charged with holy
+influences.  "The trivial round, the common task," become _media_ to
+him, by which he can interpret and make known to all, the beauty of
+holiness as revealed to him by communion with God.
+
+It is a significant fact in the history of Enoch, that his piety shone
+brightest amid family surroundings.  He was not an ascetic or an
+anchorite.  He was a husband and a father.  It is said that he "_walked
+with God after the birth of Methusaleh_."  With what measure of fervour
+he served God before the coming of a child into his house, we are not
+told; but we are told that after that event "_he walked with God three
+hundred years_."  Possibly he had not manifested special piety before.
+His children gathered round him, for we are told that after Methusaleh,
+he had "sons and daughters."  But the blessing of children in no wise
+slackened his course of piety.  Not infrequently, family cares and
+business responsibilities draw men's thoughts and desires from God; and
+many who in youth were ardent in religious exercises and unfailing in
+spiritual duties, in middle life and old age are found to be merely
+formalists in worship, and paralysed for useful work in the Church.
+The fine gold has become dim, through the fretting cares or the surging
+excitements of life.  It is awful when such is the case, when the
+promise and interest of youth settles into impotence and rigidity, when
+the type which once had the die of thought fresh upon it is worn flat
+by overuse, or when the shell, once the home of life and bright with
+ocean's spray, lies with faded colour and emptied hollowness.  This is
+melancholy, indeed, and many such wrecks of religious life are around
+us.  But with Enoch, the increase of life's cares brought an access of
+fresh devotion.  New gifts of Providence roused new feelings of
+gratitude, and he grappled himself the closer in attachment to the
+Giver of enlarged blessing.  This is as it should be.  Every gift of
+God should be a call to renewed praise and prayer, to a more perfect
+and joyous service.
+
+This record of Enoch's piety teaches that the highest spirituality of
+nature is not found in avoiding the duties and cares of life, or in
+seeking a cloistered and solitary existence.  The piety of monkery is
+not the crown of living.  It is neither an experience of healthy joy
+nor of abundant fruitfulness.  The healthful influences of Christianity
+are immeasurably more beautiful when manifested in the joys of family
+and home life, or in the discharge of honest trade and commerce, than
+in the introspective gloom of the recluse, or the ceremonial round of
+the ascetic.  It is remarkable that the record states that Enoch's walk
+with God lasted "_three hundred years after the birth of Methusaleh_."
+There was no break in his spiritual course; it was continuous growth
+and progress until the light of eventide deepened into the glory of
+heaven.
+
+
+II.
+
+"He pleased God."
+
+
+This is to win the highest prize of life.  Not only because God is
+highest and noblest of beings, but also because His pleasure
+presupposes great moral and spiritual qualities, and unfolds itself in
+blessings of untold preciousness both in this life and that which is to
+come.  The pleasure of the Lord is graduated to the intrinsic beauty or
+value possessed by the object which draws it out.  It was manifested
+when the great creation stood in finished order before Him, and He
+pronounced it "only good."  But of a higher kind is that pleasure said
+to be taken by Him in His only-begotten Son, in His people, and in His
+Church.  Over these He rejoices with singing, as He rests in His love.
+Of such pleasure Enoch was the recipient, and it was bestowed upon him
+in a most signal and unique manner.  Two especial qualities are
+indispensable to those with whom God is pleased.  One is
+faith--"_Without faith it is impossible to please God_" (Heb. xi. 6).
+The other is uprightness--"_I know also, my God, that Thou hast
+pleasure in uprightness_" (1 Chron. xxix. 17).  The former grace is the
+superlative and distinguishing feature of the people of God.  It is
+indeed the foundation quality on which all others rest, and from which
+they spring.  It is the broad separating act which marks the difference
+between the saint and the sinner.  Without it man is in opposition to
+God.  The Divine displeasure rests upon him, because absence of faith
+means want of confidence and want of sympathy.  The unbeliever
+distrusts God, and has no fellow-feeling with Him or His ways.
+
+There is no more offensive feeling that can be shown by one being
+towards another than distrust.  It irritates our sensibility; it arrays
+in opposition all the resentment of our nature.  It is the parent of
+gloom, dissatisfaction, pessimism, and rebellion.  It writes discontent
+on the brow, and bitterness on the heart.  It is the fruitful parent of
+all ill in human nature.  But faith pleases God.  It draws the human
+and Divine into loving association.  It leads the human to look to the
+Divine for counsel, to lean upon Him for help, to refer all things to
+His decision, to wait on Him for guidance in every step and enterprise
+in life.  The faith of the patriarchs seems to have been characterised
+by entire simplicity and childlikeness.  As manifested by Enoch, Noah,
+and Abraham, all of whom had the pleasure of the Lord resting on them
+in a pre-eminent degree, there was no stumbling or hesitancy.  Some of
+them had their faith severely tried, but it came forth from the test
+victorious, as "gold tried in the fire."  Therefore, if the command of
+God was hard, faith led to obedience; if the mystery of life was deep,
+faith drew them close to the Father; if the sense of sin and guilt was
+strong, faith never failed, but led them to look for the promised
+Redeemer, and they rejoiced to see His day and were glad.
+
+Faith is said to be difficult to exercise in this day of bustle,
+excitement, and pressure.  The differences between this day and Enoch's
+day are merely accidental and not essential.  There were the same
+inducements and temptations to evil then as now.  There were scoffers
+and cavillers then as now.  The doubting spirit in our first parents
+and in Cain was felt in all; but there was also the strong and manly
+faith which resisted the sin of doubt, which looked from the seen to
+the unseen, from the temporal to the eternal, from sin and folly to
+God, and which established itself firmly on His promise of unchangeable
+love.  Therefore Enoch "pleased God."  Faith presupposes reverence,
+love, obedience, and man never pays a higher tribute to another than to
+trust him implicitly and for all in all.  Such faith God accepts and
+delights in.  Such faith builds a noble character and a lofty life.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+"He was translated that he should not see death."
+
+
+That was the crowning evidence and token of the Divine pleasure.  Death
+is the wages of sin, the harbinger of retribution, the seal of man's
+humiliation and defeat.  The fear of death is a bondage under which the
+race of man lies, save only where Christian faith and hope alleviate
+the terror and inspire a superhuman courage before which all fear is
+banished.  The extraordinary nature of Enoch's piety could not be
+demonstrated by any fact so imperative as this, "_He was translated_."
+
+There are three complete men in heaven.  Man is threefold in his
+nature.  He is body, soul, and spirit.  He is not complete without his
+bodily organisation.  The work of faith is not perfect, nor is the work
+of sin undone until at the Resurrection trump man shall stand complete
+in his threefold being.  But of that completeness there are three
+specimens in heaven; Enoch from the patriarchal epoch; Elijah from the
+Jewish dispensation; and Christ from the Christian.  The translation of
+Elijah was a marvellously dramatic episode.  It was witnessed by Elisha
+and the sons of the prophets--and a heavenly equipage, lambent with
+supernal glow, carried him in triumph out of sight.  But as to Enoch
+there was no such scenic display.  "_He was not found, for God took
+him_."  It was a quiet but beautifully fitting end.  Moonlight rising
+into sunlight, the sweet calm light of a starlit sky becoming flushed
+with the auroral tints of a brilliant morning.
+
+Translation means promotion, and also expansion.
+
+It is _promotion_ in honour, in office, in privilege.  The bishop is
+translated from Rochester to Winchester and thence to Canterbury,
+because he has pleased his party and his sovereign.  It is a sign that
+he has won promotion by devoted service.  Christ says to his follower,
+"_Occupy till I come_"; and after a due period of labour well
+discharged, he says, "_Come up higher_."  The rule of the Divine
+Kingdom is, "_faithful in that which is least_," then, "_ruler over
+that which is much_."  Translation to Enoch meant the elevation to
+higher duties and enjoyments without the wearing agonies of disease,
+the sharpness of death, or the darkness of the grave.
+
+It meant also _expansion_.  In the passing from a lower to a higher
+condition, we cannot now realise the quick change which would pass over
+the material framework of the patriarch, but that it would be
+etherialised so as to be "_a heavenly body_" marvellously endowed with
+new powers of sense, of insight and locomotion, fit to be the
+instrument of a soul fully redeemed from the consequences of sin, we
+cannot doubt; and for thousands of generations has that soul sunned
+itself in the brightest fellowships and employments of the highest
+heaven.
+
+
+
+
+ELDAD AND MEDAD
+
+BY REV. ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+
+NUMBERS xi. 24-30.
+
+
+Nothing is known of these two men beyond the incident recorded in the
+Book of Numbers; but this is so remarkable and significant, that it
+well repays careful study.
+
+The Israelites had been once more displaying suspicion and ingratitude.
+Turning with loathing from the manna, they whimpered, like spoilt
+children, for the fish and flesh they had enjoyed in Egypt, and
+murmured against God and against Moses.  The patience of their leader,
+under this new provocation, completely broke down, so that he went so
+far as to accuse God Himself of being a hard taskmaster, who had laid
+too much upon him.  With infinite forbearance, allowance was made for
+the manner in which Divine counsel and help had been asked for, and the
+promise was graciously fulfilled, "_Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and
+He shall sustain thee.  He will never suffer the righteous to be
+moved_."  God dealt with his servant as a father at his best will deal
+with his child who runs to him, hurt and bruised, in a passion of
+tears.  Instead of beginning with an angry rebuke, help and relief are
+first given, and then in a few calm words the needed counsel is
+proffered.  It was in a spirit of patient love that God appointed
+elders from among the people to help his over-wrought servant and share
+his heavy burden.
+
+Moses was, no doubt, justified in saying, "_I am not able to bear all
+this people alone, because it is too heavy for me_."  Indeed it was
+well for him, as it is for us all, to feel the need there is for human
+sympathy and Divine aid.  Self-contained, self-reliant men are not the
+highest type of humanity, and they are sometimes for their own good
+visited by anxieties and responsibilities which compel them to cry,
+"_Lord help me_."  Thus was it with Moses.  Indeed, our Lord Himself
+shared that experience, when for our sakes He became man.  He chose
+comrades who were a blessing to Himself, although He was a far greater
+blessing to them.  He took them with Him when he went forth to confront
+the crises of His life--on the Mount of Transfiguration, and in the
+Garden of Gethsemane, where His sorrow was intensified by their failure
+to watch with Him.  He had three specially intimate friends.  He called
+twelve to be apostles, and sent forth seventy as missioners--an
+arrangement in which we see the New Testament counterpart of the
+choosing of these seventy-two elders, to rule and judge the Israelites,
+and thus share the responsibility of Moses.
+
+The account given us of their appointment is singularly interesting.
+Six men out of each of the twelve tribes were summoned to the
+Tabernacle, solemnly set apart and filled with the Spirit--but two of
+the men--Eldad and Medad--were absent "_They were of them written to_"
+is the exact phrase--and the fact that they received a written summons
+denotes a higher and more general culture among that ancient people
+than is generally imagined to have existed.  Yet it is what might be
+reasonably expected, for they had come out of Egypt, the most civilised
+power then in the world, a country where the usual writing materials
+were exclusively made.  Though the Israelites had been only slaves
+there, they would doubtless be familiar with the art of writing, for
+the men of that race have never yet lagged behind any people among whom
+they have lived.
+
+Seventy of the men thus summoned came together promptly, and were
+ranged in a semicircle before the Tabernacle.  Then, in the sight of
+all the people, the cloud descended, wrapped them all in impenetrable
+mist, as a sign that the chosen men were being mysteriously baptised
+with the Spirit, and when again they emerged they began to prophesy.
+It was the ancient counterpart of the day of Pentecost, when the
+disciples met, and the Spirit came upon them as a mighty, rushing wind,
+and they began to speak with other tongues, as men chosen and inspired
+by God.
+
+In the 25th verse of the eleventh chapter of Numbers, it is said that
+"_the Lord took of the spirit that was upon Moses, and gave it unto the
+seventy elders_."  Some conclude from this statement that, as a
+punishment for his intemperate prayer, the wisdom of Moses was thus
+lessened, while others were enriched at his expense.  But wisdom, and
+all gifts similar to it, are not diminished by distribution.  If we
+impart information, we do not lessen our own store of knowledge.  If we
+give of our love lavishly, yet affection is not lessened by such
+outpouring.  The spread of fire over what is inflammable increases its
+intensity.  Though we light a thousand candles from one which burned
+alone at first, it still burns brightly as before.  So is it with the
+Spirit of whose fulness we all receive.  No Christian man is poorer
+because his brother is enriched with grace, nor was Moses.  "_There is
+that scattereth, and yet increaseth_."
+
+It is time that we turned to the two men, Eldad and Medad, who,
+although summoned with their brethren, did not come to the assembly at
+the Tabernacle.  They may have been absent from their tents when the
+papyrus letter was delivered, and would not be quickly found in the
+vast camp.  Be this as it may, what followed is evidence that they did
+not wilfully disobey the summons, and that their absence was not due to
+any bad motive.  For some reason unknown to us they failed to put in an
+appearance at the critical time, when others of the elect were
+receiving the mysterious but efficient grace of the Spirit.  Yet, at
+one and the same moment, they also were inspired while walking
+together, as they probably were doing, in some far-off part of the
+camp.  To the amazement of the people, and doubtless to their own
+amazement too, they suddenly began to prophesy, and crowds of listeners
+quickly gathered round them, as on Pentecost they ran together to hear
+the inspired apostles.  This unique experience was given by God, and
+received by the people as convincing evidence that Eldad and Medad were
+divinely appointed, and divinely qualified, equally with their brethren
+nearer the Tabernacle.  It is true that Joshua exhibited some jealousy
+and suspicion, and would have silenced them because the blessing had
+not come through Moses; but the great law-giver, with characteristic
+insight and generosity, would not heed the request--"_My lord Moses,
+forbid them_."  Calmly, yet decisively, the answer rang out, "_Enviest
+thou for my sake?  Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets,
+and that the Lord would put His spirit upon them_!"
+
+In the experience of these two men there is imbedded valuable and
+permanent truth.  We regard it as an evidence, the more remarkable
+because given under a ceremonial regime, that God did not intend to
+institute any order of men outside the limits of which there was to be
+no liberty of prophesying and no fitness for it.  Nor is there any
+exclusively sacred place, be it tabernacle, temple, synagogue, or
+church, where alone such gifts can be conferred.  We believe that
+outside all sacred places, outside the churches of our own faith and
+order, and of any other churches, there are men, and women too, equally
+called of God with those within such limits, and the evidence that they
+are so called lies in the fact that in them also the Spirit of God is
+resting, and through them the Spirit of God is working.
+
+This lesson, which still needs to be enforced in our own day, is
+perhaps best deduced from an incident so early and so simple as this.
+Just as we may learn more of the way in which an engine really works
+from a simple model--say of George Stephenson's--than from one of the
+complicated machines of the present day, so we may gain the more
+instruction from this incident, because of its very simple character,
+while its antiquity keeps it out of the confusion caused by modern
+controversies.
+
+Eldad and Medad were men called of God to undertake holy service for
+the good of His people.  In their case the call was manifestly inward
+rather than outward.  Though truly chosen, they were not in the
+Tabernacle, nor were they wrapped in the cloud, and they received no
+ordination from the laying on of hands by Moses and Aaron.  The
+evidence of their call lay in their fitness for the work, and their
+fitness was due to the gift of the Spirit.  Yet all this occurred under
+a dispensation which was far more strict in ceremonial law than that
+under which we live.
+
+What does it teach?  It surely confirms our belief that the word of God
+is not bound.  The exposition and enforcement of Divine truth is not to
+be confined to those who have received priestly ordination by some
+outward rite.  No man therefore has the right to forbid any preacher
+from exercising his functions on the ground that his orders are not
+regular, or because he has not been recognised by an Episcopate, a
+Presbytery, a Conference, or a Union.
+
+To put the same truth in hortatory form, I would say to any one who has
+knowledge of Divine truth, who has experienced the graces of the Holy
+Spirit, and who has the gift of utterance: You are called upon, by the
+fact of possessing these qualifications, to serve God as opportunity
+comes.  You ought not to be silent on the claims of Christ, nor should
+you refrain from leading others in prayer, while on every other topic
+you are fluency itself.  "_Neglect not the gift that is in thee_,"
+whether it came by laying on of hands, or in some other way.  Every
+true convert should sometimes feel as the prophet Jeremiah felt, when
+he said, "_The word of the Lord was within me as a burning fire shut up
+in my bones.  I was weary with forbearing and could not stay_."  The
+work assigned too often exclusively to the minister is really the work
+of the Church.
+
+Happily, speech is not the only mode in which men can serve God.  It is
+clear from the Hebrew narrative that Eldad and Medad, like their
+brethren at the door of the Tabernacle, did not receive an abiding gift
+of prophecy, but a transient sign which seemed adequate to convince the
+people that they had been chosen and inspired.  Unfortunately, the
+Authorised Version gives us a phrase which is the exact opposite of the
+meaning of the Hebrew phrase in the twenty-fifth verse, rendering it
+thus, "_They prophesied, and did not cease_."  The Revised Version sets
+this right in the phrase, "_They prophesied, but they did so no more_."
+In other words, the singular manifestation of power soon passed away.
+It was not a permanent possession.
+
+This is in harmony with the experience of the early Christian Church.
+The miraculous power given to the apostles, as evidence of their Divine
+commission, was not always at their disposal.  The gift of tongues
+bestowed on them, and on others, soon ceased; for it was intended to
+show the supernatural origin of Christianity until written evidence was
+available, and then it was withdrawn.  The Holy Spirit still remained
+in the Church, and was revealed in a diversity of operations.  His
+presence was proved by the changed characters of converts more
+effectually than by abnormal gifts--and similarly the religious ecstasy
+of Eldad and Medad and their comrades was soon exchanged for their
+abiding spirit of wisdom and justice.
+
+Christians who at one time spoke for Christ are not always to blame if
+they speak publicly no more.  They may have withdrawn from Sunday
+School teaching, for example, but only to serve God in another form.
+Their matured experience may be quite as valuable as their once fervent
+zeal.  The river which near its source noisily rushes over the pebbles,
+is not lessened in value when, full and deep, it silently glides onward
+to the sea.
+
+Happily, there are diversities of operations, though they are all under
+the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; and if we are faithful to our
+special calling, we may hope to receive our Lord's "_Well done_," just
+as did these seventy-two men, who sustained and aided Moses, though
+they left no record of their steady, useful work.  Indeed, there are
+those who in actual service can do very little, whose gracious and
+benign influence is the best proof of true inspiration.  Such was he of
+whom Cowper sings:
+
+  "When one that holds communion with the skies
+  Has filled his urn where those pure waters rise,
+  And once more mingles with us meaner things,
+  'Tis even as if an angel shook his wings;
+  Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
+  That tells us whence his treasures are supplied."
+
+God calls us to Himself before He calls us to His service.  The same
+Divine Spirit who qualifies for religious work, creates men anew.  Of
+every one so created, it may be said he was "_born of the Spirit_."
+
+In this, also, neither place nor circumstance is essential.  Eldad and
+Medad were both away from the Tabernacle, somewhere in the
+unconsecrated camp; yet they received the same blessing which their
+brethren were enjoying at the door of the Tabernacle.  And we rejoice
+that some who are now outside a place of worship--outside this or that
+denomination--outside Christendom, do receive the Spirit who transforms
+them into the likeness of Christ.
+
+In confirmation of this, we recall the fact that our Lord spoke more
+often in houses, and fields, and boats, and streets, than in the
+Temple.  And the apostles who were called to follow Him were engaged at
+the time of their calling in their ordinary occupations, at the
+toll-office or in the fishing-boat.  Saul was converted on the road to
+Damascus, the jailor of Philippi in prison, Lydia by the river side.
+All this reminds us that though our power may be limited by time and
+place, God's power is not; though our work is contracted, His is broad.
+The Holy Spirit is no more confined to a place than the wind is, which
+bloweth as it listeth over land and sea, over desert and garden.
+
+It is a comfort to remember this when we grieve over some prodigal, who
+has gone beyond the reach of religious observances; who never attends
+worship, or reads the Bible.  We may hope about him, believe in him,
+and pray for him still, because the Spirit of God can reach him as He
+reached Eldad and Medad, "_who went not up to the Tabernacle_."  The
+old promise is not exhausted yet: "_I will pour out of My Spirit upon
+all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your
+young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams_."
+
+It is this divine afflatus, this outpouring of the Spirit, which is the
+great need of the age we live in.  The Church seems to be lying
+listless as a sailing ship, due to leave harbour, but still waiting for
+a breeze.  Her masts are firm, the canvas ready to be stretched, and
+her equipment complete.  The helmsman stands impatient at the wheel,
+and all the sailors are alert, but not a ripple runs along the vessel's
+side.  She waits, and must wait, for a heavenly breeze to fill her
+sails, and till it comes she cannot stir.  Like that ship the Church is
+wanting impulse, and we ought to be waiting for it, and praying for it.
+The power we need can only come from heaven, the breath of God must be
+our real moving force, and we should be wiser, stronger, and more
+hopeful if we entered into the meaning of the old, oft-repeated verse:
+
+  "At anchor laid, remote from home,
+  Toiling, I cry, 'sweet Spirit, come,'
+  Celestial breeze no longer stay,
+  But swell my sails, and speed my way."
+
+
+
+
+BARZILLAI
+
+BY REV. GEORGE MILLIGAN, M.A., D.D.
+
+
+"There is nothing," says Socrates to Cephalus in the _Republic_, "I
+like better than conversing with aged men.  For I regard them as
+travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of
+whom it is right to learn the character of the way, whether it is
+rugged or difficult, or smooth and easy" (p. 328 E.).
+
+It is to such an aged traveller that we are introduced in the person of
+Barzillai the Gileadite.  And though he is one of the lesser-known
+characters of Scripture--and we might perhaps never have heard of him
+at all had it not been for his connection with King David--on the few
+occasions on which he does appear he acts with an independence and
+disinterestedness which are very striking.
+
+The first of these occasions is at Mahanaim, in his own country of
+Gilead.  In the strong fortress there David and his companions had
+taken refuge after the disastrous revolt of Absalom.  Owing to their
+hurried flight, the fugitives were wanting in almost all the
+necessaries of life, and they could hardly fail also to have been a
+little apprehensive of the kind of welcome the Gileadites would extend
+to them.  But if so, their fears were soon set at rest.  Three of the
+richest and most influential men in the district at once came to their
+aid.  Shobi the son of Nahash, and Machir the son of Ammiel, and
+Barzillai the Gileadite of Rogelim, brought beds, and cups, and wheat,
+and barley, and honey, and butter, and sheep--all, in fact, that was
+needed--for David, and for the people that were with him: for they
+said, "_The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the
+wilderness_" (2 Sam. xvii. 29).
+
+In so acting, the first of these, Shobi, may have been trying to atone
+for his brother's insulting conduct when David had sent messengers to
+comfort him on his father's death (2 Sam. x. 1-5);[1] and Machir as the
+friend of Mephibosheth (2 Sam, ix. 4), was naturally grateful for the
+king's kindness to the lame prince.  But, as regards Barzillai, we know
+of no such reasons for his conduct, and his generosity may, therefore,
+be traced to the natural impulses of a kind and generous heart.  In any
+case, this unlooked-for sympathy and friendship had an arousing and
+encouraging effect upon the king.  He no longer despaired of his
+fortunes, black though at the moment they looked, but, marshalling his
+forces under three captains, prepared for war with his rebellious son;
+with the result that in the forest of Ephraim Absalom's army was wholly
+defeated, and the young prince himself treacherously slain.
+
+With the death of its leader, the rebellion against David may be said
+to have ended; but to the sorrow-stricken father victory at such a
+price seemed an almost greater calamity than defeat would have been.
+And it needed the strong, almost harsh, remonstrances of Joab to rouse
+him from his grief, and lead him to think of his duty to his people.
+At length, however, the homeward journey began, the king following the
+same route by which so shortly before he had fled, until he came to the
+banks of the Jordan, where a ferry-boat was in readiness to take him
+and his household across (2 Sam. xix. 18).  Before, however, he
+crossed, several interesting interviews took place.  Shimei, who had
+cursed so shamelessly on the day of misfortune, was forgiven, and
+received the promise of protection; Mephibosheth was restored to the
+king's favour, and his old place at the king's table; and, what
+specially concerns us at present, David had his final parting with
+Barzillai.
+
+The loyal chieftain, notwithstanding his eighty years, had come all the
+way from his upland farm to bid farewell to his king, and see him
+safely over Jordan.  And as David remarked the old man's devotion, and
+remembered his former favours, the wish seized him to attach him still
+more closely to his person.  "_Come thou over with me_," he said, "_and
+I will feed thee with me in Jerusalem_" (2 Sam. xix. 33).  It was from
+one point of view a dazzling offer.  Barzillai had seen enough of David
+to know that what the king said he meant, and that if he chose to go
+with him, honour and position awaited him at the court.  But he would
+not be moved.  His grey hairs, if nothing else, stood in the way.
+"_How long have I to live_," he answered, "_that I should go up with
+the king unto Jerusalem_?" (verse 34).  I am too old, that is, for such
+a life as would there be expected of me.  And, after all, why should
+conduct such as mine meet with so great a reward?  No! let me go a
+little way over Jordan with the king, and then "_Let thy servant, I
+pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city, and be
+buried by the grave of my father and of my mother_."  "_But_," he
+hastened to add, as if anxious to show that he appreciated to the full
+the king's generous offer, and saw the advantages it presented to those
+who were able to enjoy them, "_behold thy servant Chimham_," my son,
+"_let him go over with my lord the king; and do to him what shall seem
+good unto thee_" (verse 37).  With a plea so expressed, David could not
+but acquiesce: "_The king kissed Barzillai, and blessed him; and he
+returned unto his own place . . . and Chimham went on with him_"
+(verses 39, 40), to become famous as the founder of a caravanserai, or
+halting-place for pilgrims on the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
+which for at least four centuries continued to bear his name (Jer. xli.
+17) and which may even, it has been conjectured, have been the same
+which, at the time of the Christian era "furnished shelter for two
+travellers with their infant child, when 'there was no room in the
+inn.'"[2]
+
+Round Barzillai's own name no such associations have gathered.  After
+his parting with David we do not hear of him again, if we except a
+passing reference in David's dying instructions to Solomon, to "_shew
+kindness unto the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite_" (1 Kings ii. 7),
+and the mention, as late as the return from Babylon, of a family of
+priests who traced their descent to a marriage with the Gileadite's
+daughter, and prided themselves on the distinctive title of "_the
+children of Barzillai_" (Ezra ii. 61).  But in the absence of anything
+to the contrary, we may be allowed to conjecture that, full of years
+and experience, surrounded by all the love which his useful, helpful
+life had called forth, Barzillai died in peace among his own people,
+and was buried, as he had himself desired, by his parents' grave.
+
+Such, then, is the story of Barzillai's life, so far as the Bible
+reveals it to us.  It is, as I have already said, as an old man that he
+is principally brought before us, and in thinking of his character
+further, it may be well to do so from this point of view, and see what
+he has to teach us regarding a true old age.  Four points at least
+stand out clearly from the Bible narrative.
+
+
+I.
+
+_Barzillai was evidently by nature a warm-hearted, sunshiny old man,
+himself happy and making others happy_.
+
+
+David himself was such a man before the great sin which brought a
+trouble and a sorrow into his life that he was never again able wholly
+to surmount.  And it may have been the sight of his own lost gaiety and
+lightness of spirit in the aged Gileadite that first drew out his heart
+to him.
+
+It may be said, perhaps, that it was easy for Barzillai to be cheerful.
+The sun had shone on him very brightly: the good things of life had
+fallen very freely to his share.  He was, according to the Bible
+record, "_a very great man_" (2 Sam. xix. 32), evidently a most
+successful farmer, rich in flocks and herds, looked up and respected in
+the district in which he lived.  But after all, is it the universal, or
+even the general, experience that wealth and power are associated with
+simple cheerfulness and happiness?  Could anything, for example, have
+exceeded the bitterness and the boorishness of the other rich
+flockmaster whom David's youths, with Eastern frankness, had asked,
+"_Give, we pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand unto thy
+servants, and to thy son David_"  "_Who is David? and who is the son of
+Jesse_?" burst out Nabal in a fury.  "_Shall I then take my bread, and
+my water . . . and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be_?"
+(1 Sam. xxv. 8, 10, 11).  And even if that be an extreme instance, it
+will not be denied that outward blessings in themselves, and considered
+only by themselves, are apt to have a hardening rather than a softening
+effect.  It says much, therefore, for Barzillai, that amidst his great
+possessions, he still kept the free, open, happy disposition of youth.
+
+
+II.
+
+_That he did so, is due amongst other reasons to the fact that he was a
+generous man_.
+
+
+His unsolicited assistance of David clearly proves this, while the very
+length of the catalogue of articles with which he and his friends
+supplied the fugitive's needs, proves that when he gave, he did so in
+no stinted fashion, but freely and liberally.
+
+It is an excellent example for all who are feeling themselves burdened
+by the possessions and the opportunities with which God has enriched
+them.  Let them remember that they hold them only in trust, and in
+helping to bear others' burdens, they will actually, strange to say,
+lighten their own.
+
+  "'Tis worth a wise man's best of life,
+  'Tis worth a thousand years of strife,
+  If thou canst lessen but by one,
+  The countless ills beneath the sun."
+
+While, on the other hand, can there be a sadder thought for the man
+whose earthly course is nearly run, than the thought that there will be
+none to rise up after him and call him blessed, but that he will die,
+as he has lived, unhonoured, unwept?
+
+If that, then, is not to be our fate, we cannot use too diligently
+every opportunity of well-doing which God has placed within our reach;
+we cannot live too earnestly, not for ourselves only, but for others:
+that from the seeds which we sow now, there may spring up hereafter a
+rich and abundant harvest.
+
+
+III.
+
+_Barzillai was contented_.
+
+
+Not many men in his position would have refused the king's offer.  It
+seems rather to be one of the penalties of wealth and greatness, that
+their owners cannot rest satisfied with what they have, but are always
+desiring more.  But Barzillai felt, and felt rightly, that in his
+circumstances, the place in which he had been brought up--"_his own
+place_"--was the best place for him.  He was a home-loving old man, and
+the simple interests and pleasures of his daily life had more
+attraction for him than the excitements and rivalries of the court.
+
+I do not, of course, mean to say that either here or elsewhere in
+Scripture, a wise and healthy ambition is discouraged.  It is natural
+to wish to get on, if only for the sake of a wider sphere of
+usefulness; but let us see to it that we avoid that restless longing
+for change, simply for the sake of change, that coveting of positions
+for which we are not suited, and which, if gratified, can end only in
+disappointment.
+
+"It is a great thing," said one to an ancient philosopher, "to possess
+what one wishes."  "It is a greater blessing still," was the reply,
+"not to desire what one does not possess."  And surely, in what we do
+possess, in the beauties of nature with which we are here surrounded,
+in the love of home and wife and children, in the intercourse with
+friends and acquaintance, we have much to make us contented, much, very
+much, to be thankful for.  "To watch the corn grow, or the blossoms
+set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think,
+to love, to pray,"--these, says John Ruskin, "are the things that make
+men happy."  And these are things that, in some measure at least, are
+within the reach of us all.
+
+
+IV.
+
+_There remains still a fourth and a last element in Barzillai's
+honoured, life and happy old age--his attitude towards God_.
+
+
+Though we are never distinctly told so, we cannot doubt that he was a
+religious man.  And as it was in gratitude to God for all that He had
+done to him, that he first showed kindness to God's anointed, so it was
+in the same humble and trusting spirit that he accepted old age, and
+all that it involved when it came.  That is by no means always the
+case.  Are there not some, who, as they look forward to the time of old
+age, if God should ever permit them to see it, do so with a certain
+amount of dread?  They think only of what they will be called upon to
+abandon--the duties they must give up, the pleasures, so dear to them
+now, they must forego.  But to Barzillai, the presence of such
+disabilities brought, as we have seen, no disquieting thoughts.  He
+could relinquish, without a sigh, what he was no longer fitted to
+enjoy.  He desired nothing but to end his days peacefully in his
+appointed lot.  Enough for him that the God who had been with him all
+his life long was with him still.
+
+Happy old man!  Who does not long for an old age, if he is ever to see
+old age, such as his?  But, if so, it must be sought in the same way.
+Every man's old age is just what his own past has made it.  If, in his
+days of health and vigour, he has lived an idle, careless, selfish
+life, he must not wonder if his closing years are querulous, and
+bitter, and lonely.  But if, on the other hand, he has devoted himself
+to good and doing good, if he has made the will of God his rule and
+guide amidst all the difficulties and perplexities of his daily lot,
+then in that will he will find peace.  God wilt not forget his "_work
+and labour of love_" (Heb. vi. 10): and in him the old promise will be
+once more fulfilled--"_Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar
+hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry
+and will deliver you_" (Isa. xlvi. 4).
+
+
+
+[1]In view, however, of the difficulty of reconciling the two passages,
+and of the fact that Shobi is not mentioned elsewhere, it has been
+conjectured that for "Shobi the son of Nahash" in 2 Sam. xvii. 27, we
+should read simply "Nahash," see Hastings' _Dict. of the Bible_, art.
+"Shobi."
+
+[2]Stanley, _History of the Jewish Church_, ii., p. 154.
+
+
+
+
+ADONIJAH
+
+BY REV. ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+
+It is notorious that the sons of devout men sometimes prove a curse to
+their parents, and bring dishonour on the cause of God.  When Eve
+rejoiced over her first-born, she little suspected that passions were
+sleeping within him which would impel him to slay his own brother; and
+the experience of the first mother has been repeated, though in
+different forms, in all lands and in all ages.  Isaac's heart was rent
+by the deceit of Jacob, and by the self-will of Esau.  Jacob lived to
+see his own sin repeated in his sons, and he who deceived his father
+when he was old and blind, suffered for years an agony of grief because
+he had been falsely told that Joseph, his favourite son, was dead.
+
+Probably few men have known domestic sorrows, so many and so great, as
+those which befell David.  He shared, in all its bitterness, the misery
+of a parent who sees his best hopes disappointed, and who is racked
+with anxiety as to what his wayward boy will do next, sometimes wishing
+that before such dishonour had befallen him his son had been laid to
+rest under the daisies, in the time of infant innocence.  David's
+eldest son, Amnon, after committing a terrible crime, was assassinated
+by his brother Absalom.  In his turn, Absalom, the fairest of the
+family, rebelled against his own father, and was killed by Joab, as he
+hung in the oak.  Chiliah, or Daniel, died we know not how, and then
+Adonijah, the fourth son, the eldest of those surviving, followed in
+Absalom's footsteps.
+
+Adonijah's sin appears at first sight so unnatural that, in justice to
+him as well as for our own instruction, we should try to discover the
+sources whence this stream of evil flowed which was so bitter and so
+desolating in its results.
+
+This is not an easy task, because the full details of his life are not
+recorded.  There are, however, no less than three evil influences
+hinted at in these words: "_His father had not displeased him at any
+time, in saying, Why hast thou done so? and he also was a very goodly
+man, and his mother bare him after Absalom_" (1 Kings i. 6).  Taking
+them in reverse order: _Heritage_, _Adulation_, and _Lack of
+Discipline_, were three sources of moral peril, and these would tend to
+the ruin of any man.  Let us think of each of these, for they are not
+extinct by any means.
+
+We know very little of Haggith, but she was probably a dancing girl who
+made her way to the front by her ambition and beauty.  From her and
+from his father we may assume that Adonijah inherited a tendency to
+ambition and self-conceit such as Absalom inherited from the union of
+David with Bathsheba.  It is one of the laws of life that "like
+produces like," Evidence of this constantly appears in the lower
+animals, in the speed of the racehorse, in the scent of the hound, and
+so forth.  This asserts itself in men also.  We often notice what we
+call a "family likeness."  Tricks of manner, and various mental
+qualities such as heroism, statesmanship, mathematical or artistic
+talent, descend from parents to children, and sometimes reappear for
+generations in the same family.  This cannot be due to example alone,
+because the phenomena is almost as frequent when the parents die during
+the child's infancy.  Similarly, moral tendencies are transmitted, and
+the Bible gives us many examples of the fact.  The luxury-loving Isaac,
+who must have his savoury food, just as his son, Esau, who would sell
+his birthright for a mess of pottage, Rebekah, who, like her brother
+Laban is shrewd and cunning, sees her tendency repeated in her son
+Jacob, who needed a life of discipline and prayer to set him free from
+it.
+
+In more senses than one "the evil which men do lives after them."  A
+drunkard's son, for example, is often conscious of an inbred craving
+which is a veritable disease, so that he is heavily weighted as he
+starts out on the race of life.  This solemn and suggestive fact that
+the future well-being of children depends largely on the character of
+parents, should give emphasis to the adjuration in the wedding
+service--marriage, therefore, is to be honourable in all, and ought not
+to be engaged in rashly, "thoughtlessly, or lightly, but advisedly,
+reverently, and in the fear of God."  The law of moral heritage makes
+parental responsibility a solemn trust, while, in so far as it affects
+those who inherit bad or good tendencies, we are sure that the Judge of
+all the earth will do right.  But it must never be forgotten that even
+a bad disposition need never become a dominant habit.  It is something
+to be resisted and conquered, and, it may be, by the grace of Him who
+is faithful, and will not suffer any of us to be tempted above what we
+are able to bear.  Our tendencies are Divine calls to us to recognise
+and guard certain weak places in the citadel of character, for it is
+against these that our enemy directs his most persistent and vigorous
+attacks.
+
+Unhappily, Adonijah's natural bias was made the more dangerous by the
+atmosphere of the court, where flatterers naturally abounded--for "_he
+was a very goodly man_," physically a repetition of Absalom, the Adonis
+of his time.  We may also fairly surmise that his parents were guilty
+of partiality and indulgence in their treatment of him, for David would
+love him the more as one who revived the memory of his favourite
+Absalom, the idol of the people, distinguished for his noble mien and
+princely bearing.  Courtiers, soldiers, and people all flattered
+Adonijah, and Joab, the greatest captain of his age, next only to the
+king, was his partisan, the more so because he neither forgot nor
+forgave David's reproaches after the death of Absalom.  Even Abiathar,
+who represented the younger and more ambitious branch of the
+priesthood, joined in the general adulation, until Adonijah,
+intoxicated by vanity, set up his own court in rivalry to that of his
+father, and when he moved abroad was accompanied by a stately retinue
+of chariots and horsemen, and fifty foot attendants gorgeously
+apparelled.
+
+No doubt every position in life has its own peculiar temptations.  The
+ill-favoured lad, who is the butt at school and the scapegoat at home,
+is in serious danger of becoming bitter and revengeful, and of growing
+crooked in character, like a plant in a dark vault, which will have no
+beauty because it enjoys no sunshine.  But, on the other hand, physical
+beauty, which attracts attention and wins admiration, especially if it
+is associated with brilliant conversational gifts, and great charm of
+manner, has befooled both men and women into sin and misery.  Many a
+girl has been entrapped into an unhappy marriage; and many a lad, moved
+by a vaunting ambition which overleaped itself, has fallen never to
+rise: like Icarus, when his waxen wings melted in the sun.
+
+There must have been sad laxity of discipline in the home of David.  It
+is said of Adonijah that "_his father had not displeased him at any
+time in saying, Why hast thou done so_?"  In other words, Adonijah had
+never been checked and rebuked as he ought to have been, and this
+foolish indulgence was as fatal to him as it had been to the sons of
+Eli.  There are still such homes as David's, although their inmates do
+well to draw down the veil of secrecy over them with loyal hands, and
+never blazon abroad the grief and anxiety which rend their hearts.  In
+one home a fair, bright girl mars the beauty of her early womanhood by
+a flippant disregard of her mother's wishes, and by an exaltation of
+her own pleasure-loving disposition as the one law of her life.  In
+another, a mere child, hasty and uncontrolled in temper, is the dread
+of the whole household, and at last becomes its tyrant, because every
+wish is gratified rather than that a scene should be provoked.  In yet
+another a grown-up son is callous about his mother's anxiety and his
+father's counsels; and gladly ignores his home associations as he
+drifts away upon the sea of vice, and there becomes a miserable wreck.
+With each of these it might have been otherwise.  If authority had been
+asserted, and steadily maintained, before bad habits were formed; if
+firm resolution on the part of the parents had taken the place of
+indulgent laxity, if, instead of being left to chance, character had
+been moulded during the time when it was plastic--these might, with
+God's blessing, have grown up to be wise, pure-hearted, courageous
+followers of Christ--who would not only have sweetened the atmosphere
+of home, but would have done something to purify and illumine society,
+as the salt and the light of the world.
+
+The sin of which Adonijah was guilty, whose sources we have tried to
+discover, was the assumption of unlawful authority and state, which
+involved rebellion against his own father.
+
+Ambition is not always wrong.  It is a common inspiration often nerving
+men to attempt daring and noble deeds.  Desire for distinction, with
+capacity for it, may often be regarded as the voice of God summoning to
+high effort.  The world would soon be stagnant without ambition.  The
+scholar working for a prize, the writer or speaker resolving to make a
+name, the man of business pressing onward past the indolent and the
+ne'er-do-weel, are not to be condemned, so long as they seek lawful
+objects by lawful means.  Those who strenuously and hopefully fulfil
+the duties of their present sphere will be called higher, either in
+this world or the next, for God means us to rise by our fidelity where
+we are, and not by discontent with what we are.  Ambition may have
+conscience in it, and this will reveal itself in the steady and minute
+performance of small duties.  Any who are content, with tireless hand,
+to make crooked things straight and rough places plain, will ultimately
+see glory revealed.  But if ambition is not ruled by righteousness, if
+it is not modified by love and consideration for others, it becomes a
+sin, and will prove to be the herald of disobedience and death, for it
+is such ambition which has cursed the world by tyrannies and bloodshed,
+and dragged down angels from realms of light.  This was the ambition
+which let Adonijah exalt himself, and say, "I will be _king_."
+
+It may be said that his conduct was natural enough, although it was too
+precipitate, because he would legitimately succeed his father in due
+course, as his eldest surviving son.  But this was not so.  The law of
+primogeniture was not law for Israel.  The invisible King expressly
+reserved to Himself the right of appointing the ruler of His people, as
+is evident from Deut. xvii. 14 and 15.  The government was theocratic,
+not monarchical nor democratic.  David himself had been chosen and
+anointed in preference to Jonathan, Saul's son, and Solomon, David's
+younger son, had already been designated as his successor through the
+prophet Nathan, partly because he was best fitted to become the man of
+peace who should erect Jehovah's temple, and partly as a sign to David
+that his sin with Bathsheba was forgiven.  It was not as the "leader of
+a court cabal," but as a prophet inspired by Jehovah, that Nathan had
+made this solemn appointment.  Adonijah knew this perfectly well; he
+acknowledged it to Bathsheba in the fifteenth verse of the second
+chapter, and therefore, when he declared, "_I_ will be king," he was
+deliberately and knowingly setting his will against God's, and this was
+a sin.
+
+The divine choice often differs from the human, for "_the Lord seeth
+not as man seeth_."  In his reply to the sons of Zebedee, Jesus
+declared that God is not swayed by favouritism, nor moved by arbitrary
+impulse, but assigns to each his position according to his fitness.
+This should give us contentment with our lot, and should emphasise the
+precept, "_Seekest thou great things for thyself; seek them not_."
+Though it is natural enough to wish for escape from the fret of
+poverty, or the weariness of pain, and to win for ourselves wealth or
+prominence, we must be on our guard against the indulgence of defiant
+self-will, like that of him who said, "I _will_ be king."
+
+Adonijah's motive in aspiring to the throne was not that he might the
+better care for the welfare of others, but that he might selfishly
+enjoy wealth and honour.  He cared much for outward show, while he
+failed to cultivate inward worth, preparing for himself chariots,
+horsemen, and a retinue of servants, but never displaying a love of
+justice or ability in statesmanship.  And such little motives as his
+never make greatness.
+
+Adonijah was not the last to be attracted by glitter and tinsel, and to
+live for earthly things which perish in the using.  The candidate who
+cares much for honour and nothing for learning, the professional man
+who will sacrifice reputation to win a fortune, and all who wrong
+others in order to better themselves, only gain what is transient and
+unsatisfying.  It would be well for all to learn the lesson (not least
+he for whom the ceremony is primarily intended), which is symbolically
+taught when a Pope is crowned.  The Master of the Ceremonies takes a
+lighted taper in one hand, and in the other a reed with a handful of
+flax fastened to it.  The flax flares up for a moment, and then the
+flame dies away into thin, almost imperceptible, ashes, which fall at
+the Pontiff's feet, as the choir chant the refrain "Pater sanctus, sic
+transit gloria mundi."  No earthly honour is worth having except it is
+the result or the reward of character.  Even in Pagan Rome the Temple
+of Honour could only be reached through the Temple of Virtue.  And over
+the gateway of the greatest of all kingdoms in which Christ Jesus is
+supreme, this motto is inscribed indelibly--"_He that humbleth himself
+shall be exalted, and he that exalteth himself shall be abased_."
+
+How often such ambition is accompanied by disregard of the rights of
+others!  What did Adonijah care for his father's dignity, or his
+brother's claims?  David was still on the throne, and Solomon's right
+to succeed him had been authoritatively proclaimed, and yet, with
+inbred selfishness, this ambitious prince declared, "_I_ will be king!"
+The lawfulness of any ambition may often be tested by the amount of
+selfishness which inheres in it.  If desire for distinction, or wealth,
+leads one to crush a competitor to the wall without ruth, or to refuse
+all help to others in a struggle where every man seems to fight for his
+own hand, its lawfulness may well be questioned.  Our Lord taught us to
+love even our enemies, and surely competitors have a still stronger
+claim on our consideration, and certainly all who belong to a church
+which is based on sacrifice, and symbolised by a cross, should even in
+such matters deny themselves, and seek every man his neighbour's good.
+
+All sin is the worse when it is committed, as Adonijah's was, in
+defiance of warning.  He deliberately repeated his brother's offence.
+Yet he knew the tragic story of his death, and how his brilliant life
+had been ended by violence in a wood, where he perished without a
+friend; and he must often have seen his father brooding alone over the
+trouble thus caused, as if he was still whispering to himself: "_O
+Absalom, my son, would God I had died for thee!  O Absalom, my son, my
+son_!"  Yet the very sin of Absalom which had been so terribly
+punished, Adonijah boldly committed.
+
+History is crowded with examples of ambitious men who died in
+disappointment and despair,--Alexander, who conquered a world, and then
+wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, perished in a scene
+of debauchery, after setting fire to the city.  Hannibal, who filled
+three bushel measures with the gold rings of fallen knights, at last,
+by poison self-administered, died unwept in a foreign land.  Caesar,
+who had practically the whole world at his feet, was stabbed to the
+heart by so-called friends, even Brutus being among them.  Napoleon,
+the scourge and conqueror of Europe, died, a heart-broken exile, in St
+Helena.  Indeed, it is written in letters of blood on the pages of
+history, "_The expectation of the wicked shall perish_."
+
+Happily, angels' voices are calling us to higher things.  Conscience
+whispers to us of duty and love.  Christ Himself, from the Cross, which
+was the stepping-stone to His throne, still cries to every one who will
+listen, "_Follow me_."
+
+The false must be displaced by the true--the world by the Christ--the
+usurper by the Divinely-appointed King.  It was thus that Adonijah's
+scheme was defeated.  Bathsheba, Solomon's mother, and Nathan, the
+prophet, hurried in to tell David of Adonijah's revolt against his
+authority, and that at his coronation-festival, then begun, even Joab,
+the commander-in-chief, and Abiathar, the priest, were present.  Then
+David's old decision and promptitude reasserted themselves once more.
+At his command, Solomon, his designated successor, was seated on the
+King's own mule, and rode in state to Gihon, where Zadok anointed him
+in Jehovah's name; and when the trumpet was blown all the people said,
+"_God save King Solomon_!"
+
+It was the crowning of the new king which proved the dethronement of
+the false; and this fact enshrines a principle divine and permanent.
+False doctrine is overcome, not by abuse, but by the proclamation of
+the true.  Evil, whether enthroned in the heart or in the world, is
+conquered by greater good.  The strong man armed, only keeps his goods
+in peace, until One stronger than he comes to bind him and cast him
+out.  Christ conquers the devil, be he where he may.  "_For this
+purpose the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works
+of the devil_."
+
+In the progress of Solomon, as he rode on his mule to Jerusalem, amid
+the acclamations of the people, we see the Old Testament counterpart to
+the New Testament narrative, which tells how Christ Jesus entered
+Jerusalem as its king, while the people met Him with welcomes, and with
+palms, and children sang His praises.  And in both is a symbol of His
+advent to every heart, and, if He be but welcomed as rightful king, He
+will take to Himself His power, and reign.
+
+
+
+
+HIRAM, THE INSPIRED ARTIFICER
+
+BY REV. W. J. TOWNSEND, D.D.
+
+
+
+
+The Temple of Solomon was the crown of art in the old world.  There were
+temples on a larger scale, and of more massive construction, but the
+enormous masses of masonry of the oldest nations were not comparable with
+the artistic grace, the luxurious adornments, and the harmonious
+proportions of this glorious House of God.  David had laid up money and
+material for the great work, but he was not permitted to carry it out.
+He was a man of war, and blood-stained hands were not to build the temple
+of peace and righteousness.  Solomon was the providential man for such an
+undertaking.  He had large ideas, a keen sense of beauty, generous
+instincts, a religious nature, a literary training, and a highly
+cultivated mind.  He was in peaceful alliance with surrounding nations,
+many of whom would be drawn into requisition for the suitable materials.
+They had to supply the cedar wood, iron, copper, brass, tin, gold,
+silver, and the rich fabrics which have made proverbial the sumptuous and
+beautiful raiment and decorations of those times, with the rarest marbles
+that the quarries of Lebanon and Bezetha could contribute.  So with the
+thousands of busy builders and artificers,
+
+  "Like some tall palm, the graceful fabric grew,"
+
+until it stood complete on Mount Moriah, an inspiration to the people, a
+continual benediction to the nation, and the envy of many a covetous
+conqueror.
+
+The name of one man only has been handed down the ages as having
+specially signalised himself in the decoration of the temple.  Solomon
+must procure the best of human talent and genius for the perfection of
+the work he meditated.  Therefore he not only made a treaty with Hiram,
+King of Tyre, for supplies of material, but of workmen, and chief of
+these, one whose artistic productions were to be the best adornments of
+the House of God for succeeding centuries.  He was a tried veteran in
+decorative work, an expert in almost every kind of art, and fit to be
+placed in the position of chief superintendent of so superb a building.
+The King of Tyre sent to Solomon a testimony which was eloquent in his
+praise: "_I have sent a cunning man endued with understanding . . . .
+the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, his father was a man of Tyre,
+skilful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and
+in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson; also to
+grave any manner of graving, and to find out every device_" (2 Chron. ii.
+13, i4).  Another record says: "_He was filled with wisdom, and
+understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass_" (1 Kings vii. 14).
+
+It is a significant fact in the history that Hiram, this expert
+artificer, bearing the same name as his king, should have had an
+Israelitish mother, and a Gentile father who had also been a worker in
+metal.  Thus he got his artistic taste and training from the father, his
+religious knowledge and sympathy from the mother.  Religious feeling and
+sympathy he certainly had, as his magnificent work in the temple fully
+demonstrated.
+
+Hiram constructed of bright, burnished brass, an immense laver, called "a
+molten sea," to be used for the ablutions of the priests.  It was capable
+of containing from fifteen to twenty thousand gallons of water, and the
+ornamentation was elaborate exceedingly.  Under the brim were two rows of
+balls or bosses, encircling the laver.  Twelve oxen, three looking in
+four different directions, supported it, and the brim was wrought like
+the brim of a cup with flowers of lilies.  Beyond this, there were ten
+lavers, smaller in size, for the washing of such things as were offered
+in sacrifice.  These were carefully decorated with lions, oxen, and
+cherubim on the borders of the ledges.  They stood upon bases, measuring
+6 feet by 4 1/2 feet, ornamented carefully on each side with garlands
+hanging in festoons, literally, "garlands, pensile work."  Each base had
+brasen wheels attached, with brasen axletrees, and brackets which
+stretched from the four upper corners of the bases to the outward rim of
+the laver.  All the furnishings were also made by Hiram, such as pots,
+basons, shovels; probably also the golden altar, and table, with the
+seven-branched lamp stands, of which there were ten, of beautiful
+construction and ornamentation.  But the most glorious work of Hiram was
+the construction of the two majestic brasen pillars, called Jachin and
+Boaz, They were stately in height, the shaft of each measuring 27 feet, a
+base of 12 feet, and two capitals of 13 1/2 feet, thus the whole height
+of each pillar being 52 1/2 feet.  The decoration was equally graceful
+and elaborate, especially upon the capitals.  The lower capitals had a
+fine network over the whole, and chain-work hanging in festoons outside.
+There were also pomegranates wrought upon them.  The upper capitals,
+forming a cornice to the whole pillar, were ornamented with lily-work.
+At Persepolis there still stands a pillar, the cornice of which is carved
+with three rows of lily leaves.  These pillars were esteemed the most
+important ornaments in the magnificent temple, the erection of which was
+the best feature of Solomon's reign.  They were of such prominent
+importance that a name was affixed to each of them.  One was called
+"Jachin," which means, "he will establish," the other was called "Boaz,"
+which means "in strength."  The ideas involved are stability and
+strength.  Possibly the Psalmist had these pillars in his mind when he
+wrote, "_Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary_" (Ps. xcvi. 6);
+strength first, then beauty; strength as the foundation of divine work,
+then beauty, graceful finish, and ornament.
+
+Hiram was an inspired artist and artificer.  He was "_filled with wisdom
+and understanding, and cunning to work_."  We are told the same as to the
+great decorative workers of the Tabernacle, concerning whom the Lord
+said: "_See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of
+Hur of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with the spirit of God,
+in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of
+workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and
+in brass, and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood,
+to work in all manner of workmanship_" (Exod. xxxi.  2-5).  So also it is
+written of Aholiab, Ahisamach, and other Tabernacle workers.
+
+It is instructive to find that in Scripture, genius as displayed in
+literary insight and facility, in ingenuity and inventiveness as to the
+various arts, and even in the conception of instruments of husbandry, is
+attributed to Divine inspiration.  It may not be the same order of
+inspiration by which "_men spake from God, being moved by the Holy
+Ghost_"; "_Searching what time or manner of time the spirit of Christ
+which was in them did point unto when it testified beforehand the
+sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them_" (2 Peter
+i. 21; 1 Peter i. 11); but the fact is clear, whether it was inspiration
+of a different nature or in a different degree, that on men of special
+gifts in various departments and of the highest order, wisdom and
+understanding are a direct gift of the Holy Spirit.  This truth was
+acknowledged in earliest times, and skilled experts in art or handicraft
+were reckoned to be under the inspiration of God.  Among the heathen this
+belief lingered long.  The ancient poets invoked the aid of their deities
+when entering on some great composition, and the devout earnestness of
+some recorded prayers is remarkable.  There should be a line of
+demarcation drawn in this connection between a man of talent and a man of
+genius.  Talent may be a matter of cultivation and perseverance.  A man
+of ordinary intelligence may, by determined resolution, push his way to
+power in many directions, and the one talent may become ten talents.  But
+genius is not mere cleverness, however well directed and carefully
+developed.  Genius is creative and inventive; it has insight, it has
+imagination, it "bodies forth the forms of things unknown," and "gives to
+airy nothings a local habitation and a name."  Isaiah speaks of the
+inspiration of the inventor of the agricultural instrument: "_His God
+doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him . . . This also cometh from
+the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in
+wisdom_" (Isa.  xxviii. 26-29).
+
+When man required in the old time direct teaching of great religious
+truths and realities, God inspired prophets and seers, but the world
+required also to be educated, regulated, civilised.  Therefore poets,
+painters, _litterateurs_, artists, and artificers were called for, by
+deep needs of humanity.  God answered the need by giving the marvellous
+gift in various forms and degrees to men who had understanding of their
+times, and who by special insight were able to give impulses to progress
+in every direction.  This truth is powerfully stated by a German
+metaphysician:--"Nothing calls us more powerfully to adore the living God
+than the appearance and embodiment of genius upon the earth.  Whatever in
+the ordinary course of things we may choose to attribute to the
+mechanical process of cause and effect, the highest manifestations of
+intellect can be called forth only by the express will of the original
+Mind, independent of second causes.  Genius descends upon us from the
+clouds precisely where we least look for it.  Events may be calculated,
+predicted--spirits never; no earthly oracle announces the appearance of
+genius: the unfathomable will of the Creator suddenly calls to it--Be!"[1]
+
+The Apostle Paul says concerning the Christ, "_IN HIM were all things
+created_" (Col. i. 16).  Everything in the universe became objective,
+because they were first subjective in Christ, the second Person in the
+adorable Trinity.  All things were made from forms and types which were
+in Himself before they were impressed on Creation.  The infinite glories
+of sky, and air, and sea, the beauties of the tree, the flower, the bird,
+and all forms of life, the fleeting and recurring grandeurs that paint
+the seasons and the years, are all but revelations of the boundless
+resources and the ineffable beauties and qualities of the mind of Christ,
+our Master and Teacher.  Our craving of genius, and its never-dying
+ambition, is to come ever nearer to the perfection of the Infinite Artist
+and Architect.  The inspiration which filled the soul of Bezalel or Hiram
+may not be so elevated or elevating as that which enabled Isaiah to soar
+to the throne of the Eternal in speechless rapture, or which enabled
+Michael Angelo to represent in form and colour his vast conceptions of
+the beautiful and sublime; but it was as real, and in some aspects as
+serviceable in suggestion and realisation, as these.  "God fulfils
+Himself in many ways."  As the Divine Spirit plays on the minds of
+special men, one is turned to music, another to painting, another to
+sculpture, another to architecture, another to mechanics, and another to
+a smith's imaginings; but it is still the same Spirit that worketh in all
+and through all, and each may be perfected instruments by which He
+accomplishes His wise and gracious purposes in the uplift of men.
+
+What a living force among men is the true poet, the man who can take
+words and weave them into forms of perfect rhythm, rhyme, and measure,
+and then fill them with thoughts so suggestive and burning, as that they
+become for ever a force in the hearts of men, thrilling the souls of men
+and women with lofty ideals, prompting them to noble deeds, nerving them
+to patience in suffering and courage in battle.  What may not the artist
+accomplish by throwing on the canvas landscapes or seascapes, like
+Turner, Scripture scenes, like Raphael, or heroic deeds, like Millais?
+Do these things not speak to the heart through the eye effectually?  And
+what refining influences may not be silently absorbed into the nature by
+the artificer, who works in metals, or in pottery, in glass, or in wood,
+producing shapes of graceful contour, and decoration of delicate beauty,
+so that the articles of the household or the warehouse may be an
+education to the mind, and become to it patterns of things in the
+heavens.  The command to Moses on the Mount was, concerning all the
+furniture of the Tabernacle, which Bezalel and Aholiab had to construct
+was, "_See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to
+thee in the mount_" (Heb.  viii. 5).  The beautiful things were in the
+mind of God first, and then had to be produced by the inspiration of the
+artist, in the house of prayer by the wisdom and deftness imparted by the
+Spirit.
+
+It is possible, we sorrow to think, to misuse the Divine gift of artistic
+inspiration.  The poet may devote his genius to animalism, like Byron, or
+to teach immoral license, like Swinburne; the painter may crowd his
+canvas with degrading ideas and vulgar representations, and the artificer
+may be ingenious in the production of forms of ugliness and degrading
+grotesqueness.  Such desecration of great endowments is alike displeasing
+to God and ruinous to the man.  Of such it may be said: "_He feedeth on
+ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his
+soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand_?" (Isa. xliv. 20).
+
+Thank God, that we may say truly that generally the superlatives might
+have been found sitting at the feet of Jesus.  The heavy, dull masses of
+meaningless masonry which belonged to Egypt or Assyria, flowered into the
+pure, delicate, ideality of the Greek builders, and this again developed
+into the warm, spiritual, suggestive style of Christianity which has
+covered Christendom with consecrated buildings like the cathedrals of
+Cologne or Chartres.  The art of twenty centuries has been proclaiming
+the Christ as perfect in beauty, in grace and refinement, as He is
+perfect in love and in sacrifice.  The music of the past, in all its
+highest reaches from Gregory to Mendelssohn, celebrates His grand
+redemption.  The most gifted poets, from Dante, pealing his threefold
+anthem from the topmost peak of Parnassus, to Shakespeare, with "his
+woodnotes wild"; from Milton, with his "sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs
+and harping symphonies," to Tennyson, with his "happy bells," which
+
+  "Ring in the valiant man and free,
+  The larger heart, the kindlier hand,"
+
+but chief of all which
+
+  "Ring in the Christ that is to be,"
+
+are resonant with loyalty and devotion to Him.  Thus, all voices and all
+gifts, as they come from Christ, and are claimed by Christ, should be
+used for Him and Him alone.  The lofty reach of genius is called to
+glorify Him, and the humblest gift of the peasant in the cottage, or the
+workman in the mill, or the little child at the mother's knee, are all
+due to Christ, to be devoted to Him, and also to be appreciated and
+rewarded by Him.
+
+
+[1]Gustav Schwab, quoted by Ullmann, in _The Worship of Genius_.
+
+
+
+
+JEROBOAM
+
+BY REV. ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+
+"Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin."--1 KINGS xiv. 16.
+
+
+Jeroboam's character is worthy of serious study, not only because it
+influenced the destiny of God's ancient people, but because it suggests
+lessons of the utmost value to His people still.  He may be fairly
+regarded as a type of those who are successful men of the world.  He was
+not an example of piety, for he had none--nor of lofty principle, for he
+was an opportunist who made expediency the law of his life throughout.
+Yet he was permitted to win all that he could have hoped for, and reached
+the very zenith of his ambition, though he went down to the grave at
+last, defeated and dishonoured, with this as his record--he was the man
+"_who made Israel to sin_."
+
+Such a life as his throws a flood of light on our possibilities and
+perils, showing unscrupulous men both what they may possibly win, and
+what they will certainly lose.
+
+Jeroboam appears to have been a man of lowly origin.  Of his father
+Nebat, whose name is so often linked with his own, we know nothing,
+although an old Jewish tradition, preserved by Jerome, identifies him
+with Shimei, who was the first to insult David in his flight, and the
+first of all the house of Joseph to congratulate him on his return.  All
+we know with certainty is that he belonged to the powerful tribe of
+Ephraim, which was always jealous of the supremacy of Judah, and
+therefore hated David, Solomon, and Rehoboam.  It was this feeling of
+which Jeroboam skilfully availed himself when he split the kingdom of
+David in twain.
+
+In the Book of Kings, this remarkable man first appears as an ordinary
+workman, or possibly as a foreman of the masons who were engaged in
+building Fort Millo, one of the chief defences of the citadel of Zion,
+guarding its weakest point, and making it almost impregnable.  Under the
+system of forced labour then in vogue, the workmen would be inclined to
+shirk their toil, and among them Jeroboam stood out in conspicuous
+contrast, by reason of his eagerness and industry.  Solomon the king, who
+always had a keen eye for capacity, saw the young man that he was
+industrious, and after making some inquiries about him, raised him to the
+remunerative post of superintendent of the tribute payable by the tribe
+of Ephraim.  It was, no doubt, a difficult office to fill, for the tribe
+was restive and powerful, but it would be very profitable, because the
+system on which taxes were collected, as is still usual in Eastern
+countries, gave immense opportunities for enrichment to an unscrupulous
+man.  We may be sure, therefore, that Jeroboam quickly became wealthy.
+At the same time he won influence with the tribe, by expressing secret
+sympathy with his fellow-tribesmen, and he stealthily fostered their
+discontent until the opportunity came for asserting himself as a more
+successful Wat Tyler, in the kingdom which by that time Solomon had left
+to his foolish son, Rehoboam.  Little did Solomon imagine that when he
+advanced Jeroboam he was preparing the instrument of his son's ruin, and
+that this Ephraimite would prove to be like the viper Aesop tells of,
+which a kind-hearted man took in from the cold, but which when roused by
+warmth from its torpor, killed its benefactor.
+
+
+I
+
+1. In looking for the elements which contributed to Jeroboam's
+rapidly-won success, we must certainly credit him with remarkable natural
+ability.
+
+No one can read his biography carefully without noticing his shrewdness
+in seeing his chance when it came, and his boldness and promptitude in
+seizing it.  He possessed such self-control that he kept his plans
+absolutely to himself until the critical moment, and then he made a
+daring dash for power, and won it.  And these characteristics of his were
+gifts from God, as Ahijah the prophet emphatically declared.
+
+We are far too timid in the maintenance of our professed belief that
+physical and mental gifts are divine in their origin.  Mediaeval
+theology, which was largely tinged by Pagan philosophy, sometimes went so
+far as to attribute exceptional beauty, or talent, to evil powers; and we
+are apt to trace them to a merely human source.  But keen perception,
+sound judgment, a retentive memory, a vigorous imagination, and, not
+least, good common-sense, are among the talents entrusted to us by God
+Himself, who will by-and-bye take account of His servants.
+
+This is regarded by many as an old-fashioned and effete theory.  They
+assume that the doctrine of evolution has conclusively shown that no man
+is a new creation, but is a necessary product of preceding lives; that
+his lineaments and talents may be traced to parentage, that the
+brilliance of the Cecils and the solid sense of the Cavendishes, for
+example, are simply a matter of heritage.  But even admitting this to be
+largely true, it does not invalidate the statement that our gifts are of
+God--He is the Father of all the "families" of the earth, as well as of
+individuals.  He does not rule over one year only, but over all the
+generations.  Time and change, of which we make much, are nothing to Him.
+The theory of evolution, therefore, merely extends our conceptions of the
+range of His power and forethought.  Whether a child presents a striking
+contrast to his parents, or whether he seems to be a re-incarnation of
+their talents, it is equally true that all things are of God, and that
+for Him and by Him all things consist.  Natural abilities are Divine
+trusts.
+
+There is startling unevenness in the distribution of these gifts.  Not
+only do two families differ widely in their talents and possessions, but
+children of the same parents are often strangely unlike, physically and
+mentally.  One is radiantly beautiful, and another has no charm in
+appearance or in manners.  One is physically vigorous, and another is
+frail as a hothouse flower.  One is so quick that lessons are no trouble
+at all, and another wearily plods over them till ready to give up in
+despair.  Evidences of this unevenness of distribution meet us
+everywhere.  One man will make a fortune where another would not suspect
+a chance.  One remains a third-rate salesman all his days, and would
+spend even his holidays in looking into shop windows, for his soul does
+not rise beyond them; while his comrade is brimful of talent, and the
+world will ring at last with his name and fame.  We say "it is in them";
+but what is in them is of God, and these very differences between men are
+intended by Him to elicit mutual consideration and mutual helpfulness;
+for we are members one of another, and the deficiencies of one are to be
+supplemented by the superabundance of another.
+
+2.  The most brilliant gifts are of no great value apart from personal
+diligence, such as distinguished Jeroboam.
+
+He did thoroughly the work which lay to his hand, whether as mason,
+tax-collector, or king.  Such diligence often rectifies the balance
+between two men of unequal ability.  The plodding tortoise still beats
+the hare, who believes herself to be so swift that she can afford time to
+sleep.  Any one who looks back on his classmates will see that the
+cleverest have not proved the most successful, but that the prizes of
+life have usually gone to those who diligently developed to the utmost
+what they had.  Scripture is crowded with examples of this.  Jacob
+laboured night and day, and therefore he prospered, even under Laban,
+unjust and exacting though Laban was.  Joseph won his way to the front,
+though an exile and a slave, for he made himself indispensable in prison,
+and in the kingdom.  "_Seest thou a man diligent in business?  he shall
+stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men_."  And because
+this is a Divine law, it prevails in higher spheres also.  If a Christian
+uses, in the service of his heavenly Master, the gifts he possesses,
+faith in God, knowledge of truth, power in prayer, persuasive speech--his
+five talents will become ten, or his two will gain other two.  "_To him
+that hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance_."
+
+3. It may be said that talent and diligence combined do not always win
+success, and so far as this world is concerned, it is true.  Possibly
+Jeroboam would never have come to the front if Solomon had not happened
+to notice him.  But if we read the interviews which Ahijah the prophet
+had with Jeroboam, and with his mother, we shall learn to recognise the
+control of God in this also.
+
+If God over-rules anything he must over-rule everything, because what
+appears to be the most trivial incident, often has the most far-reaching
+results on human character and destiny.  Trifles are often turning-points
+in one's history.  A casual word spoken in our favour may bring about the
+introduction which leads to a happy marriage, or to a prosperous business
+career.  It may not have been known to us at the time, nor thought of
+again by the friend who spoke about us, but back of his friendly
+utterance God was.  In life we are not infrequently like a passenger on
+board ship, who chats to those about him, but pays no regard to the
+wheel, or to the seaman who controls it, still less to the officer who
+gives the man his instructions; and yet the turning of that wheel, in
+this direction or in that, involves safety, or wreck.  God keeps
+control--unseen--over the lives of men, and it was more than a lucky
+chance which led Solomon to notice the smart, stalwart worker at Millo,
+and raise him to a higher post.
+
+The wise king showed his wisdom in rewarding as he did, fidelity and
+diligence.  It is because this is often not done in offices and
+warehouses that there is so little mutual goodwill between servants and
+masters.  An employer will often treat his people as mere "hands," who
+are to sell his goods and do his bidding, but directly work is slack, he
+will turn them adrift without scruple or ruth; or if they remain for
+years in his service, will give no increase of wage or salary
+proportioned to capacity and diligence.  A Christian employer, at least,
+should follow a more excellent way, and advance a diligent servant, not
+because he cannot be done without, or because it is for the good of the
+firm to retain his services, but because his promotion is right and
+richly deserved.  It would be a woful thing if God treated us exactly as
+we treat our fellows.
+
+But whatever the immediate result, fidelity and industry are called for
+from us all.  Our Lord Himself said, "_It is My meat and My drink to do
+the will of My Father in heaven_," and this He felt to be as true of His
+work at the carpenter's bench as in the precincts of the Temple.  Whether
+in the business, or in the household, or in the Church, the King is ever
+watching His servants, and of His grace will raise every faithful one to
+higher service and larger possibilities.  "_The Father, who seeth in
+secret, shall reward thee openly_," and His reward will come not only in
+loftier position but in ennobled character--
+
+  "Toil is no thorny crown of pain,
+    Bound round man's brow for sin;
+  True souls from it all strength may gain,
+    High manliness may win.
+
+  "O God, who workest hitherto,
+    Working in all we see,
+  Fain would we be, and hear, and do,
+    As best it pleaseth Thee."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Jeroboam's defects in character, and indeed his actual sins, were many
+and great.
+
+1. His ingratitude to his benefactor was a disgrace to him.
+
+He fostered and used, as far as he dared, the discontent which smouldered
+in the tribe of Ephraim, as the result partly of jealousy of Judah, and
+partly of restiveness under extravagant expenditure and increasing
+taxation, and this treachery went on until he was expelled the country by
+Solomon, and driven out as an exile into Egypt, where, however, he still
+carried out his ambitious schemes, till his chance came under Rehoboam.
+
+Many a man kicks away the ladder by which he rose to fortune.  He likes
+to divest himself of the past wherein he needed help, for it was a time
+of humiliation, and by cutting off association with former friends, would
+fain lead people to believe that his success was entirely due to his own
+cleverness.  Even his own parents are sometimes neglected and ignored,
+and these, to whom he owed his life, who cared for him in his helpless
+infancy and wayward youth, are left unhelped.  "_Cursed is the man who
+setteth light by his father or mother_."
+
+But though we naturally cry "shame" upon such an one, it is possible that
+we ourselves are acting an unfilial part towards our Heavenly Father.
+And the more He prospers us the greater is the danger of our forgetting
+Him, who crowns us with loving-kindness and tender mercies.
+
+2. Jeroboam's sin against Solomon was as nothing compared with his sin
+against God.
+
+From the first he seems to have been an irreligious man.  He regarded
+religion as a kind of restraint on the lower orders, and therefore useful
+in government.  Priests and prophets constituted, in his opinion, the
+vanguard of the police, and they should, therefore, be supported and
+encouraged by the State.  As to the form religion assumed, he was not
+particular.  In Egypt he had become accustomed to the ritual of Apis and
+Mnevis, which was by no means so gross and demoralising as the idolatry
+of the Canaanites, and he evidently could not see why the worship of
+Jehovah could not be carried on by those who believed in Him through the
+use of emblems, and, if need be, of idols.  Therefore he set about the
+establishment of the cult of Apis, and "_made two calves of gold, and set
+the one in Bethel and the other put he in Dan_."  This was the sin for
+which he was condemned again and again with almost wearisome iteration.
+He was by no means a fanatical idolater, and this act of his was simply
+the dictate of his worldly policy.  He was engaged in the establishment
+of the separate kingdom of Israel, which for many a long year was to
+exist side by side with the kingdom of Judah.  But this policy of
+separation would be impossible so long as there was the old spirit of
+unity in the nation.  And this unity was expressed and fostered most of
+all by the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, the common centre to
+which all the tribes resorted, and from which all government emanated.
+If this continued so to be, it was evident that the nation would sooner
+or later reassert its unity.  The men of Ephraim were just now
+exasperated by the taxation imposed by Solomon, and increased by
+Rehoboam, and they still resented the precedence and supremacy of the
+rival tribe of Judah; but this feeling might prove transient, it might be
+some day dissipated by the statesmanship of a wiser king, and then the
+separated kingdom would die out, and all God's people would appear as
+one.  To prevent this was Jeroboam's aim in the erection of the golden
+calves.
+
+It was a policy which would naturally appeal to the jealous people, who
+were told that they ought not to be dependent for their means of worship
+on Judah, nor send up their tribute for the support of the Temple in
+Jerusalem.  And they would welcome a scheme which brought worship within
+easier range, and saved the cost of leaving business and undertaking a
+wearisome journey in order to keep the feasts.  Thus, without deliberate
+choice, they swiftly glided down into idolatry and national ruin.
+
+Jeroboam thus led the people to a violation of one of the fundamental
+laws in the Decalogue.  For if the first command was not disobeyed by all
+the people, the second was, and these laws are still obligatory, nor can
+they be broken with impunity.  With fatal facility those who worshipped
+Jeroboam's golden calf became identified with the heathen, and the
+kingdom thus set upon a false foundation was at last utterly destroyed.
+And as surely as the tide flows in upon the shore, so surely will the
+laws of God bring retribution on all who are impenitent.  To every man
+the choice is proffered between the false and the true ideal of life.  On
+the one side the tempter points to wealth and position, which may often
+be won, as Jeroboam won it, by unscrupulousness; and on the other side
+stands the Son of God, who, though rejected and crucified, was
+nevertheless the Victor over sin, and who now from His heavenly throne
+exclaims, "_To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My
+throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His
+throne_."
+
+
+
+
+ASA
+
+BY REV. ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D., LL.B.
+
+
+
+1 KINGS xv. 8-24; 2 CHRON. xiv-xvi.
+
+
+Asa was the third king who reigned over the separated kingdoms of
+Judah.  His father was Ahijah, of whom it is sternly said, "_He walked
+in all the sins of his father, Rehoboam, which he had done before
+him_."  A worse bringing-up than Asa's could scarcely be imagined.  As
+a child, and as a lad, he was grievously tempted by his father's
+example, and by the influence of an idolatrous court, which was crowded
+by flatterers and panderers.  The leading spirit of the court-circle
+was Maachah, "_the King's mother_," as she is called--the Sultana
+Valide.  She was a woman of strong character, and held a high official
+position.  She was the grand-daughter of Absalom, and was notorious for
+her fanatical idolatry.  In short, she was the evil genius of the
+kingdom, like the Chinese Queen-mother of our own times, although,
+happily, Asa possessed a force of character which the young Emperor of
+China seems to lack.  It is certainly noteworthy, that, with so much
+against the cultivation of a religious life, "_Asa did that which was
+right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father_."  Sometimes on
+a heap of corruption, which we are glad to hurry past with abhorrence,
+God plants a beautiful and fragrant flower, as if in defiance of man's
+neglect; and thus Asa appeared in the family, and in the court of
+Ahijah, his father--a God-fearing, single-minded lad, with a will of
+his own.
+
+As there was hope for him, there is hope for all.  Whatever a man's
+parentage and circumstances may be, he is not forced into sin, and has
+no right to say, "_We are delivered to do all these abominations_."
+Amid all his difficulties and discouragements, if he is earnestly
+seeking to serve God, and looking to Him for help and hope, he may
+triumph over the most adverse circumstances, and prove himself to be a
+true citizen of heaven.  If he waits in prayer on God, as Joseph did in
+Egypt, Daniel in Babylon, and Asa in Ahijah's court, he will not only
+be endued with piety, but with an independent spirit, and a resolute
+will, which will make him a power for good in the very sphere where he
+seemed likely to be crushed by the powers of evil.  It is not in vain
+that the apostle gave the exhortation, "_Be not overcome of evil, but
+overcome evil with good_."  Asa was a noble example of obedience to
+that command.
+
+It is clear from the narrative, in the First Book of Kings, that Asa
+was rich in noble qualities, such as manly resoluteness, political
+sagacity, and administrative vigour.  But special prominence is given
+in the Bible (as one might expect) to his religious sincerity, for it
+is emphatically said--"_Asa's heart was perfect with the Lord all his
+days_."  This does not mean that he was sinless, that he had reached
+moral perfection, but that he had completely, with whole-heartedness,
+given himself over to the will of God, to be and to do what He ordained.
+
+The proof of this was seen in the reformation Asa daringly attempted.
+This is the record of it--"_He took away the sodomites out of the land,
+and removed all the idols that his father had made.  And also Maachah
+his mother, even her he removed from being queen, because she had made
+an idol in a grove; and Asa destroyed her idol, and burnt it by the
+brook Kidron_."
+
+Things must have gone badly in the kingdom before he ascended the
+throne.  Although it was only about twenty years since the death of
+Solomon, irreligion and vice had corrupted the nation.  The truth is
+that evil spreads faster than good in this world, which is evidence
+that it has fallen.  We have embodied this truth in a familiar
+proverb--"Ill weeds grow apace."  If we neglect a garden, we are soon
+confronted with weeds, not with flowers.  Valuable fruit-trees grow
+slowly, but a poisonous fungus will spring up in a night.
+
+Evidence of this often appears in national affairs.  A few months of
+war will suffice to desolate many homes, to destroy fertile fields, and
+to burn down prosperous villages, but it is long before that waste can
+be repaired, confidence restored, and prosperity and goodwill
+re-established.  The devil will carry fire and sword through the world
+with the swiftness of a whirlwind, but Jesus Christ patiently waits and
+weeps over an irresponsive people, as he says, "_Ye will not come to Me
+that ye might have life_."
+
+The same contrast in the progress of good and evil appears in our own
+experience.  If we yield to evil, and indulge sinful passions, we move
+so swiftly downward that it is hard to stop,--like an Alpine climber on
+a snow-slope, who, having once slipped, in a few minutes' rush loses
+all that he has gained by toilsome climbing, and becomes less able to
+make new effort because of his wounds and bruises.  Among our Lord's
+disciples, we see Judas swiftly rushing on self-destruction, whereas
+Peter and John received years of discipline, before they were fully
+prepared to fulfil their mission.  No doubt, in such cases evil may
+have been, making slow and stealthy advance under the surface, though
+the result appears with startling suddenness, just as gas will escape
+without noise, and creep into every corner of the room; but when a
+light comes in, death and destruction come in a flash.  Evil is an
+explosion, good is a growth.
+
+This perhaps accounts for the facts that evil had quickly grown strong
+in the kingdom; while, on the other hand, Asa's attempt at reformation
+was incomplete and transient.  He seems, however, to have done what he
+could, and that is more than can be said of many.  If he had been a
+timid, half-hearted man he might have been content to worship Jehovah
+in his private room, and thus rebuke, by his example, any idolaters who
+happened to hear of it But his was no policy of _laissez-faire_.  He
+felt that the evils encouraged by the father ought to be put down by
+the son, and this he did with a strong hand, wherever he could reach it.
+
+Unhappily, there is a sad dearth of such reforming zeal in the Church,
+and in the world.  Even among those who in private lament prevailing
+evils there is a singular contentment and tolerance even of those which
+might be at once removed.  This is grievously common in large centres
+of population, where each individual feels insignificant among such
+vast multitudes, and loses the sense of individual responsibility in
+the vastness of the crowd which surrounds him.  How many professing
+Christians, for example, deplore drunkenness and impurity, while they
+shrink from any kind of open protest, and will not even trouble
+themselves to vote for representatives who will fight these evils; and
+if a preacher boldly denounces such iniquities they will even beg him
+to leave questions of that kind alone, and to confine himself to
+doctrinal exposition.  We are all too apt to forget that truth and
+righteousness, sobriety and holiness, are of God; and that the mission
+of Jesus Christ was to establish these, and to put away sin, even by
+the sacrifice of Himself.  The religion He exemplified was not to be
+ranged on the shelves of a library, but to prove itself a living force
+in politics, in business, and at home.  What was His own doctrine?
+"_Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
+kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in
+heaven_."  Evils outside the Church, then, are to be combated, and not
+tolerated, by all true Christians--even though in the result they are
+maligned as renegades to their party, or jeered at as Pharisees or
+Puritans.  The late Tom Hughes was quite right half a century ago, when
+he thus described to the lads before him the lot of a would-be reformer.
+
+"If the angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a
+successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested
+interests which this poor old world groans under, he would most
+certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries,
+not only with upholders of the said vested interest, but with the
+respectable mass of the people he has delivered.  They wouldn't ask him
+to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would
+be careful how they spoke of him in the palaver, or at their clubs.
+What can we expect, then, when we have only poor gallant, blundering
+men like Garibaldi and Mazzini, and righteous causes which do not
+triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in their armour, God
+knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their
+lounge-chairs, and having large balances at their bankers.  But you are
+brave, gallant boys, who have no balances or bankers, and hate
+easy-chairs.  You only want to have your heads set straight to take the
+right side; so bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable
+ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong, and that if you see a man
+or boy striving earnestly on the weaker side, however wrong-headed or
+blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him.
+If you cannot join him, and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate
+remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight
+and suffer for--which is just what you have got to do for
+yourselves--and so think and speak of him tenderly."
+
+Those manly words are worth quoting in full, and they will fitly set
+forth the service young Asa rendered to his kingdom, and to the world
+at large.
+
+
+I.
+
+It may be well to analyse a little more closely the reformation this
+right-hearted king attempted.  He diminished opportunities for sin.
+The traffic in vice, by which many were making profit, he put down with
+a strong hand.  And there are hotbeds of vice to be found in our own
+land, where strong appeal is made to the lusts of the flesh, and where
+intoxicating drink incites men to yield to passions which need
+restraint.  Indeed, even in our streets moral perils assail the young
+and innocent, which no Christian nation ought to tolerate.  We often
+meet the assertion that we cannot make people moral by Acts of
+Parliament; but if dens of infamy, which it is perilous to enter, are
+swept away, if gin-palaces and public-houses which flood the land with
+ruin are diminished in number, and in their hours of trade, it would
+certainly lessen the evils we deplore.  Vested interests fight against
+such a change, and many on the side of sobriety and righteousness
+shrink from the contest, so that we need the inspiration which God gave
+to Asa, if we are to win the victory.
+
+This kingly reformer not only lessened opportunities for vice, but
+certain evil influences in his kingdom he brushed aside with a strong
+hand.  Maachah, the king's mother, was a potent influence on the side
+of idolatry.  It seemed at first impossible to touch her.  The king was
+indebted to her.  She was aged, and age merits respect, and, therefore,
+some would argue that she might be tolerated for the few years she yet
+had to live.  But these pleas did not avail her, for the issues
+involved were too serious for the nation, and for the kingdom of God.
+And because "_Asa's heart was perfect_," completely devoted to
+Jehovah's cause, he "_removed her from being queen_," and publicly
+burnt the idol she had put up.
+
+Leaders in evil are sometimes found among the leaders of the world.
+Clever, unscrupulous men succeed in winning power through their want of
+principle, and even of scruple.  Distinguished writers, gifted with
+brilliant style, or poetic power, exercise widespread influence for
+evil.  Young people of singularly attractive personality win to
+themselves a large following, and use it for the worst ends.  Many a
+golden image, or beautiful object of adoration, still stands on the
+high places of the world; and even if we cannot pull them down, as Asa
+did, at least we can say to the evil one, who set them up, "_Be it
+known unto thee that we will not serve thy gods nor worship the golden
+image which thou hast set up_."
+
+The history of Asa should inspire us to a renewal of war against the
+evils which Jesus Christ died to put away.  Victory will not come
+without conflict.  In respect to anxiety we are to be quiescent as the
+lilies, which neither toil nor spin, but in respect of moral evil,
+within or without, we must be vigilant and strenuous.
+
+  "Lilies have no sin
+    Leading them astray,
+  No false heart within
+    That would them bewray,
+  Nought to tempt them in
+    An evil way;
+  And if canker come and blight,
+  Nought will ever put them right.
+
+  "But good and ill, I know,
+    Are in my being blent,
+  And good or ill may flow
+    From mine environment;
+  And yet the ill, laid low,
+    May better the event;
+  Careless lilies, happy ye!
+  But careless life were death to me."
+
+
+II.
+
+The courage of Asa had as its root confidence in God, and this is shown
+more fully in the narrative which appears in the Second Book of
+Chronicles than in the First Book of Kings.
+
+His reforming work--carried out with ruthless vigour--naturally raised
+up adversaries on every side.  In the court itself Maachah and her
+party were implacable.  Outside it the idolatrous priests, and all
+their hangers-on, whose vested interests were abolished, were plotting
+and scheming against the king.  But Asa was imperturbable, because he
+had found God to be his refuge and strength.  The man who really fears
+God finds the fear of his fellows thereby cast out.
+
+To Jehovah, therefore, the brave king brought all his difficulties.
+This was beautifully exemplified when he found himself confronted with
+an overwhelming force of Ethiopians, for then "_Asa cried unto the Lord
+his God, and said, Lord, it is nothing with Thee to help, whether with
+many, or with them that have no power: help us, O Lord our God; for we
+rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go against this multitude.  O Lord,
+Thou art our God; let not man prevail against Thee_."  Prayer was the
+secret of his strength, and in it we also may find all the help we need
+in meeting our discouragements--the ignorance which tries our patience,
+the indifference to God which nothing seems to stir, the vice which
+holds its victim as an octopus, the sin which is as subtle as it is
+strong.  Against them all we have no power, and may well pray as Asa
+did.  "Lord, help us."  Then He will fulfil the promise, "_When the
+enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a
+standard against him_."
+
+
+III.
+
+After his great deliverance Asa renewed his consecration.  The need for
+its renewal shows that in character and conduct he was far from being
+all that he ought to have been.  He was not "_perfect_" in that sense.
+His earnestness cooled down.  Through his carelessness the "_high
+places_" were re-erected.  He seems to have been content that the
+"_groves_," with their grosser forms of idolatry, were gone, and that
+other forms might be tolerated, just as some, who have conquered their
+vices, are morally ruined by what the world calls little sins.  But, in
+spite of these failings, the judgment of God, who is ever slow to anger
+and of great mercy, was that Asa's heart was "_perfect_"--sound, whole,
+and sincere, though not sinless.
+
+How happy it is that God judges not as man judges, that He can
+unerringly read the heart, and graciously accepts even the imperfect
+and blundering service which we sincerely offer to Him.  Jehu
+accurately executed Jehovah's fiat, whereas Asa's obedience seemed
+imperfect; yet the latter was commended, and the former condemned,
+because Asa, unlike Jehu, was right in heart.  Therefore we may be
+encouraged still to do our little part in God's service, in spite of
+the failures and imperfections of the past, if only we can say, "_Lord,
+Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee_."
+
+
+
+
+AHAZIAH
+
+BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+
+
+"And the destruction of Ahaziah was of God, by coming to Joram; for,
+when he was come, he went out with Jehoram against Jehu the son of
+Nimshi, whom the Lord had anointed to cut off the house of Ahab."--2
+CHRON. xxii. 7.
+
+
+We rarely read this part of the Bible.  And I do not wonder at it.  For
+those particular chapters are undoubtedly dreary and monotonous.  They
+contain the names of a number of incompetent and worthless kings who
+did nothing that was worth writing about, and who were singularly
+alike, so that when you have heard the story of one of them you know
+pretty well the story of all.  It is the good lives that furnish
+attractive reading, because there is so much individuality and variety
+in them, so many pictorial lights and shadows.  A novel in which all
+the characters are mean, would be read by nobody.  The blackness needs
+to be relieved by something good, for darkness is always monotonous.
+Bad men show a dreary sameness in their thoughts and doings, their rise
+and fall.  The godly are like nature illumined by the sunlight,
+manifold and infinite; the wicked are like nature when the darkness
+covers it, uniform and dismal.  Nearly all that is said in the Bible
+about these bad kings, is that they walked in the ways of Ahab or
+Jeroboam or some other wicked person, that they closely imitated the
+doings of their model.  The Bible does not waste space in describing
+them more accurately.  One or two specimens do for all.
+
+But certain things are said about Ahaziah which afford room for
+reflection, and may, perhaps, be useful to us if we take them in a
+right way.
+
+And first let me give you a lesson in genealogy.  These lessons are
+often very wearisome.  Let two men get on talking about who was the
+cousin, father, grandfather, great-grandmother, and what not of such a
+person, and you begin at once to wish that you were out of it, or that
+you could quietly go to sleep until they settle the question; and yet
+it is not so unimportant as it seems.  When a man writes a biography he
+deems it his duty to go back three or four generations, and tell you
+what sort of fathers and mothers and grandmothers and even
+great-grandsires his hero had.  It is very wearisome, but it is very
+necessary.  The story is not complete without that--for breed and
+ancestry go quite as far with men as with cattle, and often further.
+
+Ahaziah's descent was right on one side, but it was very mean on the
+other.  He had David's blood in his veins, and Jehoshaphat's, and
+mingled with that, the venom of heathenism.  His mother was Athaliah,
+and Athaliah was the daughter of Jezebel, and Jezebel was a licentious
+heathen princess whom Ahab on an evil day had made his wife.
+
+There is nothing in the Bible more tragical and more infamous than the
+story of this woman Jezebel, and the part which she took in shaping the
+destiny of the Jewish nation.  She was a Syro-Phenician princess, whose
+father ruled over the powerful and wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon.
+Ahab was caught by her beauty, and by the attractive political alliance
+of which she was the pledge.  Some think that the forty-fifth Psalm had
+reference to her, which speaks of the daughter of Tyre coming with gold
+of Ophir, splendidly arrayed, and bringing a handsome dowry with her.
+Ahab thought he was marrying wealth and dignity, and providing for the
+greatness of his house, and, as often happens in such marriages, he
+forgot to ask for a certificate of character, forgot to ask what sort
+of mother he was providing for his children.  She came with all her
+meretricious splendour covering one of the most fiendish natures that
+ever wore a woman's form.  She developed, if she did not bring with
+her, all imaginable vices--her vindictive passion revelled in blood;
+her religion was the filthiest licentiousness; her beauty became the
+painted face of a common harlot.  Her figure stands forth in the Bible
+as the very worst exemplification of the dark possibilities of human
+nature.  Tennyson says men do not mount as high as the best of
+women--but they scarce can sink as low as the worst.  For men at most
+differ as heaven and earth; but women, worst and best, as heaven and
+hell.  And this woman became, alas, the mother of kings; and all who
+went forth from her inherited her nature, and forgot nothing of her
+training.  For several generations the taint of her evil influence was
+felt throughout the whole court life of Israel, and the licentious
+abominations which she had introduced infected the whole national life.
+Ahab married for money and position, and this was what came of it.
+
+Her influence extended also to the southern kingdom of Judah.  Jehoram,
+King of Judah, must needs marry Ahab's daughter, Athaliah, who was the
+exact counterpart of her mother, Jezebel.  Another wedding in which
+morals and religion were sacrificed on the altar of gain--for by means
+of it a small kingdom was to be cemented in alliance with a greater,
+and another rich dowry to be secured.  And the same dreary results
+followed--a court corrupted with all manner of impurity, sons and
+daughters initiated into all the mysteries of wickedness,
+demoralisation spreading all around.
+
+In this atmosphere Ahaziah was trained.  His mother's name, says the
+record briefly, was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri, that is, the direct
+daughter of Jezebel.  He also walked in the ways of the house of Ahab,
+for his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly--wherefore he did evil
+in the sight of the Lord, for they were his counsellors after the death
+of his father to his destruction.  What else could result in a home of
+which Athaliah was the head, in which the main training and influence
+were supplied by one of Jezebel's brood.  The significant feature in
+all these Chronicles is the immense influence of women in shaping the
+lives and characters of kings.  The men seem to have little to do with
+it; the women are almost supreme.  Sons do not take after their fathers
+but after their mothers.  Again and again we read of a good king who
+had a wicked father--Josiah, Hezekiah, and others.  They shake off
+their evil inheritance; they refuse to follow in their fathers' steps;
+they destroy idolatry, and endeavour to redeem Israel from its
+iniquity.  But whenever this is the case you do not look far without
+discovering the cause.  A good mother has been at work--woman's
+gracious influence has counteracted against the pernicious example of
+the father.  And, on the other hand, we have a long list of vile and
+idolatrous kings, whose fathers were either comparatively worthy, or
+full of downright godliness, and then, invariably, there is some
+evil-minded royal consort at the back of it.  Whenever we can get into
+the secrets of court life, we find that the character of the wife
+determines the moral weight and form of the royal children.  It is her
+training that shapes the men.  How could it be otherwise indeed?  What
+time had those kings to spend on home matters, what with their
+fighting, judging, governing, and attending to all the affairs of
+empire?  How could they do a father's work and watch the training of
+the future kings?  It was left to the mothers, and unhappy they who had
+mothers like Ahaziah's.
+
+And is not this an everlasting story, true to-day as it was in those
+old days?  It is the mother's hand mainly that shapes men for good or
+evil.  Women more than men make the atmosphere of home--the atmosphere
+which young lives breathe, and breathing never lose.  The wise woman
+buildeth her house--the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.  What
+time does a father spend in disciplining the moral and spiritual nature
+of his children?  That has to be done in the hours when he is toiling
+in the warehouse, or resting wearily after the labours of the day, or
+surely it is not done at all.  From a mother the child receives all its
+early religious thoughts.  By her the Bible stories are taught, and
+through her lips the good book comes to be loved.  None can do it
+except her.  It is her eyes that watch every moral movement in the
+young life--every sign of change--every incipient error--every
+beginning of good and evil habit.  No eyes can detect these things as
+quickly and as surely as hers.  And if she is too careless to discover
+them, they will go unobserved and unchecked.  Unhappy is the mother who
+gives to society, or to friendship, or to pleasure the time which she
+owes to her sons and daughters, for she will have to reap in vain
+regrets the penalty of her neglect.  How rarely do good and true women
+and men go forth from a home in which a mother has been too busy with
+the giddy affairs of the pleasurable world to teach and pray with her
+children.  Still more rarely do permanently evil and incorrigible lives
+go forth from a home in which a noble and religious mother has made it
+the chief business of her life to mould and train her children in paths
+of pure thought and reverent purpose.  There is no religious work which
+a woman can do that equals this in importance, and none which secures
+such sure and blessed results.  That, then, is the main thought
+suggested by these chapters--the measureless influence of women in
+forming lives for evil or for good.
+
+Then comes the only other thing that we are told about this
+Ahaziah--that he was killed because he happened to be found in evil
+company.  He lived badly because he followed the counsels of his
+mother, we read, and he died suddenly and tragically because he
+endeavoured to be on very friendly terms with his mother's relatives.
+He was King of Judah, and Judah with all its sins still worshipped God
+and was comparatively free from idolatry.  But Israel, over which
+Jehoram, his mother's brother ruled, was given up to all the
+abominations of heathenism.  Its court was a horrible sink of iniquity,
+and God's judgment had gone forth against it and all its doings.
+Ahaziah must needs join hands and pledge friendship with his relatives,
+and for that purpose visited them--probably he did not intend to do
+more.  It was just to look at the doings of this court, and have a
+taste of its pleasures, and then come back again.  But once there he
+was led on from step to step--found Jehoram's company very attractive,
+entered into his plans, went out with him to battle, took part, no
+doubt, in the worship of his gods, and then while the two were going
+hand and glove together, the long-deferred judgment of God fell on
+Jezebel's house.  The soldier raised up by God for that purpose swooped
+down upon the wicked king and his favourites with resistless force,
+making no distinction; and Ahaziah, being one of the band, shared in
+the general destruction.
+
+The destruction of Ahaziah, says the Book, was of God, by coming to
+Jehoram.  By his coquetting with evil he was made to pay the last
+penalty.  So runs the story, and it seems far removed from everything
+that concerns our lives--yet not so far--things of a similar kind are
+happening every day.  Men who tread the ways of sinners, who enter into
+any sort of fellowship with them, often find themselves involved very
+strangely and suddenly in their shame and their punishment.  You cannot
+go into ways of evil men, or visit any forbidden scenes, or lend your
+countenance in any way to their doings, even though you have no further
+intention than just to look on, but there is ever hanging over you the
+sword of detection.  The policeman appears, or God's light is let down
+upon the scene, and you are discovered as having part in it, and your
+name is stained and your character gone, and your life marked with a
+perpetual stigma of disgrace.  When God's Judgment comes on sin it
+always involves some who are just hovering on the edge of it, as well
+as those who are in the thick of it.  You ought not to be there.
+Remember Ahaziah.
+
+And there are some evil natures and some evil things which a man cannot
+touch in even the slightest degree without being led on from step to
+step, as Ahaziah was, until he was in the thick of Jehoram's iniquity.
+A young woman cannot enter a gin-palace and drink her glass at the
+counter--as I see scores do any night--without gradually going further
+and losing all the modesty and grace of womanhood.  A young man cannot
+touch gambling in any of its forms without almost inevitably being
+drawn under its fascinations, as one who is slowly involved in a wily
+serpent's coils.  An English bishop thinks and has said that a little
+betting is allowable, that if you only indulge moderately in it, you
+may do it with impunity.  He might as well have said that if you only
+steal coppers the law will smile upon you, but if you steal gold you
+will come in for its stripes.  He might as well have said, "If you only
+put your little finger in this fire it will not hurt you, but if you
+thrust your whole hand in, it will burn."  There can be no moderation
+in a thing which is essentially and in all its principles based on
+dishonesty and corruption, and evil excitement and evil greed.  I am
+profoundly sorry that such a thing has been said by one whose word has
+so much authority and influence.  It will be taken by thousands as an
+encouragement to do what they are only too prone and eager to do.  Who
+shall curse what a father in Christ has condescended to bless?  We need
+rather to have all Christian hands and voices raised in passionate and
+tearful denunciation of that which is doing more than anything else to
+demoralise our youth and eat away the very morals of the nation.  We
+need to warn against it and denounce it in whatever form and degree it
+is practised, and to say, "Touch not, taste not, handle not the
+accursed thing."
+
+We must keep away altogether from the men who delight in evil paths,
+and from the things, the very touch of which defiles.  Go not in their
+way, pass not by it.  "If sinners entice thee, consent thou not."
+Learn the lesson of Ahaziah's life, and how his fall came because he
+consorted with wickeder men than himself, and was anxious to see their
+doings.
+
+
+
+
+GEHAZI
+
+BY REV. J. MORGAN GIBBON
+
+
+
+"The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy
+seed for ever.  And he went out from his presence a leper as white as
+snow."--2 KINGS v. 27.
+
+
+Elisha and Gehazi were master and man.  They were more.  They were
+almost father and son.  Elisha calls him "_my heart_," just as Paul
+calls Onesimus his heart.  Yet they parted so.--"_He went out from his
+presence a leper_."  The punishment was terrible.  Was it deserved?
+Had the master a right to pass this sentence?  "_The leprosy of
+Naaman_"--yes! but had Gehazi caught nothing from Elisha?
+
+Most commentators fall on Gehazi with one accord.  He is pilloried as a
+liar.  He is branded as a thief.  He is bracketed with Achan, and
+coupled with Judas.  They flatter the master, they are hard on the man.
+But this is surely a very false reading of facts.  By clothing the
+prophet in spotless white, and tarring Gehazi a deep black all over, we
+violate the truth of things and miss the lesson of the story, which,
+like the sword-flames at Eden's gate, turn many ways.
+
+To take but one out of its numerous suggestions, we have here a story
+for servants of all sorts, and for masters and mistresses too, of all
+kinds.
+
+The section is rich in domestic interiors.  Servants have always formed
+important members of the household, and often their service has risen
+to be a beautiful and holy ministry.
+
+We see here, for example, a great Eastern lady, Naaman's wife, and her
+little Jewish maid, whom the fortunes of war had swept from her home
+"in the land of Israel."  In the division of the spoil, this human mite
+had fallen to Naaman's share, and drifted into his lady's service.  The
+slave-child has evidently reached the woman, perhaps the hungering
+mother's heart, in her mistress; and the sorrow of the woman, for alas!
+she is a leper's wife, has touched the servant's heart.  The burning
+sense of the wrong to herself is cooled and quenched by the pity she
+feels for her master; and the expedition that brought health to Naaman,
+and unspeakable joy to Naaman's wife, was the outcome of a word she
+spoke.  She knew of Elisha, she said what she knew, and great things
+came of it.
+
+She did this, not as a slave of Naaman's wife, but as a free human
+soul, and servant of God.  No tyranny could extort this service.  No
+wealth could pay for this golden secret.  Sometimes a character appears
+but once in the course of a great drama.  The man or woman, comes on
+the stage to deliver one message, and then disappears.  But that one
+brief word has its place in the playwright's scheme, and its effect on
+the action of the piece.  This child was sent to Syria to utter one
+speech, to speak one name, and because she spoke her little speech,
+kindly and clearly, things went better with ever so many people.
+
+"A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," but let there be more than
+money in the wage, and more than labour in the service.  Let no one, in
+being a servant, cease to be a free human soul.  Do you serve in Syria?
+Is your lot cast among those that know not the Prophet?  Well, but
+_you_ are from the land of Israel; speak your speech, tell out the
+Prophet's name.  Be more than servant, more than clerk, more than a
+"hand," an apprentice, a journeyman; be a soul, an influence, a link
+with higher things, a reminder of God, a minister of Christ.
+
+Naaman, too, was happy in _his_ servants.  He was a Bismarckian,
+peppery man.  Accustomed to command, he expected miracles to be done to
+order, and prophets to toe the line.  And because he did not like
+Elisha's manner nor his prescription, he was on the point of returning
+to Syria in a rage.  But he had servants that knew him through and
+through.  They knew what note to sound, and they saved him from
+himself.  The expedition had been suggested by a servant who generously
+paid good for evil.  It was saved from defeat by servants who did for
+kindness what no contract could have specified and no wage could cover.
+They also were souls who knew at times that man was created for
+spiritual service.
+
+But Elisha, too, though doubtless poor, had his servant, and an
+efficient, tactful servant he was.
+
+A very good book might be written on "poor men's servants."  For they
+have had of the very best.  The whole world knows Boswell, and with all
+his faults it loves him still, for he was loyal to a royal soul.  Well,
+most great men have had their Boswells.  When all is known it will be
+found that the men of the five talents have owed much of their success
+and more of their happiness to the fidelity and love of men of the one
+talent.
+
+How well Gehazi served Elisha!  How nobly the servant comes out in that
+exquisite story of the Lady of Shunem.  How jealous he is of his
+master's honour! How dear he was to Elisha's soul, "my heart! my other
+self!"  And yet, he did this thing.  He lied, he cheated, he obtained
+goods by false pretences, he lowered the prophet in Naaman's sight; and
+after all his years of noble service, his master smote him with his
+curse, and he went out of his presence a leper!
+
+But was Naaman's the only leprosy that infected Gehazi?  Had Elisha any
+share in his fall?  After all, it is a sorry business to heal a
+stranger and send forth one's own friend in this fashion.
+
+Nothing can exonerate Gehazi.  His lie remains a lie, say what you
+will.  But our business is not to apportion blame, but to try to find
+out how such things came to be, in order to guard against them in our
+own homes.  If a servant leaves your employ poorer in character than
+when she came to you, if a youth leaves your business harder, colder,
+weaker in will, further from God than when you received him from home,
+it is a clear case for inquiry.  It is our duty to see that young
+people are not exposed to moral infection in our homes.
+
+In the matter of physical infection, two facts are familiar to us all.
+The first is, that mischief enters the system by means of a germ; and
+the second is, that the action of the germ depends very much on the
+condition of health in which it finds a man.  If the man is healthy, he
+is often proof against the arrow that fleeth by day, and the pestilence
+that walketh in darkness.  But if the body is already enfeebled, the
+germs find half their work done for them beforehand.
+
+Well now, these natural laws are valid in the spiritual world.  The
+rules of moral hygiene are summed up in our Lord's prayer, "_Lead us
+not into temptation_," that is to say, do not breathe the germ-laden
+air, and in St Paul's precept, "_Be strong in the Lord_," cultivate
+general spiritual health, safety lies in strength.  Good health is the
+best prophylactic.  There is no precaution so effective as being well.
+
+Now what have we in this narrative?  When the prophet permitted Naaman
+to bow in the temple of Rimmon he did very right, say the chorus of
+commentators.  But the common-sense of mankind has taken a different
+view.  Bowing in the temple of Rimmon has become a byword and a
+reproach.  It signifies something which men feel is not quite right.
+It was, in fact, an indulgence.  Still, perhaps it was wise not to
+force the new-born convert.  Perhaps it did Naaman no harm.  Possibly
+it did Elisha's soul no injury to be so far complaisant towards
+idolatry.  But surely there was a germ of evil in the thing, and this
+germ found a nidus, found a nest in Gehazi's soul, in which to hatch
+its evil brood.  It lighted on Gehazi at the psychological moment.  He
+had seen the gorgeous equipage.  He had gazed on the ingots of gold and
+the great bars of silver.  He had fingered the silks and brocades.
+Elisha had waved them away.  To him they were as child's trinkets.  But
+he had other resources than Gehazi, and when the cavalcade drew off,
+leaving nothing of its treasures behind, his longing grew into a fever
+of desire.  It was so mad of the master to let _all_ that gold and
+silver go, and he so poor!  Gehazi had to bear the brunt of the
+poverty, and tax his five wits to make ends meet.  And to think that a
+gold mine had come to their very door and they had refused to let it in!
+
+But it is too late now--and yet why should it be too late?  The company
+moves slowly.  One could easily catch up with it.  But what to say?
+
+Pilgrims sometimes knock at Elisha's door.  Sons of the prophets from
+the college on Mount Ephraim often come to see the master.  There were
+two last week, or was it the week before?  Without doubt we shall have
+others soon, for they like to talk to the master.  They are miserably
+poor like ourselves, but they have good appetites.  Naaman would be
+delighted to leave something for them.  He would feel easier in his
+mind.  It would be a kindness to let him give something.  True, we have
+none of them in the house at this moment.  But we have had and we shall
+have.  If I say we have them _now_--well, that will only be making a
+little bow in the temple of Rimmon.  Naaman means to do that.  Master
+allows him to do it.  We must not be _too_ strict.  "_As the Lord
+liveth I will run after him and take somewhat of him_!"  Elisha was
+hurt, shamed, and angry.  The sin was great and terrible.  Yet,
+perhaps, had Gehazi met Elijah this would not have happened.  Had
+Elisha sounded the great Elijah-note, "if the Lord is God, follow Him,
+but if Rimmon, then follow him," perhaps the germ of temptation would
+not have found Gehazi even quite such an easy prey,
+
+Mind, I am not whitewashing him or mitigating his crime.  I am trying
+to get at the forces that conspired to make him what he was, and among
+these I have no doubt at all that his master's complaisant permission
+of compromise was a very potent force.  Of course he was wrong, of
+course there is no logical connection between what the master allowed
+in the Syrian general and the great lie Gehazi told.  And yet there was
+a sort of ghastly logic in this poor wretch's procedure.  There are
+many commandments.  But duty is one thing, and if you weaken a man's
+sense of duty by breaking one commandment yourself, you must not be
+surprised if you find him breaking another commandment later on.
+Gehazi was cured of the leprosy of Naaman.  The prophet's angry word
+was not countersigned on high, and one hopes that he also shook off by
+God's assisting grace the ill-effects of Elisha's complacency.  For the
+greater danger lay in _that_.  And does it not still lie there?
+
+Our young people, our children, our servants that minister to our
+comfort, our assistants and clerks that multiply our personal
+activities and help to build up our fortunes, is there no danger to
+their spiritual life in being exposed as they are to the spiritual
+influences which we give off every hour?  They see the cavalcades of
+wealth, they gaze at the ingots of gold and the great white silver
+bars; they look with longing eyes at the silks with colours that come
+and go like the iris on the dove's neck.  The luxuries of meat and
+drink appeal to them.  The temptation to live for these things assaults
+them.
+
+And what help does Gehazi get from Elisha to-day?  What help do young
+men in offices and shops get from masters and heads of departments?
+What help do servants in London homes get from the daily examples of
+mistresses?  What are the inferences drawn in the kitchen from things
+heard and seen in the dining or drawing-room? and what in the nursery?
+Does a young man who sees to the very core of your business say to
+himself, "The master's profession of religion is hypocrisy--_all_
+religion is hypocrisy?"  Then may God help him, for he is smitten with
+the leprosy of Elisha; and may God help you, for it is a sorry business
+to evangelise Asiatics and send your own servants forth from your
+presence lepers white as snow.
+
+Let every master and mistress pray, "_Search me, O God, and know my
+heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any way of
+wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting_."
+
+
+
+
+HAZAEL
+
+BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+
+"But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great
+thing?"--2 KINGS viii. 13.
+
+
+Hazael was the chief minister and prime favourite of Benhadad, the
+Syrian king.  He had been raised from a humble lot and promoted to that
+high post by the partiality of his sovereign, who had doubtless
+discerned his exceptional abilities, and certainly placed implicit
+trust in him.  Just now the king was dangerously ill, and Hazael had
+been sent to inquire of the prophet of Israel as to the probable issue
+of the sickness.  He put the question with seeming anxiety: "Will my
+master recover?"  He spoke as if that was his dearest wish; perhaps he
+did wish it.  But there were evidently other thoughts half-formed,
+lurking and hiding themselves in the background.  Suppose the king
+should die and leave the throne vacant, what then?  May there not be a
+chance for me?  Elisha read these hidden thoughts, and looked the man
+in the face long and steadfastly, until the face turned crimson and the
+head was lowered with shame.  And then the prophet said, "Thy master
+need not die of the sickness; nevertheless, he will die, and I see you
+filling a throne won by murder, and I have a picture before me of the
+terrible things which you will do to my dear land of Israel."  And as
+this vision passed before the prophet's eyes, he wept.  Then Hazael
+gave the answer which stands at the head of this paper.
+
+It is open to two interpretations.  The Authorised Version gives one
+and the Revised Version the other.  According to the first, it is an
+indignant denial; he recoils with horror from the picture of perfidy,
+cruelty, and enormous criminality which the prophet has sketched for
+him.  I am not capable of such a thing, he says; "_Is thy servant a
+dog, that he should do this great thing_?"  According to the other
+reading it is not the crime that he revolts from, but the kingship and
+the greatness that he refuses to believe in.  It seems so improbable
+and all but impossible that he, a man of obscure birth, should climb to
+such eminence.  He exclaims against it as a piece of incredulous and
+extravagant imagination.  "_What is thy servant, which is but a dog,
+that he should do this great thing_?"
+
+Now, I doubt not that both readings may be allowed.  For certainly both
+thoughts were in the speaker's mind.  He did not believe at that moment
+that he could ever be brought to commit such infamous deeds, and he did
+not believe that he could ever attain such high ambitions and power.
+There was a dark moral depth predicted for him to which he was sure he
+would never fall, and there was a certain grandeur and elevation to
+which he was confident he would never rise.  To both things he said,
+"It is impossible," and yet the impossible came to pass.
+
+Now I would have you observe that this is one of the prominent lessons
+of the Bible; on many a page does it bring out an unexpected
+development like this.  Again and again it is the unlikely that happens
+in the lives which figure on its pages.  They rise or they fall in a
+way that no one looked for, and which they, least of all, anticipated
+themselves.  We seem to hear them saying with Hazael, "Impossible," and
+then, before we get far, the thing is done.  Impossible, we say, that
+king Saul should ever descend so low as to deal in witches; or that
+Solomon, the wise, God-fearing youth, should give himself up to the
+sway of lustful passions and idolatries.  Yet that comes to pass.
+Impossible, we say, that the cunning, lying Jacob should ever develop
+into a man of prayer; and the outcast beggar, Jephthah, ever grow into
+a hero-patriot and king.  Yet we see it.  In the Bible stories
+greatness always comes to those who have neither marked themselves out
+for it, nor deemed themselves fit for it; and, on the contrary, its
+most infamous deeds are done, and its most shameful lives lived, by
+those who have given promise of fairer things, and who in their early
+manhood would have scouted the possibility of descending so low.  The
+men whom it describes have no suspicion, to begin with, of the great
+power for good that is in them, or the equally great possibilities of
+evil.  Tell the shepherd youth, David, that he has in him the making of
+a king and an immortal poet, and he will think you are poking fun at
+him.  Tell him that he will one day fall into the crimes of adultery
+and murder, and make all Israel blush for him, and he will be indignant
+enough to strike you to the ground.  Speak to the fisherman, Peter, of
+the commanding influence which awaits him in some coming kingdom of
+God, and he will think you are beside yourself: and then tell him that
+he will one day deny and curse his sworn Master and kindest Friend, and
+he will ask you, Do you think I am a dog or a devil that I should do
+this?  Impossible!  And yet the thing comes off.
+
+Why do the sacred writers give us so many stories of this kind?  Surely
+it is because we need both the warning and encouragement.  It is to
+prove to us that on one side of our nature we are greater than we
+think, and on the other side weaker and lower than we believe.  It is
+to inspire the diffident with courage, and the despairing with hope,
+while it pulls up the forward, the careless, and the over-confident
+with the wholesome and humbling word, "_Let him that thinketh he
+standeth, take heed lest he fall_." These men of the Bible were
+strangely mixed.  They were conspicuous instances of the contradictions
+and surprises which are in us all.  For that is the point: the thing
+comes home to us.
+
+Believe me, we are all a riddle to ourselves.  Each man is to himself,
+and each woman too, the greatest of all mysteries save the one greater
+mystery, God.  None of us know of what elements he is composed, and how
+strangely the good and evil mix and mingle and clash and strive in each
+day's doings, and through the whole of life.  They who believe that the
+saint is all saint, and the sinner all sinner, are blindly and pitiably
+ignorant of human nature.  God has made no man without putting some
+little bit of the Divine image in him.  The worst has some lingering
+trace or ruin of it.  And the best is not so entirely the temple of the
+Holy Ghost that no fouler spirits ever obtain entrance there.  You may
+say that you do not believe in a devil.  Well, that may be; but there
+is something like a devil in all of us at certain times, and I would
+rather believe that it comes from the outside than that it is born and
+bred and originates within.  At any rate, there are in all of us the
+strange oppositions, the darkness and the light overlapping each other,
+the evil and the good ever contending, like Esau and Jacob, in the
+birth hour.  The awful and the blessed possibilities are there, and
+which shall get the uppermost depends first on God, and then upon
+ourselves.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Remember first, then, that we have all a lower side.
+
+
+There is in us what I may call a lurking, crouching, slumbering devil,
+which needs constant watching and holding down with the strong hand of
+self-mastery and prayer.  "Praying always with all prayer, and watching
+thereunto," says the apostle.  In every one of us there is the
+possibility of falling, however high we stand and however near God we
+walk.  Bunyan says, in his immortal story, "Then I saw in my dream that
+by the very gate of heaven there was a way that led down to hell."  No
+man, however ripe in goodness, however firmly rooted and grounded in
+faith, love, and Christian qualities, ever gets beyond the need of
+vigilant sentinel work--watching himself.  He must always be buffeting
+himself, and keeping under his body, as Paul did, lest he himself
+should be a castaway.  Let him grow careless, presumptuous, neglectful
+of prayer, and all the old tempers and passions slowly steal in, and
+bit by bit obtain the mastery, and the Christian disgraces his
+profession, and the saint becomes a sinner again.  Every Christian
+knows this.  He knows the evil powers that are in him.
+
+It is the man who has never fought with his temptation, never prayed,
+who especially needs to be reminded of it; young men and women who have
+been well brought up, who have kept themselves moderately straight so
+far, and who are full of good resolutions.  I hear them say, "Oh I am
+strong enough.  I am not such a fool as to throw myself away in the
+stupid game of the prodigal, in drunkenness, and gambling, and unclean
+living.  I can hold myself in.  I can go just as far as I please.  I
+can indulge to a certain extent, and pull myself up just at the moment
+I please; and as for prayer and seeking God's help, thank my stars I
+can clear a safe course without all that.  I shall not overstep the
+line you may depend upon it."  "_Is thy servant a dog, that he should
+do this_?"
+
+And I answer, yes--there is quite enough of the dog in you, or of the
+devil, if you like the word better, to do this and to do worse
+things--if you play with the dog and let it loose, and let it have a
+free run now and then.  In my time I have heard scores of young men
+talk in this way.  I have heard them laugh scornfully when danger was
+mentioned to them, and I have seen a few of them fortunate enough to
+grow up to manhood with a fairly unspotted character; a few, but not
+many--the greater part have gone wrong, and some deplorably wrong.
+There is hardly one of us can keep that dog fastened up and chained
+down always, unless we rely upon a stronger power than our own.  It
+gets loose at times with the best of us--it runs wild and plays
+dreadful havoc with those who are not the best; there is always in you
+the baser self--always the dry torches of evil passions which a spark
+may kindle--always the moral weaknesses and lusts, half-sleeping, which
+some stronger blast of temptation may awaken and bring out; and if you
+wish to escape the evil and hold fast to the good, you will commit your
+way unto the Lord, and put on the Christian armour, and strengthen
+yourselves by prayer.  Do not presume too much--better men than you
+have fallen every day.  God only can save you from yourselves.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+It is just as needful to remember the other side--the side of better
+possibilities.
+
+
+Some of you are tempted to say at times with Hazael, "_Thy servant is
+but a dog; how can he do these great things_?"  You are disposed to
+underrate your gifts, your opportunities, your happy chances in
+life--in a word, your possibilities.  You despair of finding any
+opening; you are sure that you will never hear a call to come up
+higher; you think your lives must always be ill-paid drudgery, with no
+promotion.  It is sad to work with a conviction of that kind.  You
+never work well if there is nothing to look forward to, and it is
+cowardly to give way to a conviction of that kind.  Perhaps you are not
+specially clever--no, but there are better things than cleverness in
+the world, and things which have more to do with life's real successes.
+
+If you have in you some power of plodding, to do steady work, doing it
+always honestly; if you have perseverance, self-control, a sense of
+duty, a determination to do always the thing that is right, all will be
+well--these are the qualities which lift a man up to the best places,
+and one of those places is being prepared for you if you are worthy to
+fill it.  You say, perhaps, "I can never be a good man.  I can never be
+a Christian.  I am not made for these high things; it is not in me."  I
+answer, "It is in you, or if it be not in you now, God will put it in
+you if you diligently ask Him."
+
+Nay, truly, there are the germs of goodness in every one of us.  Thy
+servant is something more than a dog, though he calls himself that, and
+nothing else.  There is something of the religious emotion in you, and
+that means there is something of the Divine.  You have dreams at times
+of a beautiful life, you have longings for it, sometimes you even set
+out to reach it--and these are all touches of God.  They all prove that
+the Holy Ghost sometimes pays at least a passing visit to your hearts.
+You do not know what God can make of you until you trust and try Him.
+There are greater things by far in you than you have guessed.  Have
+confidence in Him, and He will bring them out.  I can see a man of God
+in you, a pillar in the Church, an honour to the town.  I can see a
+Christian mother in you, a half-sainted woman full of good works,
+bringing children up to noble lives.  It is there in many of you, if
+you do not despise and neglect the gift that is in you, but use it and
+cultivate it prayerfully, and let God bring it to perfection.
+
+
+
+
+MANASSEH
+
+BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+
+
+"Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned
+fifty and five years in Jerusalem."--2 CHRON. xxxiii. l.
+
+
+Fifty and five years--he wore the crown a longer time than any other of
+the house of David.  Of all the kings that reigned in Jerusalem, this
+man's reign filled the largest space; yet he is the one king of Judah
+about whom we are told least.  In the modern city of Venice there is a
+hall which is adorned with the portraits of all the doges or kings who
+ruled that city in the days of its splendour--all except one--one who
+made himself infamous by evil deeds.  Where his portrait ought to be,
+there is a black blank space which says nothing, yet speaks volumes;
+which says to every visitor, Do not think of him, let him be forgotten.
+In some such way Manasseh is disposed of by the sacred writers.  They
+hurry over the fifty-five years; they crowd them into half a chapter,
+as if they were ashamed to dwell upon them, as if they wanted the
+memory of them and of the man to be forgotten.  And that was the
+feeling of all the Jews.  Century after century, and even to the
+present time, Jews have held the man's name in abhorrence.  Do not
+speak of him, they say.  He was the curse of our nation.  He denied our
+faith.  He slew our prophets.  He brought Jerusalem to ruin.
+
+Yet, strange to say, the man so hated and cursed was once a nation's
+hope and joy.  When his father, Hezekiah, lay sick unto death, his
+greatest grief and the profoundest sorrow of his people was caused by
+the thought that he was dying childless.  They prayed for his recovery
+mainly on that ground.  He recovered, and married, and a child was
+born, and the glad father called him Manasseh, which means, God hath
+made me forget--forget my sickness and my sorrow; and all over the land
+the ringing of bells was heard and shouts of rejoicing, and the prophet
+Isaiah sang of the child's birth in those triumphant words which we
+have often heard since in another connection, "_Unto us a son is born,
+unto us a child is given_"; and they thought that all would go well now
+that there was an heir to the throne, and they prayed that he might be
+sturdy and strong, and get over all the ailments of childhood.  They
+hoped more from the child than they did from God.  Their prayers were
+granted.  God gave them their desire, and the result was such as to
+make us doubtful whether we are always wise in pressing such prayers.
+We are never sure that it will be good for us, or good for our darling
+child, that its life should be spared and prolonged in some time of
+crisis.  Often the early death which we dread may be far less cruel
+than the evil which waits beyond.  Better to leave these things in
+God's hands, and say that will be best for all which seems right to
+Thee.  A whole nation prayed for the birth and preservation of this
+son.  That same nation came to curse the day on which he was born.
+
+Strange that a father like Hezekiah had a child like this.  Hezekiah
+was, I think, the best of the Jewish kings, wise and brave, gentle and
+strong, full of reverence and faith, pre-eminently a man who walked
+with God and strengthened himself by prayer, and fought as earnest and
+true a battle for religion and righteousness as we have recorded in the
+Old Testament.  How came it that the son was in all respects his
+opposite?  Did an evil mother shape him, or what?  We cannot tell.
+These are among the saddest mysteries of human life.  The law that a
+child's training and environment determine the character of the man,
+often fails most deplorably.  The wisest man may have a most foolish
+son; the godliest home may send forth a reprobate; the child of many
+prayers may live a life of shame.  When a young man goes wrong, it is
+often both unjust and cruel to lay it on the home training, and to say
+that there has been neglect or want of discipline, or want of right
+example there.  It is adding another burden to hearts already weighted
+with intolerable grief.
+
+For the most part, children will follow their parents in what is good,
+and those nursed in prayer will grow up praying men.  But there are
+hideous exceptions, and sometimes the most Christlike people have this
+cross to bear; and it is the most heart-crushing of all to see children
+turning aside from all that they have held dear, and by the whole
+course of their lives mocking the religious ideals and hopes which were
+cherished for them.  God save all you fathers and mothers from this
+calamity, and God save all our young people from crushing tender hopes
+in this cruel way.
+
+Manasseh's life was spent in undoing what his father had done.  It
+seemed to be his great ambition to overturn and destroy the sacred
+edifice which his father's hands, with untiring prayer and devotion,
+had raised.  Hezekiah had taught his people to trust in God, and in
+reliance on His help to sustain a noble independence separate from
+heathen alliances.  Manasseh hastened to join hands with Babylon, and
+make his nation the vassal of a great heathen empire.  Hezekiah had
+swept the land clean of idols.  Manasseh filled every grove and
+hillside with these vain images again.  Hezekiah had restored the
+Temple worship and the Mosaic ritual, and the moral law, and laboured
+to establish a reign of sobriety, purity, justice, and order.  Manasseh
+outraged all the moralities, and delighted in introducing everywhere
+the licentious abominations of the neighbouring peoples.  Hezekiah had
+cultivated and encouraged prophecy, and gathered about him great and
+noble souls like Isaiah and Habakkuk.  Manasseh drove them from his
+presence, and finally slew them.
+
+There were new lights in those days, as there are now.  Men who sneered
+at all the old thoughts and ways, who swept Moses aside with disdain,
+and thought that David's psalms were poor and feeble things, and that
+the old-fashioned religion was narrow and provincial, and that the
+stories of victories won by faith and miracles wrought by prayer were
+worn-out fictions.  They said that if the nation would prosper, it must
+turn its back on all this stuff, and follow new methods, and profess a
+new religion.  Let them make the great empire, Babylon, their model,
+with its advanced civilisation, and science, and literature, and vast
+stores of wealth, with its worship, too, of the sun, and stars, and
+fire, its religion full of jollity and license, which contrasted so
+happily with the sober and severe worship of Jehovah, and did not
+trouble men with unwelcome moral precepts.  See how great that empire
+had become, and how stationary and unprogressive was their own little
+kingdom, because it clung to the old ways.  That was what the new party
+said.  Away with the old-fashioned thoughts and the old-fashioned
+trusts and beliefs and worship.  We are wiser than our simple-minded
+fathers.  We know a few things more than these narrow-minded and crazy
+prophets.  We will have all things new.
+
+And Manasseh, being a young man and as foolish as he was young, drank
+in greedily their counsels and made himself their leader.  For it is
+ever the temptation of young life to think lightly of their father's
+wisdom, and to despise what they call the narrow religious beliefs, and
+the careful moral scruples of the old, and to fancy that they know all
+things so much better than those who have gone before.  They want to
+try experiments of their own with life, and shake off the shackles of
+old moral laws and religious creeds, and be free to do and think as
+they please, and put the Bible away on the shelf, and shove prayer
+aside as a sort of worn-out heirloom, and have a merrier and better
+time than the old folks knew.  That was the course which Manasseh took,
+just as headstrong and irreverent youths take it now.
+
+Then followed that time which the Jewish people never speak of without
+shame--a hideous reign of idolatry, and immorality, and injustice; an
+awful period of persecution for the few righteous and God-fearing
+people who were left when the prophets had been sought out and slain.
+Isaiah sawn asunder, Habakkuk stoned to death, the faithful driven into
+dens and caves of earth.  It is of this time that we read in the
+Epistle to the Hebrews, in that graphic account of the martyred
+faithful: "_They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted,
+were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and
+goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented: of whom the world was
+not worthy_" (xi. 37, 38).  A few years of this sufficed to pull down
+the whole fabric of religion which Hezekiah had so painfully and
+patiently raised.  For it is so easy to destroy; so easy for folly and
+irreverence to pull down what wisdom and goodness have taken years in
+building; so easy for a vicious and irreligious son to bring shame and
+ruin upon the house which a godly father and mother have spent a
+lifetime in rearing with honour; so easy, by a few rash acts, to
+destroy the character and reputation which the prayers and training of
+years have sought to establish.  It is the easiest thing in the world
+to undo and overturn; there is no cleverness and courage required for
+destroying, the cleverness and courage are called for in building it up.
+
+Manasseh succeeded to his heart's content.  People followed him
+greedily, except the steadfast few.  And presently the prophets were
+all gone, and the worship of the true God was nowhere practised except
+in secret, and the sacred names were no more mentioned, and the land
+gave itself up to all the foul rites and the shameful indulgences of
+the heathen world, And then God's retribution came swiftly.  Where the
+rotting carcase was, there the eagles gathered together.  These same
+Babylonians whose ways the renegade Jews had so much admired and
+imitated, swept down upon them with the talons of a vulture, with
+cruelty that spared neither tender woman nor innocent child, and
+Jerusalem was burned with fire, and Manasseh carried off in chains and
+flung into a foreign prison to muse in solitude over the end of his
+projects, and to find out there that the old ways had been the best.
+
+There we are told that he repented, that he was stricken with shame
+because of all the evil that he had done, and turned with prayer and
+humility to the God whom he had defied.  And we are told that God was
+merciful and heard his entreaties, and accepted his repentance, and
+brought him back after sorrowful years of imprisonment to his land and
+throne.  This is the part of the story which most people emphasise.
+That, they say, is the main lesson of the story--Manasseh's repentance,
+and how God accepted the rebellious sinner at the last and forgave him
+all his iniquities--and they draw from that the conclusion that it is
+never too late to turn to God, and that all the dark doings of a man's
+life are swept clean away, if at any time the heart repents and
+believes.
+
+But this is not the part of the story which the sacred writers dwell
+upon.  In the Book of Kings, where there is another version of
+Manasseh's doings, no mention is made whatever of the repentance, and
+here it is only briefly recorded, and in a somewhat sorrowful tone.
+
+He came back humbled and forgiven, indeed, but not in a happy state of
+mind.  He came back to a ruined kingdom; to a sinful and demoralised
+and destitute people; to see everywhere the sorrow, and the evil and
+the misery and shame which his doings had caused; to be reminded
+continually that his life had been a great wicked and foolish blunder,
+and that there was no undoing the mischief which he had done.  For the
+sake of his repentance he was spared a little longer, but there could
+be little joy in the remaining years of a life like that.
+
+I think that that is the experience of most men who turn away in their
+youth from the example and precepts of godly fathers, who reject the
+truths which make life sober and strong, who betake themselves to
+thoughts of infidelity and ways of sin, and fancy that they can live
+life happily without God and prayer.  There comes a time when they are
+made to feel that their life has been a mistake, that it would have
+been far better for them to have stuck to the old ways, that those
+believing fathers whom they laughed at were right after all; perhaps
+they repent and go back to God at last, and He accepts them; but
+whether repentant or not, they always carry with them an awful burden.
+Shame is upon them for the evil they have done, shame for the life that
+has been spent to so little purpose, regret and humbling that they
+cannot undo the blind and guilty past.  Repentance at the best is a
+poor business when it comes in the evening hours of life.  Better then
+than never; but better far to have gone with God from the beginning.
+That, I think, is the lesson which the wise man will find in the story
+of the evil king.
+
+
+
+
+AMAZIAH
+
+BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+
+"And Amaziah said to the man of God, But what shall we do for the
+hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel?  And the man
+of God answered, The Lord is able to give thee much more than this."--2
+CHRON. xxv. 9.
+
+
+Amaziah, King of Judah, belonged to that numerous class of men who wish
+to stand well with both worlds.  He was what we call in religious
+matters half-and-half.  He wanted to secure the favour and protection
+of God without losing much or anything of the ungodly helps and
+advantages.  One hardly knows whether to describe him as a bad sort of
+good man, or a better sort of bad man.  He was like those gentlemen in
+the _Pilgrim's Progress_ whom Bunyan names Mr Facing-both-ways and Mr
+Pliable.  It depended very much on the company he was in, whether he
+showed a religious face or assumed the other character.
+
+We have an illustration of this doubleness in the incident recorded
+here.  He was preparing to go to war against the neighbouring nation of
+the Edomites, or probably he had learned that they were about to make
+war on him.  For these neighbours, like some others you know, were
+always ready to pick a quarrel.  Edomite and Jew were never long
+without a scrimmage or a battle.  Amaziah, with this business on hand,
+took count of his forces, found that he had three hundred thousand
+soldiers; big enough battalions if they had only had a leader with a
+big heart.  David had scattered those Edomites with an army not
+one-twentieth part the size of that.  But Amaziah was not a David.  He
+must needs have more men.  He sent, therefore, to the king of Israel to
+hire another hundred thousand, and paid him down an enormous sum of
+money for the loan.  Now these men of Israel and their king had fallen
+away from God, and become heathen people, worshippers of Baal, foul and
+immoral as the Edomites themselves.  But Amaziah thought that was of no
+consequence so long as he could increase his fighting force.  The money
+was paid, and the hundred thousand hirelings came.
+
+And then suddenly appeared another man whom he had not sent for, one of
+those prophets or preachers whom kings and other people find very
+troublesome at times, who upset all the nice arrangements, and stop the
+business which promises so well, with an unwelcome "_Thus saith the
+Lord_"; prophets who do not know how to flatter, who cannot be bought
+for a hundred talents, or for any price, and who say what God has given
+them to say whether the great folk like it or not.  This man came
+uninvited, and told the king that he must pack off these mercenaries to
+their own country again, for God was not with them, and God would not
+be with him if he joined hands with idolaters and paid them to fight
+his battles.
+
+It was an awkward position.  Amaziah knew that what the prophet said
+was true, and he believed, moreover, that if God should turn against
+him, that business with the Edomites was likely to end badly for him.
+But, on the other hand, to send that goodly array of fighting men away
+and lose all that gold into the bargain, was both galling to his pride
+and a ridiculous waste of treasure.  He knew well what was the right
+thing to do, but to do it at such a sacrifice, that was the difficulty.
+He was in a strait betwixt two, wriggling and hesitating, and at last
+he cries in his bewilderment, "_What shall we do for the hundred
+talents which I have given to the army of Israel_?"  And the man of God
+answers, "_Never mind the money, let that go; far better forfeit that
+than lose God's help.  The Lord is able to do for thee much more than
+the hundred talents are worth_."
+
+And now, out of this old story, we learn some lessons for this and
+every day.
+
+
+I.
+
+Our difficulties in the way of serving and obeying God are often
+self-made.
+
+
+They are always more or less self-made.  This man pleads his own wrong
+act as a reason why he should not do right now.  He himself has raised
+the obstacle which now stands in the way of obedience.  He ought not to
+have sought the help of an idolatrous king.  He ought not to have
+bargained for these hirelings, he ought not to have paid the money.
+God had not put the difficulty in his way; his own foolish and wicked
+action had created it.  And people are constantly talking as this man
+talked, declaring that there are hindrances and immense difficulties
+which prevent them from doing what is right, prevent them from doing
+what they know to be the will of God.  They talk as if God was somehow
+responsible for those hindrances, when, in fact, their own wrong-doing
+has caused them.
+
+For instance, some of you know perfectly well that you ought to be
+Christians, avowed Christians, that you ought to take the Lord's side
+in the great battle of life; you know that you ought to be His
+servants, followers, and soldiers; you know that that is your duty, you
+cannot help knowing it and admitting it, unless you reject the Bible
+altogether, and deny the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ.  You have known
+from childhood that Christ has claims upon you, and that to live the
+Christian life is your solemn obligation.  It is more than probable
+that you told your mother, your teachers, and yourselves long ago, and
+perhaps many a time over, that you fully intended to give your lives
+and hearts to Christ's service.  But you have not done it yet, and the
+reason is that there are certain self-made difficulties which hold you
+back.  God has not put them in the way--you have built them up
+yourselves.  I hear young men and women say, in the very tone of this
+perplexed king.  But what shall we do for the hundred talents?  If we
+take up religion, how shall we bear the loss which it involves?  How
+are we to get on without those pleasures, self-indulgences, and
+dearly-loved habits which Christ's service would cut us off from?  How
+are we to abandon those very pleasant, but not very inspiring and pure,
+companionships, with and among which we spend most of our leisure time?
+How are we to resign all our free and easy and thoughtless ways, our
+loose talk, our vain and sinful imaginations?
+
+These are your difficulties, are they?  But who made them for you?
+Heaven did not send them.  I am not sure, even, that the devil was the
+author of them.  You made every one of them yourselves.  It was your
+own weak yielding that formed those habits so dear to you.  It was
+because you preferred your own way to God's that you took to pleasures
+and self-indulgences which were wrong in His sight.  It was your own
+choice that sought out and formed friendships and companionships of the
+ungodly sort.  If you have any joys, delights, and associations which
+Christ would compel you to resign, they are only such as you ought
+never to have entered upon.  They are self-made difficulties which
+ought never to have been made; and now, with curious inconsistency, you
+are urging them as reasons why you cannot serve God.  You are using the
+sinful things which you have done in the past as an excuse for not
+doing the right and noble thing now.
+
+There are hundreds of people who, if they could begin again, would join
+the ranks of the religious--at least they think they would, and perhaps
+say it.  If we could just start with a clean sheet, we would be
+Christians, we would walk in the noble and faithful way.  But then, you
+see, we cannot undo the years that have been lived in the other way.
+We have committed ourselves to the irreligious side.  We have made all
+who know us understand that we do not care about religious things.  We
+have talked about them carelessly, perhaps contemptuously, as if we put
+no value upon them at all.  We have made a reputation of that sort, and
+now it stands in the way.  We cannot go back of all our old
+professions; the inconsistency would be manifest.  No one expects it of
+us.  No one would believe if we did it.  There you have the self-made
+difficulties again.  Because you did wrong all those years, you must
+needs go on doing wrong.  Because you talked and acted in an
+unbelieving way, you must not now change into the higher and prayerful
+way.  Because you have robbed God and your own souls so long, there is
+nothing for you but to continue repeating the offence.  Yet these, when
+you name them, are so absurd, that one could almost laugh at them.  The
+conviction that you have hitherto been on the wrong side is the one
+thing that ought to force you now to the right side.  Why should you
+perpetuate blunders, follies, and misdoings?  Why should the evil past
+chain you?  Let the dead bury its dead--forget the things which are
+behind.  You have paid the hundred talents to the wrong master.  Why
+should you go on paying because you have done it once?  Let God's mercy
+cover and forgive that.  And now pay your vows and give your lives to
+Him henceforth.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+We are held back from the right thing by the fear of the loss which it
+will involve.
+
+
+We say with poor, frightened Amaziah, But what about the hundred
+talents?  They will be clean gone if I obey the voice of God.  The
+hundred talents take many forms, but the principle is always the same.
+We shall lose a little in the way of business, if we make up our minds
+to be scrupulously honest, and to speak the simple truth.  We shall
+forfeit a little of our present popularity, if we take the course which
+conscience dictates.  We shall have to forego and neglect certain
+things, and suffer loss, if we undertake Christian work.  We shall have
+to give up many an easy hour, many a light and frivolous hour, many an
+open and secret sin, sweeter to us than honey, if we confess the Lord
+Christ, and take up the burden of discipleship.  The hundred talents
+block the way, and rather than let them go, we let God go, and
+sacrifice all the sanctities, and all the precious and immortal things.
+
+And this answer comes to all of us--the answer which the prophet gave
+to the hesitating king as he stood balancing the hundred talents
+against the duty of the hour: "_The Lord is able to give thee much more
+than this_."  Better to win thy great battle and lose the talents, than
+keep the money and lose thyself and everything in the impending
+struggle.  God is not so poor that He cannot pay His servants as ample
+wages as they ever get from other masters.  It is not the same kind of
+pay, but it is always, in the long-run, larger and better.  No man ever
+does the right thing at God's command, without receiving eventually
+sufficient wages for it--joy even in this life.  Whatever immediate
+losses he may incur, there will be more than compensating gains.  The
+man who lives an upright, conscientious, pure and kindly life, wronging
+no one, showing justice and mercy to all, is always the happier man;
+richer in all his thoughts and emotions, richer in friendships and
+affections, richer in peace of mind, in abiding satisfactions, richer
+in hopes.  He has within him a well-spring of joy which never ceases to
+flow.  Righteousness is not a losing business: it has the best part in
+this life, and in that which is to come.
+
+Whatever you resign at Christ's call: whatever His service costs you in
+the way of sacrifice: however much you must give up in the shape of
+pleasure, ease, and agreeable habits--there will be more given to you
+in return.  When Christ asked the disciples to leave all things and
+follow Him, He said nothing about the rewards--not just then.  He told
+them to take up their cross and come after Him; that was all.  He spoke
+often to them about the pains they would have to endure, the scorn they
+would meet with, the tribulation they would have to pass through.  When
+he called the last of the apostles, Paul, He even said, and it was the
+only promise He gave, "_I will show him how great things he must suffer
+for My name's sake_" (Acts ix. 16).  No talk of rewards and gains at
+first.  He knew the men.  He knew their eagerness to do what was right
+and to obey the voice of God.  Men who have the right spirit, men with
+some fire of enthusiasm, do not need crowns held before them to draw
+them into the true and noble way.  They are almost glad to think that
+crosses and self-sacrifices await them in that way.  Christ spoke no
+words at the beginning about gains and rewards.  Come, because I want
+you, and God asks you, and it is your duty: but afterwards, when they
+had obeyed His call, He talked to them often about the gains.  They had
+begun to understand them then.  There is no man who hath left anything
+for My sake, who shall not receive a hundredfold in this present time,
+and in the world to come, life everlasting.
+
+And we all learn in a measure what that means, when we have faithfully
+served Christ for a little time.  You talk about the sacrifices and
+losses of the Christian life.  Yes, but no man is fit to be called a
+Christian who has not found in Christ ten or twenty times as much joy
+as he has lost.  If there were no hereafter, no future crowns at all,
+it would be a terrible disappointment, but even, apart from that, the
+present life of every one who believes in Christ and does Christ's
+work, and loves as Christ loved, is richer, fuller, wider, and happier
+in almost every way than the life which knows Him not.  What about the
+hundred talents? you say, and I answer with the prophet, "_The Lord is
+able to give thee much more than this_."
+
+
+
+
+JABEZ
+
+BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+
+
+"And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren."--1 CHRON. iv, 9.
+
+
+This is a curious fragment of biography, half-hidden in a dreary mass
+of wholly uninteresting names.  We cannot conjecture how it got there.
+It seems to have no connection either with what comes before or what
+follows.  It is like a sweet little poem in the midst of a dry,
+genealogical chart; or like a real, living face with the flush of warm
+colour in it, speaking amid endless rows of mummies or waxwork effigies.
+
+It is indeed the short, incomplete story of a life with neither
+beginning nor end.  We are not told who his father was, or who his
+mother was, or what tribe or family he belonged to.  Not a word about
+origin, descent, pedigree.  And there seems to be a purpose in this.
+For the sacred writer at this point is doing nothing else but tracing
+pedigrees.  These four chapters are to us the most useless in the
+Bible: names, nothing but long-forgotten names.  Names of everybody's
+father, grandfather, great-grandfather, back to a remote antiquity.  I
+question whether there are many Bible readers who have ever laboured
+through the list.  Yet these family trees, as we may call them, were
+very precious to the Jews.  They thought as much of long descent as my
+lord Noodle does now.  It swelled them immeasurably in self-importance
+if they could trace their lineage back in unbroken line to one of the
+twelve patriarchs, or to one of those who came out of Egypt.  And the
+historian ministers to this prejudice or vanity by diligently recording
+the whole dry catalogue, and then, as if weary of the business, or,
+perhaps, with just a touch of scorn, he introduces this one name as
+something worth talking about.
+
+Here was a god-made nobleman, whose heraldry need not be written on
+earth, because it is more surely written in heaven.  All the rest were
+their fathers' sons, and that was about all.  This man did not need a
+pedigree: he won a name and reputation for himself without the help of
+a distinguished ancestry.  By prayerfulness, and energy, and courage,
+he fought his way from obscurity to honour.  And when that happens,
+when a man has fought the fight with adverse circumstances and overcome
+them, when he has made his mark in the world by sheer force of work and
+character, no one cares to grope through musty fusty parchments in
+search of his progenitors.  What does it matter!  God has given him a
+certificate of noble birth; that was surely what the historian meant:
+"_Jabez was more honourable than his brethren_."
+
+Now there are two or three touches in this little story worth noticing.
+God sends us some of our best joys in the guise of sorrows.
+
+
+I.
+
+He came into the world without a welcome.
+
+
+I venture to say, and I thank God for it, that there is hardly one of
+my readers of whom that can be said.  No matter into what home you were
+born, there was a welcome awaiting you on the part of one at least.  It
+may be that no one else was particularly glad, that every one else
+looked upon you as one too many; but your mother at least met you with
+a sweet kiss which plainly said, thank God for this gift.  Here,
+however, there was not even that; this child was received with
+misgivings and fears, and awoke no joy in the mother's breast.  She
+called his name Jabez, which means sorrowful, because she had borne him
+in sorrow.
+
+Of course, we do not know what lies behind that, but it was something
+of a heart-burning or heart-breaking kind; either the father was dead,
+or the home was in a state of terrible poverty and distress, or the
+child was a child of shame; you can only guess, and all your queries
+will probably be wide of the mark.  But the mother looked mournfully
+upon him, and wished he had not come, and could not believe that a life
+which commenced so untowardly would ever be anything better than a
+burden to her, and a misfortune and misery to himself.  She expressed
+her fears and forebodings in the name which she gave him--Jabez, the
+child of sorrow.
+
+And while she was gloomily predicting his future with the black colours
+of her despondency, God was writing the child's story in golden lines
+which would have set her heart leaping for joy could she have read
+them.  This despised one was to win for himself a noble name, and build
+up the house in honour, and become his mother's pride, and make her
+young again in hope and gladness.
+
+What fools we are when we set ourselves to forecast the future of our
+children!  They rarely develop on the lines we draw for them; the most
+promising of them sometimes flatter us in the bud and blossom, and mock
+us in the fruit.  Where we hope most there comes most heartache, our
+favourites are made our burdens, our pride is humbled by a harvest of
+sorrow.  And where we have bestowed most tenderness we get most
+ingratitude--the child of many gifts, the joy of the household, the
+flower of the flock, turns out the nightmare of our lives, the one
+unhappy failure which costs us endless tears.
+
+And perhaps it is partly our own fault, because we have pampered,
+flattered, and indulged them too much.  Ah! and just as often the
+reverse is true--the child whom in our hearts we called Jabez; the
+slow, dull child so hard to teach, so unresponsive, or perhaps so
+wilful and obstinate that we never thought or spoke of him save with
+secret fears and misgivings--the child who was always to be a burden
+and a cross to us, develops by-and-by in beautiful and unexpected ways,
+grows into moral strength and religious grace, becomes honourable in
+the sight of all men, and saves our old age from going down with sorrow
+to the grave.  The golden harvest of our lives grows not where we look
+for it, but often in the neglected places where God bids it grow.
+Where our pride built its palace of content we find emptiness and
+shame, and that which we almost cursed God for sending us becomes our
+crown of rejoicing.  She called his name Jabez, my sorrow, and lo! he
+became her very consolation, most honourable of all.
+
+
+II.
+
+Faith wins the battle of life against many odds.
+
+
+Yes! this is indeed a romance of faith--faith overcoming the world.
+This child or youth starts out with all things against him.  He is
+likely to grow up into an Ishmaelite if he grows up at all.  He starts
+with an ill-starred name--a name that spells misfortune.  He starts
+without his mother's blessing and without a glimmer of hope to cheer
+him; no father to give him a helping hand by the way--without
+endowment, fortune, family, or friends.  What chance can there be in
+the race for one so heavily handicapped?  Failure is written on his
+brow by the hand that nursed him.  Failure is written on all his
+circumstances.  It will be a desperate struggle all through.  There
+will be none of the prizes of life for him.  If he gets a bare living
+wage, it is as much as he may expect.
+
+That is what he has before him, apparently!  Well, for one thing, he
+puts on courage, and starts on his way singing _Nil desperandum_.  And
+then, knowing well that he has few or no human friends, he falls back
+on the Father of the fatherless and the Helper of those who have no
+other help.  He relies on faith instead of fortune.  He will make
+prayer his main weapon, and the light of the Lord his guide, and duty
+his pole star.  He will pursue a straight course, avoiding evil, trying
+to feel the hand of God upon him, and the watchful eyes of God over
+him.  And he will make a brave fight of it day by day, doing his best,
+and leave a higher power to determine what shall follow.  That is what
+we read between the lines of this story.  Nay, that is all expressed.
+"_He called on the God of Israel_."  He committed his life to the
+ordering of the Almighty.  And the Almighty promoted him.  He became
+more honourable than his brethren.
+
+They are poor creatures who complain that the battle is lost before it
+is even begun, who groan that the chances of life are all against them
+before they have made one brave venture and endeavour; and they are
+vain and self-deceiving men who fancy that the victory will be easy
+because somebody has given them a good start, and they have the backing
+of family, social position, wealth, and mental gifts.  If some of you
+think because your fathers stand high, because your education has been
+well looked after, because there are unlimited money and plenty of
+friends to push you on--if you think that because of these things you
+can dispense with the fear of God, and the daily obligations of duty,
+and make pleasure and self-indulgence your main ends, and do without
+honest, persevering, self-denying toil, you will be miserably
+disappointed.  God has some hard things to say to you before you get
+far on in years.  It does not matter how promising one's beginnings, if
+there is no steady, conscientious brave self-discipline, and endeavour.
+
+Life is always a failure and a disgraceful thing with a downward
+course, if there is no serious purpose in it and no great thoughts.
+And if you are ever tempted to say, as many do, that there is no hope
+for a life which commences heavily weighted; that all the chances go to
+those who are clever, and richly endowed; that if a youth begins with
+no money to back him and no friends to push him into promotion, he must
+remain chained down to that low condition to the end--then I point you
+to this little bit of biography.  I could take you round a certain town
+and point you to a hundred men who have repeated that bit of biography
+in their own lives, and I tell you that even now the chances are
+plentiful: waiting at the feet of those who tread life's way, a brave
+heart within and God overhead, and that no one need despair, however
+unpromising his start, who makes God his guide, and prayer his
+inspiration, and duty his chosen companion, and shuns evil, and pursues
+that which is good.  Faith and loyalty to conscience and a courageous
+temper are still the weapons which conquer in the fight.  Jabez, the
+child of sorrow and misfortune, became more honourable than all his
+brethren.
+
+
+III.
+
+And now I commend this prayer to all of you--the prayer which this
+youth offered when he went out carrying his unhonoured name and empty
+hand into the rough places of the world.  It is a beautiful prayer.  It
+is on the whole a wise prayer.  There are better and more Christian
+prayers in the gospels and epistles; but in the Old Testament there are
+few prayers more worthy of imitation than this.
+
+He asked that "_God might bless him indeed_," that is, above every
+human blessing and favour, that he might, by his life and conduct,
+deserve it He asked what we may all safely and humbly ask of God,
+provided that we give a large and not a low meaning.  He asked that
+"_God would enlarge his coast_."  If that meant broad estates, you had
+better drop it out of your prayer.  But if it means to have your life
+enlarged, your sympathies and interests widened out, your influence and
+your power of service increased, it is such a prayer as Christ might
+have taught you.  Never forget to offer it.  He asked that "_the hand
+of God might be with him_"; that every day he might feel the leadings
+and take no step which was not a step approved by God.  And he asked
+that the watchful and restraining power of the Almighty would "_keep
+him from evil_."
+
+You will do well to offer that prayer at the beginning.  You will do
+well to offer it every day to the end.  It is a prayer that will keep;
+you will find it fresh each morning.  And every day will be a better
+day which is thus commenced, and every life will grow honourable in the
+sight of men, and beautiful in the sight of God, which develops in the
+spirit of it.
+
+
+
+
+SIMEON
+
+BY REV. H. ELVET LEWIS
+
+
+The Temple shows to better advantage at the beginning of the Gospel
+history than at its close.  As we follow our Lord through the events of
+the last week, we meet no winsome faces within its precincts.  Annas is
+there, and Caiaphas; Pharisees too, blinded with envy; but there is no
+Zacharias seen there, no Simeon, no doctors of the law even, such as
+gathered around the Boy of twelve.  If any successors of these still
+frequented the sanctuary, they are lost in the deep shadow cast by a
+nation's crime.  Perhaps we may consider those whom we meet on the
+threshold of our Lord's life as the last of an old regime of prophetic
+souls, the last watchers passing out of sight as the twilight of a
+coming doom thickened and settled on the Holy City.
+
+But there he stands, the gracious, winsome old man, whom death is not
+permitted to touch till the Star of Bethlehem has risen.  "_It was
+revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before
+he had seen the Lord's Christ_!"  He is like a dweller of the spiritual
+world, who only returns to visit earthly ways.  For him the veil,
+though not as yet rent, has worn thin, and he is more familiar with the
+voices from beyond it than with the voices of earth.  The priest, the
+Levite, the Rabbi, pass him like shadows: the Holy Ghost is his living
+companion and teacher.  Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra might well have
+borrowed his song from the lips of this aged saint:
+
+      "Grow old along with me!
+      The best is yet to be,
+    The last of life, for which the first was made:
+      Our times are in His hand
+      Who saith, 'A whole I planned,
+  Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'"
+
+Consider his CHARACTER: "_the same man was just and devout_."  Inward
+and outward are in equipoise; he does not make frequent prayers atone
+for equally frequent lapses in duty.  He looks upon men in the light
+which has risen upon him through looking upon God.  He brought with
+him, from the Throne of Grace, the tranquil beams which helped him to
+perceive what he owed to his fellow-men.  He was so subdued to charity,
+that his one expectation was the consolation of Israel.  He was no
+prophet of doom; perhaps he was even blind to the moral deterioration,
+the blight of ideals, growing more wasteful, every day, of the nation's
+best life.  To him, Israel was still more in need of consolation than
+chastisement.  Alas! for these gentle-souled patriots, whose hopes rise
+from their own heart's goodness, and not from their nation's worth!  So
+obscure, so devout: while the great ones sin, they pray; while the
+popular priests lead in worldliness, they retire into God's
+hiding-places to intercede.  They have private paths into God's
+Paradise: they do not always see the cherubim with flaming sword.  God
+often calls them home before the stormy dawn of the evil day.  So they
+live and die, waiting for the consolation.
+
+Consider, again, his HOLY FELLOWSHIP: "_the Holy Ghost was upon him_."
+His heart became the ark of the Heavenly Dove, wandering over the grey
+waters; and to him was the olive leaf brought.  He looked past the face
+of the Rabbi and the priest, not contemptuously, but wistfully,
+wondering why he must: he looked past them, and beheld in the dawning
+shadow a diviner Face.  He heard secrets which would be foolishness to
+others, even to frequenters of the Temple and to robed priests.  He
+thought of death peacefully; but that other Face always came, faintly
+but immutably, between him and the Last Shadow.  The Lord's Christ
+first, death after.  What gracious ways God has of treating some of
+these simply-trusting children of His!  How graciously He orders the
+course of spiritual wants for them!  "_And the evening and the
+morning_" are--each day.
+
+"_And he came by the Spirit into the Temple_."  He required no
+ecclesiastical calendar, no book of the hours.  This obscure denizen of
+the sanctuary had a dial in his own soul, and the silent shadow on the
+figures came from no visible sun.  Be sure that there are men and women
+still, just, and fearing God, who anticipate the days of heaven, and
+almost win their dawning.  How often must Simeon have come, waiting:
+and yet how fresh was his hope each time!  He fed on God's
+disappointments; the unfulfilled was his hidden manna.
+
+Consider his ONE GREAT DAY.  An obscure worshipper suddenly becomes the
+richest, most honoured man in all the world: in his arms he holds God's
+Incarnate Son.  Yesterday was a day of earth, tomorrow also may well be
+a day of earth: but this, a day of heaven!  Alas! but only to him.  To
+others this, too, is a very day of earth.  Did some officiating priest
+watch the little group of peasant parents showing their first-born to
+an obscure worshipper?  And did he look, without a stain of contempt
+upon his vision?  And yet Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome, had no such gift
+and prize as the arms of that humble dreamer held.  Who would not have
+taken his place, had they known!  It is well to be reckoned God's
+intimate, lest we miss the Child.
+
+  "The sages frowned, their beards they shook,
+    For pride their heart beguiled;
+  They said, each looking on his book,
+      'We want no child.'"
+
+But Simeon had dwelt nearer God than they--nearest God of all that came
+to the Temple that day.  And so God trusted him with His Best.
+
+Then, once more, consider his PROPHETIC PRAYER.  He was now ready to
+depart.  He had arrived at the house where the chamber of peace looks
+towards the sunrising: why should he return to the warfare again?  He
+was unfitted for earth, by the face of that Child: he would go where
+such a vision would not be marred by earthly airs!  "_For mine eyes
+have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of
+all people: a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy
+people Israel_."  The sentinel has been long on duty: now the watch is
+done, "_now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace_."  And as he
+passes from his well-kept post, his heart's charity overflows, and
+Gentile and Jew are covered with his blessing: the Gentile even coming
+first, as though, perhaps, he perceived that "the salvation of the Jews
+could only be realised after the enlightenment of the heathen, and by
+this means"--Godet suggests.  To the darkened souls of the pagan
+world--light: to the humiliated Jewish people--glory.  Israel had seen
+and lost many a glory: it had seen the glory of conquest, of wealth, of
+wisdom, of ritual, of righteousness: but in the little Child was the
+sum and essential radiancy of all glory that had been, the earnest of
+all glory that was to be.  Eternally, Christ is "_the hope of glory_."
+
+Consider also his PERFECT CANDOUR.  He looked in the Child's face, he
+looked in the mother's face, with all the tenderness and love that made
+it half divine; and then this disciple of the Spirit, strangely moved
+from his wonted calm, described truth purely as he saw it.  He scanned
+the future, heard the sound of many a fall, caught the hiss and cry of
+uneasy consciences against the "sign"; he saw the gleam of the sword,
+and the wounded mother's heart; he saw the revelations of good and of
+evil which the child would surely effect.  One might not unnaturally
+conclude that these presentiments were of the day--of that very hour.
+He had hitherto walked and dwelt in the light of consolation; he had
+dreamed his tranquil dream "_beside still waters_."  But in this moment
+of contact with God, he was made strong to see the darkness which is
+never absent from the azure of truth--"a deep, but dazzling darkness."
+So to young Samuel came the sorrowful vision of the fall of the house
+of Eli; so to the old prophet-saint now glittered the gleaming arrows
+of truth.  But neither scorn nor wrathful eloquence moves him, in view
+of what he saw: he simply accepts this burden of the Lord, and bears
+it, without murmuring or exulting.  He sees the "_fall and rising again
+of many in Israel_"; it is God's will: let His will be done!  "_A sword
+shall pierce through thy own soul also_": bow, mother-heart, to the
+purposes of God's heart of love!  "_In peace_" this servant of the Lord
+still stands; "_in peace_" he departs.  Blessed are they whom darkling
+truths may grieve, but not distract; whom stormy revelations beat upon,
+but cannot shake.  They live in the house founded upon a rock.
+
+What presentiment of his nation's doom came to him in that moment of
+clearer insight, of more candid intercourse with truth?  "_The thoughts
+of many hearts_"--"the uneasy working of the understanding in the
+service of a bad heart":--how much was revealed, how much was
+mercifully concealed?  We cannot tell; but strength was given him to
+bear the gleam of the vision, and still wait.  "_O rest in the Lord;
+wait patiently for Him_."  He saw the Child go out of the Temple; and
+if, for a moment, a breath as of a chill wind smote his soul, he
+retired into the deeper consolations of God, where the sun smites not
+by day, nor the moon by night.  If it was his last visit to the Temple,
+he had seen what would have made it worth his while to have gone there
+every day for seventy years or more.  And let it not be forgotten that
+God still gives His Child to those who humbly, faithfully wait for the
+consolation of Israel.
+
+
+Such a picture as that of Simeon gives piety its divinest charm.  It is
+not simply that men have wished to be in his place; but--what is far
+better and far more practical--they have wished to be in his spirit.
+He draws them towards him, and after him.  He stands in a glorious
+company of winsome souls, who not only lead to heaven, but attract men
+on the way.
+
+  "They are, indeed, our Pillar-fires
+        Seen as we go;
+  They are that City's shining spires,
+        We travel to:
+      A sword-like gleam
+        Kept man for sin
+      First out; this beam
+        Will guide him in."
+
+
+
+
+PONTIUS PILATE
+
+BY REV. PRINCIPAL WALTER F. ADENEY, D.D.
+
+
+In spite of the fact that he condemned Jesus to death, the Gospels
+present us a more favourable portrait of Pontius Pilate than that which
+we derive from secular historians.  Josephus relates incidents that
+reveal him as the most insolent and provoking of governors.  For
+instance, the Jewish historian ascribes to him a gratuitous insult, the
+story of which shows its perpetrator to have been as weak as he was
+offensive.  It was customary for Roman armies to carry an image of the
+emperor on their standards; but previous governors of Judaea had
+relaxed this rule when entering Jerusalem, in deference to the strong
+objection of the Jews to admit "the likeness of anything."
+Nevertheless Pilate ordered the usual images to be introduced at night.
+When they were discovered, the citizens protested vehemently.  Pilate
+had the crowd that he had admitted to his presence surrounded with
+soldiers, and threatened them with instant death.  But they threw
+themselves on the ground, protesting that they would submit to this
+fate rather than that the wisdom of their laws should be transgressed.
+The governor had not reckoned on this.  He was only "bluffing," and now
+he had to climb down, and the images were removed.  On another
+occasion, described by the same historian, Pilate had seized the sacred
+money at the Temple and employed it in building an aqueduct, a piece of
+utilitarian profanity which enraged the Jews to such an extent that a
+vast crowd gathered, clamouring against Pilate and insisting on the
+stoppage of the works.  Then the governor sent soldiers among the
+people, disguised in the garb of civilians, who at a given signal drew
+their clubs and attacked them more savagely than Pilate had intended,
+killing and wounding a great number.  Although Josephus does not
+mention the incident recorded by St Luke (xiii. 1), in which Pilate
+mingled the blood of some Galilean pilgrims with their sacrifices, this
+is entirely in accordance with his brutality of conduct in the events
+the historian records.  Philo goes further, giving a story told by
+Agrippa, according to which Pilate hung gilt shields in the palace of
+Herod at Jerusalem, but was compelled to take them down as the result
+of an appeal to Tiberius Caesar, and adding that Agrippa described
+Pilate as "inflexible, merciless, and obstinate."  He says that Pilate
+dreaded lest the Jews should go on an embassy to the emperor,
+impeaching him for "his corruptions, his acts of insolence, his rapine,
+and his habit of insulting people; his cruelty, and his continual
+murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending,
+gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity."  Josephus is not
+trustworthy, always writing "with a motive," and Philo must be
+considered prejudiced, since he saw too much of the worst side of the
+Roman treatment of Jews; and the wholly unfavourable verdict of these
+two writers should be qualified by what we read in the New Testament
+concerning the subject of them.  The interesting point is that we have
+to go to the Christian documents for the more calm and just estimate of
+the man who crucified Christ.  This fact should deepen our sense of the
+fairness of the evangelists.  They evince nothing of that bitterness of
+resentment which the Jews, quite naturally, as the world judges,
+cherished towards their oppressors.  They were the followers of One who
+had taught them to love their enemies, and who, when in mortal agony,
+prayed to God to forgive the men who had inflicted it.  But further,
+the early Christians discriminated between the Jewish authorities, who
+planned and purposed the death of Christ and really compassed it, and
+Pilate, who was but a weak instrument in the hands of these men.  The
+fact that the evangelists so clearly mark this distinction is a sign
+that they are in close touch with the events, and that they faithfully
+record what they know to have taken place.  In a word, it is clear that
+we have a more just and accurate portrait of Pilate in our Gospels than
+the representations of him by Josephus and Philo, who are thus seen to
+be less trustworthy historians than the New Testament writers.
+
+The word "Pilate" as a proper name has been variously explained.  Some
+have derived it from the Latin _pileatus_, meaning one who wore the
+_pileus_, the cap of a freed slave, and so have regarded the Roman
+governor by whom Jesus was tried as a man who had been raised from the
+ranks of slavery.  The worst condemnation of slavery is, that it
+degrades the characters of its victims, developing the servile vices of
+cowardice, meanness, and cruelty--all of which vices are manifest in
+Pilate's character.  But such a promotion as this theory implies would
+be most improbable.  A more likely explanation connects the name with
+_pilum_, a javelin.  The earlier name Pontius suggests the family of
+the Pontii, of Samnite origin, well-known in Roman history.  It was
+customary to confine such an office as that which Pilate held to
+knights, men of the equestrian order.  Nevertheless, it was not a very
+dignified office.  It is described indefinitely in the Gospels as that
+of a "governor."  But Pilate is designated more distinctly by Tacitus
+and Josephus as _procurator_ of Judaea.  This official served under the
+Legate of Syria.  His proper duty was simply to collect the taxes of
+the district over which he was appointed.  Thus he would be likely to
+come into contact with the chief local collectors, such as Zaccheus;
+and in this way he may have heard, and that not unfavourably, of One
+who was known as the "Friend of publicans and sinners."  But in the
+turbulent districts--such as Judaea and Egypt--the procurators were
+entrusted with almost unlimited powers, subject to an appeal to Caesar
+on the part of Roman citizens.  Soldiers were sometimes needed for the
+forcible collection of taxes, and the disturbed condition of these
+parts demanded an official in residence who could act at once and on
+the spot.  The punishment of turbulence was with the rigour of martial
+law, which really means no law at all, but only the will of the man in
+charge of the army.  A subordinate official lifted to a position of
+almost irresponsible power--such was Pilate.  We can well understand
+how a man with no moral backbone would succumb to its temptations.
+Pilate was a much smaller man than Gallic the proconsul at Corinth, and
+that other proconsul at Cyprus, Sergius Paulus, whom St Paul won over
+to Christian faith.  But his pettiness in the eyes of Roman society
+would lead him to magnify his importance in the little world he was
+trying to rule like a king, though often with consequences humiliating
+to himself.
+
+Pilate's headquarters were at Caesarea, by the sea coast, the Roman
+capital of Palestine; but he came up to Jerusalem with a troop of
+soldiers at the Passover, to prevent any disturbance among the vast
+hosts of pilgrims then gathered together in the city, just as Turkish
+soldiers now mount guard at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during the
+Easter celebrations, to prevent the Christians from quarrelling and
+fighting.  That is how it was he happened to be present when Jesus was
+arrested and brought up for trial.  In this fact also we may see why
+the Jewish authorities felt it necessary to hand their Prisoner over to
+the Roman governor; although, a few years later, they were able
+themselves to execute the death sentence on Stephen in the Jewish mode,
+by stoning, and still later to do the same with James, the Lord's
+brother.
+
+All four Gospels refer to the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate; but
+the fullest information is to be obtained from the third and fourth.
+St Luke throughout both his works seizes every suitable opportunity for
+setting out the scene of his story on the large stage of the world's
+history, and he is especially interested in showing it in relation to
+the imperial government.  Thus, while Matthew only connects the time of
+the birth of Jesus with the reign of Herod, a Jewish note of time, Luke
+also associates it with Caesar Augustus and the chronology of Rome; and
+later, while Matthew does not say when John the Baptist began his work,
+but notes the imprisonment of John as the occasion of the commencement
+of our Lord's public ministry, Luke carefully records that it was "in
+the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, _Pontius Pilate
+being governor of Judaea_" (Luke iii. 1), that John the Baptist began
+preaching and baptizing.  It is this same evangelist only who refers to
+Pilate's savage slaughter of the Galileans at Jerusalem.  The author of
+the Fourth Gospel does not mention Pilate before the time of our Lord's
+trial, but he gives us a much fuller account of that trial than any of
+his companion evangelists.  Next to John, our fullest account is in
+Luke.  On these two authorities therefore we must mainly rely.  But
+John's is not only the most ample and fully detailed narrative; it also
+furnishes us with by far the most vivid and convincing portrait of the
+Roman governor.  This is one of the numerous cases of life-like
+character-drawing with which the Fourth Gospel abounds.  Nicodemus, the
+woman of Samaria, Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, and now Pilate, are
+all known to history from St John's portraits of them.  Should not this
+significant fact lead us to attach great weight to his portrait of
+Jesus Christ, which soars above the Christ-pictures of the synoptics in
+the most exalted Divine glory?
+
+Jesus had been tried soon after His arrest before Caiaphas and the
+Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews, and there He had been
+condemned to death, not on the charge for which He had been
+arrested--threatening to destroy the Temple--for the evidence against
+Him had broken down, but for blasphemy during the course of His trial,
+when adjured by the high priest to declare whether He was the Christ.
+But the presence of Pilate prevented the council from executing their
+sentence (as doubtless they would have done if he had been away at
+Caesarea), in defiance of the law, which was entrusted to a weak and
+capricious governor.  Accordingly they brought their Prisoner to the
+procurator's residence--probably Herod's palace, a magnificent building
+with two marble wings, containing large rooms sumptuously furnished,
+and spacious porticos surrounded by gardens and enclosed in a lofty
+wall with towers, situated in the western district of the city, and
+approached by a bridge across the Tyropaean valley.  The facts that a
+later governor, Gestius Florus, resided here, and that Pilate lived in
+Herod's palace at Caesarea when in that city, and that he hung the
+shields about which there was so much trouble in the Jerusalem palace,
+make this view more probable than the traditional idea that the trial
+of Jesus took place in the Castle of Antonio, the imperial barracks,
+close to the Temple.
+
+The Jews objected to enter this fine palace, because as a Gentile
+residence it was defiled, and therefore defiling, and they wished to be
+"clean" for the feast they were to eat in the evening.  Pilate humoured
+them, and had his conferences with them outside the building.  Seeing
+their object and observing their temper, he must have discovered at
+once their miserable hypocrisy.  These were the men who affected to be
+the leaders of the one pure faith on earth, a faith which looked with
+scorn on the "idolatry" of the cultured Roman.  He must have regarded
+them with immense contempt.  If his tone is cynical, it is but a match
+for the unmitigated cynicism of their conduct.
+
+Pilate inquires as to the crime with which the Prisoner is charged.  At
+first, the Jews do not give an explicit reply, only stating that they
+have already found Him guilty.  Pilate catches at that.  His weakness,
+so pitiably apparent throughout the whole proceedings, appears at this
+early stage.  Desiring to shirk the responsibility of deciding the
+case--he would use the first apparent loophole of escape.  Since the
+Jews have taken this case in hand, let them carry it through, dealing
+with it according to their law.  They are not to be caught by that
+flattering suggestion.  They know that they have not the power of life
+and death.  Pilate would not let them kill Jesus.  His proposal, which
+on the surface looks like the granting of a privilege, amounts to this,
+that they may exercise ecclesiastical discipline, excommunicate their
+Prisoner, or perhaps fling Him into jail, possibly scourge Him.  But
+the worst of these punishments will not satisfy their determined
+hatred, or rid them of the haunting fear inspiring it, that Jesus will
+undermine their influence with the people.  Nothing less than His death
+will put an end to that danger; so they thought, although the event
+proved that it was this very death of Christ that was to lead to the
+victory of Christianity over Judaism.  This, however, even His own
+disciples could not foresee, much less could it enter into the minds of
+His enemies among the Jews.
+
+Thwarted in his first attempt to escape, and compelled to try this
+difficult case, Pilate enters the palace where Jesus is kept under
+arrest, and questions Him.  He has been informed that Jesus claims to
+be the king of the Jews.  Is that so?  Is the charge but a piece of
+malicious slander?  If it is, there is an end of the matter.  Pilate is
+not going to lend himself to humour the whim of those hateful Jews,
+whom he affects to despise while in his heart he is mortally afraid of
+them.  There is nothing of the bearing of the violent insurgent in this
+calm peasant who stands before him.  Surely this is some stupid
+mistake, or there is more Jewish malice in it than Pilate can fathom.
+But the Roman magistrate soon discovers that he is dealing with no
+ordinary man.  Jesus takes his measure in a moment.  Pilate is a feeble
+creature, with no character, insincere, dishonest.  He must be made to
+feel his littleness.  We can imagine how our Lord would fix on him a
+penetrating gaze before which the shallow nature of the man would
+become apparent, as He asked whether this cross-examination was
+genuine, or whether Pilate was prompted to it; whether, as we should
+say, it was "a put-up affair"--"_Sayest thou this of thyself, or did
+others say it concerning Me_?"  Picture the situation--the great marble
+palace, the representative of Imperial Rome clad in the purple robe of
+office, and seated in his chair on the dais, the surrounding officials
+and bodyguard; and then the peasant from Galilee, alone, unattended,
+undefended, come straight from insult and mockery in another court, and
+that after a night of mental agony.  Observe how completely the
+relative position of judge and Prisoner are reversed, at least, to the
+eyes of the onlooker.  Jesus calmly questions Pilate, calmly tells him
+of the limit of his power, and calmly claims the kinship for
+himself--there of all places--in the Roman governor's residence,
+speaking to this governor himself, knowing that it must seal His own
+fate.  The two powers are now face to face--the world-power of Rome,
+outwardly so imposing, but at this moment shrinking to insignificance,
+looking so vulgar, so mean, so sordid, so unreal, so essentially weak,
+in the person of the paltry governor; and the heavenly power, the power
+of truth and goodness, the Kingdom of God represented by the provincial
+Prisoner whose inherent dignity of Presence is seen to be all the more
+sublime for the contrast.  And Pilate?  How does he view this?  He is
+manifestly disconcerted, but he tries to hide his awkwardness under a
+mask of Roman scorn.  "_Am I a Jew_?" he exclaims, in a tone of
+measureless contempt.  It is like the contempt of Agrippa when, in
+response to St Paul's enthusiastic appeal and close home-thrust, he
+cried, "_With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a
+Christian_!"  Pilate reminds Jesus that He has been given up by His own
+people.  Jews might be expected to stand by a fellow-Jew under the
+Roman tyranny.  How comes it to pass that the Jewish people have
+brought a man of their own race to the foreign tribunal, prosecuting
+Him before this alien power, seeking His death from the hated Imperial
+government?  What can He have done to bring about so unusual a
+situation?  Pilate is perplexed; and the answer of Jesus does not
+clarify the magistrate's ideas.  It seems only more mystifying.  Jesus
+describes His kingdom, so different from any institution bearing the
+name that Pilate has ever heard of.  It is not of the order of things
+in this world.  If it were, of course Christ's servants would fight, as
+do the servants of the claimants of earthly thrones.  But they do not
+resort to violence.  The kingdom and its methods of government are both
+unearthly.  Pilate is interested, perhaps amused, with what now seem to
+him the fancies of a fanatical dreamer.  He pursues the inquiry, we may
+suppose, with a smile on his lips, "_Art thou a king, then_?" he asked.
+There is no ambiguity in his Prisoner's reply.  He is a king.  This
+strange kingdom, not resting on any basis of earthly power, dispensing
+with fighting, with all that an army suggests, with force, is the very
+opposite to Pilate's idea of a state.  Rome was materialistic to the
+core.  Her rule rested on brute force.  The Empire, the _Imperium_, was
+the dominion of the _Imperator_, that is to say, of the
+commander-in-chief of the army.  It was a military despotism.
+Nominally the government was still republican, and the older and more
+peaceable provinces were administered by proconsuls, whose appointment
+rested with the senate, or was supposed by a legal fiction to rest with
+that body.  But the newer and more troublesome provinces were governed
+as conquered territory directly by the emperor as the head of the army.
+Now Judaea came in this latter division.  Pontius Pilate and his
+superior, the Legate of Syria, were both directly responsible to
+Tiberius Caesar.  Pilate was Caesar's officer under military direction.
+Military methods characterised the procurator's rule.  To a man placed
+as Pilate, the notion of a ruler independent of fighting supporters,
+and that in territory held down by force of arms, was simply absurd.
+
+Our Lord's further explanation seems to Pilate still more out of
+keeping with the notion of royalty.  Jesus says He was born to be a
+king in order that He might bear witness to the truth.  A
+king--truth--what have these two words in common, the one referring to
+the most real region, the other to the most ideal?  To Pilate, the
+conjunction is absolutely incongruous.  "_What is truth_?" he asks, as
+he turns away, too contemptuous to wait for an answer.  This famous
+utterance has been quoted as a text for the anxious inquirer, and
+preachers have gravely set themselves to answer it.  Jesus did nothing
+of the kind.  Evidently it was not a serious inquiry.  Pilate flung off
+the very idea of truth--a mere abstraction, nothing to a practical
+Roman.  Still, though he was not seeking any answer to his question, by
+the very tone of it he suggested that he did not possess that gem which
+those who hold it prize above all things.  "The Scepticism of Pilate"
+is the title of one of Robertson's greatest sermons.  The preacher
+traces it to four sources: indecision; falseness to his own
+convictions; the taint of the worldly temper of his day; and that
+priestly bigotry which forbids inquiry, and makes doubt a crime.
+Pilate is the typical sceptic, who is worlds removed from the "honest"
+doubter.  Serious doubt, which is pained and anxious in the search of
+truth, is in essence belief, for it believes in the value of truth, if
+only truth can be discovered; but typical scepticism not only does not
+credit what the believer takes for truth, but despises it as not worth
+seeking.  That is the fatal doubt, a doubt that eats into the soul as a
+moral canker.
+
+Nevertheless, although what is of supreme value to Jesus is reckoned by
+Pilate as of no importance whatever, the cross-examination has
+satisfied the magistrate of the innocence of his Prisoner.  His duty,
+then, is plain.  He should acquit the innocent man.  But he dare not do
+so immediately.  That howling mob of Jews and those odious priests and
+Sadducees of the council are determined on the death of their victim.
+Pilate has made himself well hated by the roughness of his government.
+Nothing would please the Jews and their leaders better than to have
+some chance of impeaching him before his jealous master at Rome, on the
+charge of leniency to treason.  Pilate quails before the terrible
+possibility.  In face of it he simply dares not pronounce a verdict of
+acquittal.  Yet he means to do all he can to effect the escape of his
+Prisoner.  His inbred instinct for justice prompts him to this; for the
+Romans cherished reverence for law, and even so corrupt a ruler as
+Pilate was not independent of the atmosphere of his race.  Then it
+would be a bitter humiliation to let his judgment be overruled by those
+contemptible Jews.  He would be heartily glad to confound and
+disappoint them.  More than this, he had begun to feel some awakening
+interest in his remarkable Prisoner.  He had come to the conclusion
+that Jesus was a harmless dreamer; but he had felt some faint shadow of
+the spell of the wonderful Personality.  If only it could be managed
+with safety to himself, he would be glad to have Jesus set free.
+
+Accordingly we now see Pilate resorting to a series of devices in order
+to escape from his vexatious dilemma.  From this point his conduct
+opens out to us a curious study in psychological phenomena.  The
+ingenuity of Pilate in resorting to one expedient after another, is
+very striking.  Evidently he has keen wits, and he uses them with some
+agility.  But it is all in vain.  He is pushed from each of the
+positions he takes up by the same stubborn, relentless pressure which
+he invariably finds to be irresistible.  The explanation is, that
+though he has intellect, he lacks will-power.  On the other side there
+is not much need for intelligence, but there is the most obstinate
+will.  The Jews possess a clear notion of what they want, and a set
+determination to have their way.  In such a contest there is no doubt
+which side will win.  When will is bitter against intellect, it is the
+latter that succumbs.  The determined will forces itself through all
+opposition that rests only on intelligence, reasoning, contrivance.
+Intellect does not count for nothing; allied to a strong will, as in
+Calvin, Cromwell, Napoleon, it helps to effect gigantic results.  But
+in the sphere of action, it is will-power that tells in immediate
+results.  Even here, reason may conquer stupid obstinacy in the
+long-run.  But you must give it time; and you must have honesty of
+character.  Neither condition was present in this case of Pilate.  He
+had to decide promptly; and his moral nature was unsound.  Such a man
+under such circumstances will never find his most cunning devices a
+match for the set determination of his opponents.  So Pilate, feebly
+protesting, helplessly scheming, is pushed back step by step; and
+ultimately he concedes everything demanded of him, and the final issue
+is more humiliating to himself and more cruel to the innocent Prisoner
+whom he is trying to shield, than it would have been if he had yielded
+at the beginning.  The real victim of this tragedy in the palace is not
+Jesus, it is the soul of Pilate.  We seem to see a weak man being
+thrust down a steep place, resisting and catching at the shrubs and
+rocks that he passes, but torn from his grasp of them and finally flung
+over the precipice.
+
+Pilate's first device was to send Jesus to Herod Antipas, who happened
+to be at Jerusalem at the time.  It was a compliment to the frivolous
+"king of Galilee" to remit a Galilean prisoner to his judgment, and
+Pilate would gladly rid himself of the awkward case by this ingenious
+device.  But it was useless, for the simple reason that Herod had no
+power of life and death in Jerusalem, and Pilate soon had his Prisoner
+on his hands again.  Next he clutched at the custom of releasing a
+prisoner during the feast.  Here was a chance for letting off Jesus
+without declaring Him innocent.  But this suggestion was hopeless.  If
+the Jews were set on effecting the death of Jesus, they would not give
+up their right to choose their prisoners to be released, and take at
+the dictation of Pilate the very man they wanted to have done to death.
+They clamoured for an insurgent, Barabbas, a man caught red-handed in
+the very crime for which these hypocrites professed in their
+new-fledged loyalty to Caesar to be anxious to have Jesus executed.
+The cynicism of their choice is palpable.  By daring to make it, they
+show in what contempt they hold Pilate.  The governor loses ground
+considerably by this false move.  Then he tries to throw the blame of
+the murder of Jesus, which he sees he cannot prevent, on the Jews.  A
+new motive urges him to escape from the responsibility of committing a
+judicial murder.  His wife had sent a private message warning him to
+"_have nothing to do with that righteous man_."  She had been much
+disturbed by a dream about him.  Romans were slaves to omens and
+auguries, and the most materialistic of them felt some awe of dreams,
+although they had lost faith in real religion.  Your confirmed sceptic
+is often slavishly superstitious in the secret of his soul.  It is a
+way the spiritual has of avenging itself on the man who openly flouts
+it.  Boldly flung out of the window, it creeps back into the cellar and
+vexes the soul with petty tricks played on the subterranean
+consciousness.  The man who expels his good angel is haunted by imps
+and elves.  He who will not believe in God and despises truth succumbs
+to the message of a dream.
+
+More anxious now than ever to escape responsibility, Pilate calls for
+water and publicly washes his hands, telling the Jews that the innocent
+blood will be on their heads.  They accept the awful responsibility.
+What do they care for the weak Roman's scruples?  He is doing their
+will, and of course no hand-washing can cleanse his conscience from the
+stain of guilty compliance.
+
+Yet one thing more Pilate will do.  He will scourge Jesus.  Perhaps
+that may satisfy these savage Jews.  For scourging was a savage
+punishment.  The whip was loaded with lead and sharp fish-bones, and at
+every stroke the flesh was cut.  Men often died under this severe
+treatment.  Pilate had it inflicted on Jesus, knowing Him to be
+innocent; but hoping that, if He survived, no more might be required.
+It was an abominable compromise.  If Jesus were innocent--and Pilate
+knew He was innocent--He should have been set free unscathed, with
+apologies for a mistaken arrest.  If he were guilty, of course he ought
+to receive the death-penalty for the crime of treason.  Justice could
+allow of no middle course.  But Pilate is not thinking of Justice.  He
+only wants to escape the onus of killing an innocent man.  Then he has
+Jesus brought forth, bleeding, in agony, His lacerated flesh exposed to
+the view of that heartless multitude.  "_Behold the man_," says Pilate.
+"Look at your victim; is not this enough?"  If Pilate thought his
+appeal _ad misericordiam_ would touch those hardened sinners of the
+Sanhedrin, he was strangely mistaken.  The sight of their victim in His
+agony only maddens them.  They are like hounds who had tasted blood.
+Like hounds, they "give tongue," and yell for His death.  Pilate can
+resist no longer.  He has played his last card, and it has been taken.
+Thoroughly humiliated and quite helpless, he gives sentence, and so in
+spite of the governor's desperate efforts to escape the stigma of his
+awful crime, it goes down to all the ages that Jesus was "crucified
+under Pontius Pilate."
+
+
+
+
+BARABBAS
+
+BY REV. J. G. GREENHOUGH, M.A.
+
+
+
+"And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and
+release unto us Barabbas."--ST LUKE xxiii. 18.
+
+
+You have heard a crowd of people cry out all at once.  It is always
+impressive, it is sometimes very terrible, occasionally it is sublime.
+It begins in a way that no one can explain.  Somebody in the crowd
+utters a name, or ejaculates a brief sentence.  What happens?  Often
+nothing at all.  Men are not in the mood for it; it drops unnoticed, or
+provokes a jeer or two and is then forgotten.  But sometimes the word
+falls like a spark on a mass of dry tinder--ten thousand hearts have
+been prepared for it--swift as a flash of lightning a sympathetic
+current passes through the whole throng--ten thousand lips take up the
+cry.  They are all carried away by contagion, magnetism, or madness,
+and a shout goes up enough to rend the sky.  When some great and noble
+sentiment has laid hold of them, the shout of a people is one of the
+grandest things on earth; when it is some awful prejudice, unreasoning
+hatred, or cowardly terror that sways them, the shout is the most
+inhuman and hellish thing on earth; and that was the character of the
+shout that was raised here.
+
+The world has never forgotten that cry, and never will.  To the very
+last the world will wonder how it should have come to be raised, and
+will condemn and pity the crowd of people who gave themselves up to it,
+for they were making a hero of the vilest stuff, and clamouring for the
+murder of the world's one Divine man.  There never was a more brutal
+and insane shout than that; never again can there be a choice so fatal
+and so suicidal as the choice they made: "_Away with this man, and
+release unto us Barabbas_."
+
+If the thing had not happened, we should say it was impossible.  It
+seems well-nigh incredible that human eyes and human hearts could be so
+blind.  A story of this kind is food for the bitterest cynic.  He who
+has the most utter contempt for the race to which he belongs might find
+here almost a justification of his scorn.  Oh what a satire upon human
+nature, that a whole city full of people, men, women, mothers and
+daughters, had come to this pass that they could not discern which was
+the nobler of these two--nay, thought that Barabbas was more deserving
+of their honour.  One the very flower and crown of humanity, the
+express image of God; and the other a gaol bird, a notorious criminal,
+whose hands had been dyed red, and whose heart had been hardened by the
+shedding of blood.  Well might those pitiful lips say, "_Father forgive
+them, for they know not what they do_."
+
+Why did they do it?  Why did they raise their voices for Barabbas?
+
+The main answer is that men make their heroes as the heathen make gods,
+after their own image.  There is no doubt that Barabbas was more to the
+taste of this people, more according to their heart, than Christ; or at
+least they thought he was; not quite their ideal man, perhaps, but
+certainly nearer to their ideal than the Christ whom they rejected.  It
+may be that they had had no particular love for him until just now,
+possibly they had hardly thought of him at all; but now it was a
+question between this man and Jesus, and Jesus they did not want at any
+price.  And their very hatred of the one made the other look beautiful.
+Barabbas is our man, they said, and the more they said it the more they
+believed it; and each time the name was repeated it sounded sweeter,
+until they were all shouting it, nine-tenths of them because the others
+shouted it, and until they really made themselves believe that in this
+man they had got a veritable hero and hardly less than a god.
+
+That is always what happens in such cases, the greater part begin
+shouting for no particular reason because a few others have led the
+way, and they end by believing that the man whom they are acclaiming is
+almost divine; yet it is certain that they elected this man on the
+whole because of the two he had more points in common with them, this
+poor despicable and very unheroic thing was the person whom they
+delighted to honour because they themselves were very unheroic and
+somewhat despicable.  We cannot see the greatness of a truly great man
+unless there is just a bit of greatness in ourselves; Christ was too
+big and too divine to be seen and measured by their small and vulgar
+eyes.  Barabbas was about their size, and they raised their voices for
+him.
+
+We have had Carlyle's words quoted to us a thousand times about heroes
+and hero-worship--how it is part of human nature to go after heroes and
+make them--how the world has always been given up to this worship, and
+always will be.  We all revere and follow great men, or those whom we
+deem great, which is not quite the same thing.  And it is a beautiful
+feature in human nature if it is wisely directed, if we can only set
+our hearts on the true heroes and follow them.  It is not beautiful at
+all when we make our gods of clay, and shout ourselves hoarse in
+exalting to the skies creatures as undivine and quite as small as we
+are.
+
+Heroes are sometimes easily made to-day, and martyrs too.  Modern
+martyrdom of the popular sort is about the least costly thing going.
+It calls for no tears and blood, it can be gained on very easy terms.
+You have only to break a law which you do not like, or your conscience
+does not approve, and to be brought up for it with an admiring crowd
+accompanying you, and to have a fine imposed, which is paid for,
+perhaps, by popular subscription--and lo, you are a martyr.  I am not
+calling in question the thing itself.  It may be both right and
+Christian to refuse obedience to a law on extreme occasions; but to
+call this martyrdom is extravagant and almost humorous.
+
+It was not so in the olden time when the real martyrs were made.  No,
+those martyrs were not delicately handled, but stripped and stoned to
+pieces, and burned, and there were no crowds to greet them with bravoes
+and caresses, but furious mobs clamouring for their blood.  We have
+changed all that indeed, thank God: but they were heroes and martyrs
+indeed, and it sounds to me somewhat like a desecration of the word to
+apply it to men and even women who are good, probably brave in a way,
+but who win their crown of glory very cheaply indeed.  If we are to
+have heroes, let us make sure that they possess some heroic stuff.
+
+There is a vast amount of hero-worship to-day which reminds us too much
+of that shout for Barabbas.  We are glorifying the wrong people; at
+least, most of us are.  It is one of the deplorable weaknesses of the
+times, or if you like it better, it is one of the fashions or crazes to
+which human nature at times gives itself up.  The heroes of the crowd,
+of the great mass of people, are not the good men, not the men of light
+and leading, not the men who are morally great or even intellectually
+great, not the men who are the strength and salt of a nation, but the
+men who minister to its pleasures, and lead the way in sports.  No one
+can have any doubt of that.  No one can have any doubt about the sort
+of persons whom the vast majority of young people, and some older
+people too, delight to honour.  With some it is the star of the music
+hall or opera.  With a great many more it is the winner of a race, or
+the champion player in a successful football team, or the most
+effective bowler, or the highest scorer in cricket.  The crowd goes mad
+about these heroes.  There is no throne high enough to place them on.
+Money and favours are lavished at their feet, and all the newspapers
+are full of their glorious triumphs.
+
+Mark I am not speaking against athletic sports.  I like to see a well
+and honestly played game, and I would join in the clapping when a man
+makes a clever stroke.  What I object to is the crazy and almost
+delirious worship which is given to these champions of the sporting
+world.  It is the excess of the thing that proves a diseased state of
+mind.  There is more fuss made over some youth who scores a few
+hundreds on the cricket-field, than there would be over a man who had
+saved six hundred lives.  In hundreds of journals his portrait appears,
+and his doings are chronicled as if he had wrought some deliverance for
+the nation.  Poor lad, it is not his fault that he has sprung up
+suddenly into fame, it is the fault of the people who love to have
+these things so.  It is because men have gone pleasure-mad and
+sport-mad, and in their madness cannot see the difference between a
+clever athlete and a mental or moral giant.  We prove what our own
+tastes are, we prove the quality of our own hearts and minds, we prove
+our own debasement, when we exalt physical strength above excellence of
+character, when we make our heroes out of muscle instead of soul, when
+we worship those who serve our pleasure more than those who set us
+examples of noble things, and lead the way in them.  It is only another
+rendering of the old shout, "_Away with this man, and release unto us
+Barabbas_."  Not so wicked, of course, but equally foolish and unworthy.
+
+Who are your heroes?  That is the question.  Or in other words, What
+sort of men do you admire most?  Answer that, and I know at once what
+sort of men and women you are.  If you are worshippers of pleasure, the
+champions of the pleasure-world will be your idols and kings.  If you
+are rooted and grounded in the love of lucre, the successful
+millionaire is the man that you will fawn upon or worship from afar.
+If your main delight is in intellectual things, the great thinkers and
+writers will be the men to whom you look up with reverence.  And if you
+are good men, with a passionate love for goodness, and a constant
+striving to be better than you are, there are none whom you will admire
+with all your hearts except the good, except the best, and those who
+are leading in the way of goodness.
+
+In a land which is truly Christian, the only heroes will be those who
+most resemble Christ.  If we are truly Christians, and Christian
+thoughts have taken full possession of our hearts, we shall recognise
+no heroes save those who serve as Christ served, who live in a measure
+as Christ lived, who deny themselves for others, and spend their
+strength for the benefit of their fellow-men as the Master did.  These
+are the true heroes, and all the others are more or less cheap
+imitations of them, or false substitutes for them.  These are the true
+heroes, I say.  The men and women who risk their lives to save other
+lives.  The men who use their strength and ability, not for pay, but
+for the good and the advancement of their fellow-men, to save men from
+their sins, and to lessen the sum of human ill.  The brave men and
+women who venture all things to serve some great and righteous cause,
+and to speed on the Kingdom of Christ and righteousness in the world.
+
+We have no right to count any as heroes unless they have courage,
+patience, self-denial, great love for their fellow-men, and strength
+which they cheerfully employ for something greater than themselves.
+The men, in fact, who have something of Christ in them; these are the
+only heroes whom God writes down in His book of life, and they are the
+only heroes whom we shall exalt in our hearts if we are followers of
+the crucified One.
+
+In a Christian land, the beginning and end of all true and healthy
+hero-worship, is to set Christ first and above everything else and
+every one else in our affections.  We shall measure all other men truly
+if we have first of all taken the true measure of Him.  Love Him with
+all your hearts, say of Him, "Thou art the chief among ten thousand,
+and the altogether lovely," and you will never give much of your hearts
+again to the things and the men who are morally not worth loving.  You
+will never be carried away again into the worship of that which is
+false, common, or cheap.  A man who sees _all_ beauty, and the perfect
+beauty in Christ, will never say that there is much beauty anywhere
+else, except where there is something that resembles Christ.
+
+We have to make our choice to-day, as those men made it long ago.  It
+is not quite the same choice.  It is not Barabbas against Christ, but
+it is the poor, coarse, common, frivolous things of the world against
+Christ.  It is the earthly against the heavenly; it is pleasure and sin
+against the service of the Man who was crucified: it is the love of
+self, and things baser than ourselves, against the love of Him who died
+for us.  And everything depends upon that choice.  To make Him your
+King is to become kingly yourselves, and to be crowned at last with the
+true glory and honour.  But it is a terrible thing to say, "_Away with
+this man, and release unto us Barabbas_."
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA
+
+BY REV. ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D.. LL.B.
+
+
+"Joseph of Arimathea, an honourable counsellor, which also waited for
+the kingdom of God."--MARK xv. 43.
+
+
+The crucifixion of our Lord produced strange and startling effects in
+moral experience, as well as in the physical world.  The veil of the
+Temple was rent from top to bottom as if a hand from heaven had torn
+it, in order to teach men that the ancient ritual was done with.
+Darkness covered the earth, suggesting to thoughtful minds the guilt of
+the world and the mystery of the sacrifice which atoned for it.
+Concurrently with these physical phenomena were spiritual experiences.
+The Roman centurion who, in command of four soldiers, had the duty of
+seeing the sentence of the law duly executed, was so profoundly moved
+by what he saw of the Divine Sufferer and by His dying cry, that he
+exclaimed, "_Truly this was the Son of God_," and thus he became the
+first of the great multitude out of all nations who give honour to the
+Lamb that has been slain.  The women, too, who were sometimes despised
+for weakness and timidity, proved themselves in this crisis to be
+heroines.  And Joseph of Arimathea, who up to this moment of shame and
+apparent defeat had been content to remain a secret disciple of our
+Lord, now boldly avowed his love and loyalty.
+
+The "_even_" had come, the second evening of the Jews, and the last
+streak of golden light was beginning to fade from the western sky.
+Three lifeless bodies were still hanging on the crosses at Golgotha,
+but according to Jewish custom they were about to be taken down, and
+flung into a dishonourable grave, when Joseph "_went in boldly to
+Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus_," caring for our Lord in death as
+another Joseph had cared for him in infancy.
+
+This man is described as an "_honourable counsellor_," which doubtless
+means a member of the Sanhedrim.  He is also spoken of as "_a good man
+and a just_," which could not have been said of many of his
+fellow-counsellors.  On this occasion his action was sufficiently
+important in its relation to prophecy, and in its bearing as evidence
+of the reality of the burial and of the resurrection of our Lord, to be
+mentioned in each of the Four Gospels.  Yet neither by this nor by
+social influence, nor by brilliant gifts (if he possessed them), did he
+become prominent in the early Church.  Probably he was a man of
+practical sagacity and ready resource, rather than of great spiritual
+force.  He could not stand on the same level with Simon Peter, the
+fisherman, whose honour it was so to hold the key of the Kingdom as to
+open the door of it to the Gentiles; nor did he ever attain influence
+comparable to that of Paul, who shook the citadel of paganism to its
+foundations, and planted amid its fallen defences the seed of the
+Kingdom, even the word of God.  Joseph must be regarded as a common
+soldier, rather than as a general in Christ's army; but when the
+officers had fallen, or deserted their Leader, he bravely stepped to
+the front and proved himself a hero.  Perhaps all the more on this
+account some study of his character and conduct may encourage those who
+are not prominent in the Church to cultivate his fidelity, promptitude,
+and courage.
+
+If we piece together the few fragments of his biography which are
+scattered through the Four Gospels, we shall gain a fuller and more
+accurate conception of the man.
+
+
+I.
+
+It is clear that Joseph had already protested against the wrong done to
+our Lord by the Sanhedrim, though he had been powerless to prevent it.
+
+In this protest no doubt Nicodemus would have sided with him, but he
+was probably absent, for Joseph seems to have stood alone in his
+refusal to condemn the prophet of Nazareth.  This was not easy.  He
+would be urged to vote with his fellow-counsellors on the ground that
+their ecclesiastical authority, which had been defied, must be
+maintained, and that loyalty to the Sanhedrim demanded that all members
+of it should sink their private opinions in its defence.  To hold out
+against an otherwise unanimous council would be the more difficult if
+Joseph had but recently attained the honour of membership, and this is
+probable, for the allusion to his "_new grave_" seems to imply that he
+had not long resided in Jerusalem.  It was difficult, and possibly
+dangerous, to assert his independence; but he did so by vote, if not by
+voice, for he "_had not consented to the counsel and deed of them_."
+
+Right-minded men are not infrequently placed in a similar position.  A
+policy may be initiated which they disapprove, and yet their protest
+against it may wreck the party and even displace the government, so
+that they naturally hesitate between party loyalty and enlightened
+conscience.  Others who are engaged in business, or in professional
+affairs, have sometimes to confront doubtful practices  which, though
+sanctioned by custom, unquestionably tend to the lowering of the moral
+tone of the nation.  Their own financial interests, their fear of
+casting a slur on some known to them, who, though guilty of such
+practices are in other respects honourable men, and their dread of
+posing before the world as over-scrupulous, pharisaic men, who are
+righteous over-much--all urge them to keep quiet, especially as such a
+custom cannot be put down by one man.  Yet is not conscience to be
+supreme, even under such conditions?  The cultivation of the required
+moral heroism, which is sadly lacking in all sections of society, must
+begin in youth; and in this, elder brothers and sisters as well as
+parents and teachers of all grades have serious responsibility.
+Occasionally the moral atmosphere of a whole school becomes corrupt,
+and practices spring up which can only be put down by some right-minded
+lad or girl running the risk of unpopularity and social ostracism, yet
+it is under such conditions that God's heroes are bred; and books like
+_Tom Brown's Schooldays_ have done much to foster the development of
+the heroic temper.
+
+The truth is, that, wherever we are, in this world where evil widely
+prevails, fidelity to conscience must occasionally inspire what seems
+an unavailing protest against the practice of the majority.  But we
+must see to it on such occasions that a real principle is at stake, and
+that we are not moved by mere desire for self-assertion, nor by pride
+and obstinacy.  If, however, we are consciously free from these, and
+bravely protest against a wrong we cannot prevent, we may at least look
+for the approval of Him who carried His protest against evil up to the
+point of death, even the death of the Cross.
+
+In thus taking up our stand against what we believe to be wrong, we may
+be, imperceptibly to ourselves, emboldening others, who are secretly
+waiting for some such lead.
+
+
+II.
+
+If Joseph required bravery on the council, he needed it still more when
+he went into the presence of Pilate to beg the body of Jesus.
+
+The Roman procurator was a man to be dreaded by any Jew, and was just
+now in a suspicious and angry mood.  But Joseph not only braved a
+repulse from him.  He knew he would have to confront the far more
+bitter hostility of the priests.  Theirs was a relentless hate, before
+which Peter had fallen, and Pilate himself had quailed.  Yet this man
+Joseph, brought up though he had been in circumstances of ease, went in
+boldly to Pilate and deliberately ran the risk of their savage hatred,
+which would not only bring about as he believed his expulsion from
+office, but in all probability cruel martyrdom.  It was a bold step;
+but no sooner did he take it than another rich man was by his
+side--Nicodemus by name--who also himself was one of Christ's
+disciples, though secretly, for fear of the Jews.  The act of Joseph
+had more far-reaching consequences on the conduct of others than he
+expected.
+
+Most heroic actions are richer in results than is expected by those who
+dare to do them; though the immediate effects may seem disappointing.
+Elijah learnt to his amazement that although all the people on Carmel
+had not been converted, more than seven thousand faithful men had been
+emboldened by his conduct.  And when John plucked up courage to go
+right in to the palace of the high priest, Peter, who till then had
+followed Jesus afar off, went in also.
+
+The truth is, that we all have influence beyond the limits of what we
+can see or estimate--parents over children, employers over their young
+people, mistresses over servants; for what we are these are encouraged
+to be, whether for good or for evil.  Indeed, even a child who
+fearlessly speaks the truth, a servant who does her work thoroughly and
+cheerfully, an obscure lad who in a small situation is faithful to
+honour and truth, will effect far more than is imagined.  Others who
+are unperceived are emboldened, and range themselves on the side of
+righteousness.
+
+Joseph discovered, as many have done since, that when he steadfastly
+set his face towards duty he succeeded far better then he expected.
+When he went into the palace of Pilate he foresaw that he might be
+asked to pay an enormous ransom, for that would be only customary; or
+possibly his request might be scornfully refused by the procurator, who
+was angry with himself and with the Jews.  But, doubtless to his
+amazement, no such thing happened.  Without delay, or bartering or
+abuse, Pilate at once gave him leave.
+
+History is crowded with similar incidents.  How helpless and hopeless
+the Israelites were when they found themselves face to face with the
+waters of the Red Sea, while the army of Egypt was rapidly overtaking
+them; yet they soon discovered that their danger was to prove their
+means of deliverance; for the waters which barred their progress to
+liberty soon overwhelmed their enemies.  In other spheres of experience
+such deliverances have come, and will continue to come, to trustful
+souls:
+
+  "Dark and wide the sea appears,
+  Every soul is full of fears,
+  Yet the word is 'onward still,'
+  Onward move and do His will;
+  And the great deep shall discover
+  God's highway to take thee over."
+
+Peter had a similar experience when in prison.  He arose and followed
+the angel, and safely passed through the first and the second ward; but
+the great iron gate seemed an insuperable barrier, yet that opened to
+them of its own accord, and he stepped through it into liberty.  Thus
+it was with the women who as they walked, while it was yet dark,
+towards the grave of their Lord, thought of one difficulty which seemed
+insurmountable, and asked one another, "_Who shall roll us away the
+stone at the door of the sepulchre_?"  Still on they went, with faith
+and courage, and when they reached their imagined difficulty they found
+that it had vanished; for they saw that the stone was rolled away.
+
+A similar experience is constantly met with.  It is shared by a young
+man who is expected to undertake some doubtful transaction, but from
+conscientious scruple hesitates.  He fears what the result of a refusal
+may be, but resolves to risk it; perhaps to find that the order is not
+pressed, or that some new incident opens up for him a way of escape.
+True, God does not always deliver a conscientious man from the special
+danger before him, but in the forum of conscience, and before the
+judgment-seat of Christ, he will be righted.
+
+Be the result what it may, we must be true to conscience, which,
+however, is but another form of saying, we must be true to God; and
+instead of peering into the future, and picturing to ourselves all
+possible evil results, we must learn to take the next obvious step in
+the pathway of duty, trusting that God will make the next step clear,
+possible, and safe.  When a tourist is climbing a difficult mountain,
+his guide sometimes rounds a corner, or climbs up to a higher level,
+and for a time is lost to sight, having left his charge behind him; and
+he, unaccustomed to such an expedition, dares not look down, and fears
+to stir another step, till feeling the rope taut between himself and
+the guide, and hearing his cheery voice, he ventures forward, to find
+that the danger was not so great as he imagined.  Thus made bolder by
+each difficulty surmounted, he begins to feel the exhilaration of a
+mountain climb, which braces the nerves more than anything besides.  If
+we are really anxious to be in God's appointed way, and boldly take it
+when it is made clear, we may be sure that He will answer the prayer:
+"_Hold up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps slip not_."
+
+
+III.
+
+There are crises in the experience of every one when the whole future
+is determined; and such a crisis came to Joseph of Arimathea.
+
+He had been for some time a disciple of Jesus, but had never avowed the
+fact.  But after standing on Calvary and seeing the death of his Lord,
+sorrow, shame, and indignation so stirred him, that at once he went in
+boldly unto Pilate.  It was the turning-point in his history, when
+obedience to God-given impulse decided his whole destiny.  The
+spiritual influences which play upon our souls are not even in their
+flow.  There are times when one is strangely moved, although in outward
+environment there is little to account for it.  The sermon listened to
+may be illiterate, the hymn sung may be destitute of poetic beauty, the
+friendly word may be spoken by a social inferior--yet one of these
+sometimes suffices as the channel of divine power, which shakes the
+soul to its very depths.  We have known the unexpected avowal of love
+to Christ on the part of one obscure scholar set all in the class
+thinking on the subject of personal responsibility to God, and to His
+Church.  And sometimes the sorrow of leaving home for the first time,
+or the death of a dearly-loved friend, has sufficed to arouse the
+question, "_What must I do to be saved_?"  We must beware of allowing
+such opportunities for decisive action to slip away unimproved.  When a
+vessel has grounded at the harbour-bar, she must wait till the tide
+lifts her, or she will not reach a safe anchorage; but when the tide
+does flow in, no sane man will let the chance go by, lest a storm
+should rise and wreck her within reach of home.
+
+It is noteworthy that Joseph was moved to decision and confession by
+the crucifixion of the Lord; for this might have been expected to seal
+his lips.  It would seem to have been easier to follow the great
+Teacher when listening crowds gathered round Him, and multitudes were
+being healed of whatsoever diseases they had, than to acknowledge
+loyalty to Him when He was crucified as a malefactor.  Yet it was from
+the Cross that this man went into the Church.  The light came to him
+when darkness seemed deepest.  It was in the presence of the crucified
+Saviour, of whom even the Roman centurion said, "_Truly this was the
+Son of God_," that Joseph learned to say, "Because thou hast died for
+me, I will henceforth live for Thee."  This was one of the earliest
+triumphs of the Cross, in which Paul gloried, and of Him who died
+thereon--dying for us all, that we who live should not henceforth live
+unto ourselves but unto Him.  In the presence of that memorable scene
+we are called on for more than admiration or adoration, even for a
+passionate devotion to Him who gave Himself up for us all.
+
+It may be that some of His professed followers may again fail Him, and
+that others will step in to do the service which He requires.  In the
+hour of darkness all His recognised disciples forsook him and fled; and
+when the tragedy on Golgotha was over, it was not Peter, and James, and
+John, and Andrew, who rendered Him the last service, but holy, humble
+women, and Joseph and Nicodemus, who up till then had not been reckoned
+as disciples at all.  There are times in the history of the Church when
+our Lord seems "_crucified afresh, and put to an open shame_," while
+His so-called disciples remain silent and hidden.  Superstition and sin
+still join hands to put the Christ to death, to bury Him, and seal His
+sepulchre.  But secret disciples are meanwhile avowing themselves;
+coming from the east, and the west, from the north, and from the south,
+to fill up the vacant places, to do the needed services, and to rejoice
+in a risen and glorified Lord.  Better by far the doing of a simple act
+of love to the Saviour who died for us--such as Joseph did--than loud
+professions of loyalty, or accurate knowledge of creeds.  Hear once
+more the solemn words of Jesus: "_Not every one that saith unto Me,
+Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth
+the will of My Father which is in heaven_."
+
+        "And that voice still soundeth on
+        From the centuries that are gone
+        To the centuries that shall be!
+  From all vain pomps and shows, from the pride that overflows,
+  From all the narrow rules and subtleties of Schools,
+        And the craft of tongue and pen:
+  Bewildered in its search, bewildered with the cry:
+  'Lo here, lo there, the Church!' poor, sad Humanity
+  Through all the dust and heat turns back with bleeding feet
+        By the weary road it came
+  Unto the simple thought by the Great Master taught,
+        And that remaineth still:
+        'Not he that repeateth the Name
+        But he that doeth the Will.'"
+
+
+
+
+PHILIP, THE EVANGELIST
+
+BY REV. GEORGE MILLIGAN, M.A., D.D.
+
+
+Philip the Evangelist must be carefully distinguished from Philip the
+Apostle.  And though it is little that we are told regarding him in
+Scripture, that little is very significant.  He first comes before us
+as one of the seven chosen by the early Church at Jerusalem to take
+charge of the daily ministration of charity to the poor widows (Acts
+vi. I ff.).  And when this work is hindered by the outbreak of
+persecution following on the death of Stephen, we find him at once
+departing to enter on active missionary work elsewhere (Acts viii. 4
+ff.).  The fact that he should have selected Samaria as the scene of
+these new labours, is in itself a proof that he was able to rise above
+the ordinary Jewish prejudices of his time.  And this same liberal
+spirit is further exemplified by the incident in connection with which
+he will always be principally remembered.
+
+In obedience to a Divine summons, Philip had betaken himself to the way
+that goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza.  And if at first he may have
+wondered why he should have been called upon to leave his rapidly
+progressing work in Samaria for a desert road, he was not for long left
+in doubt as to what was required of him.  For as he walked along he was
+overtaken by an Ethiopian stranger returning in his chariot from
+Jerusalem.  This man, who was the chamberlain or treasurer of Candace,
+Queen of the Ethiopians, had heard somehow in his distant home, of the
+Jewish religion, and had undertaken this long journey to make further
+inquiries regarding it.  We are not told how he had been impressed;
+very possibly the actual fruits that he witnessed were very different
+from what he had expected.  But one treasure at least he had found, a
+Greek copy of the prophecies of Isaiah, and this he was eagerly
+searching on his return journey, to see if he could find further light
+there.  One passage specially arrested his attention, the touching
+passage in which the prophet draws out his great portraiture of the Man
+of Sorrows.  But, then, how reconcile the thought of this Messiah,
+suffering, wounded, dying, with the great King and Conqueror whom the
+Jews at Jerusalem had been expecting!  Could it be that he had anything
+to do with our Jesus of Nazareth, of whom he had also heard, and whom,
+because of the Messianic claims He had put forward, the Jewish leaders
+had crucified on a cross?  Oh, for some one to help him!  Help was
+nearer than he thought.  Prompted by the Spirit, Philip ran forward to
+the chariot; and no sooner had he learned the royal chamberlain's
+difficulties than he "_opened his mouth, and beginning from this
+scripture, preached unto him Jesus_" (Acts viii. 35).
+
+We are not told on what particulars Philip dwelt; but, doubtless,
+starting from the prophetic description of the Man of Sorrows,
+"_despised and rejected of men_," he would show how that description
+held true of the earthly life of Jesus.  And then he would go on to
+show the meaning and bearing of these sufferings.  They arose from no
+fault on the part of Jesus; but, "_He was wounded for our
+transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities_."  And yet that was
+not the end.  The life which had thus ended in shame had begun again in
+glory: the cross had led on to the crown.  And as thus he unfolded the
+first great principles of the Christian faith, Philip would press home
+on the eunuch's awakened conscience that they had a vital meaning for
+him.  "_Repent_," can we not imagine him pleading as Peter had pleaded
+before, "_and be baptised . . . in the name of Jesus Christ unto the
+remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
+Ghost_" (Acts ii. 38).  The eunuch's heart was touched, and he asked
+that he might be baptized.  Satisfied that he was in earnest, Philip
+agreed to his request.  And when they came to a certain water, "_they
+both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he
+baptized him_."  Thus "the Ethiopian changed his skin," and "_went on
+his way rejoicing_" to his distant home, to declare in his turn to his
+countrymen the tidings of great joy.
+
+There are many points of view from which we might regard this beautiful
+incident, but it is with it in its bearing on the person and character
+of Philip that we are alone at present concerned.  And in considering
+it further in this light, it may be well to confine ourselves to
+noticing in what way it gained for Philip his distinctive title of
+"_the Evangelist_," and consequently what it has to teach us still
+regarding all evangelistic and missionary work.
+
+
+I.
+
+The Evangelist.
+
+With regard to the evangelist himself, one truth stands out clearly
+from the whole narrative, his work is _given_ to him to do.  He is
+first and foremost a missionary, one sent.
+
+It is a pity, perhaps, that in our ordinary speech, we have come to
+limit the name "missionary" so much to the man who carries the gospel
+abroad.  No doubt he is a missionary in the highest sense of the word;
+but still the fundamental idea in every minister or evangelist's
+position is the idea of one sent--sent for a particular purpose, with a
+particular message to proclaim wherever God may place him.  He has no
+power, no authority of his own.  All that he has comes from Him whose
+servant he is, and whose truth he has to announce.
+
+You remember--to appeal at once to the highest example--how
+ever-present this thought of His mission was to the mind of our Lord
+and Master.  His meat, so He told His disciples, was to do the will of
+Him that sent Him (John iv. 34).  The word which He spake was not His
+own, but the Father's who sent Him (John xiv. 24).  And so when the
+time came for His sending forth His disciples to carry on His work, it
+was as "Apostles," those sent, that the work was entrusted to them; and
+in the same spirit He prayed for them in His great intercessory prayer:
+"_As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the
+world_" (John xvii. 18).
+
+If we keep this view of the evangelist as the missionary, ever before
+us, there is one fact regarding his position we can never lose sight
+of.  He has no new truth of his own to declare, no new theories of his
+own to frame.  The message which he has to deliver is not his own, but
+God's; and it must be his constant endeavour to learn that message for
+himself, and then, as God's servant, to announce it to others.  Men may
+receive his message.  If they do not, he dare not substitute any other.
+
+
+II.
+
+His Message.
+
+In what does the evangelist's message consist?  "_Philip_," we are
+told, "_preached unto him_ JESUS." And what that included we have
+already seen.  It was the story of the life, and the death, and the
+resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a new story then, an old story now,
+but still "the old, old story" for us.
+
+The duty of the Christian teacher must be first of all to proclaim
+Christ and His salvation, to announce the glad tidings of mercy and of
+love to sinful men.
+
+This is not, of course, to say that every address or sermon is to be
+occupied with the objective facts of Christ's life and death.  Such
+teaching would soon become monotonous and wearisome, and fail in the
+very purpose it set before it.  Nor have men only to be awakened to the
+truth, they must be built up in it.  And the practical question for us
+all is to learn how to apply and carry out in our daily lives, the
+truths we have received, how to make our conduct correspond to our
+creed.  That opens up an endless field for the evangelist's work: that
+introduces us to lectures on Home Missions and Foreign Missions, to the
+story of noble lives; to all, in fact, that is likely to deepen and to
+quicken our moral nature.  But still this remains as the fundamental
+object of the whole evangel, to preach Jesus, to bring those to Him who
+know Him not, to strengthen and to comfort those who do.
+
+When, then, men call upon the Christian teacher to leave the objective
+facts of the gospel alone, and to occupy himself with the philosophic
+and social questions of the day, they are calling upon him to surrender
+his special function and duty.  He must indeed endeavour so to present
+the truth so as to meet the peculiar wants of his own time.  The form
+in which the gospel was presented in one age may not be the best form
+of presenting it in another.  At one time it may be necessary to
+emphasise one aspect of the truth, at another, another.  But underneath
+all its changing forms and aspects, _the_ truth remains unchanged; and
+it is that which must be taught.
+
+And after all, has not the simple gospel message ever proved itself the
+one message that can touch the hearts and meet the wants of men?  What
+was it, for example, in the preaching of Savonarola that so mightily
+moved Florence, the elegant, refined, wicked, pagan Florence of the
+fifteenth century?  He himself tells us that it was the preaching of
+Scripture truth.  When he discoursed in a philosophical manner, the
+ignorant and the learned were alike inattentive: but "the word"
+mightily delighted the minds of men, and showed its divine power in the
+reformation of their lives.  Or, to take another instance from nearer
+home.  Archdeacon Wilson describes somewhere the experience of the
+promoters of a certain evening-class, which they had instituted for the
+benefit of some of the more ignorant and degraded inhabitants of
+Bristol.  All that they could think of they did for the benefit of the
+men who gathered to it.  They read to them; they sang to them: they
+taught them to read and write.  Yet, in course of time, interest
+flagged.  Every expedient failed, and they were on the point of
+abandoning the work in despair, when it occurred to them to apply to
+the men themselves.  "What would you like us to tell you about next?"
+they asked.  "Could you tell us something about Jesus Christ?" answered
+one of the men.  That was the one thing needful, the one abiding
+satisfaction for their deepest needs.
+
+And so ever.  It may be strange, but it is true, that it is "_the Man
+of Sorrows_" who has won the love of men; it is the Saviour who has
+been lifted up on high out of the earth, who has drawn all men to
+Himself.  Christ: Christ crucified: Christ risen: that is the message
+which every Christian evangelist has to declare.
+
+
+III.
+
+His Message of Glad Tidings.
+
+And is not that good news?  "_Beginning from that same scripture,
+Philip preached the GLAD TIDINGS of Jesus_."
+
+Philip made the eunuch's previous knowledge the starting-point of all
+that he had to say, and, as he went on, showed how there was in his
+message the answer to all his doubts and the solution of all his
+difficulties.
+
+And the gospel has still the same meaning for us.  It has a message for
+the man struggling with the battle of life, in the example of One who
+has fought that fight before, who knows its every trial and sorrow, and
+who has come gloriously through them all.  It has a message for the
+sinner, brooding anxiously over his guilty past, conscious only of his
+own defilement and unworthiness in the sight of an all-holy God, as it
+assures him of mercy and free forgiveness, of sin blotted out in the
+blood of Christ.  It has a message for the trembling believer,
+compassed about with temptations and doubts, as it tells of One who can
+still be "_touched with the feeling of our infirmities_," and who,
+because "_He Himself hath suffered being tempted_," is "_able to
+succour them that are tempted_."  And it has a message for the mourner
+sorrowing over the loss of near and dear ones, for it points to Him who
+is "_the Resurrection and the Life_" of His people, and gives promise
+of the "_Father's house_" with its many mansions, where He is preparing
+a place for His children.
+
+And yet great and glorious though that message is, where there are not
+a hearing ear, an understanding heart, and a willing mind, even a St
+Philip or a St Paul may preach in vain.  But where, on the other hand,
+these are present, then God may use even the humblest and feeblest of
+His servants to speak some word, to utter some warning, which may be
+worth to us more than all we have in the world besides.  God grant that
+it may be so with us, and that by the power of the Holy Ghost the word
+preached may be welcomed, "not as the word of men, but, as it is in
+truth, the word of God, which also worketh in you that believe" (1
+Thess. ii. 13).
+
+
+
+
+ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA
+
+BY REV. GEORGE MILLIGAN, M.A., D.D.
+
+
+One of the most striking features of the early Christian Church was
+what we have come to know as Christian Communism, or as the historian
+describes it in Acts iv, 32: "_And the multitude of them that believed
+were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the
+things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things
+common_."  It is a bright and a pleasing picture that is thus
+presented.  Nor is it difficult to understand how such a spirit should
+arise amongst men whose hearts were full to overflowing with the new
+Christian graces of brotherhood and peace.  For we must not imagine
+that there was anything compulsory about this communism.  It was
+entirely voluntary, and was due to the eager desire on the part of the
+wealthier members of the Church to do all that they could for their
+poorer brethren.  In this particular alone, we can at once see how
+widely it differed from what is generally known as communism or
+socialism in the present day.  The spirit of much at any rate of our
+present-day socialism--so the distinction has been cleverly drawn--is,
+"What is thine, is mine": but the spirit of those early believers was
+rather, "What is mine, is thine."
+
+At the same time, we can readily understand that in a large and mixed
+community like the early Church, all members would not think exactly
+alike, and that while many, we may believe most, would cheerfully obey
+this unwritten law of love, and share and share alike, others would
+give in to it--if they did give in, for, let me again emphasise, there
+was no compulsion upon any--more grudgingly and hesitatingly.
+
+Of these two classes the writer of the Book of Acts presents us with
+individual examples--of the former class, in the case of Joseph, or
+Barnabas, a wealthy Cypriot, who "_having a field, sold it, and brought
+the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet_" (Acts iv. 37)--of the
+latter, in the case of Ananias with Sapphira his wife, whose melancholy
+story is now before us.
+
+That story is very familiar, and is often regarded simply as an
+instance of the sinfulness of lying.  And that undoubtedly it is; but
+it warns us also against other equally dangerous and insidious errors,
+as a little consideration will, I think, show.  For what were Ananias's
+motives in acting as he did?  If we can discover them, we shall have
+the key to the whole story.
+
+And here, it seems to me, they must, in the first instance at any rate,
+have been of a sufficiently _generous_ character.  Ananias had seen
+what was going on around him, and he had determined that he must not be
+behindhand in this ministry of love.  But--and now we get a little
+deeper into his character--_ambition_ to stand well with his
+fellow-members evidently mingled with the pure spirit of charity:
+though we do not need to suppose that there was as yet any conscious
+intention to deceive.  Acting, then, on these somewhat mixed motives of
+charity and ambition, Ananias determined to sell a possession, some
+farm or other which he had, and hand over the money to the apostles.
+He probably meant at first to hand over the whole price, but with the
+money in his hand, the demon of avarice entered into his heart.   And
+he "_kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and
+brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet.  But Peter
+said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy
+Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?  Whiles it
+remained, did it not remain thine own? and after it was sold, was it
+not in thy power?  How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thy
+heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God_" (Acts v. 2-4).
+
+The sin of Ananias, then, lay in this, that he gave a certain sum _as
+if it were the whole_.  There was no necessity for his giving either
+the whole or the part.  Had he hung back, when others were selling
+their possessions, he would have been pronounced _ungenerous_ in
+comparison with them.  Had he brought a part, making no mistake about
+it that it was only a part, when they were giving all, then he would
+have been not _so generous_.  But when he brought a part as if it were
+the whole, he added to his former selfishness and avarice _deceit and
+hypocrisy_.  If he did not in so many words tell a lie, he did what was
+equally heinous, he _acted_ a lie.
+
+It is only when we thus clearly realise the enormity of Ananias's sin,
+that we can understand the reason of the dreadful doom that followed.
+"_And Ananias, hearing these words, fell down, and gave up the ghost_"
+(ver. 5).  The judgment came not from men, but from God.  As it was in
+God's sight--the sight of the living and heart-searching God--that the
+sin had been committed: so it was by the direct "visitation of God"
+that it was now punished.
+
+Nor was the awful lesson yet over.  Three hours had scarcely elapsed
+since the young men had carried forth her husband, and buried him, when
+Sapphira, "_not knowing what was done, came in_."  "_And Peter answered
+unto her_"--answered her look of amazement as she regarded the
+awe-struck faces of those present--"_Tell me, whether ye sold the land
+for so much_?"  "_Yea, for so much_," she replied, adhering to the
+unholy compact into which, with Ananias, she had entered, and adding
+deceit in speech to his deceit in act.  "_But Peter said unto her, How
+is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?
+behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door,
+and they shall carry thee out_" (verses 8, 9).
+
+It was the first intimation the unhappy woman had received of Ananias's
+death: and to the shame of her own consciousness of guilt, must have
+been added the feeling that she had a certain responsibility in what
+had befallen him.  A word of remonstrance on her part might, at the
+beginning, have prevented the crime: it was too late now.  "_And she
+fell down immediately at his feet, and gave up the ghost: and the young
+men came in and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her
+by her husband_" (ver. 10).  And as the sacred historian again
+impressively adds, showing how deep was the effect produced: "_And
+great fear came upon the whole church, and upon all that heard these
+things_" (ver. 11).
+
+Such is the story.  Who does not feel its sadness?  All before had been
+so peaceful and happy.  The early believers had presented such a
+beautiful spectacle of brotherly unity and love.  And now, all too
+soon, the enemy had been at work, sowing tares among the wheat.  In the
+very particular in which the Church most deserved praise--the
+enthusiasm of its members' charity--sin had appeared.  And thus early
+had the young Church of Christ learned that truth, which it has been
+the work of nineteen centuries to emphasise, that her true danger comes
+not so much from without as from within, and that then only is she
+disgraced, when she disgraces herself.
+
+For what may we learn from this tragic incident?
+
+
+I.
+
+We learn the sanctity, the holiness, which Christ looks for in His
+Church.
+
+
+The Church of Christ is holy: it consists of those who have separated
+themselves from the world and its defilements, and who have set
+themselves apart--body, soul, and spirit--for Christ's service.  That,
+I say, is the Church's ideal.  But we know, alas! only too well, how
+far short the Church on earth falls of that--how much worldliness, and
+vanity, and ambition--yes, and even grosser sins--mingle with our holy
+things.
+
+But we must keep God's ideal ever before us, that ideal which assures
+us that God, by His Spirit, actually dwells in His Church, dwells in
+the heart of each individual believer.  Only when we remember that, can
+we see how great was Ananias's sin.  "_He lied to the Holy Ghost: he
+lied not unto men, but unto God_."  As by God's Spirit his heart had
+been enlightened and opened to the knowledge of the truth: so now
+against that Spirit he had deliberately sinned.
+
+Such a sin could not pass unpunished.  Had that been allowed, the false
+impression would have got abroad that God was easy and tolerant of sin.
+Rather it was necessary "that men should be taught once for all, by
+sudden death treading swiftly on the heels of detected sin, that the
+gospel, which discovers God's boundless mercy, has not wiped out the
+sterner attributes of the Judge."[1]
+
+
+II.
+
+We learn the reality of the power of Satan.
+
+
+On this point, Peter's question is very suggestive--"_Why has Satan
+filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost_?"
+
+There is a constant tendency in those days, which are so impatient of
+all that is supersensible and wonderful, to try and get rid of the
+personality of the devil, and to tone down the question of man's
+salvation to a struggle between two opposing principles within the
+heart, instead of regarding it, as the Bible teaches us to regard it,
+as an actual contest for the soul of man between real persons--the
+Spirit of God from above, the Spirit of evil from beneath.  The heart
+of man is as it were a little city or fortress on the borderland
+between two nations at war with each other, and which is liable to be
+captured by whichever at that point proves itself the strongest.  But
+at the same time with this great difference, that every man has the
+power of deciding into whose hands he is to fall.  His will is free:
+and he is personally accountable for whom he may choose as master.
+
+For, notice how, in the case before us, St Peter, while tracing the
+fall of Ananias to the agency of Satan, yet prefixes his question with
+a _why_: "_Why hath Satan jilted thine heart_?"  There had been a time
+when resistance was still possible.  Ananias might have rejected the
+suggestion of the tempter: he was not bound to yield: but he had
+yielded.  And very suggestive of why he had fallen so low, is that
+other word "_filled_."  It brings before us the quiet, gradual manner
+in which evil takes possession of the heart of man.  We have seen
+already that it was so in the case of Ananias.  _Ambition_ to stand
+well in the sight of others was his first step: to ambition was
+afterwards added _avarice_: and then ambition and avarice combined led
+to _deceit and hypocrisy_.  Or, as bringing out the same truth of the
+gradual progression of sin, notice how Ananias apparently first
+_thought_ over the sin in his own heart: then _spoke_ of it to his
+wife, and agreed with her that it could be done: and then how together
+they _carried it out_.  Thought, speech, action: how often are these
+the successive links by which a man is led on from one degree of sin to
+another?  The lesson is surely to resist at the very outset: so much
+depends upon the first step.  We must not give place to even the first
+thought of evil: nor listen to the tempter's whisper, whisper he ever
+so softly.  How many, as they look back upon a downward career, can
+trace its beginning to some idle or vain thought, or to some hasty or
+careless word!
+
+
+III.
+
+We learn that a divided service is not possible.
+
+
+"_No man_!" said our Lord Himself, "_can serve two masters: ye cannot
+serve God and mammon_."  Not that we are not tempted sometimes to try
+it.  What commoner sin is there amongst professing Christians than the
+attempt to make the best of both worlds--to lay hold of this world with
+the one hand, while we give it up with the other--to seem other than we
+are?
+
+But surely with this old story from the Book of Acts to warn us, we
+must see how vain all such divided efforts are.  We may deceive
+ourselves or others for a while; but the deception cannot last, and in
+some hour of searching or of trial our true characters will be laid
+bare.  Let us see to it, then, that we may take this awful example home
+as a very real and practical warning to ourselves--that we not only
+"_hate and abhor lying_," but put away from us whatsoever "_maketh a
+lie_"! and that the prayer continually on our lips and in our hearts
+is, "From the crafts and assaults of the devil . . . from pride,
+vain-glory, and hypocrisy, good Lord, deliver us."
+
+
+[1]Dr Oswald Dykes.
+
+
+
+
+DEMAS
+
+BY REV. PRINCIPAL DAVID ROWLANDS, B.A.
+
+
+Many a man who figures in history, is only known in connection with
+some stupendous fault--some mistake, some folly, or some sin--that has
+given him an unenviable immortality.  Mention his name, and the huge
+blot by which his memory is besmirched starts up before the mind in all
+its hideousness.  Take Cain, for example.  He occupies the foremost
+rank as regards fame; his name is one of the first that children learn
+to lisp; and yet what do we know about him?  Very little indeed; our
+knowledge, in fact, is limited to a single act--an act which is the
+most horrible of human crimes.  His name is suggestive only of
+violence, murder, the shedding of innocent blood--the foulest deeds
+that man can possibly commit.  Or take Judas Iscariot.  We know more
+particulars about him--we know that he was one of the original
+apostles, that he managed their common fund, that he posed as a strict
+economist, and above all, that he was a consummate hypocrite.  Yet when
+we mention his name, we call up the remembrance of only one vile deed,
+one treacherous act--an act that has made his name a curse and a byword
+throughout the ages.  The same remark is applicable to Demas.  His name
+is familiar enough, but the story of his life is almost unknown.  Paul
+refers to him more than once as a fellow-labourer, which shows that for
+a time at least he was an exemplary Christian.  But he failed in the
+hour of trial--failed through being dominated by an inordinate love of
+the world--and his memory survives, therefore, as a representative of
+that worldly-mindedness which leads to apostasy.
+
+The tone in which the great apostle mentions Demas, in his second
+letter to Timothy, is very touching.  "_Demas_," saith he, "_has
+forsaken me, having loved the present world_" (2 Tim. iv. 16).  We
+might have expected him to give vent to his feelings in bitter
+invective--as is customary in such cases--and to denounce the
+cowardliness of this desertion in language aflame with indignation.  It
+would have been no more than justice to the offender, and it might have
+deterred others from stumbling in the same way.  But no, he does
+nothing of the kind; his words contain nothing more than the brief,
+deep, pathetic groan of a wounded heart.  He had probably built many
+hopes upon Demas, and not without reason.  In his arduous labours among
+the Gentiles he had found him an efficient helper, and many were the
+hours of sweet communion he had spent with him and others, in
+discussing the triumphs of the Gospel.  And he was confident that now
+in his bonds, waiting the pleasure of the Roman tyrant, he would have
+derived comfort from his companionship and encouragement from his
+faithfulness.  But alas! these bright hopes had been cruelly shattered;
+for in the hour of his greatest need Demas had abandoned him.  The
+apostle was too grieved to use harsh language--too grieved, not only at
+his own disappointment, but also when he thought of Demas's own future.
+Unconsciously, in this unostentatious exercise of self-restraint, he
+has left us an impressive lesson in Christian charity, and has shown us
+the way in which those who fall away from their steadfastness ought to
+be treated.  How many of those hapless delinquents might have been
+reclaimed, had the high, noble, generous spirit which animated the
+apostle been manifested towards them by those whose confidence they had
+betrayed, it is impossible to tell; but it is certain that not a few.
+
+The question that presents itself here is this: In what light are we to
+regard Demas's character?  Was he a cool, calculating, determined
+apostate; or did he simply give way to weakness?  There is an essential
+difference between the two cases, and they ought to be judged
+accordingly.  There are men who through sheer perversity renounce their
+faith, and are not ashamed to vilify the religion which they once
+professed.  They are generally embodiments of irreverence, who glory in
+their atheism, and talk of infidelity as if it were a cardinal virtue.
+Whenever there is foul work to be done, they are almost always to the
+fore; whenever holy things are to be held up to ridicule, they are the
+men to do it.  These are deliberate apostates; men who with their eyes
+open prefer darkness to light, who of set purpose deny the truth and
+embrace error.  Happily the world contains but few such.  To the honour
+of human nature, fallen though it be, it may be said that it
+instinctively recoils from such characters with a sense of horror.  We
+do not think for a moment that Demas belonged to this class, though the
+terms in which he is sometimes spoken of might lead one to suppose so.
+
+There are others who fall away through weakness.  They find themselves
+in circumstances for which they are not prepared--circumstances by
+which their faith is sorely tried--and, lacking that strength of
+conviction, which alone can give stability, they recede from the
+position which they took up with so much apparent enthusiasm.  Theirs
+is not that deep spiritual experience which makes its possessor count
+suffering as a privilege and martyrdom as a crown.  They rejoice for a
+season in Christ and His salvation, but "_they have no root in
+themselves_," so that "_when tribulation or persecution ariseth because
+of the word, by and by they are offended_."  We are inclined to think
+that Demas belonged to this class.  The apostle was now overwhelmed by
+calamities.  His career as a messenger of the Cross had been ruthlessly
+cut short.  There were unmistakable signs of a coming storm, when he,
+and possibly those around him, would be tortured and slain, to gratify
+the bloodthirstiness of the Roman emperor.  He seems to be fully
+cognisant of this, for he says, "_I am now ready to be offered, and the
+time of my departure is at hand_."  It is probable, therefore, that
+Demas feared lest by continuing with the apostle he might share his
+dreadful fate.  He pictured himself being carried away in chains by the
+brutal soldiery, as he had seen many others, to the great amphitheatre,
+to be thrown into the arena, and there to be drawn limb from limb by
+ferocious beasts, for the amusement of the frivolous thousands who
+gloated on such scenes.  The bare thought of it made him tremble.  He
+"_loved the present world_"; to him life was too precious, too full of
+delightful possibilities, to be thrown away in the prime of manhood--to
+be thrown away especially in this awful fashion.  Visions of former
+days began to haunt him.  His early home, the comrades of his youth,
+his loving kindred, all that he had left when he became a convert,
+completely engrossed his thoughts, and cast over him a fascination that
+was becoming irresistible.  There was nothing else for it; he must see
+them once more, even though it should cost him his hope of heaven.  And
+so he "departed to Thessalonica," the place where he was bred and born.
+Some suppose that he took this step for the sake of gain--for the sake
+of engaging in some lucrative trade.  It may be so; but there is no
+evidence to prove it.
+
+These considerations, though they explain, do not excuse Demas's
+conduct.  Far from it.  He richly merits all the censure that has been
+meted out to him.  He ought to have played the man, and braved any
+danger for the sake of his principles.  Like the Psalmist, he ought to
+have said: "_The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?
+The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid_?"
+Compared with the kingdom to which he belonged, what was Rome with all
+its power?  Compared with the King whom he served, what was Nero with
+all his glory?  Compared with the joys of holy living, what was the
+world with all its attractions?  But he failed to realise these great
+facts, and hence he acted the part of a weakling; he bent as a reed,
+when he ought to have stood firm as an oak.  If all the first disciples
+had been made of such pliable stuff as himself, what would have been
+the condition of the world to-day?  How mean and cowardly his action
+appears when contrasted with the heroic endurance of weak women, who
+rather than deny their Lord faced the "_violence of fire_!"  Weakness
+in certain situations amounts to a crime.  Who ever thinks of
+justifying Pontius Pilate?  He was not guilty of wilful wrong; he would
+have gladly acquitted our Lord, had he been able to do so without
+risking his own safety; when he delivered Him to be crucified, he
+simply gave way, through fear, to the clamour of an enraged populace.
+Nevertheless he stands convicted by after-ages of the vilest act that
+any judge has ever committed.  Wrong-doing is not to be palliated by
+ascribing it to the overpowering force of temptation.  The claims of
+conscience are paramount, and no inducements, however plausible, can
+justify us in setting them aside.
+
+It is sometimes asked, what became of Demas eventually?  Did he, after
+wandering in the world, and finding no rest to his soul, identify
+himself again with the cause which he had deserted?  We should like to
+be able to believe this.  But the record is silent; and this silence is
+ominous; for when the Bible describes the fall of a good man, it
+generally gives some account of his restoration.  Peter is a notable
+instance.  Amidst the terrors of the Judgment-hall he thrice denied his
+Lord.  The evangelists make no attempt to shield him from adverse
+criticism; on the other hand, they mention in detail every circumstance
+that enhances the baseness of his behaviour.  But they are equally
+careful to dwell also upon the reality of his repentance.  John, in a
+passage of marvellous beauty, relates how in a saner mood, on the shore
+of the sea of Galilee, he thrice confessed his Lord--confessed Him with
+such glowing fervour, that he was there and then restored into the
+position which he had so miserably forfeited.  But the last word about
+Demas is that which points him out as a backslider; and as such he must
+be for ever known.
+
+The lesson of Demas's life is clear, nay even obtrusively clear, and
+the need of it has been freely acknowledged at all times.  We could
+almost wish that it were inscribed in letters of fire upon the midnight
+sky.  He was a man who "_loved this present world_," and we see in his
+history how loving the world involves separation from God, and how
+separation from God results in the abandonment of His cause.
+
+It is difficult to discourse to any purpose upon worldliness.  You
+might get a crowd of people anywhere to hear you dilate upon it.  They
+would probably applaud to the echo your most scathing denunciations of
+its baseness.  But after all the probability is that no one would apply
+those fervid periods to himself.  And why?  Just because this evil
+principle manifests itself in such a variety of ways.  A man who
+detects worldliness in his neighbour with the greatest ease may be
+absolutely incapable of seeing it in himself, simply because his own
+and his neighbour's are so different in form.  It is the old story.
+David boiled over with indignation at the hard-hearted monster who had
+taken the poor man's lamb; but the fact that he himself had taken
+another man's wife, gave him no concern whatever.
+
+It will be readily conceded that the miser is a worldly man.  He loves
+gold for its own sake; he hoards up riches, not with the view of
+enjoying them, but in order to satisfy an inordinate greed of
+possession; his chief object in life is to die worth his hundreds, his
+thousands, or his millions.  Though rich, he is frequently tormented
+with the fear of ending his days in want, and is more anxious for the
+morrow than the poorest of the poor.  The only redeeming point in his
+character is his self-denial--a truly noble characteristic when
+associated with a generous disposition--which, however, in his case,
+loses its value through the sordidness of its aim.  Yes, he is a
+worldly man, beyond the shadow of a doubt.  But this is equally true of
+the man whose manner of life is the very opposite of this--the
+spendthrift.  He values money only in so far as it enables him to make
+a grand display, to spend his days in riotous living, to gain the
+goodwill of the empty, useless, pleasure-living society in which he
+moves.  How totally different the latter from the former!  How
+frequently do they despise and condemn each other--the miser the
+spendthrift, and the spendthrift the miser!  And yet they worship, so
+to speak, at the same shrine; they are victims of the same delusion;
+they both make this world their all.
+
+This love of the world leads in every case to separation from God.  The
+story of the Fall furnishes an apt illustration of this fatal result.
+Stript of its poetic setting, what have we there depicted?
+Covetousness--the desire of material good--the determination to obtain
+it at all hazards.  It was under this guise that sin made its first
+entrance into human life--sin, which in its turn
+
+  "Brought death into our world and all our woe."
+
+Now mark the effect of the first act of transgression.  We are told
+that when Adam and his wife heard the voice of the Lord God walking in
+the garden in the cool of the day, they "hid themselves" from His
+presence "amongst the trees."  In other words, the cords of love which
+up to that point bound man to God were rudely severed.  Before this the
+thought of God filled their souls with joy; they loved to hear His
+voice in the whisperings of the wind, to see His smile in the merry
+sunshine, to trace His power in the structure of the heavens; but now
+all was mysteriously changed, things which previously ministered to
+their enjoyment became a source of terror.
+
+Why should the love of the world lead to this result?  It is because
+God must be all or nothing to the human soul.  The first commandment in
+the law is--"_Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,
+with all thy soul, and with all thy might_."  This is not an arbitrary
+enactment, but it has its ground in the eternal fitness of things.  God
+is the infinitely powerful, the infinitely wise, and the infinitely
+good, and as such demands the undivided love of man.  Anything less
+than this, not only falls below His lawful claim, but also fails to
+satisfy our profoundest aspirations.  As Augustine puts it, "Thou hast
+made us for Thyself; our hearts are restless, until they find rest in
+Thee."  But it may be asked, Does love to God exclude all other loves?
+By no means.  The second commandment in the law, "_Thou shalt love thy
+neighbour as thyself_," is inseparable from the first.  It is
+impossible to obey the one without obeying the other.  Obedience that
+does not regard both is partial, and therefore futile.  The reason is
+plain.  God is immanent in creation.  The Christian beholds God in
+everything, and everything in God.  Thus it comes to pass that his
+supreme love--his love to God--intensifies, ennobles, and hallows every
+other.  If you would have an example of the highest type of love--love
+to God manifesting itself as love to man--go to a Christian home, and
+you will find it there in all its charm, uniting husband and wife,
+parents and children, master and servants, making the house a veritable
+"paradise regained."
+
+There is a sense in which the Christian even loves the world--loves it
+as no other man can love it--that is, when the term is applied to the
+wondrous system of nature.  He loves sometimes to wander in the fields,
+where innumerable lovely forms, both animate and inanimate, reveal
+their beauty to the eye; and at other times to meditate upon the
+illimitable expanse of heaven, crowded by ten thousand worlds, which
+all declare the glory of Him who is Lord over all.  Paul could not have
+had this meaning in his mind when he spoke of Demas as having, through
+loving the present world, made shipwreck concerning his faith.  He was
+thinking rather of the sum-total of those pursuits, pleasures, and
+ambitions which bind man to earth, hamper his spiritual growth, and
+lead him to his ruin.  The "world" in this sense is God's rival; to
+love the "world" is to hate God.
+
+What does separation from God imply, and when can it be said to take
+place?  God is everywhere; who can flee His presence?  God is a spirit;
+who can do Him injury?  These are questions that have always presented
+some difficulty.  It was asked in the days of Malachi, "_Will a man rob
+God_?" as if such a thing were beyond the range of possibility.  At the
+day of judgment, those on the left hand will ask the Judge, "_Lord when
+saw we Thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick,
+or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee_?" as if the things laid
+to their charge were without foundation.  Now, the objectors in the
+days of Malachi who asked, "Wherein have we robbed thee?" were
+answered, "In the tithes and offering."  And the objectors at the day
+of judgment will be answered, "_Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye
+did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me_."
+Evidently, therefore, God--or God in Christ--and His cause are in a
+very real sense identical; so that he who forsakes the one, of
+necessity forsakes the other also.
+
+Separation from the world is an inward process; it takes place in the
+heart, and cannot therefore be perceived by a man's most intimate
+friends.  But the forsaking of God's cause is the outward expression of
+this process, the manner whereby it becomes known to all the world.  If
+it is asked why we assert that Demas had forsaken God, the answer is
+evident; it is because he forsook Paul, who was the representative of
+God's cause.
+
+This is never the work of a day, though it may sometimes appear such.
+A professedly religious man commits a flagrant act of sin--or perhaps a
+punishable crime--which places him at once among the open enemies of
+religion.  We wonder at it; we say in our minds, "What a sudden change!
+yesterday a saint, to-day an unmitigated villain!"  But are we right in
+saying so?  Certainly not.  That rash act was simply the culmination of
+a process that had been going on through a long period.  The man had
+been sailing towards the rapids for months, or perhaps years, only the
+fact was unobserved; it was not until he was hurled headlong over the
+precipice into the foaming gulf, that the attention of the world was
+attracted to it.
+
+
+
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