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+Project Gutenberg's Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander Maclaren
+
+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: Expositions of Holy Scripture
+       Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel,
+       Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I
+       to VII
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+Posting Date: October 18, 2012 [EBook #8068]
+Release Date: May, 2005
+First Posted: June 11, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks, Anne Folland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  EXPOSITIONS OF
+  HOLY SCRIPTURE
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+
+DEUTERONOMY, JOSHUA, JUDGES, RUTH, AND FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+SECOND SAMUEL, FIRST KINGS, AND SECOND KINGS _CHAPTERS I to VII_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY
+
+
+  GOD'S FAITHFULNESS (Deut. vii. 9)
+  THE LESSON OF MEMORY (Deut. viii. 2)
+  THE EATING OF THE PEACE-OFFERING (Deut. xii. 18)
+  PROPHETS AND THE PROPHET (Deut. xviii. 9-22)
+  A CHOICE OF MASTERS (Deut. xxviii. 47, 48)
+  THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW (Deut. xxx. 11-20)
+  GOD'S TRUE TREASURE IN MAN (Deut. xxxii. 9; TITUS ii. 14)
+  THE EAGLE AND ITS BROOD (Deut. xxxii. 11)
+  THEIR ROCK AND OUR ROCK (Deut. xxxii. 31)
+  GOD AND HIS SAINTS (Deut. xxxiii. 3)
+  ISRAEL THE BELOVED (Deut. xxxiii. 12)
+  'AT THE BUSH' (Deut. xxxiii. 16)
+  SHOD FOR THE ROAD (Deut. xxxiii. 25)
+  A DEATH IN THE DESERT (Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6)
+
+
+THE BOOK OF JOSHUA
+
+
+  THE NEW LEADER'S COMMISSION (Joshua i. 1-11)
+  THE CHARGE TO THE SOLDIER OF THE LORD (Joshua i. 7, 8)
+  THE UNTRODDEN PATH AND THE GUIDING ARK (Joshua iii. 4)
+  'THE WATERS SAW THEE; THEY WERE AFRAID' (Joshua iii. 5-17)
+  STONES CRYING OUT (Joshua iv. 10-24)
+  THE CAPTAIN OF THE LORD'S HOST (Joshua v. 14)
+  THE SIEGE OF JERICHO (Joshua vi. 10, 11)
+  RAHAB (Joshua vi. 25)
+  ACHAN'S SIN, ISRAEL'S DEFEAT (Joshua vii. 1-12)
+  THE SUN STAYED (Joshua x. 12)
+  UNWON BUT CLAIMED (Joshua xiii. 1-6)
+  CALEB-A GREEN OLD AGE (Joshua xiv. 6)
+  THE CITIES OF REFUGE (Joshua xx. 1-9)
+  THE END OF THE WAR (Joshua xxi. 43-45; xxii. 1-9)
+  THE NATIONAL OATH AT SHECHEM (Joshua xxiv. 19-28)
+
+
+THE BOOK OF JUDGES
+
+
+  A SUMMARY OF ISRAEL'S FAITHLESSNESS AND GOD'S PATIENCE (Judges ii. 1-10)
+  ISRAEL'S OBSTINACY AND GOD'S PATIENCE (Judges ii. 11-23)
+  RECREANT REUBEN (Judges v. 16, R.V.)
+  'ALL THINGS ARE YOURS' (Judges v. 20; Job v. 23)
+  LOVE MAKES SUNS (Judges v. 31)
+  GIDEON'S ALTAR (Judges vi. 24)
+  GIDEON'S FLEECE (Judges vi. 37)
+  'FIT, THOUGH FEW'(Judges vii. 1-8)
+  A BATTLE WITHOUT A SWORD (Judges vii. 13-23)
+  STRENGTH PROFANED AND LOST (Judges xvi. 21-31)
+
+
+THE BOOK OF RUTH
+
+
+GENTLE HEROINE, A GENTILE CONVERT (Ruth i. 16-22)
+
+
+THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+
+  THE CHILD PROPHET (1 Samuel iii. 1-14)
+  FAITHLESSNESS AND DEFEAT (1 Samuel iv. 1-18)
+  REPENTANCE AND VICTORY (1 Samuel vii, 1-12)
+  'MAKE US A KING' (1 Samuel viii. 4-20)
+  THE OLD JUDGE AND THE YOUNG KING (1 Samuel ix. 16-27)
+  THE KING AFTER MAN'S HEART (1 Samuel x. 17-27)
+  SAMUEL'S CHALLENGE AND CHARGE (1 Samuel xii. 1-15)
+  OLD TRUTH FOR A NEW EPOCH (1 Samuel xii. 13-25)
+  SAUL REJECTED (1 Samuel xv. 10-23)
+  THE SHEPHERD-KING (1 Samuel xvi. 1-13)
+  THE VICTORY OF UNARMED FAITH (1 Samuel xvii. 32-51)
+  A SOUL'S TRAGEDY (1 Samuel xviii. 5-16)
+  JONATHAN, THE PATTERN OF FRIENDSHIP (1 Samuel xx.1-13)
+  LOVE FOR HATE, THE TRUE _QUID PRO QUO_ (1 Samuel xxiv.4-17)
+  LOVE AND REMORSE (1 Samuel xxvi. 5-12; 21-25)
+  SAUL (1 Samuel xxviii. 15)
+  'WHAT DOEST THOU HERE?' (1 Samuel xxix. 3; I Kings xix. 9)
+  THE SECRET OF COURAGE (1 Samuel xxx. 6)
+  AT THE FRONT OR THE BASE (1 Samuel xxx. 24)
+  THE END OF SELF-WILL (1 Samuel xxxi. 1-13)
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY
+
+
+GOD'S FAITHFULNESS
+
+'Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God,
+which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him.'--DEUT. vii.
+9.
+
+
+'Faithful,' like most Hebrew words, has a picture in it. It means
+something that can be (1) leant on, or (2) builded on.
+
+This leads to a double signification--(1) trustworthy, and that because
+(2) rigidly observant of obligations. So the word applies to a steward,
+a friend, or a witness. Its most wonderful and sublime application is
+to God. It presents to our adoring love--
+
+I. God as coming under obligations to us.
+
+A marvellous and blessed idea. He limits His action, regards Himself as
+bound to a certain line of conduct.
+
+1. Obligations from His act of creation.
+
+'A faithful Creator,' bound to take care of those whom He has made. To
+supply their necessities. To satisfy their desires. To give to each the
+possibility of discharging its ideal.
+
+2. Obligations from His past self.
+
+'God is faithful by whom ye were called,' therefore He will do all that
+is imposed on Him by His act of calling.
+
+He cannot begin without completing. There are no abandoned mines. There
+are no half-hewn stones in His quarries, like the block at Baalbec. And
+this because the divine nature is inexhaustible in power and
+unchangeable in purpose.
+
+3. Obligations from His own word.
+
+A revelation is presupposed by the notion of faithfulness. It is not
+possible in heathenism. 'Dumb idols,' which have given their
+worshippers no promises, cannot be thought of as faithful. By its grand
+conception of Jehovah as entering into a covenant with Israel, the Old
+Testament presents Him to our trust as having bound Himself to a known
+line of action. Thereby He becomes, if we may so phrase it, a
+constitutional monarch.
+
+That conception of a Covenant is the negation of caprice, of arbitrary
+sovereignty, of mystery. We know the principles of His government. His
+majestic 'I wills' cover the whole ground of human life and needs for
+the present and the future. We can go into no region of life but we
+find that God has defined His conduct to us there by some word spoken
+to our heart and binding Him.
+
+4. Obligations from His new Covenant and highest word in Jesus Christ.
+
+'He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.'
+
+II. God as recognising and discharging these obligations.
+
+That He will do so comes from His very nature. With Him there is no
+change of disposition, no emergence of unseen circumstances, no failure
+or exhaustion of power.
+
+That He does so is matter of fact. Moses in the preceding context had
+pointed to facts of history, on which he built the 'know therefore' of
+the text. On the broad scale the whole world's history is full of
+illustrations of God's faithfulness to His promises and His threats.
+The history of Judaism, the sorrows of nations, and the complications
+of national events, all illustrate this fact.
+
+The personal history of each of us. The experience of all Christian
+souls. No man ever trusted in Him and was ashamed. He wills that we
+should put Him to the proof.
+
+III. God as claiming our trust.
+
+He is faithful, worthy to be trusted, as His deeds show.
+
+Faith is our attitude corresponding to His faithfulness. Faith is the
+germ of all that He requires from us. How much we need it! How firm it
+might be! How blessed it would make us!
+
+The thought of God as 'faithful' is, like a precious stone, turned in
+many directions in Scripture, and wherever turned it flashes light.
+Sometimes it is laid as the foundation for the confidence that even our
+weakness will be upheld to the end, as when Paul tells the Corinthians
+that they will be confirmed to the end, because 'God is faithful,
+through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son' (1 Cor. i.
+9). Sometimes there is built on it the assurance of complete
+sanctification, as when he prays for the Thessalonians that their
+'whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the
+coming of our Lord' and finds it in his heart to pray thus because
+'Faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it' (1 Thess. v.
+24). Sometimes it is presented as the steadfast stay grasping which
+faith can expect apparent impossibilities, as when Sara 'judged Him
+faithful who had promised' (Heb. xi. 11). Sometimes it is adduced as
+bringing strong consolation to souls conscious of their own feeble and
+fluctuating faith, as when Paul tells Timothy that 'If we are
+faithless, He abideth faithful; for He cannot deny Himself' (2 Tim. ii.
+13). Sometimes it is presented as an anodyne to souls disturbed by
+experience of men's unreliableness, as when the apostle heartens the
+Thessalonians and himself to bear human untrustworthiness by the
+thought that though men are faithless, God 'is faithful, who shall
+establish you and keep you from evil' (2 Thess. in. 2, 3). Sometimes it
+is put forward to breathe patience into tempted spirits, as when the
+Corinthians are comforted by the assurance that 'God is faithful, who
+will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able' (1 Cor. x.
+13). Sometimes it is laid as the firm foundation for our assurance of
+pardon, as when John tells us that 'If we confess our sins, He is
+faithful and just to forgive us our sins' (1 John i. 9). And sometimes
+that great attribute of the divine nature is proposed as holding forth
+a pattern for us to follow, and the faith in it as tending to make us
+in a measure steadfast like Himself, as when Paul indignantly rebuts
+his enemies' charge of levity of purpose and vacillation, and avers
+that 'as God is faithful, our word toward you is not yea and nay' (2
+Cor. L 18).
+
+
+
+
+THE LESSON OF MEMORY
+
+'Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these
+lofty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to
+know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His
+commandments, or no.'--DEUT. viii.2.
+
+
+The strand of our lives usually slips away smoothly enough, but days
+such as this, the last Sunday in a year, are like the knots on a
+sailor's log, which, as they pass through his fingers, tell him how
+fast it is being paid out from the reel, and how far it has run off.
+
+They suggest a momentary consciousness of the swift passage of life,
+and naturally lead us to a glance backwards and forwards, both of which
+occupations ought to be very good for us. The dead flat upon which some
+of us live may be taken as an emblem of the low present in which most
+of us are content to pass our lives, affording nowhere a distant view,
+and never enabling us to see more than a street's length ahead of us.
+It is a good thing to get up upon some little elevation and take a
+wider view, backwards and forwards.
+
+And so now I venture to let the season preach to us, and to confine
+myself simply to suggesting for you one or two very plain and obvious
+thoughts which may help to make our retrospect wise and useful. And
+there are two main considerations which I wish to submit. The first
+is--what we ought to be chiefly occupied with as we look back; and
+secondly, what the issue of such a retrospect ought to be.
+
+I. With what we should be mainly occupied as we look back. Memory, like
+all other faculties, may either help us or hinder us. As is the man, so
+will be his remembrance. The tastes which rule his present will
+determine the things that he likes best to think about in the past.
+There are many ways of going wrong in our retrospects. Some of us, for
+instance, prefer to think with pleasure about things that ought never
+to have been done, and to give a wicked immortality to thoughts that
+ought never to have had a being. Some men's tastes and inclinations are
+so vitiated and corrupted that they find a joy in living their
+badnesses over again. Some of us, looking back on the days that are
+gone, select by instinctive preference for remembrance, the vanities
+and frivolities and trifles which were the main things in them whilst
+they lasted. Such a use of the great faculty of memory is like the
+folly of the Egyptians who embalmed cats and vermin. Do not let us be
+of those, who have in their memories nothing but rubbish, or something
+worse, who let down the drag-net into the depths of the past and bring
+it up full only of mud and foulnesses, and of ugly monsters that never
+ought to have been dragged into the daylight.
+
+Then there are some of us who abuse memory just as much by picking out,
+with perverse ingenuity, every black bit that lies in the distance
+behind us, all the disappointments, all the losses, all the pains, all
+the sorrows. Some men look back and say, with Jacob in one of his
+moods, 'Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life!' Yes!
+and the same man, when he was in a better spirit, said, and a great
+deal more truly, 'The God that fed me all my life long, the Angel which
+redeemed me from all evil.' Do not paint like Rembrandt, even if you do
+not paint like Turner. Do not dip your brush only in the blackness,
+even if you cannot always dip it in molten sunshine.
+
+And there are some of us who, in like manner, spoil all the good that
+we could get out of a wise retrospect, by only looking back in such a
+fashion as to feed a sentimental melancholy, which is, perhaps, the
+most profitless of all the ways of looking backwards.
+
+Now here are the two points, in this verse of my text, which would put
+all these blunders and all others right, telling us what we should
+chiefly think about when we look back, and from what point of view the
+retrospect of the past must be taken in order that it should be
+salutary. 'Thou shalt remember all the way by which the Lord thy God
+hath led thee.' Let memory work under the distinct recognition of
+divine guidance in every part of the past. That is the _first_
+condition of making the retrospect blessed. 'To humble thee and to
+prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest
+keep His commandments, or no'; let us look back with a clear
+recognition of the fact that the use of life is to test, and reveal,
+and to make, character. This world, and all its outward engagements,
+duties, and occupations, is but a scaffolding, on which the builders
+may stand to rear the true temple, and when the building is reared you
+may do what you like with the scaffolding. So we have to look back on
+life from this point of view, that its joys and sorrows, its ups and
+downs, its work and repose, the vicissitudes and sometimes contrariety
+of its circumstances and conditions, are all for the purpose of making
+_us_, and of making plain to ourselves, what we are. 'To humble thee,'
+that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us to
+say: 'I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak rag
+of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be able
+to resist or to do.' That is one main lesson that life is meant to
+teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering and
+shocks of time, by reason of sorrows and failures, by reason of joys,
+too, and fruition,--'Lord, I come to Thee as depending upon Thee for
+everything,' has wrung its supreme good out of life, and has fulfilled
+the purpose of the Father, who has led us all these years, to humble us
+into the wholesome diffidence that says: 'Not in myself, but in Thee
+are all my strength and my hope.'
+
+I need not do more than remind you of the other cognate purposes which
+are suggested here. Life is meant, not only to bring us to humble
+self-distrust, as a step towards devout dependence on God, but also to
+reveal us to ourselves; for we only know what we are by reflecting on
+what we have done, and the only path by which self-knowledge can be
+attained is the path of observant recollection of our conduct in daily
+life.
+
+Another purpose for which the whole panorama of life is made to pass
+before us, and for which all the gymnastic of life exercises us, is
+that we may be made submissive to the great Will, and may keep His
+commandments.
+
+These thoughts should be with us in our retrospect, and then our
+retrospect will be blessed: First, we are to look back and see God's
+guidance everywhere, and second, we are to judge of the things that we
+remember by their tendency to make character, to make us humble, to
+reveal us to ourselves, and to knit us in glad obedience to our Father
+God.
+
+II. And now turn to the other consideration which may help to make
+remembrance a good, viz., the issues to which our retrospect must tend,
+if it is to be anything more than sentimental recollection.
+
+First, let me say: Remember and be thankful. If what I have been saying
+as to the standard by which events are to be tried be true; if it be
+the case that the main fact about things is their power to mould
+persons and to make character, then there follows, very plainly and
+clearly, that all things that come within the sweep of our memory may
+equally contribute to our highest good.
+
+Good does not mean pleasure. Bright-being may not always be well-being,
+and the highest good has a very much nobler meaning than comfort and
+satisfaction. And so, realising the fact that the best of things is
+that they shall make us like God, then we can turn to the past and
+judge it wisely, because then we shall see that all the diversity, and
+even the opposition, of circumstances and events, may co-operate
+towards the same end. Suppose two wheels in a great machine, one turns
+from right to left and the other from left to right, but they fit into
+one another, and they both produce one final result of motion. So the
+moments in my life which I call blessings and gladness, and the moments
+in my life which I call sorrows and tortures, may work into each other,
+and they will do so if I take hold of them rightly, and use them as
+they ought to be used. They will tend to the highest good whether they
+be light or dark; even as night with its darkness and its dews has its
+ministration and mission of mercy for the wearied eye no less than day
+with its brilliancy and sunshine; even as the summer and the winter are
+equally needful, and equally good for the crop. So in our lives it is
+good for us, sometimes, that we be brought into the dark places; it is
+good for us sometimes that the leaves be stripped from the trees, and
+the ground be bound with frost.
+
+And so for both kinds of weather, dear brethren, we have to remember
+and be thankful. It is a hard lesson, I know, for some of us. There may
+be some listening to me whose memory goes back to this dying year as
+the year that has held the sorest sorrow of their lives; to whom it has
+brought some loss that has made earth dark. And it seems hard to tell
+quivering lips to be thankful, and to bid a man be grateful though his
+eyes fill with tears as he looks back on such a past. But yet it is
+true that it is good for us to be drawn, or to be driven, to Him; it is
+good for us to have to tread even a lonely path if it makes us lean
+more on the arm of our Beloved. It is good for us to have places made
+empty if, as in the year when Israel's King died, we shall thereby have
+our eyes purged to behold the Lord sitting on the Royal Seat.
+
+               'Take it on trust a little while,
+                  Thou soon shalt read the mystery right,
+                In the full sunshine of His smile.'
+
+And for the present let us try to remember that He dwelleth in the
+darkness as in the light, and that we are to be thankful for the things
+that help us to be near Him, and not only for the things that make us
+outwardly glad. So I venture to say even to those of you who may be
+struggling with sad remembrances, remember and be thankful.
+
+I have no doubt there are many of us who have to look back, if not upon
+a year desolated by some blow that never can be repaired, yet upon a
+year in which failing resources and declining business, or diminished
+health, or broken spirits, or a multitude of minute but most disturbing
+cares and sorrows, do make it hard to recognise the loving Hand in all
+that comes. Yet to such, too, I would say: 'All things work together
+for good,' therefore all things are to be embraced in the thankfulness
+of our retrospect.
+
+The second and simple practical suggestion that I make is this:
+Remember, and let the memory lead to contrition. Perhaps I am speaking
+to some men or women for whom this dying year holds the memory of some
+great lapse from goodness; some young man who for the first time has
+been tempted to sensuous sin; some man who may have been led into
+slippery places in regard to business integrity. I draw a 'bow at a
+venture' when I speak of such things--perhaps some one is listening to
+me who would give a great deal if he or she could forget a certain past
+moment of this dying year, which makes their cheeks hot yet whilst they
+think of it. To such I say: Remember, go close into the presence of the
+black thing, and get the consciousness of it driven into your heart;
+for such remembrance is the first step to deliverance from the load,
+and to your passing, emancipated from the bitterness, into the year
+that lies before you.
+
+But even if there are none of us to whom such remarks would specially
+apply, let us summon up to ourselves the memories of these bygone days.
+In all the three hundred and sixty-five of them, my friend, how many
+moments stand out distinct before you as moments of high communion with
+God? How many times can you remember of devout consecration to Him? How
+many, when--as visitors to the Riviera reckon the number of days in the
+season in which, far across the water, they have seen Corsica--you can
+remember this year to have beheld, faint and far away, 'the mountains
+that are round about' the 'Jerusalem that is above'? How many moments
+do you remember of consecration and service, of devotion to your God
+and your fellows? Oh! what a miserable, low-lying stretch of
+God-forgetting monotony our lives look when we are looking back at them
+in the mass. One film of mist is scarcely perceptible, but when you get
+a mile of it you can tell what it is--oppressive darkness. One drop of
+muddy water does not show its pollution, but when you have a pitcherful
+of it you can see how thick it is. And so a day or an hour looked back
+upon may not reveal the true godlessness of the average life, but if
+you will take the twelvemonth and think about it, and ask yourself a
+question or two about it, I think you will feel that the only attitude
+for any of us in looking back across a stretch of such brown barren
+moorland is that of penitent prayer for forgiveness and for cleansing.
+
+But I dare say that some of you say: 'Oh! I look back and I do not feel
+anything of that kind of regret that you describe; I have done my duty,
+and nobody can blame me. I am quite comfortable in my retrospect. Of
+course there have been imperfections; we are all human, and these need
+not trouble a man.' Let me ask you, dear brother, one question: Do you
+believe that the law of a man's life is, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy
+God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
+strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself'? Do you
+believe that that is what you ought to do? Have you done it? If you
+have not, let me beseech you not to go out of this year, across the
+artificial and imaginary boundary that separates you from the next,
+with the old guilt upon your back, but go to Jesus Christ, and ask Him
+to forgive you, and then you may pass into the coming twelvemonth
+without the intolerable burden of unremembered, unconfessed, and
+therefore unforgiven, sin.
+
+The next point that I would suggest is this: Let us remember in order
+that from the retrospect we may gain practical wisdom. It is
+astonishing what unteachable, untamable creatures men are. They learn
+wisdom about all the little matters of daily life by experience, but
+they do not seem to do so about the higher. Even a sparrow comes to
+understand a scarecrow after a time or two, and any rat in a hole will
+learn the trick of a trap. But you can trick men over and over again
+with the same inducement, and, even whilst the hook is sticking in
+their jaws, the same bait will tempt them once more. That is very
+largely the case because they do not observe and remember what has
+happened to them in bygone days.
+
+There are two things that any man, who will bring his reason and
+common-sense to bear upon the honest estimate and retrospect of the
+facts of his life, may be fully convinced of. These are, first, his own
+weakness. One main use of a wise retrospect is to teach us where we are
+weakest. What an absurd thing it would be if the inhabitants of a Dutch
+village were to let the sea come in at the same gap in the same dyke a
+dozen times! What an absurd thing it would be if a city were captured
+over and over again by assaults at the same point, and did not
+strengthen its defences there! But that is exactly what you do; and all
+the while, if you would only think about your own past lives wisely and
+reasonably, and like men with brains in your heads, you might find out
+where it was that you were most open to attack; what it was in your
+character that most needed strengthening, what it was wherein the devil
+caught you most quickly, and might so build yourselves up in the most
+defenceless points.
+
+Do not look back for sentimental melancholy; do not look back with
+unavailing regrets; do not look back to torment yourselves with useless
+self-accusation; but look back to see how good God has been, and look
+back to see where you are weak, and pile the wall, higher there, and so
+learn practical wisdom from retrospect.
+
+Another phase of the practical wisdom which memory should give is
+deliverance from the illusions of sense and time. Remember how little
+the world has ever done for you in bygone days. Why should you let it
+befool you once again? If it has proved itself a liar when it has
+tempted you with gilded offers that came to nothing, and with beauty
+that was no more solid than the 'Easter-eggs' that you buy in the
+shops--painted sugar with nothing inside--why should you believe it
+when it comes to you once more? Why not say: 'Ah! once burnt, twice
+shy! You have tried that trick on me before, and I have found it out!'
+Let the retrospect teach us how hollow life is without God, and so let
+it draw us near to Him.
+
+The last thing that I would say is: 'Let us remember that we may hope.
+It is the prerogative of Christian remembrance, that it merges into
+Christian hope. The forward look and the backward look are really but
+the exercise of the same faculty in two different directions. Memory
+does not always imply hope, we remember sometimes because we do not
+hope, and try to gather round ourselves the vanished past because we
+know it never again can be a present or a future. But when we are
+occupied with an unchanging Friend, whose love is inexhaustible, and
+whose arm is unwearied, it is good logic to say: 'It has been,
+therefore it shall be.'
+
+With regard to this fleeting life, it is a delusion to say 'to-morrow
+shall be as this day, and much more abundant'; but with regard to the
+life of the soul that lives in God, that is true, and true for ever.
+The past is a specimen of the future. The future for the man who lives
+in Christ is but the prolongation, and the heightening into superlative
+excellence and beauty, of all that is good in the past and in the
+present. As the radiance of some rising sun may cast its bright beams
+into the opposite sky, even so the glowing past behind us flings its
+purples and its golds and its scarlets on to the else dim curtain of
+the future.
+
+Remember that you may hope. A paradox, but a paradox that is a truth in
+the case of Christians whose memory is of a God that has loved and
+blessed them whose hope is in a God that changes never; whose memory is
+charged with 'every good and perfect gift that came down from the
+Father of Lights,' whose hope is in that same Father, 'with whom is no
+variableness, neither shadow of turning.' So on every stone of
+remembrance, every Ebenezer on which is graved: 'Hitherto hath the Lord
+helped us,' we can mount a telescope--if I may so say--that will look
+into the furthest glories of the heavens, and be sure that the past
+will be magnified and perpetuated in the future. Our prayer may
+legitimately be; 'Thou hast been my help, leave me not, neither forsake
+me!' And His answer will be: 'I will not leave thee until I have done
+that which I have spoken to thee of.' Remember that you may hope, and
+hope because you remember.
+
+
+
+
+THE EATING OF THE PEACE-OFFERING
+
+'But thou must eat them before the Lord thy God in the place which the
+Lord thy God shall choose, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy
+manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy
+gates: and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God in all that thou
+puttest thine hands unto.'--DEUT. xii. 18.
+
+
+There were three bloody sacrifices, the sin-offering, the
+burnt-offering, and the peace-offering. In all three expiation was the
+first idea, but in the second of them the act of burning symbolised a
+further thought, namely, that of offering to God, while in the third,
+the peace-offering, there was added to both of these the still further
+thought of the offerer's participation with God, as symbolised by the
+eating of the sacrifice. So we have great verities of the most
+spiritual religion adumbrated in this external rite. The rind is hard
+and forbidding, the kernel is juicy and sweet.
+
+I. Communion with God based on atonement.
+
+II. Feeding on Christ.
+
+What was sacrifice becomes food. The same Person and facts, apprehended
+by faith, are, in regard to their bearing on the divine government, the
+ground of pardon, and in regard to their operation within us, the
+source of spiritual sustenance. Christ for us is our pardon; Christ in
+us is our life.
+
+III. The restoration to the offerer of all which he lays on God's altar.
+
+The sacrifice was transformed and elevated into a sacrament. By being
+offered the sacrifice was ennobled. The offerer did not lose what he
+laid on the altar, but it came back to him, far more precious than
+before. It was no longer mere food for the body, and to eat it became
+not an ordinary meal, but a sacrament and means of union with God. It
+was a hundredfold more the offerer's even in this life. All its savour
+was more savoury, all its nutritive qualities were more nutritious. It
+had suffered a fiery change, and was turned into something more rich
+and rare.
+
+That is blessedly true as to all which we lay on God's altar. It is far
+more ours than it ever was or could be, while we kept it for ourselves,
+and our enjoyment of, and nourishment from, our good things, when
+offered as sacrifices, are greater than when we eat our morsel alone.
+If we make earthly joys and possessions the materials of our sacrifice,
+they will not only become more joyful and richer, but they will become
+means of closer union with Him, instead of parting us from Him, as they
+do when used in selfish disregard of Him.
+
+Nor must we forget the wonderful thought, also mirrored in this piece
+of ancient ritual, that God delights in men's sacrifices and surrenders
+and services. 'If I were hungry, I would not tell thee,' said the
+Psalmist in God's name in regard to outward sacrifices; 'Will I eat the
+flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' But he does 'eat' the
+better sacrifices that loving hearts or obedient wills lay on His
+altar. He seeks for these, and delights when they are offered to Him.
+'He hungered, and seeing a fig tree by the wayside, He came to it.' He
+still hungers for the fruit that we can yield to Him, and if we will,
+He will enter in and sup with us, not disdaining to sit at the poor
+table which we can spread for Him, nor to partake of the humble fare
+which we can lay upon it, but mending the banquet by what He brings for
+_our_ nourishment, and hallowing the hour by His presence.
+
+
+
+
+PROPHETS AND THE PROPHET
+
+'When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,
+thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. 10.
+There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his
+daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an
+observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, 11. Or a charmer, or a
+consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12. For
+all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because
+of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before
+thee. 13. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. 14. For these
+nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times,
+and unto diviners: but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered
+thee so to do. 15. The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet
+from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye
+shall hearken; 16. According to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy
+God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again
+the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any
+more, that I die not. 17. And the Lord said unto me, They have well
+spoken that which they have spoken. 18. I will raise them up a Prophet
+from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put My words in His
+mouth; and He shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him. 19.
+And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto My words
+which He shall speak in My name, I will require it of him. 20. But the
+prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in My name, which I have
+not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other
+gods, even that prophet shall die. 21. And if thou say in thine heart,
+How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? 22. When a
+prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor
+come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the
+prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of
+him.'--DEUT. xviii. 9-22.
+
+
+It is evident from the connection in which the promise of 'a prophet
+like unto Moses' is here introduced that it does not refer to Jesus
+only; for it is presented as Israel's continuous defence against the
+temptation of seeking knowledge of the divine will by the illegitimate
+methods of divination, soothsaying, necromancy, and the like, which
+were rampant among the inhabitants of the land. A distant hope of a
+prophet in the far-off future could afford no motive to shun these
+superstitions. We cannot understand this passage unless we recognise
+that the direct reference is to the institution of the prophetic order
+as the standing means of imparting the reliable knowledge of God's
+will, possessing which, Israel had no need to turn to them 'that peep
+and mutter' and bring false oracles from imagined gods. But that
+primary reference of the words does not exclude, but rather demands,
+their ultimate reference to Him in whom the divine word is perfectly
+enshrined, and who is the bright, consummate flower of the prophetic
+order, which 'spake of Him,' not only in its individual predictions,
+but by its very existence.
+
+A glance must be given to the exhaustive list of pretenders to
+knowledge of the future or to power of shaping it magically, which
+occurs in verses 10,11, and suggests a terrible picture of the burdens
+of superstition which weighed on men in these days of ignorance, as the
+like burdens do still, wherever Jesus is not known as the one Revealer
+of God, and the sole Lord of all things. Of the eight terms employed,
+the first three refer to different means of reading the future, the
+next two to different means of influencing events, and the last three
+to different ways of consulting the dead. The first of these eight
+properly refers to drawing lots, but includes other methods; the second
+is an obscure word, which is supposed by some to mean a 'murmurer,' and
+may refer rather to the low mutterings of the soothsayer than to the
+method of his working; the third is probably a general expression for
+an interpreter of omens, especially of those given by the play of
+liquid in a 'cup,' such as Joseph 'divined' by.
+
+Two names for magicians follow, of which the former seems to mean one
+who worked with charms such as African or American Indian 'medicine
+men' use, and the latter, one who binds by incantations, or one who
+ties magic knots, which are supposed to have the power of hindering the
+designs of the person against whom they are directed. The word employed
+means 'binding,' and maybe used either literally or metaphorically. The
+malicious tying of knots in order to work harm is not dead yet in some
+backward corners of Britain. Then follow three names for traffickers
+with spirits,--those who raise ghosts as did the witch of Endor, those
+who have a 'familiar spirit,' and those who in any way consult the
+dead. It is a grim catalogue, bearing witness to the deep-rooted
+longing in men to peer into the darkness ahead, and to get some
+knowledge of the purposes of the awful unseen Power who rules there.
+The longing is here recognised as legitimate, while the methods are
+branded as bad, and Israel is warned from them, by being pointed to the
+merciful divine institution which meets the longing.
+
+It is clear, from this glance at the context, that the 'prophet'
+promised to Israel must mean the order, not the individual; and it is
+interesting to note, first, the relation in which that order is
+presented as standing towards all that rabble of diviners and
+sorcerers, with their rubbish of charms and muttered spells. It sweeps
+them off the field, because it is truly what they pretend to be. God
+knows men's longings, and God will meet them so far as meeting them is
+for men's good. But the characteristics of the prophet are set in
+strong contrast to those of the diviners and magicians, and lift the
+order high above all the filth and folly of these others. First, the
+prophet is 'raised up' by God; the individual holder of the office has
+his 'call' and does not 'prophesy out of his own heart.' The man who
+takes this office on himself without such a call is _ipso facto_
+branded as a false prophet. Then he is 'from the midst of thee, of thy
+brethren,'--springing from the people, not an alien, like so many of
+these wandering soothsayers, but with the national life throbbing in
+his veins, and himself participant of the thoughts and emotions of his
+brethren. Then he is to be 'like unto' Moses,--not in all points, but
+in his receiving direct communications from God, and in his authority
+as God's messenger. The crowning characteristic, 'I will put My words
+into his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command
+him,' invests his words with divine authority, calls for obedience to
+them as the words of God Himself, widens out his sphere far beyond that
+of merely foretelling, brings in the moral and religious element which
+had no place in the oracles of the soothsayer, and opens up the
+prospect of a continuous progressive revelation throughout the ages
+('all that I _shall_ command him'). We mutilate the grand idea of the
+prophet in Israel if we think of his work as mainly prediction, and we
+mutilate it no less if we exclude prediction from it. We mutilate it
+still more fatally if we try to account for it on naturalistic
+principles, and fail to see in the prophet a man directly conscious of
+a divine call, or to hear in his words the solemn accents of the voice
+of God.
+
+The loftiness and the limitations of 'the goodly fellowship of the
+prophets' alike point onwards to Jesus Christ. In Him, and in Him
+alone, the idea of the prophet is fully realised. The imperfect
+embodiments of it in the past were prophecies as well as prophets. The
+fact that God has 'spoken unto the fathers by the prophets,' leads us
+to expect that He will speak 'to us in a Son,' and that not by
+fragments of His mighty voice, but in one full, eternal, all-embracing
+and all-sufficient Word. Every divine idea, which has been imperfectly
+manifested in fragmentary and sinful men and in the material creation,
+is completely incarnated in Him. He is the King to whom the sins and
+the saintlinesses of Israel's kings alike pointed. He is the Priest,
+whom Aaron and his sons foreshadowed, who perfectly exercises the
+sympathy which they could only feel partially, because they were
+compassed with infirmity and self-regard, and who offers the true
+sacrifice of efficacy higher than 'the blood of bulls and goats.' He is
+the Prophet, who makes all other means of knowing the divine will
+unnecessary, hearing whom we hear the very voice of God speaking in His
+gentle words of love, in His authoritative words of command, in His
+illuminating words of wisdom, and speaking yet more loudly and
+heart-touchingly in the eloquence of deeds no less than divine; who is
+'not ashamed to call us brethren,' and is 'bone of our bone and flesh
+of our flesh'; who is like, but greater than, the great lawgiver of
+Israel, being the Son and Lord of the 'house' in which Moses was but a
+servant. 'To Him give all the prophets witness,' and the greatest of
+them was honoured when, with Moses, Elijah stood on the Mount of
+Transfiguration, subordinate and attesting, and then faded away when
+the voice proclaimed, 'This is My beloved Son, hear Him,'--and they
+'saw no one save Jesus only.'
+
+
+
+
+A CHOICE OF MASTERS
+
+'Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with
+gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; 48. Therefore shalt
+thou serve thine enemies ... in want of all things: and He shall put a
+yoke of iron upon thy neck, until He have destroyed thee.'--DEUT.
+xxviii. 47, 48
+
+
+The history of Israel is a picture on the large scale of what befalls
+every man.
+
+A service--we are all born to obedience, to depend on and follow some
+person or thing. There is only a choice of services; and he who boasts
+himself free is but a more abject slave, as the choice for a nation is
+either the rule of settled order and the sanctities of an established
+law, or the usurpation of a mob and the intolerable tyranny of
+unbridled and irresponsible force.
+
+I. The service of God or the service of our enemies.
+
+Israel was the servant in turn of Egypt, Philistia, Edom, Assyria,
+Babylon, Syria, and Rome. It was every invader's prey. God's invisible
+arm was its only guard from these, and an all-sufficient guard as long
+as it leaned on Him. When it turned from Him it fell under their yoke.
+Its lawful Lord loved it; its tyrants hated it.
+
+So with us. We have to serve God or enemies. Our lusts, our passions,
+the world, evil habits--in a word, our sins ring us round. God is the
+only defence against them.
+
+The contrast between the one and the many--a king or an ochlocracy. The
+contrast of the loving Lord and the hostile sins.
+
+II. A service which is honour or a service which is degradation.
+
+God alone is worthy of our absolute submission and service. How low a
+man sinks when he is ruled by any lesser authority! Such obedience is a
+crime against the dignity of human nature, and the soul is not without
+a galling sense of this now and then, when its chains rattle.
+
+III. A service which is freedom because it is rendered by love, or a
+service which is hard slavery.
+
+'With joy for the abundance of all things.' How sin palls upon us, and
+yet we commit it. The will is overborne, conscience is stifled.
+
+IV. A service which feeds the spirit or a service which starves it.
+
+The soul can only in God get what it wants. Prison fare is what it
+receives in the other service. The unsatisfying character of all sin;
+it cloys, and yet leaves one hungry. It is 'that which satisfieth not.'
+'Broken cisterns which hold no water.'
+
+V. A service which is life or a service which is death.
+
+The dark forebodings of the text grow darker as it goes on. The grim
+slavery which it threatens as the only alternative to joyful service of
+God is declared to be lifelong 'penal servitude,' and not only is there
+no deliverance from it, but it directly tends to wear away the life of
+the hopeless slaves. For the words that follow our text are 'and he
+shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.'
+That is dismally true in regard to any and every life that has shaken
+off the service of God which is perfect freedom, and has persisted in
+the service of sin. Such service is suicidal; it rivets an iron yoke on
+our necks, and there is no locksmith who can undo the shackles and lift
+it off, so long as we refuse to take service with God. Stubbornly
+rebellious wills forge their own fetters. Like many a slave-owner, our
+tyrants have a cruel delight in killing their slaves, and our sins not
+only lead to death, but are themselves death.
+
+But there is a bright possibility before the most down-trodden vassal
+of sin. 'The bond-servant abideth not in the house for ever.' He is not
+a son of the house, but has been brought into it, stolen from his home.
+He may be carried back to his Father's house, and there 'have bread
+enough and to spare,' if a deliverer can be found. And He has been
+found. Christ the Son makes us free, and if we trust Him for our
+emancipation we 'shall be free indeed,' 'that we, being delivered out
+of the hand of our enemies, should serve Him without fear, in holiness
+and righteousness before Him all our days.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW
+
+'For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden
+from thee, neither is it far off. 12. It is not in heaven, that thou
+shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us,
+that we may hear it, and do it? 13. Neither is it beyond the sea, that
+thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto
+us, that we may hear it, and do it? 14. But the word is very nigh unto
+thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. 15. See,
+I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; 16.
+In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in
+His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His
+judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply; and the Lord thy God
+shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. 17. But
+if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be
+drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; 18. I denounce unto
+you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not
+prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go
+to possess it. 19. I call heaven and earth to record this day against
+you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:
+therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: 20. That
+thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice,
+and that thou mayest cleave unto Him: for He is thy life, and the
+length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord
+sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give
+them.'--DEUT. xxx. 11-20.
+
+
+This paragraph closes the legislation of this book, the succeeding
+chapters being in the nature of an epilogue or appendix. It sums up the
+whole law, makes plain its inmost essence and its tremendous
+alternatives. As in the closing strains of some great symphony, the
+themes which have run through the preceding movements are woven
+together in the final burst of music. Let us try to discover the
+component threads of the web.
+
+The first point to note is the lofty conception of the true essence of
+the whole law, which is enshrined here. 'This commandment which I
+command thee this day' is twice defined in the section (vs. 16, 20),
+and in both instances 'to love Jehovah thy God' is presented as the
+all-important precept. Love is recognised as the great commandment.
+Leviticus may deal with minute regulations for worship, but these are
+subordinate, and the sovereign commandment is love. Nor is the motive
+which should sway to love omitted; for what a tender drawing by the
+memories of what He had done for Israel is put forth in the name of
+'Jehovah, _thy_ God!' The Old Testament system is a spiritual system,
+and it too places the very heart of religion in love to God, drawn out
+by the contemplation of his self-revelation in his loving dealings with
+us. We have here clearly recognised that the obedience which pleases
+God is obedience born of love, and that the love which really sets
+towards God will, like a powerful stream, turn all the wheels of life
+in conformity to His will. When Paul proclaimed that 'love is the
+fulfilling of the law,' he was only repeating the teaching of this
+passage, when it puts 'to walk in His ways,' or 'to obey His voice,'
+after 'to love Jehovah thy God.' Obedience is the result and test of
+love; love is the only parent of real obedience.
+
+The second point strongly insisted on here is the blessedness of
+possessing such a knowledge as the law gives. Verses 11-14 present that
+thought in three ways. The revelation is not that of duties far beyond
+our capacity: 'It is not too hard for thee.' No doubt, complete
+conformity with it is beyond our powers, and entire, whole-hearted, and
+whole-souled love of God is not attained even by those who love Him
+most. Paul's position that the law gives the knowledge of sin, just
+because it presents an impossible elevation in its ideal, is not
+opposed to the point of view of this context; for he is thinking of
+complete conformity as impossible, while it is thinking of real, though
+imperfect, obedience as within the reach of all men. No man can love as
+he ought; every man can love. It is blessed to have our obligations all
+gathered into such a commandment.
+
+Again, the possession of the law is a blessing, because its
+authoritative voice ends the weary quest after some reliable guide to
+conduct, and we need neither try to climb to heaven, nor to traverse
+the wide world and cross the ocean, to find certitude and enlightenment
+enough for our need. They err who think of God's commandments as
+grievous burdens; they are merciful guide-posts. They do not so much
+lay weights on our backs as give light to our eyes.
+
+Still further, the law has its echo 'in thy heart.' It is 'graven on
+the fleshly tables of the heart,' and we all respond to it when it
+gathers up all duty into 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,' and our
+consciences say to it, 'Thou speakest well.' The worst man knows it
+better than the best man keeps it. Blurred and illegible often, like
+the half-defaced inscriptions disinterred from the rubbish mounds that
+once were Nineveh or Babylon, that law remains written on the hearts of
+all men.
+
+A further point to be well laid to heart is the merciful plainness and
+emphasis with which the issues that are suspended on obedience or
+disobedience are declared. The solemn alternatives are before every man
+that hears. Life or death, blessing or cursing, are held out to him,
+and it is for him to elect which shall be realised in his case. Of
+course, it may be said that the words 'life' and 'death' are here used
+in their merely physical sense, and that the context shows (vs. 17, 18)
+that life here means only 'length of days, that thou mayest dwell in
+the land.' No doubt that is so, though we can scarcely refuse to see
+some glimmer of a deeper conception gleaming through the words, 'He is
+thy life,' though it is but a glimmer. We have no space here to enter
+upon the question of how far it is now true that obedience brings
+material blessings. It was true for Israel, as many a sad experience
+that it was a bitter as well as an evil thing to forsake Jehovah was to
+show in the future. But though the connection between well-doing and
+material gain is not so clear now, it is by no means abrogated, either
+for nations or for individuals. Moral and religious law has social and
+economic consequences, and though the perplexed distribution of earthly
+good and ill often bewilders faith and emboldens scepticism, there
+still is visible in human affairs a drift towards recompensing in the
+world the righteous and the wicked.
+
+But to us, with our Christian consciousness, 'life' means more than
+living, and 'He is our life' in a deeper and more blessed sense than
+that our physical existence is sustained by His continual energy. The
+love of God and consequent union with Him give us the only true life.
+Jesus is 'our life,' and He enters the spirit which opens to Him by
+faith, and communicates to it a spark of His own immortal life. He that
+is joined to Jesus lives; he that is separated from Him 'is dead while
+he liveth.'
+
+The last point here is the solemn responsibility for choosing one's
+part, which the revelation of the law brings with it. 'I have set
+before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse, therefore
+choose life.' We each determine for ourselves whether the knowledge of
+what we ought to be will lead to life or to death, and by choosing
+obedience we choose life. Every ray of light from God is capable of
+producing a double effect. It either gladdens or pains, it either gives
+vision or blindness. The gospel, which is the perfect revelation of God
+in Christ, brings every one of us face to face with the great
+alternative, and urgently demands from each his personal act of choice
+whether he will accept it or neglect or reject it. Not to choose to
+accept _is_ to choose to reject. To do nothing is to choose death. The
+knowledge of the law was not enough, and neither is an intellectual
+reception of the gospel. The one bred Pharisees, who were 'whited
+sepulchres'; the other breeds orthodox professors, who have 'a name to
+live and are dead.' The clearer our light, the heavier our
+responsibility. If we are to live, we have to 'choose life'; and if we
+do not, by the vigorous exercise of our will, turn away from earth and
+self, and take Jesus for our Saviour and Lord, loving and obeying whom
+we love and obey God, we have effectually chosen a worse death than
+that of the body, and flung away a better life than that of earth.
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S TRUE TREASURE IN MAN
+
+'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
+inheritance.'--DEUT, xxxii.9.
+
+'Jesus Christ (Who) gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from
+all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people.'--TITUS ii. 14.
+
+
+I choose these two texts because they together present us with the
+other side of the thought to that which I have elsewhere considered,
+that man's true treasure is in God. That great axiom of the religious
+consciousness, which pervades the whole of Scripture, is rapturously
+expressed in many a psalm, and never more assuredly than in that one
+which struggles up from the miry clay in which the Psalmist's 'steps
+had well-nigh slipped' and soars and sings thus: 'The Lord is the
+portion of my inheritance and of my cup; Thou maintainest my lot,' 'The
+lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly
+heritage.'
+
+You observe the correspondence between these words and those of my
+first text: 'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
+inheritance.' The correspondence in the original is not quite so marked
+as it is in our Authorised Version, but still the idea in the two
+passages is the same. Now it is plain that persons can possess persons
+only by love, sympathy, and communion. From that it follows that the
+possession must be mutual; or, in other words, that only he can say
+'Thou art mine' who can say 'I am Thine.' And so to possess God, and to
+be possessed by God, are but two ways of putting the same fact. 'The
+Lord is the portion of His people, and the Lord's portion is His
+people,' are only two ways of stating the same truth.
+
+Then my second text clearly quotes the well-known utterance that lies
+at the foundation of the national life of Israel: 'Ye shall be unto Me
+a peculiar treasure above all people,' and claims that privilege, like
+all Israel's privileges, for the Christian Church. In like manner Peter
+(1 Pet. ii. 9) quotes the same words, 'a peculiar people,' as properly
+applying to Christians. I need scarcely remind you that 'peculiar' here
+is used in its proper original sense of belonging to, or, as the
+Revised Version gives it, 'a people for God's own possession' and has
+no trace of the modern signification of 'singular.' Similarly we find
+Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians giving both sides of the idea of
+the inheritance in intentional juxtaposition, when he speaks (i. 14) of
+the 'earnest of our inheritance ... unto the redemption of God's own
+possession.' In the words before us we have the same idea; and this
+text besides tells us how Christ, the Revealer of God, wins men for
+Himself, and what manner of men they must be whom He counts as His.
+
+Therefore there are, as I take it, three things to be spoken about now.
+First, God has a special ownership in some people. Second, God owns
+these people because He has given Himself to them. Third, God
+possesses, and is possessed by, His inheritance, that He may give and
+receive services of love. Or, in briefer words, I have to speak about
+this wonderful thought of a special divine ownership, what it rests
+upon, and what it involves.
+
+I. God has special ownership in some people.
+
+'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
+inheritance.' Put side by side with those other words of the Old
+Testament: 'All souls are Mine,' or the utterance of the 100th Psalm
+rightly translated: 'It is He that hath made us, and to Him we belong.'
+There is a right of absolute and utter ownership and possession
+inherent in the very relation of Creator and creature; so that the
+being made is wholly and altogether at the disposal, and is the
+property, of Him that makes him.
+
+But is that enough for God's heart? Is that worth calling ownership at
+all? An arbitrary tyrant in an unconstitutional kingdom, or a
+slave-owner, may have the most absolute right of property over his
+subject or his slave; may have the right of entire disposal of all his
+industry, of the profit of all his labour; may be able to do anything
+he likes with him, may have the power of life and death; but such
+ownership is only of the husk and case of a man: the man himself may be
+free, and may smile at the claim of possession. 'They may '_own_' the
+body, and after that have no more than they can do.' That kind of
+authority and ownership, absolute and utter, to the point of death, may
+satisfy a tyrant or a slave-driver, it does not satisfy the loving
+heart of God. It is not real possession at all. In what sense did Nero
+own Paul when he shut him up in prison, and cut his head off? Does the
+slave-owner own the man whom he whips within an inch of his life, and
+who dare not do anything without his permission? Does God, in any sense
+that corresponds with the longing of infinite love, own the men that
+reluctantly obey Him, and are simply, as it were, tools in His hands?
+He covets and longs for a deeper relationship and tenderer ties, and
+though all creatures are His, and all men are His servants and His
+possession, yet, like certain regiments in our own British army, there
+are some who have the right to bear in a special manner on their
+uniform and on their banners the emblazonment, 'The King's Own.' 'The
+Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.'
+
+Well, then, the next thought is that the special relationship of
+possession is constituted by mutual love. I said at the beginning of
+these remarks that as concerns men's relations, the only real
+possession is through love, sympathy, and communion, and that that must
+necessarily be mutual. We have a perfect right to apply the human
+analogy here; in fact, we are bound to do it if we would rightly
+understand such words as those of my text; and it just leads us to
+this, that the one thing whereby God reckons that He possesses a man at
+all is when His love falls upon that man's heart and soaks into it, and
+when there springs up in the heart a corresponding emotion and
+affection. The men who welcome the divine love that goes through the
+whole world, seeking such to worship it, and to trust it, and to become
+its own; and who therefore lovingly yield to the loving divine will,
+and take it for their law--these are the men whom He regards as His
+'portion' and 'the lot of His inheritance.' So that God is mine, and
+that 'I am God's,' are two ends of one truth; 'I possess Him,' and 'I
+am possessed by Him,' are but the statement of one fact expressed from
+two points of view. In the one case you look upon it from above, in the
+other case you look upon it from beneath. All the sweet commerce of
+mutual surrender and possession which makes the joy of our hearts, in
+friendship and in domestic life, we have the right to lift up into this
+loftier region, and find in it the last teaching of what makes the
+special bond of mutual possession between God and man.
+
+And deep words of Scripture point in that direction. Those parables of
+our Lord's: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, in their
+infinite beauty, whilst they contain a great deal besides this, do
+contain this in their several ways; the money, the animal, the man
+belong to the woman of the house, to the shepherd, to the father. Each
+is 'lost' in a different fashion, but the most clear revelation is
+given in the last parable of the three, which explains the other two.
+The son was 'lost' when he did not love the father; and he was 'found'
+by the father when he returned the yearning of the father's heart.
+
+And so, dear brethren, it ever is; the one thing that knits men to God
+is that the silken cord of love let down from Heaven should by our own
+hand be wrapped round our own hearts, and then we are united to Him. We
+are His and He is ours by the double action of His love manifested by
+Him, and His love received by us.
+
+Now there is nothing in all that of favouritism. The declaration that
+there are people who have a special relationship to the divine heart
+may be so stated as to have a very ugly look, and it often has been so
+stated as to be nothing more than self-complacent Pharisaism, which
+values a privilege principally because its possession is an insult to
+somebody else that has it not.
+
+There has been plenty of Christianity of that sort in the world, but
+there is nothing of it in the thoughts of these texts rightly looked
+at. There is only this: it cannot but be that men who yield to God and
+love Him, and try to live near Him and to do righteousness, are His in
+a manner that those who steel themselves against Him and turn away from
+Him are not. Whilst all creatures have a place in His heart, and are
+flooded with His benefits, and get as much of Him as they can hold, the
+men who recognise the source of their blessing, and turn to it with
+grateful hearts, are nearer Him than those that do not do so. Let us
+take care, lest for the sake of seeming to preserve the impartiality of
+His love, we have destroyed all in Him that makes His love worth
+having. If to Him the good and the bad, the men who fear Him and the
+men who fear Him not, are equally satisfactory, and, in the same
+manner, the objects of an equal love, then He is not a God that has
+pleasure in righteousness; and if He is not a God that 'has pleasure in
+righteousness,' He is not a God for us to trust to. We are not giving
+countenance to the notion that God has any step-children, any petted
+members of His family, when we cleave to this--they that have welcomed
+His love into their hearts are nearer to Him than those that have
+closed the door against it.
+
+And there is one more point here about this matter of ownership on
+which I dwell for a moment, namely, that this conception of certain men
+being in a special sense God's possession and inheritance means also
+that He has a special delight in, and lofty appreciation of, them. All
+this material creation exists for the sake of growing good men and
+women. That is the use of the things that are seen and temporal; they
+are like greenhouses built for the great Gardener's use in striking and
+furthering the growth of His plants; and when He has got the plants He
+has got what He wanted, and you may pull the greenhouse down if you
+like. And so God estimates, and teaches us to estimate, the relative
+value and greatness of the material and the spiritual in this fashion,
+that He says to us in effect: 'All these magnificences and magnitudes
+round you are small and vulgar as compared with this--a heart in which
+wisdom and divine truth and the love and likeness of God have attained
+to some tolerable measure of maturity and of strength.' These are His
+'jewels,' as the Roman matron said about her two boys. The great Father
+looks upon the men that love Him as His jewels, and, having got the
+jewels, the rock in which they were embedded and preserved may be
+crushed when you like. 'They shall be Mine,' saith the Lord, 'My
+treasures in that day of judgment which I make.'
+
+And so, my brother, all the insignificance of man, as compared with the
+magnitude and duration of the universe, need not stagger our faith that
+the divinest thing in the universe is a heart that has learnt to love
+God and aspires after Him, and should but increase our wonder and our
+gratitude that He has been mindful of man and has visited him, in order
+that He might give Himself to men, and so might win men for Himself.
+
+II. That brings me, and very briefly, to the other points that I desire
+to deal with now. The second one, which is suggested to us from my
+second text in the Epistle to Titus, is that this possession, by God,
+of man, like man's possession of God, comes because God has given
+Himself to man.
+
+The Apostle puts it very strongly in the Epistle to Titus: 'The
+glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who
+gave Himself for us that He might purify unto Himself _a people for a
+possession_.' Israel, according to one metaphor, was God's 'son,'
+begotten by that great redeeming act of deliverance from the captivity
+of Egypt (Deut. xxxii. 6-19). According to another metaphor, Israel was
+God's bride, wooed and won for His own by that same act. Both of these
+figures point to the thought that in order to get man for His own He
+has to give Himself to man.
+
+And the very height and sublimity of that truth is found in the
+Christian fact which the Apostle points to here. We need not depart
+from human analogies here either. Christ gave Himself to us that He
+might acquire us for Himself. Absolute possession of others is only
+possible at the price of absolute surrender to them. No human heart
+ever gave itself away unless it was convinced that the heart to which
+it gave itself had given itself to it.
+
+And on the lower levels of gratitude and obligation, the only thing
+that binds a man to another in utter submission is the conviction that
+that other has given himself in absolute sacrifice for him. A doctor
+goes into the wards of an hospital with his life in his hands, and
+because he does, he wins the full confidence and affection of those
+whom he treats. You cannot buy a heart with anything less than a heart.
+In the barter of the world it is not 'skin for skin,' but it is 'self
+for self'; and if you want to own me, you must give yourself altogether
+to me. And the measure in which teachers and guides and preachers and
+philanthropists of all sorts make conquests of men is the measure in
+which they make themselves sacrifices for men.
+
+Now all that is true, and is lifted to its superlative truth, in the
+great central fact of the Christian faith. But there is more than human
+analogy here. Christ is not only self-sacrifice in the sense of
+surrender, but He is sacrifice in the sense of giving Himself for our
+redemption and forgiveness. He has not only given Himself to us, He has
+given Himself for us. And there, and on that, is builded, and on that
+alone has He a right to build, or have we a right to yield to it, His
+claim to absolute authority and utter command over each of us.
+
+He has died for us, therefore the springs of our life are at His
+disposal; and the strongest motives which can sway our lives are set in
+motion by His touch. His death, says this text, redeems us from
+iniquity and purifies us. That points to its power in delivering us
+from the service and practice of sin. He buys us from the despot whose
+slaves we were, and makes us His own in the hatred of evil and the
+doing of righteousness. Moved by His death, we become capable of
+heroisms and martyrdoms of devotion to Him. Brethren, it is only as
+that self-sacrificing love touches us, which died for our sins upon the
+Cross, that the diabolical chain of selfishness will be broken from our
+affections and our wills, and we shall be led into the large place of
+glad surrender of ourselves to the sweetness and the gentle authority
+of His omnipotent love.
+
+III. The last thought that I suggest is the issues to which this mutual
+possession points. God owns men, and is owned by them, in order that
+there may be a giving and receiving of mutual services of love.
+
+'The Lord's portion is His people.' That in the Old Testament is always
+laid as the foundation of certain obligations under which He has come,
+and which He will abundantly discharge. What is a great landlord
+expected to do to his estate? 'What ought I to have done to my
+vineyard?' the divine Proprietor asks through the mouth of His servant
+the prophet. He ought to till it, He ought not to starve it, He ought
+to fence it, He ought to cast a wall about it, He ought to reap the
+fruits. And He does all that for His inheritance. God's honour is
+concerned in His portion not being waste. It is not to be a 'garden of
+the sluggard,' by which people who pass can see the thorns growing
+there. So He will till it, He will plough it, He will pick out the
+weeds, and all the disciplines of life will come to us, and the
+ploughshare will be driven deep into the heart, that 'the peaceable
+fruit of righteousness' may spring up. He will fence His vineyard.
+Round about His inheritance His hand will be cast, within His people
+His Spirit will dwell. No harm shall come near thee if thy love is
+given to Him; safe and untouched by evil thou shalt walk if thou walk
+with God. 'He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of Mine eye.' The
+soul that trusts Him He takes in charge, and before any evil can fall
+to it 'the pillared firmament must be rottenness, and earth be built on
+stubble.' 'He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him
+against that day.' 'The Lord's portion is His people,' and 'none shall
+pluck them out of His hand.'
+
+And on the other side, we belong to God in Christ. What do we owe Him?
+What does the vineyard owe the husbandman? Fruit. We are His, therefore
+we are bound to absolute submission. 'Ye are not your own.' Life,
+circumstances, occupations, all--we hold them at His will. We have no
+more right of property in anything than a slave in the bad old days had
+in his cabin and patch of ground. They belonged to the master to whom
+he belonged. Let us recognise our stewardship, and be glad to know
+ourselves His, and all events and things which we sometimes think ours,
+His also.
+
+We are His, therefore we owe absolute trust. The slave has at least
+this blessing in his lot, that he need have no anxieties; nor need we.
+We belong to God, and He will take care of us. A rich man's horses and
+dogs are well cared for, and our Owner will not leave us unheeded. Our
+well-being involves His good name. Leave anxious thought to masterless
+hearts which have to front the world with nobody at their backs. If you
+are God's you will be looked after.
+
+We are His, therefore we are bound to live to His praise. That is the
+conclusion which one Old Testament passage draws. 'This people have I
+formed for Myself; they shall show forth My praise' (Isaiah xliii. 21).
+The Apostle Peter quotes these words immediately after those from
+Exodus, which describe Israel as 'a people for God's own possession,'
+when he says 'that ye should show forth the praise of Him who hath
+called you.' Let us, then, live to His glory, and remember that the
+servants of the King are bound to stand to their colours amid rebels,
+and that they who know the sweetness of possessing God, and the
+blessedness of yielding to His supreme control, should acknowledge what
+they have found of His goodness, and 'tell forth the honour of His
+name, and make His praise glorious.' Let not all the magnificent and
+wonderful expenditure of divine longing and love be in vain, nor run
+off your hearts like water poured upon a rock. Surely the sun's flames
+leaping leagues high, they tell us, in tongues of burning gas, must
+melt everything that is near them. Shall we keep our hearts sullen and
+cold before such a fire of love? Surely that superb and wonderful
+manifestation of the love of God in the Cross of Christ should melt
+into running rivers of gratitude all the ice of our hearts.
+
+'He gave Himself for me!' Let us turn to Him and say: 'Lo! I give
+myself to Thee. Thou art mine. Make me Thine by the constraint of Thy
+love, so utterly, and so saturate my spirit with Thyself, that it shall
+not only be Thine, but in a very deep sense it shall be Thee, and that
+it may be "no more I that live, but Christ that liveth in me."'
+
+
+
+
+THE EAGLE AND ITS BROOD
+
+'As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth
+abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings.'--DEUT.
+xxxii. 11.
+
+
+This is an incomplete sentence in the Authorised Version, but really it
+should be rendered as a complete one; the description of the eagle's
+action including only the two first clauses, and (the figure being
+still retained) the person spoken of in the last clauses being God
+Himself. That is to say, it should read thus, 'As an eagle stirreth up
+his nest, fluttereth over his young, _He_ spreads abroad His wings,
+takes them, bears them on His pinions.' That is far grander, as well as
+more compact, than the somewhat dragging comparison which, according to
+the Authorised Version, is spread over the whole verse and tardily
+explained, in the following, by a clause introduced by an unwarranted
+'So'--'the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with
+him.'
+
+Now, of course, we all know that the original reference of these words
+is to the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and their training
+in the desert. In the solemn address by Jehovah at the giving of the
+law (Exodus xix. 4), the same metaphor is employed, and, no doubt, that
+passage was the source of the extended imagery here. There we read, 'Ye
+know what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings,
+and brought you unto Myself.' The meaning of the glowing metaphor, with
+its vivid details, is just that Jehovah brought Israel out of its fixed
+abode in Goshen, and trained it for mature national life by its varied
+desert experiences. As one of the prophets puts the same idea, 'I
+taught Ephraim to go,' where the figure of the parent bird training its
+callow fledglings for flight is exchanged for that of the nurse
+teaching a child to walk. While, then, the text primarily refers to the
+experience of the infant nation in the forty years' wanderings, it
+carries large truths about us all; and sets forth the true meaning and
+importance of life. There seem to me to be three thoughts here, which I
+desire to touch on briefly: first, a great thought about God; then an
+illuminating thought about the true meaning and aspect of life; and
+lastly a calming thought about the variety of the methods by which God
+carries out our training.
+
+I. Here is a great thought about God.
+
+Now, it may come as something of a shock if I say that the bird that is
+selected for the comparison is not really the eagle, but one which, in
+our estimation, is of a very much lower order--viz. the carnivorous
+vulture. But a poetical emblem is not the less fitting, though, besides
+the points of resemblance, the thing which is so used has others less
+noble. Our modern repugnance to the vulture as feeding on carcasses was
+probably not felt by the singer of this song. What he brings into view
+are the characteristics common to the eagle and the vulture; superb
+strength in beak and claw, keenness of vision almost incredible,
+magnificent sweep of pinion and power of rapid, unwearied flight. And
+these characteristics, we may say, have their analogues in the divine
+nature, and the emblem not unfitly shadows forth one aspect of the God
+of Israel, who is 'fearful in praises,' who is strong to destroy as
+well as to save, whose all-seeing eye marks every foul thing, and who
+often pounces on it swiftly to rend it to pieces, though the sky seemed
+empty a moment before.
+
+But the action described in the text is not destructive, terrible, or
+fierce. The monarch of the sky busies itself with tender cares for its
+brood. Then, there is gentleness along with the terribleness. The
+strong beak and claw, the gaze that can see so far, and the mighty
+spread of wings that can lift it till it is an invisible speck in the
+blue vault, go along with the instinct of paternity: and the fledglings
+in the nest look up at the fierce beak and bright eyes, and know no
+terror. The impression of this blending of power and gentleness is
+greatly deepened, as it seems to me, if we notice that it is the male
+bird that is spoken about in the text, which should be rendered: 'As
+the eagle stirreth up _his_ nest and fluttereth over _his_ young.'
+
+So we just come to the thought that we must keep the true balance
+between these two aspects of that great divine nature--the majesty, the
+terror, the awfulness, the soaring elevation, the all-penetrating
+vision, the power of the mighty pinion, one stroke of which could crush
+a universe into nothing; and, on the other side, the yearning instinct
+of Fatherhood, the love and gentleness, and all the tender ministries
+for us, His children, to which these lead. Brethren, unless we keep
+hold of both of these in due equipoise and inseparably intertwining, we
+damage the one which we retain almost as much as the one which we
+dismiss. For there is no love like the love that is strong, and can be
+fierce, and there is no condescension like the condescension of Him who
+is the Highest, in order that He may be, and because He is ready to be,
+the lowest. Modern tendencies, legitimately recoiling from the
+one-sidedness of a past generation, are now turning away far too much
+from the Old Testament conceptions of Jehovah, which are concentrated
+in that metaphor of the vulture in the sky. And thereby we destroy the
+love, in the name of which we scout the wrath.
+
+                    'Infinite mercy, but, I wis,
+                     As infinite a justice too.'
+
+'As the vulture stirreth up his nest,'--that is the Old Testament
+revelation of the terribleness and gentleness of Jehovah. 'How often
+would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth
+her chickens under her wing?'--that is the New Testament modification
+of the image. But you never could have had the New unless you first had
+had the Old. And you are a foolish man if, in the name of the sanctity
+of the New, you cast away the teaching of the Old. Keep both the
+metaphors, and they will explain and confirm each other.
+
+II. Here we have an illuminating thought of the meaning of life.
+
+What is it all for? To teach us to fly, to exercise our half-fledged
+wings in short flights, that may prepare us for, and make it possible
+to take, longer ones. Every event that befalls us has a meaning beyond
+itself; and every task that we have to do reacts upon us, the doers,
+and either fits or hinders us for larger work. Life as a whole, and in
+its minutest detail, is worthy of God to give, and worthy of us to
+possess, only if we recognise the teaching that is put into picturesque
+form in this text--that the meaning of all which God does to us is to
+train us for something greater yonder. Life as a whole is 'full of
+sound and fury, signifying nothing,' unless it is an apprenticeship
+training. What are we here for? To make character. That is the aim and
+end of all--to make character; to get experience; to learn the use of
+our tools. I declare it seems to me that the world had better be wiped
+out altogether, incontinently, unless there is a world beyond, where a
+man shall use the force which here he made his own. 'Thou hast been
+faithful in a few things; behold I will make thee ruler over many
+things.' No man gets to the heart of the mystery of life or has in his
+hand the key which will enable him to unlock all the doors and
+difficulties of human experience, unless he gets to this--that it is
+all meant as training.
+
+If we could only carry that clear conviction with us day by day into
+the little things of life, what different things these, which we call
+the monotonous trifles of our daily duties, would become! The things
+may be small and unimportant, but the way in which we do them is not
+unimportant. The same fidelity may be exercised, and must be brought to
+bear, in order to do the veriest trifle of our daily lives rightly, as
+needs to be invoked, in order to get us safely through the crises and
+great times of life. There are no great principles for great duties,
+and little ones for little duties. We have to regulate all our conduct
+by the same laws. Life is built up of trifles, as mica-flakes, if there
+be enough of them, make the Alpine summits towering thousands of feet
+into the blue. Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it
+is made in the small ones. So, life is meant for discipline, and unless
+we use it for that, however much enjoyment we get out of it, we misuse
+it.
+
+III. Lastly, there is here a calming thought as to the variety of God's
+methods with us.
+
+'As the eagle stirreth up his nest.' No doubt the callow brood are much
+warmer and more comfortable in the nest than when they are turned out
+of it. The Israelites were by no means enamoured with the prospect of
+leaving the flesh-pots and the onions and the farmhouses that they had
+got for themselves in Goshen, to tramp with their cattle through the
+wilderness. They went after Moses with considerable disinclination.
+
+Here we have, then, as the first thing needed, God's loving compulsion
+to effort. To 'stir up the nest' means to make a man uncomfortable
+where he is;--sometimes by the prickings of his conscience, which are
+often the voices of God's Spirit; sometimes by changes of
+circumstances, either for the better or for the worse; and oftentimes
+by sorrows. The straw is pulled out of the nest, and it is not so
+comfortable to lie in; or a bit of it develops a sharp point that runs
+into the half-feathered skin, and makes the fledgling glad to come
+forth into the air. We all shrink from change. What should we do if we
+had it not? We should stiffen into habits that would dwarf and weaken
+us. We all recoil from storms. What should we do if we had them not?
+Sea and air would stagnate, and become heavy and putrid and
+pestilential, if it were not for the wild west wind and the hurtling
+storms. So all our changes, instead of being whimpered over, and all
+our sorrows, instead of being taken reluctantly, should be recognised
+as being what they are, loving summonses to effort. Then their pressure
+would be modified, and their blessing would be secured when their
+purpose was served.
+
+But the training of the father-eagle is not confined to stirring up the
+nest. What is to become of the young ones when they get out of it, and
+have never been accustomed to bear themselves up in the invisible ether
+about them? So 'he fluttereth over his young.' It is a very beautiful
+word that is employed here, which 'flutter' scarcely gives us. It is
+the same word that is used in the first chapter of Genesis, about the
+Spirit of God '_brooding_ on the face of the waters'; and it suggests
+how near, how all-protecting with expanded wings, the divine Father
+comes to the child whose restfulness He has disturbed.
+
+And is not that true? Had you ever trouble that you took as from Him,
+which did not bring that hovering presence nearer you, until you could
+almost feel the motion of the wing, and be brushed by it as it passed
+protectingly above your head? Ah, yes! 'Stirring the nest' is meant to
+be the precursor of closer approach of the Father to us; and if we take
+our changes and our sorrows as loving summonses from Him to effort, be
+sure that we shall realise Him as near to us, in a fashion that we
+never did before.
+
+That is not all. There is sustaining power. 'He spreadeth abroad his
+wings; he taketh them; beareth them on his wings.' On those broad
+pinions we are lifted, and by them we are guarded. It matters little
+whether the belief that the parent bird thus carries the young, when
+wearied with their short flights, is correct or not. The truth which
+underlies the representation is what concerns us. The beautiful
+metaphor is a picturesque way of saying, 'In all their afflictions He
+was afflicted; and the Angel of His presence saved them.' It is a
+picturesque way of saying, 'Thou canst do all things through Christ
+which strengtheneth thee.' And we may be very sure that if we let Him
+'stir up our nests' and obey His loving summons to effort, He will come
+very near to strengthen us for our attempts, and to bear us up when our
+own weak wings fail. The Psalmist sang that angels' hands should bear
+up God's servant. That is little compared with this promise of being
+carried heavenwards on Jehovah's own pinions. A vile piece of Greek
+mythology tells how Jove once, in the guise of an eagle, bore away a
+boy between his great wings. It is foul where it stands, but it is
+blessedly true about Christian experience. If only we lay ourselves on
+God's wings--and that not in idleness, but having ourselves tried our
+poor little flight--He will see that no harm comes to us.
+
+During life this training will go on; and after life, what then? Then,
+in the deepest sense, the old word will be true, 'Ye know how I bore
+you on eagle's wings and brought you _to Myself_'; and the great
+promise shall be fulfilled, when the half-fledged young brood are
+matured and full grown, 'They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they
+shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.'
+
+
+
+
+THEIR ROCK AND OUR ROCK
+
+'Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being
+Judges.' DEUT. xxxii. 31.
+
+
+Moses is about to leave the people whom he had led so long, and his
+last words are words of solemn warning. He exhorts them to cleave to
+God. The words of the text simply mean that the history of the nation
+had sufficiently proved that God, their God, was 'above all gods.' The
+Canaanites and all the enemies whom Israel had fought had been beaten,
+and in their awe of this warrior people acknowledged that their idols
+had found their lord. The great suit of 'Jehovah _versus_ Idols' has
+long since been decided. Every one acknowledges that Christianity is
+the only religion possible for twentieth century men. But the words of
+the text lend themselves to a wider application, and clothe in a
+picturesque garb the universal truth that the experience of godless men
+proves the futility of their objects of trust, when compared with that
+of him whose refuge is in God.
+
+I. God is a Rock to them that trust Him.
+
+We note the singular frequency of that designation in this song, in
+which it occurs six times. It is also found often in the Psalms. If
+Moses were the singer, we might see in this often-repeated metaphor a
+trace of influence of the scenery of the Sinaitic peninsula, which
+would be doubly striking to eyes accustomed to the alluvial plains of
+Egypt. What are the aspects of the divine nature set forth by this name?
+
+(1) Firm foundation: the solid eternity of the rock on which we can
+build.
+
+Petra: faithfulness to promises, unchanging.
+
+(2) Refuge: 'refuge from the storm'; 'my rock and my fortress and my
+high tower.'
+
+(3) Refreshment: rock from which water gushed out; and (4) Repose:
+'shadow of a great rock'; 'shadow from the heat.'
+
+Trace the image through Scripture, from this song till Christ's parable
+of the man who 'built his house on a rock.'
+
+II. Every man's experience shows him that there is no such refuge
+anywhere else.
+
+We do not assert that every man consciously comes to that conclusion.
+All we say is that he would do so if he rightly pondered the facts. The
+history of every life is a history of disappointment. Take these
+particulars just stated and ask yourselves: What does experience say as
+to the possibility of our possessing such blessings apart from God?
+There is no need for us to exaggerate, for the naked reality is sad
+enough. If God is not our best Good, we have no solid good. Every other
+'rock' crumbles into sand. Else why this restless change, why this
+disquiet, why the constant repetition, generation after generation, of
+the old, old wail, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity'? Why does every
+heart say Amen to the poet and the dramatist singing of 'the fever and
+the fret,' the tragic fare of man's life?
+
+Our appeal is not to men in the flush of excitement, but to them in
+their hours of solitary sane reflection. It is from 'Philip drunk to
+Philip sober.' We each have material for judging in our own case, and
+in the cases of some others. The experiment of living with other
+'rocks' than God has been tried for millenniums now. What has been the
+issue? You know what Christianity claims that it can do to make a life
+stable and safe. Do you know anything else that can? You know what
+Christian men will calmly say that they have found. Can you say as
+much? Let us hear some dying testimonies. Hearken to Jacob: 'The God
+which hath fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which
+redeemed me from all evil.' Hearken to Moses: 'The Rock, His work is
+perfect, for all His ways are judgment, a God of faithfulness and
+without iniquity, just and right is He.' Hearken to Joshua: 'Not one
+good thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God
+spake.' Hearken to David: 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
+.... Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
+life.' Hearken to Paul: 'The Lord stood by me and strengthened me, and
+I was delivered ... the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and
+will save me unto His heavenly kingdom.' What man who has chosen to
+take refuge or build on men and creatures can look backward and forward
+in such fashion?
+
+III. Every man's own nature tells him that God is his true Rock.
+
+Again I say that here I do not appeal to the surface of our
+consciousness, nor to men who have sophisticated themselves, nor to
+people who have sinned themselves, into hardness, but to the voice of
+the inner man which speaks in the depths of each man's being.
+
+There is the cry of Want: the manifest want of the soul for God.
+
+There is the voice of Reason.
+
+There is the voice of Conscience.
+
+IV. Yet many of us will not take God for our Rock.
+
+Surely it is a most extraordinary thing that men should be 'judges,'
+being convinced in their deepest consciousness that God is the only
+Foundation and Refuge, and yet that the conviction should have
+absolutely no influence on their conduct. The same stark, staring
+inconsequence is visible in many other departments of life, but in this
+region it works its most tragic results. The message which many of my
+hearers need most is--follow out your deepest convictions, and be true
+to the inward voice which condenses all your experience into the one
+counsel to take God for the 'strength of your hearts and your portion
+for ever,' for only in Him will you find what you need for life and
+strength and riches. If He is 'our Rock,' then we shall have a firm
+foundation, a safe refuge, inexhaustible refreshment and untroubled
+rest. Lives founded on aught beside are built on sand and will be full
+of tremors and unsettlements, and at last the despairing builder and
+his ruined house will be washed away with the dissolving 'sandbank and
+shoal of time' on which he built.
+
+
+
+
+GOD AND HIS SAINTS
+
+'He loved the people; all His saints are in Thy hand: and they sat down
+at Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 3.
+
+
+The great ode of which these words are a part is called 'the blessing
+wherewith Moses blessed the children of Israel before his death.' It is
+mainly an invocation of blessing from Heaven on the various tribes, but
+it begins, as the national existence of Israel began, with the
+revelation of God on Sinai, and it lays that as the foundation of
+everything. It does not matter, for my purposes, in the smallest
+degree, who was the author of this great song. Whoever he was, he has,
+by dint of divine inspiration and of his own sympathy with the inmost
+spirit of the Old Covenant, anticipated the deepest things of Christian
+truth; and these are here in the words of our text.
+
+I. The first thing that I would point out is the Divine Love which is
+the foundation of all.
+
+'He loved the people.' That is the beginning of everything. The word
+that this singer uses is one that only appears in this place, and if we
+regard its etymology, there lies in it a very tender and beautiful
+expression of the warmth of the divine love, for it is probably
+connected with words in an allied language which mean the _bosom_ and a
+_tender embrace_, and so the picture that we have is of that great
+divine Lover folding 'the people' to His heart, as a mother might her
+child, and cherishing them in His bosom.
+
+Still further, the word is in a form in the Hebrew which implies that
+the act spoken about is neither past, present, nor future only, but
+continuous and perpetual. Thus it suggests to us the thought of
+timeless, eternal love, which has no beginning, and therefore has no
+end, which does not grow, and therefore will never decline nor decay,
+but which runs on upon one lofty level, with neither ups nor downs, and
+with no variation of the impulse which sends it forth; always the same,
+and always holding its objects in the fervent embrace of which the text
+speaks.
+
+Further, mark the place in this great song where this thought comes in.
+As I said, it is laid as the beginning of everything. 'We love Him
+because He first loved us' was the height to which the last of the
+Apostles attained in the last of his writings. But this old singer,
+with the mists of antiquity around him, who knew nothing about the
+Cross, nothing about the historical Christ, who had only that which
+modern thinkers tell us is a revelation of a wrathful God, somehow or
+other rose to the height of the evangelical conception of God's love as
+the foundation of the very existence of a people who are His. Like an
+orchid growing on a block of dry wood and putting forth a gorgeous
+bloom, this singer, with so much less to feed his faith than we have,
+has yet borne this fair flower of deep and devout insight into the
+secret of things and the heart of God. 'He loved the people'--therefore
+He formed them for Himself; therefore He brought them out of bondage;
+therefore He came down in flashing fire on Sinai and made known His
+will, which to know and do is life. All begins from the tender,
+timeless love of God.
+
+And if the question is asked, Why does God thus love? the only answer
+is, Because he is God. 'Not for your sakes, O house of Israel ... but
+for Mine own name's sake.' The love of God is self-originated. In it,
+as in all His acts, He is His own motive, as His name, 'I am that I
+am,' proclaims. It is inseparable from His being, and flows forth
+before, and independent of, anything in the creature which could draw
+it out. Men's love is attracted by their perception or their
+imagination of something loveable in its objects. It is like a well,
+where there has to be much work of the pump-handle before the gush
+comes. God's love is like an artesian well, or a fountain springing up
+from unknown depths in obedience to its own impulse. All that we can
+say is, 'Thou art God. It is Thy nature and property to be merciful.'
+
+'God loved the people.' The bed-rock is the spontaneous, unalterable,
+inexhaustible, ever-active, fervent love of God, like that with which a
+mother clasps her child to her maternal breast. The fair flower of this
+great thought was a product of Judaism. Let no man say that the God of
+Love is unknown to the Old Testament.
+
+II. Notice how, with this for a basis, we have next the guardian care
+extended to all those that answer love by love.
+
+The singer goes on to say, mixing up his pronouns, in the fashion of
+Hebrew poetry, somewhat arbitrarily, 'all _His_ saints are in _Thy_
+hand.' Now, what is a 'saint'? A man who answers God's love by his
+love. The notion of a saint has been marred and mutilated by the Church
+and the world. It has been taken as a special designation of certain
+selected individuals, mostly of the ascetic and monastic type, whereas
+it belongs to every one of God's people. It has been taken by the world
+to mean sanctimoniousness and not sanctity, and is a term of contempt
+rather than of admiration on their lips. And even those of us, who have
+got beyond thinking that it is a title of honour belonging only to the
+aristocracy of Christ's Kingdom, are too apt to mistake what it really
+does mean. It may be useful to say a word about the Scriptural use and
+true meaning of that much-abused term. The root idea of sanctity or
+holiness is not moral character, goodness of disposition and of action,
+but it is separation from the world and consecration to God. As surely
+as a magnet applied to a heap of miscellaneous filings will pick out
+every little bit of iron there, so surely will that love which He bears
+to the people, when it is responded to, draw to itself, and therefore
+draw out of the heap, the men that feel its impulse and its
+preciousness. And so 'saint' means, secondly, righteous and pure, but
+it means, first, knit to God, separated from evil, and separated by the
+power of His received love.
+
+Now, brethren, here is a question for each of us: Do I yield to that
+timeless, tender clasp of the divine Father and Mother in one? Do I
+answer it by my love? If I do, then I am a 'saint,' because I belong to
+Him, and He belongs to me, and in that commerce I have broken with the
+world. If we are true to ourselves, and true to our Lord, and true to
+the relation between us, the purity of character, which is popularly
+supposed to be the meaning of _holiness_, will come. Not without
+effort, not without set-backs, not without slow advance, but it will
+come; for he that is consecrated to the Lord is 'separated' from
+iniquity. Such is the meaning of 'saint.'
+
+'All His saints are in Thy hand.' The first metaphor of our text spoke
+of God's bosom, to which He drew the people and folded them there. This
+one speaks of His 'hand.' They lie in it. That means two things. It
+means absolute security, for will He not close His fingers over His
+palm to keep the soul that has laid itself there? And 'none shall pluck
+them out of My Father's hand.' No one but yourself can do that. And you
+can do it, if you cease to respond to His love, and so cease to be a
+saint. Then you will fall out of His hand, and how far you will fall
+God only knows.
+
+Being in God's hand means also submission. Loyola said to his black
+army, 'Be like a stick in a man's hand.' That meant utter submission
+and abnegation of self, the willingness to be put anywhere, and used
+anyhow, and done anything with. And if I by my reception of, and
+response to, that timeless love, am a saint belonging to God, then not
+only shall I be secure, but I must be submissive. 'All His saints are
+in Thy hand.' Do not try to get out of it; be content to let it guide
+you as the steersman's hand turns the spokes of the wheel and directs
+the ship.
+
+Now, there is a last thought here. I have spoken of the foundation of
+all as being divine love, of the security and guardian care of the
+saints, and there follows one thought more:--
+
+III. The docile obedience of those that are thus guarded.
+
+As the words stand in our Bible, they are as follow:--'They sat down at
+Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words.' These two clauses make
+up one picture, and one easily understands what it is. It represents a
+group of docile scholars, sitting at the Master's feet. He is teaching
+them, and they listen open-mouthed and open-eared to what he says, and
+will take his words into their lives, like Mary sitting at Christ's
+feet, whilst Martha was bustling about His meal. But, beautiful as that
+picture is, there has been suggested a little variation in the words
+which gives another one that strikes me as being even more beautiful.
+There are some difficulties of language with which I need not trouble
+you. But the general result is this, that perhaps instead of 'sitting
+down at Thy feet' we should read 'followed at Thy feet.' That suggests
+the familiar metaphor of a guide and those led by him who, without him,
+know not their road. As a dog follows his master, as the sheep their
+shepherd, so, this singer felt, will saints follow the God whom they
+love. Religion is imitation of God. That was a deep thought for such a
+stage of revelation, and it in part anticipates Christ's tender words:
+'He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His
+voice.' They follow at His feet. That is the blessedness and the power
+of Christian morality, that it is keeping close at Christ's heels, and
+that instead of its being said to us, 'Go,' He says, 'Come,' and
+instead of our being bid to hew out for ourselves a path of duty, He
+says to us, 'He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall
+have the light of life.' They follow at His feet, as the dog at his
+master's, as the sheep at their shepherd's.
+
+They 'receive His words.' Yes, if you will keep close to Him, He will
+turn round and speak to you. If you are near enough to Him to catch His
+whisper He will not leave you without guidance. That is one side of the
+thought, that following we receive what He says, whereas the people
+that are away far behind Him scarcely know what His will is, and never
+can catch the low whisper which will come to us by providences, by
+movements in our own spirits, through the exercise of our own faculties
+of judgment and common-sense, if only we will keep near to Him. 'Be ye
+not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose
+mouths must be held in with bit and with bridle, else they will not
+come near to thee,' but walk close behind Him, and then the promise
+will be fulfilled: 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' A glance tells
+two people who are in sympathy what each wishes, and Jesus Christ will
+speak to us, if we keep close at His heels.
+
+They that follow Him will 'receive His words' in another sense. They
+will take them in, and His words will not be wasted. And they will
+receive them in yet another sense. They will carry them out and do
+them, and His words will not be in vain.
+
+So, dear brethren, the peace, the strength, the blessedness, the
+goodness, of our lives flow from these three stages, which this singer
+so long ago had found to be the essence of everything, recognition of
+the timeless tenderness of God, the yielding to and answering that
+love, so that it separates us for Himself, the calm security and happy
+submission which follow thereon, the imitation of Him in daily life,
+and the walking in His steps, which is rewarded and made more perfect
+by hearing more distinctly the whisper of His loving, commanding voice.
+
+
+
+
+ISRAEL THE BELOVED
+
+'The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him; and the Lord
+shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between His
+shoulders.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 12.
+
+
+Benjamin was his father's favourite child, and the imagery of this
+promise is throughout drawn from the relations between such a child and
+its father. So far as the future history of the tribes is shadowed in
+these 'blessings' of this great ode, the reference of the text may be
+to the tribe of Benjamin, as specially distinguished by Saul having
+been a member of it, and by the Temple having been built on its soil.
+But we find that each of the promises of the text is repeated
+elsewhere, with distinct reference to the whole nation. For example,
+the first one, of safe dwelling, reappears in verse 28 in reference to
+Israel; the second one, of God's protecting covering, is extended to
+the nation in many places; and the third, of dwelling between His
+shoulders, is in substance found again in chap. i. 31, 'the Lord thy
+God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son.' So that we may give the
+text a wider extension, and take it as setting forth under a lovely
+metaphor, and with a restricted reference, what is true of all God's
+children everywhere and always.
+
+I. Who are the 'beloved of the Lord'?
+
+The first answer to that question must be--all men. But these great
+blessings, so beautifully shadowed in this text, do not belong to all
+men; nor does the designation, 'the beloved of the Lord,' belong to all
+men, but to those who have entered into a special relation to Him. In
+these words of the Hebrew singer there sound the first faint tones of a
+music that was to swell into clear notes, when Jesus said: 'If a man
+love Me, he will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will
+come unto him, and make Our abode with him.' They who are knit by faith
+and love to God's only-begotten and beloved Son, by that union receive
+'power to become the sons of God,' and share in the love which is ever
+pouring out from the Father's heart on 'the Son of His love.'
+
+II. What are their blessed privileges?
+
+The three clauses of the text express substantially the same idea, but
+with a striking variety of metaphors.
+
+1. They have a sure dwelling-place.
+
+There is a very slight change of rendering of the first clause, which
+greatly increases its 'force, and preserves the figure that is obscured
+by the usual translation. We should read 'shall dwell safely _on_,'
+rather than '_by_, Him.' And the effect of that small change in the
+preposition is to bring out the thought that God is regarded as the
+foundation on which His beloved build their house of life, and dwell in
+security and calm. If we are sons through the Son, we shall build our
+houses or pitch our tents on that firm ground, and, being founded on
+the Rock of ages, they will not fall when all created foundations reel
+to the overthrow of whatever is built on _them_. It is not
+companionship only, blessed as that is, that is promised here. We have
+a larger privilege than dwelling _by_ Him, for if we love His Son, we
+build _on_ God, and 'God dwelleth in us and we in Him.'
+
+What spiritual reality underlies the metaphor of dwelling or building
+on God? The fact of habitual communion.
+
+Note the blessed results of such grounding of our lives on God through
+such habitual communion. We shall 'dwell safely.' We may think of that
+as being objective safety--that is, freedom from peril, or as being
+subjective--that is, freedom from care or fear, or as meaning
+'trustfully,' confidently, as the expression is rendered in Psalm xvi.
+9 (margin), which is for us the ground of both these. He who dwells in
+God trustfully dwells both safely and securely, and none else is free
+either from danger or from dread.
+
+2. They have a sure shelter.
+
+God is for His beloved not only the foundation on which they dwell in
+safety, but their perpetual covering. They dwell safely because He is
+so. There are many tender shapes in which this great promise is
+presented to our faith. Sometimes God is thought of as covering the
+weak fugitive, as the arching sides of His cave sheltered David from
+Saul. Sometimes He is represented as covering His beloved, who cower
+under His wings, 'as the hen gathereth her chickens' when hawks are in
+the sky. Sometimes He appears as covering them from tempest, 'when the
+blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall,' and 'the
+shadow of a great rock' shields from its fury. Sometimes He is pictured
+as stretching out protection over His beloved's heads, as the Pillar of
+cloud lay, long-drawn-out, over the Tabernacle when at rest, and 'on
+all the Glory was a defence.' But under whatever emblem the general
+idea of a covering shelter was conceived, there was always a
+correlative duty on our side. For the root-meaning of one of the Old
+Testament words for 'faith' is 'fleeing to a refuge,' and we shall not
+be safe in God unless by faith we flee for refuge to Him in Christ.
+
+3. They have a Father who bears them on His shoulders.
+
+The image is the same as in chap. i. already referred to. It recurs
+also in Isaiah (xlvi. 3, 4), 'Even to hoar hairs will I carry you, and
+I have made and I will bear, yea, I will carry, and will deliver'; and
+in Hosea (xi. 3), 'I taught Ephraim to go; I took them on My arms.'
+
+The image beautifully suggests the thought of the favourite child
+riding high and happy on the strong shoulder, which lifts it above
+rough places and miry ways. The prose reality is: 'My grace is
+sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.'
+
+The Cross carries those who carry it. They who carry God in their
+hearts are carried by God through all the long pilgrimage of life.
+Because they are thus upheld by a strength not their own, 'they shall
+run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint,' and though
+marches be long and limbs strained, they shall 'go from strength to
+strength till every one of them appears before God in Zion.'
+
+
+
+'AT THE BUSH'
+
+'.. The goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.'-DEUT. xxxiii. 16.
+
+
+I Think this is the only reference in the Old Testament to that great
+vision which underlay Moses' call and Israel's deliverance. It occurs
+in what is called 'the blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God,
+blessed the children of Israel before his death,' although modern
+opinion tends to decide that this hymn is indeed much more recent than
+the days of Moses. There seems a peculiar appropriateness in this
+reference being put into the mouth of the ancient Lawgiver, for to him
+even Sinai, with all its glories, cannot have been so impressive and so
+formative of his character as was the vision granted to him when
+solitary in the wilderness. It is to be noticed that the characteristic
+by which God is designated here never occurs elsewhere than in this one
+place. It is intended to intensify the conception of the greatness, and
+preciousness, and all-sufficiency of that 'goodwill.' If it is that 'of
+Him that dwelt in the bush,' it is sure to be all that a man can need.
+I need not remind you that the words occur in the blessing pronounced
+on 'Joseph'--that is, the two tribes which represented Joseph--in which
+all the greatest material gifts that could be desired by a pastoral
+people are first called down upon them, and then the ground of all
+these is laid in 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.' 'The
+blessing--let it come on the head of Joseph.'
+
+So then here, first, is a great thought as to what for us all is the
+blessing of blessings--God's 'goodwill.' 'Goodwill'-the word, perhaps,
+might bear a little stronger rendering. 'Goodwill' is somewhat tepid. A
+man may have a good enough will, and yet no very strong emotion of
+favour or delight, and may do nothing to carry his goodwill into
+action. But the word that is employed here, and is a common enough one
+in Scripture, always carries with it a certain intensity and warmth of
+feeling. It is more than 'goodwill'; it is more than 'favour'; perhaps
+'delight' would be nearer the meaning. It implies, too, not only the
+inward sentiment of complacency, but also the active purpose of action
+in conformity with it, on God's part. Now it needs few words to show
+that these two things, which are inseparable, do make the blessing of
+blessings for every one of us--the delight, the complacency, of God in
+us, and the active purpose of good in God for us. These are the things
+that will make a man happy wherever he is.
+
+If I might dwell for a moment upon other scriptural passages, I would
+just recall to you, as bringing up very strongly and beautifully the
+all-sufficiency and the blessed effects of having this delight and
+loving purpose directed towards us like a sunbeam, the various great
+things that a chorus of psalmists say that it will do for a man. Here
+is one of their triumphant utterances: 'Thou wilt bless the righteous;
+with favour wilt Thou compass him as with a shield.' That crystal
+battlement, if I may so vary the figure, is round a man, keeping far
+away from him all manner of real evil, and filling his quiet heart as
+he stands erect behind the rampart, with the sense of absolute
+security. That is one of the blessings that God's favour or goodwill
+will secure for us. Again, we read: 'By Thy favour Thou hast made my
+mountain to stand strong.' He that knows himself to be the object of
+the divine delight, and who by faith knows himself to be the object of
+the divine activity in protection, stands firm, and his purposes will
+be carried through, because they will be purposes in accordance with
+the divine mind, and nothing has power to shake him. So he that grasps
+the hand of God can say, not because of his grasp, but because of the
+Hand that he holds, 'The Lord is at my right hand; I shall not be
+greatly moved. By Thy favour Thou hast made our mountain to stand
+strong.' And again, in another analogous but yet diversified
+representation, we read: 'In Thee shall we rejoice all the day, and in
+Thy favour shall our horn be exalted.' That is the emblem, not only of
+victory, but of joyful confidence, and so he who knows himself to have
+God for his friend and his helper, can go through the world keeping a
+sunny face, whatever the clouds may be, erect and secure, light of
+heart and buoyant, holding up his chin above the stormiest waters, and
+breasting all difficulties and dangers with a confidence far away from
+presumption, because it is the consequence of the realisation of God's
+presence. So the goodwill of God is the chiefest good.
+
+Now, if we turn to the remarkable designation of the divine nature
+which is here, consider what rivers of strength and of blessedness flow
+out of the thought that for each of us 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt
+in the bush' may be our possession.
+
+What does that pregnant designation of God say? That was a strange
+shrine for God, that poor, ragged, dry desert bush, with apparently no
+sap in its gray stem, prickly with thorns, with 'no beauty that we
+should desire it,' fragile and insignificant, yet it was 'God's house.'
+Not in the cedars of Lebanon, not in the great monarchs of the forest,
+but in the forlorn child of the desert did He abide. 'The goodwill of
+Him that dwelt in the bush' may dwell in you and me. Never mind how
+small, never mind how sapless, never mind how lightly esteemed among
+men, never mind though we make a very poor show by the side of the
+'oaks of Bashan' or the 'cedars of Lebanon.' It is all right; the Fire
+does not dwell in them. 'Unto this man will I look, and with him will I
+dwell, who is of a humble and a contrite heart, and who trembleth at My
+word.' Let no sense of poverty, weakness, unworthiness, ever draw the
+faintest film of fear across our confidence, for even with us He will
+sojourn. For it is 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' that we
+evoke for ours.
+
+Again, what more does that name say? He 'that dwelt in the bush' filled
+it with fire, and it 'burned and was not consumed.' Now there is good
+ground to object to the ordinary interpretation, as if the burning of
+the bush which yet remains unconsumed was meant to symbolise Israel,
+or, in the New Testament application, the Church which, notwithstanding
+all persecution, still remains undestroyed. Our brethren of the
+Presbyterian churches have taken the Latin form of the words in the
+context for their motto--_Nec Tamen Consumebatur_. But I venture to
+think that that is a mistake; and that what is meant by the symbol is
+just what is expressed by the verbal revelation which accompanied it,
+and that was this: 'I AM THAT I AM.' The fire that did not burn out is
+the emblem of the divine nature which does not tend to death because it
+lives, nor to exhaustion because it energises, nor to emptiness because
+it bestows, but after all times is the same; lives by its own energy
+and is independent. 'I am that I have become,'--that is what men have
+to say. 'I am that I once was not, and again once shall not be,' is
+what men have to say. 'I am that I am' is God's name. And this eternal,
+ever-living, self-sufficing, absolute, independent, unwearied,
+inexhaustible God is the God whose favour is as inexhaustible as
+Himself, and eternal as His own being. 'Therefore the sons of men shall
+put their trust beneath the shadow of Thy wings,' and, if they have
+'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush,' will be able to say,
+'Because Thou livest we shall live also.'
+
+What more does the name say? He 'that dwelt in the bush' dwelt there in
+order to deliver; and, dwelling there, declared 'I have seen the
+affliction of My people, and am come down to deliver them.' So, then,
+if the goodwill of that eternal, delivering God is with us, we, too,
+may feel that our trivial troubles and our heavy burdens, all the needs
+of our prisoned wills and captive souls, are known to Him, and that we
+shall have deliverance from them by Him. Brethren, in that name, with
+its historical associations, with its deep revelations of the divine
+nature, with its large promises of the divine sympathy and help, there
+lie surely abundant strengths and consolations for us all. The
+goodwill, the delight, of God, and the active help of God, may be ours,
+and if these be ours we shall be blessed and strong.
+
+Do not let us forget the place in this blessing on the head of Joseph
+which my text holds. It is preceded by an invoking of the precious
+things of Heaven, and 'the precious fruits brought forth by the sun...
+of the chief things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things
+of the lasting hills, and the precious things of the earth and the
+fulness thereof.' They are all heaped together in one great mass for
+the beloved Joseph. And then, like the golden spire that tops some of
+those campaniles in Italian cities, and completes their beauty, above
+them all there is set, as the shining apex of all, 'the goodwill of Him
+that dwelt in the bush.' That is more precious than all other precious
+things; set last because it is to be sought first; set last as in
+building some great structure the top stone is put on last of all; set
+last because it gathers all others into itself, secures that all others
+shall be ours in the measure in which we need them, and arms us against
+all possibilities of evil. So the blessing of blessings is the
+'goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.'
+
+In my text this is an invocation only; but we can go further than that.
+You and I can make sure that we have it, if we will. How to secure it?
+One of the texts which I have already quoted helps us a little way
+along t he road in answer to that question, for it says, 'Thou, Lord,
+wilt bless the righteous. With favour wilt thou compass him as with a
+shield.' But it is of little use to tell me that if I am 'righteous'
+God will 'bless me,' and 'compass me with favour.' If you will tell me
+how to become righteous, you will do me more good. And we have been
+told how to be righteous--'If a man keep My commandments My Father will
+love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.' If we
+knit ourselves to Jesus Christ, and we can all do that if we like, by
+faith that trusts Him, and by love, the child of faith, that obeys Him,
+and grows daily more like Him--then, without a doubt, that delight of
+God in us, and that active purpose of good in God's mind towards us,
+will assuredly be ours; and on no other terms.
+
+So, dear brethren, the upshot of my homily is just this--Men may strive
+and scheme, and wear their finger-nails down to the quick, to get some
+lesser good, and fail after all. The greatest good is certainly ours by
+that easy road which, however hard it may be otherwise, is made easy
+because it is so certain to bring us to what we want. Holiness is the
+condition of God's delight in us, and a genuine faith in Christ, and
+the love which faith evokes, are the conditions. So it is a very simple
+matter You never can be sure of getting the lower good You can be quite
+sure of getting the highest. You never can be certain that the precious
+things of the earth and the fulness thereof will be yours, or that if
+they were, they would be so very precious; but you can be quite sure
+that the 'goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' may lie like light
+upon your hearts, and be strength to your limbs.
+
+And so I commend to you the words of the Apostle, 'Wherefore we labour
+that, whether present or absent, we may be well-pleasing to Him.' To
+minister to God's delight is the highest glory of man. To have the
+favour of Him that dwelt in the bush resting upon us is the highest
+blessing for man. He will say 'Well done! good and faithful servant.'
+'The Lord taketh pleasure'--wonderful as it sounds--'in them that fear
+Him, in them that hope in His mercy,' and that, hoping in His mercy,
+live as He would have them live.
+
+
+
+
+SHOD FOR THE ROAD
+
+'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy
+strength be.' DEUT. xxxiii. 25.
+
+
+There is a general correspondence between those blessings wherewith
+Moses blessed the tribes of Israel before his death, and the
+circumstances and territory of each tribe in the promised land. The
+portion of Asher, in whose blessing the words of our text occurs, was
+partly the rocky northern coast and partly the fertile lands stretching
+to the base of the Lebanon. In the inland part of their territory they
+cultivated large olive groves, the produce of which was trodden out in
+great rock-hewn cisterns. So the clause before my text is a benediction
+upon that industry-'let him dip his foot in oil.' And then the metaphor
+naturally suggested by the mention of the foot is carried on into the
+next words, 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' the tribe being
+located upon rocky sea-coast, having rough roads to travel, and so
+needing to be well shod. The substance, then, of that promise seems to
+be--strength adequate to, and unworn by, exercise; while the second
+clause, though not altogether plain, seems to put a somewhat similar
+idea in unmetaphorical shape. 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be,'
+probably means the promise of power that grows with growing years.
+
+So, then, we have first that thought that God gives us an equipment of
+strength proportioned to our work,--shoes fit for our road. God does
+not turn people out to scramble over rough mountains with thin-soled
+boots on; that is the plain English of the words. When an Alpine
+climber is preparing to go away into Switzerland for rock work, the
+first thing he does is to get a pair of strong shoes, with plenty of
+iron nails in the soles of them. So Asher had to be shod for his rough
+roads, and so each of us may be sure that if God sends us on stony
+paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and will not send us out on
+any journey for which He does not equip us well.
+
+There are no difficulties to be found in any path of duty, for which he
+that is called to tread it is not prepared by Him that sent him.
+Whatsoever may be the road, our equipment is calculated for it, and is
+given to us from Him that has appointed it.
+
+Is there not a suggestion here, too, as to the sort of travelling we
+may expect to have? An old saying tells us that we do not go to heaven
+in silver slippers, and the reason is because the road is rough. The
+'primrose way' leads somewhere else, and it may be walked on
+'delicately.' But if we need shoes of iron and brass, we may pretty
+well guess the kind of road we have before us. If a man is equipped
+with such coverings on his feet, depend upon it that there will be use
+for them before he gets to the end of his day's journey. The thickest
+sole will make the easiest travelling over rocky roads. So be quite
+sure of this, that if God gives to us certain endowments and equipments
+which are only calculated for very toilsome paths, the roughness of the
+road will match the stoutness of the shoes.
+
+And see what He does give. See the provision which is made for patience
+and strength, for endurance and courage, in all the messages of His
+mercy, in all the words of His love, in all the powers of His Gospel,
+and then say whether that looks as if we should have an easy life of it
+on our way home. Those two ships that went away a while ago upon the
+brave, and, as some people thought, desperate task of finding the North
+Pole--any one that looked upon them as they lay in Portsmouth Roads,
+might know that it was no holiday cruise they were meant for. The
+thickness of the sides, the strength of the cordage, the massiveness of
+the equipment, did not look like pleasure-sailing.
+
+And so, dear brethren, if we think of all that is given to us in God's
+Gospel in the way of stimulus and encouragement, and exhortation, and
+actual communication of powers, we may calculate, from the abundance of
+the resources, how great will be the strain upon us before we come to
+the end, and our 'feet stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.'  Go into
+some of the great fortresses in continental countries, and you will
+find the store-rooms full of ammunition and provisions; bread enough
+and biscuits enough, as it seems, for half the country, laid up there,
+and a deep well somewhere or other in the courtyard. What does that
+mean? It means fighting, that is what it means. So if we are brought
+into this strong pavilion, so well provisioned, so massively fortified
+and defended, that means that we shall need all the strength that is to
+be found in those thick walls, and all the sustenance that is to be
+found in those gorged magazines, and all the refreshment that is to be
+drawn from that free, and full, and inexhaustible fountain, before the
+battle is over and the victory won. Depend upon it, the promise 'Thy
+shoes shall be iron and brass.' means, 'Thy road shall be rocky and
+flinty'; and so it is.
+
+And yet, thank God! whilst it is true that it is very hard and very
+difficult for many of us, and hard and difficult--even if without the
+'very'--for us all, it is also true that we have the adequate provision
+sufficient for all our necessities--and far more than sufficient! It is
+a poor compliment to the strength that He gives to us to say that it is
+enough to carry us through. God does not deal out His gifts to people
+with such an economical correspondence to necessities as that. There is
+always a wide margin. More than we can ask, more than we can think,
+more than we can need is given us.
+
+If He were to deal with us as men often deal with one another, asking
+us, 'Well, how much do you want? cannot you do with a little less?
+there is the exact quantity that you need for your support'--if you got
+your bread by weight and your water by measure, it would be a very poor
+affair. See how He actually does--He says, 'Child, there is Mine own
+strength for you'; and we think that we honour Him when we say, 'God
+has given us enough for our necessities!' Rather the old word is always
+true: 'So they did eat and were filled; and they took up of the
+fragments that remained seven baskets-full,' and after they were
+satisfied and replete with the provision, there was more at the end
+than when they began.
+
+That suggests another possible thought to be drawn from this promise,
+namely, that it assures not only of strength adequate to the
+difficulties and perils of the journey, but also of a strength which is
+not worn out by use.
+
+The 'portion' of Asher was the rocky sea-coast. The sharp, jagged rocks
+would cut to pieces anything made of leather long before the day's
+march was over; but the travellers have their feet shod with metal, and
+the rocks which they have to stumble over will only strike fire from
+their shoes. They need not step timidly for fear of wearing them out;
+but, wherever they have to march, may go with full confidence that
+their shoeing will not fail them. A wise general looks after that part
+of his soldiers' outfit with special care, knowing that if _it_ gives
+out, all the rest is of no use. So our Captain provides us with an
+inexhaustible strength, to which we may fully trust. We shall not
+exhaust it by any demands that we can make upon it. We shall only
+brighten it up, like the nails in a well-used shoe, the heads of which
+are polished by stumbling and scrambling over rocky roads.
+
+So we may be bold in the march, and draw upon our stock of strength to
+the utmost. There is no fear that it will fail us. We may put all our
+force into our work, we shall not weaken the power which 'by reason of
+use is exercised,' not exhausted. For the grace which Christ gives us
+to serve Him, being divine, is subject to no weariness, and neither
+faints nor fails. The bush that burned unconsumed is a type of that
+Infinite Being who works unexhausted, and lives undying, after all
+expenditure is rich, after all pouring forth is full. And of His
+strength we partake.
+
+Whensoever a man puts forth an effort of any kind whatever--when I
+speak, when I lift my hand, when I run, when I think-there is waste of
+muscular tissue. Some of my strength goes in the act, and thus every
+effort means expenditure and diminution of force. Hence weariness that
+needs sleep, waste that needs food, languor that needs rest. We belong
+to an order of being in which work is death, in regard to our physical
+nature; but our spirits may lay hold of God, and enter into an order of
+things in which work is not death, nor effort exhaustion, nor is there
+loss of power in the expenditure of power.
+
+That sounds strange, and yet it is not strange. Think of that electric
+light which is made by directing a strong stream upon two small pieces
+of carbon. As the electricity strikes upon these and turns their
+blackness into a fiery blaze, it eats away their substance while it
+changes them into light. But there is an arrangement in the lamp by
+which a fresh surface is continually being brought into the path of the
+beam, and so the light continues without wavering and blazes on. The
+carbon is our human nature, black and dull in itself; the electric beam
+is the swift energy of God, which makes us 'light in the Lord.' For the
+one, decay is the end of effort; for the other, there is none. 'Though
+our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.'
+Though we belong to the perishing order of nature by our bodily frame,
+we belong to the undecaying realm of grace by the spirit that lays hold
+upon God. And if our work weary us, as it must do so long as we
+continue here, yet in the deepest sanctuary of our being, our strength
+is greatened by exercise. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.' 'Thy
+raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these
+forty years.' 'Stand, therefore, having your feet shod with the
+preparedness of the Gospel of peace.'
+
+But this is not all. There is an advance even upon these great promises
+in the closing words. That second clause of our text says more than the
+first one. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' that promises us powers
+and provision adapted to, and unexhausted by, the weary pilgrimage and
+rough road of life. But 'as thy days, so shall thy strength be,' says
+even more than that. The meaning of the word rendered 'strength' in our
+version is very doubtful, and most modern translators are inclined to
+render it 'rest.' But if we adhere to the translation of our version,
+we get a forcible and relevant promise, which fits on well to the
+previous clause, understood as it has been in my previous remarks. The
+usual understanding of the words is 'strength proportioned to thy day,'
+an idea which we have found already suggested by the previous clause.
+But that explanation rests on, or at any rate derives support from, the
+common misquotation of the words. They are not, as we generally hear
+them quoted, 'As thy day, so shall thy strength be,'--but 'day' is in
+the plural, and that makes a great difference. 'As thy days, so shall
+thy strength be,' that is to say: the two sums--of 'thy days' and of
+'thy strength'--keep growing side by side, the one as fast as the other
+and no faster. The days increase. Well, what then? The strength
+increases too. As I said, we are allied to two worlds. According to the
+law of one of them, the outer world of physical life, we soon reach the
+summit of human strength. For a little while it is true, even in the
+life of nature, that our power grows with our days. But we soon reach
+the watershed, and then the opposite comes to be true. Down, steadily
+down, we go. With diminishing power, with diminishing vitality, with a
+dimmer eye, with an obtuser ear, with a slower-beating heart, with a
+feebler frame, we march on and on to our grave. 'As thy days, so shall
+thy weakness be,' is the law for all of us mature men and women in
+regard to our outward life.
+
+But, dear brethren, we may be emancipated from that dreary law in
+regard to the true life of our spirits, and instead of growing weaker
+as we grow older, we may and we should grow stronger. We may be and we
+should be moving on a course that has no limit to its advance. We may
+be travelling on a shining path through the heavens, that has no
+noon-tide height from which it must slowly and sadly decline, but tends
+steadily and for ever upwards, nearer and nearer to the very fountain
+itself of heavenly radiance. 'The path of the just is as the shining
+light, which shineth more and more till the noon-tide of the day.' But
+the reality surpasses even that grand thought, for it discloses to us
+an endless approximation to an infinite beauty, and an ever-growing
+possession of never exhausted fulness, as the law for the progress of
+all Christ's servants. The life of each of us may and should be
+continual accession and increase of power through all the days here,
+through all the ages beyond. Why? Because 'the life which I live, I
+live by the faith of the Son of God.' Christ liveth in me. It is not my
+strength that grows, so much as God's strength in me which is given
+more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If
+my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal
+energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I
+shall be becoming purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will,
+gentler, liker Christ, every way fitter for His service, and for larger
+service, as the days increase.
+
+Those of us who have reached middle life, or perhaps gone a little over
+the watershed, ought to have this experience as our own in a very
+distinct degree. The years that are past ought to have drawn us
+somewhat away from our hot pursuing after earthly and perishable
+things. They should have added something to the clearness and
+completeness of our perception of the deep simplicity of God's gospel.
+They should have tightened our hold and increased our possession of
+Christ, and unfolded more and more of His all-sufficiency. They should
+have enriched us with memories of God's loving care, and lighted all
+the sky behind with a glow which is reflected on the path before us,
+and kindles calm confidence in His unfailing goodness. They should have
+given us power and skill for the conflicts that yet remain, as the Red
+Indians believe that the strength of every defeated and scalped enemy
+passes into his conqueror's arm. They should have given force to our
+better nature, and weakening, progressive weakening, to our worse. They
+should have rooted us more firmly and abidingly in Him from whom all
+our power comes, and so have given us more and fuller supplies of His
+exhaustless and ever-flowing might.
+
+So it may be with us if we abide in Him, without whom we are nothing,
+but partaking of whose strength 'the weakest shall be as David, and
+David as an angel of God.'
+
+If for us, drawing nearer to the end is drawing nearer to the light,
+our faces will be brightened more and more with that light which we
+approach, and our path will be 'as the shining light which shines more
+and more unto the noon-tide of the day,' because we are closer to the
+very fountain of heavenly radiance, and growingly bathed and flooded
+with the outgoings of His glory. 'As thy days, so shall thy strength
+be.'
+
+The promise ought to be true for us all. It _is_ true for all who use
+the things that are freely given to them of God. And whilst thus it is
+the law for the devout life here, its most glorious fulfilment remains
+for the life beyond. There each new moment shall bring new strength,
+and growing millenniums but add fresh vigour to our immortal life. Here
+the unresting beat of the waves of the sea of time gnaws away the bank
+and shoal whereon we stand, but there each roll of the great ocean of
+eternity shall but spread new treasures at our feet and add new acres
+to our immortal heritage. 'The oldest angels,' says Swedenborg, 'look
+the youngest.' When life is immortal, the longer it lasts the stronger
+it becomes, and so the spirits that have stood for countless days
+before His throne, when they appear to human eyes, appear as--'young
+men clothed in long white garments,'--full of unaging youth and energy
+that cannot wane. So, whilst in the flesh we must obey the law of
+decay, the spirit may be subject to this better law of life, and 'while
+the outward man perisheth, the inward man be renewed day by day.' 'Even
+the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly
+fall; but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.'
+
+
+
+
+A DEATH IN THE DESERT
+
+'So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab,
+according to the word of the Lord. 6. And he buried him in a valley in
+the land of Moab, ... but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this
+day.'--DEUT. xxxiv.5, 6.
+
+
+A fitting end to such a life! The great law-giver and leader had been
+all his days a lonely man; and now, surrounded by a new generation, and
+all the old familiar faces vanished, he is more solitary than ever. He
+had lived alone with God, and it was fitting that alone with God he
+should die.
+
+How the silent congregation must have watched, as, alone, with 'natural
+strength unabated,' he breasted the mountain, and went up to be seen no
+more! With dignified reticence our chapter tells us no details. He
+'died there,' in that dreary solitude, and in some cleft he was buried,
+and no man knows where. The lessons of that solitary death and unknown
+tomb may best be learned by contrast with another death and another
+grave--those of the Leader of the New Covenant, the Law-giver and
+Deliverer from a worse bondage, and Guide into a better Canaan, the Son
+who was faithful over His own house, as Moses was 'faithful in all his
+house, as a servant.' That lonely and forgotten grave among the savage
+cliffs was in keeping with the whole character and work of him who lay
+there.
+
+  Here,--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
+    Lightnings are loosened,
+  Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
+    Peace let the dew send!
+  Lofty designs must close in like effects;     Loftily lying,
+  Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
+    Living and dying.'
+
+Contrast that grave with the sepulchre in the garden where Jesus lay,
+close by a city wall, guarded by foes, haunted by troops of weeping
+friends, visited by a great light of angel faces. The one was hidden
+and solitary, as teaching the loneliness and mystery of death; the
+other revealed light in the darkness, and companionship in the
+loneliness. The one faded from men's memory because it was nothing to
+any man; no impulses, nor hopes, nor gifts, could come from it. The
+other forever draws hearts and memories, because in it was wrought out
+the victory in which all our hopes are rooted. An endured cross, an
+empty grave, an occupied throne, are as the threefold cord on which all
+our hopes hang. Moses was solitary as God's servant in life and death,
+and oblivion covered his mountain grave. Christ's 'delights were with
+the sons of men.' He lived among them, and all men 'know his sepulchre
+to this day.'
+
+I. Note, then, first, as a lesson gathered from this lonely death, the
+penalty of transgression.
+
+One of the great truths which the old law and ordinances given by Moses
+were intended to burn in on the conscience of the Jew, and through him
+on the conscience of the world, was that indissoluble connection
+between evil done and evil suffered, which reaches its highest
+exemplification in the death which is the 'wages of sin.' And just as
+some men that have invented instruments for capital punishment have
+themselves had to prove the sharpness of their own axe, so the
+lawgiver, whose message it had been to declare, 'the soul that sinneth
+it shall die,' had himself to go up alone to the mountain-top to
+receive in his own person the exemplification of the law that had been
+spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, in a moment of passion  (with
+many palliations and excuses), he smote the rock that he was bidden to
+address, and forgot therein, and in his angry words to the rebels, that
+he was only an instrument in the divine hand. It was a momentary
+wavering in a hundred and twenty years of obedience. It was one failure
+in a life of self-abnegation and suppression. The stern sentence came.
+
+People say, 'A heavy penalty for a small offence.' Yes; but an offence
+of Moses could not be a small offence.' _Noblesse oblige!_ The higher a
+man rises in communion with God, and the more glorious the message and
+office which are put into his hands, the more intolerable in him is the
+slightest deflection from the loftiest level. A splash of mud, that
+would never be seen on a navvy's clothes, stains the white satin of a
+bride or the embroidered garment of a noble. And so a little sin done
+by a loftily endowed and inspired man ceases to be small.
+
+Nor are we to regard that momentary lapse only from the outside and the
+surface. One little mark under the armpit of a plague-sufferer tells
+the physician that the fatal disease is there. A tiny leaf above ground
+may tell that, deep below, lurks the root of a poison plant. That
+little deflection, coming as it did at the beginning of the resumption
+of his functions by the Lawgiver after seven-and-thirty years of
+comparative abeyance, and on his first encounter with the new
+generation that he had to lead, was a very significant indication that
+his character had begun to yield and suffer from the strain that had
+been put upon it; and that, in fact, he was scarcely fit for the
+responsibilities that the new circumstances brought. So the penalty was
+not so disproportionate to the fault as it may seem.
+
+And was the penalty such a very great one? Do you think that a man who
+had been toiling for eighty years at a very thankless task would
+consider it a very severe punishment to be told, 'Go home and take your
+wages'? It did not mean the withdrawal of the divine favour. 'Moses and
+Aaron among his priests. ... Thou wast a God that forgavest them,
+though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' The penalty of a
+forgiven sin is never hard to bear, and the penalty of a forgiven sin
+is very often punctually and mercifully exacted.
+
+But still we are not to ignore the fact that this lonely death, with
+which we are now concerned, is of the nature of a penal infliction. And
+so it stands forth in consonance with the whole tone of the Mosaic
+teaching. I admit, of course, that the mere physical fact of the
+separation between body and spirit is simply the result of natural law.
+But that is not the death that you and I know. Death as we know it, the
+ugly thing that flings its long shadows across all life, and that comes
+armed with terrors for conscience and spirit, is 'the wages of sin,'
+and is only experienced by men who have transgressed the law of God. So
+far Moses in his life and in his death carries us--that no
+transgression escapes the appropriate punishment; that the smallest sin
+has in it the seeds of mortal consequences; that the loftiest saint
+does not escape the law of retribution.
+
+And no further does Moses with his Law and his death carry us. But we
+turn to the other death. And there we find the confirmation, in an
+eminent degree, of that Law, and yet the repeal of it. It is confirmed
+and exhausted in Jesus Christ. His death was 'the wages of sin.' Whose?
+Not His. Mine, yours, every man's. And because He died, surrounded by
+men, outside the old city wall, pure and sinless in Himself, He therein
+both said 'Amen' to the Law of Moses, and swept it away. For all the
+sins of the world were laid upon His head, He bore the curse for us
+all, and has emptied the bitter cup which men's transgressions have
+mingled. Therefore the solitary death in the desert proclaims 'the
+wages of sin'; that death outside the city wall proclaims 'the gift of
+God,' which is 'eternal life.'
+
+II. Another of the lessons of our incident is the withdrawal, by a hard
+fate, of the worker on the very eve of the completion of his work.
+
+For all these forty years there had gleamed before the fixed and
+steadfast spirit of the sorely tried leader one hope that he never
+abandoned, and that was that he might look upon and enter into the
+blessed land which God had promised. And now he stands on the heights
+of Moab. Half a dozen miles onwards, as the crow flies, and his feet
+would tread its soil. He lifts his eyes, and away up yonder, in the far
+north, he sees the rolling uplands of Gilead, and across the deep gash
+where the Jordan runs, he catches a glimpse of the blue hills of
+Naphtali or of Galilee, and the central mountain masses of Ephraim and
+Manasseh, where Ebal and Gerizim lift their heads; and then, further
+south, the stony summits of the Judaean hills, where Jerusalem and
+Bethlehem lie, and, through some gap in the mountains, a gleam as of
+sunshine upon armour tells where the ocean is. And then his eye falls
+upon the waterless plateau of the South, and at his feet the fertile
+valley of Jordan, with Jericho glittering amongst its palm trees like a
+diamond set in emeralds, and on some spur of the lower hill bounding
+the plain, the little Zoar. This was the land which the Lord had
+promised to the fathers, for which he had been yearning, and to which
+all his work had been directed all these years; and now he is to die,
+as my text puts it, with such pathetic emphasis, 'there in Moab,' and
+to have no part in the fair inheritance.
+
+It is the lot of all epoch-making men, of all great constructive and
+reforming geniuses, whether in the Church or in the world, that they
+should toil at a task, the full issues of which will not be known until
+their heads are laid low in the dust. But if, on the one hand, that
+seems hard, on the other hand there is the compensation of 'the vision
+of the future and all the wonder that shall be,' which is granted many
+a time to the faithful worker ere he closes his eyes. But that is not
+the fate of epoch-making and great men only; it is the law for our
+little lives. If these are worth anything, they are constructed on a
+scale too large to bring out all their results here and now. It is easy
+for a man to secure immediate consequences of an earthly kind; easy
+enough for him to make certain that he shall have the fruit of his
+toil. But quick returns mean small profits; and an unfinished life that
+succeeds in nothing may be far better than a completed one, that has
+realised all its shabby purposes and accomplished all its petty
+desires. Do you, my brother, live for the far-off; and seek not for the
+immediate issues and fruits that the world can give, but be contented
+to be of those whose toil waits for eternity to disclose its
+significance. Better a half-finished temple than a finished pigstye or
+huckster's shop. Better a life, the beginning of much and the
+completion of nothing, than a life directed to and hitting an earthly
+aim. 'He that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life
+everlasting,' and his harvest and garner are beyond the grave.
+
+III. Again, notice here the lesson of the solitude and mystery of death.
+
+Moses dies alone, with no hand to clasp his, none to close his eyes;
+but God's finger does it. The outward form of his death is but putting
+into symbol and visibility the awful characteristics of that last
+moment for us all. However closely we have been twined with others,
+each of us has to unclasp dear hands, and make that journey through the
+narrow, dark tunnel by himself. We live alone in a very real sense, but
+we each have to die as if there were not another human being in the
+whole universe but only ourselves. But the solitude may be a solitude
+with God. Up there, alone with the stars and the sky and the
+everlasting rocks and menacing death, Moses had for companion the
+supporting God. That awful path is not too desolate and lonely to be
+trodden if we tread it with Him.
+
+Moses' lonely death leads to a society yonder. If you refer to the
+thirty-second chapter you will find that, when he was summoned to the
+mountain, God said to him, 'Die in the mount whither thou goest up, and
+be gathered to thy people.' He was to be buried there, up amongst the
+rocks of Moab, and no man was ever to visit his sepulchre to drop a
+tear over it. How, then, was he 'gathered to his people'? Surely only
+thus, that, dying in the desert alone, he opened his eyes in 'the
+City,' surrounded by 'solemn troops and sweet societies' of those to
+whom he was kindred. So the solitude of a moment leads on to blessed
+and eternal companionship.
+
+So far the death of Moses carries us. What does the other death say?
+Moses had none but God with him when he died. There is a drearier
+desolation than that, and Jesus Christ proved it when He cried, 'My
+God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' That was solitude indeed, and
+in that hour of mysterious, and to us unfathomable, desertion and
+misery, the lonely Christ sounded a depth, of which the lawgiver in His
+death but skimmed the surface. Christ was parted from God in His death,
+because He bore on Him the sins that separate us from our Father, and
+in order that none of us may ever need to tread that dark passage
+alone, but may be able to say, 'I will fear no evil, for Thou art with
+me'--Thou, who hast trodden every step in its rough and dreary path,
+uncheered by the presence which cheers us and millions more. Christ
+died that we might live. He died alone that, when we come to die, we
+may hold His hand and the solitude may vanish.
+
+Then, again, our incident teaches us the mystery that wrapped death to
+that ancient world, of which we may regard that unknown and forgotten
+sepulchre as the visible symbol. Deep darkness lies over the Old
+Testament in reference to what is beyond the grave, broken by gleams of
+light, when the religious consciousness asserted its indestructibility,
+in spite of all appearance to the contrary; but never growing to the
+brightness of serene and continuous assurance of immortal life and
+resurrection. We may conceive that mysteriousness as set forth for us
+by that grave that was hidden away in the defiles of Moab, unvisited
+and uncared for by any.
+
+We turn to the other grave, and there, as the stone is rolled away, and
+the rising sunshine of the Easter morning pours into it, we have a
+visible symbol of the life and immortality which Jesus Christ then
+brought to light by His Gospel. The buried grave speaks of the
+inscrutable mystery that wrapped the future: the open sepulchre
+proclaims the risen Lord of life, and the sunlight certainty of future
+blessedness which we owe to Him. Death is solitary no more, though it
+be lonely as far as human companionship is concerned; and a mystery no
+more, though what is beyond is hidden from our view, and none but
+Christ has ever returned to tell the tale, and He has told us little
+but the fact that we shall live with Him.
+
+We rejoice that we have not to turn to a grave hid amongst the hills
+where our dead Leader lies, but to an open sepulchre by the city wall
+in the sunshine, from whence has come forth the ever-living 'Captain of
+our salvation.'
+
+IV. The last lesson is the uselessness of a dead leader to a generation
+with new conflicts.
+
+Commentators have spent a great deal of ingenuity in trying to assign
+reasons why God concealed the grave of Moses. The text does not say
+that God concealed it at all. The ignorance of the place of his
+sepulchre does not seem to have been part of the divine design, but
+simply a consequence of the circumstances of his death, and of the fact
+that he lay in an enemy's land, and that they had had something else to
+do than go to look for the grave of a dead commander. They had to
+conquer the land, and a living Joshua was what they wanted, not a dead
+Moses.
+
+So we may learn from this how easily the gaps fill. 'Thirty days'
+mourning,' and says my text, with almost a bitter touch,' so the days
+of mourning for Moses were ended.' A month of it, that was all; and
+then everybody turned to the new man that was appointed for the new
+work. God has many tools in His tool-chest, and He needs them all
+before the work is done. Joshua could no more have wielded Moses' rod
+than Moses could have wielded Joshua's sword. The one did his work, and
+was laid aside. New circumstances required a new type of character--the
+smaller man better fitted for the rougher work. And so it always is.
+Each generation, each period, has its own men that do some little part
+of the work which has to be done, and then drop it and hand over the
+task to others. The division of labour is the multiplication of joy at
+the end, and 'he that soweth and he that reapeth rejoice together.' But
+whilst the one grave tells us, 'This man served his generation by the
+will of God, and was laid asleep and saw corruption,' the other grave
+proclaims One whom all generations need, whose work is comprehensive
+and complete, who dies never. 'He liveth and was dead, and is alive for
+evermore.' Christ, and Christ alone, can never be antiquated. This day
+requires Him, and has in Him as complete an answer to all its
+necessities as if no other generation had ever possessed Him. He liveth
+for ever, and for ever is the Shepherd of men.
+
+So Aaron dies and is buried on Hor, and Moses dies and is buried on
+Pisgah, and Joshua steps into his place, and, in turn, he disappears.
+The one eternal Word of God worked through them all, and came at last
+Himself in human flesh to be the Everlasting Deliverer, Redeemer,
+Founder of the Covenant, Lawgiver, Guide through the wilderness,
+Captain of the warfare, and all that the world or a single soul can
+need until the last generation has crossed the flood, and the wandering
+pilgrims are gathered in the land of their inheritance. The dead Moses
+pre-supposes and points to the living Christ. Let us take Him for our
+all-sufficing and eternal Guide.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF JOSHUA
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW LEADERS COMMISSION
+
+'Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass,
+that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister,
+saying, 2. Moses My servant is dead: now therefore arise, go over this
+Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to
+them, even to the children of Israel. 3. Every place that the sole of
+your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto
+Moses. 4. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great
+river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the
+great sea, toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. 5.
+There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of
+thy life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail
+thee, nor forsake thee. 6. Be strong and of a good courage; for unto
+this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I sware
+unto their fathers to give them. 7. Only be thou strong and very
+courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law,
+which Moses My servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right
+hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.
+8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou
+shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do
+according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy
+way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. 9. Have not I
+commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither
+be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou
+goest. 10. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying,
+11. Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you
+victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go
+in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess
+it.'--JOSHUA I. 1-11.
+
+
+The closest connection exists between Deuteronomy and Joshua. The
+narrative may be read as running on without a break. It turns away from
+the lonely grave up on the mountain to the bustling camp and the new
+leader. No man is indispensable. God's work goes on uninterrupted. The
+instruments are changed, but the Master-hand is the same, and lays one
+tool aside and takes another out of the tool-chest as He will. Moses is
+dead,--what then? Does his death paralyse the march of the tribes? No;
+it is but the ground for the ringing command, 'Therefore arise, go over
+this Jordan.' The immediate installation of his successor, and the
+uninterrupted continuance of the advance, do not mean that Moses is not
+honoured or is forgotten, for the narrative lovingly links his
+honorific title, 'the servant of the Lord,' with the mention of his
+death; and God Himself does the same, for he is thrice referred to in
+the divine command to Joshua, as the recipient of the promise of the
+conquest, as the example of the highest experience of God's
+all-sufficing companionship, and as the medium by which Israel received
+the law. Joshua steps into the empty place, receives the same great
+promise, is assured of the same Presence, and is to obey the same law.
+The change of leaders is great, but nothing else is changed; and even
+it is not so great as faint hearts in their sorrow are apt to think,
+for the real Leader lives, and Moses and Joshua alike are but the
+transmitters of His orders and His aids to Israel.
+
+The first command given to Joshua was a trial of his faith, for 'Jordan
+was in flood' (Joshua iii. 15),--and how was that crowd to get across,
+when fords were impassable and ferry-boats were wanting, to say nothing
+of the watchful eyes that were upon them from the other bank? To cross
+a stream in the face of the enemy is a ticklish operation, even for
+modern armies; what must it have been, then, for Joshua and his horde?
+Not a hint is given him as to the means by which the crossing is to be
+made possible. He has Jehovah's command to do it, and Jehovah's promise
+to be with him, and that is to be enough. We too have sometimes to face
+undertakings which we cannot see how to carry through; but if we do see
+that the path is one appointed by God, and will boldly tread it, we may
+be quite sure that, when we come to what at present seems like a
+mountain wall across it, we shall find that the glen opens as we
+advance, and that there is a way,--narrow, perhaps, and dangerous, but
+practicable. 'One step enough for me' should be our motto. We may trust
+God not to command impossibilities, nor to lead us into a _cul de sac._
+
+The promise to Moses (Deut. ii. 24) is repeated almost verbally in
+verse 4. The boundaries of the land are summarily given as from 'the
+wilderness' in the south to 'this Lebanon' in the north, and from the
+Euphrates in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. 'The land of
+the Hittites' is not found in the original passage in Deuteronomy, and
+it seems to be a designation of the territory between Lebanon and the
+Euphrates, which we now know to have been the seat of the northern
+Hittites, while the southern branch was planted round Hebron and the
+surrounding district. But these wide boundaries were not attained till
+late in the history, and were not long retained. Did the promise, then,
+fail? No, for it, like all the promises, was contingent on conditions,
+and Israel's unfaithfulness cut short its extent of territory. We, too,
+fail to possess all the land destined for us. Our charter is much wider
+than our actual wealth. God gives more than we take, and we are content
+to occupy but a corner of the broad land which He has given us. In like
+manner Joshua did not realise to the full the following promise of
+uniform victory, but was defeated at Ai and elsewhere. The reason was
+the same,--the faithlessness of the people. Unbelief and sin turn a
+Samson into a weakling, and make Israel flee before the ranks of the
+Philistines.
+
+The great encouragement given to Joshua in entering on his hard and
+perilous enterprise is twice repeated here: 'As I was with Moses, so
+will I be with thee.' Did Joshua remember how, nearly forty years
+since, he had fronted the mob of cowards with the very same assurance,
+and how the answer had been a shower of stones? The cowards are all
+dead,--will their sons believe the assurance now? If we do believe that
+God is with us, we shall be ready to cross Jordan in flood, and to meet
+the enemies that are waiting on the other bank. If we do not, we shall
+not dare greatly, nor succeed in what we attempt. The small successes
+of material wealth and gratified ambition may be ours, but for all the
+higher duties and nobler conflicts that become a man, the condition of
+achievement and victory is steadfast faith in God's presence and help.
+
+That assurance--which we may all have if we cling to Jesus, in whom God
+comes to be with every believing soul--is the only basis on which the
+command to Joshua, thrice repeated, can wisely or securely be rested.
+It is mockery to say to a man conscious of weakness, and knowing that
+there are evils which must surely come, and evils which may possibly
+come, against which he is powerless, 'Don't be afraid' unless you can
+show him good reason why he need not be. And there is only one reason
+which can still reasonable dread in a human heart that has to front
+'all the ills that flesh is heir to,' and sees behind them all the grim
+form of death. He ought to be afraid, unless--unless what? Unless he
+has heard and taken into his inmost soul the Voice that said to Joshua,
+'I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee: be strong and of a good
+courage,' or, still more sweet and peace-bringing, the Voice that said
+to the frightened crew of the fishing-boat in the storm and the
+darkness,' It is I; be not afraid.' If we know that Christ is with us,
+it is wise to be strong and courageous; if we are meeting the tempest
+alone, the best thing we can do is to fear, for the fear may drive us
+to seek for His help, and He ever stretches out His hand to him who is
+afraid, as he ought to be, when he feels the cold water rising above
+his knees, and by his very fear is driven to faith, and cries, 'Lord,
+save; I perish!'
+
+Courage that does not rest on Christ's presence is audacity rather than
+courage, and is sure to collapse, like a pricked bladder, when the
+sharp point of a real peril comes in contact with it. If we sit down
+and reckon the forces that we have to oppose to the foes that we are
+sure to meet, we shall find ourselves unequal to the fight, and, if we
+are wise, shall 'send the ambassage' of a humble desire to the great
+King, who will come to our help with His all-conquering powers. Then,
+and only then, shall we be safe in saying,' I will not fear what man
+can do unto me, or devils either,' when we have said,' In God have I
+put my trust,' and have heard Him answering, 'I will not fail thee, nor
+forsake thee.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARGE TO THE SOLDIER OF THE LORD
+
+'Only be then strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to
+do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded thee...
+that thou mayest prosper wheresoever thou goest. 8. This book of the
+law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shall meditate therein
+day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is
+written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then
+thou shalt have good success.'--JOSHUA i. 7,8.
+
+
+This is the central portion of the charge given to the successor of
+Moses. Joshua was a very small man in comparison with his predecessor.
+He was no prophet nor constructive genius; he was not capable of the
+heights of communion and revelation which the lofty spirit of Moses was
+able to mount. He was only a plain, fiery soldier, with energy, swift
+decision, promptitude, self-command, and all the military virtues in
+the highest degree. The one thing that he needed was to be 'strong and
+courageous'; and over and over again in this chapter you will find that
+injunction pealed into his ears. He is the type of the militant servant
+of the Lord, and the charge to him embodies the duties of all such.
+
+I. We have here the duty of courageous strength.
+
+Christianity has altered the perspective of human virtues, has thrown
+the gentler ones into prominence altogether unknown before, and has
+dimmed the brilliancy of the old heroic type of character; but it has
+not struck those virtues out of its list. Whilst the perspective is
+altered, there is as much need in the lowliest Christian life for the
+loftiest heroism as ever there was. For in no mere metaphor, but in
+grim earnest, all Christian progress is conflict, and we have to fight,
+not only with the evils that are within, but, if we would be true to
+the obligations of our profession and loyal to the commands of our
+Master, we have to take our part in the great campaign which He has
+inaugurated and is ever carrying on against every abuse and oppression,
+iniquity and sin, that grinds down the world and makes our brethren
+miserable and servile. So, then, in these words we have directions in
+regard to a side of the Christian character, indispensable to-day as
+ever, and the lack of which cannot be made up for by any amount of
+sweet and contemplative graces.
+
+Jesus Christ is the type of both. The Conqueror of Canaan and the
+Redeemer of the world bear the same name. The Jesus whom we trust was a
+Joshua. And let us learn the lesson that neither the conqueror of the
+typical and material land of promise nor the Redeemer who has won the
+everlasting heaven for our portion could do their work without the
+heroic side of human excellence being manifestly developed. Do you
+remember 'He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem'? Do you
+remember that the Apostle whom a hasty misconception has thought of as
+the gentlest of the Twelve, because he had most to say about love, is
+the Apostle that more emphatically than any other rings into our ears
+over and over again the thought of the Christ, militant and victorious,
+the Hero as well as the patient Sufferer, the 'Captain of our
+salvation'? And so let us recognise how both the gentler and the
+stronger graces, the pacific and the warlike side of human excellence,
+have their highest development in Jesus Christ, and learn that the
+firmest strength must be accompanied with the tenderest love and
+swathed in meekest gentleness. As another Apostle has it in his
+pregnant, brief injunctions, ringing and laconic like a general's word
+of command, 'Quit you like men I be strong! let all your deeds be done
+in love!' Braid the two things together, for the mightiest strength is
+the love that conquers hate, and the only love that is worthy of a man
+is the love that is strong to contend and to overcome.
+
+'Be strong.' Then strength is a duty; then weakness is a sin. Then the
+amount of strength that we possess and wield is regulated by ourselves.
+We have our hands on the sluice. We may open it to let the whole full
+tide run in, or we may close it till a mere dribble reaches us. For the
+strength which is strength, and not merely weakness in a fever, is a
+strength derived, and ours because derived. The Apostle gives the
+complete version of the exhortation when he says: 'Finally, my
+brethren,' that Omega of command which is the Alpha of performance, 'be
+strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.' Let Christ's
+strength in. Open the heart wide that it may come. Keep yourself in
+continual touch with God, the fountain of all power. Trust is strength,
+because trust touches the Rock of Ages.
+
+For this reason the commandment to be strong and of good courage is in
+the text based upon this: 'As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.
+I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.' Our strength depends on
+ourselves, because our strength is the fruit of our faith. And if we
+live with Him, grasping His hand and, in the realising consciousness of
+our own weakness, looking beyond ourselves, then power will come to us
+above our desire and equal to our need. The old victories of faith will
+be reproduced in us when we say with the ancient king, 'Lord! We know
+not what to do, but our eyes are up unto Thee.' Then He will come to
+us, to make us 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.'
+'Wait on the Lord and He will strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on
+the Lord.'
+
+But courage is duty, too, as well as strength. Power and the
+consciousness of power do not always go together. In regard to the
+strength of nature, courage and might are quite separable. There may be
+a strong coward and a weak hero. But in the spiritual region, strength
+and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with
+us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint
+of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate
+its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the
+duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the
+duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with the weakness
+that is against me, and of being bold because I know that more and
+'greater is He that is with me than are they that be with them.'
+
+II. So much, then, for the first of the exhortations here. Now look
+next at the duty of implicit obedience to the word of command.
+
+That is another soldierly virtue, the exercise of which sheds a
+nobility over the repulsive horrors of the battlefield. Joshua had to
+be fitted to command by learning to obey, and, like that other soldier
+whose rough trade had led him to some inkling of Christ's authority by
+its familiarising him with the idea of the strange power of the word of
+command, had to realise that he himself was 'under authority' before he
+could issue his orders.
+
+Courage and strength come first, and on them follows the command to do
+all according to the law, to keep it without deflection to right or
+left, and to meditate on it day and night. These two virtues make the
+perfect soldier-courage and obedience. Daring and discipline must go
+together, and to know how to follow orders is as essential as to know
+how to despise dangers.
+
+But the connection between these two, as set forth in this charge, is
+not merely that they must co-exist, but that courage and strength are
+needed for, and are to find their noblest field of exercise in,
+absolute acceptance of, and unhesitating, swift, complete, unmurmuring
+obedience to, everything that is discerned to be God's will and our
+duty.
+
+For the Christian soldier, then, God's law is his marching orders. The
+written word, and especially the Incarnate Word, are our law of
+conduct. The whole science of our warfare and plan of campaign are
+there. We have not to take our orders from men's lips, but we must
+often disregard them, that we may listen to the 'Captain of our
+salvation.' The soldier stands where his officer has posted him, and
+does what he was bid, no matter what may happen. Only one voice can
+relieve him. Though a thousand should bid him flee, and his heart
+should echo their advices, he is recreant if he deserts his post at the
+command of any but him who set him there. Obedience to others is
+mutiny. Nor does the Christian need another law to supplement that
+which Christ has given him in His pattern and teaching. Men have
+appended huge comments to it, and have softened some of its plain
+precepts which bear hard on popular sins. But the Lawgiver's law is one
+thing, and the lawyers' explanations which explain it away or darken
+what was clear enough, however unwelcome, are quite another. Christ has
+given us Himself, and therein has given a sufficient directory for
+conduct and conflict which fits close to all our needs, and will prove
+definite and practical enough if we honestly try to apply it.
+
+The application of Christ's law to daily life takes some courage, and
+is the proper field for the exercise of Christian strength. 'Be very
+courageous that thou mayest observe.' If you are not a bold Christian
+you will very soon get frightened out of obedience to your Master's
+commandments. Courage, springing from the realisation of God's helping
+strength, is indispensable to make any man, in any age, live out
+thoroughly and consistently the principles of the law of Jesus Christ.
+No man in _this_ generation will work out a punctual obedience to what
+he knows to be the will of God, without finding out that all the
+'Canaanites' are not dead yet; but that there are enough of them left
+to make a very thorny life for the persistent follower of Jesus Christ.
+
+And not only is there courage needed for the application of the
+principles of conduct which God has given us, but you will never have
+them handy for swift application unless, in many a quiet hour of
+silent, solitary, patient meditation you have become familiar with
+them. The recruit that has to learn on the battle-field how to use his
+rifle has a good chance of being dead before he has mastered the
+mysteries of firing. And Christian people that have their Christian
+principles to dig out of the Bible when the necessity comes, will
+likely find that the necessity is past before they have completed the
+excavation. The actual battle-field is no place to learn drill. If a
+soldier does not know how his sword hangs, and cannot get at it in a
+moment, he will probably draw it too late.
+
+I am afraid that the practice of such meditation as is meant here has
+come to be, like the art of making ecclesiastical stained glass, almost
+extinct in modern times. You have all so many newspapers and magazines
+to read that the Bible has a chance of being shoved out of sight,
+except on Sundays and in chapels. The 'meditating' that is enjoined in
+my text is no mere intellectual study of Scripture, either from an
+antiquarian or a literary or a theological point of view, but it is the
+mastering of the principles of conduct as laid down there, and the
+appropriating of all the power for guidance and for sustaining which
+that word of the Lord gives. Meditation, the familiarising ourselves
+with the ethics of Scripture, and with the hopes and powers that are
+treasured in Jesus Christ, so that our minds are made up upon a great
+many thorny questions as to what we ought to do, and that when crises
+or dangers come, as they have a knack of coming, very suddenly, and are
+sprung upon us unexpectedly, we shall be able, without much difficulty,
+or much time spent in perplexed searching, to fall back upon the
+principles that decide our conduct--that is essential to all successful
+and victorious Christian life.
+
+And it is the secret of all blessed Christian life. For there is a
+lovely echo of these vigorous words of command to Joshua in a very much
+more peaceful form in the 1st Psalm: 'Blessed is the man that walketh
+not in the counsel of the ungodly, ... but his delight is in the law of
+the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night'--the very
+words that are employed in the text to describe the duty of the
+soldier--therefore 'all that he doeth shall prosper.'
+
+III. That leads to the last thought here--the sure victory of such bold
+obedience.
+
+'Thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest'; 'Thou shalt make thy
+way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success,' or, as the last
+word might be rendered, 'then shalt thou _act wisely_' You may not get
+victory from an earthly point of view, for many a man that lives strong
+and courageous and joyfully obeying God's law, as far as he knows it
+and because he loves the Lawgiver, goes through life, and finds that,
+as far as the world's estimate is concerned, there is nothing but
+failure as his portion. Ah I but the world's way is not the true way of
+estimating victory. 'Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,' said
+Jesus Christ when within arm's-length of the Cross. And His way is the
+way in which we must conquer the world, if we conquer it at all. The
+success which my text means is the carrying out of conscientious
+convictions of God's will into practice. That is the only success that
+is worth talking about or looking for. The man that succeeds in obeying
+and translating God's will into conduct is the victor, whatever be the
+outward fruits of his life. He may go out of the field beaten,
+according to the estimate of men that can see no higher than their own
+height, and little further than their own finger tips can reach; he may
+himself feel that the world has gone past him, and that he has not made
+much of it; he may have to lie down at last unknown, poor, with all his
+bright hopes that danced before him in childhood gone, and sore beaten
+by the enemies; but if he is able to say in the strength that Christ
+gives, 'I have finished my course; I have kept the faith,' his 'way has
+prospered,' and he has had' good success.' 'We are more than conquerors
+through Him that loved us.'
+
+THE UNTRODDEN PATH AND THE GUIDING ARK
+
+'Come not near unto the ark, that ye may know the way by which ye must
+go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.'--JOSHUA iii. 4.
+
+It was eminently true of Israel that they had 'not passed this way
+heretofore,' inasmuch as the path which was opening before them,
+through the oozy bed of the river, had never been seen by human eye,
+nor trodden by man's foot. Their old leader was dead. There were only
+two of the whole host that had ever been out of the desert in their
+lives. They had a hard task before them. Jericho lay there, gleaming
+across the plain, among the palm-trees, backed by the savage cliffs, up
+the passes in which they would have to fight their way. So that we need
+not wonder that, over and over again, in these early chapters of this
+book, the advice in reiterated, 'Be of good courage. Be strong and fear
+not!' They needed special guidance, and they received very special
+guidance, and my text tells us what they had to do, in order to realise
+the full blessing and guidance that was given them. 'Let there be a
+space of 2000 cubits by measure between you and the
+ark'--three-quarters of a mile or thereabouts--'do not press close upon
+the heels of the bearers, for you will not be able to see where they
+are going if you crowd on them. Be patient. Let the course of the ark
+disclose itself before you try to follow it, that ye may know the way
+by which ye must go, for ye have not passed this way heretofore.'
+
+I. Note the untrodden path.
+
+I suppose that most of us have to travel a very well-worn road, and
+that our course, in the cases of all except those in early life, is
+liker that of a millhorse than an untrodden path. Most of us are
+continually treading again in the prints of our own footsteps. A long,
+weary stretch of monotonous duties, and the repetition of the same
+things to-day that we did yesterday is the destiny of most of us.
+
+Some of us, perhaps, may be standing upon the verge of some new scenes
+in our lives. Some of you young people may have come up to a great city
+for the first time to carve out a position for yourselves, and are for
+the first time encompassed by the temptations of being unknown in a
+crowd. Some of you may be in new domestic circumstances, some with new
+sorrows, or tasks, or difficulties pressing upon you, calling for
+wisdom and patience. It is quite likely that there may be some who, in
+the most prosaic and literal sense of the words, are entering on a path
+altogether new and untrodden. But they will be in the minority, and for
+the most of us the days that were full of new possibilities are at an
+end, and we have to expect little more than the monotonous repetition
+of the habitual, humdrum duties of mature life. We have climbed the
+winding paths up the hill, and most of us are upon the long plateau
+that stretches unvaried, until it begins to dip at the further edge.
+And some of us are going down that other side of the hill.
+
+But whatever may be the variety in regard to the mere externals of our
+lives, how true it is about us all that even the most familiar duties
+of to-day are not quite like the same duties when they had to be done
+yesterday; and that the path for each of us--though, as we go along, we
+find in it nothing new--is yet an untrodden path! For we are not quite
+the same as we were yesterday, though our work may be the same, and the
+difference in us makes it in some measure different.
+
+But what mainly makes even the most well-beaten paths new at the
+thousandth time of traversing them is our ignorance of what may be
+waiting round the next turn of the road. The veil that hangs before and
+hides the future is a blessing, though we sometimes grumble at it, and
+sometimes petulantly try to make pinholes through it, and peep in to
+see a little of what is behind it. It brings freshness into our lives,
+and a possibility of anticipation, and even of wonder and expectation,
+that prevents us from stagnating. Even in the most habitual repetition
+of the same tasks 'ye have not passed this way heretofore.' And life
+for every one of us is still full of possibilities so great and so
+terrible that we may well feel that the mist that covers the future is
+a blessing and a source of strength for us all.
+
+Our march through time is like that of men in a mist, in which things
+loom in strangely distorted shapes, unlike their real selves, until we
+get close up to them, and only then do we discover them.
+
+So for us all the path is new and unknown by reason of the sudden
+surprises that may be sprung upon us, by reason of the sudden
+temptations that may start up at any moment in our course, by reason of
+the earthquakes that may shatter the most solid-seeming lives, by
+reason of the sudden calamities that may fall upon us. The sorrows that
+we anticipate seldom come, and those that do come are seldom
+anticipated. The most fatal bolts are generally from the blue. One
+flash, all unlooked for, is enough to blast the tree in all its leafy
+pride. Many of us, I have no doubt, can look back to times in our lives
+when, without anticipation on our parts, or warning from anything
+outside of us, a smiting hand fell upon some of our blessings. The
+morning dawned upon the gourd in full vigour of growth, and in the
+evening it was stretched yellow and wilted upon the turf. Dear
+brethren, anything may come out of that dark cloud through which our
+life's course has to pass, and there are some things concerning which
+all that we know is that they must come.
+
+These are very old threadbare thoughts; I dare say you think it was not
+worth your while to come to hear them, nor mine to speak them; but if
+we would lay them to heart, and realise how true it is about every step
+of our earthly course that 'ye have not passed this way heretofore,' we
+should complain less than we do of the weariness and prosaic character
+of our commonplace lives, and feel that all was mystical and great and
+awful; and yet most blessed in its possibilities and its uncertainties.
+
+II. Note, again, the guiding ark.
+
+It was a new thing that the ark should become the guide of the people.
+All through the wilderness, according to the history, it had been
+carried in the centre of the march, and had had no share in the
+direction of the course. That had been done by the pillar of cloud.
+But, just as the manna ceased when the tribes got across the Jordan and
+could eat the bread of the land, the miracle ending and they being left
+to trust to ordinary means of supply at the earliest possible moment,
+so there ensued an approximation to ordinary guidance, which is none
+the less real because it is granted without miracle. The pillar of
+cloud ceased to move before the people in the crossing of the Jordan,
+and its place was taken by the material symbol of the presence of God,
+which contained the tables of the law as the basis of the covenant. And
+that ark moved at the commandment of the leader Joshua, for he was the
+mouthpiece of the divine will in the matter. And so when the ark moved
+at the bidding of the leader, and became the guide of the people, there
+was a kind of a drop down from the pure supernatural of the guiding
+pillar.
+
+For us a similar thing is true. Jesus Christ is the true Ark of God.
+For what was the ark? the symbol of the divine Presence; and Christ is
+the reality of the divine Presence with men. The whole content of that
+ark was the 'law of the Lord,' and Jesus Christ is the embodied law of
+the present God. The ark was the sign that God had entered into this
+covenant with these people, and that they had a right to say to Him,
+'Thou art our God, and we are Thy people,' and the same double
+assurance of reciprocal possession and mutual delight in possession is
+granted to us in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+So He becomes the guiding Ark, the Shepherd of Israel. His presence and
+will are our directors. The law, which is contained and incorporated in
+Him, is that by which we are to walk. The covenant which He has
+established in His own blood between God and man contains in itself not
+only the direction for conduct, but also the motives which will impel
+us to walk where and as He enjoins.
+
+And so, every way we may say, by His providences which He appoints, by
+His example which He sets us, by His gracious word in which He sums up
+all human duties in the one sweet obligation, 'Follow Me,' and even
+more by His Spirit that dwells in us, and whispers in our ears, 'This
+is the way; walk ye in it,' and enlightens every perplexity, and
+strengthens all feebleness, and directs our footsteps into the way of
+peace; that living and personal Ark of the covenant of the Lord of the
+whole earth is still the guide of waiting and docile hearts. Jesus
+Christ's one word to us is, 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.
+And where I am'--of course, seeing he is a follower--'there shall also
+My servant be.'
+
+The one Pattern for us, the one Example that we need to follow, the one
+Strength in our perplexities, the true Director of our feet, is that
+dear Lord, if we will only listen to Him. And that direction will be
+given to us in regard to the trifles, as in regard to the great things
+of our lives.
+
+III. And so the last thought that is here is the watchful following.
+
+'Come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye ought to
+go.' In a shipwreck, the chances are that the boats will be swamped by
+the people scrambling into them in too great a hurry. In the Christian
+life most of the mistakes that people make arise from their not letting
+the ark go far enough ahead of them before they gather up their
+belongings and follow it. An impatience of the half-declared divine
+will, a running before we are sent, an acting before we are quite sure
+that God wills us to do so-and-so, are at the root of most of the
+failures of Christian effort, and of a large number of the miseries of
+Christian men. If we would only have patience! Three-quarters of a mile
+the ark went ahead before a man lifted a foot to follow it, and there
+was no mistake possible then.
+
+Now do not be in a hurry to act. 'Raw haste' is 'half-sister to delay.'
+We are all impatient of uncertainty, either in opinion or in conduct;
+but if you are not quite sure what God wants you to do, you may be
+quite sure that He does not at present want you to do anything. Wait
+till you see what He does wish you to do. Better, better far, to spend
+hours in silent--although people that know nothing about what we are
+doing may call it indolent--waiting for the clear declaration of God's
+will, than to hurry on paths which, after we have gone on them far
+enough to make it a mortification and a weariness to turn back, we
+shall find out to have been not His at all, but only our own mistakes
+as to where the ark would have us go.
+
+And that there may be this patience the one thing needful-as, indeed,
+it is the one thing needful for all strength of all kinds in the
+Christian life--is the rigid suppression of our own wills. That is the
+secret of goodness, and its opposite is the secret of evil. To live by
+my own will is to die. Nothing but blunders, nothing but miseries,
+nothing but failures, nothing but remorse, will be the fruit of such a
+life. And a great many of us who call ourselves Christians are not
+Christians in the sense of having Christ's will for our absolute law,
+and keeping our own will entirely in subordination thereto. As is the
+will, so is the man, and whoever does not bow himself absolutely, and
+hush all the babble of his own inclinations and tastes and decisions,
+in order that that great Voice may speak, has small chance of ever
+walking in the paths of righteousness, or finding that his ways please
+the Lord.
+
+Suppress your own wills, dwell near God, that you may hear His lightest
+whisper. 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' What is the use of the
+glance of an eye if the man for whom it is meant is half a mile off,
+and staring about him at everything except the eye that would guide?
+And that is what some of us that call ourselves Christian people are.
+God might look guidance at us for a week, and we should never know that
+He was doing it; we have so many other things to look after. And we are
+so far away from Him that it would need a telescope for us to see His
+face. 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' Keep near Him, and you will
+not lack direction.
+
+
+And so, dear brethren, if we stay ourselves on, and wait patiently for,
+Him, and are content to do what He wishes, and never to run without a
+clear commission, nor to act without a full conviction of duty, then
+the old story of my text will repeat itself in our daily life, as well
+as in the noblest form in the last act of life, which is death. The
+Lord will move before us and open a safe, dry path for us between the
+heaped waters; and where the feet of our great High Priest, bearing the
+Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, stood, amidst the slime and the mud,
+we may plant our firm feet on the stones that He has left there. And so
+the stream of life, like the river of death, will be parted for
+Christ's followers, and they will pass over on dry ground, 'until all
+the people are passed clean over Jordan.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE WATERS SAW THEE; THEY WERE AFRAID'
+
+'And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the
+Lord will do wonders among you. 6. And Joshua spake unto the priests,
+saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the
+people. And they took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the
+people. 7. And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to
+magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I
+was with Moses, so I will be with thee. 8 And thou shalt command the
+priests that bear the ark of the covenant, saying, When ye are come to
+the brink of the water of Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan. 8.
+And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, Come hither, and hear the
+words of the Lord your God. 10. And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know
+that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive
+out from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites,
+and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the
+Jebusites. 11. Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the
+earth passeth Over before you into Jordan. 12. Now therefore take you
+twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man. 13.
+And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the
+priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall
+rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be out
+off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand
+upon an heap. 14. And it came to pass, when the people removed from
+their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of
+the covenant before the people; 15. And as they that bare the ark were
+come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were
+dipped in the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks
+all the time of harvest,) 16. That the waters which came down from
+above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that
+is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the
+plain, even the salt sea failed, and were cut off: and the people
+passed over right against Jericho. 17. And the priests that bare the
+ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst
+of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all
+the people were passed clean over Jordan.'--JOSHUA iii 5-17.
+
+
+The arrangement of the narrative of the passage of Jordan, which
+occupies chapters iii. and iv., is remarkable, and has led to
+suggestions of interpolation and blending of two accounts, which are
+quite unnecessary. It is divided into four sections,--the preparations
+(Joshua in. 1-6), the passage (Joshua in. 7-17), the lifting of the
+memorial stones from the river's bed and the fixing of one set of them
+in it (Joshua iv. 1-14), the return of the waters, and the erection of
+the second set of memorial stones at Gilgal (Joshua iv. 15-24).
+
+Each section closes with a summary of the whole transaction, after the
+common manner of Old Testament history, which gives to a hasty reader
+the impression of confusion and repetition; but a little attention
+shows a very symmetrical arrangement, negativing the possibility of
+interpolation. The last three sections are all built on the same lines.
+In each there is a triple division,--God's command to Joshua, Joshua's
+communication of it to the people, and the actual fact, fulfilling
+these. So each stage passes thrice before the view, and the
+impressiveness of the history is heightened by our seeing it first in
+the mirror of the divine Word, and then in the orders of the commander,
+before we see it as a thing actually happening.
+
+Verses 5 and 6 of the chapter belong to the section which deals with
+the preparation. General instructions had been already issued that the
+host was to follow the ark, leaving two thousand cubits between them
+and it; but nothing had been said as to how Jordan was to be crossed.
+No doubt many a question and doubt had been muttered by the
+watch-fires, as the people looked at the muddy, turbid stream, swirling
+in flood. The spies probably managed to swim it, but that was a feat
+worthy to be named in the epitaph of heroes (1 Chron. xii. 15), and
+impossible for the crowd of all ages and both sexes which followed
+Joshua. There was the rushing stream, swollen as it always is in
+harvest. How were they to get over? And if the people of Jericho, right
+over against them, chose to fall upon them as they were struggling
+across, what could hinder utter defeat? No doubt, all that was
+canvassed, in all sorts of tones; but no inkling of the miracle seems
+to have been given.
+
+God often opens His hand by one finger at a time, and leaves us face to
+face with some plain but difficult duty, without letting us see the
+helps to its performance, till we need to use them. If we go right on
+the road which He has traced out, it will never lead us into a blind
+alley. The mountains will part before us as we come near what looked
+their impassable wall; and some narrow gorge or other, wide enough to
+run a track through, but not wide enough to be noticed before we are
+close on it, will be sure to open. The attitude of expectation of God's
+help, while its nature is unrevealed, is kept up in Joshua's last
+instruction. The people are bidden to 'sanctify themselves, because
+to-morrow the Lord will do wonders' among them. That sanctifying was
+not external, but included the hallowing of spirit by docile waiting
+for His intervention, and by obedience while the manner of it was
+hidden. The secret of to-morrow is partly made known, and the faith of
+the people is nourished by the mystery remaining, as well as by the
+light given. The best security for to-morrow's wonders is to-day's
+sanctifying.
+
+The command to the priests discloses to them a little more, in bidding
+them pass over before the people, but the additional disclosure would
+only be an additional trial of faith; for the silence as to how so
+impossible a command was to be made possible is absolute. The swollen
+river had obliterated all fords; and how were priests, staggering under
+the weight of the ark on their shoulders, to 'pass over'? The question
+is not answered till the ark is on their shoulders. To-day often sees
+to-morrow's duty without seeing how it is to be done. But the bearers
+of the ark need never fear but that the God to whom it belongs will
+take care of it and of them. The last sentence of verse 6 is the
+anticipatory summary which closes each section.
+
+In verses 7-17 we have the narrative of the actual crossing, in its
+three divisions of God's command (vs. 7-8), Joshua's repetition of it
+(vs. 9-13), and the historical fact (vs. 14-17). The final instructions
+were only given on the morning of the day of crossing. The report of
+God's commands given in verses 7 and 8 is condensed, as is evident from
+the fuller statement of them in Joshua's address to the people, which
+immediately follows. In it Joshua is fully aware of the manner of the
+miracle and of the details of the crossing, but we have no record of
+his having received them. The summary of that eventful morning's
+instructions to him emphasises first the bearing of the miracle on his
+reputation. The passage of the Red Sea had authenticated the mission of
+Moses to the past generation, who, in consequence of it, 'believed God
+and His servant Moses.' The new generation are to have a parallel
+authentication of Joshua's commission. It is noteworthy that this is
+not the purpose of the miracle which the leader announces to the people
+in verse 10. It was a message from God to himself, a kind of gracious
+whisper meant for his own encouragement. What a thought to fill a man's
+heart with humble devotion, that God would work such a wonder in order
+to demonstrate that He was with him! And what a glimpse of more to
+follow lay in that promise, 'This day will I _begin_ to magnify thee I'
+
+The command to the priests in verse 8 is also obviously condensed; for
+Joshua's version of it, which follows, is much more detailed, and
+contains particular instructions, which must have been derived from the
+divine word to him on that morning.
+
+We may pass on, then, to the second division of the narrative; namely,
+Joshua's communication of God's commands to the people. Observe the
+form which the purpose of the miracle assumes there. It is the
+confirmation of the divine Presence, not with the leader, but with the
+people and their consequent victory. Joshua grasped the inmost meaning
+of God's Word to himself, and showed noble self-suppression, when he
+thus turned the direction of the miracle. The true servant of God knows
+that God is with him, not for his personal glorification, but for the
+welfare of God's people, and cares little for the estimation in which
+men hold him, if they will only believe that the conquering God is with
+them. We too often make great leaders and teachers in the church opaque
+barriers to hide God from us, instead of transparent windows through
+which He shines upon His people. We are a great deal more ready to say,
+'God is with him,' than to add, 'and therefore God is with us, in our
+Joshuas, and without them.'
+
+Observe the grand emphasis of that name, 'the living God,' tacitly
+contrasted with the dead idols of the enemies, and sealing the
+assurance of His swift and all-conquering might. Observe, too, the
+triumphant contempt in the enumeration of the many tribes of the foe
+with their barbarous names. Five of them had been enough, when named by
+the spies' trembling lips, to terrify the congregation, but here the
+list of the whole seven but strengthens confidence. Faith delights to
+look steadily at its enemies, knowing that the one Helper is more than
+they all. This catalogue breathes the same spirit as Paul's rapturous
+list of the foes impotent to separate from the love of God. Mark, too,
+the long-drawn-out designation of the ark, with its accumulation of
+nouns, which grammatical purists have found difficult,--'the ark of the
+covenant of the Lord of all the earth'; where it leads they need not
+fear to follow. It was the pledge of His presence, it contained the Ten
+Words on which His covenant was concluded. That covenant enlisted on
+their side Him who was Lord of the swollen river as of all the fierce
+clans beyond; and with His ark in front, their victory was sure. If
+ever the contemplation of His power and covenant relation was in place,
+it was on that morning, as Israel stood ranked for the march that was
+to lead them through Jordan, and to plant their feet on the soil of
+Canaan. Nor must we omit the peculiar appropriateness of this solemn
+designation, on the occasion of the ark's first becoming the leader of
+the march. Hitherto it had been carried in the centre; now it was moved
+to the van, and took the place of the pillar, which blazed no more. But
+the guidance was no less divine. The simple coffer which Bezaleel had
+made was as august and reliable a symbol of God's presence as the
+pillar; and the tables of the law, shut in it, were henceforth to be
+the best directors of the nation.
+
+Then follows the command to elect twelve representatives of the tribes,
+for a purpose not yet explained; and then, at the last moment, the
+manner of crossing is disclosed, to the silencing of wise doubters and
+the confirmation of ignorant faith. The brief anticipatory announcement
+of the miracle puts stress on the arrest of the waters at the instant
+when the priests' feet touched them, and tells what is to befall the
+arrested torrent above the point where the ark stood, saying nothing
+about the lower stretch of the river, and just hinting by one word
+'heap' the parallel between this miracle and that of the passing of the
+Red Sea: 'The floods stood upright as an heap' (Exod. xv. 8).
+
+Verses 14-17 narrate the actual crossing. One long sentence, like the
+roll of an Atlantic wave, or a long-drawn shout of triumph, masses
+together the stages of the march; the breaking up of the encampment;
+the solemn advance of the ark, watched by the motionless crowd; its
+approach to the foaming stream, running bank-full, as is its wont in
+the early harvest months; the decisive moment when the naked feet of
+the priests were dipped in the water. What a hush of almost painful
+expectation would fall on the gazers! Then, with a rush of triumph, the
+long sentence pours on, like a river escaping from some rocky gorge,
+and tells the details of the transcendent fact. Looking up stream, the
+water 'stood'; and, as the flow above went on, it was dammed up, and,
+as would appear, swept back to a point not now known, but apparently
+some miles up. Looking down the course, the water flowed naturally to
+the Dead Sea; and, in effect, the whole bed southwards was quickly left
+bare, giving room for the advance of the people with wide-extended
+front, while the priests, with the ark on their shoulders, stood silent
+in the midst of the bed, between the heaped waters and the hasting
+host. Verse 17 gives the usual summary sentence, which partly
+anticipates what is still to follow, but here comes in with special
+force, as gathering up the whole wonderful scene, and recounting once
+more, and not without a ring of astonished triumph, how the priests
+stood firm on dry ground in that strange place, 'until all the nation
+were passed clean over Jordan'
+
+From verses 7 and 10 we learn the purpose of this miracle as being
+twofold. It was intended to stamp the seal of God's approbation on
+Joshua, and to hearten the people by the assurance of God's fighting
+for them. The leader was thereby put on the level of Moses, the people,
+on that of the generation before whom the Red Sea had been divided. The
+parallel with that event is obvious and significant. The miracle which
+led Israel into the wilderness is repeated as they pass from it. The
+first stage of their deliverance and the second are begun with
+analogous displays of divine power. The same arm which cleft the sea is
+stretched out, after all sins, for the new generation, and 'is not
+shortened that it cannot save.' God does not disdain to duplicate His
+wonders, even for very unworthy servants. The unchanging,
+long-suffering patience, and the unwearied strength to which all
+generations in succession can turn with confidence, are wonderfully set
+forth by these two miracles. And though we have passed into the higher
+stage, where miracles have ceased, the principle which dictated the
+parallelism still holds good, and we too can look back to all these
+ancient wonders, and be sure that they are done over and over again
+according to our needs. 'As we have heard, so have we seen,' might have
+been Israel's song that day, as it may be ours every day.
+
+The beautiful application made of the parted waters of Jordan in
+Christian literature, which sees in them the prophecy of conquered
+death, is perhaps scarcely in accordance with truth, for the divided
+Jordan was the introduction, not to peace, but to warfare. But it is
+too deeply impressed on the heart to be lightly put aside, and we may
+well allow faith and hope to discern in the stream, whose swollen
+waters shrink backwards as soon as the ark is borne into their turbid
+and swift current, an emblem of that dark flood that rolled between the
+host of God and their home, and was dried up as soon as the pierced
+foot of the Christ touched its cold waters.
+
+'What ailest thee, thou sea, that thou fleest; thou Jordan, that thou
+turnest back?' Christ has gone up before us. He has shaken His hand
+over the river, and caused men to go over dry shod.
+
+
+
+
+STONES CRYING OUT
+
+'For the priests which bare the ark stood in the midst of Jordan, until
+every thing was finished that the Lord commanded Joshua to speak unto
+the people, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua: and the
+people hasted and passed over. 11. And it came to pass, when all the
+people were clean passed over, that the ark of the Lord passed over,
+and the priests, in the presence of the people. 12. And the children of
+Reuben, and the children of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, passed
+over armed before the children of Israel, as Moses spake unto them: 13.
+About forty thousand prepared for war passed over before the Lord unto
+battle, to the plains of Jericho. 14. On that day the Lord magnified
+Joshua in the sight of all Israel; and they feared him, as they feared
+Moses, all the days of his life. 15. And the Lord spake unto Joshua,
+saying, 16. Command the priests that bare the ark of the testimony,
+that they come up out of Jordan. 17. Joshua therefore commanded the
+priests, saying, Come ye up out of Jordan. 18. And it came to pass,
+when the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord were
+come up out of the midst of Jordan, and the soles of the priests' feet
+were lifted up unto the dry land, that the waters of Jordan returned
+unto their place, and flowed over all his banks, as they did before.
+19. And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first
+month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho. 80. And
+those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in
+Gilgal. 21. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your
+children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean
+these stones? 22. Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel
+came over this Jordan on dry land. 23. For the Lord your God dried up
+the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the
+Lord your God did to the Red sea, which He dried up from before us,
+until we were gone over: 24. That all the people of the earth might
+know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the
+Lord your God for ever.'--JOSHUA iv. 10-24.
+
+
+This chapter is divided into two sections. The first (from verses 1 to
+14) has as its main subject the bringing up of the twelve memorial
+stones from the bed of Jordan; the second (verse 15 to the end) gives
+the conclusion of the whole incident. The plan of arrangement, already
+pointed out in a former chapter, is very plain in this. Each section
+has God's commands to Joshua, Joshua's to the people, and the execution
+of these. To each is appended a summary, which anticipates the more
+detailed particulars that follow. Our text begins in the middle of the
+first section, but we must glance at the preceding verses. These tell
+how, when the people were all across, Joshua, who had apparently
+remained on the eastern bank with the twelve representatives of the
+tribes, received God's command to tell these the purpose for which they
+had been chosen, and to set them to execute it. This additional
+instruction is the explanation of the apparent discrepancy between
+Joshua iii. 12 and iv. 2. Verses 4-8 tell Joshua's communication of the
+instructions to the men; verse 8 narrates the execution of them by each
+man's wrenching up from the river's bed a great stone, with which he
+toiled through the muddy ooze to the western shore, and thence over the
+hot plain to Gilgal, where the host camped; verse 9 tells that twelve
+other stones were set up where the priests had stood, and were visible
+at some time after date, when it was written; but when that was, or
+whether the verse is part of the original or a later note, we cannot
+say. At any rate, there were two memorials, one on the bank, one in the
+stream--'a grand jury of great stones,' as Thomas Fuller calls them.
+There is no difficulty in supposing that the monument in the river was
+firm enough to resist its current, and high enough to be visible either
+above the surface or beneath the ordinarily shallow water.
+
+I. The first picture here brought before us is that of the motionless
+ark in the midst of what had been Jordan. There is an obvious intention
+to contrast the stillness of the priests, bearing it on their
+shoulders, and standing rooted in that strange place all these long
+hours, with the hurry around. 'The priests stood ... and the people
+hasted.' However broad the front and swift the march, the crossing must
+have taken many hours. The haste was not from fear, but eagerness. It
+was 'an industrious speed and mannerly quickness, as not willing to
+make God wait upon them, in continuing a miracle longer than necessity
+did require.' When all were over, then came the twelve and Joshua, who
+would spend some time in gathering the stones and rearing the memorial
+in the river-bed. Through all the stir the ark was still. Over all the
+march it watched. So long as one Israelite was in the channel it
+remained, a silent presence, to ensure his safety. It let their rate of
+speed determine the length of its standing there. It waited for the
+slowest foot and the weariest laggard. God makes His 'very present
+help' of the same length as our necessities, and lets us beat the time
+to which He conforms. Not till the last loiterer has struggled to the
+farther shore does He cease by His presence to keep His people safe on
+the strange road which by His presence He has opened for them.
+
+The silent presence of the ark is enough to dam up the stream. There is
+vehement action around, but the cause of it all is in absolute repose.
+God moves all things, Himself unmoved. He 'worketh hitherto,' and no
+intensity of energy breaks the depth of His perfect rest. His activity
+implies no effort, and is followed by no exhaustion. The ark is still,
+while it holds back a swollen river for hours. The centre of the
+swiftest revolution is a point of rest.
+
+The form of the miracle was a condescension to weak faith, to which
+help was ministered by giving sense something to grasp. It was easier
+to believe that the torrent would not rush down on them when they could
+look at the priests standing there motionless, with the visible symbol
+of God's presence on their shoulders. The ark was no more the cause of
+the miracle than were its carriers; but, just as Jesus helped one blind
+man by laying moistened earth on his eyes, and another by sending him
+to Siloam to wash, so God did here. Children learn best when they have
+something to look at. Sight is sometimes the servant of faith.
+
+We need not dwell on the summary, beginning with verse 11, which
+anticipates the subject of the next section, and adds that the fighting
+men of the tribes who had already received their inheritance on the
+east bank of Jordan, loyally kept their promise, and marched with their
+brethren to the campaign.
+
+II. Verses 15-18 finish the story with the return of the waters to
+their bed. The triple division appears again. First God commands
+Joshua, who then transmits the command to the people, who, in turn,
+then obey. And thus at each stage the divine causality, Joshua's
+delegated but absolute authority, and the people's prompt obedience,
+are signalised; and the whole incident, in all its parts, is set forth
+as on the one hand a conspicuous instance of God's interposition, and,
+on the other, of Israel's willing service.
+
+We can fancy how the people who had reached the western shore lined the
+bank, gazing on the group in the channel, who still stood waiting God's
+command to relieve them at their post. The word comes at last, and is
+immediately obeyed. May we not learn the lesson to stand fixed and
+patient wherever God sets us, as long as He does not call us thence?
+God's priests should be like the legionary on guard in Pompeii, who
+stuck to his post while the ashes were falling thick, and was smothered
+by them, rather than leave his charge without his commander's orders.
+One graphic word pictures the priests lifting, or, as it might be
+translated, 'plucking,' the soles of their feet from the slimy bottom
+into which they had settled down by reason of long standing still. They
+reach the bank, marching as steadily with their sacred burden as might
+be over so rough and slippery a road. The first to enter were the last
+to leave the river's bed. God's ark 'goes before us,' and 'is our
+rearward.' He besets us behind and before, and all dangerous service is
+safe if begun and ended in Him. The one point made prominent is the
+instantaneous rush back of the impatient torrent as soon as the curb
+was taken off. Like some horse rejoicing to be free, the tawny flood
+pours down, and soon everything looks 'as aforetime,' except for the
+new rock, piled by human hands, round which the waters chafed. The
+dullest would understand what had wrought the miracle when they saw the
+immediate consequence of the ark's leaving its place. Cause and effect
+seldom come thus close together in God's dealings; but sometimes He
+lets us see them as near each other as the lightning and the thunder,
+that we may learn to trace them in faith, when centuries part them. How
+the people would gaze as the hurrying stream covered up their path, and
+would look across to the further shore, almost doubting if they had
+really stood there that morning I They were indeed 'Hebrews'--men from
+the other side-now, and would set themselves to the dangerous task
+before them with courage. 'Well begun is half done'; and God would not
+divide the river for them to thrust them into a tiger's den, where they
+would be torn to pieces. Retreat was impossible now. A new page in
+their history was turned. The desert was as unreachable as Egypt, The
+passage of the Jordan rounded off the epoch which the passage of the
+Bed Sea introduced, and began a new era.
+
+That parallelism of the two crossings is suggested by the notice of
+date in verse 19. 'The tenth day of the first month' was just forty
+years to a day since the first Paschal lamb had been chosen, and four
+days short of the Passover, which was solemnised at Gilgal (Joshua v.
+10) where they encamped that night. It was a short march from the point
+of crossing, and a still shorter from Jericho. It would have been easy
+to fall upon the invaders as they straggled across the river, but no
+attempt was made to dispute the passage, though, no doubt, many a keen
+pair of eyes watched it from the neighbouring hills. In the beginning
+of the next chapter we are told why there was this singular supineness.
+'Their heart melted, neither was there spirit in them any more,' or, in
+more modern language, panic laid hold of the enemy, and they could not
+pluck up courage to oppose the advance of Israel. If we add this result
+to those mentioned in chapter in., we find sufficient motive for the
+miracle to take it out of the class of purposeless, legendary wonders.
+Given the importance of Israel as the depositaries of revelation, there
+is nothing unreasonable in a miracle which so powerfully contributed to
+their conquest of Canaan, and we have yet to learn that there is
+anything unreasonable in the belief that they were the depositaries of
+revelation. The fundamental postulate of the Old Testament is a
+supernatural revelation, and that opens the door for any miracle
+needful for its accomplishment. It is folly to seek to conciliate by
+minimising the miraculous element. However much may be thrown out to
+the wolves, they will not cease to pursue and show their teeth. We
+should be very slow to pronounce on what is worthy of God; but any man
+who believes in a divine revelation, given to the world through Israel,
+may well believe in such a miracle as this at such a moment of their
+history.
+
+III. The memorial stones (verses 20-24). Gilgal, the first encampment,
+lay defenceless in the open plain, and the first thing to be done would
+be to throw up some earthwork round the camp. It seems to have been the
+resting-place of the ark and probably of the non-combatants, during the
+conquest, and to have derived thence a sacredness which long clung to
+it, and finally led, singularly enough, to its becoming a centre of
+idolatrous worship. The rude circle of unhewn stones without
+inscription was, no doubt, exactly like the many prehistoric monuments
+found all over the world, which forgotten races have raised to keep in
+everlasting remembrance forgotten fights and heroes. It was a
+comparatively small thing; for each stone was but a load for one man,
+and it would seem mean enough by the side of Stonehenge or Carnac, just
+as Israel's history is on a small scale, as compared with the
+world-embracing empires of old. Size is not greatness; and Joshua's
+little circle told a more wonderful story than its taller kindred, or
+Egyptian obelisks or colossi.
+
+These grey stones preached at once the duty of remembering, and the
+danger of forgetting, the past mercies of God. When they were reared,
+they would seem needless; but the deepest impressions get filled up by
+degrees, as the river of time deposits its sands on them. We do not
+forget pain so quickly as joy, and most men have a longer and keener
+remembrance of their injurers than of their benefactors, human or
+divine. The stones were set up because Israel remembered, but also lest
+Israel should forget. We often think of the Jews as monsters of
+ingratitude; but we should more truly learn the lesson of their
+history, if we regarded them as fair, average men, and asked ourselves
+whether our recollection of God's goodness to us is much more vivid
+than theirs. Unless we make distinct and frequent efforts to recall, we
+shall certainly forget 'all His benefits.' The cultivation of thankful
+remembrance is a very large part of practical religion; and it is not
+by accident that the Psalmist puts it in the middle, between hope and
+obedience, when he says 'that they might set their hope in God, and not
+forget the works of God, but keep His commandments' (Psalm lxxviii.7).
+
+The memorial stones further proclaimed the duty of parental instruction
+in God's mercies. They speak of a time when tradition was the vehicle
+of history; when books were rare, and monuments were relied upon to
+awaken curiosity which a father's words would satisfy. Notwithstanding
+all differences in means of obtaining knowledge, the old law remains in
+full force, that the parent is the natural and most powerful instructor
+in the ways of God. The Jewish father was not to send his child to some
+Levite or other to get his question answered, but was to answer it
+himself. I am afraid that a good many English parents, who call
+themselves Christians, are too apt to say, 'Ask your Sunday-school
+teacher,' when such questions are put to them. The decay of parental
+religious teaching is working enormous mischief in Christian
+households; and the happiest results would follow if Joshua's homely
+advice were attended to, '_Ye_ shall let your children know.'
+
+The same principle which led to the erection of this simple monument
+reaches its highest and sacredest instance in the institution of the
+Lord's Supper, in which Jesus, with wonderful lowliness, condescends to
+avail Himself of material symbols in order to secure a firmer place in
+treacherous memories. He might well have expected that such stupendous
+love could never be forgotten; but He 'knoweth our frame,' and trusts
+some share in keeping His death vividly in the hearts of His people to
+the humble ministry of bread and wine, Strange that we should need to
+be reminded of the death which it is life to remember! Blessed that,
+needing it, we have the need so tenderly met, and that He does not
+disdain to accept loving memories which slumber till stirred by such
+poor reminders of His unspeakable love!
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE LORD'S HOST
+
+And he said, Nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.
+JOSHUA v. 14.
+
+
+The army of Israel was just beginning a hard conflict under an untried
+leader. Behind them the Jordan barred their retreat, in front of them
+Jericho forbade their advance. Most of them had never seen a fortified
+city, and had no experience nor engines for a siege. So we may well
+suppose that many doubts and fears shook the courage of the host, as it
+drew around the doomed city. Their chief had his own heavy burden. He
+seems to have gone apart to meditate on what his next step was to be.
+Absorbed in thought, he lifts up his eyes mechanically, as brooding men
+will, not expecting to see anything, and is startled by the silent
+figure of 'a man with a sword drawn' in his hand, close beside him.
+There is nothing supernatural in his appearance; and the immediate
+thought of the leader is, 'Is this one of the enemy that has stolen
+upon my solitude?' So, promptly and boldly, he strides up to him with
+the quick challenge: 'Whose side are you on? Are you one of us, or from
+the enemy's camp?' And then the silent lips open. 'Upon neither the one
+nor the other. I am not on your side, you are on mine, for as Captain
+of the Lord's host, am I come up.' And then Joshua falls on his face,
+recognises his Commander-in-Chief, owns himself a subordinate, and asks
+for orders. 'What saith my Lord unto his servant?'
+
+Now let us try to gather the meaning and the lessons of this striking
+incident.
+
+I. I see in it a transient revelation of an eternal truth.
+
+I believe, as the vast majority of careful students of the course of
+Old Testament revelation and its relation to the New Testament
+completion believe, that we have here not a record of the appearance of
+a created superhuman person, but that of a preliminary manifestation of
+the Eternal Word of God, who, in the fulness of time, 'became flesh and
+dwelt among us.'
+
+You will observe that there run throughout the whole of the Old
+Testament notices of the occasional manifestation of a mysterious
+person who is named '_the_ Angel,' 'the Angel of the Lord.' For
+instance, in the great scene in the wilderness, where the bush burned
+and was not consumed, he who appeared is named 'the Angel of the Lord';
+and his lips declare 'I am that I am.' In like manner, soon after, the
+divine voice speaks to Moses of 'the Angel in whom is My name.'
+
+When Balaam had his path blocked amongst the vineyards, it was a
+_replica_ of the figure of my text that stayed his way, a man with a
+drawn sword in his hand, who spoke in autocratic and divine fashion.
+When the parents of Samson were apprised of the coming birth of the
+hero, it was 'the Angel of the Lord' that appeared to them, accepted
+their sacrifice, declared the divine will, and disappeared in a flame
+of fire from the altar. A psalm speaks of 'the Angel of the Lord' as
+encamping round about them that fear him, and delivering them. Isaiah
+tells us of the 'Angel of his face,' who was 'afflicted in all Israel's
+afflictions, and saved them.' And the last prophetic utterance of the
+Old Testament is most distinct and remarkable in its strange
+identification and separation of Jehovah and the Angel, when it says,
+'the Lord shall suddenly come to His Temple, even the Angel of the
+Covenant.' Now, if we put all these passages--and they are but select
+instances--if we put all these passages together, I think we cannot
+help seeing that there runs, as I said, throughout the whole of the Old
+Testament a singular strain of revelation in regard to a Person who, in
+a remarkable manner, is distinguished from the created hosts of angel
+beings, and also is distinguished from, and yet in name, attributes,
+and worship all but identified with, the Lord Himself.
+
+If we turn to the narrative before us, we find there similar phenomena
+marked out. For this mysterious 'man with the sword drawn' in his hand,
+quotes the very words which were spoken at the bush, when he says,
+'Loose thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest
+is holy.' And by fair implication, He would have us to identify the
+persons in these two great theophanies. He ascribes to Himself, in the
+further conversation in the next chapter, directly divine attributes,
+and is named by the sacred name; 'The Lord said unto Joshua, see, I
+have given into thy hand Jericho and its king.'
+
+If we turn to the New Testament, we find that there under another image
+the same strain of thought is presented. The Word of God, who from
+everlasting 'was with God, and was God,' is represented as being the
+Agent of Creation, the Source of all human illumination, the Director
+of Providence, the Lord of the Universe. 'By him were all things, and
+in him all things consists.' So, surely, these two halves make a whole;
+and the Angel of the Lord, separate and yet so strangely identified
+with Jehovah, who at the crises of the nation's history, and stages of
+the development of the process of Revelation, is manifested, and the
+Eternal Word of God, whom the New Testament reveals to us, are one and
+the same.
+
+This truth was transiently manifested in our text. The vision passed,
+the ground that was hallowed by His foot is undistinguished now in the
+sweltering plain round the mound that once was Jericho. But the fact
+remains, the humanity, that was only in appearance, and for a few
+minutes, assumed then, has now been taken up into everlasting union
+with the divine nature, and a Man reigns on the Throne, and is
+Commander of all who battle for the truth and the right. The eternal
+order of the universe is before us here.
+
+It only remains to say a word in reference to the sweep of the command
+which our vision assigns to the Angel of the Lord. 'Captain of the
+Lord's host' means a great deal more than the true General of Israel's
+little army. It does mean that, or the words and the vision would cease
+to have relevance and bearing on the moment's circumstances and need.
+But it includes also, as the usage of Scripture would sufficiently
+show, if it were needful to adduce instances of it, all the ordered
+ranks of loftier intelligent beings, and all the powers and forces of
+the universe. These are conceived of as an embattled host, comparable
+to an army in the strictness of their discipline and their obedience to
+a single will. It is the modern thought that the universe is a Cosmos
+and not a Chaos, an ordered unit, with the addition of the truth beyond
+the reach and range of science, that its unity is the expression of a
+personal will. It is the same thought which the centurion had, to
+Christ's wonder, when he compared his own power as an officer in a
+legion, where his will was implicitly obeyed, to the power of Christ
+over diseases and sorrows and miseries and death, and recognised that
+all these were His servants, to whom, if His autocratic lips chose to
+say 'Go,' they went, and if He said, 'Do this,' they did it.
+
+So the Lord of the universe and its ordered ranks is Jesus Christ. That
+is the truth which was flashed from the unknown, like a vanishing
+meteor in the midnight, before the face of Joshua, and which stands
+like the noonday sun, unsetting and irradiating for us who live under
+the Gospel.
+
+II. I see here the Leader of all the warfare against the world's evil.
+
+'The Captain of the Lord's host.' He Himself takes part in the fight.
+He is not like a general who, on some safe knoll behind the army, sends
+his soldiers to death, and keeps his own skin whole. But He _has_
+fought, and He _is_ fighting. Do you remember that wonderful picture in
+two halves, at the end of one of the Gospels, 'the Lord went up into
+Heaven and sat at the right hand of God, ... they went forth everywhere
+preaching the Word'? Strange contrast between the repose of the seated
+Christ and the toils of His peripatetic servants! Yes, strange
+contrast; but the next words harmonise the two halves of it; 'the Lord
+also working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.'
+The Leader does not so rest as that He does not fight; and the servants
+do not need so to fight, as that they cannot rest. Thus the old legends
+of many a land and tongue have a glorious truth in them to the eye of
+faith, and at the head of all the armies that are charging against any
+form of the world's misery and sin, there moves the form of the Son of
+Man, whose aid we have to invoke, even from His crowned repose at the
+right hand of God. 'Gird thy sword upon Thy thigh, O Most Mighty, and
+in Thy majesty ride forth prosperously, and Thy right hand shall teach
+Thee terrible things.'
+
+If this, then, be for us, as truly as for Joshua and his host, a
+revelation of who is our true leader, surely all of us in our various
+degrees, and especially any of us who have any 'Quixotic crusade' for
+the world's good on our consciences and on our hands, may take the
+lessons and the encouragements that are here. Own your Leader; that is
+one plain duty. And recognise this fact, that by no other power than by
+His, and with no other weapons than those which He puts into our hands,
+in His Cross and meekness, can a world's evils be overcome, and the
+victory be won for the right and the truth. I have no faith in crusades
+which are not under the Captain of our salvation. And I would that the
+earnest men, and there are many of them, the laborious and the
+self-sacrificing men in many departments of philanthropy and
+benevolence and social reformation--who labour unaware of who is their
+Leader, and not dependent upon His help, nor trusting in His
+strength--would take to heart this vision of my text, and see beside
+them the 'man with the drawn sword in his hand,' the Christ with the
+'sharp two-edged sword going out of his mouth,' by whom, and by whom
+alone, the world's evil can be overcome and slain.
+
+Own your General; submit to His authority; pick the weapons that He can
+bless; trust absolutely in His help. We _may_ have, we _shall_ have, in
+all enterprises for God and man that are worth doing, 'need of
+patience,' just as the army of Israel had to parade for six weary days
+round Jericho blowing their useless trumpets, whilst the impregnable
+walls stood firm, and the defenders flouted and jeered their aimless
+procession. But the seventh day will come, and at the trumpet blast
+down will go the loftiest ramparts of the cities that are 'walled up to
+heaven' with a rush and a crash, and through the dust and over the
+ruined rubbish Christ's soldiers will march and take possession. So
+trust in your Leader, and be sure of the victory, and have patience and
+keep on at your work.
+
+Do not make Joshua's mistake. 'Art Thou for us?'--'Nay! Thou art for
+_me._' That is a very different thing. We have the right to be sure
+that God is on our side, when we have made sure that we are on God's.
+So take care of self-will and self-regard, and human passions, and all
+the other parasitical insects that creep round philanthropic religious
+work, lest they spoil your service. There is a great deal that calls
+itself after Jehu's fashion, 'My zeal for the Lord,' which is nothing
+better than zeal for my own notions and their preponderance. Therefore
+we must strip ourselves of all that, and not fancy that the cause is
+ours, and then graciously admit Christ to help us, but recognise that
+it is _His_, and lowly submit ourselves to His direction, and what we
+do, do, and when we fight, fight, in His name and for His sake.
+
+III. Here is the Ally in all our warfare with ourselves.
+
+That is the worst fight. Far worse than all these Hittites and Hivites,
+and the other tribes with their barbarous names, far worse than all
+external foes, are the foes that each man carries about in his own
+heart. In that slow hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot struggle I do not
+believe that there is any conquering power available for a man that can
+for a moment be compared with the power that comes through submission
+to Christ's command and acceptance of Christ's help. He has fought
+every foot of the ground before us. We have to 'run the race'--to take
+another metaphor--'that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,' the
+great Leader, and in His own self the Perfecter of the faith which
+conquers. In Him, His example, the actual communication of His divine
+Spirit, and in the motives for brave and persistent conflict which flow
+from His Cross and Passion, we shall find that which alone will make us
+the victors in this internecine warfare. There can be no better
+directory given to any man than to tread in Christ's footsteps, and
+learn how to fight, from Him who in the wilderness repelled the triple
+assault with the single 'It is written'; thus recognising the word and
+will of God as the only directory and defence.
+
+Thus, brethren, if we humbly take service in His ranks, and ask Him to
+show us where our foes within are, and to give us the grace to grapple
+with them, and cast them out, anything is possible rather than ultimate
+defeat, and however long and sore the struggle may be, its length and
+its severity are precious parts of the discipline that makes us strong,
+and we shall at last be more than conquerors through Him that loveth us.
+
+IV. Lastly, I see here the Power which it is madness to resist.
+
+Think of this vision. Think of the deep truths, partially shadowed and
+symbolised by it. Think of Christ, what He is, and what resources He
+has at His back, of what are His claims for our service, and our loyal,
+militant obedience. Think of the certain victory of all who follow Him
+amongst 'the armies of Heaven, clad in fine linen, clean and white.'
+Think of the crown and the throne for him that 'overcomes.'
+
+Remember the destructive powers that sleep in Him: the 'drawn sword in
+His hand,' the 'two-edged sword out of His mouth' the 'wrath of the
+Lamb.' Think of the ultimate certain defeat of all antagonisms; of that
+last campaign when He goes forth with the 'name written on His vesture
+and on His thigh "King of kings and Lord of lords."' Think of how He
+'strikes through kings in the day of His wrath, and fills the place
+with the bodies of the dead'; and how His 'enemies become His
+footstool.'
+
+Ponder His own solemn word, 'He that is not with Me, is against Me.'
+There is no neutrality in this warfare. Either we are for Him or we are
+for His adversary. 'Under which King? speak or die!' As sensible men,
+not indifferent to your highest and lasting well-being, ask yourselves,
+'Can I, with my ten thousand, meet Him with His twenty thousand?' Put
+yourselves under His orders, and He will be on your side. He will teach
+your hands to war, and your fingers to fight; will cover your heads in
+the day of battle, and bring you at last, palm-bearing and
+laurel-crowned, to that blissful state where there will still be
+service, and He still be the 'Captain of the Lord's host,' but where
+'swords will be beaten into ploughshares' and the victors shall need to
+'learn war no more.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SIEGE OF JERICHO
+
+'And Joshua had commanded the people, saying, Ye shall not shout, nor
+make any noise with your voice, ... until the day I bid you shout; then
+shall ye shout. 11. So the ark of the Lord compassed the city, going
+about it once: and they came into the camp, and lodged in the
+camp.'--JOSHUA vi.10, 11.
+
+The cheerful uniform obedience of Israel to Joshua stands in very
+remarkable contrast with their perpetual murmurings and rebellions
+under Moses. Many reasons probably concurred in bringing about this
+change of tone. For one thing the long period of suspense was over; and
+to average sense-bound people there is no greater trial of faith and
+submission than waiting, inactive, for something that is to come. Now
+they are face to face with their enemies, and it is a great deal easier
+to fight than to expect; and their courage mounts higher as dangers
+come nearer. Then there were great miracles which left their impression
+upon the people, such as the passage of the Jordan, and so on.
+
+So that the Epistle to the Hebrews is right when it says, 'By faith the
+walls of Jericho fell down after they were compassed about seven days.'
+And that faith was as manifest in the six days' march round the city,
+as on the seventh day of victorious entrance. For, if you will read the
+narrative carefully, you will see that it says that the Israelites were
+not told what was to be the end of that apparently useless and aimless
+promenade. It was only on the morning of the day of the miracle that it
+was announced. So there are two stages in this instance of faith. There
+is the protracted trial of it, in doing an apparently useless thing;
+and there is the victory, which explains and vindicates it. Let us look
+at these two points now.
+
+I. Consider that strange protracted trial of faith.
+
+The command comes to the people, through Joshua's lips, unaccompanied
+by any explanation or reasons. If Moses had called for a like obedience
+from the people in their wilderness mood, there would have been no end
+of grumbling. But whatever some of them may have thought, there is
+nothing recorded now but prompt submission. Notice, too, the order of
+the procession. First come the armed men, then seven white-robed
+priests, blowing, probably, discordant music upon their ram's horn
+trumpets; then the Ark, the symbol and token of God's presence; and
+then the rereward. So the _Ark_ is the centre; and it is not only
+Israel that is marching round the city, but rather it is God who is
+circling the walls. Very impressive would be the grim silence of it
+all. Tramp, tramp, tramp, round and round, six days on end, without a
+word spoken (though no doubt taunts in plenty were being showered down
+from the walls), they marched, and went back to the camp, and subsided
+into inactivity for another four-and-twenty hours, until they 'turned
+out' for the procession once more.
+
+Now, what did all that mean? The blast of the trumpet was, in the
+Jewish feasts, the solemn proclamation of the presence of God. And
+hence the purpose of that singular march circumambulating Jericho was
+to declare 'Here is the Lord of the whole earth, weaving His invisible
+cordon and network around the doomed city.' In fact the meaning of the
+procession, emphasised by the silence of the soldiers, was that God
+Himself was saying, in the long-drawn blasts of the priestly trumpet,
+'Lift up your heads, O ye gates! even lift them up, ye everlasting
+doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.' Now, whatever Jericho and
+its people thought about that, Israel, according to the commentary of
+the New Testament, had to some extent, at all events, learnt the
+lesson, and knew, of course very rudimentarily and with a great deal of
+mere human passion mingled with it, but still knew, that this was God's
+summons, and the manifestation of God's presence. And so round the city
+they went, and day by day they did the thing in which their faith
+apprehended its true meaning, and which, by reason of their faith, they
+were willing to do. Let us take some lessons from that.
+
+Here is a confidence in the divine presence, manifested by
+unquestioning obedience to a divine command.
+
+                       'Theirs not to make reply,
+                        Theirs not to reason why.'
+
+Joshua had spoken; God had spoken through him. And so here goes! up
+with the Ark and the trumpets, and out on to the hot sand for the
+march! It would have been a great deal easier to have stopped in the
+tents. It was disheartening work marching round thus. The sceptical
+spirit in the host--the folk of whom there are many great-grandchildren
+living to-day, who always have objections to urge when disagreeable
+duties are crammed up against their faces--would have enough to say on
+that occasion, but the bulk of the people were true, and obeyed. Now,
+we do not need to put out the eyes of our understanding in order to
+practise the obedience of faith. And we have to exercise common-sense
+about the things that seem to us to be duties.
+
+But this is plain, that if once we see a thing to be, in Christian
+language, the will of our Father in heaven, then everything is settled;
+and there is only one course for us, and that is, unquestioning
+submission, active submission, or, what is as hard, passive submission.
+
+Then here again is faith manifesting itself by an obedience which was
+altogether ignorant of what was coming. I think that is quite plain in
+the story, if you will read it carefully, though I think that it is not
+quite what people generally understand as its meaning. But it makes the
+incident more in accordance with God's uniform way of dealing with us
+that the host should be told on the morning of the first day of the
+week that they were to march round the city, and told the same on the
+second day, and on the third the same, and so on until the sixth; and
+that not until the morning of the seventh, were they told what was to
+be the end of it all. That is the way in which God generally deals with
+us. In the passage of the Jordan, too, you will find, if you will look
+at the narrative carefully, that although Joshua was told what was
+coming, the people were not told till the morning of the day, when the
+priests' feet were dipped in the brink of the water. We, too, have to
+do our day's march, knowing very little about tomorrow; and we have to
+carry on all through life 'doing the duty that lies nearest us,'
+entirely ignorant of the strange issues to which it may conduct. Life
+is like a voyage down some winding stream, shut in by hills, sometimes
+sunny and vine-clad, like the Rhine, sometimes grim and black, like an
+American canon. As the traveller looks ahead he wonders how the stream
+will find a passage beyond the next bend; and as he looks back, he
+cannot trace the course by which he has come. It is only when he rounds
+the last shoulder that he sees a narrow opening flashing in the
+sunshine, and making a way for his keel. So, seeing that we know
+nothing about the issues, let us make sure of the motives; and seeing
+that we do not know what to-morrow may bring forth, nor even what the
+next moment may bring, let us see that we fill the present instant as
+full as it will hold with active obedience to God, based upon simple
+faith in Him. He does not open His whole hand at once; He opens a
+finger at a time, as you do sometimes with your children when you are
+trying to coax them to take something out of the palm. He gives us
+enough light for the moment, He says, 'March round Jericho; and be sure
+that I mean something. What I do mean I will tell you some day.' And so
+we have to put all into His hands.
+
+Then here, again, is faith manifesting itself by persistency. A week
+was not long, but it was a long while during which to do that one
+apparently useless thing and nothing else. It would take about an hour
+or so to march round the city, and there were twenty-three hours of
+idleness. Little progress in reducing Jericho was made by the progress
+round it, and it must have got rather wearisome about the sixth day.
+Familiarity would breed monotony, but notwithstanding the deadly
+influences of habit, the obedient host turned out for their daily
+round. 'Let us not be weary in well-doing,' for there is a time for
+everything. There is a time for sowing and for reaping, and in the
+season of the reaping 'we shall reap, if we faint not.' Dear brethren!
+we all get weary of our work. Custom presses upon us, 'with a weight
+heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.' It is easy to do things with
+a spurt, but it is the keeping on at the monotonous, trivial, and
+sometimes unintelligible duties that is the test of a man's grit, and
+of his goodness too. So, although it is a very, very threadbare
+lesson--one that you may think it was not worth while for me to bring you
+all here to receive--I am sure that there are few things needed more by us
+all, and especially by those of us who are on the wrong side of middle
+life, as people call it--though I think it is the right side in many
+respects--than that old familiar lesson. Keep on as you have begun, and
+for the six weary days turn out, however hot the sun, however
+comfortable the carpets in the tent, however burning the sand, however
+wearisome and flat it may seem to be perpetually tramping round the
+same walls of the same old city; keep on, for in due season the trumpet
+will sound and the walls will fall.
+
+II. So that brings me to the second stage--viz., the sudden victory
+which vindicates and explains the protracted trial of faith.
+
+I do not need to tell the story of how, on the seventh day, the host
+encompassed the city seven times, and at last they were allowed to
+break the long silence with a shout. You will observe the prominence
+given to the sacred seven, both in the number of days, of circuits
+made, and the number of the priests' trumpets. Probably the last day
+was a Sabbath, for there must have been one somewhere in the week, and
+it is improbable that it was one of the undistinguished days. That was
+a shout, we may be sure, by which the week's silence was avenged, and
+all the repressed emotions gained utterance at last. The fierce yell
+from many throats, which startled the wild creatures in the hills
+behind Jericho, blended discordantly with the trumpets' clang which
+proclaimed a present God; and at His summons the fortifications toppled
+into hideous ruin, and over the fallen stones the men of Israel
+clambered, each soldier, in all that terrible circle of avengers that
+surrounded the doomed city, marching straight forward, and so all
+converging on the centre.
+
+Now, we can discover good reasons for this first incident in the
+campaign being marked by miracle. The fact that it was the first is a
+reason. It is a law of God's progressive revelation that each new epoch
+is inaugurated by miraculous works which do not continue throughout its
+course. For instance, it is observable that, in the _Acts of the
+Apostles,_ the first example of each class of incidents recorded there,
+such as the first preaching, the first persecution, the first
+martyrdom, the first expansion of the Gospel beyond Jews, its first
+entrance into Europe, has usually the stamp of miracle impressed on it,
+and is narrated at great length, while subsequent events of the same
+class have neither of those marks of distinction. Take, for example,
+the account of Stephen, the first martyr. He saw 'the heavens opened'
+and the Son of Man 'standing at the right hand of God.' We do not read
+that the heavens opened when Herod struck off the head of James with
+the sword. But was Jesus any the less near to help His servant?
+Certainly not.
+
+In like manner it was fitting that the first time that Israel crossed
+swords with these deadly and dreaded enemies should be marked by a
+miraculous intervention to hearten God's warriors. But let us take care
+that we understand the teaching of any miracle. Surely it does not
+secularise and degrade the other incidents of a similar sort in which
+no miracle was experienced. The very opposite lesson is the true one to
+draw from a miracle. In its form it is extraordinary, and presents
+God's direct action on men or on nature, so obviously that all eyes can
+see it. But the conclusion to be drawn is not that God acts only in a
+supernatural' manner, but that He is acting as really, though in a less
+obvious fashion, in the 'natural' order. In these turning-points, the
+inauguration of new stages in revelation or history, the cause which
+always produces all nearer effects and the ultimate effects, which are
+usually separated or united (as one may choose to regard it) by many
+intervening links, are brought together. But the originating power
+works as truly when it is transmitted through these many links as when
+it dispenses with them. Miracle shows us in abbreviated fashion, and
+therefore conspicuously, the divine will acting directly, that we may
+see it working when it acts indirectly. In miracle God makes bare His
+arm,' that we may be sure of its operation when it is draped and
+partially hid, as by a vesture, by second causes.
+
+We are not to argue that, because there is no miracle, God is not
+present or active. He was as truly with Israel when there was no Ark
+present, and no blast of the trumpet heard. He was as truly with Israel
+when they fought apparently unhelped, as He was when Jericho fell. The
+teaching of all the miracles in the Old and the New Testaments is that
+the order of the universe is maintained by the continual action of the
+will of God on men and things. So this story is a transient revelation
+of an eternal fact. God is as much with you and me in our fights as He
+was with the Israelites when they marched round Jericho, and as
+certainly will He help. If by faith we endure the days of often blind
+obedience, we shall share the rapture of the sudden victory.
+
+Now, I have said that the last day of this incident was probably a
+Sabbath day. Does not that suggest the thought that we may take this
+story as a prophetic symbol? There is for us a week of work, and a
+seventh day of victory, when we shall enter, not into the city of
+confusion which has come to nought, but into the city which 'hath the
+foundations, whose builder and maker is God.' The old fathers of the
+Christian Church were not far wrong, when they saw in this story a type
+of the final coming of the Lord. Did you ever notice how St. Paul, in
+writing to the Thessalonians about that coming, seems to have his mind
+turned back to the incident before us? Remember that in this incident
+the two things which signalised the fall of the city were the trumpet
+and the shout. What does Paul say? 'The Lord Himself shall descend from
+heaven with a _shout_, with the voice of the archangel, and with the
+_trump_ of God.' Jericho over again! And then, 'Babylon is fallen, is
+fallen!' 'And I saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, like a
+bride adorned for her husband.'
+
+
+
+
+RAHAB
+
+'And Joanna paved Rahab the harlot alive... and she dwelleth in Israel
+even unto this day.'--JOSHUA vi. 25.
+
+
+This story comes in like an oasis in these terrible narratives of
+Canaanite extermination. There is much about it that is beautiful and
+striking, but the main thing is that it teaches the universality of
+God's mercy, and the great truth that trust in Him unites to Him and
+brings deliverance, how black soever may have been the previous life.
+
+I need not tell over again the story, told with such inimitable
+picturesqueness here: how the two spies, swimming the Jordan in flood,
+set out on their dangerous mission and found themselves in the house of
+Rahab, a harlot; how the king sent to capture them, how she hid them
+among the flax-stalks bleaching on the flat roof, confessed faith in
+Israel's God and lied steadfastly to save them, how they escaped to the
+Quarantania hills, how she 'perished not' in the capture, entered into
+the community of Israel, was married, and took her place--hers!--in the
+line of David's and Christ's ancestresses.
+
+The point of interest is her being, notwithstanding her previous
+position and history, one of the few instances in which heathen were
+brought into Israel. The _Epistle to the Hebrews_ and _James_ both
+refer to her. We now consider her story as embodying for us some
+important truths about faith in its nature, its origin, its power.
+
+I. Faith in its constant essence and its varying objects.
+
+Her creed was very short and simple. She abjured idols, and believed
+that Jehovah was the one God. She knew nothing of even the Mosaic
+revelation, nothing of its moral law or of its sacrifices. And yet the
+_Epistle to the Hebrews_ has no scruple in ascribing faith to her. The
+object of that Epistle is to show that Christianity is Judaism
+perfected. It labours to establish that objectively there has been
+advance, not contradiction, and that subjectively there is absolute
+identity. It has always been faith that has bound men to God. That
+faith may co-exist with very different degrees of illumination. Not the
+creed, but the trust, is the all-important matter. This applies to all
+pre-Christian times and to all heathen lands. _Our_ faith has a fuller
+gospel to lay hold of. Do not neglect it.
+
+Beware lest people with less light and more love get in before you,
+'who shall come from the east and the west.'
+
+II. Faith in its origin in fear.
+
+There are many roads to faith, and it matters little which we take, so
+long as we get to the goal. This is one, and some people seem to think
+that it is a very low and unworthy one, and one which we should never
+urge upon men. But there are a side of the divine nature and a mode of
+the divine government which properly evoke fear.
+
+God's moral government, His justice and retribution, are facts.
+
+Fear is an inevitable and natural consequence of feeling that His
+justice is antagonistic to us. The work of conscience is precisely to
+create such fear. Not to feel it is to fall below manhood or to be
+hardened by sin.
+
+That fear is meant to lead us to God and love. Rahab fled to God. Peter
+'girt his fisher's coat to him,' and lost his fear in the sunshine of
+Christ's face, as a rainbow trembles out of a thunder-cloud when
+touched by sunbeams.
+
+We have all grounds enough to _fear_.
+
+Urge these as a reason for _trust_.
+
+III. Faith in its relation to the previous life.
+
+It is a strange instance of blindness that attempts have been made to
+soften down the Bible's plain speaking about Rahab's character.
+
+In her story we have an anticipation of New Testament teaching.
+
+The 'woman that was a sinner.'
+
+Mary Magdalene.
+
+'Then drew near all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him.'
+
+She shows us that there is no hopeless guilt. None is so in regard to
+the effects of sin on a soul. There is no heart so indurated as that
+its capacity for being stirred by the divine message is killed.
+
+There is none hopeless in regard to God.
+
+His love embraces all, however bad. The bond which unites to Him is not
+blamelessness of life but simple trust.
+
+The grossest vice is not so thorough a barrier as self-satisfied
+self-righteousness.
+
+A thin slice of crystal will bar the entrance of air more effectually
+than many folds of stuff.
+
+IV. Faith in its practical effects.
+
+Rahab's story shows how living faith, like a living stream, will cut a
+channel for itself, and must needs flow out into the life.
+
+Hence James is right in using her as an example of how 'we are
+justified by works and not by faith only,' and the author of the
+_Epistle to the Hebrews_ is equally right in enrolling her in his great
+muster-roll of heroes and heroines of faith, and asserting that 'by
+faith' she 'perished not among them who believed not.' The one writer
+fastens on a later stage in her experience than does the other. James
+points to the rich fruit, the Epistle to the Hebrews goes deeper and
+lays bare the root from which the life rose to the clusters.
+
+The faith that saves is not a barren intellectual process, nor an idle
+trust in Christ's salvation, but a practical power. If genuine it
+_will_ mould and impel the life.
+
+So Rahab's faith led her, as ours, if real, will lead us, to break with
+old habits and associations contrary to itself. She ceased to be 'Rahab
+the harlot,' she forsook 'her own people and her father's house.' But
+her conquest of her old self was gradual. A lie was a strange kind of
+first-fruits of faith. Its true fruit takes time to flower and swell
+and come to ripeness and sweetness.
+
+So we should not expect old heads on young shoulders, nor wonder if
+people, lifted from the dunghills of the world, have some stench and
+rags of their old vices hanging about them still. That thought should
+moderate our expectations of the characters of converts from
+heathenism, or from the degraded classes at home. And it should be
+present to ourselves, when we find in ourselves sad recurrences of
+faults and sins that we know should have been cast out, and that we
+hoped had been so.
+
+This thought enhances our wondering gratitude for the divine
+long-suffering which bears with our slow progress. Our great Teacher
+never loses patience with His dull scholars.
+
+V. Faith as the means of deliverance and safety.
+
+From external evils it delivers us or not, as God may will. James was
+no less dear, and no less faithful, than John, though he was early
+'slain with the sword,' and his brother died in extreme old age in
+Ephesus. Paul looked forward to being 'delivered from every evil work,'
+though he knew that the time of his being 'offered' was at hand,
+because the deliverance that he looked for was his being 'saved _into_
+His heavenly kingdom.'
+
+That true deliverance is infallibly ours, if by faith we have made the
+Deliverer ours.
+
+There is a more terrible fall of a worse city than Jericho, in that day
+when 'the city of the terrible ones shall be laid low,' and _our_
+Joshua brings it 'to the ground, even to the dust.' 'In that same day
+shall this song be sung in the land of Judah: we have a strong city,
+salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks,' and into that
+eternal home He will certainly lead all who are joined to Him, and
+separated from their foul old selves, and from 'the city of
+destruction,' by faith in Him.
+
+
+
+
+ACHAN'S SIN, ISRAEL'S DEFEAT
+
+'But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing:
+for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the
+tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the Lord
+was kindled against the children of Israel. 2. And Joshua sent men from
+Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Beth-ei,
+and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men
+went up and viewed Ai. 3. And they returned to Joshua, and said unto
+him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand
+men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither;
+for they are but few. 4. So there went up thither of the people about
+three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai. 5. And the men
+of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from
+before the Irate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down;
+wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water. 6. And
+Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the
+ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and
+put dust upon their heads. 7. And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God,
+wherefore hast Thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver
+us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had
+been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan! 8. O Lord, what shall
+I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies! 9. For the
+Canaanites, and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and
+shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what
+wilt Thou do unto Thy great name? 10. And the Lord said unto Joshua,
+Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? 11. Israel hath
+sinned, and they have also trangressed My covenant which I commanded
+them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also
+stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own
+stuff. 12. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before
+their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because
+they were accursed; neither will I be with you any more, except ye
+destroy the accursed from among you.'--JOSHUA vii. 1-12.
+
+
+This passage naturally parts itself into--1. The hidden sin (v. 1); 2.
+The repulse by which it is punished (vs. 2-5); 3. The prayer of
+remonstrance (vs. 6-9); and 4. The answer revealing the cause (vs.
+10-12). We may briefly note the salient points in these four divisions,
+and then consider the general lessons of the whole.
+
+I. Observe, then, that the sin is laid at the doors of the whole
+nation, while yet it was the secret act of one man. That Is a strange
+'for' in verse 1--the people did it; 'for' Achan did it. Observe, too,
+with what bitter particularity his descent is counted back through
+three generations, as if to diffuse the shame and guilt over a wide
+area, and to blacken the ancestors of the culprit. Note also the
+description of the sin. Its details are not given, but its inmost
+nature is. The specification of the 'Babylonish garment,' the 'shekels
+of silver,' and the 'wedge of gold,' is reserved for the sinner's own
+confession; but the blackness of the deed is set forth in its principle
+in verse 1. It was a 'breach of trust,' for so the phrase 'committed a
+trespass' might be rendered. The expression is frequent in the
+Pentateuch to describe Israel's treacherous departure from God, and has
+this full meaning here. The sphere in which Achan's treason was
+evidenced was 'in the devoted thing.' The spoil of Jericho was set
+aside for Jehovah, and to appropriate any part of it was sacrilege. His
+sin, then, was double, being at once covetousness and robbing God.
+Achan, at the beginning of Israel's warfare for Canaan, and Ananias, at
+the beginning of the Church's conquest of the world, are brothers alike
+in guilt and in doom. Note the wide sweep of 'the anger of the Lord,'
+involving in its range not only the one transgressor, but the whole
+people.
+
+II. All unconscious of the sin, and flushed with victory, Joshua let no
+grass grow under his feet, but was prepared to push his advantage to
+the utmost with soldierly promptitude. The commander's faith and
+courage were contagious, and the spies came back from their perilous
+reconnaissance of Ai with the advice that a small detachment was enough
+for its reduction. They had not spied the mound in the middle of
+Achan's tent, or their note would have been changed. Three thousand, or
+three hundred, would have been enough, if God had been with them. The
+whole army would not have been enough since He was not. The site of Ai
+seems to have been satisfactorily identified on a small plateau among
+the intricate network of wild wadys and bare hills that rise behind
+Jericho. The valley to the north, the place where the ambush lay at the
+successful assault, and a great mound, still bearing the name 'Et Tel'
+(the heap), are all there. The attacking force does not seem to have
+been commanded by Joshua. The ark stayed at Gilgal, The contempt for
+the resistance likely to be met makes the panic which ensued the more
+remarkable. What turned the hearts of the confident assailants to
+water? There was no serious fighting, or the slaughter would have been
+more than thirty-six. 'There went up ... about three thousand and
+they'--did what? fought and conquered? Alas, no, but 'they fled before
+the men of Ai,' rushing in wild terror down the steep pass which they
+had so confidently breasted in the morning, till the pursuers caught
+them up at some 'quarries,' where, perhaps, the ground was difficult,
+and there slew the few who fell, while the remainder got away by
+swiftness of foot, and brought back their terror and their shame to the
+camp. As the disordered fugitives poured in, they infected the whole
+with their panic. Such unwieldy undisciplined hosts are peculiarly
+liable to such contagious terror, and we find many instances in
+Scripture and elsewhere of the utter disorganisation which ensues. The
+whole conquest hung in the balance. A little more and the army would be
+a mob; and the mob would break into twos and threes, which would get
+short shrift from the Amorites.
+
+Ill. Mark, then, Joshua's action in the crisis. He does not try to
+encourage the people, but turns from them to God. The spectacle of the
+leader and the elders prone before the ark, with rent garments and
+dust-bestrewn hair, in sign of mourning, would not be likely to hearten
+the alarmed people; but the defeat had clearly shown that something had
+disturbed the relation to God, and the first necessity was to know what
+it was. Joshua's prayer is perplexed, and not free from a wistful,
+backward look, nor from regard to his own reputation; but the soul of
+it is an earnest desire to know the 'wherefore' of this disaster. It
+traces the defeat to God, and means really, 'Show me wherefore Thou
+contendest with me.' No doubt it runs perilously near to repeating the
+old complaints at Kadesh and elsewhere, which are almost verbally
+reproduced in its first words. But the same things said by different
+people are not the same; and Joshua's question is the voice of a faith
+struggling to find footing, and his backward look is not because he
+doubts God's power to help, or hankers after Egypt, but because he sees
+that, for some unknown reason, they have lost the divine protection.
+His reference to himself betrays the crushing weight of responsibility
+which he felt, and comes not from carefulness for his own good fame so
+much as from his dread of being unable to vindicate himself, if the
+people should turn on him as the author of their misfortunes. His fear
+of the news of the check at Ai emboldening not only the neighbouring
+Amorites (highlanders) of the western Palestine, but the remoter
+Canaanites (lowlanders) of the coast, to make a combined attack, and
+sweep Israel out of existence, was a perfectly reasonable forecast of
+what would follow. The naive simplicity of the appeal to God, 'What
+wilt Thou do for Thy great name?' becomes the soldier, whose words went
+the shortest way to their aim, as his spear did. We cannot fancy this
+prayer coming from Moses; but, for all that, it has the ring of faith
+in it, and beneath its blunt, simple words throbs a true heart.
+
+IV. The answer sounds strange at first. God almost rebukes him for
+praying. He gives Joshua back his own 'wherefore' in the question that
+sounds so harsh, 'Wherefore art thou thus fallen upon thy face?' but
+the harshness is only apparent, and serves to point the lesson that
+follows, that the cause of the disaster is with Israel, not with God,
+and that therefore the remedy is not in prayer, but in active steps to
+cast out 'the unclean thing.' The prayer had asked two things,--the
+disclosure of the cause of God's having left them, and His return. The
+answer lays bare the cause, and therein shows the conditions of His
+return. Note the indignant accumulation of verbs in verse 11,
+describing the sin in all its aspects. The first three of the six point
+out its heinousness in reference to God, as sin, as a breach of
+covenant, and as an appropriation of what was specially His. The second
+three describe it in terms of ordinary morality, as theft, lying, and
+concealment; so many black sides has one sin when God's eye scrutinises
+it. Note, too, the attribution of the sin to the whole people, the
+emphatic reduplication of the shameful picture of their defeat, the
+singular transference to them of the properties of 'the devoted thing'
+which Achan has taken, and the plain, stringent conditions of God's
+return. Joshua's prayer is answered. He knows now why little Ai has
+beaten them back. He asked, 'What shall I say?' He has got something of
+grave import to say. So far this passage carries us, leaving the
+pitiful last hour of the wretched troubler of Israel untouched. What
+lessons are taught here?
+
+First, God's soldiers must be pure. The conditions of God's help are
+the same to-day as when that panic-stricken crowd ignominiously fled
+down the rocky pass, foiled before an insignificant fortress, because
+sin clave to them, and God was gone from them. The age of miracles may
+have ceased, but the law of the divine intervention which governed the
+miracles has not ceased. It is true to-day, and will always be true,
+that the victories of the Church are won by its holiness far more than
+by any gifts or powers of mind, culture, wealth, eloquence, or the
+like. Its conquests are the conquests of an indwelling God, and He
+cannot share His temples with idols. When God is with us, Jericho is
+not too strong to be captured; when He is driven from us by our own
+sin, Ai is not too weak to defeat us. A shattered wall keeps us out, if
+we fight in our own strength. Fortifications that reach to heaven fall
+flat before us when God is at our side. If Christian effort seems ever
+fruitless, the first thing to do is to look for the 'Babylonish
+garment' and the glittering shekels hidden in our tents. Nine times out
+of ten we shall find the cause in our own spiritual deficiencies. Our
+success depends on God's presence, and God's presence depends on our
+keeping His dwelling-place holy. When the Church is 'fair as the moon,'
+reflecting in silvery whiteness the ardours of the sun which gives her
+all her light, and without such spots as dim the moon's brightness, she
+will be 'terrible as an army with banners.' This page of Old Testament
+history has a living application to the many efforts and few victories
+of the churches of to-day, which seem scarce able to hold their own
+amid the natural increase of population in so-called Christian lands,
+and are so often apparently repulsed when they go up to attack the
+outlying heathenism.
+
+            'His strength was as the strength of ten,
+             Because his heart was pure,'
+
+is true of the Christian soldier.
+
+Again, we learn the power of one man to infect a whole community and to
+inflict disaster on it. One sick sheep taints a flock. The effects of
+the individual's sin are not confined to the doer. We have got a fine
+new modern word to express this solemn law, and we talk now of
+'solidarity,' which sounds very learned and 'advanced.' But it means
+just what we see in this story; Achan was the sinner, all Israel
+suffered. We are knit together by a mystical but real bond, so that 'no
+man,' be he good or bad, 'liveth to himself,' and no man's sin
+terminates in himself. We see the working of that unity in families,
+communities, churches, nations. Men are not merely aggregated together
+like a pile of cannon balls, but are knit together like the myriad
+lives in a coral rock. Put a drop of poison anywhere, and it runs by a
+thousand branching veins through the mass, and tints and taints it all.
+No man can tell how far the blight of his secret sins may reach, nor
+how wide the blessing of his modest goodness may extend. We should seek
+to cultivate the sense of being members of a great whole, and to ponder
+our individual responsibility for the moral and religious health of the
+church, the city, the nation. We are not without danger from an
+exaggerated individualism, and we need to realise more constantly and
+strongly that we are but threads in a great network, endowed with
+mysterious vitality and power of transmitting electric impulses, both
+of good and evil.
+
+Again, we have one more illustration in this story of the well-worn
+lesson,--never too threadbare to be repeated, until it is habitually
+realised,--that God's eye sees the hidden sins. Nobody saw Achan carry
+the spoil to his tent, or dig the hole to hide it. His friends walked
+across the floor without suspicion of what was beneath. No doubt, he
+held his place in his tribe as an honourable man, and his conscience
+traced no connection between that recently disturbed patch on the floor
+and the helter-skelter flight from Ai; but when the lot began to be
+cast, he would have his own thought, and when the tribe of Judah was
+taken, some creeping fear would begin to coil round his heart, which
+tightened its folds, and hissed more loudly, as each step in the lot
+brought discovery nearer home; and when, at last, his own name fell
+from the vase, how terribly the thought would glare in on him,--'And
+God knew it all the while, and I fancied I had covered it all up so
+safely.' It is an awful thing to hear the bloodhounds following up the
+scent which leads them straight to our lurking-place. God's judgments
+may be long in being put on our tracks, but, once loose, they are sure
+of scent, and cannot be baffled. It is an old, old thought, 'Thou God
+seest me'; but kept well in mind, it would save from many a sin, and
+make sunshine in many a shady place.
+
+Again, we have in Achan a lesson which the professing Christians of
+great commercial nations, like England, sorely need. I have already
+pointed out the singular parallel between him and Ananias and Sapphira.
+Covetousness was the sin of all three. It is the sin of the Church
+to-day. The whole atmosphere in which some of us live is charged with
+the subtle poison of it. Men are estimated by their wealth. The great
+aim of life is to get money, or to keep it, or to gain influence and
+notoriety by spending it. Did anybody ever hear of church discipline
+being exercised on men who committed Achan's sin? _He_ was stoned to
+death, but we set _our_ Achans in high places in the Church. Perhaps if
+we went and fell on our faces before the ark when we are beaten, we
+should be directed to some tent where a very 'influential member' of
+Israel lived, and should find that to put an end to his ecclesiastical
+life had a wonderful effect in bringing back courage to the army, and
+leading to more unmingled dependence on God. Covetousness was stoned to
+death in Israel, and struck with sudden destruction in the Apostolic
+Church. It has been reserved for the modern Church to tolerate and
+almost to canonise it; and yet we wonder how it comes that we are so
+often foiled before some little Ai, and so seldom see any walls falling
+by our assault. Let us listen to that stern sentence,  'I will not be
+with you any more, except ye destroy the devoted thing from among you.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SUN STAYED
+
+Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon.'-JOSHUA x. 12
+
+
+'The last time,' what a sad sound that has! In all minds there is a
+shrinking from the last time of doing even some common act. The walk
+down a street that we have passed every day for twenty years, and never
+cared in the least about, and the very doorsteps and the children in
+the streets, have an interest for us, as pensively we leave the
+commonplace familiar scene.
+
+On this last Sunday of another year, there comes a tone of sober
+meditation over us, as we think that it _is_ the last. I would fain let
+the hour preach. I have little to say but to give voice to its lessons.
+
+My text is only taken as a starting-point, and I shall say nothing
+about Joshua and his prayer. I do not discuss whether this was a
+miracle or not. It seems, at any rate, to be taken by the writer of the
+story as one. What a picture he draws of the fugitives rushing down the
+rocky pass, blind in their fear, behind them the flushed and eager
+conqueror, the burst of the sudden tempest and far in the west the
+crescent moon, the leader on the hilltop with his prayer for but one
+hour or two more of daylight to finish the wild work so well begun!
+And, says the story, his wish was granted, and no day has been 'like it
+before or since, in which the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man.'
+Once, and only once, did time seem to stand still; from the beginning
+till now it has been going steadily on, and even then it only seemed to
+stand. That day seemed longer, but life was passing all the same.
+
+And so the first thought forced upon us here by our narrative and by
+the season is the old one, so commonplace and yet so solemn.
+
+I. Life inexorably slides away from us.
+
+Once, and only once, it seemed to pause. How often since has Joshua's
+prayer been prayed again! By the fearful,--the wretch to be hanged at
+eight o'clock to-morrow morning, the man whom the next train will part
+from all he loves. By the hopeful,--the child wearying for the
+holidays, the bridegroom,
+
+             'Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds!'
+
+By the suffering,--
+
+             'Would God it were evening!'
+
+By the martyr amid the flames,
+
+             'Come quickly, Lord Jesus!'
+
+But all in vain. We cannot expand the moments to hours, nor compress
+the hours to moments. Leaden or winged, the hours are hours. The
+cold-blooded pendulum ticks on, equable and unaltered, and after sixty
+minutes, no sooner and no later, the hour strikes. 'There is a time for
+every purpose.'
+
+How solemn is the thought of that constant process! It goes on for
+ever, like the sea fog creeping up from the wide ocean and burying life
+and sunshine in its fatal folds, or like the ever-flowing river, or
+like the fall plunging over the edge of the cliff, or like the motions
+of the midnight sky. Each moment in its turn passes into the colourless
+stony past, and the shadow creeps up the hillside.
+
+And how unnoticed it is! We only know motion by the jolts. The
+revolution of the earth and its rush along its orbit are unfelt by us.
+We are constantly startled to feel how long ago such and such a thing
+took place. The mother sees her little girl at her knee, and in a few
+days, as it seems, finds her a woman. How immense is our life in the
+prospect, how awfully it collapses in the retrospect! Only by seeing
+constellation after constellation set, do we know that the heavens are
+in motion. We have need of an effort of serious reflection to realise
+that it is of _us_ and of _our_ lives that all these old commonplaces
+are true.
+
+That constant, unnoticed progress has an end. Our life is a definite
+period, having a bounded past behind it, a present, and a bounded
+future before it. We have a sandglass and it runs out. We are like men
+sliding down a rope or hauling a boat towards a fixed point. The sea is
+washing away our sandy island, and is creeping nearer and nearer to
+where we stand, and will wash over us soon. No cries, nor prayers, nor
+wishes will avail. It is vain for _us_ to say, 'Sun! stand thou still!'
+
+II. Therefore our chief care should be to finish our work in our day.
+
+Joshua had his day lengthened; we can come to the same result by
+crowding ours with service. What is the purpose of life? Is it a shop?
+or a garden? a school? No. Our 'chief end' is to become like God and a
+little to help forward His cause. All is intended to develop character;
+all life is disciplinary.
+
+God's purpose should be our desire. That desire should mould all our
+thoughts and acts. There should be no mere sentimental regrets for the
+past, but the spirit of consecration should affect our thoughts about
+it. There should be penitence, thankfulness, not vain mourning over
+what is gone. There should be no waste or selfish use of the present.
+What is it given us for but to use for God?
+
+Strenuous work is the true way to lengthen each day. Time is infinitely
+elastic. The noblest work is to do 'the works of Him that sent me.'
+There should be no care for the future. It is in His hand. There will
+be room in it for doing all His will.
+
+                  'Lord, it belongs not to my care,
+                   Whether I die or live.'
+
+III. If so, the passing day will have results that never pass.
+
+Joshua's day was long enough for his work, and that work was a victory
+which told on future generations. So life, short as it is, will be long
+enough for all that we have to do and learn and be.
+
+Christ's servant is immortal till his work is done.
+
+God gives every man time enough for his salvation.
+
+What may we bring out of life? Character, Christ-likeness, thankful
+memories, union with God, capacity for heaven. The transient leaves the
+abiding. The flood foams itself away, but deposits rich soil on the
+plain.
+
+IV. Thus the passing away of what must pass may become a joy.
+
+Why should we be sad? There are reasons enough, as many sad, lonely
+hearts among us know too well To some men dark thoughts of death and
+judgment make the crumbling away of life too gloomy a fact to be
+contemplated, but it may and should be calm joy to us that the weary
+world ends and a blessed life begins. We may count the moments and see
+them pass, as a bride watches the hours rolling on to her marriage
+morning; not, indeed, without tremor and sadness at leaving her old
+home, but yet with meek hope and gentle joy.
+
+It is possible for men to see that life is but 'as a shadow that
+declineth,' and yet to be glad. By faith in Christ, united to 'Him Who
+is for ever and ever,' our souls shall 'triumph over death and thee, O
+time.'
+
+We need not cry, 'Sun! stand still!' but rather, 'Come quickly, Lord
+Jesus!'
+
+Then Time shall be 'the lackey to eternity,' and Death be the porter of
+heaven's gate, and we shall pass from the land of setting suns and
+waning moons and change and sorrow, to that land where 'thy sun shall
+no more go down,' and 'there shall be no more time.'
+
+
+
+
+UNWON BUT CLAIMED
+
+'There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed, ... them will I
+drive out from before the children of Israel; only divide thou it by
+lot unto Israel for an inheritance'--Joshua xiii. 1-8.
+
+Joshua was now a very old man and had occupied seven years in the
+conquest. His work was over, and now he had only to take steps to
+secure the completion by others of the triumph which he would never
+see. This incident has many applications to the work of the Church in
+the world, but not less important ones to individual progress, and we
+consider these mainly now.
+
+I. The clear recognition of present imperfection.
+
+That is essential in all regions, 'Not as though'; the higher up, the
+more clearly we see the summit. The ideal grows loftier, as partially
+realised. The mountain seems comparatively low and easy till we begin
+to climb. We should be continually driven by a sense of our
+incompleteness, and drawn by the fair vision of unattained
+possibilities. In all regions, to be satisfied with the attained is to
+cease to grow.
+
+This is eminently so in the Christian life, with its goal of absolute
+completeness.
+
+How blessed this dissatisfaction is! It keeps life fresh: it is the
+secret of perpetual youth.
+
+Joshua's work was incomplete, as every man's must be. We each have our
+limitations, the defects of our qualities, the barriers of our
+environment, the brevity of our day of toil, and we have to be content
+to carry the fiery cross a little way and then to give it up to other
+hands. There is only One who could say,' It is done.' Let us see that
+we do our own fragment.
+
+II. The confident reckoning on complete possession.
+
+Joshua's conquest was very partial. He subdued part of the central
+mountain nucleus, but the low-lying stretch of country on the coast,
+Philistia and the maritime plain up to Tyre and Sidon and other
+outlying districts, remained unsubdued. Yet the whole land was now to
+be allotted out to the tribes. That allotment must have strengthened
+faith in their ultimate possession, and encouraged effort to make the
+ideal a reality, and to appropriate as their own in fact what was
+already theirs in God's purpose. So a great part of Christian duty, and
+a great secret of Christian progress, is to familiarise ourselves with
+the hope of complete victory. We should acquire the habit of
+contemplating as certainly meant by God to be ours, complete conformity
+to Christ's character, complete appropriation of Christ's gifts. God
+bade Jeremiah buy a 'field that was in Anathoth' at the time an
+invading army held the land. A Roman paid down money for the ground on
+which the besiegers of Rome were encamped. It does not become
+Christians to be less confident of victory. But we have to take heed
+that our confidence is grounded on the right foundation. God's
+commandment to Joshua to allot the land, even while the formidable foes
+enumerated in the context held it firmly, was based on the assurance
+(verse 6): 'Them will I drive out before the children of Israel.'
+Confidence based on self is presumption, and will end in defeat;
+confidence based on God will brace to noble effort, which is all the
+more vigorous and will surely lead to victory, because it distrusts
+self.
+
+III. The vigorous effort animated by both the preceding.
+
+How the habit of thinking the unconquered land theirs would encourage
+Israel. Efforts without hope are feeble; hope without effort is
+fallacious.
+
+Israel's history is significant. The land was never actually all
+conquered. God's promises are all conditional, and if we do not work,
+or if we work in any other spirit than in faith, we shall not win our
+allotted part in the 'inheritance of the saints in light.' It is
+possible to lose 'thy crow.' 'Work out your own salvation.' 'Trust in
+the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land.'
+
+
+
+
+CALEB--A GREEN OLD AGE
+
+'And Caleb... said unto him (Joshua), Thou knowest the thing that the
+Lord said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in
+Kadesh-barnea.'--JOSHUA xiv. 6.
+
+
+Five and forty years had passed since the Lord had 'said this thing.'
+It was the promise to these two, now old men, of the prolongation of
+their lives, and to Caleb of his inheritance in the land. Seven years
+of fighting have been got through, and the preparations are being made
+for the division of the land by lot. But, before that is done, it is
+fitting that Caleb, whose portion had been specially secured to him by
+that old promise, should have the promise specially recognised and
+endorsed by the action of the leader, and independent of the operation
+of the lot. So he appears before Joshua, accompanied by the head men of
+his tribe, whose presence expresses their official consent to the
+exceptional treatment of their tribesman, and urges his request in a
+little speech, full of pathos and beauty and unconscious portraiture of
+the speaker. I take it as a picture of an ideal old age, showing in an
+actual instance how happy, vigorous, full of buoyant energy and
+undiminished appetite for enterprise a devout old age may be. And my
+purpose now is not merely to comment on the few words of our text, but
+upon the whole of what falls from the lips of Caleb here.
+
+I. I see then here, first, a life all built upon God's promise.
+
+Five times in the course of his short plea with Joshua does he use the
+expression 'the Lord spake.' On the first occasion of the five he
+unites Joshua with himself as a recipient of the promise, 'Thou knowest
+the thing that the Lord said concerning me and thee.' But in the other
+four he takes it all to himself; not because it concerned him only, but
+because his confidence, laying hold of the promise, forgot his brother
+in the earnestness of his personal appropriation of it. And so,
+whatsoever general words God speaks to the world, a true believer will
+make them his very own; and when Christ says, 'God so loved the world
+that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him
+should not perish,' faith translates it into 'He loved me, and gave
+Himself for me.' This is the first characteristic of a life built upon
+the promise of God, that it lays its hand upon that promise and claims
+it all for its very own.
+
+Then notice, still further, how for all these forty-five years Caleb
+had 'hid the word in his heart,' had lived upon it and thought about it
+and believed it, and recognised the partial fulfilment of it, and
+cherished the secret fire unknown to any besides. And now at last,
+after so long an interval, he comes forward and stretches out a hand,
+unweakened by the long delay, to claim the perfect fulfilment at the
+end of his days. So 'the vision may tarry,' but a life based upon God's
+promise has another estimate of swiftness and slowness than is current
+amongst men who have only the years of earthly life to reckon by; and
+that which to sense seems a long, weary delay, to faith seems but as 'a
+watch in the night'. The world, which only measures time by its own
+revolutions, has to lament over what seem to the sufferers long years
+of pains and tears, but in the calendar of faith 'weeping endures for a
+night, joy cometh in the morning.' The weary days dwindle into a point
+when they are looked at with an eye that has been accustomed to gaze on
+the solemn eternities of a promising and a faithful God. To it, as to
+Him, 'a thousand years are as one day'; and 'one day,' in the
+possibilities of divine favour and spiritual growth which it may
+enfold, 'as a thousand years.' To the men who measure time as God
+measures it, His help, howsoever long it may tarry, ever comes 'right
+early.'
+
+Further, note how this life, built upon faith in the divine promise,
+was nourished and nurtured by instalments of fulfilment all along the
+road. Two promises were given to Caleb--one, that his life should be
+prolonged, and the other, that he should possess the territory into
+which he had so bravely ventured. The daily fulfilment of the one fed
+the fire of his faith in the ultimate accomplishment of the other, and
+he gratefully recounts it now, as part of his plea with Joshua--'Now,
+behold, the Lord hath kept me alive as He spake, these forty and five
+years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses. And now, lo! I
+am this day fourscore and five years old.'
+
+Whosoever builds his life on the promise of God has in the present the
+guarantee of the better future. As we are journeying onwards to that
+great fountain-head of all sweetness and felicity, there are ever
+trickling brooks from it by the way, at which we may refresh our
+thirsty lips and invigorate our fainting strength. The present
+instalment carries with it the pledge of the full discharge of the
+obligation, and he whose heart and hope is fixed with a forward look on
+the divine inheritance, may, as he looks backward over all the years,
+see clearly in them one unbroken mass of preserving providences, and
+thankfully say, 'The Lord hath kept me alive, as He spake.'
+
+And, still further, the life that is built upon faith like this man's,
+is a life of buoyant hopefulness till the very end. The hopes of age
+are few and tremulous. When the feast is nearly over, and the appetite
+is dulled, there is little more to be done, but to push back our chairs
+and go away. But God keeps 'the good wine' until the last. And when all
+earthly hopes are beginning to wear thin and to burn dim, then the
+great hope of 'the mountain of the inheritance' will rise brighter and
+clearer upon our horizon. It is something to have a hope so far in
+front of us that we never get up to it, to find it either less than our
+expectations or more than our desires; and this is not the least of the
+blessednesses of the living 'hope that maketh not ashamed,' that it
+lies before us till the very end, and beckons and draws us across the
+gulf of darkness. 'The Lord hath kept me alive, as He said; now give me
+this mountain whereof the Lord spake.'
+
+II. Further, I see here a life that bears to be looked back at.
+
+Caleb becomes almost garrulous in telling over the old story of that
+never-to-be-forgotten day, when he and Joshua stood alone and tried to
+put some heart into the cowardly mob before them. There is no mock
+modesty about the man. He says that, amidst many temptations to be
+untrue, he gave his report with sincerity and veracity, 'speaking as it
+was in mine heart,' and then he quotes twice, with a permissible
+satisfaction, the eulogium that had come upon him from the divine lips,
+'I wholly followed the Lord my God.' The private soldier's cheek may
+well flush and his eye glitter as he repeats over again his general's
+praise. And for Caleb, half a century has not dimmed the impression
+that was made on his heart when he received that praise, through the
+lips of Moses, from God.
+
+Now, of course, such a tone of speaking about one's past savours of an
+earlier stage in revelation than that in which we live, and, if this
+were to be taken as a man's total account of his whole life, we could
+not free it from the charge of unpleasing self-complacency and
+self-righteousness. But for all that, it is not the same thing in the
+retrospect whether you and I have to look back upon years that have
+been given to self, and the world, and passion, and pride, and
+covetousness, and frivolities and trifles of all sorts, or upon years
+that in the main, and regard being had to their deepest desires and
+governing direction, have been given to God and to His service. Many a
+man looking back upon his life--I wonder if there are any such men
+listening to me now--can only see such a sight as Abraham did on that
+morning when he looked down on the plain of Sodom, and 'Lo! the smoke
+of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.' Dear friends I the only
+thing that makes life in the retrospect tolerable is that it shall have
+been given to God, and that we can say, 'I wholly followed the Lord my
+God.'
+
+III. Again, I see here a life which has discovered the secret of
+perpetual youth.
+
+'I,' says the old man--'am as strong this day as I was in the day when
+Moses sent me. As my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for
+war, both to go out and to come in.' For fighting, and for all the
+intercourse and manifold activities of life, his sinews are as braced,
+his eyes as clear, his spirit and limbs as alert as they were in those
+old days. No doubt you will say that was due to miraculous
+intervention. No doubt it was; but is it not true that, in a very real
+sense, a man may keep himself young all his life, if he will go the
+right way to work? And the secret of perpetual youthfulness lies here,
+in giving our hearts to God and in living for Him. Christianity, with
+its self-restraint and its exhortations to all, and especially to the
+young, to be chaste and temperate and to subdue the animal passions,
+has a direct tendency to conserve physical vigour; and Christianity, by
+the inspiration that it imparts, the stimulus that it gives, and the
+hopes that it permits us to cherish, has a direct tendency to keep
+alive in old age all the best of the characteristics of youth. Its
+buoyancy, its undimmed interest, its cheeriness, its freedom from
+anxiety and care--all these things are directly ministered to, and
+preserved by, a life of simple faith that casts itself upon God, and
+dwells securely, in joy and in restfulness, and not without a great
+light of hope, even when the shadows of evening are falling.
+
+One of the greatest and most blessed of the characteristics of youth is
+the consciousness that the most of life lies before us; and to a
+Christian man, in any stage of his earthly life, that consciousness is
+possible. When he stands on the verge of the last sinking sandbank of
+time, and the water is up to his ankles, he may well feel that the best
+and the most of life 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."'
+
+'They shall still bring forth fruit in old age, they shall be full of
+sap and green.' A gnarled old tree may be green in all its branches,
+and blossom and fruit may hang together there. The ideal of life is,
+that into each stage we shall carry the best of the preceding,
+harmonised with the best of the new, and that is possible to a
+Christian soul. The fountain of perpetual youth, of which the ancients
+fabled, is no fable, but a fact; and it rises, where the prophet in his
+vision saw the stream coming out, from beneath the threshold of the
+Temple door.
+
+IV. So, lastly, I see here a beautiful example of a life which to the
+last is ready for danger and enterprise.
+
+Caleb's words as to his undiminished strength were not meant for a
+boast. They express thankfulness and praise, and they are put as the
+ground of the request that he has to make. He gives a chivalrous reason
+for his petition when he says,' Now, therefore, give me this mountain,
+_for_ the Anakims (the giants) are there; and the cities great and
+fenced.'
+
+Caleb's readiness for one more fight was fed by his reliance on God's
+help in it. When he says, 'It may be the Lord will be with me,' the
+_perhaps_ is that of humility, not of doubt. The old warrior's eye
+flashes, and his voice sounds strong and full, as he ends his words
+with 'I _shall_ drive them out, as _the Lord spake_.' That has the true
+ring. What were the three Anak chiefs, with their barbarous names,
+Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, and their giant stature, to the onset
+of a warrior faith like that? Of course, 'Caleb drove out thence the
+three sons of Anak,' and Hebron became his inheritance. Nothing can
+stand against us, if we seek for our portion, not where advantages are
+greatest, but where difficulties and dangers are most rife, and cast
+ourselves into the conflict, sure that God is with us, though humbly
+wondering that we should be worthy of His all-conquering presence, and
+sure, therefore, that victory marches by our sides.
+
+Old age is generally much more disposed to talk about its past
+victories than to fight new ones; to rest upon its arms, or upon its
+laurels, than to undertake fresh conflicts. Now and then we see a man,
+statesman or other, who, bearing the burden of threescore years and ten
+lightly, is still as alert of spirit, as eager for work, as bold for
+enterprise, as he was years before. And in nine cases out of ten such a
+man is a Christian; and his brilliant energy of service is due, not
+only, nor so much, to natural vigour of constitution as to religion,
+which has preserved his vigour because it has preserved his purity, and
+been to him a stimulus and an inspiration.
+
+Danger is an attraction to the generous mind. It is the coward and the
+selfish man who are always looking for an easy place, where somebody
+else will do the work. This man felt that this miraculously prolonged
+life of his bound him to special service, and the fact that up in
+Hebron there were a fenced city and tall giants behind the battlements,
+was an additional reason for picking out that bit of the field as the
+place where he ought to be. Thank God, that spirit is not dead yet! It
+has lived all through the Christian Church, and flamed up in times of
+martyrdom. On missionary fields to-day, if one man falls two are ready
+to step into his place. It is the true spirit of the Christian soldier.
+'A great door and effectual is opened,' says Paul, 'and there are many
+adversaries.' He knew the door was opened because the adversaries were
+many. And because there were so many of them, would he run away? Some
+of us would have said: 'I must abandon that work, it bristles with
+difficulties; I cannot stop in that post, the bullets are whistling too
+fast.' Nay! says Paul; 'I abide till Pentecost'--a good long
+while--because the post is dangerous, and promises to be fruitful.
+
+So, dear friends, if we would have lives on which we can look back,
+lives in which early freshness will last beyond the 'morning dew,'
+lives in which there shall come, day by day and moment by moment,
+abundant foretastes to stay our hunger until we sit at Christ's table
+in His kingdom, we must 'follow the Lord alway,' with no half-hearted
+surrender, nor partial devotion, but give ourselves to Him utterly, to
+be guided and sent where He will. And then, like Caleb, we shall be
+able to say, with a 'perhaps,' not of doubt, but of wonder, that it
+should be so, to us unworthy, 'It may be the Lord will be with me, arid
+I shall drive them out.' In all these things 'we are more than
+conquerors through Him that loved us.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CITIES OF REFUGE
+
+'The Lord also spake unto Joshua, saying, 2. Speak to the children of
+Israel, saying, Appoint out for you cities of refuge, whereof I spake
+unto you by the hand of Moses: 3. That the slayer that killeth any
+person unawares and unwittingly may flee thither: and they shall be
+your refuge from the avenger of blood. 4. And when he that doth flee
+unto one of those cities shall stand at the entering of the gate of the
+city, and shall declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that
+city, they shall take him into the city unto them, and give him a
+place, that he may dwell among them. 5. And if the avenger of blood
+pursue after him, then they shall not deliver the slayer up into his
+hand; because he smote his neighbour unwittingly, and hated him not
+beforetime. 6. And he shall dwell in that city, until he stand before
+the congregation for judgment, and until the death of the high priest
+that shall be in those days: then shall the slayer return, and come
+unto his own city, and unto his own house, unto the city from whence he
+fled. 7. And they appointed Kedesh in Galilee in mount Naphtali, and
+Shechem in mount Ephraim, and Kirjath-arba, which is Hebron, in the
+mountain of Judah. 8. And on the other side Jordan by Jericho eastward,
+they assigned Bezer in the wilderness upon the plain out of the tribe
+of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in
+Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh. 9. These were the cities appointed
+for all the children of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourneth
+among them, that whosoever killeth any person at unawares might flee
+thither, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he
+stood before the congregation.'--JOSHUA xx. 1-9.
+
+
+Our Lord has taught us that parts of the Mosaic legislation were given
+because of the 'hardness' of the people's hearts. The moral and
+religious condition of the recipients of revelation determines and is
+taken into account in the form and contents of revelation. That is
+strikingly obvious in this institution of the 'cities of refuge.' They
+have no typical meaning, though they may illustrate Christian truth.
+But their true significance is that they are instances of revelation
+permitting, and, while permitting, checking, a custom for the abolition
+of which Israel was not ready.
+
+I. Cities of refuge were needed, because the 'avenger of blood' was
+recognised as performing an imperative duty. 'Blood for blood' was the
+law for the then stage of civilisation. The weaker the central
+authority, the more need for supplementing it with the wild justice of
+personal avenging. Neither Israel nor surrounding nations were fit for
+the higher commandment of the Sermon on the Mount. 'An eye for an eye,
+and a tooth for a tooth,' corresponded to their stage of progress; and
+to have hurried them forward to 'I say unto you, Resist not evil,'
+would only have led to weakening the restraint on evil, and would have
+had no response in the hearers' consciences. It is a commonplace that
+legislation which is too far ahead of public opinion is useless, except
+to make hypocrites. And the divine law was shaped in accordance with
+that truth. Therefore the _goel_, or kinsman-avenger of blood, was not
+only permitted but enjoined by Moses.
+
+But the evils inherent in his existence were great. Blood feuds were
+handed down through generations, involving an ever-increasing number of
+innocent people, and finally leading to more murders than they
+prevented. But the thing could not be abolished. Therefore it was
+checked by this institution. The lessons taught by it are the gracious
+forbearance of God with the imperfections attaching to each stage of
+His people's moral and religious progress; the uselessness of violent
+changes forced on people who are not ready for them; the presence of a
+temporary element in the Old Testament law and ethics.
+
+No doubt many things in the present institutions of so-called Christian
+nations and in the churches are destined to drop away, as the
+principles of Christianity become more clearly discerned and more
+honestly applied to social and national life. But the good shepherd
+does not overdrive his flock, but, like Jacob, 'leads on softly,
+according to the pace of the cattle that is before' him. We must be
+content to bring the world gradually to the Christian ideal. To abolish
+or to impose institutions or customs by force is useless. Revolutions
+made by violence never last. To fell the upas-tree maybe very heroic,
+but what is the use of doing it, if the soil is full of seeds of
+others, and the climate and conditions favourable to their growth?
+Change the elevation of the land, and the `flora' will change itself.
+Institutions are the outcome of the whole mental and moral state of a
+nation, and when that changes, and not till then, do they change. The
+New Testament in its treatment of slavery and war shows us the
+Christian way of destroying evils; namely, by establishing the
+principles which will make them impossible. It is better to girdle the
+tree and leave it to die than to fell it.
+
+II. Another striking lesson from the cities of refuge is the now
+well-worn truth that the same act, when done from different motives, is
+not the same. The kinsman-avenger took no heed of the motive of the
+slaying. His duty was to slay, whatever the slayer's intention had
+been. The asylum of the city of refuge was open for the unintentional
+homicide, and for him only, Deliberate murder had no escape thither. So
+the lesson was taught that motive is of supreme importance in
+determining the nature of an act. In God's sight, a deed is done when
+it is determined on, and it is not done, though done, when it was not
+meant by the doer. 'Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,' and he
+that killeth his brother unawares is none. We suppose ourselves to have
+learned that so thoroughly that it is trivial to repeat the lesson.
+
+What, then, of our thoughts and desires which never come to light in
+acts? Do we recognise our criminality in regard to these as vividly as
+we should? Do we regulate the hidden man of the heart accordingly? A
+man may break all the commandments sitting in an easy-chair and doing
+nothing. Von Moltke fought the Austro-Prussian war in his cabinet in
+Berlin, bending over maps. The soldiers on the field were but pawns in
+the dreadful game. So our battles are waged, and we are beaten or
+conquerors, on the field of our inner desires and purposes. 'Keep thy
+heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.'
+
+III. The elaborately careful specification of cases which gave the
+fugitive a right to shelter in the city is set forth at length in
+Numbers xxxv. 15-24, and Deuteronomy xix. 4-13. The broad principle is
+there laid down that the cities were open for one who slew a man
+'unwittingly.' But the plea of not intending to slay was held to be
+negatived, not only if intention could be otherwise shown but if the
+weapon used was such as would probably kill; such, for instance, as 'an
+instrument of iron,' or a stone, or a 'weapon of wood, whereby a man
+may die.' If we do what is likely to have a given result, we are
+responsible for that result, should it come about, even though we did
+not consciously seek to bring it. That is plain common sense. 'I never
+thought the house would catch fire' is no defence from the guilt of
+burning it down, if we fired a revolver into a powder barrel. Further,
+if the fatal blow was struck in 'hatred,' or if the slayer had lain in
+ambush to catch his victim, he was not allowed shelter. These careful
+definitions freed the cities from becoming nests of desperate
+criminals, as the 'sanctuaries' of the Middle Ages in Europe became.
+They were not harbours for the guilty, but asylums for the innocent.
+
+IV. The procedure by which the fugitive secured protection is described
+at length in the passages cited, with which the briefer account here
+should be compared. It is not quite free from obscurity, but probably
+the process was as follows. Suppose the poor hunted man arrived panting
+at the limits of the city, perhaps with the avenger's sword within half
+a foot of his neck; he was safe for the time. But before he could enter
+the city, a preliminary inquiry was held 'at the gate' by the city
+elders. That could only be of a rough-and-ready kind; most frequently
+there would be no evidence available but the man's own word. It,
+however, secured _interim_ protection. A fuller investigation followed,
+and, as would appear, was held in another place,--perhaps at the scene
+of the accident. 'The congregation' was the judge in this second
+examination, where the whole facts would be fully gone into, probably
+in the presence of the avenger. If the plea of non-intention was
+sustained, the fugitive was 'restored to his city of refuge,' and there
+remained safely till the death of the high-priest, when he was at
+liberty to return to his home, and to stay there without fear.
+
+Attempts have been made to find a spiritual significance in this last
+provision of the law, and to make out a lame parallel between the death
+of the high-priest, which cancelled the crime of the fugitive, and the
+death of Christ, which takes away our sins. But--to say nothing of the
+fact that the fugitive was where he was just because he had done no
+crime--the parallel breaks down at other points. It is more probable
+that the death of one high-priest and the accession of another were
+regarded simply as closing one epoch and beginning another, just as a
+king's accession is often attended with an amnesty. It was natural to
+begin a new era with a clean sheet, as it were.
+
+V. The selection of the cities brings out a difference between the
+Jewish right of asylum and the somewhat similar right in heathen and
+mediaeval times. The temples or churches were usually the sanctuaries
+in these. But not the Tabernacle or Temple, but the priestly cities,
+were chosen here. Their inhabitants represented God to Israel, and as
+such were the fit persons to cast a shield over the fugitives; while
+yet their cities were less sacred than the Temple, and in them the
+innocent man-slayer could live for long years. The sanctity of the
+Temple was preserved intact, the necessary provision for possibly
+protracted stay was made, evils attendant on the use of the place of
+worship as a refuge were avoided.
+
+Another reason--namely, accessibility swiftly from all parts of the
+land--dictated the choice of the cities, and also their number and
+locality. There were three on each side of Jordan, though the
+population was scantier on the east than on the west side, for the
+extent of country was about the same. They stood, roughly speaking,
+opposite each other,--Kedesh and Golan in the north, Shechem and Ramoth
+central, Hebron and Bezer in the south. So, wherever a fugitive was, he
+had no long distance between himself and safety.
+
+We too have a 'strong city' to which we may 'continually resort.' The
+Israelite had right to enter only if his act had been inadvertent, but
+we have the right to hide ourselves in Christ just because we have
+sinned wilfully. The hurried, eager flight of the man who heard the
+tread of the avenger behind him, and dreaded every moment to be struck
+to the heart by his sword, may well set forth what should be the
+earnestness of our flight to 'lay hold on the hope set before us in the
+gospel.' His safety, as soon as he was within the gate, and could turn
+round and look calmly at the pursuer shaking his useless spear and
+grinding his teeth in disappointment, is but a feeble shadow of the
+security of those who rest in Christ's love, and are sheltered by His
+work for sinners. 'I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never
+perish, and no one shall pluck them out of My hand.'
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE WAR
+
+'And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which He sware to give unto
+their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein. 44. And the
+Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that He sware unto
+their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before
+them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. 45. There
+failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the
+house of Israel; all came to pass.
+
+'Then Joshua called the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe
+of Manasseh, 2. And said unto them, Ye have kept all that Moses, the
+servant of the Lord commanded you, and have obeyed my voice in all that
+I commanded you: 3. Ye have not left your brethren these many days unto
+this day, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the Lord your
+God. 4. And now the Lord your God hath given rest unto your brethren,
+as He promised them: therefore now return ye, and get you unto your
+tents, and unto the land of your possession, which Moses the servant of
+the Lord gave you on the other side Jordan. 5. But take diligent heed
+to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the Lord
+charged you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all His ways,
+and to keep His commandments, and to cleave unto Him, and to serve Him
+with all your heart, and with all your soul. 6. So Joshua blessed them,
+and sent them away: and they went unto their tents. 7. Now to the one
+half of the tribe of Manasseh Moses had given possession in Bashan: but
+unto the other half thereof gave Joshua among their brethren on this
+side Jordan westward. And when Joshua sent them away also unto their
+tents, then he blessed them, 8. And he spake unto them, saying, Return
+with much riches unto your tents, and with very much cattle, with
+silver, and with gold, and with brass, and with iron, and with very
+much raiment: divide the spoil of your enemies with your brethren. 9.
+And the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe
+of Manasseh returned, and departed from the children of Israel out of
+Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan, to go unto the country of
+Gilead, to the land of their possession, whereof they were possessed,
+according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses.'--JOSHUA xxi.
+43-45; xxii. 1-9.
+
+
+'The old order changeth, giving place to new.' In this passage we have
+the breaking up of the congregation and the disbanding of the
+victorious army. The seven years of fighting had come to an end. The
+swords were to be 'beaten into plowshares,' and the comrades who had
+marched shoulder to shoulder, and shared the fierce excitement of many
+a bloody field, were to be scattered, each becoming a peaceful farmer
+or shepherd. A picturesque historian, of the modern 'special
+correspondent' sort, would have overlaid the narrative with sentiment
+and description; but how quietly the writer tells it, so that we have
+to bethink ourselves before we apprehend that we are reading the
+account of an epoch-making event! He fixes attention on two
+things,--the complete fulfilment of God's promises (xxi. 43-45) and the
+dismissal to their homes of the contingent from the trans-Jordanic
+tribes, whose departure was the signal that the war was ended (xxii.
+1-8). We may consider the lessons from these two separately.
+
+I. The triumphant record of God's faithfulness (xxi. 43-45). These
+three verses are the trophy reared on the battlefield, like the lion of
+Marathon, which the Greeks set on its sacred soil. But the only name
+inscribed on this monument is Jehovah's. Other memorials of victories
+have borne the pompous titles of commanders who arrogated the glory to
+themselves; but the Bible knows of only one conqueror, and that is God.
+'The help that is done on earth, He doeth it all Himself.' The military
+genius and heroic constancy of Joshua, the eagerness for perilous
+honour that flamed, undimmed by age, in Caleb, the daring and strong
+arms of many a humble private in the ranks, have their due recognition
+and reward; but when the history that tells of these comes to sum up
+the whole, and to put the 'philosophy' of the conquest into a sentence,
+it has only one name to speak as cause of Israel's victory.
+
+That is the true point of view from which to look at the history of the
+world and of the church in the world. The difference between the
+'miraculous' conquest of Canaan and the 'ordinary' facts of history is
+not that God did the one and men do the other; both are equally, though
+in different methods, His acts. In the field of human affairs, as in
+the realm of nature, God is immanent, though in the former His working
+is complicated by the mysterious power of man's will to set itself in
+antagonism to His; while yet, in manner insoluble to us, His will is
+supreme. The very powers which are arrayed against Him are His gift,
+and the issues which they finally subserve are His appointment. It does
+not need that we should be able to pierce to the bottom of the
+bottomless in order to attain and hold fast by the great conviction
+that 'there is no power but of God,' and that 'from Him are all things,
+and to Him are all things.'
+
+Especially does this trophy on the battlefield teach a needful lesson
+to us in the Christian warfare. We are ever apt to think too much of
+our visible weapons and leaders, and to forget our unseen and
+ever-present Commander, from whom comes all our power. We 'burn incense
+to our own net, and sacrifice to our own drag,' and, like the heathen
+conqueror of whom Habakkuk speaks, make our swords our gods (Hab. i.
+11, 16). The Church has always been prone to hero-worship, and to the
+idolatry of its organisation, its methods, or its theology. Augustine
+did so and so; Luther smote the 'whited wall' (the Pope) a blow that
+made him reel; the Pilgrim Fathers carried a slip of the plant of
+religious liberty in a tiny pot across the Atlantic, and watered it
+with tears till it has grown a great tree; the Wesleys revived a formal
+Church,--let us sing hallelujahs to these great names! By all means;
+but do not let us forget whence they drew their power; and let us
+listen to Paul's question, 'Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but
+servants through whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?'
+
+And let us carve, deep-cut and indelible, in solitary conspicuousness,
+on the trophy that we rear on each well-fought field, the name of no
+man save 'Jesus only.' We read that on a pyramid in Egypt the name and
+sounding titles of the king in whose reign it was erected were blazoned
+on the plaster facing, but beneath that transitory inscription the name
+of the architect was hewn, imperishable, in the granite, and stood out
+when the plaster dropped away. So, when all the short-lived records
+which ascribe the events of the Church's progress to her great men have
+perished, the one name of the true builder will shine out, and 'at the
+name of Jesus every knee shall bow.' Let us not rely on our own skill,
+courage, talents, orthodoxy, or methods, nor try to 'build tabernacles'
+for the witnessing servants beside the central one for the supreme
+Lord, but ever seek to deepen our conviction that Christ, and Christ
+only, gives all their powers to all, and that to Him, and Him only, is
+all victory to be ascribed. That is an elementary and simple truth; but
+if we really lived in its power we should go into the battle with more
+confidence, and come out of it with less self-gratulation.
+
+We may note, too, in these verses, the threefold repetition of one
+thought, that of God's punctual and perfect fulfilment of His word. He
+'gave unto Israel all the land which He sware to give'; 'He gave them
+rest, ... according to all that He sware'; 'there failed not aught of
+any good thing which the Lord had spoken.' It is the joy of thankful
+hearts to compare the promise with the reality, to lay the one upon the
+other, as it were, and to declare how precisely their outlines
+correspond. The finished building is exactly according to the plans
+drawn long before. God gives us the power of checking His work, and we
+are unworthy to receive His gifts if we do not take delight in marking
+and proclaiming how completely He has fulfilled His contract. It is no
+small part of Christian duty, and a still greater part of Christian
+blessedness, to do this. Many a fulfilment passes unnoticed, and many a
+joy, which might be sacred and sweet as a token of love from His own
+hand, remains common and unhallowed, because we fail to see that it is
+a fulfilled promise. The eye that is trained to watch for God's being
+as good as His word will never have long to wait for proofs that He is
+so. 'Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even he shall
+understand the loving kindness of the Lord.' And to such a one faith
+will become easier, being sustained by experience; and a present thus
+manifestly studded with indications of God's faithfulness will merge
+into a future still fuller of these. For it does not need that we
+should wait for the end of the war to have many a token that His every
+word is true. The struggling soldier can say, 'No good thing has failed
+of all that the Lord has spoken.' We look, indeed, for completer
+fulfilment when the fighting is done; but there are 'brooks by the way'
+for the warriors in the thick of the fight, of which they drink, and,
+refreshed, 'lift up the head.' We need not postpone this glad
+acknowledgment till we can look back and down from the land of peace on
+the completed campaign, but may rear this trophy on many a field,
+whilst still we look for another conflict to-morrow.
+
+II. The disbanding of the contingent from the tribes across Jordan
+(xxii. 1-8). Forty thousand fighting men, of the tribes of Reuben, Gad,
+and the half of Manasseh, had willingly helped in the conquest, leaving
+their own newly-won homes on the eastern side of Jordan, and for seven
+long years taking their share in the hardships and dangers of their
+brethren. It was no small tax which they had thus cheerfully paid for
+the sake of brotherly unity. Their aid had not only been valuable as
+strengthening Joshua's force, but still more so as a witness of the
+unbroken oneness of the nation, and of the sympathy which the tribes
+already settled bore to the others. Politically, it was wise to
+associate the whole people in the whole conquest; for nothing welds a
+nation together like the glories of common victories and the
+remembrance of common dangers survived. The separation of the
+trans-Jordanic tribes by the rapid river, and by their pastoral life,
+was a possible source of weakness, and would, no doubt, have led to
+more complete severance, if it had not been for the uniting power of
+the campaign. If the forty thousand had been quietly feeding sheep on
+the uplands while their brethren were fighting among the stony hills of
+Canaan, a great gulf would have opened between them. Even as it was,
+the eastern tribes drifted somewhat away from the western; but the
+disintegration would have been still more complete if no memories of
+the war, when all Israel stood side by side, had lived on among them.
+Their share in the conquest was not only a piece of policy,--it was the
+natural expression of the national brotherhood. Even I Joshua had not
+ordered their presence, it would have been impossible for them to stop
+in their peacefulness and let their brethren bear the brunt of battle.
+
+The law for us is the same as for these warriors. In the family, the
+city, the nation, the Church, and the world, union with others binds us
+to help them in their conflicts, and that especially if we are blessed
+with secure possessions, while they have to struggle for theirs. We are
+tempted to selfish lives of indulgence in our quiet peace, and
+sometimes think it hard that we should be expected to buckle on our
+armour, and leave our leisurely repose, because our brethren ask the
+help of our arms. If we did as Reuben and Gad did, would there be so
+many rich men who never stir a finger to relieve poverty, so many
+Christians whose religion is much more selfish than beneficent? Would
+so many souls be left to toil without help, to struggle without allies,
+to weep without comforters, to wander in the dark without a guide? All
+God's gifts in providence and in the Gospel are given that we may have
+somewhat wherewith to bless our less happy brethren. 'The service of
+man' is not the substitute for, but the expression of, Christianity.
+Are we not kept here, on this side Jordan, away for a time from our
+inheritance, for the very same reason that these men were separated
+from theirs,--that we may strike some strokes for God and our fellows
+in the great war? Dives, who lolls on his soft cushions, and has less
+pity for Lazarus than the dogs have, is Cain come to life again; and
+every Christian is either his brother's keeper or his murderer. Would
+that the Church of to-day, with infinitely deeper and sacreder ties
+knitting it to suffering, struggling humanity, had a tithe of the
+willing relinquishment of legitimate possessions and patient
+participation in the long campaign for God which kept these rude
+soldiers faithful to their flag and forgetful of home and ease, till
+their general gave them their discharge!
+
+Note the commander's parting charge. They were about to depart for a
+life of comparative separation from the mass of the nation. Their
+remoteness and their occupations drew them away from the current of the
+national life, and gave them a kind of quasi-independence. They would
+necessarily be less directly under Joshua's control than the other
+tribes were. He sends them away with one commandment, the Imperative
+stringency of which is expressed by the accumulation of expressions in
+verse 5. They are to give diligent heed to the law of Moses. Their
+obedience is to be based on love to God, who is their God no less than
+the God of the other tribes. It is to be comprehensive--they are 'to
+walk in all His ways'; it is to be resolute--they are 'to cleave to
+Him'; it is to be wholehearted and whole-souled service, that will be
+the true bond between the separated parts of the whole. Independence so
+limited will be harmless; and, however wide apart their paths may lie,
+Israel will be one. In like manner the bond that knits all divisions of
+God's people together, however different their modes of life and
+thought, however unlike their homes and their work, is the similarity
+of relation to God. They are one in a common faith, a common love, a
+common obedience. Wider waters than Jordan part them. Graver
+differences of tasks and outlooks than separated these two sections of
+Israel part them. But all are one who love and obey the one Lord. The
+closer we cleave to Him, the nearer we shall be to all His tribes.
+
+We need only note in a word how these departing soldiers, leaving the
+battlefield with their commander's praise and benediction, laden with
+much wealth, the spoil of their enemies, and fording the stream to
+reach the peaceful homes, which had long stood ready for them, may be
+taken, by a permissible play of fancy, as symbols of the faithful
+servants and soldiers of the true Joshua, at the end of their long
+warfare passing to the 'kingdom prepared for them before the foundation
+of the world,' bearing in their hands the wealth which, by God's grace,
+they had conquered from out of things here. _They_ are not sent away by
+their Commander, but summoned by Him to the great peace of His own
+presence; and while His lips give them the praise which is praise
+indeed, they inscribe on the perpetual memorial which they rear no name
+but His, who first wrought all their works in them, and now has
+ordained eternal peace for them.
+
+
+
+
+THE NATIONAL OATH AT SHECHEM
+
+'And Joshua said unto the people. Ye cannot serve the Lord: for He is
+an holy God; He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your
+transgressions nor your sins. 20. If ye forsake the Lord, and serve
+strange gods, then He will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after
+that He hath done you good. 21. And the people said unto Joshua, Nay;
+but we will serve the Lord. 22. And Joshua said unto the people, Ye are
+witnesses against yourselves, that ye have chosen you the Lord, to
+serve Him. And they said, We are witnesses. 23. Now therefore put away,
+said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart
+unto the Lord God of Israel. 24. And the people said unto Joshua, The
+Lord our God will we serve, and His voice will we obey. 25. So Joshua
+made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an
+ordinance in Shechem. 26. And Joshua wrote these words in the book of
+the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an
+oak, that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. 27. And Joshua said unto
+all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us; for it
+hath heard all the words of the Lord which He spake unto us: it shall
+be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God. 28. So Joshua
+let the people depart, every man unto his inheritance.'-JOSHUA xxiv.
+19-28.
+
+
+We reach in this passage the close of an epoch. It narrates the last
+public act of Joshua and the last of the assembled people before they
+scatter 'every man unto his inheritance.' It was fitting that the
+transition from the nomad stage to that of settled abode in the land
+should be marked by the solemn renewal of the covenant, which is thus
+declared to be the willingly accepted law for the future national life.
+We have here the closing scene of that solemn assembly set before us.
+
+The narrative carries us to Shechem, the lovely valley in the heart of
+the land, already consecrated by many patriarchal associations, and by
+that picturesque scene (Joshua viii. 30-35), when the gathered nation,
+ranged on the slopes of Ebal and Gerizim, listened to Joshua reading
+'all that Moses commanded.' There, too, the coffin of Joseph, which had
+been reverently carried all through the desert and the war, was laid in
+the ground that Jacob had bought five hundred years ago, and which now
+had fallen to Joseph's descendants, the tribe of Ephraim. There was
+another reason for the selection of Shechem for this renewal of the
+covenant. The gathered representatives of Israel stood, at Shechem, on
+the very soil where, long ago, Abram had made his first resting-place
+as a stranger in the land, and had received the first divine pledge,
+'unto thy seed will I give this land,' and had piled beneath the oak of
+Moreh his first altar (of which the weathered stones might still be
+there) to 'the Lord, who appeared unto him.' It was fitting that this
+cradle of the nation should witness their vow, as it witnessed the
+fulfilment of God's promise. What Plymouth Rock is to one side of the
+Atlantic, or Hastings Field to the other, Shechem was to Israel. Vows
+sworn there had sanctity added by the place. Nor did these remembrances
+exhaust the appropriateness of the site. The oak, which had waved green
+above Abram's altar, had looked down on another significant incident in
+the life of Jacob, when, in preparation for his journey to Bethel, he
+had made a clean sweep of the idols of his household, and buried them
+'under the oak which was by Shechem' (Gen. xxxv. 2-4). His very words
+are quoted by Joshua in his command, in verse 23, and it is impossible
+to overlook the intention to parallel the two events. The spot which
+had seen the earlier act of purification from idolatry was for that
+very reason chosen for the later. It is possible that the same tree at
+whose roots the idols from beyond the river, which Leah and Rachel had
+brought, had been buried, was that under which Joshua set up his
+memorial stone; and it is possible that the very stone had been part of
+Abram's altar. But, in any case, the place was sacred by these past
+manifestations of God and devotions of the fathers, so that we need not
+wonder that Joshua selected it rather than Shiloh, where the ark was,
+for the scene of this national oath of obedience. Patriotism and
+devotion would both burn brighter in such an atmosphere. These
+considerations explain also the designation of the place as 'the
+sanctuary of the Lord,'--a phrase which has led some to think of the
+Tabernacle, and apparently occasioned the Septuagint reading of
+'Shiloh' instead of 'Shechem' in verses 1 and 25. The precise rendering
+of the preposition in verse 26 (which the Revised Version has put in
+the margin) shows that the Tabernacle is not meant; for how could the
+oak-tree be 'in' the Tabernacle? Clearly, the open space, hallowed by
+so many remembrances, and by the appearance to Abram, was regarded as a
+sanctuary.
+
+The earlier part of this chapter shows that the people, by their
+representatives, responded with alacrity--which to Joshua seemed too
+eager--to his charge, and enumerated with too facile tongues God's
+deliverances and benefits. His ear must have caught some tones of
+levity, if not of insincerity, in the lightly-made vow. So he meets it
+with a douche of cold water in verses 19, 20, because he wishes to
+condense vaporous resolutions into something more tangible and
+permanent. Cold, judiciously applied, solidifies. Discouragements,
+rightly put, encourage. The best way to deepen and confirm good
+resolutions which have been too swiftly and inconsiderately formed, is
+to state very plainly all the difficulty of keeping them. The hand that
+seems to repel, often most powerfully attracts. There is no better way
+of turning a somewhat careless 'we will' into a persistent 'nay, but we
+_will_' than to interpose a 'ye cannot.' Many a boy has been made a
+sailor by the stories of hardships which his parents have meant as
+dissuasives. Joshua here is doing exactly what Jesus Christ often did.
+He refused glib vows because He desired whole hearts. His very longing
+that men should follow Him made Him send them back to bethink
+themselves when they promised to do it. 'Master, I will follow Thee
+whithersoever Thou goest!' was answered by no recognition of the
+speaker's enthusiasm, and by no word of pleasure or invitation, but by
+the apparently cold repulse: 'Foxes have holes, birds of the air
+roosting-places; but the Son of Man has not where to lay His head. That
+is what you are offering to share. Do you stand to your words?' So,
+when once 'great multitudes' came to Him He turned on them, with no
+invitation in His words, and told them the hard conditions of
+discipleship as being entire self-renunciation. He will have no
+soldiers enlisted under false pretences. They shall know the full
+difficulties and trials which they must meet; and if, knowing these,
+they still are willing to take His yoke upon them, then how exuberant
+and warm the welcome which He gives!
+
+There is a real danger that this side of the evangelist's work should
+be overlooked in the earnestness with which the other side is done. We
+cannot be too emphatic in our reiteration of Christ's call to all the
+'weary and heavy-laden' to come unto Him, nor too confident in our
+assurance that whosoever comes will not be 'cast out'; but we may be,
+and, I fear, often are, defective in our repetition of Christ's demand
+for entire surrender, and of His warning to intending disciples of what
+they are taking upon them. We shall repel no true seeker by duly
+emphasising the difficulties of the Christian course. Perhaps, if there
+were more plain speaking about these at the beginning, there would be
+fewer backsliders and dead professors with 'a name to live.' Christ ran
+the risk of the rich ruler's going away sorrowful, and so should His
+messengers do. The sorrow tells of real desire, and the departure will
+sooner or later be exchanged for return with a deeper and more thorough
+purpose, if the earlier wish had any substance in it. If it had not,
+better that the consciousness of its hollowness should be forced upon
+the man, than that he should outwardly become what he is not really,--a
+Christian; for, in the one case, he may be led to reflection which may
+issue in thorough surrender; and in the other he will be a
+self-deceived deceiver, and probably an apostate.
+
+Note the special form of Joshua's warning. It turns mainly on two
+points,--the extent of the obligations which they were so lightly
+incurring, and the heavy penalties of their infraction. As to the
+former, the vow to 'serve the Lord' had been made, as he fears, with
+small consideration of what it meant. In heathenism, the 'service' of a
+god is a mere matter of outward acts of so-called worship. There is
+absolutely no connection between religion and morality in idolatrous
+systems. The notion that the service of a god implies any duties in
+common life beyond ceremonial ones is wholly foreign to paganism in all
+its forms. The establishment of the opposite idea is wholly the
+consequence of revelation. So we need not wonder if the pagan
+conception of service was here in the minds of the vowing assembly. If
+we look at their vow, as recorded in verses 16-18, we see nothing in it
+which necessarily implies a loftier idea. Jehovah is their national
+God, who has fought and conquered for them, therefore they will 'serve
+Him.' If we substitute Baal, or Chemosh, or Nebo, or Ra, for Jehovah,
+this is exactly what we read on Moabite stones and Assyrian tablets and
+Egyptian tombs. The reasons for the service, and the service itself,
+are both suspiciously external. We are not judging the people more
+harshly than Joshua did; for he clearly was not satisfied with them,
+and the tone of his answer sufficiently shows what he thought wrong in
+them. Observe that he does not call Jehovah 'your God.' He does so
+afterwards; but in this grave reply to their exuberant enthusiasm he
+speaks of Him only as 'the Lord,' as if he would put stress on the
+monotheistic conception, which, at all events, does not appear in the
+people's words, and was probably dim in their thoughts. Then observe
+that he broadly asserts the impossibility of their serving the Lord;
+that is, of course, so long as they continued in their then tone of
+feeling about Him and His service.
+
+Then observe the points in the character of God on which he dwells, as
+indicating the points which were left out of view by the people, and as
+fitted to rectify their notions of service. First, 'He is an holy God.'
+The scriptural idea of the holiness of God has a wider sweep than we
+often recognise. It fundamentally means His supreme and inaccessible
+elevation above the creature; which, of course, is manifested in His
+perfect separation from all sin, but has not regard to this only.
+Joshua here urges the infinite distance between man and God, and
+especially the infinite moral distance, in order to enforce a
+profounder conception of what goes to God's service. A holy God cannot
+have unholy worshippers. His service can be no mere ceremonial, but
+must be the bowing of the whole man before His majesty, the aspiration
+of the whole man after His loftiness, the transformation of the whole
+man into the reflection of His purity, the approach of the unholy to
+the Holy through a sacrifice which puts away sin.
+
+Further, He is 'a jealous God.' 'Jealous' is an ugly word, with
+repulsive associations, and its application to God has sometimes been
+explained in ugly fashion, and has actually repelled men. But, rightly
+looked at, what does it mean but that God desires our whole hearts for
+His own, and loves us so much, and is so desirous to pour His love into
+us, that He will have no rivals in our love? The metaphor of marriage,
+which puts His love to men in the tenderest form, underlies this word,
+so harsh on the surface, but so gracious at the core.
+
+There is still abundant need for Joshua's warning. We rejoice that it
+takes so little to be a Christian that the feeblest and simplest act of
+faith knits the soul to the all-forgiving Christ. But let us not forget
+that, on the other hand, it is hard to be a Christian indeed; for it
+means 'forsaking all that we have,' and loving God with all our powers.
+The measure of His love is the measure of His 'jealousy,' and He loves
+us no less than He did Israel. Unless our conceptions of His service
+are based upon our recognition of His holiness and demand for our all,
+we, too, 'cannot serve the Lord.'
+
+The other half of Joshua's warnings refers to the penalties of the
+broken vows. These are put with extraordinary force. The declaration
+that the sins of the servants of God would not be forgiven is not, of
+course, to be taken so as to contradict the whole teaching of
+Scripture, but as meaning that the sins of His people cannot be left
+unpunished. The closer relation between God and them made retribution
+certain. The law of Israel's existence, which its history ever since
+has exemplified, was here laid down, that their prosperity depended on
+their allegiance, and that their nearness to Him ensured His
+chastisement for their sin. 'You only have I known of all the families
+of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.'
+
+The remainder of the incident must be briefly disposed of. These
+warnings produced the desired effect; for Joshua did not seek to
+prevent, but to make more intelligent and firm, the people's
+allegiance. The resolve, repeated after fuller knowledge, is the best
+reward, as it is the earnest hope, of the faithful teacher, whose
+apparent discouragements are meant to purify and deepen, not to
+repress, the faintest wish to serve God. Having tested their sincerity,
+he calls them to witness that their resolution is perfectly voluntary;
+and, on their endorsing it as their free choice, he requires the
+putting away of their 'strange gods,' and the surrender of their inward
+selves to Him who, by this their action as well as by His benefits,
+becomes in truth 'the God of Israel.' Attempts have been made to evade
+the implication that idolatry had crept in among the people; but there
+can be no doubt of the plain, sad meaning of the words. They are a
+quotation of Jacob's, at the same spot, on a similar occasion centuries
+before. If there were no idols buried now under the old oak, it was not
+because there were none in Israel, but because they had not been
+brought by the people from their homes. Joshua's commands are the
+practical outcome of his previous words. If God be 'holy' and
+'jealous,' serving Him must demand the forsaking of all other gods, and
+the surrender of heart and self to Him. That is as true to-day as ever
+it was. The people accept the stringent requirement, and their repeated
+shout of obedience has a deeper tone than their first hasty utterance
+had. They have learned what service means,--that it includes more than
+ceremonies; and they are willing to obey His voice. Blessed those for
+whom the plain disclosure of all that they must give up to follow Him,
+only leads to the more assured and hearty response of willing surrender!
+
+The simple but impressive ceremony which ratified the covenant thus
+renewed consisted of two parts,--the writing of the account of the
+transaction in 'the book of the law'; and the erection of a great
+stone, whose grey strength stood beneath the green oak, a silent
+witness that Israel, by his own choice, after full knowledge of all
+that the vow meant, had reiterated his vow to be the Lord's. Thus on
+the spot made sacred by so many ancient memories, the people ended
+their wandering and homeless life, and passed into the possession of
+the inheritance, through the portal of this fresh acceptance of the
+covenant, proclaiming thereby that they held the land on condition of
+serving God, and writing their own sentence in case of unfaithfulness.
+It was the last act of the assembled people, and the crown and close of
+Joshua's career.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF JUDGES
+
+
+
+
+A SUMMARY OF ISRAEL'S FAITHLESSNESS AND GOD'S PATIENCE
+
+'And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I
+made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land
+which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my
+covenant with you. 2. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants
+of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed
+my voice: why have ye done this? 3. Wherefore I also said, I will not
+drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your
+sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. 4. And it came to
+pass, when the angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the
+children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept. 5.
+And they called the name of that place Bochim: and they sacrificed
+there unto the Lord. 6. And when Joshua had let the people go, the
+children of Israel went every man unto his inheritance to possess the
+land. 7. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all
+the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great
+works of the Lord that He did for Israel. 8. And Joshua the son of Nun,
+the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old. 9.
+And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath-heres,
+in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. 10. And
+also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there
+arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet
+the works which He had done for Israel.'--JUDGES II. 1-10.
+
+
+The Book of Judges begins a new era, the development of the nation in
+its land. Chapters i. to iii. 6 contain two summaries: first, of the
+progress of the conquest; and second, of the history about to be
+unfolded in the book. The first part of this passage (verses 1-5)
+belongs to the former, and closes it; the second (verses 6-10)
+introduces the latter, and contrasts it with the state of things
+prevailing as long as the soldiers of Joshua lived.
+
+I. 'The Angel of the Lord' had appeared to Joshua in Gilgal at the
+beginning of the war, and issued his orders as 'Captain of the Lord's
+host.' Now He reappears to ask why his orders had not been carried out,
+and to announce that victory was no longer to attend Israel's arms.
+Nothing can be plainer than that the Angel speaks as one in whom the
+divine name dwells. His reiterated 'I's' are incomprehensible on any
+other hypothesis than that He is that mysterious person, distinct from
+and yet one with Jehovah, whom we know as the 'Word made flesh.' His
+words here are stern. He enumerates the favours which He had showed to
+Israel, and which should have inspired them to glad obedience. He
+recalls the conditions on which they had received the land; namely,
+that they were to enter into no entangling alliances with the remnant
+of the inhabitants, and especially to have no tolerance for their
+idolatry. Here we may observe that, according to Joshua's last charge,
+the extermination of the native peoples was not contemplated, but that
+there should be no such alliances as would peril Israel's observance of
+the covenant (Joshua xxiii. 7, 12). He charges them with disobedience,
+and asks the same question as had been asked of Eve, 'What is this ye
+have done?' And He declares the punishment about to follow, in the
+paralysing of Israel's conquering arm by the withdrawal of His
+conquering might, and in the seductions from the native inhabitants to
+which they would fall victims.
+
+Note, then, how God's benefits aggravate our disobedience, and how He
+bases His right to command on them. Further, note how His promises are
+contingent on our fulfilment of their conditions, and how a covenant
+which He has sworn that He will never break He does count as
+non-existent when men break it. Again, observe the sharp arraignment of
+the faithless, and the forcing of them to bethink themselves of the
+true character of their deeds, or, if we adopt the Revised Version's
+rendering, of the unreasonableness of departing from God. No man dare
+answer when God asks, 'What hast thou done?' No man can answer
+reasonably when He asks, 'Why hast thou done it?' Once more, note that
+His servants sin when they allow themselves to be so mixed up with the
+world that they are in peril of learning its ways and getting a snare
+to their souls. We have all unconquered 'Canaanites' in our hearts, and
+amity with them is supreme folly and crying wickedness. 'Thorough' must
+be our motto. Many times have the conquered overcome their conquerors,
+as in Rome's conquest of Greece, the Goths' conquest of Rome, the
+Normans' conquest of England. Israel was in some respects conquered by
+Canaanites and other conquered tribes. Let us take care that we are not
+overcome by our inward foes, whom we fancy we have subdued and can
+afford to treat leniently.
+
+Again, God punishes our making truce with our spiritual foes by letting
+the effects of the truce work themselves out. He said to Israel, in
+effect: 'If you make alliances with the people of the land, you shall
+no longer have power to cast them out. The swift rush of the stream of
+victory shall be stayed. You have chosen to make them your friends, and
+their friendship shall produce its natural effects, of tempting you to
+imitation.' The increased power of our unsubdued evils is the
+punishment, as it is the result, of tolerance of them. We wanted to
+keep them, and dreamed that we could control them. Keep them we shall,
+control them we cannot. They will master us if we do not expel them. No
+wonder that the place was named Bochim ('Weepers'), when such stern
+words were thundered forth. Tears flow easily; and many a sin is wept
+for once, and afterwards repeated often. So it was with Israel, as the
+narrative goes on to tell. Let us take the warning, and give heed to
+make repentance deep and lasting.
+
+II. Verses 6-10 go back to an earlier period than the appearance of the
+Angel. We do not know how long the survivors of the conquering army
+lived in sufficient numbers to leaven opinion and practice. We may,
+however, roughly calculate that the youngest of these would be about
+twenty when the war began, and that about fifty years would see the end
+of the host that had crossed Jordan and stormed Jericho. If Joshua was
+of about the same age as Caleb, he would be about eighty at the
+beginning of the conquest, and lived thirty years afterwards, so that
+about twenty years after his death would be the limit of 'the elders
+that outlived Joshua.'
+
+Verses 6-9 substantially repeat Joshua xxiv. 28-31, and are here
+inserted to mark not only the connection with the former book, but to
+indicate the beginning of a new epoch. The facts narrated in this
+paragraph are but too sadly in accord with the uniform tendencies of
+our poor weak nature. As long as some strong personality leads a nation
+or a church, it keeps true to its early fervour. The first generation
+which has lived through some great epoch, when God's arm has been made
+bare, retains the impression of His power. But when the leader falls,
+it is like withdrawing a magnet, and the heap of iron filings tumbles
+back to the ground inert. Think of the post-Apostolic age of the
+Church, of Germany in the generation after Luther, not to come nearer
+home, and we must see that Israel's experience was an all but universal
+one. It is hard to keep a community even of professing Christians on
+the high level. No great cause is ever launched which does not lose
+'way' as it continues. 'Having begun in the Spirit,' all such are too
+apt to continue 'in the flesh.' The original impulses wane, friction
+begins to tell. Custom clogs the wheels. The fiery lava-stream cools
+and slackens. So it always has been. Therefore God has to change His
+instruments, and churches need to be shaken up, and sometimes broken
+up, 'lest one good,' when it has degenerated into 'custom,' should
+'corrupt the world.'
+
+But we shall miss the lesson here taught if we do not apply it to
+tendencies in ourselves, and humbly recognise that we are in danger of
+being 'hindered,' however 'well' we may have begun to 'run,' and that
+our only remedy is to renew continually our first-hand vision of 'the
+great works of the Lord,' and our consecration to His service. It is a
+poor affair if, like Israel, our devotion to God depends on Joshua's
+life, or, like King Joash, we do that which is 'right in the eyes of
+the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.'
+
+
+
+
+ISRAEL'S OBSTINACY AND GOD'S PATIENCE
+
+'And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and
+served Baalim; 12. And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers,
+which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods,
+of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed
+themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. 13. And they
+forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. 14. And the anger of
+the Lord was hot against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands
+of spoilers that spoiled them, and He sold them into the hands of their
+enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before
+their enemies. 15. Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the Lord
+was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had
+sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed. 16. Nevertheless the
+Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those
+that spoiled them. 17. And yet they would not hearken unto their
+judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves
+unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers
+walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so.
+18. And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the
+judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days
+of the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groanings, by
+reason of them that oppressed them, and vexed them. 19. And it came to
+pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted
+themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve
+them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings,
+nor from their stubborn way. 20. And the anger of the Lord was hot
+against Israel; and He said, Because that this people hath transgressed
+My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened
+unto My voice; 21. I also will not henceforth drive out any from before
+them of the nations which Joshua left when he died: 22. That through
+them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the Lord, to
+walk therein, as their fathers did keep it, or not. 23. Therefore the
+Lord left those nations, without driving them out hastily; neither
+delivered He them into the hand of Joshua.'--JUDGES ii. 11-23.
+
+
+This passage sums up the Book of Judges, and also the history of Israel
+for over four hundred years. Like the overture of an oratorio, it
+sounds the main themes of the story which follows. That story has four
+chapters, repeated with dreary monotony over and over again. They are:
+Relapse into idolatry, retribution, respite and deliverance, and brief
+return to God. The last of these phases soon passes into fresh relapse,
+and then the old round is gone all over again, as regularly as the
+white and red lights and the darkness reappear in a revolving
+lighthouse lantern, or the figures recur in a circulating decimal
+fraction. That sad phrase which begins this lesson, 'The children of
+Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord,' is repeated at the beginning
+of each new record of apostacy, on which duly follow, as outlined here,
+the oppression by the enemy, the raising up of a deliverer, the gleam
+of brightness which dies with him, and then, _da capo_, 'the children
+of Israel did evil,' and all the rest as before. The names change, but
+the incidents are the same. There is something extremely impressive in
+this uniformity of the plan of the book, which thus sets in so strong
+light the persistence through generations of the same bad strain in the
+nation's blood, and the unwearying patience of God. The story of these
+successive recurrences of the same sequence of events occupies the book
+to the end of chapter xvi., and the remainder of it is taken up with
+two wild stories deeply stained with the lawlessness and moral laxity
+of these anarchic times. We may best bring out the force of this
+summary by considering in their order the four stages signalised.
+
+I. The first is the continual tendency to relapse into idolatry. The
+fact itself, and the frank prominence given to it in the Old Testament,
+are both remarkable. As to the latter, certainly, if the Old Testament
+histories have the same origin as the chronicles of other nations, they
+present most anomalous features. Where do we find any other people
+whose annals contain nothing that can minister to national vanity, and
+have for one of their chief themes the sins of the nation? The history
+of Israel, as told in Scripture, is one long indictment of Israel. The
+peculiarity is explicable, if we believe that, whoever or how numerous
+soever its authors, God was its true Author, as He is its true theme,
+and that the object of its histories is not to tell the deeds of
+Israel, but those of God for Israel.
+
+As to the fact of the continual relapses into idolatry, nothing could
+be more natural than that the recently received and but imperfectly
+assimilated revelation of the one God, with its stringent requirements
+of purity, and its severe prohibition of idols, should easily slip off
+from these rude and merely outward worshippers. Joshua's death without
+a successor, the dispersion of the tribes, the difficulty of
+communication when much of the country was still in the hands of its
+former possessors, would all weaken the sense of unity, which was too
+recent to be firm, and would expose the isolated Israelites to the full
+force of the temptation to idolatry. It is difficult for us fairly to
+judge the immense strain required for resistance to it. The conception
+of one sole God was too high to be easily retained. A shrine without a
+deity seemed bare and empty. The Law stringently bridled passions which
+the hideous worship of the Canaanites stimulated. No wonder that, when
+the first generation of the conquerors had passed away, their
+successors lapsed into the universal polytheism, with its attendant
+idolatry and immorality. Instead of thinking of the Israelites as
+monsters of ingratitude and backsliding, we come nearer the truth, and
+make a better use of the history, when we see in it a mirror which
+shows us our own image. The strong earthward pull is ever acting on us,
+and, unless God hold us up, we too shall slide downwards. 'Hath a
+nation changed their gods, which yet are no gods? but My people hath
+changed their glory for that which doth not profit.' Idolatry and
+worldliness are persistent; for they are natural. Firm adherence to God
+is less common, because it goes against the strong forces, within and
+without, which bind us to earth.
+
+Apparently the relapses into idolatry did not imply the entire
+abandonment of the worship of Jehovah, but the worship of Baalim and
+Ashtaroth along with it. Such illegitimate mixing up of deities was
+accordant with the very essence of polytheism, and repugnant to that of
+the true worship of God. The one may be tolerant, the other cannot be.
+To unite Baal with Jehovah was to forsake Jehovah.
+
+These continual relapses have an important bearing on the question of
+the origin of the 'Jewish conception of God.' They are intelligible
+only if we take the old-fashioned explanation, that its origin was a
+divine revelation, given to a rude people. They are unintelligible if
+we take the new-fashioned explanation that the monotheism of Israel was
+the product of natural evolution, or was anything but a treasure put by
+God into their hands, which they did not appreciate, and would
+willingly have thrown away. The foul Canaanitish worship was the kind
+of thing in which, if left to themselves, they would have wallowed. How
+came such people by such thoughts as these? The history of Israel's
+idolatry is not the least conclusive proof of the supernatural
+revelation which made Israel's religion.
+
+II. Note the swift-following retribution. We have two sections in the
+context dealing with this, each introduced by that terrible phrase,
+which recurs so often in the subsequent parts of the book, 'The anger
+of the Lord was kindled against Israel.' That phrase is no sign of a
+lower conception of God than that which the gospel brings. Wrath is an
+integral part of love, when the lover is perfectly righteous and the
+loved are sinful. The most terrible anger is the anger of perfect
+gentleness, as expressed in that solemn paradox of the Apostle of love,
+when he speaks of 'the wrath of the Lamb.' God was angry with Israel
+because He loved them, and desired their love for their own good. The
+fact of His choice of the nation for His own and the intensity of His
+love were shown no less by the swift certainty with which suffering
+dogged sin, than by the blessings which crowned obedience. The first
+section, referring to the punishment, is in verses 14 and 15, which
+seems to describe mainly the defeats and plunderings which outside
+surrounding nations inflicted. The brief description is extraordinarily
+energetic. It ascribes all their miseries to God's direct act. He
+'delivered' them over, or, as the next clause says still more strongly,
+'sold' them, to plunderers, who stripped them bare. Their defeats were
+the result of His having thus ceased to regard them as His. But though
+He had 'sold' them, He had not done with them; for it was not only the
+foeman's hand that struck them, but God's 'hand was against them,' and
+its grip crushed them. His judgments were not occasional, but
+continuous, and went with them 'whithersoever they went out.'
+Everything went wrong with them; there were no gleams breaking the
+black thunder-cloud. God's anger darkened the whole sky, and blasted
+the whole earth. And the misery was the more miserable and awful
+because it had all been foretold, and in it God was but doing 'as He
+had said' and sworn. It is a dreadful picture of the all-withering
+effect of God's anger,--a picture which is repeated in inmost verity in
+many an outwardly prosperous life to-day.
+
+The second section is in verses 20-23, and describes the consequence of
+Israel's relapse in reference to the surviving Canaanite and other
+tribes in the land itself. Note that 'nation' in verse 20 is the term
+usually applied, not to Israel, but to the Gentile peoples; and that
+its use here seems equivalent to cancelling the choice of Israel as
+God's special possession, and reducing them to the level of the other
+nations in Canaan, to whom the same term is applied in verse 21. The
+stern words which are here put into the mouth of God may possibly refer
+to the actual message recorded in the first verses of the chapter; but,
+more probably, 'the Lord said' does not here mean any divine
+communication, but only the divine resolve, conceived as spoken to
+himself. It embodies the divine _lex talionis_. The punishment is
+analogous to the crime. Israel had broken the covenant; God would not
+keep His promise. That involves a great principle as to all God's
+promises,--that they are all conditional, and voidable by men's failure
+to fulfil their conditions. Observe, too, that the punishment is the
+retention of the occasions of the sin. Is not that, too, a law of the
+divine procedure to-day? Whips to scourge us are made of our pleasant
+vices. Sin is the punishment of sin. If we yield to some temptation,
+part of the avenging retribution is that the temptation abides by us,
+and has power over us. The 'Canaanites' whom we have allowed to lead us
+astray will stay beside us when their power to seduce us is done, and
+will pull off their masks and show themselves for what they are, our
+spoilers and foes.
+
+The rate of Israel's conquest was determined by Israel's faithful
+adherence to God. That is a standing law. Victory for us in all the
+good fight of life depends on our cleaving to Him, and forsaking all
+other.
+
+The divine motive, if we may so say, in leaving the unsubdued nations
+in the land, was to provide the means of proving Israel. Would it not
+have been better, since Israel was so weak, to secure for it an
+untempted period? Surely, it is a strange way of helping a man who has
+stumbled, to make provision that future occasions of stumbling shall
+lie in his path. But so the perfect wisdom which is perfect love ever
+ordains. There shall be no unnatural greenhouse shelter provided for
+weak plants. The liability to fall imposes the necessity of trial, but
+the trial does not impose the necessity of falling! The Devil tempts,
+because he hopes that we shall fall. God tries, in order that we may
+stand, and that our feet may be strengthened by the trial. 'I cannot
+praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed,
+that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the
+race, where that immortal garland is to be run for,--not without dust
+and heat.'
+
+III. Respite and deliverance are described in verses 16 and 18. The
+Revised Version has wisely substituted a simple 'and' for
+'nevertheless' at the beginning of verse 16. The latter word implies
+that the raising up of the judges was a reversal of what had gone
+before; 'and' implies that it was a continuation. And its use here is
+not merely an instance of inartificial Hebrew style, but carries the
+lesson that God's judgment and deliverance come from the same source,
+and are harmonious parts of one educational process. Nor is this
+thought negatived by the statement in verse 18 that 'it repented the
+Lord.' That strong metaphorical ascription to Him of human emotion
+simply implies that His action, which of necessity is the expression of
+His will, was changed. The will of the moment before had been to
+punish; the will of the next moment was to deliver, because their
+'groaning' showed that the punishment had done its work. But the two
+wills were one in ultimate purpose, and the two sets of acts were
+equally and harmoniously parts of one design. The surgeon is carrying
+out one plan when he cuts deep into the quivering flesh, and when he
+sews up the wounds which he himself has made. God's deliverances are
+linked to His chastisements by 'and,' not by 'nevertheless.' We need
+not discuss that remarkable series of judges, who were champions rather
+than the peaceful functionaries whom we understand by the name. The
+vivid and stirring stories associated with their names make the bulk of
+this book, and move the most peace-loving among us like the sound of a
+trumpet. These wild warriors, with many a roughness and flaw in their
+characters, of whom no saintly traits are recorded, are yet treated in
+this section as directly inspired, and as continually upheld by God.
+The writer of the _Epistle to the Hebrews_ claims some of them as
+heroes of 'faith.' And one chief lesson for us to learn, as we look on
+the strange garb in which in them faith has arrayed itself, and the
+strange work which it does in nerving hands to strike with sharp
+swords, is the oneness of the principle amid the most diverse
+manifestations, and the nobleness and strength which the sense of
+belonging to God and reliance on His help breathe into the rudest life
+and shed over the wildest scenes.
+
+These judges were raised up indiscriminately from different tribes.
+They belonged to different ranks, and were of different occupations.
+One of them was a woman. The when and the where and the how of their
+appearance were incalculable. They authenticated their commission by no
+miracles except victory. For a time they started to the front, and then
+passed, leaving no successors, and founding no dynasty. They were an
+entirely unique order, plainly raised up by God, and drawing all their
+power from Him. Let us be thankful for the weaknesses, and even sins,
+recorded of some of them, and for the boldness with which the book
+traces the physical strength of a Samson, in spite of his wild
+animalism, and the bravery of a Jephthah, notwithstanding his savage
+vow and subsequent lapse into idolatry, to God's inspiration. Their
+faith was limited, and acted but imperfectly on their moral nature; but
+it was true faith, in the judgment of the _Epistle to the Hebrews_.
+Their work was rough and bloody, and they were rough tools, as such
+work needed; but it was God's work, and He had made them for His
+instruments, in the judgment of the Book of _Judges_. If we try to
+understand the reasons for such judgments, we may learn some useful
+lessons.
+
+IV. A word only can be given to the last stage in the dreary round. It
+comes back to the first. The religion of the delivered people lasted as
+long as the judge's life. When he died, it died. There is intense
+bitterness in the remark to that effect in verse 19. Did God then die
+with the judge? Was it Samson, or Jehovah, that had delivered? Why
+should the death of the instrument affect gratitude to the hand that
+gave it its edge? What a lurid light is thrown back on the unreality of
+the people's return to God by their swift relapse! If it needed a human
+hand to keep them from departing, had they ever come near? We may press
+the questions on ourselves; for none of us knows how much of our
+religion is owing to the influence of men upon us, or how much of it
+would drop away if we were left to ourselves.
+
+This miserable repetition of the same weary round of sin, punishment,
+respite, and renewed sin, sets in a strong light the two great wonders
+of man's obstinate persistency in unfaithfulness and sin, and of God's
+unwearied persistency in discipline and patient forgiveness. His
+charity 'suffers long and is kind, is not easily provoked.' We can
+weary out all forbearance but His, which is endless. We weary Him
+indeed, but we do not weary Him out, with our iniquities. Man's sin
+stretches far; but God's patient love overlaps it. It lasts long; but
+God's love is eternal. It resists miracles of chastisement and love;
+but He does not cease His use of the rod and the staff. We can tire out
+all other forbearance, but not His. And however old and obstinate our
+rebellion, He waits to pardon, and smites but to heal.
+
+
+
+
+RECREANT REUBEN
+
+
+'Why satest then among the sheepfolds, to hear the pipings for the
+flocks? At the watercourses of Reuben there were great searchings of
+heart.'--JUDGES v. 16 (R.V.).
+
+
+I. The fight.
+
+The warfare is ever repeated, though in new forms. In the highest form
+it is Christ _versus_ the World, And that conflict must be fought out
+in our own souls first. Our religion should lead not only to accept and
+rely on what Christ does for us, but to do and dare for Christ. He has
+given Himself for us, and has thereby won the right to recruit us as
+His soldiers. We have to fight against ourselves to establish His reign
+over ourselves.
+
+And then we have to give our personal service in the great battle for
+right and truth, for establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth. There
+come national crises when every man must take up arms, but in Christ's
+kingdom that is a permanent obligation. There the nation is the army.
+Each subject is not only His servant but His soldier. The metaphor is
+well worn, but it carries everlasting truth, and to take it seriously
+to heart would revolutionise our lives.
+
+II. The reason for standing aloof. Reuben 'abode in the sheepfolds to
+hear the pipings to the flocks.' For Dan his ships, for Asher his
+havens held them apart. Reuben and the other trans-Jordanic tribes held
+loosely by the national unity. They had fallen in love with an easy
+life of pastoral wealth, they did not care to venture anything for the
+national good. It is still too true that like reasons are largely
+operative in producing like results. It is seldom from the wealthy and
+leisurely classes that the bold fighters for great social reformations
+are recruited. Times of commercial prosperity are usually times of
+stagnation in regard to these. Reuben lies lazily listening to the
+'drowsy tinklings' that 'lull' not only 'the distant folds' but himself
+to inglorious slumber, while Zebulon and Naphtali are 'venturing their
+lives on the high places of the field.' The love of ease enervates many
+a one who should be doing valiantly for the 'Captain of his salvation.'
+The men of Reuben cared more for their sheep than for their nation.
+They were not minded to hazard these by listening to Deborah's call.
+And what their flocks were to that pastoral tribe, their business is to
+shoals of professing Christians. The love of the world depletes the
+ranks of Christ's army, and they are comparatively few who stick by the
+colours and are 'ready, aye ready' for service, as the brave motto of
+one English regiment has it. The lives of multitudes of so-called
+Christians are divided between strained energy in their business or
+trade or profession and self-regarding repose. No doubt competition is
+fierce, and, no doubt, a Christian man is bound, 'whatsoever his hand
+finds to do, to do it with his might,' and, no doubt, rest is as much a
+duty as work. But must not loyalty to Jesus have become tepid, if a
+servant of His has so little interest in the purposes for which He gave
+His life that he can hear no call to take active part in promoting
+them, nor find rest in the work by which he becomes a fellow-worker
+with his Lord?
+
+III. The recreant's brave resolves which came to nothing. The indignant
+question of our text is, as it were, framed between two clauses which
+contrast Reuben's indolent holding aloof with his valorous resolves.
+'By the watercourses of Reuben there were great resolves of heart.' ...
+'At the watercourses of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.'
+Resolves came first, but they were not immediately acted on, and as the
+Reubenites sate among the sheepfolds and felt the charm of their
+peaceful lives, the 'native hue of resolution was sicklied o'er,' and
+doubts of the wisdom of their gallant determination crept in, and their
+valour oozed out. And so for all their fine resolves, they had no share
+in the fight nor in the triumph.
+
+So let us lay the warning of that example to heart, and if we are
+stirred by noble impulses to take our place in the ranks of the
+fighters for God, let us act on these at once. Emotions evaporate very
+soon if they are not used to drive the wheels of conduct. The Psalmist
+was wise who 'delayed not, but made haste and delayed not to keep God's
+commandments.' Many a man has over and over again resolved to serve God
+in some specific fashion, and to enlist in the 'effective force' of
+Christ's army, and has died without ever having done it.
+
+IV. The question in the hour of victory. 'Why?'
+
+Deborah asks it with vehement contempt.
+
+That victory is certain. Are _you_ to have part in it?
+
+The question will be asked on the judgment day by Christ, and by our
+own consciences. 'And he was speechless.'
+
+To be neutral is to be on the side of the enemy, against whom the
+'stars fight,' and whom Kishon sweeps away.
+
+'Who is on the Lord's side?'--Who?
+
+
+
+
+'ALL THINGS ARE YOURS'
+
+'They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against
+Sisera.'--JUDGES v. 20.
+
+
+'For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field: and the
+beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.'--Job v. 23.
+
+These two poetical fragments present the same truth on opposite sides.
+The first of them comes from Deborah's triumphant chant. The singer
+identifies God with the cause of Israel, and declares that heaven
+itself fought against those who fought against God's people. There may
+be an allusion to the tempest which Jewish tradition tells us burst
+over the ranks of the enemy, or there may be some trace of ancient
+astrological notions, or the words may simply be an elevated way of
+saying that Heaven fought for Israel. The silent stars, as they swept
+on their paths through the sky, advanced like an avenging host
+embattled against the foes of Israel and of God. All things fight
+against the man who fights against God.
+
+The other text gives the other side of the same truth. One of Job's
+friends is rubbing salt into his wounds by insisting on the
+commonplace, which needs a great many explanations and limitations
+before it can be accepted as true, that sin is the cause of sorrow, and
+that righteousness brings happiness; and in the course of trying to
+establish this heartless thesis to a heavy heart he breaks into a
+strain of the loftiest poetry in describing the blessedness of the
+righteous. All things, animate and inanimate, are upon his side. The
+ground, which Genesis tells us is 'cursed for his sake,' becomes his
+ally, and the very creatures whom man's sin set at enmity against him
+are at peace with him. All things are the friends and servants of him
+who is the friend and servant of God.
+
+I. So, putting these two texts together, we have first the great
+conviction to which religion clings, that God being on our side all
+things are for us, and not against us.
+
+Now, that is the standing faith of the Old Testament, which no doubt
+was more easily held in those days, because, if we accept its teaching,
+we shall recognise that Israel lived under a system in so far
+supernatural as that moral goodness and material prosperity were a
+great deal more closely and indissolubly connected than they are
+to-day. So, many a psalmist and many a prophet breaks out into
+apostrophes, warranted by the whole history of Israel, and declaring
+how blessed are the men who, apart from all other defences and sources
+of prosperity, have God for their help and Him for their hope.
+
+But we are not to dismiss this conviction as belonging only to a system
+where the supernatural comes in, as it does in the Old Testament
+history, and as antiquated under a dispensation such as that in which
+we live. For the New Testament is not a whit behind the Old in
+insisting upon this truth. 'All things work together for good to them
+that love God.' 'All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ
+is God's.' 'Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that
+which is good?' The New Testament is committed to the same conviction
+as that to which the faith of Old Testament saints clung as the sheet
+anchor of their lives.
+
+That conviction cannot be struck out of the creed of any man, who
+believes in the God to whom the Old and the New Testament alike bear
+witness. For it rests upon this plain principle, that all this great
+universe is not a chaos, but a cosmos, that all these forces and
+creatures are not a rabble, but an ordered host.
+
+What is the meaning of that great Name by which, from of old, God in
+His relations to the whole universe has been described--the 'Lord of
+Hosts'? Who are the 'hosts' of which He is 'the Lord,' and to whom, as
+the centurion said, He says to this one, 'Go!' and he goeth; and to
+another, 'Come!' and he cometh; and to another, 'Do this!' and he doeth
+it? Who are 'the hosts'? Not only these beings who are dimly revealed
+to us as rational and intelligent, who 'excel in strength,' because
+they 'hearken to the voice of His word', but in the ranks of that great
+army are also embattled all the forces of the universe, and all things
+living or dead. 'All are Thy servants; they continue this day'--angels,
+stars, creatures of earth--' according to Thine ordinances.'
+
+And if it be true that the All is an ordered whole, which is obedient
+to the touch and to the will of that divine Commander, then all His
+servants must be on the same side, and cannot turn their arms against
+each other. As an old hymn says with another reference--
+
+               'All the servants of our King
+                In heaven and earth are one,'
+
+and none of them can injure, wound, or slay a fellow-servant. If all
+are travelling in the same direction there can be no collision. If all
+are enlisted under the same standard they can never turn their weapons
+against each other. If God sways all things, then all things which God
+sways must be on the side of the men that are on the side of God. 'Thou
+shalt make a league with the stones of the field: and the beasts of the
+field shall be at peace with thee.'
+
+II, Note the difficulties arising from experience, in the way of
+holding fast by this conviction of faith.
+
+The grim facts of the world, seen from their lowest level, seem to
+shatter it to atoms. Talk about 'the stars in their courses fighting'
+for or against anybody! In one aspect it is superstition, in another
+aspect it is a dream and an illusion. The prose truth is that they
+shine down silent, pitiless, cold, indifferent, on battlefields or on
+peaceful homes; and the moonlight is as pure when it falls upon broken
+hearts as when it falls upon glad ones. Nature is utterly indifferent
+to the moral or the religious character of its victims. It goes on its
+way unswerving and pitiless; and whether the man who stands in its path
+is good or bad matters not. If he gets into a typhoon he will be
+wrecked; if he tumbles over Niagara he will be drowned. And what
+becomes of all the talk about an embattled universe on the side of
+goodness, in the face of the plain facts of life--of nature's
+indifference, nature's cruelty which has led some men to believe in two
+sovereign powers, one beneficent and one malicious, and has led others
+to say, 'God is a superfluous hypothesis, and to believe in Him brings
+more enigmas than it solves,' and has led still others to say, 'Why, if
+there _is_ a God, does it look as if either He was not all-powerful, or
+was not all-merciful?' Nature has but ambiguous evidence to give in
+support of this conviction.
+
+Then, if we turn to what we call Providence and its mysteries, the very
+book of Job, from which my second text is taken, is one of the earliest
+attempts to grapple with the difficulty and to untie the knot; and I
+suppose everybody will admit that, whatever may be the solution which
+is suggested by that enigmatical book, the solution is by no means a
+complete one, though it is as complete as the state of religious
+knowledge at the time at which the book was written made possible to be
+attained. The seventy-third psalm shows that even in that old time
+when, as I have said, supernatural sanctions were introduced into the
+ordinary dealings of life, the difficulties that cropped up were great
+enough to bring a devout heart to a stand, and to make the Psalmist
+say, 'My feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped.'
+Providence, with all its depths and mysteries, often to our aching
+hearts seems in our own lives to contradict the conviction, and when we
+look out over the sadness of humanity, still more does it seem
+impossible for us to hold fast by the faith 'that all which we behold
+is full of blessings.'
+
+I doubt not that there are many of ourselves whose lives, shadowed,
+darkened, hemmed in, perplexed, or made solitary for ever, seem to them
+to be hard to reconcile with this cheerful faith upon which I am trying
+to insist. Brethren, cling to it even in the darkness. Be sure of this,
+that amongst all our mercies there are none more truly merciful than
+those which come to us shrouded in dark garments, and in questionable
+shapes. Let nothing rob us of the confidence that 'all things work
+together for good.'
+
+III. I come, lastly, to consider the higher form in which this
+conviction is true for ever.
+
+I have said that the facts of life seem often to us, and are felt often
+by some of us, to shatter it to atoms; to riddle it through and through
+with shot. But, if we bring the Pattern-life to bear upon the
+illumination of all life, and if we learn the lessons of the Cradle and
+the Cross, and rise to the view of human life which emerges from the
+example of Jesus Christ, then we get back the old conviction,
+transfigured indeed, but firmer than ever. We have to alter the point
+of view. Everything always depends on the point of view. We have to
+alter one or two definitions. Definitions come first in geometry and in
+everything else. Get _them_ right, and you will get your theorems and
+problems right.
+
+So, looking at life in the light of Christ, we have to give new
+contents to the two words 'good' and 'evil,' and a new meaning to the
+two words 'for' and 'against.' And when we do that, then the
+difficulties straighten themselves out, and there are not any more
+knots, but all is plain; and the old faith of the Old Testament, which
+reposed very largely upon abnormal and extraordinary conditions of
+life, comes back in a still nobler form, as possible to be held by us
+amidst the commonplace of our daily existence.
+
+For everything is my friend, is for me and not against me, that helps
+me nearer to God. To live for Him, to live with Him, to be conscious
+ever of communion with Himself, to feel the touch of His hand on my
+hand, and the pressure of His breast against mine, at all moments of my
+life, is my true and the highest good. And if it is true that the
+'river of the water of life' which 'flows from the Throne of God' is
+the only draught that can ever satisfy the immortal thirst of a soul,
+then whatever drives me away from the cisterns and to the fountain, is
+on my side. Better to dwell in a 'dry and thirsty land, where no water
+is,' if it makes me long for the water that rises at the gate of the
+true Bethlehem--the house of bread--than to dwell in a land flowing
+with milk and honey, and well watered in every part! If the cup that I
+would fain lift to my lips has poison in it, or if its sweetness is
+making me lose my relish for the pure and tasteless river that flows
+from the Throne of God, there can be no truer friend than that
+calamity, as men call it, which strikes the cup from my hands, and
+shivers the glass before I have raised it to my lips. Everything is my
+friend that helps me towards God.
+
+Everything is my friend that leads me to submission and obedience. The
+joy of life, and the perfection of human nature, is an absolutely
+submitted will, identified with the divine, both in regard to doing and
+to enduring. And whatever tends to make my will flexible, so that it
+corresponds to all the sinuosities, so to speak, of the divine will,
+and fits into all its bends and turns, is a blessing to me. Raw hides,
+stiff with dirt and blood, are put into a bath of bitter infusion of
+oak-bark. What for? For the same end as, when they are taken out, they
+are scraped with sharp steels,--that they may become flexible. When
+that is done the useless hide is worth something.
+
+            'Our wills are ours, we know not how;
+             Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.'
+
+And whatever helps me to that is my friend.
+
+Everything is a friend to the man that loves God, in a far sweeter and
+deeper sense than it can ever be to any other. Like a sudden burst of
+sunshine upon a gloomy landscape, the light of union with God and
+friendship with Him flooding my daily life flashes it all up into
+brightness. The dark ribbon of the river that went creeping through the
+black copses, when the sun glints upon it, gleams up into links of
+silver, and the trees by its bank blaze out into green and gold.
+Brethren! 'Who follows pleasure follows pain'; who follows God finds
+pleasure following him. There can be no surer way to set the world
+against me than to try to make it for me, and to make it my all They
+tell us that if you want to count those stars that 'like a swarm of
+fire-flies tangled in a silver braid' make up the Pleiades, the surest
+way to see the greatest number of them is to look a little on one side
+of them. Look away from the joys and friendships of creatural things
+right up to God, and you will see these sparkling and dancing in the
+skies, as you never see them when you gaze at them only. Make them
+second and they are good and on your side. Make them first, and they
+will turn to be your enemies and fight against you.
+
+This conviction will be established still more irrefragably and
+wonderfully in that future. Nothing lasts but goodness. 'He that doeth
+the will of God abideth for ever.' To oppose it is like stretching a
+piece of pack-thread across the rails before the express comes; or
+putting up some thin wooden partition on the beach on one of the
+Western Hebrides, exposed to the whole roll of the Atlantic, which will
+be battered into ruin by the first winter's storm. Such is the end of
+all those who set themselves against God.
+
+But there comes a future in which, as dim hints tell us, these texts of
+ours shall receive a fulfilment beyond that realised in the present
+condition of things. 'Then comes the statelier Eden back to man,' and
+in a renewed and redeemed earth 'they shall not hurt nor destroy in all
+My holy mountain'; and the ancient story will be repeated in higher
+form. The servants shall be like the Lord who, when He had conquered
+temptation, 'was with the wild beasts' that forgot their enmity, and
+'angels ministered unto Him.' That scene in the desert may serve as a
+prophecy of the future when, under conditions of which we know nothing,
+all God's servants shall, even more markedly and manifestly than here,
+help each other; and every man that loves God will find a friend in
+every creature.
+
+If we take Him for our Commander, and enlist ourselves in that
+embattled host, then all weathers will be good; 'stormy winds,
+fulfilling His word,' will blow us to our port; 'the wilderness will
+rejoice and blossom as the rose'; and the whole universe will be
+radiant with the light of His presence, and ringing with the music of
+His voice. But if we elect to join the other army--for there is another
+army, and men have wills that enable them to lift themselves up against
+God, the Ruler of all things--then the old story, from which my first
+text is taken, will fulfil itself again in regard to us--'the stars in
+their courses will fight against' us; and Sisera, lying stiff and
+stark, with Jael's tent-peg through his temples, and the swollen
+corpses being swirled down to the stormy sea by 'that ancient river,
+the river Kishon,' will be a grim parable of the end of the men that
+set themselves against God, and so have the universe against them.
+'Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.'
+
+
+
+
+LOVE MAKES SUNS 'Let them that love Him be as the sun when he goeth
+forth in his might.' JUDGES V. 51.
+
+
+These are the closing words of Deborah, the great warrior-prophetess of
+Israel. They are in singular contrast with the tone of fierce
+enthusiasm for battle which throbs through the rest of the chant, and
+with its stern approval of the deed of Jael when she slew Sisera. Here,
+in its last notes, we have an anticipation of the highest and best
+truths of the Gospel. 'Let them that love Him be as the sun when he
+goeth forth in His might.' If we think of the singer, of the age and
+the occasion of the song, such purely spiritual, lofty words must seem
+very remarkable.
+
+I. Note, then, first of all, how here we have a penetrating insight
+into the essence of religion.
+
+This woman had been nourished upon a more or less perfect edition of
+what we know as the 'Mosaic Law.' Her faith had been fed by forms. She
+moved amidst a world full of the cruelties and dark conceptions of a
+mysterious divine power which torture heathenism apart from
+Christianity. She had forced her way through all that, and laid hold of
+the vital centre. And there, a way out amidst cruelty and murder,
+amidst the unutterable abominations and terrors of heathenism, in the
+centre of a rigid system of ceremonial and retaliation, the woman's
+heart spoke out, and taught her what was the great commandment.
+Prophetess she was, fighter she was, she could burst into triumphant
+approval of Jael's bloody deed; and yet with the same lips could speak
+this profound word. She had learned that 'Thou shalt _love_ the Lord
+thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
+strength, and with all thy mind,' summed up all duty, and was the
+beginning of all good in man. That precept found an echo in her heart.
+Whatever part in her religious development may have been played by the
+externalisms of ceremonial, she had pierced to the core of religion.
+Advanced modern critics admit the antiquity of Deborah's song, and this
+closing stanza witnesses to the existence, at that early period, of a
+highly spiritual conception of the bond between God and man. Deborah
+had got as far, in a moment of exaltation and insight, as the teaching
+of the Apostle John, although her thought was strangely blended with
+the fierceness of the times in which she lived. Her approval of Jael's
+deed by no means warrants our approving it, but we may thankfully see
+that though she felt the fierce throbbing of desire for vengeance, she
+also felt this--'Them that _love_ Him; that is the Alpha and the Omega
+of all.'
+
+Our love must depend on our knowledge. Deborah's knowledge was a mere
+skeleton outline as compared with ours. Contrast the fervour of
+emotional affection that manifestly throbbed in her heart with the
+poor, cold pulsations which we dignify by the name of love, and the
+contrast may put us to shame. There is a religion of fear which
+dominates hundreds of professing Christians in this land of ours. There
+is a religion of duty, in which there is no delight, which has many
+adherents amongst us. There is a religion of form, which contents
+itself with the externals of Christianity, and that is the religion of
+many men and women in all our churches. And I may further say, there is
+a religion of faith, in its narrower and imperfect sense, which lays
+hold of and believes a body of Christian truth, and has never passed
+through faith into love. Not he who 'believes that God is,' and comes
+to Him with formal service and an alienated or negligent heart; not he
+who recognises the duty of worship, and discharges it because his
+conscience pricks him, but has no buoyancy within bearing him upwards
+towards the object of his love; not he who cowers before the dark
+shadow which some call God; but he who, knowing, trusts, and who,
+knowing and trusting 'the love which God hath to us,' pulses back the
+throbs of a recipient heart, and loves Him in return--he, and he only,
+is a worshipper. Let us learn the lesson that Deborah learnt below the
+palm-trees of Lapidoth, and if we want to understand what a religious
+man is, recognise that he is a man who loves God.
+
+II. Further, note the grand conception of the character which such a
+love produces.
+
+'Let them be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.' Think of the
+fierce Eastern sun, with 'sunbeams like swords,' that springs up from
+the East, and rushes to the zenith, and 'nothing is hid from the heat
+thereof'--a sun the like of which we, in our cloudy skies, never see
+nor feel, but which, to the Oriental, is the very emblem of splendour
+and of continuous, victorious power. There are two things here,
+radiance and energy, light and might.
+
+'As the sun when he goeth forth in his strength.' Deborah was a
+'prophetess,' and people say, 'What did she prophesy?' Well, she
+prophesied the heart of religion--as I have tried to show--in reference
+to its essence, and, as one sees by this phrase, in reference to its
+effects. What is her word but a partial anticipation of Christ's
+saying, 'Ye are the light of the world'; and of His disciple's
+utterance, 'Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the
+Lord: walk as children of light'?
+
+It is too plain to need any talking about, that the direct tendency of
+what we venture to call love to God, meaning thereby the turning of the
+whole nature to Him, in aspiration, admiration, longing for likeness,
+and practical imitation, is to elevate, ennoble, and illuminate the
+whole character. It was said about one woman that 'to love her was an
+education.' That was exaggeration; but it is below the truth about God.
+The true way to refine and elevate and educate is to cultivate love to
+God. And when we get near to Him, and hold by Him, and are continually
+occupied with Him; when our being is one continual aspiration after
+union with Him, and we experience the glow and rapture included in the
+simple word 'love,' then it cannot but be that we shall be like Him.
+
+That is what Paul meant when he said, 'Now are ye light in the Lord.'
+Union with Him illuminates. The true radiance of saintly character will
+come in the measure in which we are in fellowship with Jesus Christ.
+Deborah's astronomy was not her strong point. The sun shines by its own
+light. We are planets, and are darkness in ourselves, and it is only
+the reflection of the central sun that ever makes us look silvery white
+and radiant before men. But though it be derived, it is none the less
+our light, if it has passed into us, as it surely will, and if it
+streams out from us, as it no less surely will, in the measure in which
+love to God dominates our whole lives.
+
+If that is so, dear brethren, is not the shortest and the surest way to
+have our faces shining like that of Moses when he came down from the
+mountain, or like Stephen's when he 'saw the heavens opened,' to keep
+near Jesus Christ? It is slow work to hammer bits of ore out of the
+rock with a chisel and a mallet. Throw the whole mass into the furnace,
+and the metal will come out separated from the dross. Get up the heat,
+and the light, which is the consequence of the heat, will take care of
+itself. 'In the Lord' ye shall be 'light.'
+
+Is Deborah's aspiration fulfilled about me? Let each of us ask that.
+'As the sun when he goeth forth in his strength'--would anybody say
+that about my Christian character? Why not? Only because the springs
+have run low within is the stream low through the meadows. Only because
+the love is cold is the light feeble.
+
+There is another thought here. There is power in sunlight as well as
+radiance. On that truth the prophetess especially lays a finger; 'as
+the sun when he goeth forth in his _strength_.' She did not know what
+we know, that solar energy is the source of all energy on this earth,
+and that, just as in the deepest spiritual analysis 'there is no power
+but of God,' so in the material region we may say that the only force
+is the force of the sun, which not only stimulates vegetation and
+brings light and warmth--as the pre-scientific prophetess knew--but in
+a hundred other ways, unknown to her and known to modern science, is
+the author of all change, the parent of all life, and the reservoir of
+all energy.
+
+So we come to this thought: The true love of God is no weak,
+sentimental thing, such as narrow and sectional piety has often
+represented it to be, but it is a power which will invigorate the whole
+of a man, and make him strong and manly as well as gentle and gracious;
+being, indeed, the parent of all the so-called heroic and of all the
+so-called saintly virtues.
+
+The sun 'goeth forth in his strength,' rushing through the heavens to
+the zenith. As one of the other editions of this metaphor in the Old
+Testament has it, 'The path of the just is as the shining light, that
+shineth more and more until the noontide of the day.' That light,
+indeed, declines, but that fact does not come into view in the metaphor
+of the progressive growth towards perfection of the man in whom is the
+all-conquering might of the true love of Jesus Christ.
+
+Note the context of these words of our text, which, I said, presents so
+singular a contrast to them. It is a strange thing that so fierce a
+battle-chant should at the end settle down into such a sweet swan-song
+as this. It is a strange thing that in the same soul there should throb
+the delight in battle and almost the delight in murder, and these lofty
+thoughts. But let us learn the lesson that true love to God means
+hearty hatred of God's enemy, and that it will always have to be
+militant and sometimes stern and what people call fierce. Amidst the
+amenities and sentimentalities of modern life there is much necessity
+for remembering that the Apostle of love was a 'son of thunder,' and
+that it was the lips which summoned Israel to the fight, and chanted
+hymns of triumph over the corpses borne down by the rushing Kishon,
+which also said: 'Let them that love Him be as the sun when he shineth
+forth in his strength.' If you love God, you will surely be a strong
+man as well as an emotional and affectionate Christian.
+
+That energy is to be continuous and progressive. The sun that Deborah
+saw day by day spring from his station in the east, and climb to his
+height in the heavens, and ray down his beams, has been doing that for
+millions of years, and it will probably keep doing it for uncounted
+periods still. And so the Christian man, with continuity unbroken and
+progressive brilliance and power, should shine 'more and more till the
+unsetting noontide of the day.'
+
+III. That brings me to the last thought, which passes beyond the limits
+of the prophetess' vision. Here is a prophecy of which the utterer was
+unaware.
+
+There is a contrast drawn in the words of our text and in those
+immediately preceding. "So," says Deborah, after the fierce description
+of the slaughter of Sisera--'So let all Thine enemies perish, O Lord!
+but let them that love Thee be as the sun when he shineth in his
+strength.' She contrasts the transiency of the lives that pit
+themselves against God with the perpetuity that belongs to those which
+are in harmony with Him. The truth goes further than she probably knew;
+certainly further than she was thinking when she chanted these words.
+Let us widen them by other words which use the same metaphor, and say,
+'they that be wise'--that is a shallower word than 'them that love
+Thee'--'they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
+firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for
+ever and ever.' Let us widen and deepen them by sacreder words still;
+for Jesus Christ laid hold of this old metaphor, and said, describing
+the time when all the enemies shall have perished, and the weeds have
+been flung out of the vineyard, 'Then shall the righteous shine forth
+like the sun, in the Kingdom of their Father,' with a brilliancy that
+will fill heaven with new splendours, bright beyond all that we see
+here amidst the thick atmosphere and mists and clouds of the present
+life!
+
+Nor need we stop even there, for Jesus Christ not only laid hold of
+this metaphor in order to describe the eternal glory of the children of
+the Kingdom, but at the last time that human eyes on earth saw Him, the
+glorified Man Christ Jesus is thus described: 'His countenance was as
+the sun shineth in his strength.' Love always tends to likeness; and
+love to Christ will bring conformity with Him. The perfect love of
+heaven will issue in perfect and perpetual assimilation to Him. Science
+tells us that the light of the sun probably comes from its contraction;
+and that that process of contraction will go on until, at some point
+within the bounds of time, though far beyond the measure of our
+calculations, the sun himself shall die, the ineffectual beams will be
+paled, and there will be a black orb, with neither life nor light nor
+power. And then, then, and after that for ever, 'they that love Him'
+shall continue to be as that dead sun once was, when he went forth in
+his hot might.
+
+
+
+
+GIDEON'S ALTAR
+
+'Then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord, and called it
+Jehovah-shalom [God is peace].'--JUDGES vi. 24.
+
+
+I need not tell over again, less vividly, the picturesque story in this
+chapter, of the simple husbandman up in the hills, engaged furtively in
+threshing out a little wheat in some hollow in the rock where he might
+hide it from the keen eyes of the oppressors; and of how the angel of
+the Lord, unrecognised at first, appeared to him; and gradually there
+dawned upon his mind the suspicion of who He was who spoke. Then follow
+the offering, the discovery by fire, the shrinking of the man from
+contact with the divine, the wonderfully tranquillizing and
+condescending assurance, cast into the form of the ordinary salutation
+of domestic life: 'And the Lord said unto him Peace be unto thee!'--as
+any man might have said to any other--'fear not! thou shalt not die.'
+Then Gideon piles up the unhewn stones on the hillside into a rude
+altar, apparently not for the purpose of offering sacrifice, but for a
+monument, to which is given this strange name, strange upon such
+warrior lips, and strange in contemplation of the fierce conflict into
+which he was immediately to plunge, 'the Lord is peace.'
+
+How I think that this name, imposed for such a reason and under such
+circumstances, may teach us a good many things.
+
+I. The first thing that it seems to me to suggest is the great
+discovery which this man had made, and in the rapture of which he named
+his altar,--that the sight of God is _not_ death, but life and peace.
+
+Gideon was a plain, rude man, with no very deep religious experience.
+Apparently up to the moment of this vision he had been contentedly
+tolerating the idolatrous practices which had spread over all the
+country. He had heard of 'Jehovah.' It was a name, a tradition, which
+his fathers had told him. That was all that he knew of the God of
+Israel. Into this hearsay religion, as in a flash, while Gideon is busy
+about his threshing floor, thinking of his wheat or of the misery of
+his nation, there comes, all at once, this crushing conviction,--'the
+_hearsay_ God is beside you, speaking to you! You have personal
+relations to Him, He is nearer you than any human being is, He is no
+mere Name, here He stands!'
+
+And whenever the lightning edge of a conviction like that cuts its way
+through the formalisms and traditionalisms and hearsay repetitions of
+conventional religion, then there comes what came to Gideon, the swift
+thought, 'And if this be true, if I really do touch, and am touched by,
+that living Person whose name is Jehovah, what is to become of me?
+Shall I not shrivel up when His fiery finger is laid upon me? I have
+seen Him face to face, and I must die.'
+
+I believe that, in the case of the vast majority of men, the first
+living, real apprehension of a real, living God is accompanied with a
+shock, and has mingled with it something of awe, and even of terror.
+Were there no sin there would be no fear, and pure hearts would open in
+silent blessedness and yield their sweetest fragrance of love and
+adoration, when shone on by Him, as flowers do to the kiss of the
+sunbeams. But, taking into account the sad and universal fact of sin,
+it is inevitable that men should shrink from the Light which reveals
+their evil, and that the consciousness of God's presence should strike
+a chill. It is sad that it should be so. But it is sadder still when it
+is not so, but when, as is sometimes the case, the sight of God
+produces no sense of sin, and no consciousness of discord, or
+foreboding of judgment. For, only through that valley of the shadow of
+death lies the path to the happy confidence of peace with God, and
+unless there has been trembling at the beginning, there will be no firm
+and reasonable trust afterwards.
+
+For Gideon's terror opened the way for the gracious proclamation, which
+would have been needless but for it--'Peace be unto thee; fear not,
+thou shalt not die.'
+
+The sight of God passes from being a fear to a joy, from being a
+fountain of death to a spring of life, Terror is turned to tranquil
+trust. The narrow and rough path of conscious unworthiness leads to the
+large place of happy peace. The divine word fits Gideon's condition,
+and corresponds to his then deepest necessity; and so he drinks it in
+as the thirsty ground drinks in the water; and in the rapture of the
+discovery that the Name, that had come down from his fathers to him,
+was the Name of a real Person, with whom he stood in real
+relationships, and those of simple friendship and pure amity, he piles
+up the rough stones of the place, and makes the name of his altar the
+echo of the divine voice. It is as if he had said with rapture of
+surprise, 'Then Jehovah _is_ peace; which I never dreamed of before.'
+
+Dear friends, do you know anything of such an experience? Can you build
+your altar, and give it this same name? Can you write upon the memorial
+of your experiences, 'The Lord is my peace'? Have you passed from
+hearsay into personal contact? Can you say, 'I have heard of Thee by
+the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee'? Do you know the
+further experience expressed in the subsequent words of the same
+quotation: 'Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes'?
+And have you passed out of that stormy ocean of terror and
+self-condemnation into the quiet haven of trust in Him in whom we have
+peace with God, where your little boat lies quiet, moored for ever to
+the Rock of Ages, to 'Jehovah, who is Peace'?
+
+In connection with this rapturous discovery, and to Gideon strange new
+thought, we may gather the lesson that peace with God will give peace
+in all the soul. The 'peace with God' will pass into a wider thing, the
+'peace of God.' There is tranquillity in trust. There is rest in
+submission. There is repose in satisfied desires. When we live near
+Him, and have ceased from our own works, and let Him take control of us
+and direct us in all our ways, then the storms abate. The things that
+disturb us are by no means so much external as inward; and there is a
+charm and a fascination in the thought, 'the Lord is peace,' which
+stills the inward tempest, and makes us quiet, waiting upon His will
+and drawing in His grace. The secret of rest is to cease from self,
+from self as guide, from self as aim, from self as safety. And when
+self-will is cast out, and self-dependence is overcome, and
+self-reliance is sublimed into hanging upon God's hand, and when He,
+not mine own inclination, is my Director, and the Arbiter of my fate,
+then all the fever of unrest is swept wholly out of my heart, and there
+is nothing left in it on which the gnawing tooth of anxiety or of care
+can prey. God being my peace, and I yielding myself to Him, 'in
+quietness and confidence' is my 'strength.' 'Thou shalt keep him in
+perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon Thee, because he trusteth in
+Thee.'
+
+II. We may look upon this inscription from another point of view, as
+suggesting the thought that God's peace is the best preparation for,
+and may be experienced in the midst of, the intensest conflict.
+
+Remember what the purpose of this vision was,--to raise up a man to
+fight an almost desperate fight, no metaphorical war, but one with real
+sharp swords, against real strong enemies. The first blow in the
+campaign was to be struck that night. Gideon was being summoned by the
+vision, to long years of hardship and bitter warfare, and his
+preparation for the conflict consisted largely in the revelation to his
+inmost spirit that 'Jehovah is peace.' We might rather have looked for
+a manifestation of the divine nature as ready to go forth to battle
+with the raw levies of timid peasants. We should have expected the
+thought which inspired their captain to have been 'The Lord is a man of
+war,' rather than 'The Lord is peace.' But it is not so--and therein
+lies the deep truth that the peace of God is the best preparation for
+strife. It gives courage, it leaves the heart at leisure to fling all
+its power into the conflict, it inspires with the consciousness of a
+divine ally. As Paul puts it, in his picture of the fully-armed
+Christian soldier, the feet are 'shod with the preparedness of alacrity
+which is produced by the gospel of peace.' That will make us 'ready,
+aye ready' for the roughest march, and enable us to stand firm against
+the most violent charges of the enemy. There is no such preparation for
+the conflict of life, whether it be waged against our own inward evil,
+or against opposing forces without, as to have deep within the soul the
+settled and substantial peace of God. If we are to come out of the
+battle with victory sitting on our helmets, we must go into it with the
+Dove of God brooding in our hearts. As the Lord said to Gideon, 'Go in
+_this_ thy might, and thou shalt save Israel, ... have not I sent thee?'
+
+But, besides this thought that the knowledge of Jehovah as peace fits
+us for strife, that hastily-reared altar with its seemingly
+inappropriate name, may remind us that it is possible, in the midst of
+the deadliest hand-to-hand grip with evil, and whilst fighting the
+'good fight of faith' with the most entire self-surrender to the divine
+will, to bear within us, deeper than all the surface strife, that
+inward tranquillity which knows no disturbance, though the outward life
+is agitated by fierce storms. Deep in the centre of the ocean the
+waters lie quiet, though the wildest tempests are raging above, and the
+fiercest currents running. Over the tortured and plunging waters of the
+cataract there lies unmoving, though its particles are in perpetual
+flux, the bow of promise and of peace. So over all the rush and thunder
+of life there may stretch, radiant and many-coloured, and dyed with
+beauty by the very sun himself, the abiding bow of beauty, the emblem
+and the reality of the divine tranquillity. The Christian life is
+continual warfare, but in it all, 'the peace of God which passeth
+understanding' may 'garrison our hearts and minds.' In the inmost keep
+of the castle, though the storm of war may be breaking against the
+walls, there will be a quiet chamber where no noise of the archers can
+penetrate, and the shouts of the fight are never heard. Let us seek to
+live in the 'secret place of the Most High'; and in still communion
+with Him, keep our inmost souls in quiet, while we bravely front
+difficulties and enemies. You are to be God's warriors; see to it that
+on every battlefield there stands the altar 'Jehovah Shalom.'
+
+III. Lastly, we may draw yet another lesson, and say that that altar,
+with its significant inscription, expressed the aim of the conflict and
+the hope which sustains in the fight.
+
+Gideon was fighting for peace, and what he desired was that victory
+should bring tranquillity. The hope which beckoned him on, when he
+flung himself into his else desperate enterprise, was that God would so
+prosper his work that the swords might be beaten into ploughshares, and
+the spears into pruning hooks. Which things may stand as an allegory,
+and suggest to us that the Christian warfare, whilst it rests upon, and
+is prompted by, the revelation of God who is peace, aims in all its
+blows, at the conquering of that sure and settled peace which shall be
+broken by no rebellious outbursts of self-will, nor by any risings of
+passions and desires. The aim of our warfare should ever be that the
+peace of God may be throned in our hearts, and sit there a gentle
+queen. The true tranquillity of the blessed life is the prize of
+conflict. David, 'the man of war from his youth,' prepares the throne
+for Solomon, in whose reign no alarms of war are heard. If you would
+enter into peace, you must fight your way to it, and every step of the
+road must be a battle. The land of peace is won by the good fight of
+faith.
+
+But Gideon's altar not only expressed his purpose in his taking up
+arms, but his confidence of accomplishing it, based upon the assurance
+that the Lord would give peace. It was a trophy erected before the
+fight, and built, not by arrogant presumption or frivolous
+underestimate of the enemy's strength, but by humble reliance on the
+power of that Lord who had promised His presence, and had assured
+triumph. So the hope that named this altar was the hope that war meant
+victory, and that victory would bring peace. That hope should animate
+every Christian soldier. Across the dust of the conflict, the fair
+vision of unbroken and eternal peace should gleam before each of us,
+and we should renew fainting strength and revive drooping courage by
+many a wistful gaze.
+
+We may realise that hope in large measure here. But its fulfilment is
+reserved for the land of peace which we enter by the last conflict with
+the last enemy.
+
+Every Christian man's gravestone is an altar on which is written 'Our
+God is peace'; in token that the warrior has passed into the land where
+'violence shall no more be heard, wasting, nor destruction within its
+borders,' but all shall be deep repose, and the unarmed, because
+unattacked, peace of tranquil communion with, and likeness to, 'Jehovah
+our Peace.'
+
+So, dear brethren, let us pass from tradition and hearsay into personal
+intercourse with God, and from shrinking and doubt into the sunshine of
+the conviction that He is our peace. And then, with His tranquillity in
+our hearts let us go out, the elect apostles of the peace of God, and
+fight for Him, after the pattern of the Captain of our salvation, who
+had to conquer peace through conflict; and was 'first of all King of
+Righteousness, and _after that_ also King of Peace.'
+
+
+
+
+GIDEON'S FLEECE
+
+'Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on
+the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I
+know that Thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as Thou hast
+said.'--JUDGES vi. 37.
+
+
+The decisive moment had come when Gideon, with his hastily gathered raw
+levies, was about to plunge down to the plain to face immensely
+superior forces trained to warfare. No wonder that the equally
+untrained leader's heart heat faster. Many a soldier, who will be
+steadfastly brave in the actual shock of battle, has tremors and
+throbbings on its eve. Gideon's hand shook a little as he drew his
+sword.
+
+I. Gideon's request.
+
+His petition for a sign was not the voice of unbelief or of doubt or of
+presumption, but in it spoke real, though struggling faith, seeking to
+be confirmed. Therefore it was not regarded by God as a sin. When a
+'wicked and adulterous generation asked for a sign,' no sign was given
+it, but when faith asks for one to help it to grasp God's hand, and to
+go on His warfare in His strength and as His instrument, it does not
+ask in vain.
+
+Gideon's prayer was wrapped, as it were, in an enfolding promise, for
+it is preceded and followed by the quotation of words of the Angel of
+the Lord who had 'looked on him,' and said, 'Go in this thy might and
+save Israel from the hand of Midian: have not I sent thee?' Prayers
+that begin and end with 'as Thou hast spoken' are not likely to be
+repulsed.
+
+II. God's answer.
+
+God wonderfully allows Gideon to dictate the nature of the sign. He
+stoops to work it both ways, backwards and forwards, as it were. First
+the fleece is to be wet and the ground to be dry, then the fleece is to
+be dry and the ground wet. Miracle was a necessary accompaniment of
+revelation in those early days, as picture-books are of childhood. But,
+though we are far enough from being 'men' in Christ, yet we have not
+the same need for 'childish things' as Gideon and his contemporaries
+had. We have Christ and the Spirit, and so have a 'word made more sure'
+than to require signs. But still it is true that the same gracious
+willingness to help a tremulous faith, which carries its tremulousness
+to God in prayer, moves the Father's heart to-day, and that to such
+petitions the answer is given even before they are offered: 'Ask what
+ye will, and it shall be done unto you.' No sign that eyes can see is
+given, but inward whispers speak assurance and communicate the
+assurance which they speak.
+
+III. The meaning of the sign.
+
+Many explanations have been offered. The main point is that the fleece
+is to be made different from the soil around it. It is to be a proof of
+God's power to endow with characteristics not derived from, and
+resulting in qualities unlike, the surroundings.
+
+Gideon had no thought of any significance beyond that. But we may
+allowably let the Scripture usage of the symbol of dew influence our
+reading into the symbol a deeper meaning than it bore to him.
+
+God makes the fleece wet with dew, while all the threshing-floor is
+dry. Dew is the symbol of divine grace, of the silently formed moisture
+which, coming from no apparent source, freshens by night the wilted
+plants, and hangs in myriad drops, that twinkle into green and gold as
+the early sunshine strikes them, on the humblest twig. That grace is
+plainly not a natural product nor to be accounted for by environment.
+The dew of the Spirit, which God and God only, can give, can freshen
+our worn and drooping souls, can give joy in sorrow, can keep us from
+being touched by surrounding evils, and from being parched by
+surrounding drought, can silently 'distil' its supplies of strength
+according to our need into our else dry hearts.
+
+The wet fleece on the dry ground was not only a revelation of God's
+power, but may be taken as a pattern of what God's soldiers must ever
+be. A prophet long after Gideon said: 'The remnant of Jacob shall be in
+the midst of many peoples as dew from the Lord,' bringing to others the
+grace which they have received that they may diffuse it, and turning
+the dry and thirsty land where no water is into fertility, and the
+'parched ground' into a 'pool.'
+
+We have said that the main point of Gideon's petition was that the
+fleece should be made unlike the threshing-floor, and that that
+unlikeness, which could obviously not be naturally brought about, was
+to be to him the sure token that God was at work to produce it. The
+strongest demonstration that the Church can give the world of its
+really being God's Church is its unlikeness to the world. If it is wet
+with divine dew when all the threshing-floor is dry, and if, when all
+the floor is drenched with poisonous miasma, it is dry from the
+diffused and clinging malaria, the world will take knowledge of it, and
+some souls be set to ask how this unlikeness comes. When Haman has to
+say: 'There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among
+the peoples ... and their laws are diverse from those of every people,'
+he may meditate murder, but 'many from among the people of the land'
+will join their ranks. Gideon may or may not have thought of the fleece
+as a symbol of his little host, but we may learn from it the old
+lesson, 'Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the
+renewing of your minds.'
+
+
+
+
+'FIT, THOUGH FEW'
+
+'Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him,
+rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host
+of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh,
+in the valley. 2. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are
+with thee are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands,
+lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, saying, Mine own hand hath
+saved me. 3. Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people,
+saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart
+early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and
+two thousand; and there remained ten thousand. 4. And the Lord said
+unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the
+water, and I will try them for thee there: and it shall be, that of
+whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with
+thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee. This shall not go with thee,
+the same shall not go. 5. So he brought down the people unto the water:
+and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with
+his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise
+every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. 6. And the number
+of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three
+hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees
+to drink water. 7. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred
+men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine
+hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place. 8. So
+the people took victuals in their hand, and their trumpets: and he sent
+all the rest of Israel every man unto his tent, and retained those
+three hundred men. And the host of Midian was beneath him in the
+valley.'--JUDGES vii 1-8.
+
+
+Gideon is the noblest of the judges. Courage, constancy, and caution
+are strongly marked in his character. The youngest son of an obscure
+family in a small tribe, he humbly shrinks from the task imposed on
+him,--not from cowardice or indolence, but from conscious weakness. Men
+who are worthy to do such work as his are never forward to begin it,
+nor backward in it when they are sure that it is God's will. He began
+his war against Midian by warring against Baal, whose worship had
+brought the oppressor. If any thorough deliverance from the misery
+which departure from God has wrought is to be effected, we must destroy
+the idols before we attack the spoilers. Cast out sin, and you cast out
+sorrow. So he first earns his new name of Jerubbaal ('Let Baal plead'),
+and is known as Baal's antagonist, before he blows the trumpet of
+revolt. The name is an omen of victory. The hand that had smitten the
+idol, and had not been withered, would smite Midian. Therefore that new
+name is used in this chapter, which tells of the preparations for the
+fight and its triumphant issue. From his home among the hills, he had
+sent the fiery cross to the three northern tribes, who had been the
+mainstay of Deborah's victory, and who now rallied around Gideon to the
+number of thirty-two thousand. The narrative shows us the two armies
+confronting each other on the opposite slopes of the valley of Jezreel,
+where it begins to dip steeply towards the Jordan. Gideon and his men
+are on the south side of the valley, above the fountain of Harod, or
+'Trembling,' apparently so called from the confessed terror which
+thinned his army. The word 'is afraid,' in verse 3, comes from the same
+root. On the other side of the glen, not far from the site of the
+Philistine camp on the day of Saul's last defeat, lay the
+far-stretching camp of the invaders, outnumbering Israel by four to
+one. For seven years these Midianite marauders had paralysed Israel,
+and year by year had swarmed up this valley from the eastern desert,
+and thence by the great plain had penetrated into every corner of the
+land, as far south as Gaza, devouring like locusts. It is the same easy
+route by which, to this day, the Bedouin find their way into Palestine,
+whenever the weak Turkish Government is a little weaker or more corrupt
+than usual. Apparently, the Midianites were on their homeward march,
+laden with spoil, and very contemptuous of the small force across the
+valley, who, on their part, had not shaken off their terror of the
+fierce nomads who had used them as they pleased for seven years.
+
+I. Note, as the first lesson taught here, the divinely appointed
+disproportion between means and end, and its purpose. Many an Israelite
+would look across to the long lines of black tents, and think, 'We are
+too few for our task'; but to God's eye they were too many, and the
+first necessity was to weed them out. The numbers must be so reduced
+that the victory shall be unmistakably God's, not theirs. The same sort
+of procedure, and for the same reason, runs through all God's dealings.
+It is illustrated in a hundred Scripture instances, and is stated most
+plainly by Paul in his triumphant eloquence. He revels in telling how
+foolish, weak, base things, that are _no_ things in the world's
+estimate, have been chosen to cover with shame wise, strong, honoured
+things, which seem to be somewhat; and he gives the same reason as our
+lesson does, 'that no flesh should glory in His presence.' Eleven poor
+men on one side, and all the world on the other, made fearful odds. The
+more unevenly matched are the respective forces, the more plainly does
+the victory of the weaker demand for its explanation the intervention
+of God. The old sneer, that 'Providence is always on the side of the
+strongest battalions,' is an audacious misreading of history, and is
+the very opposite of the truth. It is the weak battalions which win in
+the long run, for the history of every good cause is the same. First,
+it kindles a fire in the hearts of two or three nobodies, who are
+burned in earlier times, and laughed at as fools, fanatics,
+impracticable dreamers, in later ages, but whose convictions grow till,
+one day, the world wakes up to find that everybody believes them, and
+then it 'builds the tombs of the prophets.'
+
+Why should God desire that there shall be no mistake as to who wins the
+battle? The answer may very easily be so given as to make what is
+really a token of His love become an unlovely and repellent trait in
+His character. It is not eagerness for praise that moves Him, but
+longing that men may have the blessedness of recognising His hand
+fighting for them. It is for Israel's sake that He is so solicitous to
+deliver them from the delusion of their having won the victory. It is
+because He loves us and would fain have us made restful, confident, and
+strong, in the assurance of His fighting for us, that He takes pains so
+to order the history of His Church in the world, that it is one long
+attestation of the omnipotence of weakness when His power flows through
+it. To say 'Mine own hand hath saved me,' is to lose unspeakable peace
+and blessing; to say 'Not I, but the grace of God in me,' is to be
+serene and of good cheer in the face of outnumbering foes, and sure of
+victory in all conflicts. Therefore God is careful to save us from
+self-gratulation and self-confidence.
+
+One lesson we may learn from this thinning of the ranks; namely, that
+we need not be anxious to count heads, when we are sure that we are
+doing His work, nor even be afraid of being in a minority. Minorities
+are generally right when they are the apostles of new thoughts, though
+the minorities which cleave to some old fossil are ordinarily wrong.
+The prophet and his man were alone and ringed around with enemies, when
+he said, 'They that be with us are more than they that be with them';
+and yet he was right, for the mountain was full of horses and chariots
+of fire. Let us be sure that we are on God's side, and then let us not
+mind how few are in the ranks with us, nor be afraid, though the
+far-extended front of the enemy threatens to curl around our flanks and
+enclose us. The three hundred heroes had God with them, and that was
+enough.
+
+II. Note the self-applied test of courage which swept away so much
+chaff. According to Deuteronomy xx. 8, the standing enactment was that
+such a proclamation as that in verse 3 should precede every battle.
+Much difficulty has been raised about the mention of Mount Gilead here,
+as the only Mount Gilead otherwise mentioned in Scripture lay to the
+east of Jordan. But perhaps the simplest solution is the true one,-that
+there was another hilly region so named on the western side. The map of
+the Palestine Exploration Fund attaches the name to the northern slopes
+of the western end of Gilboa, where Gideon was now encamped, and that
+is probably right. Be that as it may, the effect of the proclamation
+was startling. Two-thirds of the army melted away. No doubt, many who
+had flocked to Gideon's standard felt their valour oozing out at their
+finger ends, when they came close to the enemy, and saw their long
+array across the valley. It must have required some courage to confess
+being afraid, but the cowards were numerous enough to keep each other
+in countenance. Two out of three were panic-struck. I wonder if the
+proportion would be less in Christ's army to-day, if professing
+Christians were as frank as Gideon's men?
+
+Why were the 'fearful' dismissed? Because fear is contagious; and, in
+undisciplined armies like Gideon's, panic, once started, spreads
+swiftly, and becomes frenzied confusion. The same thing is true in the
+work of the Church to-day. Who that has had much to do with guiding its
+operations has not groaned over the dead weight of the timid and
+sluggish souls, who always see difficulties and never the way to get
+over them? And who that has had to lead a company of Christian men has
+not often been ready to wish that he could sound out Gideon's
+proclamation, and bid the 'fearful and afraid' take away the chilling
+encumbrance of their presence, and leave him with thinned ranks of
+trusty men? Cowardice, dressed up as cautious prudence, weakens the
+efficiency of every regiment in Christ's army.
+
+Another reason for getting rid of the fearful is that fear is the
+opposite of faith, and that therefore, where it is uppermost, the door
+by which God's power can enter to strengthen is closed. Not that faith
+must be free of all admixture of fear, but that it must subdue fear, if
+a man is to be God's warrior, fighting in His strength. Many a tremor
+would rock the hearts of the ten thousand who remained, but they so
+controlled their terror that it did not overcome their faith. We do not
+need, for our efficiency in Christ's service, complete exemption from
+fear, but we do need to make the psalmist's resolve ours: 'I will
+trust, and not be afraid.' Terror shuts the door against the entrance
+of the grace which makes us conquerors, and so fulfils its own
+forebodings; faith opens the door, and so fulfils its own confidences.
+
+III. Note the final test. God required but few men, but He required
+that these should be fit. The first test had sifted out the brave and
+willing. The liquor was none the less, though so much froth had been
+blown off. As Thomas Fuller says, there were 'fewer persons, but not
+fewer men,' after the poltroons had disappeared. The second test, 'a
+purgatory of water,' as the same wise and witty author calls it, was
+still more stringent. The dwindled ranks were led down from their camp
+on the slopes to the fountain and brook which lay in the valley near
+the Midianites' camp. Gideon alone seems to have known that a test was
+to be applied there; but he did not know what it was to be till they
+reached the spring, and the soldiers did not know that they were
+determining their fate when they drank. The two ways of drinking
+clearly indicated a difference in the men. Those who glued their lips
+to the stream and swilled till they were full, were plainly more
+self-indulgent, less engrossed with their work, less patient of fatigue
+and thirst, than those who caught up enough in their curved palms to
+moisten their lips without stopping in their stride or breaking rank.
+The former test was self-applied, and consciously so. This is no less
+self-applied, though unconsciously. God shuts out no man from His army,
+but men shut themselves out; sometimes knowingly, by avowed
+disinclination for the warfare, sometimes unknowingly, by
+self-indulgent habits, which proclaim their unfitness.
+
+The great lesson taught here is that self-restraint in the use of the
+world's goods is essential to all true Christian warfare. There are two
+ways of looking at and partaking of these. We may either 'drink for
+strength' or 'for drunkenness.' Life is to some men first a place for
+strenuous endeavour, and only secondly a place of refreshment. Such
+think of duty first and of water afterwards. To them, all the innocent
+joys and pleasures of the natural life are as brooks by the way, of
+which Christ's soldier should drink, mainly that he may be
+re-invigorated for conflict. There are others whose conception of life
+is a scene of enjoyment, for which work is unfortunately a necessary
+but disagreeable preliminary. One does not often see such a character
+in its pure perfection of sensualism; but plenty of approximations to
+it are visible, and ugly sights they are. The roots of it are in us
+all; and it cannot be too strongly insisted on that, unless it be
+subdued, we cannot enlist in Christ's army, and shall never be counted
+worthy to be His instruments. Such self-restraint is especially needful
+to be earnestly inculcated on young men and women, to whom life is
+opening as if it were a garden of delight, whose passions are strong,
+whose sense is keen, whose experience is slender, and to whom all
+earth's joys appeal more strongly than they do to those who have drunk
+of the cup, and know how bitter is its sediment. It is especially
+needful to be pealed into the ears of a generation like ours, in which
+senseless luxury, the result of wealth which has increased faster than
+the power of rightly using it, has attained such enormous proportions,
+and is threatening, in commercial communities especially, to drown all
+noble aspirations, and Spartan simplicity, and Christian self-devotion,
+in its muddy flood. Surely never was Gideon's test more wanted for the
+army of the Lord of hosts than it is to-day.
+
+Such self-restraint gives double sweetness to enjoyments, which, when
+partaken of more freely, pall on the jaded palate. 'The full soul
+loatheth a honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is
+sweet.' The senses are kept fine-edged, and the rare holidays are
+sweeter because they are rare. The most refined prudence of the mere
+sensualist would prescribe the same regimen as the Christian moralist
+does. But from how different a motive! Christ calls for self-restraint
+that we may be fit organs for His power, and bids us endure hardness
+that we may be good soldiers of His. If we know anything of the true
+sweetness of His fellowship and service, it will not be hard to drink
+sparingly of earthly fountains, when we have the river of His pleasures
+to drink from; nor will it be painful sacrifice to cast away imitation
+jewels, in order to clasp in our hands the true riches of His love and
+imparted life.
+
+
+
+
+A BATTLE WITHOUT A SWORD
+
+'And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream
+unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake
+of barley-bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent,
+and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along.
+14. And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the
+sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand
+hath God delivered Midian, and all the host. 15, And it was so, when
+Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation thereof,
+that he worshipped, and returned into the host of Israel, and said,
+Arise; for the Lord hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian.
+16. And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he
+put a trumpet in every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps
+within the pitchers. 17. And he said unto them, Look on me, and do
+likewise: and, behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall
+be, that as I do, so shall ye do. 18. When I blow with a trumpet, I and
+all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every side of
+all the camp, and say, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. 19. So
+Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside
+of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but
+newly set the watch: and they blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers
+that were in their hands. 20. And the three companies blew the
+trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left
+hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they
+cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. 21. And they stood every
+man in his place round about the camp: and all the host ran, and cried,
+and fled. 22. And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the Lord set
+every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and
+the host fled to Beth-shittah in Zererath, and to the border of
+Abel-meholah, unto Tabbath. 23. And the men of Israel gathered
+themselves together out of Naphtali, and out of Asher, and out of all
+Manasseh, and pursued after the Midianites.'--JUDGES vii. 13-23.
+
+
+To reduce thirty-two thousand to three hundred was a strange way of
+preparing for a fight; and, no doubt, the handful left felt some
+sinking of their courage when they looked on their own small number and
+then on the widespread Midianite host. Gideon, too, would need
+heartening. So the first thing to be noted is the encouragement given
+him. God strengthens faith when it needs strengthening, and He has many
+ways of doing so. Note that Gideon's visit to the Midianite camp was on
+'the same night' on which his little band was left alone after the
+ordeal by water. How punctually to meet our need, when it begins to be
+felt, does God's help come! It was by God's command that he undertook
+the daring adventure of stealing down to the camp. We can fancy how
+silently he and Phurah crept down the hillside, and, with hushed breath
+and wary steps, lest they should stumble on and wake some sleeper, or
+even rouse some tethered camel, picked their way among the tents. But
+they had God's command and promise, and these make men brave, and turn
+what would else be foolhardy into prudence. Ho put his ear to the black
+camel's-hair wall of one tent, and heard what his faith could not but
+recognise as God's message to him.
+
+The soldier's dream was just such as such a man would dream in such
+circumstances. A round loaf of barley (the commonest kind of bread) was
+dreamed of as rolling down from a height and upsetting '_the_ tent.'
+The use of the definite article seems to point to some particular tent,
+perhaps simply the one in which the dreamer lay, or perhaps the
+general's; but the noun may be used as a collective, and what is meant
+may be that the loaf went through the camp, overturning all the tents
+in its way. The interpretation needed no Daniel, but the immediate
+explanation given, shows not only the transparency of the symbol, but
+the dread in the Midianite ranks of Gideon's prowess. A nameless awe,
+which goes far to produce the defeat it dreads, was beginning to creep
+over them. It finds utterance both in the dream and in its translation.
+The tiny loaf worked effects disproportioned to its size. A rock
+thundering down the hillside might have mass and momentum enough to
+level a line of tents, but one poor loaf to do it! Some mightier than
+human hand must have set it going on its career. So the soldier
+interprets that God had delivered the army into Gideon's hand.
+
+This dream suggests two or three considerations. In several instances
+we find God speaking to those outside Israel by dreams; for example, to
+Pharaoh and his two officers, Nebuchadnezzar, Pilate's wife. It is the
+lowest form of divine communication, and, like other lower forms, is
+not to be looked for when the higher teaching of the Spirit of Christ
+is open to us all.
+
+Again, while both dream and interpretation might be accounted for on
+simply natural grounds, a deeper insight into the so-called 'natural'
+brings us to see it as all penetrated by the operations of the
+ever-present God. And the coincidences which brought Gideon to just
+that tent among the thousands along the valley at just the moment when
+the two startled sleepers were talking, might well strike Gideon, as
+they did, as being God's own fulfilment of the promise that 'what they
+say' would strengthen his hands for the attack (v. 11).
+
+Further, Gideon had already had the sign of the fleece and the dew; but
+God does not disdain to let him have an additional encouragement, and
+to let him draw confirmation of his own token from the talk of two
+Midianites. Faith may be buttressed by men's words, albeit its only
+foundation is God's.
+
+Gideon has a place in the muster-roll of heroes of faith in Hebrews
+xi., and his whole conduct in this incident proves his right to stand
+there. 'He worshipped,' for his soul went out in trust to God, whose
+voice he heard through the two Midianites, and bowed in thankfulness
+and submissive obedience. There could be no outward worship there, with
+an army of sleepers close by, but the silent uplifting of confidence
+and desire reaches God and strengthens the man. So he went back with
+new assurance of victory, and roused his sleeping band.
+
+Mark his words as another token of his faith. The Midianite interpreter
+had said, '_God_ has delivered'; Gideon says, 'The _Lord_ has
+delivered.' The former name is the more general, and is natural on the
+lips of a heathen; the latter is the covenant name, and to use it
+implies reliance on the Jehovah revealed by His acts to Israel. The
+Midianite had said that the host was delivered into Gideon's hand; he
+says that it is delivered into the hands of the three hundred,
+suppressing himself and honouring them. God's soldiers must be willing
+to 'esteem others better than themselves,' and to fight for God's
+glory, not their own. The Midianite had said, 'This is ... the sword of
+Gideon'; he bid his men cry 'the sword of _the Lord, and_ of Gideon.'
+It was God's cause for which they were contending, not his; and yet it
+was his, inasmuch as he was God's instrument. 'Excellent mixture,' says
+Thomas Fuller, 'both joined together; admirable method, God put in the
+first place. Where divine blessing leads up the van, and man's valour
+brings up the battle, must not victory needs follow in the rear?'
+
+Gideon does not seem to have been divinely directed to the stratagem by
+which the Midianites were thrown into panic. He had been promised
+victory, but that does not lead him to idle waiting for fulfilment of
+the promise. 'To wait for God's performance in doing nothing is to
+abuse that divine providence, which will so work that it will not allow
+us to idle' (_Bishop Hall_). True faith will wisely adopt means to
+reach promised ends, and, having used brain and hand as if all depended
+on ourselves, will look to Him, as if nothing depended on us, but all
+on Him.
+
+There was strong faith as well as daring and skilful generalship in
+leading down the three hundred, with no weapons but trumpets and
+pitchers, to close quarters with an armed enemy so superior in numbers.
+And did it not need some faith, too, not only in Gideon but in God, on
+the part of his band, to plunge down the hill on such an errand, each
+man with both his hands full, and so unable to strike a blow? The other
+three hundred at Thermopylae have been wept over and sung; were not
+these three hundred as true heroes? Let us not count heads when we are
+called on to take God's side. His soldiers are always in the minority,
+but, if He is reckoned in, the minority becomes the majority. 'They
+that be with us are more than they that be with them.'
+
+One can fancy the sleepers starting up dazed by the sudden bray of the
+trumpets and the wild shout of that war-cry yelled from every side. As
+they stumbled out of their tents, without leaders, without knowledge of
+the numbers of their foe, and saw all around the flaring torches, and
+heard the trumpet-blasts, which seemed to speak of an immense attacking
+force, no wonder that panic shook them, and they fled. Huge mobs of
+undisciplined men, as Eastern armies are, and these eminently were, are
+especially liable to such infectious alarms; and the larger the force,
+the faster does panic spread, the more unmanageable does the army
+become, and the more fatal are the results. Each man reflects, and so
+increases, his neighbour's fear. 'Great armies, once struck with
+amazement, are like wounded whales. Give them but line enough, and the
+fishes will be the fishermen to catch themselves.'
+
+So the host broke up in wild disorder, and hurried in fragments towards
+the Jordan fords, trampling each other down as they raced through the
+darkness, and each man, as he ran, dreading to feel the enemy's sword
+in his back next moment. `The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the
+righteous is bold as a lion.' Thus without stroke of weapon was the
+victory won. The battle was the Lord's.
+
+And the story is not antiquated in substance, however the form of the
+contests which God's soldiers have to-day to fight has changed. Still
+it is true that we shall only wage war aright when we feel that it is
+His cause for which we contend, and His sword which wins the victory.
+If Gideon had put himself first in his warcry, or had put his own name
+only in it, the issue would have been different.
+
+May we not also venture to apply the peculiar accoutrements of the
+victorious three hundred to ourselves? Christ's men have no weapons to
+wield but the sounding out from them, as from a trumpet, of the word of
+the Lord, and the light of a Christian life shining through earthen
+vessels. If we boldly lift up our voices in the ancient war-cry, and
+let that word peal forth from us, and flash the light of holy lives on
+a dark world, we may break the sleeper's slumbers to a glad waking, and
+win the noblest of victories by leading them to enlist in the army of
+our Captain, and to become partakers of His conquests by letting Him
+conquer, and thereby save them.
+
+
+
+
+STRENGTH PROFANED AND LOST
+
+'But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him
+down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in
+the prison-house. 22, Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again
+after he was shaven. 23. Then the lords of the Philistines gathered
+them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and
+to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into
+our hand. 24. And when the people saw him, they praised their god: for
+they said, Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the
+destroyer of our country, which slew many of us. 25. And it came to
+pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson,
+that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the
+prison-house; and he made them sport; and they set him between the
+pillars. 20. And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand.
+Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth,
+that I may lean upon them. 27. Now the house was full of men and women;
+and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon
+the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson
+made sport. 28. And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God,
+remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this
+once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Phillistines.  And he
+bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords,
+and upon all the people that were therein.  So the dead which he slew
+at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.  31. Then
+his brethren and all the house of his father came down, and took him,
+and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Ishtaol in the
+burying place of Munnah his father.  And he judged Israel twenty
+years.'--Judges xvi. 21-31.
+
+
+Nobody could be less like the ordinary idea of an Old Testament 'saint'
+than Samson. His gift from 'the spirit of the Lord' was simply physical
+strength, and it was associated with the defects of his qualities. His
+passions were strong, and apparently uncontrolled. He had no moral
+elevation or religious fervour. He led no army against the Philistines,
+nor seems to have had any fixed design of resisting them. He seeks a
+wife among them, and is ready to feast and play at riddles with them.
+When he does attack them, it is because he is stung by personal
+injuries; and it is only with his own arm that he strikes. His exploits
+have a mixture of grim humour and fierce hatred quite unlike anything
+else in Scripture, and more resembling the horse-play of Homeric or
+Norse heroes than the stern purpose and righteous wrath of a soldier
+who felt that he was God's instrument. We seem to hear his loud
+laughter as he ties the firebrands to the struggling jackals, or swings
+the jaw-bone. A strange champion for Jehovah! But we must not leave out
+of sight, in estimating his character, the Nazarite vow, which his
+parents had made before his birth, and he had endorsed all his life.
+
+
+That supplies the substratum which is lacking, The unshorn hair and the
+abstinence from wine were the signs of consecration to God, which might
+often fail of reaching the deepest recesses of the will and spirit, but
+still was real, and gave the point of contact for the divine gift of
+strength. Samson's strength depended on his keeping the vow, of which
+the outward sign was the long, matted locks; and therefore, when he let
+these be shorn, he voluntarily cast away his dependence on and
+consecration to God, and his strength ebbed from him. He had broken the
+conditions on which he received it, and it disappeared. So the story
+which connects the loss of his long hair with the loss of his
+superhuman power has a worthy meaning, and puts in a picturesque form
+an eternal truth.
+
+We see here, first, Samson the prisoner. Milton has caught the spirit
+of the sad picture in verses 21 and 22, in that wonderful line,
+
+           'Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves,'
+
+in which the clauses drop heavily like slow tears, each adding a new
+touch of woe. The savage manners of the times used the literal forcing
+out of the eyes from their sockets as the easiest way of reducing
+dangerous enemies to harmlessness. Pitiable as the loss was, Samson was
+better blind than seeing. The lust of the eye had led him astray, and
+the loss of his sight showed him his sin. Fetters of brass betrayed his
+jailers' dread of his possibly returning strength; and the menial task
+to which he was set was meant as a humiliation, in giving him woman's
+work to do, as if this were all for which the eclipsed hero was now
+fit. Generous enemies are merciful; the baser sort reveal their former
+terror by the indignities they offer to their prisoner.
+
+In Samson we see an impersonation of Israel. Like him, the nation was
+strong so long as it kept the covenant of its God. Like him, it was
+ever prone to follow after strange loves. Its Delilahs were the gods of
+the heathen, in whose laps it laid its anointed head, and at whose
+hands it suffered the loss of its God-given strength; for, like Samson,
+Israel was weak when it forgot its consecration, and its punishment
+came from the objects of its infatuated desires. Like him, it was
+blinded, bound, and reduced to slavery, for all its power was held, as
+was his, on condition of loyalty to God. His life is as a mirror, in
+which the nation might see their own history reflected; and the lesson
+taught by the story of the captive hero, once so strong, and now so
+weak, is the lesson which Moses taught the nation: 'Because thou
+servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of
+heart, by reason of the abundance of all things: therefore shalt thou
+serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger,
+and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things, and He
+shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck' (Deut. xxviii. 47, 48). The
+blind Samson, chained, at the mill, has a warning for us, too. That is
+what God's heroes come to, if once they prostitute the God-given
+strength to the base loves of self and the flattering world. We are
+strong only as we keep our hearts clear of lower loves, and lean on God
+alone. Delilah is most dangerous when honeyed words drop from her lips.
+The world's praise is more harmful than its censure. Its favours are
+only meant to draw the secret of our strength from us, that we may be
+made weak; and nothing gives the Philistines so much pleasure as the
+sight of God's warriors caught in their toils and robbed of power.
+
+But Samson's misery was Samson's blessedness. The 'howbeit' of verse 22
+is more than a compensation for all the wretchedness. The growth of his
+hair is not there mentioned as a mere natural fact, nor with the
+superstitious notion that his hair made him strong. God made him strong
+on condition of his keeping his vow of consecration. The long matted
+locks were the visible sign that he kept it. Their loss was the
+consequence of his own voluntary breach of it. So their growth was the
+visible token that the fault was being repaired. Chastisement wrought
+sorrow; and in the bondage of the prison he found freedom from the
+worse chains of sin, and in its darkness felt the dawning of a better
+light. As Bishop Hall puts it: 'His hair grew together with his
+repentance, and his strength with his hair.' The cruelties of the
+Philistines were better for him than their kindness. The world outwits
+itself when it presses hard on God's deserters, and thus drives them to
+repent. God mercifully takes care that His wandering children shall not
+have an easy time of it; and his chastisements, at their sharpest, are
+calls to us to come back to Him. Well for those, even if in chains, who
+know their meaning, and yield to it.
+
+II. We have here Samson,--the occasion of godless triumph. The worst
+consequence of the fall of a servant of God is that it gives occasion
+for God's enemies to blaspheme, and reflects discredit on Him, as if He
+were vanquished. Samson's capture is Dagon's glory. The strife between
+Philistia and Israel was, in the eyes of both combatants, a struggle
+between their gods; and so the men of Gaza lit their sacrificial fires
+and sent up their hymns to their monstrous deity as victor. What would
+Samson's bitter thoughts be, as the sound of the wild rejoicings
+reached him in his prison? And is not all this true to-day? If ever
+some conspicuous Christian champion falls into sin or inconsistency,
+how the sky is rent with shouts of malicious pleasure! What paragons of
+virtue worldly men become all at once! How swiftly the conclusion is
+drawn that all Christians are alike, and none of them any better than
+the non-Christian world! How much more harm the one flaw does than all
+the good which a life of service has done! The faults of Christians are
+the bulwarks of unbelief. `The name of God is blasphemed among the
+Gentiles through you.' The honour of Christ is a sacred trust, and it
+is in the keeping of us His followers. Our sins do not only darken our
+own reputation, but they cloud His. Dagon's worshippers have a right to
+rejoice when they have Samson safe in their prison, with his eyes out.
+
+III. We have Samson made a buffoon for drunkards. The feasts of
+heathenism were wild orgies, very unlike the pure joy of the
+sacrificial meals in Jehovah's worship. Dagon's temple was filled with
+a drunken crowd, whose mirth would be made more boisterous by a spice
+of cruelty. So, a roar of many voices calls for Samson, and this
+deepest degradation is not spared him. The words employed for 'make
+sport' seem to require that we should understand that he was not
+brought out to be the passive object of their gibes and drunken
+mockery, but was set to play the fool for their delectation. They imply
+that he had to dance and laugh, while three thousand gaping
+Philistines, any one of whom would have run for his life if he had been
+free, fed their hatred by the sight. Perhaps his former reputation for
+mirth and riddles suggested this new cruelty. Surely there is no more
+pathetic picture than that of the blind hero, with such thoughts as we
+know were seething in him, dragged out to make a Philistine holiday,
+and set to play the clown, while the bitterness of death was in his
+soul. And this is what God's soldiers come down to, when they forget
+Him: 'they that wasted us required of us mirth.'
+
+Wearied with his humiliating exertions, the blind captive begs the boy
+who guided him to let him lean, till he can breathe again, on the
+pillars that held up the light roof. We need not discuss the probable
+architecture of Dagon's temple, of which we know nothing. Only we may
+notice that it is not said that there were only _two_ pillars, but
+rather necessarily implied that there were more than two, for those
+against which he leaned were 'the two middle' ones. It is quite easy to
+understand how, if there were a row of them, knocking out the two
+strongest central ones would bring the whole thing down, especially
+when there was such a load on the flat roof. Apparently the principal
+people were in the best places on the ground floor, sheltered from the
+sun by the roof, on which the commonalty were clustered, all waiting
+for what their newly discovered mountebank would do next, after he had
+breathed himself. The pause was short, and they little dreamed of what
+was to follow.
+
+IV. We have the last cry and heroic death of Samson. It is not to be
+supposed that his prayer was audible to the crowd, even if it were
+spoken aloud. It is not an elevated prayer, but is, like all the rest
+of his actions at their best, deeply marked with purely personal
+motives. The loss of his two eyes is uppermost in his mind, and he
+wants to be revenged for them. Instead of trying to make a lofty hero
+out of him, it is far better to recognise frankly the limitations of
+his character and the imperfections of his religion. The distance
+between him and the New Testament type of God's soldier measures the
+progress which the revelation of God's will has made, and the debt we
+owe to the Captain of the host for the perfect example which He has
+set. The defects and impurity of Samson's zeal, which yet was accepted
+of God, preach the precious lesson that God does not require virtues
+beyond the standard of the epoch of revelation at which His servants
+stand, and that imperfection does not make service unacceptable. If the
+merely human passion of vengeance throbbed fiercely in Samson's prayer,
+he had never heard 'Love your enemies'; and, for his epoch, the
+destruction of the enemies of God and Israel was duty. He was not the
+only soldier of God who has let personal antagonism blend with his zeal
+for God; and we have less excuse, if we do it, than he had.
+
+But there is the true core of religion in the prayer. It is penitence
+which pleads, 'Remember me, O Lord God!' He knows that his sin has
+broken the flow of loving divine thought to him, but he asks that the
+broken current may be renewed. Many a silent tear had fallen from
+Samson's blind eyes, before that prayer could have come to his lips, as
+he leaned on the great pillars. Clear recognition of the Source of his
+strength is in the prayer; if ever he had forgotten, in Delilah's lap,
+where it came from, he had recovered his conscious dependence amid the
+misery of the prison. There is humility in the prayer 'Only this once.'
+He feels that, after such a fall, no more of the brilliant exploits of
+former days are possible. They who have brought such despite on Jehovah
+and such honour to Dagon may be forgiven, and even restored to much of
+their old vigour, but they must not be judges in Israel any more. The
+best thing left for the penitent Samson is death.
+
+He had been unconscious of the departure of his strength, but he seems
+to have felt it rushing back into his muscles; so he grasps the two
+pillars with his mighty hands; the crowd sees that the pause for breath
+is over, and prepares to watch the new feats. Perhaps we may suppose
+that his last words were shouted aloud, 'Let me die with the
+Philistines!' and before they have been rightly taken in by the mob, he
+sways himself backwards for a moment, and then, with one desperate
+forward push, brings down the two supports, and the whole thing rushes
+down to hideous ruin amid shrieks and curses and groans. But Samson
+lies quiet below the ruins, satisfied to die in such a cause.
+
+He 'counted not his life dear' unto himself, that he might be God's
+instrument for God's terrible work. The last of the judges teaches us
+that we too, in a nobler cause, and for men's life, not their
+destruction, must be ready to hazard and give our lives for the great
+Captain, who in His death has slain more of our foes than He did in His
+life, and has laid it down as the law for all His army, 'He that loseth
+his life for My sake shall find it.'
+
+How beautifully the quiet close of the story follows the stormy scene
+of the riotous assembly and the sudden destruction. The Philistines,
+crushed by this last blow, let the dead hero's kindred search for his
+body amid the chaos, and bear it reverently up from the plain to the
+quiet grave among the hills of Dan, where Manoah his father slept.
+There they lay that mighty frame to rest. It will be troubled no more
+by fierce passions or degrading chains. Nothing in his life became him
+like the leaving of it. The penitent heroism of its end makes us
+lenient to the flaws in its course; and we leave the last of the judges
+to sleep in his grave, recognising in him, with all his faults and
+grossness, a true soldier of God, though in strange garb.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF RUTH
+
+
+
+
+A GENTLE HEROINE, A GENTILE CONVERT
+
+'And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
+following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou
+lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
+God: 17. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the
+Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
+18. When she saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, then
+she left speaking unto her. 19. So they two went until they came to
+Beth-lehem. And it came to pass, when they were come to Beth-lehem,
+that all the city was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi?
+20. And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the
+Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. 21. I went out full, And the
+Lord hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi,
+seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath
+afflicted me? 22. So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her
+daughter in law, with her, which returned out of the country of Moab:
+and they came to Beth-lehem in the beginning of barley harvest.'--RUTH
+1 16-22.
+
+
+The lovely idyl of _Ruth_ is in sharp contrast with the bloody and
+turbulent annals of _Judges_. It completes, but does not contradict,
+these, and happily reminds us of what we are apt to forget in reading
+such pages, that no times are so wild but that in them are quiet
+corners, green oases, all the greener for their surroundings, where
+life glides on in peaceful isolation from the tumult. Men and women
+love and work and weep and laugh, the gossips of Bethlehem talk over
+Naomi's return ('they said,' in verse 19, is feminine), Boaz stands
+among his corn, and no sounds of war disturb them. Thank God! the
+blackest times were not so dismal in reality as they look in history.
+There are clefts in the grim rock, and flowers blooming, sheltered in
+the clefts. The peaceful pictures of this little book, multiplied many
+thousand times, have to be set as a background to the lurid pictures of
+the _Book of Judges_.
+
+The text begins in the middle of Naomi's remonstrance with her two
+daughters-in-law. We need not deal with the former part of the
+conversation, nor follow Orpah as she goes back to her home and her
+gods. She is the first in the sad series of those, 'not far from the
+kingdom of God,' who needed but a little more resolution at the
+critical moment, and, for want of it, shut themselves out from the
+covenant, and sank back to a world which they had half renounced.
+
+So these two lonely widows are left, each seeking to sacrifice herself
+for the other. Who shall decide which was the more noble and truly
+womanly in her self-forgetfulness,--the elder, sadder heart, which
+strove to secure for the other some joy and fellowship at the price of
+its own deepened solitude; or the younger, which steeled itself against
+entreaties, and cast away friends and country for love's sweet sake? We
+rightly praise Ruth's vow, but we should not forget Naomi's unselfish
+pleading to be left to tread her weary path alone.
+
+Ruth's passionate burst of tenderness is immortal. It has put into
+fitting words for all generations the deepest thoughts of loving
+hearts, and comes to us over all the centuries between, as warm and
+living as when it welled up from that gentle, heroic soul. The two
+strongest emotions of our nature are blended in it, and each gives a
+portion of its fervour--love and religion. So closely are they
+interwoven that it is difficult to allot to each its share in the
+united stream; but, without trying to determine to which of them the
+greater part of its volume and force is due, and while conscious of the
+danger of spoiling such words by comments weaker than themselves, we
+may seek to put into distinct form the impressions which they make.
+
+We see in them the heroism of gentleness. Put the sweet figure of the
+Moabitess beside the heroes of the _Book of Judges_, and we feel the
+contrast. But is there anything in its pages more truly heroic than her
+deed, as she turned her back on the blue hills of Moab, and chose the
+joyless lot of the widowed companion of a widow aged and poor, in a
+land of strangers, the enemies of her country and its gods? It is
+easier far to rush on the spears of the foe, amid the whirl and
+excitement of battle, than to choose with open eyes so dreary a
+lifelong path. The gentleness of a true woman covers a courage of the
+patient, silent sort, which, in its meek steadfastness, is nobler than
+the contempt of personal danger, which is vulgarly called bravery. It
+is harder to endure than to strike. The supreme type of heroic, as of
+all, virtue is Jesus Christ, whose gentleness was the velvet glove on
+the iron hand of an inflexible will. Of that best kind of heroes there
+are few brighter examples, even in the annals of the Church which
+numbers its virgin martyrs by the score, than this sweet figure of
+Ruth, as the eager vow comes from her young lips, which had already
+tasted sorrow, and were ready to drink its bitterest cup at the call of
+duty. She may well teach us to rectify our judgments, and to recognise
+the quiet heroism of many a modest life of uncomplaining suffering. Her
+example has a special message to women, and exhorts them to see to it
+that, in the cultivation of the so-called womanly excellence of
+gentleness, they do not let it run into weakness, nor, on the other
+hand, aim at strength, to the loss of meekness. The yielding
+birch-tree, the 'lady of the woods,' bends in all its elastic branches
+and tossing ringlets of foliage to the wind; but it stands upright
+after storms that level oaks and pines. God's strength is gentle
+strength, and ours is likest His when it is meek and lowly, like that
+of the 'strong Son of God.'
+
+Ruth's great words may suggest, too, the surrender which is the natural
+language of true love. Her story comes in among all these records of
+bloodshed and hate, like a bit of calm blue sky among piles of ragged
+thunder-clouds, or a breath of fresh air in the oppressive atmosphere
+of a slaughter-house. Even in these wild times there was still a quiet
+corner where love could spread his wings. The question has often been
+asked, what the purpose of the _Book of Ruth_ is, and various answers
+have been given. The genealogical table at the end, showing David's
+descent from her, the example which it supplies of the reception of a
+Gentile into Israel, and other reasons for its presence in Scripture,
+have been alleged, and, no doubt, correctly. But the Bible is a very
+human book, just because it is a divine one; and surely it would be no
+unworthy object to enshrine in its pages a picture of the noble working
+of that human love which makes so much of human life. The hallowing of
+the family is a distinct purpose of the Old Testament, and the
+beautiful example which this narrative gives of the elevating influence
+of domestic affection entitles it to a place in the canon. How many
+hearts, since Ruth spoke her vow, have found in it the words that
+fitted their love best! How often they have been repeated by quivering
+lips, and heard as music by loving ears! How solemn, and even awful, is
+that perennial freshness of words which came hot and broken by tears,
+from lips that have long ago mouldered into dust! What has made them
+thus 'enduring for ever,' is that they express most purely the
+self-sacrifice which is essential to all noble love. The very inmost
+longing of love is to give itself away to the object beloved. It is not
+so much a desire to acquire as to bestow, or, rather, the antithesis of
+giving and receiving melts into one action which has a twofold
+motion,--one outwards, to give; one inwards, to receive. To love is to
+give one's self away, therefore all lesser givings are its food and
+delight; and, when Ruth threw herself on Naomi's withered breast, and
+sobbed out her passionate resolve, she was speaking the eternal
+language of love, and claiming Naomi for her own, in the very act of
+giving herself to Naomi, Human love should be the parent of all
+self-sacrificing as of all heroic virtues; and in our homes we do not
+live in love, as we ought, unless it leads us to the daily exercise of
+self-suppression and surrender, which is not felt to be loss but the
+natural expression of our love, which it would be a crime against it,
+and a pain to ourselves, to withhold. If Ruth's temper lived in our
+families, they would be true 'houses of God' and 'gates of heaven.'
+
+We hear in Ruth's words also that forsaking of all things which is an
+essential of all true religion. We have said that it was difficult to
+separate, in the words, the effects of love to Naomi from those of
+adoption of Naomi's faith. Apparently Ruth's adhesion to the worship of
+Jehovah was originally due to her love for her mother-in-law. It is in
+order to be one with her in all things that she says, 'Thy God shall be
+my God.' And it was because Jehovah was Naomi's God that Ruth chose Him
+for hers. But whatever the origin of her faith, it was genuine and
+robust enough to bear the strain of casting Chemosh and the gods of
+Moab behind her, and setting herself with full purpose of heart to seek
+the Lord. Abandoning them was digging an impassable gulf between
+herself and all her past, with its friendships, loves, and habits. She
+is one of the first, and not the least noble, of the long series of
+those who 'suffer the loss of all things, and count them but dung, that
+they may win' God for their dearest treasure. We have seen how, in her,
+human love wrought self-sacrifice. But it was not human love alone that
+did it. The cord that drew her was twisted of two strands, and her love
+to Naomi melted into her love of Naomi's God. Blessed they who are
+drawn to the knowledge and love of the fountain of all love in heaven
+by the sweetness of the characters of His representatives in their
+homes, and who feel that they have learned to know God by seeing Him in
+dear ones, whose tenderness has revealed His, and whose gracious words
+have spoken of His grace! If Ruth teaches us that we must give up all,
+in order truly to follow the Lord, the way by which she came to her
+religion may teach us how great are the possibilities, and consequently
+the duties, of Christians to the members of their own families. If we
+had more elder women like Naomi, we should have more younger women like
+Ruth.
+
+The self-sacrifice which is possible and blessed, even to inferior
+natures, at the bidding of love, is too precious to be squandered on
+earthly objects. Men's capacities for it, at the call of dear ones
+here, should be the rebuke of their grudging surrender to God. He gave
+the capacity that it might find its true field of operation in our
+relation to Him. But how much more ready we all are to give up
+everything for the sake of our Naomis than for His sake: and how we may
+be our own accusers, if the measure of our devotion to them be
+contrasted with the measure of our devotion to God!
+
+Finally, we may see, in Ruth's entrance into the religion of Israel, a
+picture of what was intended to be the effect of Israel's relation with
+the Gentile world.
+
+The household of Elimelech emigrated to Moab in a famine, and, whether
+that were right or wrong, they were there among heathens as Jehovah
+worshippers. They were meant to be missionaries, and, in Ruth's case,
+the purpose was fulfilled. She became the 'first-fruits of the
+Gentiles'; and one aim of the book, no doubt, is to show how the
+believing Gentile was to be incorporated into Israel. Boaz rejoices
+over her, and especially over her conversion, and prays, 'A full reward
+be given thee of Jehovah, the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art
+come to trust.' She is married to him, and becomes the ancestress of
+David, and, through him, of the Messiah. All this is a beautiful
+completion to the other side of the picture which the fierce fighting
+in Judges makes prominent, and teaches that Israel's relation to the
+nations around was not to be one of mere antagonism, but that they had
+another mission than destruction, and were set in their land, as the
+candlestick in the Tabernacle, that light might stream out into the
+darkness of the desert. The story of the Moabitess, whose blood flowed
+in David's veins, was a standing protest against the later narrow
+exclusiveness which called Gentiles 'dogs,' and prided itself on
+outward connection with the nation, in the exact degree in which it
+lost real union with the nation's God, and real understanding of the
+nation's mission.
+
+We have left ourselves no space to speak of the remainder of this
+passage, which is of less importance. It gives us a lively picture of
+the stir in the little town of Bethlehem, as the two way-worn women
+came into it, in their strange attire, and attracting notice by
+travelling alone. As we have observed, 'they said,' in verse 19, is
+feminine. The women of the village buzzed round the strangers, as they
+sat in silence, perhaps by that well at the gate, of which, long after,
+David longed to drink. Wonder, curiosity, and possibly a spice of
+malice, mingle in the question, 'Is _this_ Naomi?' It is heartless, at
+any rate; it had been better to have found them food and shelter than
+to have let them sit, the mark for sharp tongues. Naomi's bitter words
+seem to be moved partly by a sense of the coldness of the reception.
+She realises that she has indeed come back to a changed world, where
+there will be little sympathy except such as Ruth can give. It is with
+almost passion that she abjures her name 'Pleasant,' as a satire on her
+woful lot, and bids them call her 'Bitter,' as truer to fact now. The
+burst of sorrow is natural, as she finds herself again where she had
+been a wife and mother, and 'remembers happier things.' Her faith
+wavers, and her words almost reproach God. The exaggerations in which
+memory is apt to indulge colour them. 'I went out full.' She has
+forgotten that they 'went out' to seek for bread. She only remembers
+that four went away, and three sleep in Moab. Possibly she thinks of
+their emigration as a sin, and traces her dear ones' deaths to God's
+displeasure on its account. His 'testifying' against her probably means
+that His providence in bereaving her witnessed to His disapprobation.
+But, whether that be so or not, her wild words are not those of a
+patient sufferer, who bows to His will. But true faith may sometimes
+break down, and Ruth's 'trusting under the wings of Jehovah' is proof
+enough that, in the long years of lonely sorrow, Naomi's example had
+shown how peaceful and safe was the shelter there.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD PROPHET
+
+'And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli. And the word
+of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision. 2.
+And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
+and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; 8. And ere the
+lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God
+was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep; 4. That the Lord called Samuel:
+and he answered, Here am I. 5. And he ran onto Eli, and said, Here am
+I; for thou calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And
+he went and lay down. 6. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And
+Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call
+me. And he answered, I called not, my son; lie down again. 7. Now
+Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet
+revealed unto him. 8. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time.
+And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call
+me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child. 9. Therefore
+Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if He call thee,
+that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth. So Samuel
+went and lay down in his place. 10. And the Lord came, and stood, and
+called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak;
+for Thy servant heareth. 11. And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I
+will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that
+heareth it shall tingle. 12. In that day I will perform against Eli all
+things which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin, I will
+also make an end. 13. For I have told him that I will judge his house
+for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made
+themselves vile, and he restrained them not. 14. And therefore I have
+sworn unto the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not
+be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever.'--1 SAMUEL ill. 1-14.
+
+
+The opening words of this passage are substantially repeated from 1
+Samuel ii. 11,18. They come as a kind of refrain, contrasting the
+quiet, continuous growth and holy service of the child Samuel with the
+black narrative of Eli's riotous sons. While the hereditary priests
+were plunging into debauchery, and making men turn away from the
+Tabernacle services, Hannah's son was ministering unto the Lord, and,
+though no priest, was 'girt with an ephod.' This white flower blossomed
+on a dunghill. The continuous growth of a character, from a child
+serving God, and to old age walking in the same path, is the great
+lesson which the story of Samuel teaches us. 'The child is father of
+the man,' and all his long days are 'bound each to each' by true
+religion. There are two types of experience among God's greatest
+servants. Paul, made an Apostle from a persecutor, heads the one class.
+Timothy in the New Testament and Samuel in the Old, represent the
+other. An Augustine or a Bunyan is made the more earnest, humble, and
+whole-hearted by the remembrance of a wasted youth and of God's
+arresting mercy. But there are a serenity and continuity about a life
+which has grown up in the fear of God that have their own charm and
+blessing. It is well to have 'much transgression' forgiven, but it may
+be better to have always been 'innocent' and ignorant of it. Pardon
+cleanses sin, and even turns the memory of it into an ally of holiness;
+but traces are left on character, and, at the best, years have been
+squandered which do not return. Samuel is the pattern of child religion
+and service, to which teachers should aim that their children may be
+conformed. How beautifully his double obedience is expressed in the
+simple words! His service was 'unto the Lord,' and it was 'before Eli';
+that is to say, he learned his work from the old man, and in obeying
+him he served God. The child's religion is largely obedience to human
+guides, and he serves God best by doing what he is bid,--a lesson
+needed in our days by both parents and children.
+
+Samuel's peaceful service is contrasted, in the second half of the
+first verse, with the sad cessation of divine revelations in that
+dreary time of national laxity. A demoralised priesthood, an alienated
+people, a silent God,--these are the outstanding features of the period
+when this fair life of continuous worship unfolded itself. This flower
+grew in a desert. The voice of God had become a tradition of the past,
+not an experience of the present. 'Rare' conveys the idea better than
+'precious.' The intention is not to tell the estimate in which the word
+was held, but the infrequency of its utterance, as appears from the
+following parallel clause. The fact is mentioned in order to complete
+the picture of Samuel's 'environment' to fling into relief against that
+background his service, and to prepare the way for the narrative of the
+beginning of an epoch of divine speech. When priests are faithless and
+people careless, God's voice will often sound from lowly childlike
+lips. The man who is to be His instrument in carrying on His work will
+often come from the very centre of the old order, into which he is to
+breathe new life, and on which he is to impress a new stamp.
+
+The artless description of the night in the Tabernacle is broken by the
+more general notice of Eli's dim sight, which the Revised Version
+rightly throws into a parenthesis. It is somewhat marred, too, by the
+transposition which the Authorised Version, following some more ancient
+ones, has made, in order to avoid saying, as the Hebrew plainly does,
+that Samuel slept in the 'Temple of the Lord, where the ark was.' The
+picture is much more vivid and tender, if we conceive of the dim-eyed
+old man, lying somewhat apart; of the glimmering light, nearly extinct
+but still faintly burning; and of the child laid to sleep in the
+Tabernacle. Surely the picturesque contrast between the sanctity of the
+ark and the innocent sleep of childhood is meant to strike us, and to
+serve as connecting the place with the subsequent revelation. Childlike
+hearts, which thus quietly rest in the 'secret place of the Most High,'
+and day and night are near His ark, will not fail of hearing His voice.
+He sleeps secure who sleeps 'beneath the shadow of the Almighty.' May
+not these particulars, too, be meant to have some symbolic
+significance? Night hung over the nation. The spiritual eye of the
+priest was dim, and the order seemed growing old and decrepit, but the
+lamp of God had not altogether gone out; and if Eli was growing blind,
+Samuel was full of fresh young life. The darkest hour is that before
+the dawn; and that silent sanctuary, with the slumbering old half-blind
+priest and the expiring lamp, may stand for an emblem of the state of
+Israel.
+
+The thrice-repeated and misunderstood call may yield lessons of value.
+We note the familiar form of the call. There is no vision, no symbol of
+the divine glory, such as other prophets had, but an articulate voice,
+so human-like that it is thought to be Eli's. Such a kind of call
+fitted the child's stature best. We note the swift, cheery obedience to
+what he supposes to be Eli's voice. He sprang up at once, and 'ran to
+Eli,'--a pretty picture of cheerful service, grudging not his broken
+sleep, which, no doubt, had often been similarly broken by similar
+calls. Perhaps it was in order to wait on Eli, quite as much as to tend
+the lamp or open the gates, that the singular arrangement was made of
+his sleeping in the Temple; and the reason for the previous parenthesis
+about Eli's blindness may have been to explain why Samuel slept near
+him. Where were Eli's sons? They should have been their father's
+attendants, and the watchers 'by night ... in the house of the Lord';
+but they were away rioting, and the care of both Temple and priest was
+left to a child.
+
+The old man's heart evidently went out to the boy. How tenderly he bids
+him lie down again! How affectionately he calls him 'my son,' as if he
+was already beginning to feel that this was his true successor, and not
+the blackguards that were breaking his heart! The two were a pair of
+friends: on the one side were sedulous care and swift obedience by
+night and by day; on the other were affection and a discernment of
+coming greatness, made the clearer by the bitter contrast with his own
+children's lives. The old and the young are good companions for one
+another, and often understand each other better and help each other
+more than either does his contemporaries.
+
+Samuel mistook God's voice for Eli's, as we all often do. And not less
+often we make the converse blunder, and mistake Eli's voice for God's.
+It needs a very attentive ear, and a heart purged from selfishness and
+self-will, and ready for obedience, to know when God speaks, though men
+may be His mouthpieces, and when men speak, though they may call
+themselves His messengers. The child's mistake was venial. It is less
+pardonable and more dangerous when repeated by us. If we would be
+guarded against it, we must be continually where Samuel was, and we
+must not _sleep_ in the Temple, but 'watch and be sober.'
+
+Eli's perception that it was God who spoke must have had a pang in it.
+It is not easy for the old to recognise that the young hear God's voice
+more clearly than they, nor for the superior to be glad when he is
+passed over and new truth dawns on the inferior. But, if there were any
+such feeling, it is silenced with beautiful self-abnegation, and he
+tells the wondering child the meaning of the voice and the answer he
+must make. What higher service can any man do to his fellows, old or
+young, than to help them to discern God's call and to obey it? What
+nobler conception of a teacher's work is there than that? Eli heard no
+voice, from which we may probably conclude that, however real the
+voice, it was not audible to sense; but he taught Samuel to interpret
+and answer the voice which he heard, and thus won some share of a
+prophet's reward.
+
+With what expectation in his young heart Samuel lay down again in his
+place! This time there is an advance in the form of the call, for only
+now do we read that the Lord 'came, and stood, and called' as before. A
+manifestation, addressed to the inward eye, accompanied that to the
+ear. There is no attempt at describing, nor at softening down, the
+frank 'anthropomorphism' of the representation, which is the less
+likely to mislead the more complete it is. Samuel had heard Him before;
+he sees Him now, and mistake is impossible. But there is no terror nor
+recoil from the presence. The child's simplicity saves from that, and
+the child's purity; for his little life had been a growing in service
+and 'in favour with God and man.'
+
+The answer that came from the child's lips meant far more than the
+child knew. It is the answer which we are all bound to make. Let us see
+how deep and wide its scope is. It expresses the entire surrender of
+the will to the will of God. That is the secret of all peace and
+nobleness. There is nothing happy or great for man in this world but to
+love and do God's will. All else is nought. This is solid. 'The world
+passeth away, ... but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.'
+Everything besides is show and delusion, and a life directed to it is
+fleeting as the cloud-wrack that sweeps across the sky, and, whether it
+is shone on or is black, is equally melting away. Happy the child who
+begins with such surrender of self to be God's instrument, and who,
+like Samuel, can stand up at the end and challenge men's judgment on
+his course!
+
+The answer vows prompt obedience to yet undisclosed duty. God ever
+calls His servants to tasks which only by degrees are made known. So
+Paul in his conversion was bid to go into Damascus, and there learn
+what more he was to do. We must first put ourselves in God's hands, and
+then He will lead us round the turn in the road, and show us our work.
+We get it set for us bit by bit, but the surrender must be entire. The
+details of His will are revealed as we need them for the moment's
+guidance. Let us accept them in bulk, and stand to the acceptance in
+each single case! That is no obedience at all which says, 'Tell me
+first what you are going to bid me do, and then I will see whether I
+will do it.' The true spirit of filial submission says, 'I delight to
+do Thy will; now show me what it is.' It was a strange, long road on
+which Samuel put his foot when he answered this call, and he little
+knew where it was to lead him. But the blessing of submission is that
+we do not need to know. It is enough to see where to put our lifted
+foot. What comes next we can let God settle.
+
+The answer supplicated further light because of present obedience.
+'Speak! for Thy servant heareth,' is a plea never urged in vain. The
+servant's open ear is a reason for the Lord's open lips. We may be
+quite sure that, if we are willing to hear, He is more than willing to
+speak; and anything is possible rather than that His children shall be
+left, like ill-commanded soldiers on a battlefield, waiting for orders
+which never come. 'If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know.'
+
+The sad prophecy which is committed to such apparently incongruous lips
+reiterates a former message by 'a man of God.' Eli was a kindly, and,
+in his way, good man, but wanting in firmness, and acquiescent in evil,
+partly, perhaps, from lack of moral courage and partly from lack of
+fervent religion. He is not charged with faults in his own
+administration of his office, but with not curbing his disreputable
+sons. The threatenings are directed, not against himself, but against
+his 'house,' who are to be removed from the high priestly office.
+Nothing less than a revolution is foretold. The deposition of Eli's
+family would shake the whole framework of society. It is to be utterly
+destroyed, and no sacrifice nor offering can purge it. The ulcer must
+have eaten deep which required such stern measures for its excision.
+The sin was mainly the sons'; but the guilt was largely the father's.
+We may learn how cruel paternal laxity is, and how fatal mischief may
+be done, by neglect of the plain duty of restraining children. He who
+tolerates evil which it is his province to suppress, is an accomplice,
+and the blood of the doers is red on his hands.
+
+It was a terrible message to give to a child; but Samuel's calling was
+to be the guide of Israel in a period of transition, and he had to be
+broken early into the work, which needed severity as well as
+tenderness. Perhaps, too, the stern message was somewhat softened, for
+the poor old man, by the lips through which it came to him. All that
+reverent love could do, we may be sure, the young prophet would do, to
+lighten the heavy tidings. Secrecy would be secured, too; for Samuel,
+who was so unwilling to tell even Eli what the Lord had said, would
+tell none besides.
+
+God calls each child in our homes as truly as He did Samuel. From each
+the same obedience is asked. Each may, like the boy in the Tabernacle,
+grow up 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,' and so escape the
+many scars and sorrows of a life wrongly begun. Let parents see to it
+that they think rightly of their work, and do not content themselves
+with conveying information, but aim at nothing short of helping all
+their children to hear and lovingly to yield to the gentle call of the
+incarnate God!
+
+
+
+
+FAITHLESSNESS AND DEFEAT
+
+'And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against
+the Philistines to battle, and pitched beside Eben-ezer: and the
+Philistines pitched in Aphek. 2. And the Philistines put themselves in
+array against Israel: and when they joined battle, Israel was smitten
+before the Philistines: and they slew of the army in the field about
+four thousand men. 3. And when the people were come into the camp, the
+elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us today before
+the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out
+of Shiloh unto us, that, when it cometh among us, it may save us out of
+the hand of our enemies. 4. So the people sent to Shiloh, that they
+might bring from thence the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts,
+which dwelleth between the cherubims: and the two sons of Eli, Hophni
+and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God. 5. And
+when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel
+shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again. 6. And when
+the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, What meaneth
+the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews? And they
+understood that the ark of the Lord was come into the camp. 7. And the
+Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. And
+they said, Woe unto us! for there hath not been such a thing
+heretofore. 8. Woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of
+these mighty gods? these are the gods that smote the Egyptians with all
+the plagues in the wilderness. 9. Be strong, and quit yourselves like
+men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as
+they have been to you: quit yourselves like men, and fight. 10. And the
+Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man
+into his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of
+Israel thirty thousand footmen. 11. And the ark of God was taken; and
+the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain. 12. And there ran
+a man of Benjamin out of the army, and came to Shiloh the same day with
+his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head. 13. And when he came,
+lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside watching: for his heart trembled
+for the ark of God. And when the man came into the city, and told it,
+all the city cried out. 14. And when Eli heard the noise of the crying,
+he said, What meaneth the noise of this tumult? And the man came in
+hastily, and told Eli. 15. Now Eli was ninety and eight years old; and
+his eyes were dim, that he could not see. 16. And the man said unto
+Eli, I am he that came out of the army, and I fled to-day out of the
+army. And he said, What is there done, my son? 17. And the messenger
+answered and said, Israel is fled before the Philistines, and there
+hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons
+also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God Is taken. 18.
+And it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of God, that he
+fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck
+brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. And he had judged
+Israel forty years.'--1 SAMUEL iv. 1-18.
+
+
+The first words of verse 1 are closely connected with the end of
+chapter iii., and complete the account of Samuel's inauguration. 'The
+word of the Lord' came to Samuel, and 'the word of Samuel came to all
+Israel.' The one clause tells of the prophet's inspiration, the other
+of his message and its reception by the nation. This bond of union
+between the clauses has been broken by the chapter division, apparently
+for the sake of representing the revolt against the Philistines as due
+to Samuel's instigation. But its being so is very doubtful. If God had
+sent the army into the field, He would have prepared it, by penitent
+return to Him, for victory, as no defeat follows on war which He
+commands. Probably Samuel's mission made an unwholesome ferment in
+minds which were quite untouched by its highest significance, and so
+led to a precipitate rebellion, preceded by no religious reformation,
+and therefore sure to fail. It was twenty years too soon (1 Sam. vii.
+3). Samuel took no part in the struggle, and his name is never
+mentioned till, at the end of that period, he emphatically condemns all
+that had been done, and points the true path of deliverance, in 'return
+to the Lord with all your heart.' So the great lesson of this story is
+that when Israel fights Philistines, unbidden and unrepentant, it is
+sure to be beaten,--a truth with manifold wide applications.
+
+The first disastrous defeat took place on a field, which was afterwards
+made memorable by a great victory, and by a name which lives still as a
+watchword for hope and gratitude. Happy they who at last conquer where
+they once failed, and in the retrospect can say, 'Hitherto the Lord
+helped,' both by defeat and by the victory for which defeat prepared a
+way! That opening struggle, bloody and grave as it was, was not
+decisive; for the Israelites regained their fortified camp unmolested,
+and held together, and kept their communications open, as appears from
+what followed.
+
+Verses 3 to 5 give us a glimpse into the camp of Israel, and verses 6
+to 9 into that of the Philistines. These two companion pictures are
+worth looking at. The two armies are very much alike, and we may say
+that the purpose of the picture is to show how Israel was practically
+heathen, taking just the same views of its relation to God which the
+Philistines did. Note, too, the absence of central authority. 'The
+elders' hold a kind of council. Where were Eli the judge and Samuel the
+prophet? Neither had part in this war. The question of the elders was
+right, inasmuch as it recognised that the Lord had smitten them, but
+wrong inasmuch as it betrayed that they had not the faintest notion
+that the reason was their own moral and religious apostasy. They had
+not learned the A B C of their history, and of the conditions of
+national prosperity. They stand precisely on the Pagan level, believing
+in a national God, who ought to help his votaries, but from some
+inexplicable caprice does not; or who, perhaps, is angry at the
+omission of some ritual observance. What an answer they would have got
+if Samuel had been there! There ought to have been no need for the
+question, or, rather, there was need for it, and the answer ought to
+have been clear to them; their sin was the all-sufficient reason for
+their defeat. There are plenty of Christians, like these elders, who,
+when they find themselves beaten by the world and the devil, puzzle
+their brains to invent all sorts of reasons for God's smiting, except
+the true one,--their own departure from Him.
+
+The remedy suggested by the united wisdom of the leaders was as heathen
+as the consultation which resulted in it. 'Let us send for the ark'
+'Those who regarded not the God of the ark,' says Bishop Hall, 'think
+themselves safe and happy in the ark of God.' They thought, with that
+confusion between symbol and reality which runs through all heathen
+worship, and makes the danger of 'images,' whether in heathenism or in
+sensuous Christianity, that if they brought the ark, they brought God
+with it. It was a kind of charm, which would help them, they hardly
+knew how. Its very name might have taught them better. They call it
+'the ark of the covenant of the Lord'; and a covenant has two parties
+to it, and promises favour on conditions. If they had kept the
+conditions, these four thousand corpses would not have been lying stiff
+and stark outside the rude encampment. As they did not keep them,
+bringing the chest which contained the transcript of them into their
+midst was bringing a witness of their apostasy, not a helper of their
+feebleness. Repentance would have brought God. Dragging the ark thither
+only removed Him farther away. We need not be too hard upon these
+people; for the natural disposition of us all is to trust to the
+externals of worship, and to put a punctilious attention to these in
+the place of a true cleaving of heart to the God who dwells near us,
+and is in us and on our side, if we cling to Him with penitent love.
+Even God-appointed symbols become snares. Baptism and the Lord's Supper
+are treated by multitudes as these elders did the ark. The fewer and
+simpler the outward observances of worship are, the less danger is
+there of the poor sense-bound soul tarrying in them, instead of passing
+by means of them into the higher, purer air beyond.
+
+What right had these presumptuous elders to bring the ark from Shiloh?
+Eli was its guardian; and he, as appears probable from his anxiety
+about its fate, did not approve of its removal. But 'the people' took
+the law into their own hands. There seems some hint that their action
+was presumptuous profanation, in the solemn, full title given in verse
+4: 'The ark of the covenant of the Lord of Hosts which dwelleth between
+the cherubim,'--as if contrasting His awful majesty, His universal
+dominion over the armies of heaven and the embattled powers of the
+universe, and the dazzling light of that 'glory,' which shone in the
+innermost chamber of the Tabernacle, with the unanointed hands that
+presumed to press in thither and drag so sacred a thing into the light
+of common day and the tumult of the camp. Nor is the profanation
+lessened, but rather increased, by the priestly attendants, Eli's two
+sons, themselves amongst the worst men in Israel. When Hophni and
+Phinehas are its priests, the ark can bring no help. Heathenism
+separates religion from morality altogether. In it there is no
+connection between worship and purity, and the Old Testament religion
+for the first time welded these two inseparably together. That
+tumultuous procession from Shiloh, with these two profligates for the
+priests of God, and the bearers thinking that they were sure of their
+God's favour now, whatever their sin, shows how completely Israel had
+forgotten its own law, and, whilst professedly worshipping Jehovah, had
+really become a heathen people. The reception of the ark with that
+fierce shout, which echoed among the hills and was heard in the
+Philistines' encampment, shows the same thing. Not so should the ark
+have been received, but with tears and confessions and silent awe. No
+man in all that host had ever looked upon it before. No man ought to
+have seen it _then_. Once a year, and not without blood sprinkled on
+its cover, the high priest might look on it through the cloud of
+incense which kept him from death, while all the people waited hushed
+till he came forth, but now it is dragged into the camp, and welcomed
+with a yell of mad delight, as a pledge of victory. What could display
+more strikingly the practical heathenism of the people?
+
+Verses 6 to 9 take us into the other camp, and show us the undisguised
+heathens. The Philistines think just as the other side did, only, in
+their polytheistic way, they do not use the name 'Jehovah,' but speak
+first of 'God' and then of 'gods' as having arrived in the camp. The
+nations dreaded each other's gods, though they worshipped their own;
+and the Philistines believed quite as much that 'Jehovah' was the
+Hebrew's God, as that 'Dagon' was theirs. There was to be a duel then
+between the two superhuman powers. The vague reports which they had
+heard of the Exodus, nearly five hundred years ago, filled the
+Philistines with panic. They had but a confused notion of the facts of
+that old story, and thought that Egypt had met the ten plagues 'in the
+wilderness.' The blunder is very characteristic, and helps to show the
+accuracy of our narrative. It would not have occurred to a
+legend-maker. It sounds strange to us that the Philistines' belief that
+the Hebrews' God had come to their help should issue in exhortations to
+'fight like men.' But polytheism makes that quite a natural conclusion;
+and there is something almost fine in the truculent boldness with which
+they set their teeth for a fierce struggle. They reiterate to one
+another the charge to 'quit themselves like men'; and while they do not
+hide from themselves that the question whether they are to be still
+masters is hanging on the coming struggle, a dash of contempt for the
+'Hebrews' who had been their 'slaves' is perceptible.
+
+According to verse 10, the Philistines appear to have begun the attack,
+perhaps taking the enemy by surprise. The rout this time was complete.
+The grim catalogue of disaster in verses 10 and 11 is strangely tragic
+in its dreadful, monotonous plainness, each clause adding something to
+the terrible story, and each linked to the preceding by a simple 'and.'
+The Israelites seem to have been scattered. 'They fled, every man to
+his tent.' The army, with little cohesion and no strong leaders, melted
+away. The ark was captured, and its two unworthy attendants slain.
+Bringing it had not brought God, then. It was but a chest of
+shittimwood, with two slabs of lettered stone in it,--and what help was
+in that? But its capture was the sign that the covenant with Israel was
+for the time annulled. The whole framework of the nation was
+disorganised. The keystone was struck out of their worship, and they
+had fallen, by their own sin, to the level of the nations, and even
+below these; for they had their gods, but Israel had turned away from
+their God, and He had departed from them. Superstition fancied that the
+presence of the ark secured to impenitent men the favour of God; but it
+was no superstition which saw in its absence from Shiloh His averted
+face.
+
+Is there in poetry or drama a more vivid and pathetic passage than the
+closing verses of this narrative, which tell of the panting messenger
+and the old blind Eli?
+
+'Eben-ezer' cannot have been very far from Shiloh, for the fugitive had
+seen the end of the fight, and reached the city before night. He came
+with the signs of mourning, and, as it would appear from verse 13,
+passed the old man at the gate without pausing, and burst into the city
+with his heavy tidings. One can almost hear the shrill shrieks of wrath
+and despair which first told Eli that something was wrong. Blind and
+unwieldy and heavy-hearted, he sat by the gate to which the news would
+first come; but yet he is the last to hear,--perhaps because all shrank
+from telling him, perhaps because in the confusion no one remembered
+him. Only after he had asked the meaning of the tumult, of which his
+foreboding heart and conscience told him the meaning before it was
+spoken, is the messenger brought to the man to whom he should have gone
+first. How touchingly the story pauses, even at this crisis, to paint
+the poor old man! A stronger word is used to describe his blindness
+than in 1 Samuel iii. 2, as the Revised Version shows. His fixed
+eyeballs were sightless now; and there he sat, dreading and longing to
+hear. The fugitive's account of himself is shameless in its avowal of
+his cowardice, and prepares Eli for the worst. But note how he speaks
+gently and with a certain dignity, crushing down his anxiety,--'How
+went the matter, my son?' Then, with no merciful circumlocution or
+veiling, out comes the whole dismal story once again.
+
+Eli spoke no more. His sons' death had been the sign given him years
+before that the threatenings against his house should be fulfilled; but
+even that blow he can bear. But the capture of the ark is more than a
+personal sorrow, and his start of horror overbalances him, and he falls
+from his seat (which probably had no back to it), and dies, silent, of
+a broken neck and a broken heart. His forty years of judgeship ended
+thus. He was in many respects good and lovable, gentle, courteous,
+devout. His kindly treatment of Hannah, his fatherly training of
+Samuel, his submission to the divine message through the child, his
+'trembling for the ark,' his death at the news of its being taken, all
+indicate a character of real sweetness and true godliness. But all was
+marred by a fatal lack of strong, stern resolve to tolerate no evil
+which he ought to suppress. Good, weak men, especially when they let
+foolish tenderness hinder righteous severity, bring terrible evils on
+themselves, their families, and their nation. It was Eli who, at
+bottom, was the cause of the defeat and the disasters which slew his
+sons and broke his own heart. Nothing is more cruel than the weak
+indulgence which, when men are bringing a curse on themselves by their
+sin, 'restrains them not.'
+
+
+
+
+REPENTANCE AND VICTORY
+
+'And the men of Kirjath-jearim came, and fetched up the ark of the
+Lord, and brought it into the house of Abinadab in the hill, and
+sanctified Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the Lord. 2. And it came
+to pans, while the ark abode in Kirjath-jearim, that the time was long;
+for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel lamented after the
+Lord. 3. And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye
+do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange
+gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the
+Lord, and serve Him only: and He will deliver you out of the hand of
+the Philistines. 4. Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and
+Ashtaroth, and served the Lord only. 5. And Samuel said, Gather all
+Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the Lord. 6. And they
+gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before
+the Lord, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned
+against the Lord. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh.
+7. And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were
+gathered together to Mizpeh, the lords of the Philistines went up
+against Israel. And when the children of Israel heard it, they were
+afraid of the Philistines. 8. And the children of Israel said to
+Samuel, Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us, that He will
+save us out of the hand of the Philistines. 9. And Samuel took a
+sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt-offering wholly unto the Lord:
+and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; and the Lord heard him. 10.
+And as Samuel was offering up the burnt-offering, the Philistines drew
+near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great
+thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them: and
+they were smitten before Israel. 11. And the men of Israel went out of
+Mizpeh, and pursued the Philistines, and smote them, until they came
+under Beth-car. 12. Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh
+and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath
+the Lord helped us.'-1 SAMUEL vii 1-12.
+
+
+The ark had spread disaster in Philistia and Beth-shemesh, and the
+willingness of the men of Kirjath-jearim to receive it was a token of
+their devotion. They must have been in some measure free from idolatry
+and penetrated with reverence. The name of the city (_City of the
+Woods_, like our _Woodville_) suggests the situation of the little
+town, 'bosomed high in tufted trees,' where the ark lay for so long,
+apparently without sacrifices, and simply watched over by Eleazar, who
+was probably of the house of Aaron. Eli's family was exterminated;
+Shiloh seems to have been destroyed, or, at all events, forsaken; and
+for twenty years internal disorganisation and foreign oppression,
+relieved only by Samuel's growing influence, prevailed. But during
+these dark days a better mind was slowly appearing among the people.
+'All ... Israel lamented after the Lord.' Lost blessings are precious.
+God was more prized when withdrawn. Happy they to whom darkness
+brightens that Light which brightens all darkness! Our text gives us
+three main points,--the preparation for victory in repentance and
+return (verses 3-9); the victory (verses 10, 11); the thankful
+commemoration of victory (verse 12).
+
+I. We have first the preparation for victory in repentance and return.
+At the time of the first fight at Eben-ezer, Israel was full of
+idolatry and immorality. Then their preparation for battle was the mere
+bringing the ark into the camp, as if it were a fetish or magic charm.
+That was pure heathenism, and they were idolaters in such worship of
+Jehovah, just as much as if they had been bowing to Baal. Many of us
+rely on our baptism or on churchgoing precisely in the same spirit, and
+are as truly pagans. Not the name of the Deity, but the spirit of the
+worshipper, makes the 'idolater.'
+
+How different this second preparation! Samuel, who had never been named
+in the narrative of defeat, now reappears as the acknowledged prophet
+and, in a sense, dictator. The first requirement is to come back to the
+Lord 'with the whole heart,' and that return is to be practically
+exhibited in the complete forsaking of Baal and the Ashtoreths. 'Ye
+cannot serve God and mammon.' It must be 'Him only,' if it is Him at
+all. Real religion is exclusive, as real love is. In its very nature it
+is indivisible, and if given to two is accepted by neither. So there
+was some kind of general and perhaps public giving up of the idols, and
+some, though probably not the fully appointed, public service of
+Jehovah. If we are to have His strength infused for victory, we must
+cast away our idols, and come back to Him with all our hearts. The
+hands that would clasp Him, and be upheld by the clasp, must be emptied
+of trifles. To yield ourselves wholly to God is the secret of strength.
+
+The next step was a solemn national assembly at Samuel's town of
+Mizpeh, situated on a conspicuous hill, north-west of Jerusalem, which
+still is called 'the prophet Samuel.' Sacrifices were offered, which
+are no part of the Mosaic ritual. A significant part of these consisted
+in the pouring out of water 'before the Lord,' probably as emblematic
+of the pouring out of soul in penitence; for it was accompanied by
+fasting and confession of sin. The surest way to the true victory,
+which is the conquest of our sins, is confessing them to God. When once
+we have seen any sin in its true character clearly enough to speak to
+Him about it, we have gone far to emancipate ourselves from it, and
+have quickened our consciences towards more complete intolerance of its
+hideousness. Confession breaks the entail of sin, and substitutes for
+the dreary expectation of its continuance the glad conviction of
+forgiveness and cleansing. It does not make a stiff fight unnecessary;
+for assured freedom from sin is not the easy prize of confession, but
+the hard-won issue of sturdy effort in God's strength. But it is like
+blowing the trumpet of revolt,--it gives the signal for, and itself
+begins, the conflict. The night before the battle should be spent, not
+in feasting, but in prayer and lowly shriving of our souls before the
+great Confessor.
+
+The watchful Philistines seem to have had their attention attracted by
+the unusual stir among their turbulent subjects, and especially by this
+suspicious gathering at Mizpeh, and they come suddenly up the passes
+from their low-lying territory to disperse it. A whiff of the old
+terror blows across the spirits of the people, not unwholesomely; for
+it sets them, not to desire the outward presence of the ark, not to run
+from their post, but to beseech Samuel's intercession. They are afraid,
+but they mean to fight all the same, and, because they are afraid, they
+long for God's help. That is the right temper, which, if a man cherish,
+he will not be defeated, however many Philistines rush at him. Twenty
+years of slavery had naturally bred fear in them, but it is a wise fear
+which breeds reliance on God. Our enemy is strong, and no fault is more
+fatal than an underestimate of his power. If we go into battle singing,
+we shall probably come out of it weeping, or never come out at all. If
+we begin bragging, we shall end bleeding. It is only he who looks on
+the advancing foe, and feels 'They are too strong for me,' who will
+have to say, as he watches them retreating, 'He delivered me from my
+strong enemy.' We should think much of our foes and little of
+ourselves. Such a temper will lead to caution, watchfulness, wise
+suspicion, vigorous strain of all our little power, and, above all, it
+will send us to our knees to plead with our great Captain and Advocate.
+
+Samuel acts as priest and intercessor, offering a burnt-offering,
+which, like the pouring out of water, is no part of the Mosaic
+sacrifices. The fact is plain, but it is neither unaccountable nor
+large enough to warrant the sweeping inferences which have been drawn
+from it and its like, as to the non-existence at this period of the
+developed ceremonial in Leviticus. We need only remember Samuel's
+special office, and the seclusion in which the ark lay, to have a
+sufficient explanation of the cessation of the appointed worship and
+the substitution of such 'irregular' sacrifices. We are on surer ground
+when we see here the incident to which Psalm xcix. 6 refers ('Samuel
+among them that call upon His name. They called upon the Lord, and He
+answered them'), and when we learn the lesson that there is a power in
+intercession which we can use for one another, and which reaches its
+perfection in the prevailing prayer of our great High-priest, who, like
+Samuel and Moses, is on the mountain praying, while we fight in the
+plain.
+
+II. We have next the victory on the field of the former defeat. The
+battle is joined on the old ground. Strategic considerations probably
+determined the choice as they did in the case of the many battles on
+the plain of Esdraelon, for instance, or on the fields of the
+Netherlands. Probably the armies met on some piece of level ground in
+one of the wadies, up which the Philistines marched to the attack. At
+all events, there they were, face to face once more on the old spot. On
+both sides might be men who had been in the former engagement.
+Depressing remembrances or burning eagerness to wipe out the shame
+would stir in those on the one side; contemptuous remembrance of the
+ease with which the last victory had been won would animate the other.
+God Himself helped them by the thunderstorm, the solemn roll of which
+was 'the voice of the Lord' answering Samuel's prayer. The ark had
+brought only defeat to the impure host; the sacrifice brings victory to
+the penitent army. Observe that the defeat is accomplished before 'the
+men of Israel went out of Mizpeh.' God scattered the enemy, and Israel
+had only to pursue flying foes, as they hurried in wild confusion down
+the pass, with the lightning flashing behind them. The same pregnant
+expression is used for the rout of the Philistines as for the previous
+one of Israel. 'They were smitten _before_,' not _by_, the victors. The
+true victor was God.
+
+The story gives boundless hope of victory, even on the fields of our
+former defeats. We can master rooted faults of character, and overcome
+temptations which have often conquered us. Let no man say: 'Ah! I have
+been beaten so often that I may as well give up the fight altogether.
+Years and years I have been a slave, and everywhere I tread on old
+battlefields, where I have come off second-best. It will never be
+different. I may as well cease struggling.' However obstinate the
+fault, however often it has re-established its dominion and dragged us
+back to slavery, when we thought that we had made good our
+escape,--that is no reason to 'bate one jot of heart or hope.' We have
+every reason to hope bravely and boundlessly in the possibility of
+victory. True, we should rightly despair if we had only our own powers
+to depend on. But the grounds of our confidence lie in the
+inexhaustible fulness of God's Spirit, and the certain purpose of His
+will that we should be purified from all iniquity, as well as in the
+proved tendency of the principles and motives of the gospel to produce
+characters of perfect goodness, and, above all, in the sacrifice and
+intercession of our Captain on high. Since we have Christ to dwell in
+us, and be the seed of a new life, which will unfold into the likeness
+of that life from which it has sprung; since we have a perfect Example
+in Him who became like us in lowliness of flesh, that we might become
+like Him in purity of spirit; since we have a gospel which enjoins and
+supplies the mightiest motives for complete obedience; and since the
+most rooted and inveterate evils are no part of ourselves, but 'vipers'
+which may be 'shaken from the hand' into which they have struck their
+fangs, we commit faithless treason against God, His message, and
+ourselves, when we doubt that we shall overcome all our sins. We should
+not, then, go into the fight downhearted, with our banners drooping, as
+if defeat sat on them. The belief that we shall conquer has much to do
+with victory. That is true in all sorts of conflicts. So, though the
+whole field may be strewed with relics, eloquent of former disgrace, we
+may renew the struggle with confidence that the future will not always
+copy the past. We 'are saved by hope'; by hope we are made strong. It
+is the very helmet on our heads. The warfare with our own evils should
+be waged in the assurance that every field of our defeat shall one day
+see set up on it the trophy of, not our victory, but God's in us.
+
+III. We have here the grateful commemoration of victory. Where that
+gray stone stands no man knows to-day, but its name lives for ever.
+This trophy bore no vaunts of leader's skill or soldier's bravery. One
+name only is associated with it. It is 'the stone of help,' and its
+message to succeeding generations is: 'Hitherto hath the Lord helped
+us.' That Hitherto' is the word of a mighty faith. It includes as parts
+of one whole the disaster no less than the victory. The Lord was
+helping Israel no less by sorrow and oppression than by joy and
+deliverance. The defeat which guided them back to Him was tender
+kindness and precious help. He helps us by griefs and losses, by
+disappointments and defeats; for whatever brings us closer to Him, and
+makes us feel that all our bliss and wellbeing lie in knowing and
+loving Him, is helpful beyond all other aid, and strength-giving above
+all other gifts.
+
+Such remembrance has in it a half-uttered prayer and hope for the
+future. 'Hitherto' means more than it says. It looks forward as well as
+backward, and sees the future in the past. Memory passes into hope, and
+the radiance in the sky behind throws light on to our forward path.
+God's 'hitherto' carries 'henceforward' wrapped up in it. His past
+reveals the eternal principles which will mould His future acts. He has
+helped, therefore he will help, is no good argument concerning men; but
+it is valid concerning God.
+
+The devout man's 'gratitude' is, and ought to be, 'a lively sense of
+favours to come.' We should never doubt but that, as good John Newton
+puts it, in words which bid fair to last longer than Samuel's gray
+stone:--
+
+       'Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review
+        Confirms His good pleasure to help me quite through.'
+
+We may write that on every field of our life's conflicts, and have it
+engraved at last on our gravestones, where we rest in hope.
+
+The best use of memory is to mark more plainly than it could be seen at
+the moment the divine help which has filled our lives. Like some track
+on a mountain side, it is less discernible to us, when treading it,
+than when we look at it from the other side of the glen. Many parts of
+our lives, that seemed unmarked by any consciousness of God's help
+while they were present, flash up into clearness when seen through the
+revealing light of memory, and gleam purple in it, while they looked
+but bare rocks as long as we were stumbling among them. It is blessed
+to remember, and to see everywhere God's help. We do not remember
+aright unless we do. The stone that commemorates our lives should bear
+no name but one, and this should be all that is read upon it: 'Now unto
+Him that kept us from falling, unto Him be glory!'
+
+
+
+
+'MAKE US A KING'
+
+'Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came
+to Samuel, onto Ramah, 5. And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and
+thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all
+the nations. 6. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give
+us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. 7. And the Lord
+said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they
+say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected
+Me, that I should not reign over them. 8. According to all the works
+which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt
+even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken Me, and served other
+gods, so do they also unto thee. 9. Now therefore hearken unto their
+voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner
+of the king that shall reign over them. 10. And Samuel told all the
+words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king. 11. And he
+said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He
+will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots,
+and to be his horsemen: and some shall run before his chariots, 12. And
+he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties;
+and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to
+make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. 13. And
+he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and
+to be bakers. 14. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and
+your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
+15. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and
+give to his officers, and to his servants. 16. And he will take your
+men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and
+your asses, and put them to his work. 17. He will take the tenth of
+your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. 18. And ye shall cry out in
+that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the
+Lord will not hear you in that day. 19. Nevertheless the people refused
+to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a
+king over us; 20. That we also may be like all the nations; and that
+our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.'--I
+SAMUEL viii. 4-20.
+
+
+The office of judge was as little capable of transmission from father
+to son as that of prophet, so that Samuel's appointment of his sons as
+judges must be regarded as contrary to its true idea. It was God who
+made the judges, and the introduction, in however slight a degree, of
+the hereditary principle, was not only politically a blunder, but
+religiously wrong. Our narrative, like Scripture generally, pronounces
+no opinion on the facts it records, but its unfavourable judgment may
+be safely inferred from its explanation that Samuel was 'old' when he
+made the appointment, and that his sons were corrupt and unjust. Our
+text deals with the unexpectedly wide consequences of that act, in the
+clamour for a king.
+
+I. Note the ill-omened request. A formal delegation of the
+representatives of the nation comes to Ramah, unsummoned by Samuel,
+with the demand for a king. There must have been much talk through
+Israel before the general mind could have been ascertained, and this
+step taken. Not a whisper of what was passing seems to have reached
+Samuel, and the request is flung at him in harsh language. It is not
+pleasant for any one, least of all for a ruler, to be told that
+everybody sees that he is getting old, and should provide for what is
+to come next. Fathers do not like to be told that their sons are
+disreputable, but Samuel had to hear the bitter truth. The old man was
+pained by it, and felt that the people were tired of him, as is plain
+enough from the divine words which followed, and bade him look beyond
+the ingratitude displayed towards himself, to that shown to God. But
+from the 'practical' point of view, there was a great deal to be said
+for the reasonableness and political wisdom of the elders' suggestion.
+Samuel had shown that he felt the danger of leaving the nation without
+a leader, by his nomination of his sons, and the proposal of a king is
+but carrying his policy a little farther. The hereditary principle once
+admitted, a full-blown king was evidently the best. There were many
+inconveniences in the rule by judges. They had no power but that of
+force of personal character and the authority of an unseen Lord. They
+left no successors; and long intervals had elapsed, and might again
+elapse, between the death of one and the rise of another, during which
+the nation appeared to have no head to guide nor arm to defend it.
+Examples of strong monarchies surrounded them, and they wanted to have
+a centre of unity and a defender in the person of a king.
+
+Samuel's displeasure seems to have been mainly on the ground of the
+insult to himself in the proposal, and its bearing on the rule of
+Jehovah over the people does not seem to have occurred to him till it
+was pointed out by the divine voice. But, like a good and wise man, he
+took his perplexity and trouble to God; and there he got light. The
+divine judgment of the request cuts down to its hidden, and probably
+unconscious, motive, and shows Samuel that weariness of him was only
+its surface, while the true bottom of it was rejection of God. The
+parallel drawn with idolatry is very instructive. The two things were
+but diverse forms of the same sense-ridden disposition: the one being
+an inability to grasp the thought of the unseen God; the other, a
+precisely similar inability to keep on the high level of trust in an
+unseen defender, and obedience to an unseen monarch. They wished for a
+king 'to go out before them' and 'fight their battles' (v. 20). Had
+they forgotten Eben-ezer, and many another field, where they and their
+fathers had but to stand still and see the Lord fight for them?
+
+The very same difficulty in living in quiet reliance on a power which
+is perceptible by no sense, besets us. We too are ever being tempted to
+prefer the solid security, as our foolish senses call it, of visible
+supports and delights, to the shadowy help of an unseen Arm. How many
+of us would feel safer with a good balance at our banker's than with
+God's promises! How many of us live as if we thought that men or women
+were better recipients of our love and of our trust than God! How few,
+even of professing Christians, really and habitually 'walk by faith,
+not by sight'! Do we not see ourselves in the mirror of this story? If
+we do not, we should. Note that the elders had, apparently, no idea
+that they were rejecting God in wanting a king. Samuel says nothing of
+the sort to them, and they could scarcely have made the request so
+boldly and briefly if they had been conscious that it was upsetting the
+very basis of their national life. Men are slow to appreciate the full
+force of their craving for visible good. The petitioners could plead
+many strong reasons, and, no doubt, fancied themselves simply taking
+proper precautions for the future. A great deal of unavowed and
+unconscious unbelief wears the mask of wise foresight. We rather pride
+ourselves on our prudence, when we should be ashamed of our distrust.
+
+Note, too, that we cannot combine reliance on the seen and the unseen.
+Life must be moulded by one or the other. The craving for a king was
+the rejection of Jehovah. We must elect by which we shall live, and
+from which we shall draw our supreme good.
+
+The desire to be like their neighbours was another motive with the
+elders. It is hard to be singular, and to foster reliance on the
+invisible, when all around us are dazzling examples of the success
+attending the other course. One of the first lessons which we have to
+learn, and one of the last which we have to practise, is a wholesome
+disregard of other people's ways. If we are to do anything worth doing,
+we must be content to be in a minority of one, if needful.
+
+II. Note God's concession of the foolish wish. The divine word to
+Samuel throws light on the nature of prophetic inspiration. He is
+bidden to 'hearken to the people's voice'--a procedure directly
+opposite to his own ideas. This is not a case of subsequent reflection
+modifying first impressions, but of an authoritative voice discerned by
+the hearer to be not his own, contradicting his own thoughts, and
+leaving no room for further consideration.
+
+Further, the granting to Israel of the king whom they desired, is but
+one instance of the law which is exemplified in God's dealing with
+nations and individuals, according to which He lets them have their own
+way, that they may 'be filled with their own devices.' Such experience
+is the best teacher, though her school fees are high. The surest way to
+disgust men with their own folly, is to let it work out its
+results,--just as boys in sweetmeat shops are allowed to eat as much as
+they like at first, and so get a distaste for the dainties. 'Try it,
+then, and see how you like it,' is not an unkind thing to say, and God
+often says it to us. When argument and appeals to duty and the like
+fail, there is nothing more to be done but to let us have our request,
+and find out the poison that lurked under the fair outside. The
+prodigal son gets his coveted portion, and is allowed to go into the
+far country, that he may prove how good and happy it is to starve among
+the swine, not because his father is angry with him, but because such
+experience is the only way to re-awaken his dormant love, and to make
+him long for the despised place in his father's house. There are some
+fevers of the desires which must run their course before the patient
+can be well again. Let us keep a careful watch over ourselves, that we
+entertain no wishes but such as run parallel with God's manifest will,
+lest He may have in His anger, which is still love, to give us our
+request, that we may find out our error by the bitter fruits of a
+granted desire.
+
+III. Note the obstinacy that, with eyes open to the consequences,
+persists in its demands. Samuel is bidden to 'show them the manner of
+the king that shall reign over them.' He sketches, in sombre outline,
+the picture of an Eastern despot, the only kind of king which the world
+then knew. The darker features of these monarchies are not included.
+There is no harem, nor cruelty, nor monstrous vice, in the picture; but
+the diversion of labour to minister to royal pomp, the establishment of
+a standing army, the alienation of land to officials, heavy taxation
+and forced labour make up the items. To these is added (v. 18) that the
+royalty, now so eagerly desired, would sooner or later become a burden,
+and that then they or their sons would find it was easier to put on
+than to put off the yoke; for 'the Lord will not hear you in that day,'
+in reference, that is, to the removal of the king. They were exchanging
+an unseen King who gave all things for one who would take, and not
+give. A wise exchange! The consequences of our wishes are not always
+drawn out so clearly before us as in this instance; but we are not left
+in darkness as to the broad issues, and we all know enough to make our
+persistence in evil, after such warnings, the deepest mystery and most
+flagrant sin. The drunkard is not deterred by his knowledge that there
+is such a thing as _delirium tremens_; nor the thief, by the certainty
+that the officer's hand will be laid on his shoulder one day or other;
+nor the young profligate, by the danger that his bones shall be 'full
+of the sin of his youth'; nor are any of us kept from our sins, by the
+clear sight of their end. 'I have loved strangers, and after them will
+I go,' notwithstanding all knowledge of the fatal issue. Surely there
+is nothing sadder than that power of neglecting the most certain known
+result of our acts. Wilfully blind, and hurried on by lust, passion, or
+other impulse, like bulls which shut their eyes when they charge, we
+rush at our mark, and often dash ourselves to pieces on it. If a man
+saw the consequences of his sin at the moment of temptation, he would
+not do it; but this is the wonder, that he does not see them, though he
+knows them well enough, and that the knowledge has no power to restrain
+him.
+
+IV. Note the divine purpose which uses man's sin as its instrument in
+advancing its designs. God had promised Israel a king (Deut. xvii. 14,
+etc.), and the elders may have thought that they were only asking for
+what was in accordance with His plan. So they were; but their motive
+was wrong, and so their prayer, though for what God meant to give, was
+wrong. In this case, as always, God uses men's sins as occasions for
+the furtherance of His own eternal purpose, as that profound saying has
+it, 'Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee.' The kingly office was
+a step in advance, and gave occasion to the development of Messianic
+expectations of the true King of Israel and of men, which would have
+been impossible without it, In many ways it was for the good of the
+nation, and the holders of the office were 'the Lord's anointed.'
+Modern criticism has found traces of two opposite views in this story,
+as compared with the passage in Deuteronomy above referred to; but
+surely it is a more sober, though less novel, view, to regard the whole
+incident as illustrating the two truths, that men may wish for right
+things in a wrong way, and that God uses sin as well as obedience as
+His instrument. No barriers can stop the march of His great purpose
+through the ages, any more than a bit of glass can stay a sunbeam.
+However the currents run and the storms howl, they carry the ship to
+the haven; for He holds the helm, and all winds help. The people
+rejected Him, and in seeking a king followed but their own earthly
+minds; but they prepared the way for David and David's Son. Their
+children long after, moved by the same spirit, shouted, 'We have no
+king but Caesar!' but they prepared the throne for the true King, for
+whom they destined a Cross. Man's greatest sin, the rejection of the
+visible King of the world, brought about the firm establishment of His
+dominion on earth and in heaven. The cross is the great instance of the
+same law as is embodied in this history,--the overruling providence
+which bends the antagonism of men into a tool for effecting the purpose
+of God.
+
+Alas for those who only thus carry on God's designs! They perish, and
+their work is none the less their sin, because God has used it. How
+much better to enter with a willing heart and a clear intelligence into
+sympathy with His designs, and, delighting to do His will, to share in
+the eternal duration of His triumphant purpose! 'The world passeth
+away, and the fashion thereof: but he that doeth the will of God
+abideth for ever.'
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD JUDGE AND THE YOUNG KING
+
+'Now the Lord had told Samuel In his ear a day before Saul came,
+saying, 16, To-morrow, about this time I will send thee a man out of
+the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over My
+people Israel, that he may save My people out of the hand of the
+Philistines: for I have looked upon My people, because their cry is
+come unto Me. 17. And when Samuel saw Saul, the Lord said unto him,
+Behold the man whom I spake to thee of! this same shall reign over My
+people. 18. Then Saul drew near to Samuel in the gate, and said, Tell
+me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is. 19. And Samuel answered
+Saul, and said, I am the seer: go up before me unto the high place; for
+ye shall eat with me to-day, and to-morrow I will let thee go, and will
+tell thee all that is in thine heart. 20. And as for thine asses that
+were lost three days ago, set not thy mind on them; for they are found.
+And on whom is all the desire of Israel? Is it not on thee, and on all
+thy father's house? 21. And Saul answered and said, Am not I a
+Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the
+least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then
+speakest thou so to me? 22. And Samuel took Saul and his servant, and
+brought them into the parlour, and made them sit in the chiefest place
+among them that were bidden, which were about thirty persons. 23. And
+Samuel said unto the cook, Bring the portion which I gave thee, of
+which I said unto thee, Set it by thee. 24. And the cook took up the
+shoulder, and that which was upon it, and set it before Saul. And
+Samuel said, Behold that which is left I set it before thee, and eat:
+for unto this time hath it been kept for thee since I said, I have
+invited the people. So Saul did eat with Samuel that day. 25. And when
+they were come down from the high place into the city, Samuel communed
+with Saul upon the top of the house. 26. And they arose early: and it
+came to pass about the spring of the day, that Samuel called Saul to
+the top of the house, saying, Up, that I may send thee away. And Saul
+arose, and they went out both of them, he and Samuel, abroad. 27. And
+as they were going down to the end of the city, Samuel said to Saul,
+Bid the servant pass on before us, (and he passed on,) but stand thou
+still a while, that I may shew thee the word of God.'--1 SAMUEL ix.
+15-27.
+
+
+Both the time and the place of the incidents here told are unknown. No
+note is given of the interval that had elapsed since the elders'
+deputation. All that we know is that on the previous day Samuel had had
+the divine communication mentioned in verse 15, and that some days are
+implied as spent by Saul in his quest for his fathers asses, Equally
+uncertain is the name of the city. It was not Samuel's ordinary
+residence; it was in the 'land of Zuph,' an unknown district; it was
+perched, like most of the cities, on a hill; it had fountains lower
+down the slope, and a 'high place' farther up, where there was a
+building large enough for a feast. How strangely vivid the picture of
+this anonymous city is, and how we can yet see the maidens coming down
+to the fountains, the wearied travellers toiling up, and the voluble
+abundance of the directions given them!
+
+I. The first thing we have to note is the premonitory word of the Lord.
+Observe the picturesque and forcible expression, 'had uncovered the ear
+of Samuel.' It is more than picturesque. It gives in the strongest form
+the fact of a revelation, both as to its origin and its secrecy. It is
+vain to represent the transition from judgeship to monarchy as a mere
+political revolution, inaugurated by Samuel as a fore-seeing statesman.
+It is misleading to speak of him, as Dean Stanley does, as one of the
+men who mediate between the old and the new. His opinions and views go
+for just nothing in the transaction, and he is simply God's instrument.
+The people's desire for the king, and God's answer to it, were equally
+independent of him. His own ideas were dead against the change, and at
+each step in bringing it about the divine causality is everything, and
+he is nothing but its obedient servant. It is hopeless to sift out a
+naturalistic explanation from the narrative, which is either
+supernatural or nothing. Note the three points of this
+communication,--God's sending Saul, the command to anoint, and the
+motive ascribed to God. As to the first, how striking that full-toned
+authoritative 'I will send' is! Think of the chain of ordinary events
+which brought Saul to the little city,--the wandering of a drove of
+asses, the failure to get on their tracks, the accident of being in the
+land of Zuph when he got tired of the search, the suggestion of the
+servant; and behind all these, and working through them, the will and
+hand of God, thrusting this man, all unconscious, along a path which he
+knew not. Our own purposes we may know, but God's we do not know. There
+is something awful in the thought of the issues that may spring from
+the smallest affairs, and we shall be bewildered and paralysed if once
+we get a glimpse of the complicated web which is ever being woven in
+the loom of time, unless we, too, can, by faith, see the Weaver, and
+then we shall be at rest. Call nothing trivial, and seek to be
+conscious of His guiding hand.
+
+The command to Samuel to anoint Saul is no product of Samuel's own
+reflection, but comes to him, in this imperative form, before he has
+seen Saul, like a commission in blank, in regard to which he has no
+option, and in the origin of which he had no share. It was a piece of
+painful work to devolve his authority, like Aaron's having to strip off
+his robes before he died, and to put them on his son. But there is no
+trace of wounded feeling in Samuel. He is true to his childhood's word,
+'Speak, for Thy servant heareth,' and, no doubt, he had the reward
+which obedience ever has to sweeten the bitterest draught, the reward
+of a quiet heart.
+
+The reason as given in the last clause of the verse ought to have made
+Samuel's self-abnegation easier. God sets him the example. Israel had
+rejected Him, but He still calls them 'My people,' and looks upon them
+in tender care, and hears their cry. There is no contradiction here
+with the aspect of the concession to the people's wish, which appeared
+in the former section. Hasty criticism tries to make out discrepancies
+in the accounts, because it does not recognise one of the plainest
+characteristics of Scripture; namely, its habit of stating strongly and
+exclusively that side of a complicated matter which is relevant to the
+purpose in hand, and leaving the other sides to be presented in due
+time. The three accounts of the election give three different reasons
+for it. In chapter viii., the people put it on the ground of Samuel's
+age and his son's unfitness, and God treats it as national rejection of
+Him. Here it appears as due, on the part of the people, to their fear
+of the Philistines, and on the part of God to His loving yielding to
+their cry. In 1 Samuel xii. 12, Samuel traces it to the fear of
+Ammonite invasion. Are these contradictory or supplementary accounts?
+Certainly the latter. Though Israel had in heart rejected God, and He
+gave them a king that they might learn how much better they would have
+been without one, it is as true that He lovingly listened to the cry of
+their fear, and answered them, in pity and tender care, by giving them
+the king whom they desired, and who would deliver them from their
+enemies. Let us learn how patient of our faithless follies, and how
+full of long-suffering love, even in 'anger,' He is. The same gift of
+His providence, regarded in one light, is loving chastisement, and in
+another is loving compliance with our cry and swift help to our need in
+the shape that we desire, but in both aspects is good and perfect.
+Note, too, that God's look is active, and is the bringing of the needed
+aid, and that He waits for our cry before He comes with His help.
+
+II. The meeting of Samuel and Saul. They encounter each other in the
+gate,--the prophet on his way to the sacrifice, the future king with
+his head full of his humble quest. Samuel knows Saul by divine
+intimation as soon as he sees him, but Saul does not know Samuel. His
+question indicates the noble simplicity, without attendants or
+trappings, of the judge's life; but it also suggests the strange
+isolation of these early days, and the probable indifference of Saul to
+religion. If he had cared much about God's rule in Israel, he could
+scarcely have been so ignorant as his servant's words about 'the seer,'
+and his failure to know him when he saw him, show Saul to have been. He
+had not cared to see Samuel in any of the latter's circuits, and now he
+only wants to get some information from a diviner about these
+unfortunate asses. What a contrast between the thoughts of the two, as
+they looked at each other! Saul begins by consulting Samuel as a
+magician; he ends by seeking counsel from the witch at Endor. Samuel's
+words are beautiful in their smothering of all personal feeling, and
+dignified in their authority. He at once takes command of Saul, and
+prepares him by half-hints for something great to come. The direction
+to 'go up before me' is a sign of honour. The invitation to the
+sacrificial feast is another. The promise to disclose his own secret
+thoughts to Saul may, perhaps, point to some hidden ambitions, the
+knowledge of which would prove Samuel's prophetic character. The
+assurance as to the asses answers the small immediate occasion of
+Saul's resort to him, and the dim hint in the last words of verse 20,
+rightly translated, tells him that 'all that is desirable in Israel' is
+for him, and for all his father's house. He went out to look for his
+father's asses, and he found a kingdom. The words were enigmatical; but
+if Saul knew of the impending revolution, they could scarcely fail to
+dazzle him and take away his breath. His answer is more than mere
+Oriental self-depreciation. Its bashful modesty contrasts sadly with
+the almost insane masterfulness and arrogant self-will of his later
+years. Fair beginnings may end ill, and those who are set in positions
+of influence have hard work to keep steady heads, and to sail with low
+sails.
+
+III. The feast. Up at the high place was some chamber used for the
+feasts which followed the sacrifices. A company of thirty--or,
+according to another reading, of seventy--persons had been invited, and
+the stately young stranger from Benjamin, with his servant (a trait of
+the simple manners of these days), is set in the place of honour, where
+wondering eyes fasten on him. Attention is still more emphatically
+centred on him when Samuel bids 'the cook' bring a part of the
+sacrifice which he had been ordered to set aside. It proves to be the
+'shoulder' or 'thigh,' the priest's perquisite, and therefore probably
+Samuel's. To give this to another was equivalent to putting him in
+Samuel's place; and Samuel's words in handing it to Saul make its
+meaning plain. It is 'that which hath been reserved.' It has been 'kept
+for thee' till 'the appointed time,' and that with a view to the
+assembled guests. All this is in true prophetic fashion, which
+delighted in symbols, and these of the homeliest sort. The whole
+transaction expressed the transference of power to Saul, the divine
+reserving of the monarchy for him, and the public investiture with it,
+by the prophet himself. The veil was intentional, and intentionally
+thin. Cannot we see the flush of surprise and modesty on Saul's cheek,
+as he tore the pieces from the significant 'shoulder,' and hear the
+whispers that ran through the guest-chamber?
+
+IV. The private colloquy. When the simple feast was over, the strangely
+assorted pair went down to Samuel's house, and there, on the quiet
+house-top, where were no curious ears, held long and earnest talk. No
+doubt Samuel told Saul all that was in his heart, as he had said that
+he would, and convinced him thereby that it was God who was speaking to
+him through the prophet. Nor would exhortations and warnings be
+wanting, which the old man's experience would be anxious to give, and
+the young one's modesty not unwilling to receive. Saul is a listener,
+not a speaker, in this unreported interview; and Samuel is in it, as
+throughout, the superior. The characteristic which marked the beginning
+of the Jewish monarchy was stamped on it till the end. The king was
+inferior to the prophet, and was meant to take his instructions from
+him when he appeared. Saul was docile on that first day, when he was
+half dazed with his new prospects, and wholly grateful to Samuel; but
+the history will show us how soon the fair promise of concord was
+darkened, and how fiercely he chafed at Samuel's attempted control.
+
+One can fancy his thoughts as he lay in the starlight, on the
+house-top, that night, and gazed into the astounding future that had
+opened before him. Had there been any true religion in him, it would
+have been a wakeful night of prayer. But, more likely, as the event
+proves, the ambition and arrogance which were deep in his nature,
+though hitherto undeveloped, were his counsellors, and drove Samuel's
+wisdom out of his head.
+
+As soon as the morning-red began to rise in the East, Samuel sent him
+away, to secure, as would appear, privacy in his departure. With simple
+courtesy the prophet accompanied his guest, and as soon as they had got
+down the hill beyond the last house of the city, he bids Saul send on
+his servant, that he may speak a last word to him alone. Our text stops
+before the solemn anointing, and leaves these two standing there, in
+the fresh morning, type of the new career opening for one of them. What
+a contrast in the men! The one has all his long life been true to his
+first vow, 'Speak, for Thy servant heareth,' and now has come, in
+fulness of years, and reverenced by all men, near the end of his
+patient, faithful service. His work is all but done, and his heart is
+quiet in the peace which is the best reward of loving and doing God's
+law. Ripened wisdom, calm trust, unhesitating submission cast a glory
+round the old man, who is now performing the supreme act of
+self-abnegation of his lifetime, and, not without a sense of relief, is
+laying the burden, so long and uncomplainingly borne, on the great
+shoulders of this young giant. The other has a humble past of a few
+years rapidly sinking out of his dazzled sight, and is in a whirl of
+emotion at the startling suddenness of his new dignity. When one thinks
+of Gilboa, and the desperate suicide there, how pathetic is that
+strong, jubilant young figure, in the morning light, below the city, as
+he bows his head to receive the anointing which, little as he knew it,
+was to prove his ruin! A life begun by obedient listening to God's
+voice, and continued in the same, comes at last to a blessed end, and
+is crowned with many goods. A life which but partially accepts God's
+will as its law, and rather takes counsel of its own passions and
+arrogant self-sufficiency, may have much that is bright and lovable at
+its beginning, but will steadily darken as it goes on, and will set at
+last in eclipse and gloom.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING AFTER MAN'S HEART
+
+'And Samuel called the people together unto the Lord to Mizpeh; 18. And
+said unto the children of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I
+brought up Israel out of Egypt, and delivered you out of the hand of
+the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all kingdoms, and of them that
+oppressed you; 19. And ye have this day rejected your God, who Himself
+saved you out of all your adversities and your tribulations; and ye
+have said unto Him, Nay, but set a king over us. Now therefore present
+yourselves before the Lord by your tribes, and by your thousands. 20.
+And when Samuel had caused all the tribes of Israel to come near, the
+tribe of Benjamin was taken. 21. When he had caused the tribe of
+Benjamin to come near by their families, the family of Matri was taken,
+and Saul the son of Kish was taken: and when they sought him, he could
+not be found. 22. Therefore they enquired of the Lord further, if the
+man should yet come thither. And the Lord answered, Behold, he hath hid
+himself among the stuff. 23. And they ran and fetched him thence: and
+when he stood among the people, he was higher than any of the people
+from his shoulders and upward. 24. And Samuel said to all the people,
+See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among
+all the people? And all the people shouted, and said, God save the
+king. 25. Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and
+wrote it in a book, and laid it up before the Lord. And Samuel sent all
+the people away, every man to his house. 26. And Saul also went home to
+Gibeah; and there went with him a band of men, whose hearts God had
+touched. 27. But the children of Belial said, How shall this man save
+us? And they despised him, and brought him no presents. But he held his
+peace.'--1 SAMUEL x. 17-27.
+
+
+These verses fit on to chapter viii., chapters ix. to x. 16, being
+probably from another source, inserted here because the anointing of
+Saul, told in them, did occur between Samuel's dismissal of the people
+and his summoning of the national assembly which is here related. That
+private anointing of Saul was the divine call to him individually; the
+text tells of his public designation to the nation. The two are
+perfectly consistent, and, indeed, the private anointing is presupposed
+in the incident recorded in this passage, of Saul's hiding himself, for
+he could not have known the result that he would be 'taken,' unless he
+had had that previous intimation. The assembly at Mizpah was not
+convened in order to choose a king, but to accept God's choice, which
+was then to be declared.
+
+But before the choice was announced, a last appeal was made to the
+people, if, perchance, they might still be persuaded to forgo their
+rebellious desire. It is not, indeed, said that this final, all but
+hopeless attempt was made by Samuel at the divine command, and we are
+not told that he had any further revelation than that in chapter viii.
+7-9. But, no doubt, he was speaking as Jehovah's mouthpiece, and so we
+have here one more instance of that long-suffering divine patience and
+love which 'hopeth all things,' and lingers pleadingly round the
+alienated heart, seeking to woo it back to itself, and never ceasing to
+labour to avert the evil deed, till it is actually and irrevocably
+done. It may be said that God knew that the appeal was sure to fail,
+and therefore could not have made it. But is not that mysterious
+continuance of effort, foreknown to be futile, the very paradox of
+God's love? Did not Jesus give the traitor the sop, as a last token of
+friendship, a last appeal to his heart? And does not God still in like
+manner deal with us all?
+
+Observe how He seeks to win Israel back. It is not by threatenings, but
+by reminders of His great benefits. He will not drive men back to His
+service, like a slave-driver with brandished whip, but He wishes to
+draw them back by 'the cords of love.' It is service from hearts melted
+by thankfulness, and therefore overflowing in joyful, willing obedience
+and grateful acts, that He desires. 'The mercies of God' should lead to
+men offering themselves as 'living sacrifices.'
+
+The last appeal failed, and Samuel at once went on to give the people
+the desired bitter which they thought so sweet. Of course, it was by
+their representatives that the tribes presented themselves before God.
+The manner of making God's choice known is not told, and speculations
+as to it are idle. Probably a simple yes or no, as each tribe, family
+or individual was 'presented' was the mode, but how it was conveyed is
+quite unknown. That is a small matter; more important is it to note
+that Saul was chosen simply because he was the very type of the
+national ideal of a hero-king. Both here and in chapter ix. 2 his
+stature and bravery are the only qualities mentioned. What Israel
+wanted was a rough fighter, with physical strength, plenty of bone and
+muscle. About moral, intellectual or spiritual qualities they did not
+care, and they got the kind of king that they wanted,--the only kind
+that they could appreciate. The only way to teach them that one who was
+a head and shoulders taller than any of them was not thereby certified
+to be the ideal king, was to give them such a man, and let them see
+what good he would do them.
+
+There is no surer index nor sharper test of national or individual
+character than the sort of 'heroes' they worship. _Vox populi_ has not
+been very much refined since Saul's day. Athletes and soldiers still
+captivate the crowd, and a mere prophet like Samuel has no chance
+beside the man of broad shoulders and well-developed biceps. And very
+often communities, especially democratic ones, get the 'king' they
+desire, the leader, statesman or the like, who comes near their ideal.
+The man whom they choose is the man whom, generally, they deserve.
+Israel had an excuse for its burst of ardour for a soldier, for it was
+in deadly danger from the Philistines. Is there as good an excuse for
+us in Britain, in our recent adoration of successful generals? Israel
+found out that its idol lacked higher gifts than thews and sinews, and
+experience taught them the falseness of their ideal.
+
+Saul's hiding among the piles of miscellaneous baggage, which the
+multitude of representatives had brought with them, is usually set down
+to his credit, as indicating an engaging modesty; but there is another
+and more probable explanation of it, less creditable to him. Was it not
+rather occasioned by his shrinking from the heavy task that God was
+laying on him? He was not being summoned to a secure throne, but to 'go
+out before us, and fight our battles.' He might well shrink, but if he
+had been God-fearing and God-obeying and God-trusting, he would have
+cried, 'Here am I! send me,' instead of skulking among the stuff. There
+was another Saul, who could say, 'I was not disobedient unto the
+heavenly vision.' It had been better for the son of Kish if he had been
+like the young Pharisee from Tarsus. We too have divine calls in _our_
+lives, and alas! we too not seldom hide ourselves among the stuff, and
+try to avoid taking up some heavy duty, by absorbing our minds in
+material good. Few things have greater power of obscuring 'the heavenly
+vision,' and of rendering us unwilling to obey it, than the clinging to
+the things of this world, which are in their place as the traveller's
+luggage needful on the road, but very much out of their place when they
+become a hiding-place for a man whom God is calling to service.
+
+The 'manner of the kingdom,' which Samuel wrote and laid up before the
+Lord, was probably not the same as 'the manner of the king' (chapter
+viii. 9-18), but a kind of constitution, or solemn statement of the
+principles which were to govern the monarchy. The reading in verse 26
+should probably be 'the men of valour,' instead of 'a band of men.'
+They were brave men, 'whose hearts God had touched.' Now that Saul was
+chosen by God, loyalty to God was shown by loyalty to Saul. The sin of
+the people's desire, and the drop from the high ideal of the theocracy,
+and the lack of lofty qualities in Saul, may all be admitted. But God
+has made him king, and that is enough. Henceforward, God's servants
+will be Saul's partisans. The malcontents were apparently but a small
+faction. They, perhaps, had had a candidate of their own, but, at all
+events, they criticised God's appointed deliverer, and saw nothing in
+him to warrant the expectation that he would be able to do much for
+Israel. Disparaging criticism of God's chosen instruments comes from
+distrust of God who chose them. To doubt _the_ divinely sent
+Deliverer's power to 'save' is to accuse God of not knowing our needs
+and of miscalculating the power of His supply of them. But not a few of
+us put that same question in various tones of incredulity, scorn or
+indifference. Sense makes many mistakes when it takes to trying to
+weigh Christ in its vulgar balances, and to settling whether He looks
+like a Saviour and a King.
+
+SAMUEL'S CHALLENGE AND CHARGE
+
+'And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I have hearkened unto your
+voice in all that ye said unto me, and have made a king over you. 2.
+And now, behold, the king walketh before you: and I am old and
+grayheaded; and, behold, my sons are with you: and I have walked before
+you from my childhood unto this day. 3. Behold, here I am: witness
+against me before the Lord, and before His anointed: whose ox have I
+taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I
+oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine
+eyes therewith? and I will restore it you. 4. And they said, Thou hast
+not defrauded us, nor oppressed us, neither hast thou taken ought of
+any man's hand. 5. And he said unto them, The Lord is witness against
+you, and His anointed is witness this day, that ye have not found ought
+in my hand. And they answered, He is witness. 6. And Samuel said unto
+the people, It is the Lord that advanced Moses and Aaron, and that
+brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. 7. Now therefore
+stand still, that I may reason with you before the Lord of all the
+righteous acts of the Lord, which he did to you and to your fathers. 8.
+When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the Lord,
+then the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, which brought forth your fathers
+out of Egypt, and them dwell in this place. 9. And when they forgat the
+Lord their God, He sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the
+host of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand
+of the king of Moab, and they fought against them. 10. And they cried
+unto the Lord, and said, We have sinned, because we have forsaken the
+Lord, and have served Baalim and Ashtaroth: but now deliver us out of
+the hand of our enemies, and we will serve Thee. 11. And the Lord sent
+Jerubbaal, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out
+of the hand of your enemies on every side, and ye dwelled safe. 12. And
+when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came against
+you, ye said unto me, Nay; but a king shall reign over us: when the
+Lord your God was your king. 13. Now therefore behold the king whom ye
+have chosen, and whom ye have desired! and, behold, the Lord hath set a
+king over you. 14. If ye will fear the Lord, and serve Him, and obey
+His voice, and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then
+shall both ye and also the king that reigneth over you continue
+following the Lord your God: 15. But if ye will not obey the voice of
+the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then shall the
+hand of the Lord be against you, as it was against your fathers.'--1
+SAMUEL xii. 1-15.
+
+The portion of Samuel's address included in this passage has three main
+sections: his noble and dignified assertion of his official purity, his
+summary of the past history, and his solemn declaration of the
+conditions of future wellbeing for the nation with its new king.
+
+I. Probably the war with the Ammonite king Nahash, which had postponed
+the formal inauguration of the king, had been carried on in the
+neighbourhood of the Jordan valley; and thus Gilgal would be a
+convenient rendezvous. But it was chosen for other reasons also, and,
+as appears from 1 Samuel x. 8, had been fixed on by Samuel at his first
+interview with Saul. There the Covenant had been renewed, after the
+wanderers had crossed the river, with Joshua at their head, and it was
+fitting that the beginnings of the new form of the national life should
+be consecrated by worship on the same site as had witnessed the
+beginnings of the national life on the soil of the promised land.
+Perhaps the silent stones, which Joshua reared, stood there yet. At all
+events, sacred memories could scarcely fail, as the rejoicing crowd,
+standing where their fathers had renewed the Covenant, saw the
+blackened ruins of Jericho, and the foaming river, now, as then,
+filling all its banks in the time of harvest, which their fathers had
+crossed with the ark, that was now hidden at Kirjath-jearim, for their
+guide. The very place spoke the same lessons from the past which Samuel
+was about to teach them.
+
+There is just a faint trace of Samuel's disapproval of the new order in
+his first words. He takes care to throw the whole responsibility on the
+people; but, at the same time, he assumes the authoritative tone which
+becomes him, and quietly takes the position of superiority to the king
+whom he has made. I Samuel xi. 15 seems to imply that he took no part
+in the rejoicings. It was 'Saul and all the men of Israel' who were so
+glad. He was still hesitant as to the issue, and obeyed the divine
+command with clearer insight into its purpose than the shouting crowd
+and the proud young king had. There is something very pathetic in the
+contrast he draws between Saul and himself. 'The king walketh before
+you,' in all the vigour of his young activity, and delighting all your
+eyes, and 'I am old and gray-headed,' feeble, and fit for little more
+work, and therefore, as happens to such worn-out public servants, cast
+aside for a new man. Samuel was not a monster of perfection without
+human feelings. His sense of Israel's ingratitude to himself and
+practical revolt from God lay together in his mind, and colour this
+whole speech, which has a certain tone of severity, and an absence of
+all congratulation. Probably that accounts for the mention of his sons.
+The elders' frank statement of their low opinion of them had been a
+sore point with Samuel, and he cannot help alluding to it. It was not
+for want of possible successors in his own house that they had cried
+out for a king. If this be not the bearing of the allusion to his sons,
+it is difficult to explain; and this obvious explanation would never
+have been overlooked if Samuel had not been idealised into a faultless
+saint. The dash of human infirmity and fatherly blindness gives reality
+to the picture. 'I have walked before you from my youth unto this day.'
+Note the recurrence of the same expression as is applied to Saul in the
+former part of the verse. It is as if he had said, 'Once I was as he is
+now,--young and active in your sight, and for your service. Remember
+these past years. May your new fancy's record be as stainless as mine
+is, when he is old and grayheaded!' The words bring into view the
+characteristic of Samuel's life which is often insisted on in the
+earlier chapters,--its calm, unbroken continuity and uniformity of
+direction, from the long-past days when he wore 'the little coat' his
+mother made him, with so many tears dropped on it, till this closing
+hour. While everything was rushing down to destruction in Eli's time,
+and his sons were rioting at the Tabernacle door, the child was growing
+up in the stillness; and from then till now, amid all changes, his
+course had been steady, and pointed to one aim. Blessed they whose age
+is but the fruitage of the promise of their youth! Blessed they who
+begin as 'little children,' with the forgiveness of sin and the
+knowledge of the Father, and who go on, as 'young men,' to overcome the
+Evil One, and end, as 'fathers,' with the deeper knowledge of Him who
+is 'from the beginning,' which is the reward of childhood's trust and
+manhood's struggles!
+
+Samuel is still a prophet, but he is ceasing to be the sole authority,
+and, in his conscious integrity, calls for a public, full discharge, in
+the presence of the king. Note that verse 3 gives the first instance of
+the use of the name 'Messiah,' and think of the contrast between Saul
+and Jesus. Observe, too, the simple manners of these times, when 'ox
+and ass' were the wealth. They would be poor plunder nowadays. Note
+also the various forms of injustice of which he challenges any one to
+convict him. Forcible seizure of live stock, fraud, harsh oppression,
+and letting suitors put gold on his eyes that he might not see, are the
+vices of the Eastern ruler to-day, and rampant in that unhappy land, as
+they have been ever since Samuel's time. I think I have heard of
+politicians in some other countries further west than Gilgal, who have
+axes to grind and logs to roll, and of the wonderful effects, in many
+places of business, of certain circular gold discs applied to the eyes.
+This man went away a poor man. He does not seem to have had salary, or
+retiring pension; but he carried away a pair of clean hands, as the
+voice of a nation witnessed.
+
+II. Having cleared himself, Samuel recounts the outlines of the past,
+in order to emphasise the law that cleaving to God had ever brought
+deliverance; departure, disaster; and penitence, restoration. It is
+history with a purpose, and less careful about chronology than
+principles. Facts are good, if illuminated by the clear recognition of
+the law which they obey; but, without that, they are lumber. The
+'philosophy of history' is not reached without the plain recognition of
+the working of the divine will. No doubt the principles which Samuel
+discerned written as with a sunbeam on the past of Israel were
+illustrated there with a certainty and directness which belonged to it
+alone; but we shall make a bad use of the history of Israel, if we say,
+'It is all miraculous, and therefore inapplicable to modern national
+life.' It would be much nearer the mark to say, 'It is all miraculous,
+and therefore meant as an exhibition for blind eyes of the eternal
+principles which govern the history of all nations.' It is as true in
+Britain to-day as ever it was in Judea, that righteousness and the fear
+of God are the sure foundations of real national as of individual
+prosperity. The kingdoms of this world are not the devil's, though
+diplomatists and soldiers seem to think so. If any nation were to live
+universally by the laws of God, it might not have what the world calls
+national success; it would have no story of wholesale robbery, called
+military glory, but it would have peace within its borders, and life
+would go nobly and sweetly there. 'Happy is the people, that is in such
+a case: yea, happy is the people, whose God is the Lord.'
+
+The details of Samuel's _resume_ need not occupy much time. Note the
+word in verse 7, 'reason,' or, as the Revised Version renders, 'plead.'
+He takes the position of God's advocate in the suit, and what he will
+prove for his client is the 'righteousness' of his dealings in the
+past. The story, says he, can be brought down to very simple
+elements,--a cry to God, an answer of deliverance, a relapse,
+punishment, a renewed cry to God, and all the rest of the series as
+before. It is like a repeating decimal, over and over again, each
+figure drawing the next after it. The list of oppressors in verse 9,
+and that of deliverers in verse 11, do not follow the same order, but
+that matters nothing. Clearly the facts are assumed as well known, and
+needing only summary reference. The new-fashioned way of treating
+Biblical history, of course, takes that as an irrefutable proof of the
+late date and spuriousness of this manufactured speech put into
+Samuel's mouth. Less omniscient students will be content with accepting
+the witness to the history. Nobody knows anything of a judge named
+Bedan, and the conjectural emendation 'Barak' is probable, especially
+remembering the roll-call in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where Gideon,
+Barak, and Jephthah appear in the same order, with the addition of
+Samson. The supposition that 'Samuel,' in this verse, is an error for
+'Samson,' is unnecessary; for the prophet's mention of himself thus is
+not unnatural, in the circumstances, and is less obtrusive than to have
+said 'me.'
+
+The retrospect here given points the lesson of the sin and folly of the
+demand for a king. The old way had been to cry to God in their
+distresses, and the old experience had been that the answer came swift
+and sufficient; but this generation had tried a new method, and fear of
+'Nahash the Ammonite' had driven them to look for a man to help them.
+The experience of God's responses to prayer does not always wean even
+those who receive them from casting about for visible helpers. Still
+less does the experience of our predecessors keep us from it. Strange
+that after a hundred plain instances of His aid, the hundred and first
+distress should find us almost as slow to turn to Him, and as eager to
+secure earthly stays, as if there were no past of our own, or of many
+generations, all crowded and bright with tokens of His care! We are
+always disposed to doubt whether the power that delivered from Sisera,
+Philistines, and Moab, will be able to deliver us from Nahash. The new
+danger looks the very worst of all, and this time we must have a king.
+All the while Israel had God for its king. Our dim eyes cannot see the
+realities of the invisible world, and so we cleave to the illusions of
+the visible, which, at their best, are but shadows of the real, and are
+often made, by our weak hearts, its rival and substitute. What does the
+soldier, who has an impenetrable armour to wear, want with pasteboard
+imitations, like those worn in a play? It is doubtful wisdom to fling
+away the substance in grasping at the shadow. Saul was brave, and a
+head and shoulders above the people, and he had beaten Nahash for them;
+but Saul for God is a poor exchange. Do we do better, when we hanker
+after something more tangible than an unseen Guide, Helper, Stay, Joy,
+and Peace-bringer for our hearts, and declare plainly, by our eager
+race after created good, that we do not reckon God by Himself enough
+for us?
+
+III. The part of Samuel's address with which we are concerned here
+closes with the application of the history to the present time. The
+great point of the last three verses is that the new order of things
+has not changed the old law, which bound up well-being inseparably with
+obedience. They have got their king, and there he stands; but if they
+think that that is to secure their prosperity, they are much mistaken.
+There is a touch of rebuke, and possibly of sarcasm, in pointing to
+Saul, and making so emphatic, as in verse 13, the vehemence of their
+anxiety to get him. It is almost as if Samuel had said, 'Look at him,
+and say whether he is worth all that eagerness. Do you like him as
+well, now that you have him, as you did before?' There are not many of
+this world's goods which stand that test. The shell that looked silvery
+and iridescent when in the sea is but a poor, pale reminder of its
+former self, when we hold it dry in our hands. One object of desire,
+and only one, brings no disappointment in possessing it. He, and only
+he, who sets his hope on God, will never have to feel that he is not so
+satisfied with the fulfilment as with the dream.
+
+Israel had rejected God in demanding a king; but the giver of their
+demand had been God, and their rejection had not abolished the divine
+government, nor altered one jot of the old law. They and their king
+were equally its subjects. There is great emphasis in the special
+mention of 'your king' as bound to obedience as much as they; and, if
+we follow the Septuagint reading of verse 15, the mention is repeated
+there in the threatening of punishment. No abundance of earthly
+supports or objects of our love or trust in the least alters the
+unalterable conditions of well-being. Whether surrounded with these or
+stripped of all, to fear and serve the Lord and to hearken to His voice
+is equally the requisite for all true blessedness, and is so equally to
+the helper and the helped, the lover and the loved. We are ever tempted
+to think that, when our wishes are granted, and some dear or strong
+hand is stretched out for aid, all will be well; and we are terribly
+apt to forget that we need God as much as before, and that the way of
+being blessed has not changed. Those whose hearts and homes are bright
+with loved faces, and whose lives are guarded by strong and wise hands,
+have need to remember that they and their dear ones are under the same
+conditions of well-being as are the loneliest and saddest; and they who
+'have none other that fighteth for' them have no less need to remember
+that, if God be their companion, they cannot be utterly solitary, nor
+altogether helpless if He be their aid.
+
+
+
+
+OLD TRUTH FOR A NEW EPOCH
+
+'Now therefore behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have
+desired! and, behold, the Lord hath set a king over yon. 14. If ye will
+fear the Lord, and serve Him, and obey His voice, and not rebel against
+the commandment of the Lord; then shall both ye, and also the king that
+reigneth over you, continue following the Lord your God: 15. But if ye
+will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment
+of the Lord; then shall the hand of the Lord be against you, as it was
+against your fathers. 16. Now therefore stand and see this great thing,
+which the Lord will do before your eyes. 17. Is it not wheat-harvest
+to-day! I will call unto the Lord, and He shall send thunder and rain;
+that ye may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which ye
+have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking you a king. 18. So Samuel
+called unto the Lord; and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day: and
+all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. 19. And all the
+people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God,
+that we die not: for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask
+us a king. 20. And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: ye have done
+all this wickedness: yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but
+serve the Lord with all your heart; 21. And turn ye not aside: for then
+should ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver, for
+they are vain. 22. For the Lord will not forsake His people for His
+great name's sake: because it hath pleased the Lord to make you His
+people. 23. Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against
+the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will teach you the good and
+the right way: 24. Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all
+your heart: for consider how great things He hath done for you. 25. But
+if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your
+king.'--1 SAMUEL xii. 13-25.
+
+
+Samuel's office as judge necessarily ended when Saul was made king, but
+his office of prophet continued. This chapter deals with both the
+cessation and the continuance, giving at first his dignified, and
+somewhat pained, vindication of his integrity, and then passing on to
+show him exercising his prophetic function in exhortation, miracle, and
+authoritative declaration of Jehovah's will.
+
+I. The first point is the sign which Samuel gave. Usually there is no
+rain in Palestine from about the end of April till October. Samuel was
+speaking during the wheat harvest, which falls about the beginning of
+June. We note that he volunteered the sign, and, what is still more
+remarkable, that he is sure that God will send it in answer to his
+prayer. Why was he thus certain? Because he recognised that the impulse
+to proffer the sign came from God. We know little of the mental
+processes by which a prophet could discriminate between his own
+thinkings and God's speech, but such discrimination was possible, or
+there could have been no ring of confidence in the prophet's 'Thus
+saith the Lord.' Not even a 'Samuel among them that call upon His name'
+had a right to assume that every asking would certainly have an answer.
+It is when we ask 'anything according to His will' that we know that
+'He heareth us,' and are entitled to predict to others the sure answer.
+
+It seems a long leap logically from hearing the thunder and seeing the
+rain rushing down on the harvest field, to recognising the sin of
+asking for a king. But the connecting steps are plain. Samuel announced
+the storm, he asked God to send it, it came at his word; therefore he
+was approved of God and was His messenger; therefore his words about
+the desire for a king were God's words. Again, God sent the tempest;
+therefore God ruled the elemental powers, and wielded them so as to
+affect Israel, and therefore it had been folly and sin to wish for
+another defender. So the result of the thunder-burst was twofold--they
+'feared Jehovah and Samuel,' and they confessed their sin in desiring a
+king. They were but rude and sense-bound men, like children in many
+respects; their religion was little more than outward worship and a
+vague awe; they needed 'signs' as children need picture-books. The very
+slightness and superficiality of their religion made their confession
+easy and swift, and neither the one nor the other went deep enough to
+be lasting. The faith that is built on 'signs and wonders' is easily
+battered down; the repentance that is due to a thunderstorm is over as
+soon as the sun comes out again. The shallowness of the contrition in
+this case is shown by two things,--the request to Samuel to pray for
+them, and the boon which they begged him to ask, 'that we die not.'
+They had better have prayed for themselves, and they had better have
+asked for strength to cleave to Jehovah. They were like Simon Magus
+cowering before Peter, and beseeching him, 'Pray ye for me to the Lord,
+that none of the things which ye have spoken may come upon me.' That is
+not the voice of true repentance, the 'godly sorrow' which works
+healing and life, but that of the 'sorrow of the world which worketh
+death.' The real penitent will press the closer to the forgiving
+Father, and his cry will be for purity even more than for pardon.
+
+II. Samuel's closing words are tender, wise, and full of great truths.
+He begins with encouragement blended with reiteration of the people's
+sin. It is not safe for a forgiven man to forget his sin quickly. The
+more sure he is that God has forgotten, the more careful he should be
+to remember it, for gratitude, humility and watchfulness. But it should
+never loom so large before him as to shut out the sunshine of God's
+love, for no fruits of goodness will ripen in character without that
+light. It is a great piece of practical wisdom always to keep one's
+forgiven sin in mind, and yet not to let it paralyse hopefulness and
+effort. 'Ye have indeed done all this evil, ... yet turn not aside from
+following Jehovah.' That is a truly evangelical exhortation. The memory
+of past failures is never to set the tune for future service. Again,
+Samuel based the exhortation to whole-hearted service of Jehovah on
+Jehovah's faithfulness and great benefits (vs. 22-24), It is suicidal
+folly to turn away from Him who never turns away from us; it is black
+ingratitude, as well as suicidal folly, to refuse to serve Him whose
+mercies encompass us. That divine good pleasure, which has no source
+but in Himself, flows out like an artesian well, unceasing. His 'nature
+and property' is to love. His past is the prophecy of His future. He
+will always be what He has been, and always do what He has done.
+Therefore we need not fear, though we change and are faithless. 'He
+cannot deny Himself.' His revealed character would be dimmed if He
+abandoned a soul that clung to Him. So our faith should, in some
+measure, match His faithfulness, and we should build firmly on the firm
+foundation.
+
+III. Samuel answers the people's request for his prayers with a wise
+word, full of affection, and also full of dignity and warning, all the
+more impressive because veiled. He promises his continued intercession,
+but he puts it as a duty which he owes to God rather than to them only,
+and he thus sufficiently asserts his God-appointed office. He promises
+to do more than pray for them; namely, to continue as their ethical and
+religious guide, which they had not asked him to be. That at once makes
+his future position in the monarchy clear. He is still the prophet,
+though no longer the judge, and, as the future was to show, he has to
+direct monarch as well as people. But it also hints to the people that
+his prayers for them will be of little avail unless they listen to his
+teaching. Whether a Samuel prays for us or not, if we do not listen to
+the voices that bid us serve God, we 'shall be consumed.'
+
+
+
+
+SAUL REJECTED
+
+'Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel, saying, 11. It repenteth
+Me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from
+following Me, and hath not performed My commandments. And it grieved
+Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night. 12. And when Samuel rose
+early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul
+came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about,
+and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal. 13. And Samuel came to Saul:
+and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed
+the commandment of the Lord. 14. And Samuel said, What meaneth then
+this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen
+which I hear? 15. And Saul said, They have brought them from the
+Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the
+oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lore thy God; and the rest we have utterly
+destroyed. 16. Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee
+what the Lord hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on.
+17. And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast
+thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed
+thee king over Israel? 18. And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and
+said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight
+against them until they be consumed. 19. Wherefore then didst thou not
+obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst
+evil in the sight of the Lord? 20. And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I
+have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord
+sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly
+destroyed the Amalekites. 21. But the people took of the spoil, sheep
+and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly
+destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal. 22. And Samuel
+said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
+as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than
+sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. 23. For rebellion is as
+the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
+Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected
+thee from being king.'--1 SAMUEL xv. 10-23.
+
+
+Again the narrative takes us to Gilgal,--a fateful place for Saul,
+There they 'made Saul king before the Lord'; there he had taken the
+first step on his dark way of gloomy, proud self-will, down which he
+was destined to plunge so far and fatally. There he had, in
+consequence, received the message of the transference of the kingdom
+from his house, though not from himself. Now, flushed with his victory
+over Amalek, he has come there with his troops, laden with spoil. They
+had made a swift march from the south where Amalek dwelt, passing by
+Nabal's Carmel, where they had put up some sort of monument of their
+exploit in a temper of vain-glory, very unlike the spirit which reared
+the stone of help at Eben-ezer; and apparently they purpose sacrifices
+and a feast. But Samuel comes into camp with no look of congratulation.
+Probably the vigorous old man had walked that day from his home, some
+fifteen miles off, and on the way seems to have picked up tidings of
+Saul's victory and position, which ought to have reached him from the
+king himself, and would have done so if Saul's conscience had been
+clear. The omission to tell him was studied neglect, which revealed
+much.
+
+Samuel had 'cried unto the Lord all night,' if perchance the terrible
+sentence might be reversed; and his cries had not been in vain, for
+they had brought him into complete submission, and had nerved him to do
+his work calmly, without a quiver or a pang of personal feeling, as
+becomes God's prophet.
+
+
+I. We must go back a step beyond this passage to understand it. Note,
+first, the command which was disobeyed. The campaign against Amalek was
+undertaken by express divine direction through Samuel's lips. It was
+the delayed fulfilment of a sentence passed in the times of the
+Conquest, but not executed then. The terrible old usages of that period
+are brought into play again, and the whole nation with its possessions
+is 'devoted'. The word explains the dreadful usage. There are two kinds
+of devotion to God: that of willing, and that of unwilling, men; the
+one brings life, the other, death. The massacre of the foul nations of
+Canaan was thereby made a direct divine judgment, and removed wholly
+from the region of ferocious warfare. No doubt, the whole plane of
+morals in the earlier revelation is lower than that of the New
+Testament. If Jesus has not taught a higher law than was given to 'them
+of old time,' one large part of His gift to men disappears. The
+wholesale destruction of 'babe and suckling' with the guilty makes us
+shudder; and we are meant to feel the difference between the atmosphere
+of that time and ours. But we are not meant to question the reality of
+the divine command, nor His right to give it. He slays, and makes
+alive. His judgments strike the innocent with the guilty. In many a
+case, and often, the sin is one generation's, and the bitter fruit
+another's. The destruction of Canaanites and Amalekites does not change
+its nature because God used men to do it; and the question is not
+whether the Israelites were fiercely barbarous in their warfare, but
+whether God has the right of life and death. We grant all the
+dreadfulness, and joyfully admit the distance between such acts and
+Jesus Christ; but we recognise them as not incongruous with the whole
+revealed character of the God who is justice as well as love, as
+parallel in substance, though different in instrument, with many of His
+dealings with men,--as the execution of righteous sentence on rank
+corruption, and as sweetening the world by its removal. Most of the
+difficulty and repugnance has been caused by forgetting that Israel was
+but the sword, while the hand was God's.
+
+II. Note the disobedience. Partial obedience is complete disobedience.
+Saul and his men obeyed as far as suited them; that is to say, they did
+not obey God at all, but their own inclinations, both in sparing the
+good and in destroying the worthless. What was not worth carrying off
+they destroyed,--not because of the command, but to save trouble. This
+one fault seems but a small thing to entail the loss of a kingdom. But
+is it so? It was obviously not an isolated act on Saul's part, but
+indicated his growing impatience of the divine control, exercised on
+him through Samuel. He was in a difficult position. He owed his kingdom
+to the prophet; and the very condition on which he held it was that of
+submission to Samuel's authority. No wonder that his elevation
+quickened the growth of his masterfulness and gloomy, impetuous
+self-will,--traits in his character which showed themselves very early
+in his reign! No wonder either that such a king, held in
+leading-strings by a prophet, should chafe! The more insignificant the
+act in itself, the more significant it may be as a flag of revolt.
+Disobedience which will not do a little thing is great disobedience.
+Nor was this the first time that Saul had 'kicked,' like another Saul,
+'against the pricks,' Gilgal had seen a previous instance of his
+impetuous self-assertion, masked by apparent deference; and the
+inference is fair that the interval between the two pieces of rebellion
+had been of a piece with them. Trivial acts, especially when repeated,
+show deep-seated evil. There may be only a coil of the snake visible,
+but that betrays the presence of the slimy folds, though they are
+covered from sight among the leaves. The tiny shoot of a plant, peeping
+above the ground, does not augur that the roots are short; they may run
+for yards. Nor can any act be called small, of which the motive is
+disregard of God's plain command: 'He that is unjust in the least is
+unjust also in much.' Saul had never much religion. He had never heard
+of Samuel till that day when he came to consult him about the asses. It
+was a wonder to his acquaintances to find him 'among the prophets'; and
+all his acts of worship have about them a smack of self, and an
+exclusive regard to the mere externals of sacrifice, which imply a
+shallow notion of religion and a spirit unsubdued by its deeper
+influences.
+
+Such a man habitually acts in disregard of God's will; and that is
+great sin, though it be manifested in small acts. It is to be
+remembered, too, that the excepting of the best of the spoil from the
+general destruction, changed the whole character of the transaction,
+and brought it down from the level of a solemn act of divine justice,
+of which Saul and his army were the executors by divine mandate, to
+that of a mere cattle-lifting foray, in which they were but thieves for
+their own gain. The mingling of personal advantage with any sort of
+service of God, ruins the whole, and turns it into mere selfishness.
+Samuel, in verse 19, puts the two sides of this 'evil in the sight of
+the Lord' as being disobedience and swooping down on the booty, like
+some bird of prey,
+
+III. Note Saul's excuses. Throughout the whole interview he plays a
+sorry part, and is evidently cowed by the hated authority and
+personality of the old man; while Samuel, on his side, is curt, stern,
+and takes the upper hand, as becomes God's messenger. The relative
+positions of the two men are the normal ones of their offices, and
+explain both Saul's revolt and the chronic impatience of kings at the
+interference of prophets. Here we have Saul coming to meet Samuel with
+affected heartiness and welcome, and with the bold lie, 'I have
+performed the commandment of the Lord.' That is more than true
+obedience is quick to say. If Saul had done it, he would have been
+slower to boast of it. 'Those vessels yield the most sound that have
+the least liquor.' He 'doth protest too much'; and the protestation
+comes from an uneasy conscience. Or did he, like a great many other men
+who have no deep sense of the sanctity of every jot and tittle of a
+divine law, please himself with the notion that it was enough to keep
+it approximately, in the 'spirit' of the precept, without slavish
+obedience to the 'letter'? In a later part of the interview (v. 20) he
+insists that he has obeyed, and tries to prove it by dwelling on the
+points in which he did so, and gliding lightly over the others.
+
+'Samuel had reason to believe the sheep and oxen above Saul'; and there
+is a tone of almost contempt for the shuffling liar in his quiet
+question: 'What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears,
+and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?' There was no answering that;
+so Saul shifts his ground without a blush or a moment's hesitation.
+'The people spared.' It is a new character for him to appear in,--that
+of a weak ruler who cannot keep his unruly men in order! Had he tried
+to restrain them? If he had, and had failed, he was not fit to be a
+king. If he had not, he was a coward to shift the blame on to them. How
+ready men are to vilify themselves in some other direction, in order to
+escape the consciousness of sin, which God is seeking to force home on
+them! No doubt the people were very willing to have a finger in the
+affair; but so was he. And if the cattle was their share, Agag, who
+could be held to ransom, was his; and the arrangement suited all round.
+As to the purpose of sacrificing at Gilgal, perhaps that was true; but
+if it were, no doubt the same process of selection, which had destroyed
+the worthless and kept the best, would have been repeated; and the net
+result would have been a sacrifice of the least valuable, and 'the
+survival of the fittest' in many a pasture and stall.
+
+But note Saul's attitude towards Jehovah, betrayed by him in that one
+word: 'the Lord _thy_ God,' No wonder that he had been content with a
+partial and perfunctory obedience, if he had no closer sense of
+connection with God than that! There is almost a sneer in it, too, as
+if he had said, 'What needs all this fuss about saving the cattle? You
+should be pleased; for this Jehovah, with whom you profess to have
+special communication, will be honoured with sacrifice, and you will
+share in the feast.' If the words do not mean abjuring Jehovah, they go
+very near it, and, at all events, betray the shallowness of Saul's
+religion. Samuel, in his answer, reminds him of his early modesty and
+self-distrust, and of the source of his elevation. He then sweeps away
+the flimsy cobwebs of excuses, by the curt repetition of the plain,
+dreadful terms of Saul's commission, and then flashes out the piercing
+question, like a sword, 'Wherefore then didst thou not?' The reminder
+of past benefits, and the reiteration of the plain injunctions which
+have been broken, are the way to cut through the poor palliations which
+men wrap around their sins.
+
+It speaks of a very obstinate and gloomy determination that, in answer,
+Saul should reiterate his protestation of having done as he was bid. He
+doggedly says over again all that he had said before, unmoved by the
+prophet's solemn words. He is steeling his heart against reproof; and
+there is only one end to that. Sin unacknowledged, after God has
+disclosed it, is doubly sin. The heart that answers the touch of God's
+rebukes by sullenly closing more tightly on its evil, is preparing
+itself for the blow of the hammer which will crush it. 'He that being
+often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and
+that without remedy.' Let us beware of meeting God's prophet with
+shuffling lies about our obedience, and of opposing to the words which
+are loving though they pierce, the armour of impenetrable
+self-righteousness and conceit.
+
+IV. Note the punishment. To the vain talk about honouring God by
+sacrifice, Samuel opposes the great principle which was the special
+message committed to every prophet in Israel, and which was repeated
+all through its history, side by side with the divinely appointed
+sacrificial system. In the intensity of his spiritual emotion, Samuel
+speaks in lyric strains, in the measured parallelism which was the
+Hebrew dress of poetry, and gives forth in words 'which will live for
+ever' the great truth that God delights in obedience more than in
+sacrifice. Whilst, on the one hand, he lifts the surrender of the will,
+and the consequent submission of the life, high above all mere ritual,
+on the other hand, by the same process, he sinks the rebellion of the
+will and the stubbornness of the nature, unsubdued either by kindness
+or threats, as Saul was showing his to be, to the level of actual
+idolatry.
+
+             'Rebellion is divination,
+              And stubbornness is idols and teraphim.'
+
+Then comes the stern sentence of rejection. Why was Saul thus
+irrevocably set aside? Was it not a harsh punishment for such a crime?
+As we have already remarked, Saul's act is not to be judged as an
+isolated deed, but as the outcome of a deep tendency in him, which
+meant revolt from God. It was not because of the single act, but
+because of that which it showed him to be, that he was set aside. The
+sentence is pronounced, not because 'thou didst spare Amalek,' but
+because 'thou didst reject the word of the Lord.' Further, it is to be
+remembered that the punishment was but the carrying out of his act. His
+own hand had cut the bond between him and God, and had disqualified
+himself for the office which he filled. Saul had said, 'I will reign by
+myself.' God said, 'Be it so! By thyself thou shalt reign.' For the
+consequence of his deposition was not outward change in his royalty.
+David indeed was anointed but in secret, so Samuel consented to honour
+Saul before the people. All the external difference was that Samuel
+never saw him again, and he was relieved from the incubus of the
+prophet's 'interference'; that is to say, he ceased to be God's king,
+and became a phantom, ruling only by his own will and power, as he had
+wished to do. How profound may be the difference while all externals
+remain unchanged! When we set up ourselves as our own lords, and shake
+off God's rule, we cast away His sanction and help in all the deeds of
+our self-will, however unaltered their outward appearance may remain.
+But God left him to 'walk in his own ways, and be filled with the fruit
+of his own devices,' by no irrevocable abandonment, however the decree
+of rejection from the kingship was irrevocable. The gates of repentance
+stood open for him; and the very sentence that came stern and laconic
+from Samuel's lips, rightly accepted, might have drawn him in true
+penitence to a forgiving God. His subsequent confession was rejected
+because it expressed no real contrition; and the worship which he
+proceeded to offer, without the sanction of the prophet's presence, was
+as unreal as his protestation of obedience, and showed how little he
+had learned the lesson of the great words, 'To obey is better than
+sacrifice.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SHEPHERD-KING
+
+'And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt them mourn for Saul,
+seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel! fill thine horn
+with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Beth-lehemite: for I
+have provided Me a king among his sons. 2. And Samuel said, How can I
+go? If Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the Lord said, Take an heifer
+with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord. 3. And call
+Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show thee what thou shalt do: and
+thou shalt anoint unto Me him whom I name unto thee. 4. And Samuel did
+that which the Lord spake, and came to Beth-lehem. And the elders of
+the town trembled at his coming, and said, Comest thou peaceably? 5.
+And he said, Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord: sanctify
+yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice. And he sanctified Jesse
+and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice. 6. And it came to pass,
+when they were come, that he looked on Eliab, and said, Surely the
+Lord's anointed is before him. 7. But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look
+not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have
+refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on
+the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. 8. Then
+Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. And he said,
+Neither hath the Lord chosen this. 9. Then Jesse made Shammah to pass
+by. And he said, Neither hath the Lord chosen this. 10. Again, Jesse
+made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. And Samuel said unto
+Jesse, The Lord hath not chosen these. 11. And Samuel said unto Jesse,
+Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the
+youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said unto
+Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come
+hither. 12. And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and
+withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the Lord
+said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he. 13. Then Samuel took the horn
+of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit
+of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up,
+and went to Ramah.'--1 SAMUEL xvi 1-13.
+
+
+The chief purpose in these verses is to bring out that the choice of
+David was purely God's. The most consummate art could have taken no
+better way of heightening the effect of his first appearance than that
+adopted in this perfectly unartificial story, which leads us up a long
+avenue to where the shepherd-boy stands. First, we have Samuel, with
+his regrets and objections; then Jesse with his seven stalwart sons;
+and at last, when expectation has been heightened by delay and by the
+minute previous details, the future king is disclosed,--a stripling
+with his ruddy locks glistening with the anointing oil, and his lovely
+eyes. We shall best catch the spirit by simply following the letter of
+the story.
+
+I. We have Samuel and his errand to Bethlehem. After that sad day at
+Gilgal, he and Saul met no more, though their homes were but a few
+miles apart, and it must have been difficult to avoid each other.
+Samuel yearned over the man whom he had learned to love, and it must
+have been pain to him to see the shattering of the vessel which he had
+formed. However natural his mourning, and however indicative of his
+sweet nature, it was wrong, because it showed that he had not yet
+reconciled himself to God's purpose, though his conduct obeyed. The
+mourning which submits while it weeps, and which interferes with no
+duty, is never rebuked by God. He never says,' How long dost thou
+mourn?' unless sorrow has deepened into accusation of His providence,
+or tears have blinded us to the duty that ensues. But the true cure for
+overmuch sorrow is work, and, for vain regrets after vanished good, the
+welcome to the new good which God ever sends to fill the empty place.
+His resources are not exhausted because one man has failed. 'There are
+as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.' Saul has been
+rejected, but a king shall be found; and Samuel is to dry his tears and
+anoint him. He evidently had no thought of a successor to Saul till
+this command came; and when it comes, how little it tells him! He gets
+light enough for the next step, but no more. That is always God's way.
+Duty opens by degrees, and the way to see farther ahead is to go as far
+as we see.
+
+Samuel's sorrow and the incomplete command show plainly that he was but
+an instrument. At every step the view is confuted which makes him a
+far-seeing statesman who inaugurated and carried through a peaceful
+revolution. The history, which is our only source, tells another story,
+and makes God the actor, and the prophet only a tool in His hands. If
+we cut the supernatural out of the story, the fragments do not hang
+together, and no reason is forthcoming why they should be any more true
+than are the rejected pieces. Samuel does not show to advantage in
+either of the two things mentioned about him here. In neither was he
+true to his early vow, 'Speak, for Thy servant heareth.' But there was
+much reason for his fear, if once God was left out of the account; for
+Saul's ever-wakeful suspicion had become a disease, and it was not
+wonderful that he should be on the watch for any act which looked like
+putting the sentence of deposition into effect. If ever a man lived
+with a sword hanging by a hair over him, it was this unhappy king, who
+knew that he was dethroned, and did not know when or by whom the divine
+rejection would be made visible to all men. But Samuel had faced worse
+dangers without a murmur; and no doubt his alarm now, which makes him
+venture all but flatly to refuse to obey, indicates that, to some
+extent, he had lost his hold of God by his indulgence in his sorrow. If
+he had been true to his high calling, he would have 'filled his horn,'
+and gone on God's errand, careless of a hundred Sauls or a hundred
+deaths. But it is easy for us, who have never perilled anything for
+obedience, to sit in judgment on him. 'Wherein thou judgest another,
+thou condemnest thyself.' God judges him mercifully, and provides a
+shelter for his weakness, which he should not have needed. To hide his
+true errand behind the cloak of the sacrifice was second-best, and only
+permitted in consideration of his fear which had a touch of sin in it.
+He was not, at the moment, up to treading the heroic plain path; and
+God opened an easier one for him. It is sometimes allowable to use an
+avowed purpose to conceal the real one, but it is a permission which
+should be very sparingly used.
+
+II. We have Samuel at Bethlehem, with Jesse and his sons. An old man is
+suddenly seen coming up the hill to the gate of the little city on
+foot, driving or leading a heifer, and carrying a horn in his hand. In
+such humble fashion did the prophet travel; but reverential awe met
+him, and his long years of noble service surrounded him as with a halo.
+Apparently, Bethlehem had not been included in his usual circuits, and
+the village elders were somewhat scared by his sudden appearance. Their
+question may give a glimpse into the severity which Samuel sometimes
+had to show, and is a strange testimony to the reality of his power:
+'Comest thou peaceably?' One old man was no very formidable assailant
+of a village, even if he did not come with friendly intent; but, if he
+is recognised as God's messenger, his words are sharper than any
+two-edged sword, and his unarmed hand bears weapons mighty to 'pull
+down strongholds.' Why should the elders have thought that he came
+'with a rod'? Because they knew that they and their fellow-villagers
+deserved it. If men were not dimly conscious of sin, they would not be
+afraid of God's messenger or of God.
+
+The narrative does not tell whether or not the sacrifice preceded the
+review of Jesse's sons. Probably it did, and the interval between it
+and the feast was occupied in the interview. It is evident that Samuel
+kept the reason of his wish to see Jesse's sons to himself; for
+disclosure would have brought about the danger which he was so anxious
+to avoid. It appears, too, from verse 13, that only the family of Jesse
+were present. So we have to fancy the wondering little cluster of burly
+husbandmen with their father surrounding the prophet, and: one by one,
+bracing themselves to meet his searching gaze. Again the choice is
+emphatically represented as God's, by the mention of Samuel's hasty
+conclusion, from the look of the eldest, that he was the man. Had not
+Samuel had enough of kings of towering stature? Strange that he should
+have been in such a hurry to fix on a second edition of Saul! The most
+obedient waiters on God sometimes outrun His intimations, and they
+always go wrong when they do. Samuel has to learn two lessons, as he is
+bidden to repress the too quick thought: one, that he is not choosing,
+but only registering God's choice; and one, that the qualifications for
+God's king are inward, not bodily. In these old days, the world's
+monarchs had to be men of thews and sinews, for power rested on mere
+brute force: but God's chosen had to rule, not by the strength of his
+own arm, but by leaning on God's. The genius of the kingdom determined
+the principle of selection of its king. Samuel does not again attempt
+to forecast the choice; but he lets the other six pass, and, hearing no
+inward voice from God, tells Jesse, as it would seem, that the Lord has
+not chosen them for whatsoever mysterious purpose was in His mind.
+
+III. We have 'the Lord's chosen.' Samuel was staggered by the apparent
+failure of his errand. God had told him that he had provided a king
+from this family, and now they had passed in review before him, and
+none was chosen. Again he is made to feel his own impotence, and his
+question, 'Are here all thy children?' has a touch of bewilderment in
+it. God seldom shows us His choice at first; and both in thought and
+practice we get at the precious and the true by a process of exclusion,
+having often to reject 'seven' before we find in some all-but-forgotten
+'eighth' that which we seek. David's insignificance in Jesse's eyes was
+such that his father would never have remembered his existence but for
+the question, and his answer is a kind of assurance to the prophet that
+he need not take the trouble to see the boy, for he will never do for
+whatever he may have in view. His youth and occupation put him out of
+the question. We know, from the other parts of his story, that his
+brothers had no love for him; nor does his father seem to have had
+much. Probably the lad had the usual lot of genius,--to grow up among
+uncongenial, commonplace people, understanding him little, and liking
+him less. It is a hard school; but where it does not sour, it makes
+strong men. His solitary shepherd life taught him many precious
+lessons, and, at any rate, gave him the priceless gift of solitude,
+which is the nurse of poetry, heroism, and religion. The glorious
+night-piece in Psalm viii., and its companion day-piece in Psalm xix.,
+may bear the impress of the shepherd life; which is idealised and
+sanctified for ever in the immortal sweetness of Psalm xxiii. There
+were many worse schools for the future king than a solitary shepherd's
+life on the bare hills round Bethlehem.
+
+The delay of the feast and the pause of idle waiting heighten the
+expectation with which we look for David's coming. When he does come,
+what a bright young figure is lovingly painted for us! He is 'ruddy,
+and withal fair of eyes, and goodly to look upon,'--of fair complexion,
+with golden hair (rare among these swarthy Orientals), and with
+lustrous poet's eyes. What a contrast to Saul's grim face and
+figure,--like a sunbeam streaming athwart a thunder-cloud seamed with
+its own lightning! Silently the divine voice spoke, and silently, as it
+would seem, Samuel poured the oil on the boy's bowed curls. No word of
+the purpose escaped his lips, and the awestruck youth was left to
+wonder for what high destiny he was chosen. One can fancy the looks of
+his brothers as they bitterly watched the anointing with hearts full of
+envy, contempt, and rage. I Samuel xvii. 28 shows what they felt to
+David.
+
+What was the use of this enigmatical anointing for an undisclosed
+purpose? It is Samuel's last act, and his last appearance, except for
+the mention of David's flight to him from the court of Saul, and that
+weird scene of Saul prophesying and lying naked before Samuel and David
+for a day and a night. It was therefore the solemn final act of the
+prophet,--transferring the monarchy; but it was for David the beginning
+of his training for the throne, in two ways, 'The Spirit of the Lord
+came upon David from that day forward.' There was an actual
+communication of divine gifts fitting him for his unknown office, and
+he was conscious of a new spirit stirring in him. Beside this, the
+consciousness of a call to unknown tasks would mature him fast, and
+bring graver thoughts, humbler sense of weakness, and clinging trust in
+God who had laid the burden on him; and the necessity for repressing
+his dreams of the future, in order to do his obscure present duties,
+would add patience and self-control to his youthful ardour. What a
+whirl of thoughts he carried back to his flock, and how welcome would
+the solitude be!
+
+The great lesson here is the one so continually reiterated in
+Scripture, from Isaac downwards, that God 'chooses the weak things of
+the world to confound the things that are mighty,' and thereby
+magnifies both the sovereign freedom of His choice and the power of His
+Spirit, which takes the stripling from the sheepcotes and qualifies him
+to be the antagonist of the grim Saul, and the king of Israel. There
+are subsidiary lessons, especially for young and ardent souls confined
+for the present to lowly tasks, and feeling some call to something
+higher in a dim future. Patience, the faithful doing of to-day's
+trivial tasks, the habit of self-repression, the quiet trust in God who
+opens the way in due time,--these, and such like, were the signs that
+David was called to a throne, and that God's Spirit was preparing him
+for it. They are the virtues which will best prepare us for whatever
+the future may have in store for us, and will be in themselves abundant
+reward, whether they draw after them a high position, which is a heavy
+burden, or, more happily, leave us in our sheltered obscurity.
+
+
+
+
+THE VICTORY OF UNARMED FAITH
+
+'And David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him; thy
+servant will go and fight with this Philistine. 33. And Saul said to
+David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with
+him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth. 34.
+And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and
+there came a lion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock; 35. And
+I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth:
+and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him,
+and slew him. 36. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this
+uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied
+the armies of the living God. 37. David said moreover, The Lord that
+delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the
+bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul
+said unto David, Go, and the Lord be with thee. 38. And Saul armed
+David with his armour, and he put an helmet of brass upon his head;
+also he armed him with a coat of mail. 39. And David girded his sword
+upon his armour, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved it. And
+David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these; for I have not proved
+them. And David put them off him. 40. And he took his staff in his
+hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them
+in a shepherd's bag which he had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in
+his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine. 41. And the Philistine
+came on and drew near unto David; and the man that bare the shield went
+before him. 42. And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he
+disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair
+countenance. 43. And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that
+thou comest to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his
+gods. 44. And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give
+thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.
+45. Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword,
+and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of
+the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast
+defied. 46. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I
+will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the
+carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the
+air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know
+that there is a God in Israel. 47. And all this assembly shall know
+that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the
+Lord's, and He will give you into our hands. 48. And it came to pass,
+when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that
+David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. 49. And
+David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it,
+and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his
+forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. 50. So David
+prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote
+the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of
+David. 51. Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took
+his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut
+off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was
+dead, they fled.'--1 SAMUEL xvii. 32-51.
+
+
+The scene of David's victory has been identified in the present Wady
+Es-Sunt, which still possesses one of the terebinth-trees which gave it
+its name of 'Elah.' At that point it is about a quarter of a mile wide,
+and runs nearly east and west. In the centre is 'a deep trench or
+gulley, the sides and bed of which are strewn with rounded and
+water-worn pebbles.' This is the 'valley,' or rather 'ravine' of verse
+3 of this chapter, which is described by a different word from that for
+'vale' in verse 2--the one meaning a much broader opening than the
+other--and from it came the 'five smooth stones.' Notice the minute
+topographical accuracy, which indicates history, not legend. The
+pebble-bed may supply a missile to hit the modern 'giant' of sceptical
+criticism, who boasts much after Goliath's fashion.
+
+The two armies lay looking at each other across the valley, with
+occasional skirmishes; and for forty days (probably a round number)
+Goliath paraded on his own, the south, side of the gulley, shouting out
+his taunts and challenge with a voice like a bull. Many a similar scene
+in classical and mediaeval warfare confirms the truth of the picture,
+so unlike modern battles. The story is, for all time, the example of
+the victory of unarmed faith over the world's utmost might. It is in
+little the history of the Church and the type of all battles for God.
+It is a pattern for the young especially. The youthful athlete leaps
+into the arena, and overcomes, not because of his own strength, but
+because he trusts in God.
+
+I. Note the glowing youthful enthusiasm which dares the conflict. When
+the Spirit of the Lord left Saul, his courage seems to have gone too,
+and he is cowed, like the rest, by Goliath. His interview with David
+shows him as timid and unlike his former self, when he dashed at Nahash
+and any odds. Now he is hardly to be roused, even by David's contagious
+boldness, and is full of objections and precautions. The temper of the
+two, as they front each other in Saul's tent, shows that the one has
+lost, and the other received, the Spirit which strengthens. David has
+become the encourager, and his cheery words bring some hopefulness to
+the gloomy, faint-hearted king. The Septuagint has a variant reading in
+verse 32, which brings this out and suits the context, 'Let not my
+lord's heart fail.' But, whether this be adopted or no, David appears
+as quite unaffected by the terror which had unmanned the army, and as
+bringing a buoyant disregard of the enemy, like a reviving breeze. It
+was not merely youthful daring, nor foolish under-estimation of the
+danger, which prompted his stimulating words. The ring of true faith is
+in them, and they show us how we may surround ourselves with an
+atmosphere which will keep prevailing faint-heartedness off us, and
+make us, like Gideon's fleece, impervious to the chill mists of
+faithless fear which saturate all around. He who trusts in God should
+be as a pillar of fire, burning bright in the darkness of terror, and
+making a rallying point for weaker hearts. When panic has seized
+others, the Christian soul has the more reason for courage. David
+conquered the temptation to share in the general cowardice, before he
+conquered Goliath, and perhaps the former fight was the worse of the
+two.
+
+While David is the embodiment of the courage of faith, Saul embodies
+worldly wisdom and calculating prudence. A touch of tenderness blends
+with his attempt to dissuade the lad from the unequal conflict. He
+speaks of probabilities, and, like all such calculation, his results
+are quite right, only that he has not taken all the forces into
+account, and the omission vitiates the conclusion. It is quite true
+that David is but a youth, and Goliath a giant and a veteran; but is
+that all that is to be said? If it be, then the lad cannot fight the
+Philistine bully; but if Saul has made the small omission of leaving
+out God, that makes a difference. The same mistake is constantly made
+still, and so the victories of faith are a constant surprise to the
+world and to a worldly Church. David's eager story of his fights with
+wild beasts is meant both to answer Saul's objection on his own ground,
+by showing him that, youth as the speaker was, he had proved his power,
+and still more to supply the lacking element in the calculation. So he
+tells, first, how 'I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew
+him,' and then at the end brings in the true ground of his confidence:
+'The Lord that delivered me ... He will deliver.' As Thomas Fuller
+says, 'He made an experimental syllogism, and from most practical
+premises (major a lion, minor a bear), inferred the direct conclusion
+that God would give him victory over Goliath. Faith has the right thus
+to argue from the past to the future, because it draws from God whose
+resources and patience are equally inexhaustible. An echo of the words
+comes from Paul's 'Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth
+deliver: in whom we trust that He will yet deliver.' There is infinite
+pathos in Saul's parting blessing. 'The Lord be with thee!' is spoken
+as if from the consciousness that the Lord had left _him_, and that
+_his_ day for going into battle with the assurance of His help was gone
+for ever. If that softened mood had lasted, how different his future
+might have been! If we modestly and boldly show the power of faith in
+our lives, we may kindle yearnings in some gloomy hearts, that would
+lead them to peace, if followed out.
+
+II. The equipment of faith. Saul meant to honour as well as to secure
+David by dressing him in his own royal attire, and by encumbering him
+by the help of sword and helmet. And David was willing to be so fitted
+out, for it is no part of the courage of faith to disdain any outward
+helps. But he soon found that he could not move freely in the
+unaccustomed armour, and flung it off, like a wise man. His motive was
+partly common sense, which told him not to choose weapons that his
+antagonist could handle better than he; and partly reliance on God,
+which told him that he was safer with no armour but his shepherd's
+dress and with only his sling in his hand. So there he stands, drawn
+for us with wonderful vividness, in one hand his staff, in the other
+his sling, both familiar and often used, and by his side the simple
+wallet which had held his frugal meal, and now received the smooth
+pebbles that he picked up as he passed the gulley to the Philistine
+side of the valley.
+
+How graphically the contrast is drawn between him and Goliath, as the
+latter conies forth swelling with his own magnificence, and preceded by
+his shield-bearer! He was 'brass' all over; note the kind of amused
+emphasis with which the word is repeated in the half-satirical and
+marvellously lifelike portrait of him in verses 5-8; 'brass' here,
+'brass' there, 'brass' everywhere; and, not content with one shield
+dangling at his back, he has a man to carry another in front of him as
+he struts. David seems to have crossed the ravine, and to have come
+close up to Goliath before he was observed; and then, with almost a
+snort of contempt, the giant resents the insult of sending such a foe
+to fight _him_ with such weapons. Perhaps he was nearer the truth than
+he thought, when he asked if he was a dog; and any stick will do, as
+the proverb says, to beat that animal, especially if God guards the
+hand that holds it.
+
+The five smooth stones have become the symbol of the insignificant
+means, in the world's estimate, which God uses in faithful hands to
+slay the giants of evil. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but
+they are mighty. Faith unarmed is armed with more than triple steel,
+and a sling in its hand is more fatal than a sword. Sometimes in
+kindness and sometimes in malice, the world tempts us to fight evil
+with its own weapons, and to put on its unfamiliar armour. The Church
+as a whole, and individual Christians, have often been hampered, and
+all but smothered, in Saul's harness. The more simply we keep ourselves
+to the simple methods which the word of God enjoins, and to the simple
+weapons which ought to be the easiest for a Christian, the more likely
+shall we be to conquer. Goliath is not to be encountered with sword and
+armour which is, after all, but a shabby copy of the tons of brass
+which he wears, but he does not know what to make of the sling, and
+does not see the stone till it crashes his skull in.
+
+III. Note faith's anticipation of victory. The dialogue before the
+battle has many parallels in classical times and among savage peoples.
+Goliath's bluster is full of contempt of David and truculent
+self-confidence. Its coarseness is characteristic,--he will make his
+boyish antagonist food for vultures and jackals. It is exactly what a
+bully would say. David's answer throbs with buoyant confidence, and
+stands as a stimulating example of the temper in which God's soldiers
+should go out to every fight, no matter against what odds. It fully
+recognises the formidable armoury of the enemy,--sword for close
+quarters, spear to thrust with, and javelin to fling from a distance,
+every weapon that ingenuity could fashion and trained skill could
+wield. Goliath was a walking arsenal, and little David took count of
+his weapons as they clanked and flashed. It is no part of faith's
+triumph to ignore the number and sharpness of the enemy's arms. But
+faith sees them all, and keeps unterrified and unashamed of the poor
+leathern sling and smooth stones. The unarmed hand which grasps God's
+hand should never tremble; and he who can say 'I come ... in the name
+of the Lord of hosts,' has no need to be afraid of an army of Goliaths,
+though each bristled with swords and spears like a porcupine.
+
+The great name on which David's faith rested, 'the Lord of hosts,'
+appears to have sprung into use in this epoch, and to have been one
+precious fruit of its frequent wars. Conflict is blessed if it teaches
+the knowledge of the unseen Commander who marshals not only men, but
+all the forces of the universe and the armies of heaven, for the
+defence of His servants and the victory of His own cause. The fulness
+of the divine name is learned by degrees, as our needs impress the
+various aspects of His character; and the revelation contained in this
+appellation is the gift of that fierce and stormy time, a possession
+for ever. He who defies the armies of Israel has to reckon with the
+Lord of these armies, whose name proclaims at once His eternal,
+self-originated, and self-sustained being, His covenant, His presence
+with His earthly host, and the infinite ranks of obedient creatures who
+are His soldiers and their allies. That is 'the Name' in the strength
+of which we may 'set up our banners' and be sure of victory. Note how
+David flings back Goliath's taunts in his teeth. He is sure that God
+will conquer through him, and, though he has no sword, that he will
+somehow hack the big head off; and that it is the host of the
+Philistines on whom the vultures and jackals are to feed to-day.
+
+His faith sees the victory before the battle is begun, and trusts, not
+in his own weak power, but only 'in the name of the Lord.' Note, too,
+the result which he expects--no glory for himself, though that came
+unsought, when the shrill songs from the women of Israel met the
+victors, but to all the world the proof that Israel had a God, and to
+Israel ('this assembly') the renewed lesson of their true weapons and
+of their Almighty Helper. Such utter suppression of self is inseparable
+from trust in God, and without it no soldier of His has a right to
+expect victory. To fight 'in the name of the Lord' requires hiding our
+own name. If we are really going to war for Him, and in His strength,
+we ought to expect to conquer. Believe that you will be beaten, and you
+will be. Trust to Him to make you 'more than conquerors,' and the trust
+will bring about its own fulfilment.
+
+IV. Observe the contrast in verse 48 between the slow movements of the
+heavy-armed Philistine and the quick run of the shepherd, whose 'feet
+were as hind's feet' (Psalm xviii. 33). Agility and confident alacrity
+were both expressed. His feet were shod with 'the preparedness of
+faith.' Observe, too, the impetuous brevity of the account in verse 49,
+of the actual fall of Goliath. The short clauses, coupled by a series
+of 'ands,' reproduce the swift succession of events, which ended the
+fight before it had begun; and one can almost hear the whiz of the
+stone as it crashes into the thick head, so strangely left unprotected
+by all the profusion of brass that clattered about him. The vulnerable
+heel of Achilles and the unarmed forehead of Goliath illustrate the
+truth, ever forgotten and needing to be repeated, that, after all
+precautions, some spot is bare, and that 'there is no armour against
+fate.'
+
+The picture of the huge 'man-mountain' fallen upon his face to the
+earth, a huddled heap of useless mail, recalls the words of a psalm,
+'When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up
+my flesh, they stumbled and fell' (Psalm xxvii. 2). Is it fanciful to
+hear in that triumphant chant an echo of Goliath's boast about giving
+his flesh to the fowls and the beasts, and a vision of the braggart as
+he tottered and lay prostrate? Observe, too, the contemptuous
+reiteration of 'the Philistine,' which occurs six times in the four
+verses (48-51). National feeling speaks in that. There is triumph in
+the sarcastic repetition of the dreaded name in such a connection. This
+was what one of the brood had got, and his fate was an omen of what
+would befall the rest. The champion of Israel, the soldier of God,
+standing over the dead Philistine, all whose brazen armour had been
+useless and his brazen insolence abased, and sawing off his head with
+his own sword, was a prophecy for the Israel of that day, and will be a
+symbol till the end of time of the true equipment, the true temper, and
+the certain victory, of all who, in the name of the Lord of hosts, go
+forth in their weakness against the giants of ignorance, vice, and sin.
+'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.'
+
+
+
+
+A SOUL'S TRAGEDY
+
+'And David went out whithersoever Saul sent him, and behaved himself
+wisely: and Saul set him over the men of war; and he was accepted in
+the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul's servants.
+6. And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the
+slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities of
+Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tabrets, with joy,
+and with instruments of musick. 7. And the women answered one another
+as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his
+ten thousands. 8. And Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased
+him; and he said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to
+me they have ascribed but thousands: and what can he have more but the
+kingdom? 9. And Saul eyed David from that day and forward. 10. And it
+came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon
+Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house: and David played
+with his hand, as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul's
+hand. 11. And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David
+even to the wall with it. And David avoided out of his presence twice.
+12. And Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, and
+was departed from Saul. 13. Therefore Saul removed him from him, and
+made him his captain over a thousand; and he went out and came in
+before the people. 14. And David behaved himself wisely in all his
+ways; and the Lord was with him. 15. Wherefore, when Saul saw that he
+behaved himself very wisely, he was afraid of him. 16. But all Israel
+and Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them.'--1
+SAMUEL xviii. 5-16.
+
+
+Verse 5 anticipates verses 13-16. It is the last verse of a section
+which interrupts the even flow of the story, and which is absent from
+the Septuagint. Verse 6 follows immediately on xvii. 54 in that
+version. Taking that verse as our starting-point, we have three stages
+in Saul's growing hatred and awe of the young champion, and of David's
+growing influence and reputation. It is deeply tragic to watch the
+gradual darkening of the once bright light, side by side with the
+irresistible increase in brilliance of the new star. 'He must increase,
+but I must decrease,' became Saul's bitter conviction; but instead of
+meekly accepting the necessity, his gloomy spirit struggled against it,
+like stormy waves against a breakwater, and, like them, was shivered
+into foam in the vain effort.
+
+I. The first stage was Saul's jealousy of David's fame as a warrior.
+The returning victorious army was met, in Oriental fashion, by a
+triumphal chorus of women, with their shrill songs, accompanied by the
+dissonant noises which do duty for music to Eastern ears. The words of
+their chant were startlingly and ominously plain-spoken, and became
+more emphatic and insulting in Saul's ears, because they were sung by
+two answering bands, one of which rang out, 'Saul hath slain his
+thousands,' while the other overtopped them by pealing out still more
+loudly and exultantly, 'And David his ten thousands.' To be brought
+into comparison with this unknown stripling was bitter enough, but to
+be used as a foil to set off his superiority was too much to be borne.
+There are few men, holding high places in any walk of life, who could
+have stood such a comparison without wincing. Suppose a great soldier
+in our day, coming home from a successful campaign, and having his
+prowess dimmed in every newspaper by the praises lavished on a young
+lieutenant who had done some brave feat that caught the public
+fancy--would he be likely to be in a very amiable mood towards either
+the singers or the object of their triumphal songs? Do great authors
+rejoice in the rising of young reputations that dim theirs? or do great
+orators smile when some 'boy' takes the public ear more than they do?
+Poor Saul had to drink the bitter cup, which all who love the sweet
+draught of popular applause have sooner or later to taste; and we need
+not think him a monster of badness because he found it bitter.
+
+It will be more to the purpose that we take care lest we do the very
+same thing in our little lives and humble spheres; for envy and
+jealousy of those who threaten to out-shine, or in any way to out-do,
+us is not confined to people in high places or with great reputations.
+The roots of them are in us all, and the only way to keep them from
+growing up rank is to think less of our reputation and more of our
+duty, to count it a very small matter what men think of us, and the
+all-important matter what God thinks.
+
+Saul was moved, too, by the consciousness that he had been really
+deposed by Jehovah, and was only a phantom king, and, as his angry
+soliloquy shows, what troubled him most in the women's song was that it
+pointed to David as likely to come in and rob him, not only of glory,
+but of the kingdom. Ever since Samuel had pronounced his rejection, his
+uneasy eyes had been furtively scanning men for his possible
+supplanter, and no wonder that his gloomy suspicions focussed
+themselves on the gallant youth, who conquered men's hearts and made
+women's tongues eloquent in his praise. Stormy and dark as Saul's
+nature had become, and grave as had been his failure to be worthy of
+the monarchy, one cannot but feel the infinite pathos and pity of his
+life.
+
+II. The second stage was the attempt on David's life. Verses 10 and 11,
+which record it, are not in the Septuagint, and the narrative does run
+more smoothly without them. But if they are retained, they show how the
+moody suspicion with which Saul 'eyed David' came to a swift, murderous
+climax. He stands as a terrible example of how suspicion and jealousy,
+working in a nature utterly without self-control, transport it into the
+wildest excesses. In the strange phraseology of verse 9, 'an evil
+spirit from God' laid hold of him, dominating his personality. The
+writer of this book felt that God was the ultimate cause of all things,
+and that all beings were under His control; and his devout recognition
+of that fact led him to the apparent paradox of tracing an 'evil
+spirit' to God. But we must not be so startled as to overlook the truth
+that Saul had prepared the fit abode for that evil spirit by his own
+indulgence in a whirl of sinful passions and acts, and that these were
+punished by their 'natural' consequence. Any man who lets his own baser
+nature have full fling invites the devil. Saul had what would now be
+called a paroxysm of insanity. But perhaps the modern medical phrase is
+not to be preferred to the old scriptural one. The former is innocent
+of any explanation of the fact which it designates, and it may possibly
+be that insanity is sometimes, even now, 'possession.' At all events,
+since science gives no explanation of it, and a great dim region of
+consciousness is now being recognised,--'subliminal,' to speak in the
+new phraseology,--he is a bold man who ventures to deny that
+possibility.
+
+But be that as it may, what a striking picture is given of Saul, worn
+with passion and swept away by ungovernable impulses, 'prophesying' or
+'raving' with wild gestures and uttering wilder sounds; and of David,
+young, calm, giving forth melodies on his harp and songs from his lips,
+that sought to soothe the paroxysms of fury. Browning has drawn the
+picture in immortal words, which all who can should read. It has been
+suggested that Saul did not 'cast' his spear, but only brandished it in
+his fierce threat to pin David to the wall. But the youthful harper
+would scarcely have 'avoided out of his presence' for a mere threat and
+the flourish of a lance; and a man, raging mad and madly hostile, would
+not be likely to waste breath in mere threats. The attempt was more
+probably a serious one, and the spear, flung by an arm made stronger
+than ever by insane hatred, quivered in the wall very near the lithe
+athlete who had agilely escaped it. Envy, allowed to have its way,
+becomes murderous. Let us suppress its beginning. A tiger pup can be
+held in and its claws cut, but a full-grown tiger cannot.
+
+III. The third stage is Saul's getting rid of David. The growing awe of
+him is marked in verses 12 and 15, and the word in the latter verse is
+stronger than that in the former. It is a pathetic picture of the
+gradual creeping over a strong man of a nameless terror.
+Ever-thickening folds of cold dread, like a wet mist, wrap a soul once
+bright and energetic. And the reason is twofold: first, that God had
+left that tempestuous, rebellious soul because it had left Him; and
+second, that, in its desolate solitude, in which there was no trace of
+softening or penitence, that lightning-riven soul knew that the
+sunshine, which it had repelled, was now pouring on David. Saul's
+suspicions were hardened into certainties. He was sure now that what
+his jealousy had whispered, when the women chanted their chorus, was
+grim fact. And he could but helplessly watch his supplanter's steady
+advance in favour with men and God. The two processes of growing
+darkness and growing light go on side by side in the two men, and each
+makes the other more striking by contrast. Twice is it repeated that
+Saul was in awe of David. Twice is it repeated that Jehovah was with
+David, and that he 'behaved himself wisely,' which last statement
+includes in the Hebrew word both the idea of prudence and that of
+success. So, on the one hand, there is a steady growth in all good,
+godly, and happy qualities and experiences; and on the other, a
+tragical increase of darkness and gloom, godlessness and despair. And
+yet Saul had begun so well! And Saul might have been what David
+was,--companioned by God, prosperous, and the idol of his people. Two
+souls stand side by side for a moment on the same platform, with the
+same divine goodness and love encircling them, and the one steadily
+rises, while the other steadily sinks. How awful are the endless
+possibilities of progress in either direction that lie open for every
+soul of man!
+
+
+
+
+JONATHAN, THE PATTERN OF FRIENDSHIP
+
+'And David fled from Naioth in Ramah, and came and said before
+Jonathan, What have I done? what is mine iniquity? and what is my sin
+before thy father, that he seeketh my life? 2. And he said unto him,
+God forbid; thou shalt not die: behold, my father will do nothing
+either great or small, but that he will shew it me: and why should my
+father hide this thing from me? it is not so. 3. And David sware
+moreover, and said, Thy father certainly knoweth that I have found
+grace in thine eyes; and he saith, Let not Jonathan know this, lest he
+be grieved: but truly, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth,
+there is but a step between me and death. 4. Then said Jonathan unto
+David, Whatsoever thy soul desireth, I will even do it for thee. 5. And
+David said unto Jonathan, Behold, to-morrow is the new moon, and I
+should not fail to sit with the king at meat: but let me go, that I may
+hide myself in the field unto the third day at even. 6. If thy father
+at all miss me, then say, David earnestly asked leave of me that he
+might run to Beth-lehem his city: for there is a yearly sacrifice there
+for all the family. 7. If he say thus, it is well; thy servant shall
+have peace: but if he be very wroth, then be sure that evil is
+determined by him. 8. Therefore thou shalt deal kindly with thy
+servant; for thou hast brought thy servant into a covenant of the Lord
+with thee: notwithstanding, if there be in me iniquity, slay me
+thyself; for why shouldest thou bring me to thy father? 9. And Jonathan
+said, Far be it from thee: for if I knew certainly that evil were
+determined by my father to come upon thee, then would not I tell it
+thee? 10. Then said David to Jonathan, Who shall tell me? or what if
+thy father answer thee roughly? 11. And Jonathan said unto David, Come,
+and let us go out into the field. And they went out both of them into
+the field. 12. And Jonathan said unto David, O Lord God of Israel when
+I have sounded my father about to-morrow any time, or the third day,
+and, behold, if there be good toward David, and I then send not unto
+thee, and shew it thee; 13. The Lord do so and much more to Jonathan:
+but if it please my father to do thee evil, then I will shew it thee,
+and send thee away, that thou mayest go in peace: and the Lord be with
+thee, as He hath been with my father.'--1 SAMUEL xx. 1-13.
+
+
+The friendship of Jonathan for David comes like a breath of pure air in
+the midst of the heavy-laden atmosphere of hate and mad fury, or like
+some clear fountain sparkling up among the sulphurous slag and barren
+scoriae of a volcano. There is no more beautiful page in history or
+poetry than the story of the passionate love of the heir to the throne
+for the young champion, whom he had so much cause to regard as a rival.
+What a proof of the victory of love over self is his saying, 'Thou
+shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee'! (1 Samuel
+xxiii. 17). Truly did David sing in his elegy, 'Thy love to me was
+wonderful, passing the love of women'; for in that old world, in which
+the relations between the sexes had not yet received the hallowing and
+refinement of Christian times, much of what is now chiefly found in
+these was manifested in friendship, such as that of these two young
+men. Jonathan is the foremost figure in it, and the nobility and
+self-oblivion of his love are beautifully brought out, while David's
+part is rather that of the loved than of the lover. The scene is laid
+in Gibeah, where Saul kept his court, and to which all the persons of
+the story seem to have come back from Samuel's house at Kamah. Saul's
+strange subjugation to the hallowing influences of the prophet's
+presence had been but momentary and superficial; and it had been
+followed by a renewed outburst of the old hate, obvious to David's
+sharpened sight, though not to Jonathan. In the interview between them,
+David is pardonably but obviously absorbed in self, while Jonathan
+bends all his soul to cheer and reassure his friend.
+
+There are four turns in the conversation, in each of which David speaks
+and Jonathan answers. David's first question presupposes that his
+friend knows that his death is determined, and is privy to Saul's
+thoughts. If he had been less harassed, he would have done Jonathan
+more justice than to suppose him capable of knowing everything without
+telling him anything; but fear is suspicious. He should have remembered
+that, when Saul first harboured murderous purposes, Jonathan had not
+waited to be asked, but had disclosed the plot to him, and perilled his
+own life by his remonstrances with his father. He should have trusted
+his friend. His question breathes consciousness of innocence of any
+hostility to Saul, but unconsciously betrays some defect in his
+confidence in Jonathan. The answer is magnanimous in its silence as to
+that aspect of the question, though the subsequent story seems to imply
+that Jonathan felt it. He tries to hearten David by strong assurances
+that his life is safe. He does not directly contradict David's
+implication that he knew more than he had told, but, without asserting
+his ignorance, takes it for granted, and quietly argues from it the
+incorrectness of David's suspicions. Incidentally he gives us, in the
+picture of the perfect confidence between Saul and himself, an inkling
+of how much he had to sacrifice to his friendship. Wild as was Saul's
+fury when aroused, and narrow as had been his escape from it at an
+earlier time (1 Samuel xiv. 44), there was yet love between them, and
+the king made a confidant of his gallant eldest son. They 'were lovely
+and pleasant in their lives.' However gloomy and savage in his
+paroxysms Saul was, the relations between them were sweet. The most
+self-introverted and solitary soul needs some heart to pour itself out
+to, and this poor king found one in Jonathan. All the harder, then, was
+the trial of friendship when the trusted son had to take the part of
+the friend whom his father deemed an enemy, and had the pain of
+breaking such close ties. How his heart must have been torn asunder! On
+the one side was the lonely father who clung to him: on the other, the
+hunted friend to whom he clung. It is a sore wrench when kindred are on
+one side, and congeniality and the voice of the heart on the other. But
+there are ties more sacred than those of flesh and blood; and the
+putting of them second, which is sometimes needful in obedience to
+earthly love or duty, is always needful if we would rightly entertain
+our heavenly Friend.
+
+Jonathan's soothing assurances did not satisfy David, and he 'sware' in
+the earnestness of his conviction. David gives a very good reason for
+his friend's ignorance, which he has at once believed, in the
+suggestion that Saul had not taken him into his confidence, out of
+tenderness to his feelings. Their friendship, then, was notorious, and,
+indeed, was an element in Saul's dread of David, who seemed to have
+some charm to steal hearts, and had bewitched both Saul's son and his
+daughter, thus making a painful rift in the family unity. It does not
+appear how David came to be so sure of Saul's designs. The incident at
+Ramah might have seemed to augur some improvement in his mood; and
+certainly there could have been no overt acts, or Jonathan could not
+have disputed the suspicions. Possibly some whispers may have reached
+David through his wife Michal, Saul's daughter, or in the course of his
+attendance on the king, which he had now resumed, his quick eye may
+have noticed ominous signs. At all events, he is so sure, that he makes
+solemn attestation to his friend, and convinces him that, in the
+picturesque phrase which has become so familiar, 'There is but a step
+between me and death.' Such temper was scarcely in accordance with 'the
+prophecies which went before on' him. If he had been walking by faith,
+he would have called Samuel's anointing to mind, and have drawn
+arguments from the victory over Goliath, for trust in victory over
+Saul, as he had done for the former from that over the lion and the
+bear. But faith does not always keep high-water mark, and we can only
+too easily sympathise with this momentary ebb of its waters.
+
+None the less is it true that David's terror was unworthy, and showed
+that the strain of his anxious position was telling on his spirit, and
+making him not only suspect his earthly friend, but half forget his
+heavenly One. There was but a step between him and death; but, if he
+had been living in the serenity of trust, he would have known that the
+narrow space was as good as a thousand miles, and that Saul could not
+force him across it, for all his hatred and power.
+
+Jonathan does not attempt to alter his conviction and probably is
+obliged to admit the justice of the explanation of his own ignorance
+and the truth of the impression of Saul's purposes. But he does what is
+more to the purpose; he pledges himself to do whatever David desires.
+It is an unconditional desertion of his father and alliance with David;
+it is the true voice of friendship or love, which ever has its delight
+in knowing and doing the will of the beloved. It answers David's
+thoughts rather than his words. He will not discuss any more whether he
+or David is right; but, in any event, he is his friend's.
+
+The touchstone of friendship is practical help and readiness to do what
+the friend wishes. It is so in our friendships here, which are best
+cemented so. It is so in the highest degree in our friendship with the
+true Friend and Lover of us all, the sweetness and power of our
+friendship with whom we do not know until we say, 'Whatsoever thou
+desirest, I will do it,' and so lose the burden of self-will, and find
+that He does for us what we desire when we make His desires our law of
+conduct.
+
+Secure of Jonathan's help, David proposed the stratagem for finding out
+Saul's disposition, which had probably been in his mind all along. It
+says more for his subtlety than for his truthfulness. With all his
+nobility, he had a streak of true Oriental craft and stood on the moral
+level of his times and country, in his readiness to eke out the lion's
+skin with the fox's tail. It was a shrewd idea to make Saul betray
+himself by the way in which he took David's absence; but a lie is a
+lie, and cannot be justified, though it may be palliated, by the
+straits of the liar. At the same time it is fair to remember the
+extremity of David's danger and the morality of his age, in estimating,
+not the nature of his action, but the extent of his guilt in doing it.
+The same relaxation of the vigour of his faith which left him a prey to
+fear, led him to walk in crooked paths, and the impartial narrative
+tells of them without a word of comment. We have to form our own
+estimate of the fitness of a lie to form the armour of a saint. The
+proposal informs us of two facts,--the custom of having a feast for
+three days at the new moon, and that of having an annual family feast
+and sacrifice, neither of which is prescribed in the law. I do not here
+deal with the grave question as to the date of the ceremonial law, as
+affected by these and similar phenomena; but I may be allowed the
+passing remark that the irregularities do not prove the non-existence
+of the law, but may be accounted for by supposing that, in such
+unsettled times, it had been loosely observed, and that many accretions
+and omissions, some of them inevitable in the absence of a recognised
+centre of worship, had crept in. That is a much less brilliant and much
+more old-fashioned explanation than the new one, but perhaps it is none
+the worse for that. This generation is fond of making 'originality' and
+'brilliancy' the tests of truth.
+
+David's words in verse 8 have a touch of suspicion in them, in their
+very appeal for kind treatment, in their reminder of the 'covenant' of
+friendship, as if Jonathan needed either, and still more in the bitter
+request to slay him himself instead of delivering him to Saul. He
+almost thinks that Jonathan is in the plot, and means to carry him off
+a prisoner. Note, too, that he does not say, 'We made a covenant,' but
+'Thou hast brought me into' it, as if it had been the other's wish
+rather than his. All this was beneath true friendship, and it hurt
+Jonathan, who next speaks with unusual emotion, beseeching David to
+clear all this fog out of his heart, and to believe in the genuineness
+and depth of his love, and in the frankness of his speech. True love
+'is not easily provoked,' is not soon angry, and his was true in spite
+of many obstacles which might have made him as jealous as his father,
+and in the face of misconstruction and suspicion. May we not think of a
+yet higher love, which bears with our suspicions and faithless doubts,
+and ever answers our incredulity by its gentle 'If it were not so, I
+would have told you'?
+
+David is not yet at the end of his difficulties, and next suggests, how
+is he to know Saul's mind? Jonathan takes him out into the privacy of
+the open country (they had apparently been in Gibeah), and there
+solemnly calls God to witness that he will disclose his father's
+purposes, whatever they are. The language is obscure and broken,
+whether owing to corruption in the text, or to the emotion of the
+speaker. In half-shaped sentences, which betray how much he felt his
+friend's doubts, and how sincere he was, he invokes evil on himself if
+he fails to tell all. He then unfolds his ingenious scheme for
+conveying the information, on which we do not touch. But note the final
+words of Jonathan,--that prayer, so pathetic, so unselfish in its
+recognition of David as the inheritor of the kingdom that had dropped
+from his own grasp, so sad in its clear-eyed assurance of his father's
+abandonment, so deeply imbued with faith in the divine word, and so
+resigned to its behests. Both in the purity of his friendship and in
+the strength of his faith and submission, Jonathan stands here above
+David, and is far surer than the latter himself is of his high destiny
+and final triumph. It was hard for him to believe in the victory which
+was to displace his own house, harder still to rejoice in it, without
+one trace of bitterness mingling in the sweetness of his love, hardest
+of all actively to help it and to take sides against his father; but
+all these difficulties his unselfish heart overcame, and he stands for
+all time as the noblest example of human friendship, and as not
+unworthy to remind us, as from afar off and dimly, of the perfect love
+of the Firstborn Son of the true King, who has loved us all with a yet
+deeper, more patient, more self-sacrificing love. If men can love one
+another as Jonathan loved David, how should they love the Christ who
+has loved them so much! And what sacrilege it is to pour such treasures
+of affection at the feet of dear ones here, and to give so grudgingly
+such miserable doles of heart's love to Him!
+
+
+
+
+LOVE FOR HATE, THE TRUE QUID PRO QUO
+
+'And the men of David said unto him, Behold the day of which the Lord
+said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand,
+that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee. Then David
+arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily. 5. And it came to
+pass afterward, that David's heart smote him, because he had out off
+Saul's skirt. 6. And he said unto his men, The Lord forbid that I
+should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch
+forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord. 7.
+So David stayed his servants with these words, and suffered them not to
+rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his
+way. 8. David also arose afterward, and went out of the cave, and cried
+after Saul, saying, My Lord the king. And when Saul looked behind him,
+David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed himself, 9. And
+David said to Saul, Wherefore hearest thou men's words, saying, Behold,
+David seeketh thy hurt? 10. Behold, this day thine eyes have seen how
+that the Lord had delivered thee to-day into mine hand in the cave: and
+some bade me kill thee: but mine eye spared thee; and I said, I will
+not put forth mine hand against my lord; for he is the Lord's anointed.
+11. Moreover, my father, see, yea, see the skirt of thy robe in my
+hand: for in that I cut off the skirt of thy robe, and killed thee not,
+know thou and see that there is neither evil nor transgression in mine
+hand, and I have not sinned against thee; yet thou huntest my soul to
+take it. 12. The Lord judge between me and thee, and the Lord avenge me
+Of thee; but mine hand shall not be upon thee. 13. As saith the proverb
+of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand
+shall not be upon thee. 14. After whom is the king of Israel come out?
+after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea. 15. The
+Lord therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and
+plead my cause, and deliver me out of thine hand. 16. And it came to
+pass, when David had made an end of speaking these words unto Saul,
+that Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his
+voice, and wept. 17. And he said to David, Thou art more righteous than
+I; for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee
+evil.'--1 SAMUEL xxiv. 4-17.
+
+
+A sudden Philistine invasion had saved David, when hard pressed by
+Saul, and had given him the opportunity of flight to the wild country
+on the west of the Dead Sea, near the place where En-Gedi ('the
+Fountain of the Wild Goat') sparkles into light on the hill above the
+weird lake. In these savage gorges Saul's three thousand men would be
+of little use against the light-footed outlaw and his troop. The whole
+district is seamed with ravines, and these are honeycombed with great
+caverns, where dangerous outcasts still lurk and defy capture.
+Travellers go into raptures over the beauty of some of these 'fairy
+grottoes' draped with maiden-hair fern, cool and moist, and blessedly
+dark after the fierce light outside. In some one of these the beautiful
+story which makes our lesson occurred.
+
+I. We have the scene in the cave. The interior would be black as night
+to one looking inward with eyes fresh from the blinding glare of such
+sunlight upon limestone, but it would hold a glimmering twilight for
+one looking outward, with eyes accustomed to the gloom. David and his
+men, keeping close to the walls and hiding behind angles, might well be
+unobserved by Saul at the mouth, and probably never looking in at all.
+How vividly the whispered eagerness of the outcasts round David is
+reproduced! They think it would be 'tempting Providence' to let such a
+chance slip. They put a religious varnish on their advice. It would be
+almost impious not to kill Saul, for here was the hand of God evidently
+fulfilling a prophecy! There may have been some unrecorded prediction
+of the sort which they seem to quote; but more probably they are only
+referring to David's designation to the crown, which they had come to
+know. It never struck them as possible that it could 'seem good' to a
+wise man not to cut his enemy's throat when he could do it without
+danger to himself. So they would watch David stealing down quietly to
+the place where the unconscious king was crouching, and getting close
+behind him, knife in hand. How disgusted they must have been when the
+blade, that flashed for a moment in the light at the cave's mouth, was
+not buried in Saul's great back, but only hacked off the end of his
+robe spread out behind him! No personal animosity was in David. However
+he had been driven to consort with outlaws, and to live a kind of
+freebooter's life, his natural sweetness was unspoiled, and was
+reinforced by solemn veneration for the sanctity of the Lord's
+anointing, which he reverenced all the more because himself had
+received it. He clambered back to his disappointed men, and, as soon as
+he was up in the dark again, his chivalry and his religion made him
+ashamed of his coarse practical jest. The humour of the thing had
+tempted him to do it; but it was a rude insult, which lowered him more
+than it did Saul, and, like a true man, he blushes there in the gloom
+at what he has done. Then he has to defend himself to his men for not
+coming up to their expectations, and he does it by insisting on the
+sacredness which still surrounded Saul as 'the Lord's anointed.' David
+knew that the unhappy king had been rejected and forsaken by 'the
+Spirit of the Lord,' and that he himself was the true bearer of the
+regal unction; but he will not take the law into his own hands, and
+still regards Saul as his 'lord.' He sets the example, much needed by
+us all, of leaving God to carry out His purposes at His own time, and
+patiently waiting till that time comes. He had hard work to keep his
+men from rushing down on the king; but, having commanded himself, is
+able to restrain them. How many virtues may be in exercise in one
+action! Here we have generosity, clemency, sensitiveness of conscience,
+reverence, self-abnegation, patience, loyalty, firmness, sway over
+lower natures for high ends,--a whole constellation shining star-like
+in the dark cavern.
+
+II. We have, next, David's pathetic remonstrance. Saul was alone, and
+David could easily escape among the cliffs, if the king summoned his
+men; but he risks capture, in the gush of ancient friendship. His words
+are full of nobleness, and his silence is no less so. He has no
+reproaches, no anger nor hate. He will not even suppose that Saul has
+followed his own impulses in his persecution, but assumes that he has
+been led astray by calumnies. He points to the fragment of Saul's robe
+in his hand as the disproof of the lie that he had designs against him,
+and passionately asserts his innocence now and in all the past. He
+compares himself to some timid wild thing, like one of the goats among
+the cliffs, and Saul to a hunter. He solemnly calls God to judge
+between them, and appeals from the slanders and misjudgings of men to
+the perfect tribunal of God, to whom he commits his cause. He abjures
+all intention of striking at Saul in his own defence. He quotes, in
+true Eastern manner, a scrap of proverbial wisdom, which contains the
+homely truth that character determines action; for it needs a wicked
+man to do a wicked thing, and he implies that he is not wicked, and
+that Saul knows that well enough,--by what has just happened, if by
+nothing else. Then he puts his own insignificance and the disproportion
+between him and his ragged band and the imposing force of Saul in vivid
+light by his half-humorous and wholly humble description of himself as
+a 'dead dog,' and a 'flea'; as harmless as the one, as hard to catch as
+the other, as little important as either. Finally, he reiterates his
+devout reference of the whole cause to God, and his fixed resolution to
+take no steps to right himself, but to leave all to Him.
+
+So ought we to deal with slanders and enmity. The eternal law for us in
+all opposition and hostility is enshrined in David's noble words and
+deeds. To repay evil with benefits, to abstain from retaliation when it
+is in our power, to keep our tongues from bitter and wounding words, to
+appeal to the adversary's better self, even at the cost of our own
+'dignity,'--all that is not easy nor usual among professing Christians.
+But it ought to be. David's Lord, 'when He suffered, threatened not;
+but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.' We are poor
+followers of Him, if David surpasses us in patience and magnanimity. It
+has taken nineteen hundred years to teach us that passive endurance is
+more heroic than fighting for our own hand, and that repaying scorn and
+hate with their like is less noble than meeting them with endless
+forgiveness.
+
+Psalm vii. is all but universally regarded as David's, and as belonging
+to this period. In it we find a clause, 'I have delivered him that
+without cause was mine enemy,' which may fairly be supposed to refer to
+the scene in the cave, and we read the same vehement protestations of
+innocence, the same figure of himself as a hunted wild animal, the same
+appeal to God's judgment, as in his remonstrance with Saul. The psalm
+is the poetic echo of our lesson.
+
+III. We have the momentary melting of Saul's heart. He breaks into
+passionate weeping. With that sudden flashing out into vehement
+emotion, so characteristic of him throughout, and, in these latter days
+of his life, so significant of enfeebled self-control, he recognises
+David's generous forbearance in its contrast to his own hate, which,
+for the moment, he feels to be causeless. There is a piteous
+remembrance of the days when David soothed him by song, in his mention
+of the sweet 'voice,' and some rekindling of ancient love in his
+calling him 'My son.' Then follow the sad words which confess the
+hopelessness of his struggle against the divine purpose, and his appeal
+for mercy to his house. The picture may well move solemn thoughts and
+pity for that scathed and solitary soul, seeing for a moment, as by a
+lightning flash, the madness of his course, and yet held so fast in the
+grip of his dark passions that he cannot shake off their tyranny.
+
+Two great lessons are taught by that tragic figure of the weeping and
+yet unchanged king. One is of the power of forbearing gentleness to
+exorcise hate. The true way to 'overcome evil' is to melt it by fiery
+coals of gentleness. That is God's way. An iceberg may be crushed to
+powder, but every fragment is still ice. Only sunshine that melts it
+will turn it into sweet water. Love is conqueror, and the only
+conqueror, and its conquest is to transform hate into love. The other
+lesson is the worthlessness of mere feeling, which by its very nature
+passes away, and, like unstored rain, leaves the rock in its obstinate
+hardness more exposed. Saul only increased his guilt by reason of the
+fleeting glimpse of his folly which he did not follow up; and our
+gleams of insight into some sin and madness of ours but add to our
+responsibility. Emotion which does not lead to action hardens the
+heart, and adds to our guilt and condemnation.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AND REMORSE
+
+'And David arose, and came to the place where Saul had pitched: and
+David beheld the place where Saul lay, and Abner the son of Xer, the
+captain of his host: and Saul lay in the trench, and the people pitched
+round about him. 6. Then answered David and said to Ahimelech the
+Hittite, and to Abishai the son of Zeruiah, brother to Joab, saying,
+Who will go down with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will
+go down with thee. 7. So David and Abishai came to the people by night:
+and, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck
+in the ground at his bolster: but Abner and the people lay round about
+him. 8. Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into
+thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with
+the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not smite him the
+second time. 9. And David said to Abishai, Destroy him not: for who can
+stretch forth his hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless?
+10. David said furthermore, As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite
+him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and
+perish. 11. The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand
+against the Lord's anointed: but, I pray thee, take thou now the spear
+that is at his bolster, and the cruse of water, and let us go. 12. So
+David took the spear and the cruse of water from Saul's bolster; and
+they gat them away, and no man saw it, nor knew it, neither awaked: for
+they were all asleep; because a deep sleep from the Lord was fallen
+upon them .... 21. Then said Saul, I have sinned: return, my son David:
+for I will no more do thee harm, because my soul was precious in thine
+eyes this day: behold, I have played the fool, and have erred
+exceedingly. 22. And David answered and said, Behold the king's spear!
+and let one of the young men come over and fetch it. 23. The Lord
+render to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness; for the
+Lord delivered thee into my hand today, but I would not stretch forth
+mine hand against the Lord's anointed. 24. And, behold, as thy life was
+much set by this day in mine eyes, so let my life be much set by in the
+eyes of the Lord, and let Him deliver me out of all tribulation. 25.
+Then Saul said to David, Blessed be thou, my son David: thou shalt both
+do great things, and also shalt still prevail. So David went on his
+way, and Saul returned to his place.'--1 SAMUEL xxvi 5-12; 21-25.
+
+
+It is fashionable at present to regard this incident and the other
+instance of David's sparing Saul, when in his power, as two versions of
+one event. But it if not improbable that the hunted outlaw should twice
+have taken refuge in the same place, or that his hiding-place should
+have been twice betrayed. He had but a small choice of safe retreats,
+and the Ziphites had motive for a second betrayal in the fact of the
+first, and of its failure to secure David's capture. The whole cast of
+the two incidents is so different that it is impossible to see how the
+one could have been evolved from the other, and either they are both
+true, or they are both unhistorical, or, at best, are both the product
+of fancy working on, and arbitrarily filling up, a very meagre skeleton
+of fact. Many of the advocates of the identity of the incident at the
+bottom of the two accounts would accept the latter explanation; we take
+the former.
+
+Saul had three thousand men with him; David had left his little troop
+'in the wilderness,' and seems to have come with only his two
+companions, Ahimelech and his own nephew, Abishai, to reconnoitre. He
+sees, from some height, the camp, with the transport wagons making a
+kind of barricade in the centre--just as camps are still arranged in
+South Africa and elsewhere,--and Saul established therein as in a rude
+fortification. A bold thought flashes into his mind as he looks.
+Perhaps he remembered Gideon's daring visit to the camp of Midian. He
+will go down, and not only into the camp, but 'to Saul,' through the
+ranks and over the barrier. What to do he does not say, but the two
+fierce fighters beside him think of only one thing as sufficient motive
+for such an adventure. Abishai volunteers to go with him; no doubt
+Ahimelech would have been ready also, but two were enough, and three
+would only have increased risk. So they lay close hid till night fell,
+and then stole down through the sleeping ranks with silent movements,
+like a couple of Indians on the war-trail, climbed the barricade, and
+stood at last where Saul lay, with his spear, as the emblem of
+kingship, stuck upright at his head, and a cruse of water for slaking
+thirst, if he awoke, beside him. Those who should have been his guards
+lay sleeping round him, for a 'deep sleep from Jehovah was fallen upon
+them.' What a vivid, strange picture it is, and how characteristic of
+the careless discipline of unscientific Eastern warfare!
+
+The tigerish lust for blood awoke in Abishai. Whatever sad, pitying,
+half-tender thoughts stirred in David as he looked at the mighty form
+of Saul, with limbs relaxed in slumber, and perhaps some of the gloom
+and evil passions charmed out of his face, his nephew's only thought
+was,' What a fair mark! what an easy blow!' He was brutally eager to
+strike once, and truculently sure that his arm would make sure that
+once would be enough. He was religious too, after a strange fierce
+fashion. God-significantly he does not say 'Jehovah'; his religion was
+only the vague belief in a deity-had delivered Saul into David's hands,
+and it would be a kind of sin not to kill him. How many bloody
+tragedies that same unnatural alliance of religion and murderous hate
+has varnished over! Very beautifully does David's spirit contrast with
+this. Abishai represents the natural impulse of us all--to strike at
+our enemies when we can, to meet hate with hate, and do to another the
+evil that he would do to us.
+
+David here, though he could be fierce and cruel enough sometimes, and
+had plenty of the devil in him, listens to his nobler self, which
+listens to God, and, at a time when everything tempted him to avenge
+himself, resists and overcomes. He is here a saint after the New
+Testament pattern. Abishai had, in effect, said, 'Thou shalt love thy
+neighbour, and hate thine enemy.' David's finely-tuned ear heard, long
+before they were spoken on earth, the great Christian words, 11 say
+unto you, Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you.' He knew
+that Saul had been 'rejected,' but he was 'Jehovah's anointed,' and the
+unction which had rested on that sleeping head lingered still. It was
+not for David to be the executor of God's retribution. He left himself
+and his cause in Jehovah's hands, and no doubt it was with sorrow and
+pitying love, not altogether quenched by Saul's mad hate, that he
+foresaw that the life which he spared now was certain one day to be
+smitten. We may well learn the lesson of this story, and apply it to
+the small antagonisms and comparatively harmless enmities which may
+beset our more quiet lives. David in Saul's 'laager,' Stephen outside
+the wall, alike lead up our thoughts to Jesus' prayer,' Father, forgive
+them; for they know not what they do.'
+
+The carrying off of the spear and the cruse was a couch of almost
+humour, and it, with the ironical taunt flung across the valley to
+Abner, gives relief to the strain of emotion in the story. Saul's burst
+of passionate remorse is morbid, paroxysmal, like his fits of fury, and
+is sure to foam itself away. The man had no self-control. He had let
+wild, ungoverned moods master him, and was truly 'possessed.' One
+passion indulged had pushed him over the precipice into insanity, or
+something like it. Let us take care not to let any passion, emotion, or
+mood get the upper hand. 'That way madness lies.' 'He that hath no rule
+over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, without walls.'
+
+And let us not confound remorse with repentance 'The sorrow of the
+world worketh death.' Saul grovelled in agony that day, but tomorrow he
+was raging again with more than the old frenzy of hate. Many a man
+says, 'I have played the fool,' and yet goes on playing it again when
+the paroxysm of remorse has stormed itself out. David's answer was by
+no means effusive, for he had learned how little Saul's regrets were to
+be trusted. He takes no notice of the honeyed words of invitation to
+return, and will not this time venture to take back the spear and
+cruse, as he had done, on the previous occasion, the skirt of Saul's
+robe. He solemnly appeals to Jehovah's righteous judgment to determine
+his and Saul's respective 'righteousness and faithfulness.' He is
+silent as to what that judgment may have in reserve for Saul, but for
+himself he is calmly conscious that, in the matter of sparing Saul's
+life, he has done right, and expects that God will deliver him 'out of
+all tribulation.' That is not self-righteous boasting, although it does
+not exactly smack of the Christian spirit; but it is faith clinging to
+the confidence that God is 'not unrighteous to forget' his servant's
+obedience, and that the innocent will not always be the oppressor's
+victim.
+
+What a strange, bewildered, self-contradictory chaos of belief and
+intention is revealed in poor, miserable Saul's parting words! He
+blesses the man whom he is hunting to slay. He knows that all his wild
+efforts to destroy him are foredoomed to failure, and that David 'shall
+surely prevail'; and yet he cannot give up fighting against the
+inevitable,--that is, against God. How many of us are doing the very
+same thing--rushing on in a course of life which we know, when we are
+sane, to be dead against God's will, and therefore doomed to utter
+collapse some day!
+
+'And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war
+against me, and God is departed from me.'-1 Samuel xxviii. 15.
+
+Among all the persons of Scripture who are represented as having fallen
+away from God and wrecked their lives, perhaps there is none so
+impressive as the giant form of the first king of Israel. Huge and
+black, seamed and scarred with lightning marks of passions, moody and
+suspicious, devil-ridden and lonely, doubting his truest friends, and
+even his son, striking blindly in his fury at the gracious, sunny
+poet-warrior who shows so bright, so full of resource, so nimble, so
+generous, by contrast with the heavy strength of the moody giant, and
+ever escapes the javelin that quivers harmlessly in the wall, with an
+inevitable destiny hanging over his head, and at last creeping to
+'wizards that peep and mutter,' and dying a suicide, with his army in
+full flight and his son dead at his feet--what a course and what an end
+for the chosen of the Lord, on whom the Spirit of the Lord came with
+the anointing oil, and gave him a new heart for his kingly office.
+
+I know not anywhere a sadder story: and I know not where human lips
+ever poured out a more awful wail--like a Titan in his rage of
+pain--than these words of our text. Bright hopes and fair promise, and
+much that was good and true in performance--all came to this. A few
+hours more and the 'battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit
+him, and he was greatly distressed by reason of the archers.' Madness,
+despair, defeat, death, all were the sequel of, 'Because thou hast
+rejected the commandment of the Lord, the Lord hath also rejected thee
+from being king.' A true soul's tragedy! Let us look together at its
+course, and gather the lessons that lie on the surface. We have neither
+space nor wish here to enter upon the many points of minute interest
+and curiosity which are in the story. We have to be contented with
+large outlines.
+
+Look then
+
+I. At the bright dawn.
+
+The early story gives us many traits of beauty in Saul's character. Not
+only physical strength but a winning personality are apparent. His
+modesty and humility when Samuel salutes him are made plain. And we are
+distinctly told that as he turned away from Samuel, 'God gave him
+another heart,' by which we are to understand not 'regeneration' but an
+inspiration, that equipped him for his office.
+
+How many a man finds that sudden elevation ruins him! But often it
+evokes what is good, brings an entire change of disposition, as with
+'Harry of Mon-mouth.' But it was not only his new responsibility which
+brought into action powers that had previously been dormant. New
+circumstances, no doubt, did something, but Saul's 'new' heart was
+God's gift.
+
+The story of the beginning of his reign reveals a very noble and
+lovable character. We can but mention his modesty in hiding among the
+stuff, his disregard of the murmurs of those who would not do homage
+('made as though he had been deaf'), his return, as it would seem, to
+his home-life and farm-work, his chivalrous boldness and warlike
+energy, which sprung at once to activity on the call of a great
+exigency in Jabesh-Gilead, his humane and sweet repression of the
+people's desire, in their first flush of pride in their soldier king,
+to slay his enemies, and his devout acknowledgment that not he but God
+has wrought this salvation.
+
+So for the first year of his reign all went well.
+
+How much of divine influence a man may have and yet fling it all away!
+How unreliable a thing mere natural goodness is! How much apparent
+goodness may coexist with deep-seated evil! How bright a beginning may
+darken into a tempestuous day! How seeds of evil may lurk in the
+fairest character! How little one can be judged by part of his life!
+How it is not the possession, but the retention, of goodness and devout
+impressions that makes a man good.
+
+II. The gathering clouds.
+
+
+The acts recorded as darkening the fair dawn of Saul's reign may seem
+too trivial to deserve the stern retribution that followed them, but
+small acts may be great sins. The first of them was his offering
+sacrifices without authority, an act which Samuel stigmatised as
+wanton, deliberate disobedience to 'the commandment of the Lord thy
+God.' Next came his rash and absurd laying of a curse on any soldier
+who should eat food before evening, and his consequent mad
+determination to kill Jonathan, for 'taking a little honey' on the end
+of his rod. Next came his flagrant disobedience to the divine command
+transmitted to him through Samuel, to 'smite Amalek, and utterly
+destroy all that they have, and spare them not,' We shudder at such
+ferocious extermination, but we are to remember that Saul was moved by
+no pity, but by mere lust for loot, and tried to deceive God, in the
+person of His representative Samuel, by the lie that the people had
+coerced him, and that the motive for preserving the best of the cattle
+was to sacrifice them to the Lord. Samuel's blaze of indignation gave
+the world the great word: 'Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.'
+
+Putting all these acts together, we have the sad picture of a character
+steadily deteriorating. He is growing daily more self-willed and
+impatient of the restraint of God's commanding will. He is chafing at
+his position as a viceroy, not an absolute sovereign. He is becoming
+tyrannical, careless of his subjects' lives, intolerant of opposition,
+remonstrance, or advice. The tragedy of his decadence is summed up in
+Samuel's stern word: 'Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord,
+He hath also rejected thee from being king.'
+
+Trivial acts may show great and deep-seated evil. A small swelling
+under the arm-pit is the sign of the plague and the precursor of swift
+death.
+
+The master-sin is disobedience, self-willed departure from God. That
+disobedience may be as virulently active in a trifle as in a deed that
+men call great. Self-will is the tap root of all sin, however
+labyrinthine the outgrowth from it.
+
+Disobedience honeycombs a soul. The attractive early traits in Saul's
+character slowly perhaps but steadily, disappeared. The fair morning
+sky was heavy with thunder-clouds by midday, and they all began with a
+light fleecy film that none noticed at first.
+
+III. The long eclipse.
+
+'An evil spirit from the Lord troubled him, and the Spirit of God
+departed from him.'
+
+Modern psychologists would call Saul's case an instance of insanity
+brought about by indulgence in passion and self-will. Is there any
+reason why the deeper, more religious explanation should not be united
+with the scientific one? Does not God work in the working of 'natural'
+phenomena?
+
+What we nowadays call insanity is not very far off from a man who
+habitually indulges in passionate self will, and spurns God from any
+authority over his life. What were Saul's characteristics now? The
+story tells of bursts of ungovernable fury, of unslumbering and
+universal suspicions, of utter misery, seeing enemies everywhere and
+complaining, 'None of you hath pity upon me,' of ferocious cruelty and
+gloomy despair, of paroxysms of agonising but transient remorse.
+
+It is an awful picture, and it grimly teaches lessons that we shall be
+wise to write deeply on our hearts.
+
+What a ruin a man makes of himself!
+
+How hideous a godless soul is!
+
+What unhappiness is certain if we dismiss God from ruling our lives!
+
+How useless remorse is unless it leads to repentance!
+
+IV. The stormy sunset.
+
+The scene at Endor makes one's flesh creep. No more tragic picture of
+failure and despair was ever painted. The greatest dramatists, whose
+creations move the terror and pity of the world, have imagined no more
+heart-touching figure.
+
+It matters very little--nothing at all in fact--either for the dramatic
+force or for the religious impressiveness of the scene, whether the
+woman 'brought up' Samuel, or whether she was as much awed as Saul was,
+by the coming up of 'an old man' covered with the well-known 'mantle.'
+The boding prophecy of to-morrow's defeat and death filled yet fuller
+the cup that had seemed to be already full of all misery. And that
+collapse of strength in the huddled figure, prostrate in the witch's
+den, may well stand for a prophecy of what will be the upshot at the
+last of a self-will that boasts of its own power, and tries to shake
+off dependence on God.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT DOEST THOU HERE?
+
+'Then said the princes of the Philistines, What do these Hebrews
+here!'--1 SAMUEL xxix. 3.
+
+'The word of the Lord came to him, and He said unto him, What doest
+thou here, Elijah?'--1 KINGS xix. 9.
+
+
+I have put these two verses together, not only because of their
+identity in form, though that is striking, but because they bear upon
+one and the same subject, as will appear, if, in a word or two, I set
+each of them in its setting. David was almost at the lowest point of
+his fortunes when he fled into foreign territory, and for awhile took
+service under one of the kings of the Philistines. He served him
+faithfully, and so, when the last great fight, in which Saul lost his
+life, was about to be waged between Philistia and Israel, David and his
+men came as a contingent to the army of the former. The Philistine
+commanders, very naturally, were suspicious of these allies, just as
+Englishmen would have been if, on the night before Waterloo, a brigade
+of Frenchmen had deserted and offered their help to fight Napoleon. So
+the question 'What do these Hebrews here?'--amongst our ranks--was an
+extremely natural one, and it was answered in the only possible way, by
+the subsequent departure of David and his men from the unnatural and
+ill-omened alliance.
+
+Now, that suggests to us that Christian people are out of their places,
+even in the eyes of worldly people, when they are fighting shoulder to
+shoulder with them in certain causes; and it suggests the propriety of
+keeping apart. 'Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith
+the Lord' 'What do these Hebrews here?' is a question that Philistia
+often asks. But now turn to the other question. Elijah had fallen into
+the mood of depression which so often follows great nervous tension. He
+had just offered the sacrifice on Carmel, and brought all Israel back
+to the Lord, and Jezebel had flamed out and threatened his life. The
+usually undaunted prophet, in the reaction after his great effort, was
+fearful for his life and deserted his work, flung himself into solitude
+and shook the dust off his feet against Israel. Was that not just doing
+what I have been saying that Christian people ought to do--separating
+himself from the world? In a sense, yes, but the voice came, 'What dost
+thou here, Elijah?' 'Go back to your work; to Ahab, to Jezebel. Go back
+to death if need be. Do not shirk your duty on the pretence of
+separating yourself from the world.'
+
+So we put the two questions together. They limit one another, and they
+suggest the _via media,_ the course between, and lead me to say one or
+two plain things about that duty of Christian separation from an evil
+world.
+
+I. The first thing that I would suggest to you is the inevitable
+intermingling, which is the law of God, and therefore can never be
+broken with impunity.
+
+Christ's parable about the Kingdom of Heaven in the world being like a
+man that sowed good seed in his field, which sprung up intermingled
+with tares, contains the lesson, not so much of the purity or nonpurity
+of the Church as of the inseparable intertwining in the world of
+Christian people with others. The roots are matted together, and you
+cannot pull up a tare without danger of pulling up a wheat-stalk that
+has got interlaced with it. That is but to say that Society at present,
+and the earthly form of the Kingdom of God, are not organised on the
+basis of religious affinity, but upon a great many other things, such
+as family, kindred, business, a thousand ties of all sorts which mat
+men together, and make it undesirable, impossible, contrary to God's
+intention, that the good people should club themselves together, and
+leave the bad ones to rot and stink. The two are meant to be in close
+contact. 'Let both grow together till the harvest.' If any Christian
+man were to do as the monks of old did, fly into solitude to look after
+his own soul, then the question which came to Elijah would be suitable
+to him, 'What doest thou here?' Is there not work enough for you out
+there, in that wicked world? Is that not the place for you? Where is
+the place for the 'salt'? Where the meat is in danger of putrefaction.
+Rub it in! That is what it was meant for. 'Ye are the light of the
+world.' That suggests the picture of a lamp upon a pedestal that it may
+send out its rays, but itself remains apart. But the companion metaphor
+suggests the closest possible contact, and such contact is duty for us
+Christian people. Elijah ran away from his work. There are types of
+Christian life to-day unwholesomely self-engrossed, and too much
+occupied with their own spiritual condition, to realise and discharge
+the duty of witnessing in the world. Wherever you find a Christian
+man--whether he is a monk with bare foot, and a rope round his brown
+robe, and shaven head, or whether he is in the garb of modern
+Protestantism--that tries more to keep himself apart, in the enjoyment
+and cultivation of his own religious life, than to fling himself into
+the midst of the world's worst evil, in order to fight and to cure it,
+you get a man who is sharing in Elijah's transgression, and needs
+Elijah's rebuke. The intermingling is inevitable in the present state
+of things; and family, kindred, business, social and political
+movements, all require that Christian people should work side by side
+with men who are not possessors of 'like precious faith.' If ever there
+have been individuals or communities that have tried to traverse that
+law, they have developed narrowness and bitterness and stunted growth,
+and a hundred evils that we all know.
+
+II. And now let me say a word about the second thing, and that is--the
+imperative separation.
+
+'What do these Israelites here?' is the question. Much of all our lives
+lies outside these necessary connections with the world, of which I
+have been speaking. And the question for each of us is, What do we do
+when we are left to do as we like? Where do we go? When the iron weight
+fastened by the bit of string is taken off the sapling, it starts back
+to its original uprightness. Is that what your Christianity does for
+you? When you are left to yourself, when you have done all the work
+that is required, and you are free, where do you turn naturally? It is
+of no use to lay down special regulations. There has been far too much
+regulation and red-tape in our Christianity all along. Do not let us
+put so much stress upon individual acts. Let us look at the spirit.
+Whither do I turn? What do I like to do? Who are my chosen companions?
+What are my recreations? Is my life of such a sort as that the world
+will point to me, and say, 'What! you here I a professing Christian;
+what are you doing here?'
+
+I remember that in the autobiography of Mr. Spurgeon, there is a story
+told about what he did when a child, and living with his grandfather,
+the pastor of a little country church. There was a very prominent
+member of that church who was in the habit of going into the
+public-house occasionally; and the small boy stepped into the sanded
+parlour where this inconsistent man was sitting, walked up to him, and
+said, 'What doest thou here, Elijah?' It was the turning-point of the
+man's life. That is the question that I desire us all to ask
+ourselves--where do we go, and what sort of lives do we live in the
+moments when our own voluntary choice determines our action?
+
+'A man is known by the company he keeps,' says an old Latin proverb,
+and I am bound to say that I do not think that it is a good sign of the
+depth of a Christian professor's religion if he feels himself more at
+home in the company of people who do not share his religion than in the
+company of those that do. I do not wish to be strait-laced and narrow,
+but I do not wish, either, to be so broad as to obliterate altogether
+the distinction between Christian people and others. The fact of the
+case is this, dear friends; if we are Christ's servants we have more in
+common with the most uncongenial Christians than we have with the most
+congenial man who is not a Christian. And if we were nearer our Master
+we should feel that it was so. 'Being let go they went to their own
+company.' Where do you go when you can make your choice?
+
+I am not going to speak in detail about occupations or recreations. I
+can quite believe that the theatre might be made an instrument of
+morality. I can quite believe that a race-course might be a perfectly
+innocent place. I can quite believe that there may be no harm in a
+dance. All that I say is that there are two questions which every
+Christian professor ought to ask himself about such subjects. One is,
+Can I ask God to bless this thing, and my doing it? And the other is,
+Does this help or hinder my religion? If we will take these two
+questions with us as tests of conduct and companionship, I do not think
+that we shall go far wrong, either in the choice of our companions, or
+in the choice of our surroundings of any kind, or in the choice of our
+recreations and our occupations. But if we do not, then I am quite sure
+that we shall go wrong in them all. 'What communion hath light with
+darkness?' 'What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? Come ye
+out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.'
+
+The main question is, do I grasp the aim of life with clearness and
+decision as being to make myself by God's help such a character as God
+has pleasure in? If I do I shall regulate all these things thereby.
+
+III. Now there is one last suggestion that I wish to make, and that is
+the double questioning that we shall have to stand.
+
+The lords of the Philistines said, 'What do these Hebrews here?' They
+saw the inconsistency, if David and his men did not. They were sharp to
+detect it, and David and his band did not rise in their opinion, but
+decidedly went down, when they saw them marching there, in such an
+unnatural place as 'behind Achish,' and ready to flesh their swords in
+the blood of their brethren. So let me tell you, you will neither
+recommend your religion nor yourselves to men of the world, by
+inconsistently trying to identify yourselves with them. There are a
+great many professing Christians nowadays whose mouths are full of the
+word 'liberality,' and who seem to try to show how absolutely identical
+with a godless man's a God-fearing one's life may be made. Do you think
+that the world respects that type of Christian, or regards his religion
+as the kind of thing to be admired? No; the question that they fling at
+such people is the question which David was humiliated by having
+pitched at his head--'What do these Hebrews here?' 'Let them go back to
+their mountains. This is no place for _them_.' The world respects an
+out-and-out Christian; but neither God nor the world respects an
+inconsistent one.
+
+But there is another question, and another Questioner--'What doest thou
+here, Elijah?' God did not ask Elijah the question because he did not
+know the answer; but because he wished to make Elijah put his mood into
+words, since then Elijah would understand it a little better, and, when
+he found the tremendous difficulty of making a decent excuse, would
+begin to suspect that the conduct that wanted so much glozing was not
+exactly the conduct fit for a prophet. And so let us think that God is
+looking down upon us, in all our occupation of our free time, and that
+He is wishing us to put into words what we are about, and why we are
+where we are.
+
+What do you think you would say if, in some of these moments of
+unnecessary intermingling with questionable things and doubtful people,
+you were brought suddenly to this, that you had to formulate into some
+kind of plausibility your reason for being there? I am afraid it would
+be a very lame and ragged set of reasons that many of us would have to
+give. Well! better that we should now have to answer the question 'What
+doest thou here?' than that we should have to fail in answering the
+future question, after we have done with the world: 'What didst thou
+there?'
+
+Dear brethren, let us cleave to Christ, and that will separate us from
+the world. If we cleave to the world, that will separate us from
+Christ. I do not insist on details of conduct, but I do beseech you,
+professing Christians, to recognise that you are set in the world in
+order to grow like your Master, and that their tendency to help you to
+that likeness is the one test of all occupations, recreations, and
+companionships, by which we may know whether we are in or out of the
+place that pleases Him. And if we are in it, that blessed hope which is
+held forth in the parable to which I have already referred, will come
+full of sweetness and of strength to us, that, yonder, men will be
+grouped according to their moral and religious character; that the
+tares will be taken away from the wheat, and, that as Christ says,
+'Then shall the righteous flame as the sun in their heavenly Father's
+Kingdom.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET OF COURAGE
+
+'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'--1 Samuel xxx. 6.
+
+
+David was at perhaps the very lowest ebb of his fortunes. He had long
+been a wandering outlaw, and had finally been driven, by Saul's
+persistent hostility, to take refuge in the Philistines' country. He
+had gathered around himself a band of desperate men, and was living
+very much like a freebooter. He had found refuge in a little city of
+the Philistines, far down in the South, from which he and his men had
+marched as a contingent in the Philistine army, which was preparing an
+attack upon Saul. But, naturally, the Philistine soldiers doubted their
+ally, and he was obliged to take himself and his troops back again to
+their temporary home.
+
+When he came there it was a heap of smoking ruins. Everything was gone;
+property, cattle, wives, children--and all was desolation. His
+turbulent followers rose against him, a mutiny broke out--a dangerous
+thing amongst such a crew--and they were ready to stone him. And at
+that moment what did he do? Nothing. Was he cast down? No. Was he
+agitated? No. 'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'
+
+Now the first thing I notice is
+
+I. The grand assurance which this man gripped fast at such a time.
+
+It is not by accident, nor is it a mere piece of tautology, that we
+read 'the Lord _his_ God.' For, if you will remember, the very keynote
+of the psalms which are ascribed to David is just that expression, 'My
+God,' 'My God.' So far as the very fragmentary records of Jewish
+literature go, it would appear as if David was the very first of all
+the ancient singers to grapple that thought that he stood in a
+personal, individual relation to God, and God to him. And so it was
+_his_ God that he laid hold of at that dark hour.
+
+Now I am not putting too much into a little word when I insist upon it
+that the very essence and nerve of what strengthened David, at that
+supreme moment of desolation, was the conviction that welled up in his
+heart that, in spite of it all, he had a grip of God's hand as his very
+own, and God had hold of him. Just think of the difference between the
+attitude of mind and heart expressed in the names that were more
+familiar to the Israelitish people, and this name for Jehovah. 'The God
+of Israel'--that is wide, general; and a man might use it and yet fail
+to feel that it implied that each individual of the community stood by
+himself in a personal relation to God. But David penetrated through the
+broad, general thought, and got into the heart of the matter. It was
+not enough for him, in his time of need, to stay himself upon a vague
+universal goodness, but he had to clasp to his burdened heart the
+individualising thought, 'the God of Israel is _my_ God.'
+
+Think, too, of the contrast of the thoughts and emotions suggested by
+'My God,' and by 'the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.'
+Great as that name is, it carries the mind away back into the past, and
+speaks of a historical relation in former days, which may or may not
+continue in all its tenderness and sweetness and power into the prosaic
+present. But when a man feels, not only 'the God of Jacob is our
+Refuge,' but, 'the God of Jacob is my God,' then the whole thing
+flashes up into new power. 'My sun'--will one man claim property in
+that great luminary that pours its light down on the whole world? Yes.
+
+          'The sun whose beams most glorious are,
+           Disdaineth no beholder,'
+
+as the old song has it. Each man's eye receives the straight impact of
+its universal beams. It is my sun, though it be the light that lightens
+all men that come into the world. 'My atmosphere'--will one man claim
+the free, unappropriated winds of heaven as his? Yes, for they will
+pour into his lungs; and yet his brother will be none the poorer.
+
+I would not go the length of saying that the living realisation, in
+heart and mind, of this personal possession of God is the difference
+between a traditional and vague profession of religion and a vital
+possession of religion, but if it is not the difference, it goes a long
+way towards explaining the difference. The man who contents himself
+with the generality of a Gospel for the world, and who can say no more
+than that Jesus Christ died for all, has yet to learn the most intimate
+sweetness, and the most quickening and transforming power, of that
+Gospel, and he only learns it when he says, 'Who loved _me_, and gave
+Himself for _me_.'
+
+So do not let us be content with saying, 'the God of Israel,' and its
+many thousands, or 'the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob,'
+who filled the past with His lustre, but let us bring the general good
+into our own houses, as men might draw the waters of Niagara into their
+homes through pipes, and let us cry: 'My Lord and my God!' 'David
+encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'
+
+II. Now note, secondly, the sufficiency of this one conviction and
+assurance.
+
+Here is one of the many eloquent 'buts' of the Bible. On the one hand
+is piled up a black heap of calamities, loss, treachery and peril; and
+opposed to them is only that one clause: 'But David encouraged himself
+in the Lord his God.' There was only one possession in all the world,
+except his body and the clothes that he stood in, that he could call
+his own at that moment. Everything else was gone; his property was
+carried off by raiders, his home was smouldering embers. But the
+Amalekites had not stolen God from him. Though he could no longer say,
+'My house, my city, my possessions,' he could say, 'My God.' Whatever
+else we lose, as long as we have Him we are rich; and whatever else we
+possess, we are poor as long as we have not Him. God is enough;
+whatever else may go. The Lord his God was the sufficient portion for
+this man when he stood a homeless pauper. He had lost everything that
+his heart clung to; wives, children; Abigail and Abinoam were captives
+in the arms of some Amalekites; his house was left to him desolate; his
+heart was bleeding. 'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God'
+and the bleeding heart was stanched, and the yearning for some one to
+love and be loved by was satisfied, when he turned himself from the
+desolation of earth to the riches in the heavens. He was standing on
+the edge of possible death, for his followers were ready to stone him.
+He had come through many perils in the past, but he had never been
+nearer a fatal end than he was at that moment. But the thought of the
+undying Friend lifted him buoyantly above the dread of death, and he
+could look with an unwinking eye right into the fleshless eye-sockets
+of the skeleton, and say, 'I fear no evil, for Thou art with me.'
+
+So for poverty, loss, the blasting of earthly hopes, the crushing of
+earthly affections, the extremity of danger, and the utmost threatening
+of death, here is the sufficient remedy--that one mighty assurance:
+'The Lord is my God.' For if He is 'the strength of my heart,' He will
+be  my portion for ever.' He is not poor who has God for his, nor does
+he wander with a hungry heart who can rest his heart on God's; nor need
+he fear death who possesses God, and in Him eternal life.
+
+So, brethren, in all our changing circumstances, there is more than
+enough for us in that sweet, simple, strong thought. The end of sorrow
+(that is to say, the purpose thereof) is to breed in us the conviction
+that God is ours, to drive us to Him by lack of all beside; and the end
+of sorrow (that is to say, the termination thereof) is the kindling in
+our hearts of the light of that blessed assurance, for with Him we
+shall fear no evil.  You never know the good of the breakwater until
+the storm is rolling the waves against its outer side. Light a little
+candle in a room, and you will not see the lightning when it flashes
+outside, however stormy the sky, and seamed with the fiery darts. If we
+have God in our hearts, we have enough for courage and for strength.
+
+I need not remind you, I suppose, how this darkest moment of David's
+fortunes was the moment at which the darkness broke. Three days after
+this _emeute_ of his turbulent followers, there came a fugitive into
+the camp with news that Saul was dead and David was king. So it was not
+in vain that he had 'strengthened himself in the Lord his God.' Our
+'light affliction which is but for a moment' leads on to a
+manifestation of the true power of God our Friend, and to the breaking
+of the day.
+
+III. And now the last thing to be noted is the effort by which this
+assurance is attained and sustained.
+
+The words of the original convey even more forcibly than those of our
+translation the thought of David's own action in securing him the hold
+of God as his. He 'strengthened _himself_ in the Lord his God.' The
+Hebrew conveys the notion of effort, persistent and continuous; and it
+tells us this, that when things are as black as they were round David
+at that hour--it is not a matter of course, even for a good man, that
+there shall well up in his heart this tranquillising and victorious
+conviction; but he has to set himself to reach and to keep it. God will
+give it, but He will not give it unless the man strains after it. David
+'strengthened himself in the Lord,' and if he had not doggedly set
+about resisting the pressure of circumstances, and flinging himself as
+it were, by an effort, into the arms of God, circumstances would have
+been too strong for him, and despair would have shrouded his soul. In
+the darkest moment it is possible for a man to surround himself with
+God's light, but even in the brightest it is not possible to do so
+unless he makes a serious effort.
+
+That effort must consist mainly in two things. One is that we shall
+honestly try to occupy our minds, as well as our hearts, with the truth
+which certifies to us that God is, in very deed, ours. If we never
+think, or think languidly and rarely, about what God has revealed to
+us, by the word and life and death and intercession of Jesus Christ,
+concerning Himself, His heart of love towards us, and His relations to
+us, then we shall not have, either in the time of disaster or of joy,
+the blessed sense that He is indeed ours. If a man will not think about
+Christian truth he will not have the blessedness of Christian
+possession of God. There is no mystery about the road to the sweetness
+and holiness and power that may belong to a Christian. The only way to
+win them is to be occupied, far more than most of us are, with the
+plain truths of God's revelation in Jesus Christ. If you never think
+about them they cannot affect you, and they will not make you sure that
+God is yours.
+
+But we cannot occupy ourselves with these truths unless we have a
+distinct and resolute purpose running through our lives, of averting
+our eyes from the things that might make us lose sight of them and of
+Him. David had his choice. He could either, as a great many of us do,
+stand there and look, and look, and look, and see nothing but his
+disasters, or he could look past them; and see beyond them God. Peter
+had his choice whether he would look at the water, or whether he would
+look at Jesus Christ. He chose to look at the water; 'and when he saw
+the wind boisterous he began to sink'--of course, and when he looked at
+Christ and cried: 'Lord, save me!' he was held up--equally of course.
+Make the effort not to let the sorrowful things, or the difficult
+things, or the fearful things, or the joyous things, in your life,
+absorb you, but turn away, and, as the writer of the Epistle to the
+Hebrews says, in another connection, 'look off unto Jesus, the Author
+and Finisher of faith.' David had to put constraint upon himself, to
+admit any other thoughts into his mind than those that were pressed
+into it by the facts before his eyes; but he put on the constraint, and
+so he was encouraged because he encouraged himself.
+
+There is another thing which we have to make an effort to do, if we
+would have the blessedness of this conviction filling and flooding our
+hearts. For the possession is reciprocal; we say, 'My God,' and He
+says, 'My people.' Unless we yield ourselves to Him and say, 'I am
+Thine,' we shall never be able to say, 'Thou art mine.' We must
+recognise His possession of us; we must yield ourselves; we must obey;
+we must elect Him as our chief good, we must feel that we are not our
+own, but bought with a price. And then when we look up into the heavens
+thus submissive, thus obedient, thus owning His authority and His
+rights, as well as claiming His love and His tenderness, and cry: 'My
+Father,' He will bend down and whisper into our hearts: 'Thou art My
+beloved son.' Then we shall be 'strong, and of a good courage,' however
+weak and timid, and we shall be rich, though, like David, we have lost
+all things.
+
+
+
+
+AT THE FRONT OR THE BASE
+
+'As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be
+that tarrieth by the stuff.'--1 Samuel xxx. 24.
+
+
+David's city of Ziklag had been captured by the Amalekites, while he
+and all his men who could carry arms were absent, serving in the army
+of Achish, the Philistine king of Gath. On their return they found
+ruin, their homes harried, their wives, children, and property carried
+off. Wearied already with their long march, they set off at once in
+pursuit of the spoilers, who had had a long start of them. When they
+reached the brook Besor, two hundred of them were too weary and
+footsore to ford it, and so had to be left behind. But these were not
+useless, for the heavy baggage was left in their charge, and the other
+four hundred were thus enabled to march more lightly, and therefore
+more swiftly. They picked up a sick slave, whom his Amalekite master
+had heartlessly abandoned to die on the 'veldt.' He was almost dead, so
+they fed him, and when he was able to answer, questioned him. He
+undertook to guide David and his band, and thus, as twilight was
+beginning to fall and the Amalekites were 'spread abroad over all the
+ground, eating and drinking and feasting because of all the great spoil
+that they had taken.' the four hundred burst on them, routed them
+utterly, and won back all their goods and much more.
+
+Then came a quarrel. The four hundred who had gone to the fight
+insisted that the booty was theirs, and that the two hundred who had
+had no hand in winning it should have no share in the distribution. But
+David over-ruled this and laid down a principle of distribution which
+was adopted as the standing law of Israel--that the soldiers who were
+actually in the fight and those who stayed behind guarding the baggage,
+looking after 'the base of operations,' should share alike. It was fair
+that they should do so, for the two hundred would willingly have been
+in the thick of battle, and, further, though they did not fight, they
+helped the fighters, and by guarding the heavy baggage contributed to
+the victory as really as if they had been in the fray and come out of
+it with swords dripping with Amalekite blood.
+
+I. God's battle requires two forms of service.
+
+In David's raid, as in every campaign, some of the available strength
+has to be taken to guard the camp, the place where the supplies are,
+the base of operations, and pickets and detachments have to be left
+behind all the way, to keep open the communication. The sword is not
+more needful than the long train of baggage carts, and the forwarding
+of supplies to the front is as indispensable to the conduct of the war
+as the headlong charge.
+
+In every great work there is the same distinction of parts and
+functions, all co-operating to produce the effect which seems to be
+entirely due to that cause which happens to come last in the series.
+Organisation of labour associates many hands in the different stages of
+the one result. There are very few things in this world which are the
+product of one simple cause alone. You cannot grow a grain of corn
+without the seed with its vital germ, the soil with its mysterious
+influences, the sunshine and the rain, the sower's hand and basket, the
+plougher's plough, and all these, except the blessed sunshine, are the
+results of a series of other causes which lie forgotten, but are really
+represented in the issue. If one of them were struck out, all the rest
+would be ineffectual. In a great machine all its parts are equally
+necessary, and a defect in a cog on a wheel would be as fatal as a flaw
+in the cylinder or a crack in the mighty shaft. What would become of a
+ship if the pintle that the rudder works on were away? The effect of a
+whole orchestra may depend on the coming in of the flute at the right
+place.
+
+So in the work which God has given to the Church to do, there are the
+two forms of service, the direct and the indirect. There are the
+fighters and the guards of the baggage. And these two are equally
+necessary. That without which a great work could not have been done is
+great. When Luther came out from the Diet of Worms, and a knight
+clapped him on the shoulder, and said, 'Well done! little monk,' he had
+a share in the memorable deed of that day. The man who gave Luther a
+flagon of beer when his lips were dry with speaking there before
+emperor and cardinals, was included in the promise to the giver 'of a
+cup of cold water in the name of a disciple.'
+
+We have brethren in Christ who have gone to the front, hazarding their
+lives on the high places of the field. Their hands will droop if they
+do not feel that a chain of sympathy stretches between them and us, for
+they in their solitude need all the strength which the confidence of a
+multitude at home feeling with them can give. They are powerfully
+influenced by the tone of feeling among us. When devotion languishes
+and faith droops here, these will generally pass through the same
+phases among them. When we are strong and bold, their hearts will be
+quickened by the pulsations of ours, and their courage heightened by
+thoughts of those from whom they come. Our disorders, our heresies, our
+struggles are all reproduced on the mission field. An epidemic here
+travels thither before long, and the spiritual condition of the Church
+at home is one of the most powerful means of determining that of the
+churches abroad. A blight among our vines soon shows itself in the
+little gardens just reclaimed from the waste.
+
+The fighters need material helps and appliances for their work. The
+days in which the law for apostles and missionaries was, 'Go forth
+without purse or scrip,' ended before Jesus said, 'Go ye into all the
+world.' That condition was solemnly revoked by our Lord Himself, when
+He said, 'When I sent you forth without purse and scrip and shoes,
+lacked ye anything? But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and
+likewise his scrip.' The fighters' material wants are now to be met by
+Christ's administration of natural means, even as before they had been
+met by Christ's administration of supernatural ones. His messengers
+cannot live, do their work, or extend the kingdom, but by the help of
+material appliances. Those who 'abide by the stuff' are to organise the
+commissariat department, and to see that those who are far ahead, among
+the ranks of the foe, do not want for either food or weapons, and are
+not left isolated, hemmed in by the enemy, and languishing because they
+feel that they are forgotten by those who 'live at home at ease.'
+
+There has always been that division of labour. Our Lord Himself 'had
+need of' many humble instruments as helpers. There were the woman who
+ministered to His wants, the faithful few whose presence and sympathy
+were joyful to Him even on the Mount of Transfiguration, and longed for
+even in the awful solitude of the agony in Gethsemane, the sisters of
+Bethany whose humble home was His last shelter before the Cross, the
+owner of the Upper Room, the sad women who prepared sweet spices, the
+ruler who consecrated his new sepulchre in a garden by His body. Even
+He, treading the wine-press alone, needed helpers in the background,
+and, while conquering for us in the awful duel with our enemy, had
+humble friends who 'tarried by the stuff.' Similarly Paul had his
+helpers, on whose names he lovingly lingers and has made immortal, a
+'Gaius, mine host, and of the whole church,' an 'Epaphroditus, my
+fellow soldier, who ministered to my wants,' and therefore was a
+soldier, though he did not fight, an 'Onesiphorus, who oft refreshed
+me, and was not ashamed of my chain.'
+
+But let us remember that these two forms of service which are equally
+necessary are equally binding on us all, in the measure of our
+opportunity and capacity. Our performing the indirect is no excuse for
+our neglecting the direct. The conversion of the world is _our_
+business and not to be handed over to any society or missionary. No
+Christian can be only and always a non-combatant, without sin and loss.
+He is bound to take some share in the actual conflict in one or other
+of its many parts.
+
+II. Service may be different in kind and one in essence.
+
+The determining element in our actions is their motive. Not what we
+work in, but what we work for, gives the principle of classification.
+Not the spots on the skin or the colour of the feathers, but the bony
+skeleton, is the basis of zoological classification. It is not the size
+or binding of a book, be it quarto or folio or octavo, be it in leather
+or cloth or paper covers, but its subject, that settles its place in a
+catalogue. The Christian motives of love to Christ, self-sacrifice,
+devotion, love to men, make all deeds the same which have these in them
+in like strength. It matters not whether the copy of a great picture be
+in oils or an engraving or a photograph, so long as it _is_ a copy. The
+smallest piece of indirect Christian service may be thus elevated to
+the same plane as the greatest.
+
+'Mere money-giving' may have in it all these qualities, as truly and in
+as great a degree, as the deeds of Apostles and martyrs. Remember how
+Peter puts in one category these two forms of service, as equally
+flowing from 'the manifold grace of God,' and equally to be exercised
+as 'good stewards' thereof--'If any man speaketh, speaking as it were
+the oracles of God; if any man ministereth, ministering as of the
+strength which God supplieth.' Remember how Paul classes all varieties
+of service as equally 'gifts according to the grace given to us,' and
+to be exercised in the same spirit whatever are the difference in their
+forms: 'or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that
+teacheth, to his teaching: he that giveth, let him do it with
+liberality ... he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.'
+
+Let us learn, then, how we ought to help Christian fighters for
+Christ--as associating ourselves with them and their work by sympathy
+and sharing in their spirit and motives.
+
+Let us learn how loftily we ought to think of the possible sacredness
+of the most secular forms of help, and to try thus to consecrate our
+indirect service.
+
+III. All work done from the same motive will receive the same reward.
+
+
+None need be startled by the thought that Christian work is rewarded.
+Essentially, it is not deeds but character that is rewarded. The
+'reward' is the possession of God of which such a character is capable,
+and the consequent blessedness which fills such a soul, and cannot but
+fill it, and which can be enjoyed by no other. The faithful servant
+enters into the joy of the Lord; the faithful administrator of his
+Lord's talents enters on the rule over cities in number the same as the
+talents. Capacity for service is the result of stewardship rightly
+administered here, and new opportunities yonder are sure to be provided
+for new capacities.
+
+God's judgment takes little note of that which men's judgment all but
+exclusively notes. The conspicuousness or success of a man's deeds is
+nothing to Him. Differences of power are of no account. It is
+_faithfulness_ that is required in a steward, and it is all the same
+whether the stewardship is of millions or of farthings. The saints
+nearest the glory in heaven will not always be the men whose words or
+deeds fill the pages of Church history and resound through the ages.
+There will be astounding new principles of nearness and comparative
+remoteness then.
+
+Christ was repeating what David made a law in Israel, when He said: 'He
+that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a
+prophet's reward.' Therein He recognises the identity in spiritual
+stature and motive for service, of the prophet and of his dumb helper,
+and assures us that those who, in widely different ways but under the
+guidance of the same spirit and motives, have contributed their
+respective shares to the one triumphant result shall be associated and
+equalised in the immortal reward.
+
+So remember that what is necessary in our indirect work, if it is to be
+thus honoured, is that it should have our devotion, and our love to
+Jesus and to men, throbbing in it, and that it should be accompanied by
+direct work, in so far as we have opportunities for that. Moneygiving
+may be made sacred, and by it, exercised in the right spirit, we may
+'lay up in store for ourselves a good foundation' and may 'lay hold
+upon eternal life.'
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF SELF-WILL
+
+'Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled
+from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa. 2.
+And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the
+Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Melchi-shua, Saul's sons.
+3. And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and
+he was sore wounded of the archers. 4. Then said Saul unto his
+armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest
+these uncircumsised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his
+armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a
+sword, and fell upon it 5. And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was
+dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him. 6. So Saul
+died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that
+same day together. 7. And when the men of Israel that were on the other
+side of the valley, and they that were on the other side Jordan, saw
+that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they
+forsook the cities, and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in
+them. 8. And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came
+to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in
+mount Gilboa. 9. And they out off his head, and stripped off his
+armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to
+publish it in the house of their idols, and among the people. 10. And
+they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his
+body to the wall of Beth-shan. 11. And when the inhabitants of
+Jabesh-gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul; 12.
+All the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of
+Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and came to
+Jabesh, and burnt them there. 19. And they took their bones, and buried
+them under a tree at Jabesh. and fasted seven days.'--1 Samuel xxxi.
+1-13.
+
+
+The story of Saul's tragic last days is broken in two by the account,
+in chapters xxix. and xxx., of David's fortunate dismissal from the
+invading army, and his exploits against Amalek. The contrast between
+the two lives, so closely intertwined and powerful for good and evil on
+each other, reaches its climax at the end of Saul's. While the one sets
+in dark thunderclouds, the other is bright with victory. While the fall
+of Saul lays all northern Israel bleeding at the feet of the enemy,
+David is sending the spoils of his conquest to the elders of Judah.
+Saul's headless and dishonoured body hangs rotting in the sun on the
+walk of Bethshan, while David sits a conqueror in Ziklag. The
+introduction of the brightness of the two preceding chapters is
+intended to heighten the darkness that broods over this one, and to
+deepen the stern teaching of that terrible death. Defeat, desolation,
+despair, attend to his self-dug grave the unhappy king, whose end
+teaches us all what comes of self-willed resistance to the law and the
+Spirit of God. Everything else is subordinated in the narrative to the
+account of his death. Next to nothing is said about the battle, the
+very site of which is left obscure. We cannot tell whether it was
+fought down in the plain by the fountain at Jezreel, where Israel was
+encamped, according to 1 Samuel xxix. 1, or whether both sides
+manoeuvred and changed their ground, and the decisive struggle was on
+the slope of Gilboa. In any case, the site was almost identical with
+that of Gideon's victory, but there was no Gideon in command on that
+dark day. The language of verse 1 seems to imply that the battle was
+over and the rout begun before the Israelites reached Gilboa. If so, we
+have to conceive of a short, hopeless struggle on the plain, and then a
+rush to the hills for safety, in which Saul and his sons and bodyguard
+were borne along, but held together, closely followed by the 'red
+pursuing spear' of the conquerors, fierce with ancestral hate and the
+memories of defeat. There, on the hillside, stands the towering form of
+Saul with a little ring of his children and retainers round him, the
+words he had heard last night in the sorceress' tent unnerving his arm,
+and many a past crime rising before him, and whispering in his ear,
+
+               'In the battle think on me,
+                And fall thy edgeless sword; despair and die.'
+
+There seems to have been a close encounter with some of the pursuers,
+and a hand-to-hand fight, in which Jonathan and his two brothers fell,
+and the rest of the bodyguard were slain or scattered. The prophecy of
+that mantle-swathed shape last night was in part fulfilled--'To-morrow
+shalt thou and thy sons be with me.' They lay stark at his feet, and he
+knew that he would soon join them. The last heart that loved him had
+ceased to beat in Jonathan's noble breast, and his own crimes had slain
+his sons. Who can paint the storm of contending passions in that lonely
+black soul? or were they all frozen into the numbness of despair?
+
+But whatever else was in his soul, repentance was not there. He may
+have been seared by remorse, but he was not softened by penitence, and
+was fierce and proud in despair as he had been in prosperity. The
+Revised Version substitutes 'overtook' for 'hit' in verse 3; but Saul's
+fear 'lest these uncircumcised come' is against that rendering, and the
+fact that the enemy did not know of his death till next day (v. 8) is a
+difficulty in the way of accepting it. The word is literally 'found'
+and possibly means that the archers recognised him, and were making for
+him, though, as would appear, from some cause they missed him in the
+confusion. The other change in the Revised Version, that of 'greatly
+distressed' for 'sore wounded' fits the context; and if it be adopted,
+we have the picture of the unwounded but desperate man, once brave, but
+now stricken with a panic which opens his lips for his only word. In
+grim silence he had met the loss of battle, sons, and kingdom; but the
+proud sense of personal dignity is strong to the end, and he fiercely
+issues his last command, and embraces death to escape insult. The
+haughty spirit was unchanged, crushed but the same, unsoftened, and
+therefore roused to madder defiance of God and man. What an awful last
+saying for 'the anointed of Jehovah,' and how the overweening self-will
+and vehemence and passionate pride of his whole life are gathered up in
+it!
+
+His last command is disobeyed by the trembling armour-bearer, whose
+very awe makes him disobedient, Did Saul, at that last moment, send a
+thought to an armour-bearer whom he had had in happier days, and who
+was to inherit his lost kingdom? The enemy are coming nearer. No time
+is to be lost if he would escape the savage mutilations and torments
+which ancient warfare made the portion of captive kings. Not another
+word passes his lips, but, in the same grim silence, he fixes his sword
+upright in the ground, and flings himself on its point, and dies. All
+through his reign no hand had injured him but his own; and, as he
+lived, so he died, his own undoer and his own murderer. Suicide, the
+refuge of defeated monarchs and praised by heathen moralists as heroic,
+was rare in Israel. Saul, Ahithophel, and Judas are the instances of
+it. The most rudimentary recognition of the truths taught by the Old
+Testament would prevent it. If Saul had had any faith in God, any
+submission, any repentance, he could not have finished a life of
+rebellion by a self-inflicted death, which was itself the very
+desperation of rebellion. We have not to pronounce on his fate, but his
+act was a sin of the darkest dye.
+
+Yet note how the narrative abstains from all comment. It neither
+condemns nor pities, though a profound sense of the tragic eclipse is
+audible in that summing up in verse 6: 'So Saul died, and his three
+sons, and his armour-bearer, and all his men (that is, immediate
+followers or escort), that same day together.' And there they all lay,
+bloody corpses in the fellowship of death, on the slopes of Gilboa.
+Where Scripture Is silent, it is not our part to speak; but we can
+scarcely turn from that mighty form, prone by his own rash act, without
+seeking to learn the lesson of his life and fate. Saul had many noble
+and lovable qualities, such as bravery, promptitude, in his earlier
+days modesty and generosity. All these he had by nature, but there is
+no sign that he ever sought to cultivate his moral character, or to win
+any grace that did not come naturally to him; nor is there any reason
+to suppose that religion had ever any strong hold on him. His whole
+character may be summed up in Samuel's words in announcing his
+rejection: 'Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is
+as idolatry.' Rebellion persisted in, in spite of all remonstrances and
+checks, till it becomes master of the whole man, is the keynote of his
+later years. Before that baleful influence, as before some hot poison
+wind, all the flowers of good dispositions were burned up, and the bad
+stimulated to growth. His early virtues disappeared, and passed into
+their opposites. Modesty became arrogance, and a long course of
+indulgence in self-will developed cruelty, gloomy suspicion, and
+passionate anger, and left him the victim and slave of his own
+causeless hate. He who rebels against God mars his own character. The
+miserable later years of Saul, haunted and hunted as by a demon by his
+own indulged and swollen rebellion and unsleeping suspicion, are an
+example of the sorrows that ever dog sin; and, as he lies there on
+Gilboa, the terrible saying recurs to our memory: 'He that being often
+reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that
+without remedy.'
+
+The remainder of the chapter is occupied with three points, bearing on
+the solemn tragedy just recorded. First, we have the disastrous effects
+of it in the complete loss of the northern territories. 'The men ...
+that were on the other side of the valley' are the tribes to the north
+of the great plain; and 'they that were on the other side Jordan' are
+probably those on the east bank. So thorough was the defeat, especially
+as Saul and the royal house were slain, that they abandoned their
+homes, and the Philistines took possession. 'One sinner destroyeth much
+good.' When Israel's king was madly rebellious, Israel was smitten, and
+its inheritance diminished.
+
+Next we have the insults to the headless corpses. The Philistines did
+not know till the following day how complete was their victory. The
+account in 1 Chronicles x. adds that Saul's head was sent to the temple
+of Dagon, probably as a kind of effacing of the shame wrought there by
+the presence of the ark. The false gods had triumphed, as their
+worshippers thought, and Saul's death was Jehovah's defeat. That
+apparent victory of the idols and the mocking exultation over the
+bloody trophy and dinted armour are, to the historian, not the least
+bitter consequences of the battle.
+
+The last point is the brave midnight march of the men of Jabesh from
+their home on the eastern uplands beyond Jordan, across the river and
+up to Bethshan, perched on its lofty cliff, and overlooking the valley
+of the Jordan. It was a requital of Saul's deed in his early bright
+days, when, with his hastily raised levies, he scattered the Ammonites.
+It is one gleam of light amid the stormy sunset. There were men ready
+to hazard their lives even then, because of the noblest of Saul's acts,
+which no tyrannical arbitrariness or fierceness of later days had
+blotted out. So the little band of grateful heroes carried back their
+ghastly load to Jabesh, and burned the mutilated bodies there,
+employing an unfamiliar mode, as we may suppose, by reason of their
+mutilation and decomposition, and then reverently gathering the white
+bones from the pyre, and laying them below the well-known tamarisk.
+Saul's one good deed as king sowed seeds of gratitude which flourished
+again, when the opportunity came. His many evil ones sowed evil seed
+which bore fatal fruit; and both were seen in his end.
+
+
+
+
+EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+
+SECOND SAMUEL AND THE BOOKS OF KINGS TO SECOND KINGS VII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+THE BRIGHT DAWN OF A REIGN (2 Samuel ii. 1-11) ONE FOLD AND ONE
+SHEPHERD (2 Samuel v. 1-12) DEATH AND LIFE FROM THE ARK (2 Samuel vi.
+1-12) THE ARK IN THE HOUSE OF OBED-EDOM (2 Samuel vi. 11) THE PROMISED
+KING AND TEMPLE-BUILDER (2 Samuel vii. 4-16) DAVID'S GRATITUDE (2
+Samuel vii. 18-29) DAVID AND JONATHAN'S SON (2 Samuel ix. 1-13) 'MORE
+THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH HIM' (2 Samuel x. 8-19) THOU ART THE MAN (2
+Samuel xii. 5-7) DAVID AND NATHAN (2 Samuel xii. 13) GOD'S BANISHED
+ONES (2 Samuel xiv. 14) PARDONED SIN PUNISHED (2 Samuel xv. 1-12) A
+LOYAL VOW (2 Samuel xv. 15) ITTAI OF GATH (2 Samuel xv. 21) THE WAIL OF
+A BROKEN HEART (2 Samuel xviii. 18-33) BARZILLAI (2 Samuel xix. 34-37)
+DAVID'S HYMN OF VICTORY (2 Samuel xxii. 40-51) THE DYING KING'S LAST
+VISION AND PSALM (2 Samuel xxiii. 1-7) THE ROYAL JUBILEE (2 Samuel
+xxiii. 3, 4) A LIBATION TO JEHOVAH (2 Samuel xxiii. 15-17)
+
+
+THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS
+
+DAVID APPOINTING SOLOMON (1 KINGS i. 28-39) A YOUNG MAN'S WISE CHOICE
+OF WISDOM (1 Kings iii. 5-15) THE GREAT GAIN OF GODLINESS (1 Kings iv.
+25-34) GREAT PREPARATIONS FOR A GREAT WORK (1 Kings v. 1-12) BUILDING
+IN SILENCE (1 Kings vi. 7) THE KING 'BLESSING' HIS PEOPLE (1 KINGS
+viii. 51-63) 'THE MATTER OF A DAY IN ITS DAY' (1 Kings viii. 59)
+PROMISES AND THREATENINGS (1 Kings ix. 1-9) A ROYAL SEEKER AFTER WISDOM
+(1 Kings x. 1-13) THE FALL OF SOLOMON (1 Kings xi. 4-13) THE NEW
+GARMENT RENT (1 Kings xi. 26-43) HOW TO SPLIT A KINGDOM (1 Kings xii.
+1-17) POLITICAL RELIGION (1 Kings xii. 25-33) THE RECORD OF TWO KINGS
+(1 Kings xvi. 23-33) A PROPHET'S STRANGE PROVIDERS (1 Kings xvii. 1-16)
+ELIJAH STANDING BEFORE THE LORD (1 Kings xvii. 1) OBADIAH (1 Kings
+xviii. 12) THE TRIAL BY FIRE (1 Kings xviii. 25-39) ELIJAH'S WEAKNESS,
+AND ITS CURE (1 Kings xix. 1-18) PUTTING ON THE ARMOUR (1 Kings xx. 11)
+ROYAL MURDERERS (1 Kings xxi. 1-16) AHAB AND ELIJAH (1 Kings xxi. 20)
+UNPOSSESSED POSSESSIONS (1 Kings xxii. 3) AHAB AND MICAIAH (1 Kings
+xxii. 7, 8)
+
+
+THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS
+
+THE CHARIOT OF FIRE (2 Kings ii. 1-11) THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH AND
+THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST (2 Kings ii. 11; Luke xxiv. 51) ELIJAH'S
+TRANSLATION AND ELISHA'S DEATHBED (2 Kings ii. 12; Kings xiii. II)
+GENTLENESS SUCCEEDING STRENGTH (2 Kings ii. 13-22) WHEN THE OIL FLOWS
+(2 Kings iv. 6) A MIRACLE NEEDING EFFORT (2 Kings iv. 25-37) NAAMAN'S
+WRATH (2 Kings v. 10, 11) NAAMAN'S IMPERFECT FAITH (2 Kings v. 15-27)
+SIGHT AND BLINDNESS (2 Kings vi. 3-18) 'IMPOSSIBLE,--ONLY I SAW IT' (2
+Kings vii. 1-16) SILENT CHRISTIANS (2 Kings vii. 9)
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIGHT DAWN OF A REIGN
+
+'And it came to pass after this, that David enquired of the Lord,
+saying, Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah? And the Lord
+said unto him, Go up. And David said, Whither shall I go up? And He
+said, Unto Hebron. 2. So David went up thither, and his two wives also,
+Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail, Nabal's wife, the Carmelite. 3.
+And his men that were with him did David bring up, every man with his
+household: and they dwelt in the cities of Hebron. 4. And the men of
+Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.
+And they told David, saying, That the men of Jabesh-gilead were they
+that buried Saul. 5. And David sent messengers unto the men of
+Jabesh-gilead, and said unto them, Blessed be ye of the Lord, that ye
+have shewed this kindness unto your lord, even unto Saul, and have
+buried him. 6. And now the Lord shew kindness and truth unto you: and I
+also will requite you this kindness, because ye have done this thing.
+7. Therefore now let your hands be strengthened, and be ye valiant: for
+your master Saul is dead, and also the house of Judah have anointed me
+king over them. 8. But Abner the son of Ner, captain of Saul's host,
+took Ishb-osheth the son of Saul, and brought him over to Mahanaim; 9.
+And he made him king over Gilead, and over the Ashurites, and over
+Jezreel, and over Ephraim,  and over Benjamin, and over all Israel. 10.
+Ish-bosheth Saul's son was forty years old when he began to reign over
+Israel, and reigned two years. But the house of Judah followed David.
+11. And the time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah
+was seven years and six months.'--2 SAMUEL ii. 1-11.
+
+
+The last stage of David's wanderings had brought him to Ziklag, a
+Philistine city. There he had been for over a year, during which he had
+won the regard of Achish, the Philistine king of Gath. He had, at
+Achish's request, accompanied him with his contingent, in the invasion
+of Israel, which crushed Saul's house at Gilboa; but jealousy on the
+part of the other Philistine leaders had obliged his patron to send him
+back to Ziklag. He found it a heap of ashes. An Amalekite raid had
+carried off all the women and children, and his soldiers were on the
+point of mutiny. His fortunes seemed desperate, but his courage and
+faith were high, and he paused not a moment for useless sorrow, but
+swept after the robbers, swooped down on them like a bolt out of the
+blue, and scattered them, recovering the captives and spoil. He went
+back to the ruins which had been Ziklag, and three days after heard of
+Saul's death.
+
+The lowest point of his fortunes suddenly turned into the highest, for
+now the path to the throne was open. But the tidings did not move him
+to joy. His first thought was not for himself, but for Saul and
+Jonathan, whose old love to him shone out again, glorified by their
+deaths. Swift vengeance from his hand struck Saul's slayer; the lovely
+elegy on the great king and his son eased his heart. Then he turned to
+front his new circumstances, and this passage shows how a God-fearing
+man will meet the summons to dignity which is duty. It sets forth
+David's conduct in three aspects-his assumption of his kingdom, his
+loving regard for Saul's memory, and his demeanour in the face of
+rebellion.
+
+I. David was now about thirty years old, and had had his character
+tested and matured by his hard experiences. He 'learned in suffering
+what he taught in song.' Exile, poverty, and danger are harsh but
+effectual teachers, if accepted by a devout spirit, and fronted with
+brave effort. The fugitive's cave was a good preparation for the king's
+palace. The throne to which he was called was no soft seat for repose.
+The Philistine invasion had torn away all the northern territory. He
+took the helm in a tempest. What was he to do? Ziklag was untenable;
+where was he to take his men? He could not stop in the Philistine
+territory, and he saw no way clear.
+
+God's servants generally find that their promotion means harder duties
+and multiplied perplexities. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.'
+David did what we shall do, if we are wise--he asked God to guide him.
+How that guidance was asked and given we are not here told; but the
+analogy of 1 Samuel xxx. 7, 8, suggests that it was by the Urim and
+Thummim, interpreted by the high-priest. The form of inquiry seems to
+have been that a course of action, suggested by the inquirer, was
+decided for him by a 'Yes' or a 'No.' So that there was the exercise of
+common-sense and judgment in formulating the proposed course, as well
+as that of God's direction in determining it.
+
+That is how we still get divine direction. Bring your own wits to bear
+on your action, and then do not obstinately stick to what seems right
+to you, but ask God to negative it if it is wrong, and to confirm you
+in it if it is right. If we humbly ask Him, 'Am I to go, or not to go?'
+we shall not be left unanswered. We note the contrast between David's
+submission to God's guidance and Saul's self-willed taking his own way,
+in spite of Samuel. He began right, and, in the main, he continued as
+he began. Self-will is sin and ruin. Submission is joy, and peace, and
+success. God's kings are viceroys. They have to rule themselves and the
+world, but they have to be ruled by His will. If they faithfully
+continue as His servants, they are masters of all besides.
+
+Hebron was a good capital for the new king, for it was a defensible
+position, in the centre of his own tribe, and sacred by association
+with the patriarchs. Established there, David was recognised as king by
+his fellow-tribesmen, and by them only. No doubt, tribal jealousy was
+partly the cause of this limited recognition, but probably the
+confusion incident to the Philistine victory contributed to it. The
+result was that, though David's designation by Samuel to the kingship
+was universally known, and his candidature had been popular, he had
+seven years of precarious sway over this mere fraction of the nation.
+We read of no impatience on his part. He let events shape themselves,
+or, rather, he let God shape events.
+
+Passiveness is not always indolence. There are two ways of compassing
+our desires. One is that which David himself tells us is the 'young
+lions' way, of struggling and fighting, and that often ends in 'lacking
+and suffering hunger'; the other is that of waiting on the Lord, and
+that always ends in 'not lacking any good.' If we are sure that God has
+promised us anything, and if He does not seem to have yet opened the
+way to obtaining it, our 'strength is to sit still.' If He has given us
+Hebron, we can be patient till He please to give us Jerusalem.
+
+II. Another side of David's character comes beautifully out in his
+treatment of the men of Jabesh-gilead. That town owed much to Saul (1
+Samuel xi.), and its gratitude lasted, and dared much for him. It was a
+brave dash that they made across Jordan to carry off Saul's corpse from
+its ignominious exposure; for it both defied the Philistines, and might
+be construed as hostile to David. But his heart was too true to ancient
+friendship to do anything but glow with admiring sympathy at that
+exhibition of affectionate remembrance. Reconciling death had swept
+away all memories of Saul's insane jealousy, and he owned a brother in
+every one who showed kindness to the unfortunate king.
+
+If the Jabesh-Gileadites are a pattern of long-memoried gratitude,
+David's commendation of them is a model of love which survives
+injuries, and of forgivingness which forgets them. It was as politic as
+it was generous. Nothing could have been better calculated to attach
+Saul's most devoted partisans to him than showing that he honoured
+their faithful attachment to Saul, and nothing could have more clearly
+defined his own position during his wanderings as being no rebel. The
+dictates of true policy and those of devout generosity always coincide.
+It is ever a blunder to be unforgiving, and mercifulness is always
+expedient.
+
+But David did not hide his claim to the allegiance of these true
+hearts. He called on them to transfer their loyalty to himself, and he
+asserted, not his anointing by Samuel, but his recognition by Judah,
+the premier tribe, as the motive. No doubt the divine appointment is
+implied, as it was generally known, but Judah's action is put forward
+as showing the beginning of the realisation of the divine designation.
+The men of Jabesh needed to 'be valiant' if they were to acknowledge
+him; for it was a far cry to Hebron, and the forces of the rival son of
+Saul were overrunning the northern districts.
+
+We have to take our sides in the age-long and worldwide warfare between
+God's King and the pretenders to His throne, and it often wants much
+courage to do so when surrounded by antagonists. It seems a long way
+off to the true monarch, and Abner's army is a very solid reality, and
+very near. But it is safest to take the side of the distant, rightful
+king.
+
+III. David's bearing in the face of opposition and rebellion comes out
+in verses 8-11. Abner, Saul's cousin, who had been in high position
+when the stripling from Bethlehem fought Goliath, was not capable of
+the self-effacement involved in acquiescing in David's accession,
+though he knew that the Lord had 'sworn to David.' So he set up a 'King
+Do-nothing' in the person of a weak lad, the only survivor of Saul's
+sons. A strange state of mind that, which struggles against a
+recognised divine appointment!
+
+But is it only Abner who knew that he was trying to thwart God's will?
+Thousands of us are doing the same, and the attempt answers as well as
+it did in his case.
+
+The puppet king is named Ishbosheth in the lesson, but I Chronicles
+viii. 33 and ix. 39 show that his real name was Esh-baal. The former
+word means 'The man of shame'; the latter, 'The man of Baal.' The
+existence of Baal as an element in names seems to indicate the
+incompleteness of the emancipation from idolatry in Saul's time, and
+the change will then indicate the keener monotheistic conscience of
+later days. Another explanation is that Baal (' Lord') was in these
+cases used as a name for Jehovah, and was 'changed at a later period
+for the purpose of avoiding what was interpreted then as a compound of
+the name of the Phoenician deity Baal' (Driver, _Notes on Hebrew Text
+of the Books of Samuel_).
+
+Abner set up his tool in Mahanaim, sacred for its associations with
+Jacob, but, no doubt, recommended to him rather by its position on the
+east side of Jordan, safe from the attacks of the victorious
+Philistines. From that fastness he made raids to recover the territory
+which the victory at Gilboa had won for them. First Gilead, on the same
+side of the river as Mahanaim; then the territory of the
+'Ashurites'--probably a scribe's error for 'Asherites,' the most
+northern tribe; and then, coming southward, the great plain, with its
+cities, Ephraim and Benjamin,--in fact, all Israel except Judah's
+country was reconquered for Saul's house.
+
+The account of the distribution of territory between the two monarchies
+is broken by the parenthesis in verse 10, which, both by its awkward
+interposition in the middle of a sentence and by its difficult
+chronological statements, looks like a late addition.
+
+For seven and a half years David reigned in Hebron, but was rather shut
+up there than ruling thence. The most noteworthy fact is that he,
+soldier as he was, took no steps to put down Abner's rebellion. He
+defended himself when attacked, but that was all. The three figures of
+David, Ishbosheth, and Abner point lessons. Silent, still, trustful,
+and therefore patient, David shows us how faith in God can lead to
+possessing one's soul in patience till 'the vision' comes. We may have
+to wait for it, but 'it will surely come,' and what is time enough for
+God should be time enough for us. Saul's son was a poor, weak creature,
+who would never have thought of resisting David but for the stronger
+will behind him. To be weak is, in this world full of tempters, to
+drift into being wicked. We have to learn betimes to say 'No,' and to
+stick to it. Moral weakness attracts tempters as surely as a camel
+fallen by the caravan track draws vultures from every corner of the
+sky. The fierce soldier who fought for his own hand while professing to
+be moved by loyalty to the dead king, may stand as a type of the
+self-deception with which we gloss over our ugliest selfishness with
+fine names, and for an instance of the madness which leads men to set
+themselves against God's plans, and therefore to be dashed in pieces,
+as some slim barrier reared across the track of a train would be. To
+'rush against the thick bosses of the Almighty's buckler' does no harm
+to the buckler, but kills the insane assailant.
+
+
+
+
+ONE FOLD AND ONE SHEPHERD
+
+'Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron, and spake,
+saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. 2. Also in time past,
+when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and
+broughtest in Israel: and the Lord said to thee, Thou shalt feed My
+people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel. 3. So all the
+elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron; and king David made a
+league with them in Hebron before the Lord: and they anointed David
+king over Israel. 4. David was thirty years old when he began to reign;
+and he reigned forty years. 5. In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven
+years and six months; and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three
+years over all Israel and Judah, 6. And the king and his men went to
+Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land; which spake
+unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou
+shalt not come in hither: thinking, David cannot come in hither. 7.
+Nevertheless, David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city
+of David. 8. And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the
+gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are
+hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they
+said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house. 9. So David
+dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And David built
+round about from Millo and inward. 10. And David went on, and grew
+great, and the Lord God of hosts was with him. 11. And Hiram king of
+Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and
+masons: and they built David an house. 12. And David perceived that the
+Lord had established him king over Israel, and that He had exalted his
+kingdom for His people Israel's sake.'--2 SAMUEL v. 1-12.
+
+
+The dark day on Gilboa put the Philistines in possession of most of
+Saul's kingdom. Only in the south David held his ground, and Abner had
+to cross Jordan to find a place of security for the remnants of the
+royal house. The completeness of the Philistine conquest is marked, not
+only by Abner's flight to Mahanaim, but by the reckoning that David
+reigned for seven and a half years and Ishbosheth two; for these
+periods must be supposed to have ended very nearly at the same time,
+and thus there would be about five years before the invaders were so
+far got rid of that Ishbosheth exercised sovereignty over his part of
+Israel. It is singular that David should have been left unattacked by
+the Philistines, and it is probably to be explained by the friendly
+relations which had sprung up between Achish, king of Gath, and him (1
+Samuel xxix.). However that may be, his power was continually
+increasing during his reign at Hebron over Judah, and at last Abner's
+death and the assassination of the poor phantom king, Ishbosheth,
+brought about the total collapse of opposition.
+
+I. This passage deals first with the submission of the tribes and the
+reunion of the divided kingdom. A comparison of verse I with verse 3
+shows that a formal delegation of elders from all the tribes which had
+held by Ishbosheth, came to Hebron with their submission. The account
+in I Chronicles is a _verbatim_ copy of this one, with the addition of
+a glowing picture of the accompanying feasting and joy. It also places
+much emphasis on the sincerity of David's new subjects, which needed
+some endorsement; for loyalty which has been disloyal as long as it
+durst, may be suspected. The elders have their mouths full of excellent
+reasons for recognising David's kingship,--he is their brother; he was
+their true leader in war, even in Saul's time; he has been appointed by
+God to be king and commander. Unfortunately, it had taken the elders
+seven and a half years to feel the force of these reasons, and probably
+their perceptions would still have remained dull if Abner and
+Ishbosheth had lived. But David is both magnanimous and politic, and
+neither bloodshed nor reproaches mar the close of the strife. Seldom
+has so formidable a civil war been ended with so complete an amnesty.
+Observe the expression that David 'made a league with them... before
+the Lord.' The Israelitish monarch was no despot, but, in modern
+language, a constitutional king, between whom and his subjects there
+was a compact, which he as well as they had to observe. In what sense
+was it made 'before the Lord'? The ark was not at Hebron, though the
+priests were; and the phrase is at once a testimony to the religious
+character of the 'league' and to the consciousness of God's presence,
+apart from the symbol of His presence. It points to a higher conception
+than that which brought the ark to Ebenezer, and dreamed that the ark
+had brought God to the army. Modern theories of the religious
+development of the Old Testament ask us to recognise these two
+conceptions as successive. The fact is that they were contemporaneous,
+and that the difference between them is not one of time, but of
+spiritual susceptibility. Who anointed David for this third time?
+Apparently the elders, for priests are not mentioned. Samuel had
+anointed him, as token of the divine choice and symbol of the divine
+gifts for his office. The men of Judah had anointed him, and finally
+the elders did so, in token of the popular confirmation of God's choice.
+
+So David has reached the throne at last. Schooled by suffering, and in
+the full maturity of his powers, enriched by the singularly varied
+experiences of his changeful life, tempered by the swift alternations
+of heat and cold, polished by friction, consolidated by heavy blows, he
+has been welded into a fitting instrument for God's purposes. Thus does
+He ever prepare for larger service. Thus does He ever reward patient
+trust. Through trials to a throne is the law for all noble lives in
+regard to their earthly progress, as well as in regard to the relation
+between earth and heaven. But David is not only a pattern instance of
+how God trains His servants, but he is a prophetic person; and in his
+progress to his kingdom we have dimly, but really, shadowed the path by
+which his Son and Lord attains to His,--a path thickly strewn with
+thorns, and plunging into 'valleys of the shadow of death' compared
+with which David's darkest hour was sunny. The psalms of the persecuted
+exile have sounding through them a deeper sorrow; for they 'testified
+beforehand the sufferings of Christ.' 'No cross, no crown,' is the
+lesson of David's earlier life.
+
+II. We have, next, the first victory of the reunited nation. Hebron was
+too far south for the capital of the whole kingdom. Jerusalem was more
+central, and, from its position, surrounded on three sides with steep
+ravines, was a strong military post. David's soldier's eye saw its
+advantages; and he, no doubt, desired to weld the monarchy together by
+participation in danger and triumph. The new glow of national unity
+would seek some great exploit, and would resent as an insult the
+presence of the Jebusites in their stronghold. The attack on it
+immediately follows the recognition of David's kingship. It is not
+necessary here to discuss the difficulties in verses 6-8; but we note
+that they give, first, the insolent boast of the besieged, then the
+twofold answer to it in fact and in word, and last, the memorial of the
+victory in a proverb. Apparently the Jebusites' taunt is best
+understood as in the margin of the Revised Version,' Thou shalt not
+come in hither, but the blind and the lame shall turn thee away,' They
+were so sure that their ravines made them safe, that they either
+actually manned their walls with blind men and cripples, or jeeringly
+shouted to the enemy across the valley that these would do for a
+garrison. The other possible meaning of the words as they stand in the
+Authorised Version would make 'the blind and lame' refer to David's
+men, and the taunt would mean, 'You will have to weed out your men. It
+will take sharper eyes and more agile limbs than theirs to clamber up
+here'; but the former explanation is the more probable. Such braggart
+speeches were quite in the manner of ancient warfare.
+
+Verse 7 tells what the answer to this mocking shout from the ramparts
+was, David did the impossible, and took the city. Courage built on
+faith has a way of making the world's predictions of what it cannot do
+look rather ridiculous. David wastes no words in answering the taunt;
+but it stirs him to fierce anger, and nerves him and his men for their
+desperate charge. The obscure words in verse 8, which he speaks to his
+soldiers, do not need the supplement given in the Authorised Version.
+The king's quick eye had seen a practical path for scaling the cliffs
+up some watercourse, where there might be projections or vegetation to
+pull oneself up by, or shelter which would hide the assailants from the
+defenders; and he bids any one who would smite the Jebusites take that
+road up, and, when he is up, 'smite.' He heartens his men for the
+assault by his description of the enemy. They had talked about 'blind
+and lame'; that is what they really are, or as unable to stand against
+the Israelites' fierce and sudden burst as if they were: and
+furthermore, they are' hated of David's soul.' It is a flash of the
+rage of battle which shows us David in a new light. He was a born
+captain as well as king; and here he exhibits the general's power to
+see, as by instinct, the weak point and to hurl his men on it. His
+swift decision and fiery eloquence stir his men's blood like the sound
+of a trumpet. The proverb that rose from the capture is best read as in
+the Revised Version: 'There are the blind and the lame; he cannot come
+into the house.' The point of it seems to be that, notwithstanding the
+bragging Jebusites, he did 'come into the house'; and so its use would
+be to ridicule boasting confidence that was falsified by events, as the
+Jebusites' had been. It was worth while to record the boast and its
+end; for they teach the always seasonable lesson of the folly of
+over-confidence in apparently impregnable defences. It is a lesson of
+worldly prudence, but still more of religion. There is always some
+'watercourse' overlooked by us, up which the enemy may make his way.
+Overestimate of our own strength and its companion folly, flippant
+underestimate of the enemy's power, are, in all worldly affairs, the
+sure precursors of disaster; and in the Christian life the only safe
+temper is that of the man who 'feareth always,' as knowing his own
+weakness and the strength of his foe, and thereby is driven to that
+trust which casts out fear.
+
+On the other hand, David's exploit reads us anew the lesson that to the
+Christian soldier there is nothing impossible, with Jesus Christ for
+our Captain. There are many unconquered fortresses of evil still to be
+carried by assault, and they look steep and inaccessible enough; but
+there is some way up, and He will show it us. For our own personal
+struggle with sin, and for the Church's conflict with social evils,
+this story is an encouragement and a prophecy.
+
+Jerusalem was captured by a reunited nation with its king at its head.
+As long as our miserable divisions weaken and disgrace us, the Church
+fights at a disadvantage; and the hoary fortresses of the foe will not
+be won till Judah ceases to vex Ephraim, and Ephraim no more envies
+Judah, but all Christ's servants in one host, with the King known by
+each to be with them, make the assault.
+
+III. We have, lastly, the growth of the kingdom. I pass over
+topographical questions, which need not concern us here. The points
+recorded are David's establishment in the stronghold, his additions to
+the city, his increasing greatness and its reason in the presence and
+favour of 'the God of hosts,' the special instance of this in the
+friendly intercourse with Hiram of Tyre and the employment of Tyrian
+workmen, and the recognition of the source and the purpose of his
+prosperity by the devout king. We see here the conditions of true
+success,--'The Lord, the God of hosts, was with him.' We see also the
+right use of it,--'David perceived that the Lord had established him
+king.' He was not puffed up into self-importance by his elevation, but
+devoutly and clearly saw who had set him in his lofty place. And, as he
+traced his royalty to God, so he recognised that he had received it,
+not for himself, but as a trust to be used, not in self-indulgence, but
+for the national good,--'and that He had exalted his kingdom for His
+people Israel's sake.' Whosoever holds firmly by these two thoughts,
+and lives them, will adorn his position, whatever it may be, and will
+be one of God's crowned kings, however obscure his lot and small his
+duties. He who lacks them will misuse his gifts and mar his life, and
+the more splendid his endowments and the higher his position, the more
+conspicuous will be his ruin and the heavier his guilt.
+
+
+
+
+DEATH AND LIFE FROM THE ARK
+
+'Again, David gathered together all the chosen men of Israel, thirty
+thousand. 2. And David arose, and went with all the people that were
+with him from Baale of Judah, to bring up from thence the ark of God,
+whose name is called by the name of the Lord of hosts that dwelleth
+between the cherubims. 3. And they set the ark of God upon a new cart,
+and brought it out of the house of Abinadab that was in Gibeah: and
+Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drave the new cart. 4. And they
+brought it out of the house of Abinadab which was at Gibeah,
+accompanying the ark of God: and Ahio went before the ark. 5. And David
+and all the house of Israel played before the Lord on all manner of
+instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on
+timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals. 6. And when they came to
+Nachon's thrashing-floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God,
+and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. 7. And the anger of the
+Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error;
+and there he died by the ark of God. 8. And David was displeased,
+because the Lord had made a breach upon Uzzah: and he called the name
+of the place Perez-uzzah to this day. 9. And David was afraid of the
+Lord that day, and said, How shall the ark of the Lord come to me? 10.
+So David would not remove the ark of the Lord unto him into the city of
+David: but David carried it aside into the house of Obed-edom the
+Gittite. 11. And the ark of the Lord continued in the house of
+Obed-edom the Gittite three months: and the Lord blessed Obed-edom, and
+all his household. 12. And it was told king David, saying, The Lord
+hath blessed the house of Obed-edom and all that pertaineth unto him,
+because of the ark of God. So David went and brought up the ark of God
+from the house of Obed-edom into the city of David with gladness.'-2
+SAMUEL vi. 1-12.
+
+
+I. The first section (verses 1-5) describes the joyful reception and
+procession. The parallel account in 1 Chronicles states that Baalah, or
+Baale, was Kirjath-jearim. Probably the former was the more ancient
+Canaanitish name, and indicates that it had been a Baal sanctuary. If
+so, the presence of the ark there was at once a symbol and an omen,
+showing Jehovah's conquest over the obscene and bloody gods of the
+land, and forecasting His triumph over all the gods of the nations.
+Every Baale shall one day be a resting-place of the ark of God. The
+solemn designation of the ark, as 'called by the Name, the name of the
+Lord of Hosts, that dwelleth between the cherubim,' is significant on
+this, its reappearance after so long eclipse, and, by emphasising its
+awful sanctity, prepares for the incidents which are to follow. The
+manner of the ark's transport was irregular; for the law strictly
+enjoined its being carried by the Levites by means of bearing-poles
+resting on their shoulders; and the copying of the Philistines' cart,
+though a new one was made for the purpose, indicates the desuetude into
+which the decencies of worship had fallen in seventy years. In 1
+Chronicles, the singular words in verse 5, which describe David as
+playing before the Lord on the very unlikely things for such a
+purpose,' all manner of instruments of fir wood,' become 'with all
+their might: even with songs' which seems much more reasonable. A
+slight alteration in three letters and the transposition of two would
+bring our text into conformity with I Chronicles, and the conjectural
+emendation is tempting. Who ever heard of fir-wood musical instruments?
+The specified ones which follow were certainly not made of it, and
+songs could scarcely fail to be mentioned.
+
+At all events, we see the glad procession streaming out of the little
+city buried among its woods; the cart drawn by meek oxen, and loaded
+with the unadorned wooden chest, in the midst; the two sons or
+descendants of its faithful custodian honoured to be the teamsters; the
+king with the harp which had cheered him in many a sad hour of exile;
+and the crowd 'making a joyful noise before the Lord,' which might
+sound discord in our ears, as some lifted up shrill songs, some touched
+stringed instruments, some beat on timbrels, some rattled metal rods
+with movable rings, and some clashed cymbals together. It was a wild
+scene, in which there was a dangerous resemblance to the frantic
+jubilations of idolatrous worship. No doubt there were true hearts in
+that crowd, and none truer than David's. No doubt we have to beware of
+applying our Christian standards to these early times, and must let a
+good deal that is sensuous and turbid pass, as, no doubt, God let it
+pass. But confession of sin in leaving the ark so long forgotten would
+have been better than this tumultuous joy; and if there had been more
+trembling in it, it would not have passed so soon into wild terror.
+Still, on the other hand, that rejoicing crowd does represent, though
+in crude form, the effect which the consciousness of God's presence
+should ever have. His felt nearness should be, as the Psalmist says,
+'the gladness of my joy.' Much of our modern religion is far too
+gloomy, and it is thought to be a sign of devotion and
+spiritual-mindedness to be sad and of a mortified countenance.
+Unquestionably, Christianity brings men into the continual presence of
+very solemn truths about themselves and the world which may well sober
+them, and make what the world calls mirth incongruous.
+
+             'There is no music in the life
+              That rings with idiot laughter solely.'
+
+But the Man of Sorrows said that His purpose for us was that 'His joy
+might remain in us, and that our joy might be full'; and we but
+imperfectly apprehend the gospel if we do not feel that its joys 'much
+more abound' than its sorrows, and that they even burn brightest, like
+the lights on safety-buoys, when drenched by stormy seas.
+
+II. The second section contains the dread vindication of the sanctity
+of the ark, which changed joy into terror, and silenced the songs. At
+some bad place in the rocky and steep track, the oxen stumbled or were
+restive. The spot is called in Samuel 'the threshing-floor of Nachon,'
+but in Chronicles the owner is named 'Chidon.' As the former word means
+'a stroke' and the latter 'destruction,' they are probably not to be
+taken as proper names, but as applied to the place after this event.
+The name given by David, however--Perez-uzzah--proved the more
+permanent 'to this day.' Uzzah, who was driving while his brother went
+in front to pilot the way, naturally stretched out his hand to steady
+his freight, just as if it had been a sack of corn; and, as if he had
+touched an electric wire, fell dead, as the story graphically says, 'by
+the ark of God.' What confusion and panic would agitate the joyous
+singers, and how their songs would die on their lips!
+
+What harm was there in Uzzah's action? It was most natural, and, in one
+point of view, commendable. Any careful waggoner would have done the
+same with any valuable article he had in charge. Yes; that was just the
+point of his error and sin, that he saw no difference between the ark
+and any other valuable article. His intention to help was right enough;
+but there was profound insensibility to the awful sacredness of the
+ark, on which even its Levitical bearers were forbidden to lay hands.
+All his life Uzzah had been accustomed to its presence. It had been one
+of the familiar pieces of furniture in Abinadab's house, and, no doubt,
+familiarity had had its usual effect. Do none of us ministers,
+teachers, and others, to whom the gospel and the worship and ordinances
+of the Church have been familiar from infancy, treat them in the same
+fashion? Many a hand is laid on the ark, sometimes to keep it from
+falling, with more criminal carelessness of its sacredness than Uzzah
+showed. Note, too, how swiftly an irreverent habit of treating holy
+things grows. The first error was in breaking the commanded order for
+removal of the ark by the Levites. Once in the cart, the rest follows.
+The smallest breach in the feeling of awe and reverence will soon lead
+to more complete profanation. There is nothing more delicate than the
+sense of awe. Trifled with ever so little, it speedily disappears.
+There is far too little of it in our modern religion. Perfect love
+casts out fear and deepens awe which hath not torment.
+
+Was not the punishment in excess of the sin? We must remember the
+times, the long neglect of the ark, the decay of religion in Saul's
+reign, the critical character of the moment as the beginning of a new
+era, when it was all-important to print deep the impression of
+sanctity, and the rude material which had to be dealt with; and we must
+not forget that God, in His punishments, does not adopt men's ideas of
+death as such a very dreadful thing. Many since have followed in
+David's wake, and been 'displeased, because the Lord broke forth upon
+Uzzah'; but he and they have been wrong. He ought to have known better,
+and to have understood the lesson of the solemn corpse that lay there
+by the ark; instead of which he gives way to mere terror, and was
+'afraid of the Lord.' David afraid of the Lord! What had become of the
+rapturous love and strong trust which ring clear through his psalms? Is
+this the man who called God his rock and fortress and deliverer, his
+buckler and the horn of his salvation and his high tower, and poured
+out his soul in burning words, which glow yet through all the centuries
+and the darkness of earth? It was ill for David to fall thus below
+himself, but well for us that the eclipse of his faith and love should
+be recorded, to hearten us, when the like emotions fall asleep in our
+souls. His consciousness of impurity was wholesome and sound, but his
+cowering before the ark, as if it were the seat of arbitrary anger,
+which might flame out destruction for no discernible reason, was a
+woful darkening of his loving insight into the heart of God.
+
+III. The last section (verses 10-12) gives us the blessings on the
+house of Obed-edom and the glad removal of the ark to Jerusalem.
+Obed-edom is called a 'Gittite,' or man of Gath; but he does not appear
+to have been a Philistine immigrant, but a native of another Gath, a
+Levitical city, and himself a Levite. There is an Obededom in the lists
+of David's Levites in Chronicles who is probably the same man. He did
+not fear to receive the ark, and, worthily received, the presence which
+had been a source of disaster and death to idolaters, to profanely
+curious pryers into its secret, and to presumptuous irreverence, became
+a fountain of unbroken blessing. This twofold effect of the same
+presence is but a symbol of a solemn law which runs through all life,
+and is especially manifest in the effects of Christ's work upon men.
+Everything has two handles, and it depends on ourselves by which of
+them we lay hold of it, and whether we shall receive a shock that
+kills, or blessings. The same circumstances of poverty, or wealth, or
+sorrow, or temptation, make one man better and another worse. The same
+presence of God will be to one man a joy; to another, a terror. 'What
+maketh heaven, that maketh hell.' The same gospel received is the
+fountain of life, purity, peace; and, rejected or neglected, is the
+source of harm and death. Jesus Christ is 'set for the fall and rising
+again of many.' Either He is the savour of life unto life, the rock on
+which we build, or He is the savour of death unto death, the stone on
+which we stumble and break our limbs.
+
+
+
+
+THE ARK OF THE HOUSE OF OBED-EDOM
+
+'The ark of the Lord continued in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite
+three months; and the Lord blessed Obed-edom, and all his household.'-2
+SAMUEL vi.11.
+
+
+Nearly seventy years had elapsed since the capture of the ark by the
+Philistines on the fatal field of Aphek. They had carried it and set it
+in insolent triumph in the Temple of Dagon, as if to proclaim that the
+Jehovah of Israel was the conquered prisoner of the Philistine god. But
+the morning showed Dagon's stump prone on the threshold. And so the
+terrified priests got rid of their dangerous trophy as swiftly as they
+could. From one Philistine city to another it passed, and everywhere
+its presence was marked by disease and calamity. So at last they
+huddled it into some rude cart, leaving the draught-oxen to drag it
+whither they would. They made straight for the Judaean hills, and in
+the first little village were welcomed by the inhabitants at their
+harvest, as they saw them coming across the plain. But again death
+attended the Presence, and curiosity, which was profanity, was
+punished. So the villagers were as eager to get rid of the ark as they
+had been to welcome it, and they passed it on to the little city of
+_Kirjath-jearim_,'the city of the woods,' as the name means, or, as we
+might say, 'Woodville.' And there it lay, neglected and all but
+forgotten, for nearly seventy years. But as soon as David was
+established in his newly-won capital he set himself to reorganise the
+national worship, which had fallen into neglect and almost into disuse.
+The first step was to bring the ark. And so he passed with a joyful
+company to _Kirjath._ But again swift death overtakes Uzzah with his
+irreverent hand. And David shrinks, in the consciousness of his
+impurity, and bestows the symbol of the awful Presence in the house of
+Obed-edom. As we have already noted, he was probably not a Philistine,
+as the name 'Gittite' at first sight suggests. There is an Obed-edom in
+the lists of David's Levites, who was an inhabitant of another Gath,
+and himself of the tribe of Levi.
+
+He was not afraid to receive the ark. There were no idols, no
+irreverent curiosity, no rash presumption in his house. He feared and
+served the God of the ark, and so the Presence, which had been a source
+of disaster to the unworthy, was a source of unbroken blessing to him
+and to his household.
+
+I have been the more particular in this enumeration of the wanderings
+of the ark and the opposite effects which its presence produced
+according to the manner of its reception, because these effects are
+symbols of a great truth which runs all through human life, and is most
+especially manifested in the message and the mission of Jesus Christ.
+
+Let us, then, just trace out two or three of the spheres in which we
+may see the application of this great principle, which makes life so
+solemn and so awful, which may make it so sad or so glad, so base or so
+noble.
+
+I. First, then, note the twofold operation of all God's outward
+dealings.
+
+Everything that befalls us, every object with which we come in contact,
+all the variety of condition, all the variations of our experience,
+have one distinct and specific purpose. They are all meant to tell upon
+character, to make us better in sundry ways, to bring us closer to God,
+and to fill us more full of Him. And that one effect may be produced by
+the most opposite incidents, just as in some great machine you may have
+two wheels turning in opposite ways, and yet contributing to one
+resulting motion; or, just as the summer and the winter, with all their
+antitheses, have a single result in the abundant harvest. One force
+attracts the planet to the sun, one force tends to drive it out into
+the fields of space; but the two, working together, make it circle in
+its orbit around its centre. And so, by sorrow and by joy, by light and
+by dark, by giving and withholding, by granting and refusing, by all
+the varieties of our circumstances, and by everything that lies around
+us, God works to prepare us for Himself and to polish His instruments,
+sometimes plunging the iron into 'baths of hissing tears,' and
+sometimes heating it 'hot with hopes and fears,' and sometimes
+'battering' it 'with the shocks of doom,' but all for the one
+purpose--that it may be a polished shaft in His quiver.
+
+And whilst, thus, the most opposite things may produce the same effect,
+the same thing will produce opposite effects according to the way in
+which we take it. There is nothing that can be relied upon to do a man
+only good; there is nothing about which we need fear that its mission
+is only to do evil. For all depends on the recipient, who can make
+everything to fulfil the purpose for which God has sent him everything.
+
+Here are two men tried by the same poverty. It beats the one down,
+makes him squalid, querulous, faithless, irreligious, drives him to
+drink, crushes him; and the other man it steadies and quiets and
+hardens, and teaches him to look beyond the things seen and temporal to
+the exceeding riches at God's right hand.
+
+Here are two men tried by wealth; the gold gets into the one man's
+veins and makes him yellow as with jaundice, and kills him, destroying
+all that is noble, generous, impulsive, quenching his early dreams and
+enthusiasms, closing his heart to sweet charity, puffing him up with a
+false sense of Importance, and laying upon him the dreadful
+responsibility of misused and selfishly employed possessions. And the
+other man, tried in the same fashion, out of his wealth makes for
+himself friends that welcome him into everlasting habitations, and lays
+up for himself treasures in heaven. The one man is damned and the other
+man is saved by their use of the same thing.
+
+Here are two men subjected to the same sorrows; the one is absorbed by
+his selfish regard to his own misery, blinded to all the blessings that
+still remain, made negligent of tasks and oblivious of the plainest
+duty. And he goes about saying, 'Oh, if thou hadst been here!' or if,
+if something else had happened, then this would not have happened. And
+the other man, passing through the same circumstances, finds that, when
+his props are taken away, he flings himself on God's breast, and, when
+the world becomes dark and all the paths dim about him, he looks up to
+a heaven that fills fuller of meek and swiftly gathering stars as the
+night falls, and he says, 'It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him
+good.'
+
+Here are two men tried by the same temptation; it leads the one man
+away captive 'with a dart through his liver'; the other man by God's
+grace overcomes it, and is the stronger and the sweeter and the gentler
+and the humbler because of the dreadful fight. And so you might go the
+whole round of diverse circumstances, and about each of them find the
+same double result. Nothing is sure to do a man good; nothing
+necessarily does him hurt. All depends upon the man himself, and the
+use he makes of what God in His mercy sends. Two plants may grow in the
+same soil, be fed by the same dews and benediction from the heavens, be
+shone upon by the same sunshine, and the one of them will elaborate
+from all, sweet juices and fragrance, and the other will elaborate a
+deadly poison. So, my brother, life is what you and I will to make it,
+and the events which befall us are for our rising or our falling
+according as we determine they shall be, and according as we use them.
+
+Think, then, how solemn, how awful, how great a thing it is to stand
+here a free agent, able to determine my character and my condition,
+surrounded by all these circumstances and the subject of all these wise
+and manifold divine dealings, in each of which there lie dormant, to be
+evoked by me, tremendous possibilities of elevation even to the very
+presence of God, or of sinking into the depths of separation from Him.
+The ark of God, that overthrew Dagon and smote Uzzah, was nothing but a
+fountain of blessing in the household of Obed-edom.
+
+II. Secondly, note the twofold operation of God's character and
+presence.
+
+The ark was the symbol of a present God, and His presence is meant to
+be the life and joy of all creatures, and the revelation of Him is
+meant to be only for our good, giving strength, righteousness, and
+peace. But the same double possibility which I have been pointing out
+as inherent in all externals belongs here too, and a man can determine
+to which aspect of the many-sided infinitude of the divine nature he
+shall stand in relation. The glass in stained windows is so coloured as
+that parts of it cut off, and prevent from passing through, different
+rays of the pure white light. And men's moral natures, the inclination
+of their hearts, and the set of their wills and energies, cut off, if I
+may say so, parts of the infinite, white light of the many-sided divine
+character, and put them into relations only with some part and aspect
+of that great whole which we call God. The man that loves the world,
+the man that is living for self, still more the man that is embruted in
+the pig-sty of sensuality and vice, cannot see the God whom the pure
+heart, which loves Him and is purified by its faith, discerns at the
+centre of all things. But the lower man sees either some very far-off
+Awfulness, in which he hopes vaguely that there is a kind of good
+nature that will let him off; or, if he has been shaken out of that
+superficial creed, which is only a creed for men whose consciences have
+not been touched, then he can see only a God whose love darkens into
+retribution, and who is the Judge and the Avenger. And no man can say
+that such a conception is not part of the truth; but, alas! he on whom
+the form of such a God glares has incapacitated himself, by his misuse
+of his powers and of God's world, from seeing the beauty of the love of
+the Father of us all, the righteous Father who in Christ loves every
+man.
+
+And thus the thought of God, the consciousness of His Presence, may be
+like the ark which was its symbol, either dreadful and to be put away,
+or to be welcomed and blessing to be drawn from it. To many of us I am
+sure--though I do not know anything about many of you--that thought,'
+Thou God seest me,' breeds feelings like the uneasy discomfort of a
+prisoner when he knows that somewhere in the wall there is a spy-hole
+at which at any moment a warder's eye may be. And to some of us,
+blessed be His name, that same thought, 'Thou art near me,' seems to
+bathe the heart in a sea of sweet rest, and to bring the assurance of a
+divine Companion that cheers all the solitude. And why is the
+difference? There are two people sitting in one pew; to the one man the
+thought of God is his ghastliest doubt, to the other it is his deepest
+joy. Wherefore? And which is it to me?
+
+Then, again, this same duality of aspect attaches to the character and
+presence of God in another way. Because, according to the variety of
+men's characters, God is obliged to treat them as standing in different
+relations. He must manifest His judgment, His justice, His punitive
+justice. There is a solemn verse in one of the Psalms which I may quote
+in lieu of all words of my own of this matter. 'With the merciful Thou
+wilt show Thyself merciful, with the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure,
+with the froward Thou wilt show Thyself froward.' The present God has
+to modify His dealings according to the characters of men.
+
+And so, dear friends, for the present life, and, as I believe, for the
+next life in a far more emphatic and awful way, the same thing makes
+blessedness and misery, the same thing makes life and death. The
+sunshine will kill and wither the slimy plants that grow in the dark
+recesses of some dripping cave; and if you take a fish out of the
+water, the air clogs its gills and it dies. Bring a man, such as some
+of you are, into a close, constant contact with the consciousness of
+the divine righteousness and presence, and you want nothing else to
+make a hell. The ark of the Lord will flash out its lightnings and
+Uzzah will die. That great Infinite Being, before whom we stand, holds
+in His right hand blessings beyond count or price, even the gift of
+Himself, and in His left His lightnings and His arrows. On which hand
+are you standing?
+
+III. Lastly, note the twofold operation of God's gospel.
+
+His dealings, His character and presence, and, most markedly and
+eminently of all, the gospel that is treasured in Jesus Christ and
+proclaimed amongst us, have this twofold operation. God sent His Son to
+be the Saviour of the world. It was meant that His mission and message
+should only be for life, and that with ever-increasing abundance. But
+God cannot save men by magic, nor by indiscriminate bestowment of
+spiritual blessings. It is not in His power to force His salvation upon
+any one, and whether the Gospel shall turn out to be a man's salvation
+or his ruin depends on the man himself. The preaching of the gospel and
+your contact with it, if you have ever come into contact with it really
+and not by mere outward hearing, leaves no man as it found him. My poor
+words--and God knows how poor I feel them to be--leave none of you as
+they find you; and that is what makes our meeting together so solemn
+and awful, and sometimes weighs one down as with a sense of
+insufficiency for these things.
+
+That twofold operation is seen first in the permanent effects of the
+Gospel upon character. If it has been offered to me, and if I accept
+it, then blessings beyond all enumeration, and which none but they who
+have them fully know, follow in its wake. Received by simple faith in
+Jesus Christ, God's sacrifice for a world's sin, it brings to us the
+clear consciousness of pardon, the calm sense of communion, the joyful
+spirit of adoption, righteousness rooted in our hearts and to be
+manifested day by day in our lives; it brings all elevation and
+strengthening and ennobling for the whole nature, and is the one power
+that makes us really men as God would have us all to be.
+
+Rejected or neglected or passed by apparently without our having done
+anything in regard to it, what are the issues? What does it do? Well,
+it does this for one thing, it turns unconscious worldliness into
+conscious worldliness. If the offer has been clearly before your minds,
+'Christ or the world?' and you have said 'I take the world!' you know
+that you have made the choice, and the act will tell on your character.
+
+Rejection strengthens all the evil motives for rejection, and adds to
+the insensibility of the man who has rejected. The ice on our pavements
+in the winter time, that melts on the surface in the day and freezes
+again at night, becomes dense and slippery beyond all other. And a
+heart, like that which beats in some of our bosoms, that has been
+melted and then has frozen again, is harder than ever it was before.
+Hammering that does not break solidifies and makes tougher the thing
+that is struck. There are no men so hard to get at as men and women,
+like multitudes of you, that have been hammered at by preaching ever
+since they were children, and have not yielded their hearts to God. The
+ark has done you hurt if it has not done you good.
+
+I do not dwell upon the other solemn thought, of the harmful results of
+contact with a gospel which we do not accept, as exemplified in the
+increase of responsibility and the consequent increase of condemnation.
+I only quote Christ's words, 'The servant that knew his Lord's will,
+and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.'
+
+My brother, Christ's gospel is never inert, one thing or other it does
+for every soul that it reaches. Either it softens or it hardens. Either
+it saves or it condemns. 'This Child is set for the rise or for the
+fall of many.' Jesus Christ may be for me and for you the Rock on which
+we build. If He is not, He is the Stone against which we stumble and
+break our limbs. Jesus Christ may be for you and for me the Pillar that
+gives light by night to those on the one side; He either is that, or He
+is the Pillar that sheds darkness and dismay on those on the other.
+Jesus Christ and His Gospel may be to each of us 'the savour of life
+unto life'; He either is that, or He is 'the savour of death unto
+death.' Oh! dear friends, if you have neglected, turned away, delayed
+to receive Him or have forgotten impressions in the midst of the whirl
+of daily life, do not do so any longer. Take Him for yours, your
+Brother, Friend, Sacrifice, Inspirer, Lord, Aim, End, Reward, and very
+Heaven of Heaven. Take Him for your own by simple trusting; and say to
+Him, 'Arise! O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the Ark of Thy strength.'
+So He will come into your hearts and smile His gladness as He whispers:
+'Here will I dwell for ever; this is My rest, for I have desired it.'
+
+
+
+
+THE PROMISED KING AND TEMPLE-BUILDER
+
+'And it came to pass that night, that the word of the Lord came unto
+Nathan, saying, 5. Go and tell My servant David, Thus saith the Lord,
+Shalt thou build Me an house for Me to dwell in! 6. Whereas I have not
+dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of
+Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in
+a tabernacle. 7. In all the places wherein I have walked with all the
+children of Israel spake I a word with any of the tribes of Israel,
+whom I commanded to feed My people Israel, saying, Why build ye not Me
+an house of cedar! 8. Now therefore so shalt thou say unto My servant
+David, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote,
+from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people, over Israel: 9.
+And I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all
+thine enemies out of thy sight, and have made thee a great name, like
+unto the name of the great men that are in the earth. 10. Moreover I
+will appoint a place for My people Israel, and will plant them, that
+they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more; neither shall
+the children of wickedness afflict them any more, as beforetime, 11.
+And as since the time that I commanded judges to be over My people
+Israel, and have caused thee to rest from all thine enemies. Also the
+Lord telleth thee that He will make thee an house. 12. And when thy
+days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up
+thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will
+establish His kingdom. 13. He shall build an house for My name; and I
+will establish the throne of His kingdom for ever. 14. I will be his
+father, and He shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten
+Him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men:
+16. But My mercy shall not depart away from Him, as I took it from
+Saul, whom I put away before thee. 16. And thine home and thy kingdom
+shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be
+established for ever.'-2 SAMUEL vii.4-16.
+
+
+The removal of the ark to Jerusalem was but the first step in a process
+which was intended to end in the erection of a permanent Temple. The
+time for the next step appeared to David to have come when he had no
+longer to fight for his throne. Rest from enemies should lead to larger
+work for God, else repose will be our worst enemy, and peace will
+degenerate into self-indulgent sloth. A devout heart will not be
+content with personal comfort and dwelling in a house of cedar, while
+the ark has but a tent for its abode. There should be a proportion
+between expenditure on self and on religious objects. How many
+professing Christians might go to school to David! Luxury at home and
+niggardliness in God's work make an ugly pair, but, alas! a common one.
+
+Nathan approved, as was natural. But he knew the difference between his
+own thoughts and 'the word of the Lord' that came to him, and, like a
+true man, he went in the morning and contradicted, by God's authority,
+his own precipitate sanction of the king's proposal. Clearly, divine
+communications were unmistakably distinguishable from the recipient's
+own thoughts.
+
+The divine message first negatives the intention to build a house. In 1
+Chronicles a positive prohibition takes the place of the question in
+verse 5, but that is only a difference of form, for the question
+implies a negative answer. From David's last words (1 Chron. xxviii. 3)
+we learn that a reason for the prohibition was 'because thou art a man
+of war, and hast shed blood.' His wars were necessary, and tended to
+establish the kingdom, but their existence showed that the time for
+building the Temple had not come, and there was a certain incongruity
+in a warrior king rearing a house for the God whose kingdom was in its
+essence peace.
+
+The prohibition rests on a deep insight into the nature of Jehovah's
+reign, and draws a broad distinction between His worship and the
+surrounding paganism. But the reason given in the text is very
+remarkable. God did not desire a permanent Temple. If we may so say, He
+preferred the less solid Tabernacle, as corresponding better to the
+simplicity and spirituality of His worship. A gorgeous stone Temple
+might easily become the sepulchre, rather than the shrine, of true
+devotion. The movable tent answered to the temporary character of the
+'dispensation.' The more fixed and elaborate the externals of worship,
+the more danger of the spirit being stifled by them. The Old Testament
+worship was necessarily ceremonial, but here is a caveat against the
+stiffening of ceremonial into stereotyped formalism.
+
+The prohibition was accompanied by gracious and far-reaching promises,
+designed to assure David of God's approbation of his motive, and to
+open up to him the vision of the future and the wonders that should be.
+We need say little about the retrospective part of the message (verses
+8, 9 a). God had been the agent in all David's past, had lifted him
+from the quiet following of his sheep, had given him rule, which was
+but a delegated authority. Israel was 'My people,' and therefore he was
+but an instrument in God's hand, and was not to govern by his own
+fancies or for his own advantage.
+
+Every devout man's life is the realisation of a plan of God's, and we
+sin against ourselves as well as Him if we do not often let thankful
+thoughts retrace all the way by which the Lord our God has led us.
+
+With verse 9 _b_ the prophecy turns to the future. David personally is
+promised the continuance of God's help; then a permanent, peaceful
+possession of the land is promised to the nation, and finally the
+perpetuity of the kingdom in the Davidic line is promised. The prophecy
+as to the nation, like all such prophecies, is contingent on national
+obedience. The future of the kingdom will stand in blessed contrast
+with the wild times of the Judges, if--and only if--Israel behaves as
+'My people' should.
+
+But the main point of the prophecy is the promise to David's 'seed.' In
+form it attaches itself very significantly to David's intention to
+build a house for Jehovah. That would invert the true order, for
+Jehovah was about to build a house, that is, a permanent posterity, for
+David. God must first give before man can requite. All our relations to
+Him begin with His free mercy to us. And our building for Him should
+ever be the result of His building for us, and will, in some humble
+way, resemble the divine beneficence by which it has been quickened
+into action. The very foundation principles of Christian service are
+expressed here, in guise fitted to the then epoch of revelation.
+
+But the relation of the two things, God's building and Solomon's, is
+not exhausted by such considerations. The consolidation of the monarchy
+in David's family was an essential preliminary to the rearing of the
+Temple. That work needed tranquil times, abundant resources, leisure,
+and assured dominion. So the prophet goes on to promise that David
+shall be succeeded by his 'seed,' who shall build the Temple.
+
+Further, three great promises are given in reference to David's
+seed,--a perpetual kingdom, a personal relation of sonship to Jehovah,
+and paternal chastisement, if necessary, but no such departure of
+Jehovah's mercy as had darkened the close of Saul's sad reign. Then,
+finally, the assurance is reiterated of the perpetuity of David's house
+and throne. The remarkable expression in verse 16, 'established before
+thee' (that is, David), if it is the true reading, suggests a hint of
+the life after death, and conceives of the long-dead king as in some
+manner cognisant of the fortunes of his descendants. But the Septuagint
+reads 'before Me,' and that reading is confirmed by verses 26 and 29,
+and by Psalm lxxxix.36 _b_.
+
+Now it is clear that these promises were in part directed to, and
+fulfilled in, Solomon. But it is as clear that the great promise of an
+eternal dominion, which is emphatically repeated thrice, goes far
+beyond him. We are obliged to recognise a second meaning in the
+prophecy, in accordance with Old Testament usage, which often means by
+'seed' a line of successive generations of descendants. But no
+succession of mortal men can reach to eternal duration.
+
+Apart from the fact that the kingdom, in the form in which David's
+descendants ruled over it, has long since crumbled away, the large
+words of the promise must be regarded as inflated and exaggerated, if
+by 'for ever' is only meant 'for long generations.' A 'seed,' or line
+of perishable men, can only last for ever if it closes in a Person who
+is not subject to the law of mortality. Unless we can with our hearts
+rejoicingly confess, 'Thou art the King of glory, O Christ! Thy kingdom
+is an everlasting kingdom,' we do not pierce to the full understanding
+of Nathan's prophecy.
+
+All the glorious prerogatives shadowed in it were but partially
+fulfilled in Israel's monarchs. Their failures and their successes,
+their sins and their virtues, equally declared them to be but shadowy
+forerunners of Him in whom all that they at the best imperfectly aimed
+at and possessed is completely and for ever fulfilled. They were
+prophetic persons by their office, and pointed on to Him.
+
+He has built the true Temple, in that His body is the seat of sacrifice
+and of revelation, and the meeting-place of God and man, and inasmuch
+as through Him we are built up into a spiritual house for an habitation
+of God. In Him is fulfilled the great prophecy of 'My Servant the
+Branch,' who 'shall build the Temple of the Lord' and 'be a Priest upon
+His throne.' In Him, too, is fulfilled in highest truth the filial
+relationship. The Israelitish kings were by office sons of God. He is
+_the_ Son in ineffable derivation and eternal unity of life with the
+Father, and their communion is in closest oneness of will and mutual
+interchange of love. In that filial relation lies the assurance of
+Christ's everlasting kingdom, for 'the Father loveth the Son, and hath
+given all things into His hand.'
+
+The prophecy is echoed in many places of Scripture, and is ever taken
+to refer to a single person. The angel of the annunciation moulded his
+salutation to the meek Virgin on it, when he declared that her Son
+'shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give
+unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign over the
+house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.'
+
+
+
+
+DAVID'S GRATITUDE
+
+'Then went king David in, and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am
+I, O Lord God? and what is my house, that Thou hast brought me
+hitherto? 19. And this was yet a small thing in Thy sight, O Lord God;
+but Thou hast spoken also of Thy servant's house for a great while to
+come. And is this the manner of man, O Lord God? 20. And what can David
+say more unto Thee? for Thou, Lord God, knowest Thy servant. 21. For
+Thy word's sake, and according to Thine own heart, hast Thou done all
+these great things, to make Thy servant know them. 22. Wherefore Thou
+art great, O Lord God: for there is none like Thee, neither is there
+any God besides Thee, according to all that we have heard with our
+ears. 23. And what one nation in the earth is like Thy people, even
+like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to Himself, and to
+make Him a name, and to do for you great things and terrible, for Thy
+land, before Thy people, which Thou redeemedst to Thee from Egypt, from
+the nations and their gods? 24. For Thou hast confirmed to Thyself Thy
+people Israel to be a people unto Thee for ever: and Thou, Lord, art
+become their God. 25. And now, O Lord God, the word that Thou hast
+spoken concerning Thy servant, and concerning his house, establish it
+for ever, and do as Thou hast said. 26. And let Thy name be magnified
+for ever, saying, The Lord of hosts is the God over Israel; and let the
+house of Thy servant David be established before Thee. 27. For Thou, O
+Lord of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to Thy servant, saying, I
+will build thee an house: therefore hath Thy servant found in his heart
+to pray this prayer unto Thee. 28. And now, O Lord God, Thou art that
+God, and Thy words be true, and Thou hast promised this goodness unto
+Thy servant: 29. Therefore now let it please Thee to bless the house of
+Thy servant, that it may continue for ever before Thee: for Thou, O
+Lord God, hast spoken it: and with Thy blessing let the house of Thy
+servant be blessed for ever.'--2 SAMUEL vii. 18-29.
+
+
+God's promise by Nathan of the perpetuity of the kingdom in David's
+house made an era in the progress of revelation. A new element was
+thereby added to devout hope, and a new object presented to faith. The
+prophecy of the Messiah entered upon a new stage, bearing a relation,
+as its successive stages always did, to the history which supplies a
+framework for it. Now, for the first time, He can be set forth as the
+king of Israel; now the width of the promise, which at first embraced
+the seed of the woman, and then was limited to the seed of Abraham, and
+thereafter to the tribe of Judah, is still further limited to the house
+of David. The beam is narrowed as it is focussed into greater
+brilliance, and the personal Messiah begins to be faintly discerned in
+words which are to have a partial, preparatory fulfilment, in itself
+prophetic, in the collective Davidic monarchs whose office is itself a
+prophecy. This passage is the wonderful burst of praise which sprang
+from David's heart in answer to Nathan's words. In many of the Psalms
+later than this prophecy we find clear traces of that expectation of
+the personal Messiah, which gradually shaped itself, under divine
+inspiration, in David, as contained in Nathan's message But this
+thanksgiving prayer, which was the immediate reflection of the
+astounding new message, has not yet penetrated its depth nor discovered
+its rich contents, but sees in it only the promise of the continuance
+of kingship in his descendants. We do not learn the fulness of God's
+gracious promises on first hearing them. Life and experience and the
+teaching of His Spirit are needed to enable us to count our treasure,
+and we are richer than we know.
+
+This prayer is a prose psalm outside the Psalter. It consists of two
+parts,--a burst of astonished thanksgiving and a stream of earnest
+petition, grasping the divine promise and turning it into a prayer.
+
+I. Note the burst of thanksgiving (vs. 18-24). The ark dwelt 'in
+curtains,' and into the temporary sanctuary went the king with his full
+heart. The somewhat peculiar attitude of sitting, while he poured it
+out to God, has offended some punctilious commentators, who will have
+it that we should translate 'remained,' and not 'sat'; but there is no
+need for the change. The decencies of public worship may require a
+posture which expresses devotion; but individual communion is free from
+such externals, and absorbed contemplation naturally disposes of the
+body so as least to hinder the spirit. The tone of almost bewildered
+surprise at the greatness of the gift is strong all through the prayer.
+The man's breath is almost taken away, and his words are sometimes
+broken, and throughout palpitating with emotion. Yet there is a plain
+progress of feeling and thought in them, and they may serve as a
+pattern of thanksgiving. Note the abrupt beginning, as if pent-up
+feeling forced its way, regardless of forms of devotion. The first
+emotion excited by God's great goodness is the sense of unworthiness.
+'I do not deserve it,' is the instinctive answer of the heart to any
+lavish human kindness, and how much more to God's! 'I am not worthy of
+the least of all the mercies,' springs to the devout lips most swiftly,
+when gazing on His miracles of bestowing love. He must know little of
+himself, and less of God, who is not most surely melted down to
+contrition, which has no bitterness or pain in it, by the coals of
+loving fire heaped by God on his head.
+
+The consciousness of unworthiness passes, in verse 19, to adoring
+contemplation of God's astounding mercy, and especially of the new
+element in Nathan's prophecy,--the perpetuity of the Davidic
+sovereignty in the dim, far-off future. Thankfulness delights to praise
+the Giver for the greatness of His gift. Faith strengthens its hold of
+its blessings by telling them over, as a miser does his treasure. To
+recount them to God is the way to possess them more fully.
+
+The difficult close of the verse cannot be discussed here. 'The law for
+man' is nearer the literal meaning of the words than 'the manner of
+men' (Rev. Ver.); and, unfortunately, man's manner is not the same as
+man's law. But the usual explanations are unsatisfactory. We would
+hazard the suggestion that 'this' means that which God has spoken 'of
+thy servant's house,' and that to call it 'the law for man' is
+equivalent to an expression of absolute confidence in the authority,
+universality, and certain fulfilment of the promise. The speech of God
+is ever the law for man, and this new utterance stands on a level with
+the older law, and shall rule all mankind. The king's faith not only
+gazes on the great words of promise, but sees them triumphant on earth.
+
+Then in verse 20 comes another bend of the stream of praise. The more
+full the heart, the more is it conscious of the weakness of all words.
+The deepest praise, like the truest love, speaks best in silence. It is
+blessed when, in earthly relations, we can trust our dear ones'
+knowledge of us to interpret our poor words. It is more blessed when,
+in our speech to God, we can feel that our love and faith are deeper
+than our word, and that He does not judge them by it, but it by them.
+
+            'Silence is His least injurious praise.'
+
+Here, too, we may note the two instances, in this verse, of what runs
+through the whole prayer,--David's avoidance of using 'I.' Except in
+the lowly 'What am I?' at the beginning, it never occurs; but he calls
+himself 'David' twice and 'Thy servant' ten times,--a striking, because
+unconscious, proof of his lowly sense of unworthiness.
+
+But he can say more; and what he does further say goes yet deeper than
+his former words. The personal aspect of the promise retreats into the
+background, and the ground of all God's mercy in His 'own heart' fills
+the thoughts. Some previous promise, perhaps that through Samuel, is
+referred to; but the great truth that God is His own motive, and that
+His love is not drawn forth by our deserts, but wells up by its own
+energy, like a perennial fountain, is the main thought of the verse.
+God is self-moved to bless, and He blesses that we may know Him through
+His gifts. The one thought is the central truth, level to our
+apprehension, concerning His nature; the other is the key to the
+meaning of all His workings. All comes to pass because He loves with a
+self-originated love, and in order that we may know the motive and
+principle of His acts. We can get no farther into the secret of God
+than that. We need nothing more for peaceful acceptance of His
+providences for ourselves and our brethren. All is from love; all is
+for the manifestation of love. He who has learned these truths sits at
+the centre and lives in light.
+
+Verse 22 strikes a new note. The effect of God's dealing with David is
+to magnify His name, to teach His incomparable greatness, and to
+confirm by experience ancient words which celebrate it. The thankful
+heart rejoices in hearsay being changed into personal knowledge. 'As we
+have heard, so have we seen.' Old truths flash up into new meaning, and
+only he who tastes and sees that God is good to him to-day really
+enters into the sweetness of His recorded past goodness.
+
+Note the widening of David's horizon in verses 23 and 24 to embrace all
+Israel. His blessings are theirs. He feels his own relation to them as
+the culmination of the long series of past deliverances, and at the
+same time loses self in joy over Israel's confirmation as God's people
+by his kingship. True thankfulness regards personal blessings in their
+bearing on others, and shrinks from selfish use of them. Note, too, the
+parallel, if we may call it so, between Israel and Israel's God, in
+that 'there is none like Thee,' and by reason of its choice by this
+incomparable Jehovah, no nation on earth is like 'Thy people, even like
+Israel.'
+
+Thus steadily does this model of thanksgiving climb up from a sense of
+unworthiness, through adoration and gazing on its treasures, to God's
+unmotived love as His impulse, and men's knowledge of that love as His
+aim, and pauses at last, rapt and hushed, before the solitary loftiness
+of the incomparable God, and the mystery of the love, which has
+intertwined the personal blessings which it celebrates, with its great
+designs for the welfare of the people, whose unique position
+corresponds to the unapproachable elevation of its God.
+
+II. Verses 25 to 29 are prayer built on promise and winged by
+thankfulness. The whole of these verses are but the expansion of 'do as
+Thou hast said.' But they are not vain repetitions. Rather they are the
+outpourings of wondering thankfulness and faith, that cannot turn away
+from dwelling on the miracle of mercy revealed to it unworthy. God
+delights in the sweet monotony and persistence of such reiterated
+prayers, each of which represents a fresh throb of desire and a renewed
+bliss in thinking of His goodness. Observe the frequency and variety of
+the divine names in these verses,--in each, one, at least: Jehovah God
+(v. 25); Jehovah of hosts (v. 26); Jehovah of hosts, God of Israel (v.
+27); Lord Jehovah (vs. 28, 29). Strong love delights to speak the
+beloved name. Each fresh utterance of it is a fresh appeal to His
+revealed nature, and betokens another wave of blessedness passing over
+David's spirit as he thinks of God. Observe, also, the other repetition
+of 'Thy servant,' which occurs in every verse, and twice in two of
+them. The king is never tired of realising his absolute subjection, and
+feels that it is dignity, and a blessed bond with God, that he should
+be His servant. The true purpose of honour and office bestowed by God
+is the service of God, and the name of 'servant' is a plea with Him
+which He cannot but regard. Observe, too, how echoes of the promise
+ring all through these verses, especially the phrases 'establish the
+house' and 'for ever.' They show how profoundly David had been moved,
+and how he is labouring, as it were, to make himself familiar with the
+astonishing vista that has begun to open before his believing eyes.
+Well is it for us if we, in like manner, seek to fix our thoughts on
+the yet grander 'for ever' disclosed to us, and if it colours all our
+look ahead, and makes the refrain of all our hopes and prayers.
+
+But the main lesson of the prayer is that God's promise should ever be
+the basis and measure of prayer. The mould into which our petitions
+should run is, 'Do as Thou hast said.' Because God's promise had come
+to David, 'therefore hath Thy servant found in his heart to pray this
+prayer unto Thee.' There is no presumption in taking God at His word.
+True prayer catches up the promises that have fallen from heaven, and
+sends them back again, as feathers to the arrows of its petitions. Nor
+does the promise make the prayer needless. We know that 'if we ask
+anything according to His will, He heareth us'; and we know that we
+shall not receive the promised blessings, which are according to His
+will, unless we do ask. Let us seek to stretch our desires to the width
+of God's promises, and to confine our wishes within their bounds.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID AND JONATHAN'S SON
+
+'And David said, is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul,
+that I may shew him kindness for Jonathan's sake? 2. And there was of
+the house of Saul a servant whose name was Ziba. And when they had
+called him unto David, the king said unto him, Art thou Ziba? And he
+said, Thy servant is he. 3. And the king said, Is there not yet any of
+the house of Saul, that I may shew the kindness of God unto him? And
+Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son, which is lame on his
+feet. 4. And the king said unto him, Where is he? And Ziba said unto
+the king, Behold, he is in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, in
+Lo-debar. 5. Then king David sent, and fetched him out of the house of
+Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lo-debar., 6. Now when Mephibosheth,
+the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was come unto David, he fell on
+his face, and did reverence. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he
+answered, Behold thy servant! 7. And David said unto him. Fear not; for
+I will surely shew then kindness for Jonathan thy father's sake, and
+will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father: and thou shalt eat
+bread at my table continually. 8. And he bowed himself, and said, What
+is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?
+9. Then the king called to Ziba, Saul's servant, and said unto him, I
+hare given unto thy master's son all that pertained to Saul and to all
+his house. 10. Thou therefore, and thy sons, and thy servants, shall
+till the land for him, and thou shalt bring in the fruits, that thy
+master's son may have food to eat: but Mephibosheth thy master's son
+shall eat bread alway at my table. Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty
+servants. 11. Then said Ziba unto the king, According to all that my
+lord the king hath commanded his servant, so shall thy servant do. As
+for Mephibosheth, said the king, he shall eat at my table, as one of
+the king's sons. 12. And Mephibosheth had a young son, whose name was
+Micha: and all that dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants unto
+Mephibosheth. 13. So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem: for he did eat
+continually at the king's table; and was lame on both his feet.'--2
+SAMUEL ix.1-13.
+
+
+This charming idyl of faithful love to a dead friend and generous
+kindness comes in amid stories of battle like a green oasis in a
+wilderness of wild rocks and sand. The natural sweetness and chivalry
+of David's disposition, which fascinated all who had to do with him,
+comes beautifully out in it, and it may well stand as an object lesson
+of the great Christian duty of practical mercifulness.
+
+I. So regarded, the narrative brings out first the motives of true
+kindliness. Saul and three of his four sons had fallen on the fatal
+field of Gilboa; the fourth, the weak Ishbosheth, had been murdered
+after his abortive attempt at setting up a rival kingdom had come to
+nothing. There were only left Saul's daughters and some sons by a
+concubine. So low had the proud house sunk, while David was
+consolidating his kingdom, and gaining victory wherever he went.
+
+But neither his own prosperity, nor the absence of any trace of Saul's
+legitimate male descendants, made him forget his ancient oath to
+Jonathan. Years had not weakened his love, his sufferings at Saul's
+hands had not embittered it. His elevation had not lifted him too high
+to see the old days of lowliness, and the dear memory of the
+self-forgetting friend whose love had once been an honour to the
+shepherd lad. Jonathan's name had been written on his heart when it was
+impressionable, and the lettering was as if 'graven on the rock for
+ever.' A heart so faithful to its old love needed no prompting either
+from men or circumstances. Hence the inquiry after 'any that is left of
+the house of Saul' was occasioned by nothing external, but came welling
+up from the depth of the king's own soul.
+
+That is the highest type of kindliness which is spontaneous and
+self-motived. It is well to be easily moved to beneficence either by
+the sight of need or by the appeals of others, but it is best to kindle
+our own fire, and be our own impulse to gracious thoughts and acts. We
+may humbly say that human mercy then shows likest God's, when, in such
+imitation as is possible, it springs in us, as His does in Him, from
+the depths of our own being. He loves and is kind because He is God. He
+is His own motive and law. So, in our measure, should we aim at
+becoming.
+
+But David's remarkable language in his questions to Ziba goes still
+deeper in unfolding his motives. For he speaks of showing 'the kindness
+of God' to any remaining of Saul's house. Now that expression is no
+mere synonym for kindness exceeding great, but it unfolds what was at
+once David's deepest motive and his bright ideal. No doubt, it may
+include a reminiscence of the sacred obligation of the oath to
+Jonathan, but it hallows David's purposed 'mercy' as the echo of God's
+to him, and so anticipates the Christian teaching, 'Be ye merciful,
+even as your Father is merciful.' We must receive mercy from Him before
+our hearts are softened, so as to give it to others, just as the wire
+must be charged from the electric source before it can communicate the
+tingle and the light.
+
+The best basis for the beneficent service of man is experience of the
+mercy of God. Philanthropy has no roots unless it is planted in
+religion. That is a lesson which this age needs. And the other side of
+the thought is as true and needful; namely, that our 'religion' is not
+'pure and undefiled' unless it manifests itself in the service of man.
+How serene and lofty, then, the ideal! How impossible ever to be too
+forgiving or too beneficent! 'As your heavenly Father is,'--that is our
+pattern. We have not shown our brother all the kindness which we owe
+him unless we have shown him 'the kindness of God.'
+
+II. The progress of the story brings out next the characteristics of
+David's kindliness, and these may be patterns for us. Ziba does not
+seem to be very communicative, and appears a rather unwilling witness,
+who needs to have the truth extracted bit by bit. He evidently had
+nothing to do with Mephibosheth, and was quite content that he should
+be left obscurely stowed away across Jordan in the house of the rich
+Machir (2 Sam. xvii. 27-29). Lo-debar was near Mahanaim, on the eastern
+side of the river, where Ishbosheth's short-lived kingdom had been
+planted, and probably the population there still clung to Saul's
+solitary representative. There he lived so privately that none of
+David's people knew whether he was alive or dead. Perhaps the savage
+practice of Eastern monarchs, who are wont to get rid of rivals by
+killing them, led the cripple son of Jonathan to 'lie low,' and Ziba's
+reticence may have been loyalty to him. It is noteworthy that Ziba is
+not said to have been sent to bring him, though that would have been
+natural.
+
+At any rate, Mephibosheth came, apparently dreading whether his summons
+to court was not his death-warrant. But he is quickly reassured. David
+again recalls the dear memory of Jonathan, which was, no doubt, stirred
+to deeper tenderness by the sight of his helpless son; but he swiftly
+passes to practical arrangements, full of common-sense and grasp of the
+case. The restoration of Saul's landed estate implies that it was in
+David's power. It had probably been 'forfeited to the crown,' as we in
+England say, or perhaps had been 'squatted on' by people who had no
+right to it. David, at any rate, will see that it reverts to its owner.
+
+But what is a lame man to do with it? and will it be wise to let a
+representative of the former dynasty loose in the territory of
+Benjamin, where Saul's memory was still cherished? Apparently, David's
+disposition of affairs was prompted partly by consideration for
+Mephibosheth, partly by affection for Jonathan, and partly by policy.
+So Ziba, who had not been present, is sent for, and installed as
+overseer of the estate, to work it for his new master's benefit, while
+the owner is to remain at Jerusalem in David's establishment. It was
+prudent to keep Mephibosheth at hand. The best way to weaken a
+pretender's claims was to make a pensioner of him, and the best way to
+hinder his doing mischief was to keep him in sight.
+
+
+But we need not suppose that this was David's only motive. He gratified
+his heart by retaining the poor young man beside himself, and, no
+doubt, sought to win his confidence and love. The recipient of his
+kindness receives it in characteristic Eastern fashion, with
+exaggerated words of self-depreciation, which sound almost too humble
+to be quite sincere. A little gratitude is better than whining
+professions of un worthiness.
+
+And how did Ziba like his task? The singular remark that he had
+'fifteen sons and twenty servants' perhaps suggests that he was a
+person of some importance; and the subsequent one that 'all in his
+house were servants to Mephibosheth' may imply that neither they nor he
+quite liked their being handed over thus cavalierly.
+
+But, however that may be, we may note that common-sense and practical
+sagacity should guide our mercifulness. Kindly impulses are good, but
+they need cool heads to direct them, or they do more harm than good. It
+is useless to set lame men to work an estate, even if they get a gift
+of it. And it is wise not to put untried ones in positions where they
+may plot against their benefactor. Mercifulness does not mean rash
+trust in its objects. They will often have to be watched very closely
+to keep them from going wrong. How many most charitable impulses have
+been so unwisely worked out that they have injured their objects and
+disappointed their subjects! We may note, too, in David's kindliness,
+that it was prompt to make sacrifice, if, as is probable, he had become
+owner of the estate. The pattern of all mercy, who is God, has not
+loved us with a love which cost Him nothing. Sacrifice is the
+life-blood of service.
+
+III. The subsequent history of Mephibosheth and Ziba is somewhat
+enigmatical. Usually the former is supposed to have been slandered by
+the latter, and to have been truly attached to David. But it is at
+least questionable whether Ziba was such a villain, and Mephibosheth
+such an injured innocent, as is supposed. This, at least, is plain,
+that Ziba demonstrated attachment to David at the time when self-love
+would have kept him silent. It took some courage to come with gifts to
+a discrowned king (2 Sam. xvi. 1-4); and his allegation about his
+master has at least this support, that the latter did not come with the
+rest of David's court to share his fortunes, and that the dream that he
+might fish to advantage in troubled waters is extremely likely to have
+occurred to him. Nor does it appear clear that, if Ziba's motive was to
+get hold of the estate, his adherence to David would have seemed, at
+that moment, the best way of effecting it.
+
+If we look at the sequel (xix. 24-30) Mephibosheth's excuse for not
+joining David seems almost as lame as himself. He says that Ziba
+'deceived him,' and did not bring him the ass for riding on, and
+therefore he could not come. Was there only one ass available in
+Jerusalem? and, when all David's _entourage_ were streaming out to
+Olivet after him, could not he easily have got there too if he had
+wished? His demonstration of mourning looks very like a blind, and his
+language to David has a disagreeable ring of untruthfulness, in its
+extreme professions of humility and loyalty. 'Me thinks the _cripple_
+doth protest too much. David evidently did not feel sure about him, and
+stopped his voluble utterances somewhat brusquely: 'Why speakest thou
+any more of thy matters?' That is as much as to say, 'Hold your
+tongue.' And the final disposition of the property, while it gives
+Mephibosheth the benefit of the doubt, yet looks as if there was a
+considerable doubt in the king's mind.
+
+We may take up the same somewhat doubting position. If he requited
+David's kindness thus unworthily, is it not the too common experience
+that one way of making enemies is to load with benefits? But no cynical
+wisdom of that sort should interfere with our showing mercy; and if we
+are to take 'the kindness of God' for our pattern, we must let our
+sunshine and rain fall, as His do, on 'the unthankful and the evil.'
+
+
+
+
+
+'MORE THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH HIM'
+
+'And the children of Ammon came out, and put the battle in array at the
+entering in of the gate: and the Syrians of Zoba, and of Rehob, and
+Ish-tob, and Maacah, were by themselves in the field. 9. When Joab saw
+that the front of the battle was against him before and behind, he
+chose of all the choice men of Israel, and put them in array against
+the Syrians: 10. And the rest of the people he delivered into the hand
+of Abishai his brother, that he might put them in array against the
+children of Ammon. 11. And he said, if the Syrians be too strong for
+me, then thou shalt help me: but if the children of Ammon be too strong
+for thee, then I will come and help thee. 12. Be of good courage, and
+let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God: and
+the Lord do that which seemeth Him good. 13. And Joab drew nigh, and
+the people that were with him, unto the battle against the Syrians: and
+they fled before him. 14. And when the children of Ammon saw that the
+Syrians were fled, then fled they also before Abishai, and entered into
+the city. So Joab returned from the children of Ammon, and came to
+Jerusalem. 15. And when the Syrians saw that they were smitten before
+Israel, they gathered themselves together. 16. And Hadarezer sent, and
+brought out the Syrians that were beyond the river: and they came to
+Helam: and Shobach the captain of the host of Hadarezer went before
+them. 17. And when it was told David, he gathered all Israel together,
+and passed over Jordan, and came to Helam. And the Syrians set
+themselves in array against David, and fought with him. 18. And the
+Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men of seven hundred
+chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote Shobach
+the captain of their host, who died there. 19. And when all the kings
+that were servants to Hadarezer saw that they were smitten before
+Israel, they made peace with Israel, and served them. So the Syrians
+feared to help the children of Ammon any more.'--2 SAMUEL x. 8-19.
+
+
+David's growing power would naturally be regarded by neighbouring
+states as a menace. Success provokes envy, and in this selfish world
+strength usually encroaches on weakness, and weakness dreads strength.
+So it was quite according to the way of the world that David's friendly
+embassy to the king of Ammon should be suspected of covering hostile
+intentions. Those who have no kindness in their own hearts are slow to
+believe in kindness in others. 'What does he want to get by it?' is the
+question put by cynical 'shrewd men,' when they see a good man doing a
+gracious, self-forgetting act.
+
+But the Ammonite courtiers need not have rejected David's overtures so
+insolently as by shaving half his ambassadors' beards and docking their
+robes. The insult meant war to the knife. Probably it was deliberately
+intended as a declaration of hostilities, as it was immediately
+followed by the preparation of a formidable coalition against Israel.
+Possibly, indeed, the coalition preceded and occasioned the rejection
+of David's conciliatory message. But, in any case, the Ammonite king
+summoned his Syrian allies from a number of small states of which we
+barely know the names, the chief of which was Zobah.
+
+That state had apparently started into prominence under its king
+Hadar-ezer, as he is called in this chapter, which is obviously a
+clerical error for Hadad-ezer, as in 2 Samuel viii. 3, etc. The name
+Hadad occurs again in Ben-hadad, and belonged to a Syrian god; so that
+the king of Zobah's name, meaning 'Hadad [is] help,' may be taken as
+the banner flaunted in the face of the army of Israel, and as making
+the war a struggle of the false against the true God.
+
+The war with the same enemies narrated in 2 Samuel viii. 3-13 is now
+generally supposed to be the same as that recorded in the latter part
+of this passage. It certainly seems more probable that there has been
+some dislocation of the text, than that so crushing a defeat as that
+retold in chapter viii. should have been followed by a revival of the
+same coalition within a short time. If, however, there was such a
+revival, it may remind us of the conditions of all warfare for God and
+goodness, either in our own lives or in the world. Sins and vicious
+institutions, once defeated, have a terrible power of swift recovery.
+The thorns cut down sprout fast again. Let no man say, 'I have
+extirpated that sin from my nature,' for, if he does, it will surprise
+him when he is lulled in false security. Hadad-ezer is not so easily
+got rid of. He does not know when he is beaten.
+
+David took the bull by the horns, and did not wait to be attacked. It
+was good policy to carry the war into the enemies' country, as it
+generally is. God's soldiers have to be aggressive, and there is no
+better way of losing what they have won than by being contented with
+it. We must advance if we are not to retrograde. From I Chronicles we
+learn that the Ammonites had begun the campaign by besieging Medeba, a
+trans-Jordanic Israelitish city. The answer of Joab was to lay siege to
+Rabbath, the capital of Ammon, an almost impregnable fastness, perched
+on a cliff, and surrounded on all sides but one by steep ravines.
+
+Apparently his bold strategy led to the abandonment of the attack on
+Medeba, and to the hurried march of its besiegers to relieve Rabbath.
+Probably the Syrian allies had been before Medeba, and suddenly
+appeared in Joab's rear. Their advance led the besieged to attempt a
+sortie, so that Joab was between two fires. It was a difficult
+position. Whichever foe he attacked, his retreat was cut off, and
+another enemy was ready to hurl itself on his rear. There was no time
+for manoeuvring, and nothing for it but to face both assailants. So,
+without hesitation he made his dispositions. The new-comers, the
+Syrians, were evidently the more formidable, and Joab picked the best
+men to deal with them under his own command, while his brother Abishai
+was to give account of the Ammonites, who were pouring out of Rabbath.
+There is sometimes advantage in being 'Mr. Facing-both-ways.' We are
+often surrounded by allied evils or sins; for all our vices are
+kindred, and help each other, and all public or social iniquities are
+in league against the army of righteousness. We have to be many-sided
+in our attacks on what is wrong, as well as in our development of what
+is right.
+
+Danger woke the best in Joab, Fierce and truculent as he often was, he
+had a hero's mettle in him, and in that dark hour he flamed like a
+pillar of light. His ringing words to his brother as they parted, not
+knowing if they would ever meet again, are like a clarion call. They
+extract encouragement out of the separation of forces, which might have
+depressed, and cheerily pledge the two divisions to mutual help. What
+was to happen, Joab, if the Syrians were too strong for thee, and the
+Ammonites for Abishai? That very possible contingency is not
+contemplated in his words. Rash confidence is unwise, but God's
+soldiers have a right to go into battle not anticipating utter defeat.
+Such expectation is apt to fulfil itself, and, on the other hand, to
+believe that we shall conquer goes a long way towards making us
+conquerors.
+
+Does not Joab's pledge of mutual help carry in it a lesson applicable
+to all the divisions of God's great army? In the presence of the
+coalition of evil, is not the separation of the friends of good,
+madness? When bad men unite, should not good men hold together? The
+defeat or victory of one is the defeat or victory of all. We serve
+under the same banner, and, instead of shutting up our sympathies
+within the narrow limits of our own regiment, and even having a certain
+satisfaction at the difficulties into which another has got, we should
+feel that, if 'one member suffer, all the members suffer with it,' and
+should be ready to help all our fellow-soldiers who need help.
+Self-preservation as well as comradeship, and, above all, loyalty to
+Him for whom we fight, should lead to that; for, if Abishai is crushed,
+Joab will be in sorer peril.
+
+His other word is equally pregnant. 'Be of good courage' is an
+exhortation always in season for Christ's soldiers, for, whatever are
+their foes, 'He that is with them is more than they that are with'
+their enemies. One man with Christ to back him may always be sure of
+victory. Calculations of probabilities and of resources may often yield
+occasion for despondency if we calculate only what appears to sense,
+but if we bring Christ into the calculation we shall be of good cheer.
+'The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?'
+
+We may note, too, the stimulating motive drawn from the thought of what
+Israel's army fought for,--'Our people, and the cities of our God.'
+Patriotism and devotion coalesced, and, like two contiguous flames in
+some duplex lamp, each made the other burn the brighter. So we may feel
+that we have the highest good of 'our people,' our brethren, in view,
+and that, in helping them and warring against evil, we are fighting for
+what belongs to God.
+
+High courage, the effort to do their very best, and not to spare blood
+or life in the fight, blended nobly in Joab and his brother with
+recognition of God's supreme determination of the event. Nothing can
+stand before men who live and fight in such a temper as that. The early
+conquests of Mohammedanism were secured by just such a blending of
+courage and submission. These were vulgar and poor, compared with the
+victories that would attend a Church which was animated by these
+principles in the higher form in which Christianity presents them.
+
+The account of the victory is remarkable. It is surely not by accident
+that no word is said about fighting. Note that it was as Joab 'drew
+nigh unto the battle' that the Syrians fled as if in sudden panic, and
+infected the Ammonites with their terror. We hear nothing of men slain,
+or of any actual crossing of swords. Contrast verse 18, which tells of
+a real fight. It is, perhaps, not pressing omissions too far to suggest
+that the narrative favours the supposition of a bloodless victory. The
+dangers that often appal Christ's servants have a way of often
+disappearing when they are marched boldly up to. Like ghosts, they
+vanish when accosted.
+
+So ended one campaign. But Hadad-ezer, the soul of the coalition, was
+not crushed, and the latter part of the passage tells of his renewed
+attempt. Partial defeat stirs up our foes to stronger struggles. The
+league was extended to include Syrian states farther east, and a still
+more formidable expedition was fitted out to attack this dangerous
+upstart king of Israel, who was casting his shadow so far. Such is
+always the case. We are never in more danger of fresh assailants than
+when we have won some victory over evil in ourselves or around us.
+David repeated his former tactics. Not waiting to be attacked, and to
+have the soil of Israel profaned and wasted by enemies, he crossed
+Jordan to meet the would-be invader, and, when he met him, struck hard,
+and crushed him and his host, slew the commander, and dispersed the
+thunder-cloud. The coalition broke down. Hadad-ezer's tributaries were
+glad to shake off his yoke and transfer their allegiance to David.
+
+'Nothing succeeds like success.' The alliances between worldly men
+banded against God's soldiers are held together by self-interest, and,
+when that can be best secured by deserting a man when he is down, away
+go all the allies, tumbling over each other in their haste to be the
+first to desert and bring feigned submission to the conqueror. The
+jackals leave the sick lion. The Syrians had had enough of helping
+Ammon, and Rabbath might fall without their lifting a finger. So hollow
+are the world's coalitions against God and His anointed!
+
+
+
+
+THOU ART THE MAN
+
+'And David said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done
+this thing shall surely die; because he did this thing, and because he
+had no pity. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.'--2 SAMUEL
+xii. 5-7.
+
+
+Nathan's apologue, so tenderly beautiful, takes the poet-king on the
+most susceptible side of his character. All his history shows him as a
+man of wonderfully sweet, chivalrous, generous, swiftly compassionate
+nature. And so, when he hears the story of a mean, heartless
+selfishness, all that is best in him kindles into a generous
+indignation, and flames out into instinctive condemnation. 'The man
+that did this thing shall die because he had no pity.'
+
+And then, on to that hot fervour of righteous wrath, comes this dash of
+cold water, 'And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.' Like some
+keen spear-point, sharpened almost to invisibility, this short sentence
+(two words in the original) driven by a strong hand, goes right through
+the armour to the very heart. What a collapse there would be in the
+king when the pointed forefinger of the prophet emphasised and drove
+home the application!
+
+I. This dramatic scene before us may be taken as suggesting first that
+we are all strangely blind to our own faults.
+
+If a man's own sin is held up before him a little disguised, he says,
+'How ugly it is!' And if only for a moment he can be persuaded that it
+is not his own conduct but some other sinner's that he is judging, the
+instinctive condemnation comes. We have two sets of names for vices:
+one set which rather mitigates and excuses them, and another set which
+puts them in their real hideousness. We keep the palliative set for
+home consumption, and liberally distribute the plain-spoken, ugly set
+amongst the vices and faults of our friends. The same thing which I
+call in myself prudence I call in you meanness. The same thing which
+you call in yourselves generous living, you call in your friend filthy
+sensualism. That which, to the doer of it, is only righteous
+indignation, to the onlooker is passionate anger. That which, in the
+practiser of it, is no more than a due regard for the interests of his
+own family and himself in the future, is, to the envious lookers-on,
+shabbiness and meanness in money matters. That which, to the liar, is
+only prudent diplomatic reticence, to the listener is falsehood. That
+which, in the man that judges his own conduct, is but 'a choleric
+word,' is, in his friend, when he judges him, 'flat blasphemy.'
+
+And so we go all round the circle, and condemn our own vices, when we
+see them in other people. So the king who had never thought, when he
+stole away Uriah's one ewe lamb, and did him to death by traitorous
+commands, setting him in the front of the battle, that he was wanting
+in compassion, blazes up at once, and righteously sentences the other
+'man' to death, 'because he had no pity.' He had never thought of
+himself or of his crime as cruel, as mean, as selfish, as heartless.
+But when he sees a partially disguised picture of it he knows it for
+the devil's child that it is.
+
+          'O wad some Power the giftie gie us
+           To see oursels as ithers see us!
+           It wad frae mony a blunder free us,'
+
+and so it would, to see ourselves as we see others. We judge our
+brother and ourselves by two different standards.
+
+And that is only one phase of a more general principle, one case that
+comes under a yet wider law, viz. that we are all blind, strangely
+blind, to our own faults. Why that is so I do not need to spend time in
+inquiring, except for a distinctly practical purpose. Let me just
+remind you how a strong wish for a thing that seems desirable always
+tends to confuse to a man the plain distinction between right and
+wrong; and how passions once excited, or the animal lusts and desires
+once kindled in a man, go straight to their object without the smallest
+regard to whether that object is to be reached by the breach of all
+laws, human and divine, or not. Excite any passion, and the passion is
+but a blind propensity towards certain good, and takes no question or
+consideration of whether right or wrong is involved at all.
+
+And further, habit familiarises with evil and diminishes our sense of
+it as evil. A man that has been for half a day in some ill-ventilated
+room does not notice the poisonous atmosphere; if you go into it you
+are half suffocated at first, and breathe more easily as you get used
+to it. A man can live amidst the foulest poison of evil; and, as the
+Styrian peasants get fat upon arsenic, his whole nature may seem to
+thrive by the poison that it absorbs. They tell us that the breed of
+fish that live in the lightless caverns in the bowels of some
+mountains, by long disuse have had their eyes atrophied out of them,
+and are blind because they have lived out of the light. And so men that
+live in the love of evil lose the capacity of discerning the evil, and
+'he that walketh in darkness' becomes blind, blind to his sin, and
+blind to all the realities of life.
+
+Then is it not true, too, that many of us systematically and of set
+purpose, continually avoid all questions as to the moral nature of our
+conduct? How many a man and woman who reads these words never sits down
+to think whether what they have been doing is right or wrong, because
+they have deep down in their consciences an uneasy suspicion as to what
+the answer would be. So, by reason of fostering passion, by reason of
+listening to wishes, by reason of the habit of wrongdoing, by reason of
+the systematic avoidance of all careful investigation of our character
+and of our conduct, we lose the power of fairly deciding upon the
+nature of our own acts.
+
+Then self-love comes in, and still another thing tends to blind us. We
+are all ready to acquiesce in the general indictment, and so to shirk
+the particular application of it. That is what people do about all
+great moral principles that ought to affect conduct,--they admit them
+in words, as general truths applying to mankind, and then hide
+themselves in the crowd, and think that they escape the incidence and
+particular application of the truths. No one of us would, I suppose,
+venture in plain words to stand up and say: 'I am an exception to your
+general confessions of sin,' and most of us would be ready to unite in
+the acknowledgment: 'We have all come short of the glory of God,'
+though in our consciences there has never stirred the faintest movement
+of self-condemnation even whilst our lips have been uttering the
+confession. Do not shrink away in the crowd, my brother! Come out to
+the front, and stand by yourself as God sees you, isolated. Look at
+your own actions; never mind about other men's. Do not content
+yourselves with saying,' _We_ have sinned'; say, '_I_ have sinned
+against _Thee._' God and you are as if alone in the universe. 'Against
+Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.' There are no crowds in God's eyes; He
+deals with single souls. Every one of us,--thou, and thou, and
+thou,--must give account of himself to God.
+
+II. In the next place, let me ask you to think how this story suggests
+that the true work of God's message is to tear down the veil and to
+show the ugly thing.
+
+'Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man.' It needed a prophet to do
+that, with divine authority. Nothing less would suffice to get through
+the thick bosses of the buckler of self-conceit and ignorance which he
+had to penetrate. As God's messenger, he gathered up, as I said, into
+one sharp-pointed, keen-edged, steel-bright sentence, the very spirit
+of the whole ancient Law, which seeks to individualise the sinner, and
+to drive home to the conscience the consciousness of wrong-doing.
+
+The remarks that I have been making, in the former part of this sermon,
+imperfect as they must necessarily be, may at least serve one or two
+purposes in reference to this part of my discourse.
+
+It seems to me that if what I have been saying as to a man's blindness
+to his own true moral character be at all correct, there flows from
+that thought a strong presumption in favour of a divine revelation. We
+need another than our own voice to lay down the law of conduct, and to
+accuse and condemn the breaches of it. Conscience is not a wholly
+reliable guide, and is neither an impartial nor an all-knowing judge.
+Unconsciousness of evil is not innocence. It is not the purest of women
+who 'wipes her mouth and says, I have done no harm.' My conscience says
+to me, 'It is wrong to do wrong'; but when I say to my conscience,
+'Yes, and pray what is wrong?' a large variety of answers is possible.
+A man may sophisticate his conscience, or bribe his conscience, or
+throttle his conscience, or sear his conscience. And so the man who is
+worst, who, therefore, ought to be most chastised by his conscience,
+has most immunity from it, and where, if it is to be of use, it ought
+to be most powerful, there it is weakest.
+
+What then? Why this, then--a standard that varies is not a standard; we
+are left with a leaden rule. My conscience, your conscience, is like
+the standard measures which we at present possess, which by their very
+names--foot, handbreadth, nail, and the like, tell us that they were
+originally but the length of one man's limb. And so your measure of
+right and wrong, and another man's measure, though they may
+substantially correspond, yet differ according to your differences of
+education, character, and a thousand other things. So that the
+individual man's standard needs to be rectified. You have to send all
+the weights and measures up to the Tower now and then, to get them
+stamped and certified. And, as I believe, this fluctuation of our moral
+judgments shows the need for a fixed pattern and firm unchangeable
+standard, external to our mutable selves. A light on deck which pitches
+with the pitching ship is no guide. It must flash from a white pillar
+founded on a rock and immovable amid the restless waves. Our need of
+such a standard raises a strong presumption that a good God will give
+us what we need, if He can. Such a standard He has given, as I believe,
+in the revelation of Himself which lies in this book, and culminates in
+the life and character of Jesus Christ our Lord. There, and by that, we
+can set our watches. There we can read the law of morality, and by our
+deflections from it we can measure the amount of our guilt.
+
+But beyond that, the remarks which I have already made in the former
+part of my sermon may suggest to us, along with this utterance of the
+prophet's, that one indispensable characteristic and certain criterion
+of a true message and gospel from God is that it pierces the conscience
+and kindles the sense of sin. My dear brethren, there is a great deal
+of so-called Christian teaching, both from pulpits and books in this
+day, which, to my mind, is altogether defective by reason of its
+underestimate of the cardinal fact of sin, and its consequent failure
+to represent the fundamental characteristic of the gospel as being
+deliverance and redemption. I am quite sure that the root of
+nine-tenths of all the heresies that have ever afflicted the Christian
+Church, and of the weakness of so much popular Christianity, is none
+other than this failure adequately to recognise the universality and
+the gravity of the fact of transgression. If a word comes to you, calls
+itself God's message, and does not start with man's sin, nor put in the
+forefront of its utterances the way by which the dominion of that sin
+in your own heart can be broken, and the penalties of that sin in your
+present and future life can be swept away, it is condemned, _ipso
+facto_, as not a gospel from God, or fit for man. O my brother! it
+sounds harsh; but it is the truest kindness, when Nathan stands before
+the king, and with his flashing eye and stern, calm voice says, 'Thou
+art the man.' Was not that nobler, truer, tenderer, worthier of God,
+than if he had smoothed David down with soft speeches that would not
+have roused his conscience? Is it not the truest benevolence that keeps
+the surgeon's hand steady whilst his heart is touched by the pain that
+he inflicts, as he thrusts his gleaming instrument of tender cruelty
+into the poisonous sore? And are not God's mercy and love manifest for
+us in this, that He begins all His work on us with the grave, solemn
+indictment of each soul by itself, 'Thou art the man'?
+
+               'He showed me all the mercy,
+                For He taught me all the sin.'
+
+III. Lastly, let me say that God accuses us and condemns us one by one
+that He may save us one by one.
+
+The meaning of Nathan's sharp sentence was speedily disclosed when the
+broken-down king exclaimed, 'I have sinned against the Lord,' and when,
+with laconic force as great as that which barbed the condemnation, the
+prophet stanched the wound with the brief words, 'And the Lord hath
+made to pass the iniquity of thy sin.' The intention of the accusation
+is the extension of the mercy and forgiveness. God, as the Apostle puts
+it, 'hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.'
+
+And now, mark, for the carrying out of that divine purpose in regard to
+us, and for our possession of the proffered mercy, the same
+individualising and isolating process is needful as was needful for the
+conviction of the sin. God desires to save the world, but God can only
+save men one at a time. There must be an individual access to Him for
+the reception of forgiveness, as there must be in regard to the
+conviction of sin, just as if He and I were the only two beings in the
+whole universe. There is no wholesale entrance into God's Church or
+into God's kingdom. God's mercy is not given to crowds, except as
+composed of individuals who have individually received it. There must
+be the personal act of faith; there must be my solitary coming to Him.
+As the old mystics used to define prayer, so I might define the whole
+process by which men are saved from their sins, 'the flight of the
+lonely soul to the lonely God.' My brother, it is not enough for you to
+say, 'We have sinned'; say, 'I have sinned.' It is not enough that from
+a gathered congregation there should go up the united litany, 'Lord,
+have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon
+us!' You must make the prayer your own: 'Lord, have mercy upon _me_!'
+It is not enough that you should believe, as I suppose most of you
+fancy that you believe, that Christ has died for the sins of the whole
+world. That belief will give you no share in His forgiveness. You must
+come to closer grips with Him than that; and you must be able to say,
+'Who loved _me_, and gave Himself for _me_.' Let us have no running
+away into the crowd. Come out, and stand by yourselves, and for
+yourselves stretch out your own band, and take Christ for yourselves.
+
+A man may die of starvation in a granary. You may be lost in the midst
+of this abundance which Christ has provided for you. And the difference
+between really possessing salvation and not possessing it, lies very
+largely in the difference between saying 'us' and 'me.' 'Thou art the
+man' in regard to the general accusation of sin; 'Thou art the man' in
+regard to the solemn law which proclaims that 'the soul that sinneth it
+shall die'; and, blessed be God, 'Thou art the man' in regard to the
+great promise that says, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and
+drink.' Christ gives you a blank cheque in His word: 'Whoso cometh unto
+Me, I will in no wise cast out.' Write thine own name in, and by thy
+personal faith in the Lamb of God that died for thee, thy sins shall
+pass away; and all the fulness of God shall be thy very own for ever.
+'If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest,
+thou alone shall bear it.'
+
+
+
+
+DAVID AND NATHAN
+
+'And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan
+said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin.'--2 SAMUEL xii.
+13.
+
+
+We ought to be very thankful that Scripture never conceals the faults
+of its noblest men. High among the highest of them stands the
+poet-king. Whoever, for nearly three thousand years, has wished to
+express the emotions of trust in God, longing after purity, aspiration,
+and rapture of devotion, has found that his words have been before him.
+
+And this man sins; black, inexcusable, aggravated transgression. You
+know the shameful story; I need not tell it over again. The Bible gives
+it us in all its naked ugliness, and there are precious lessons to be
+got out of it; such, for instance, as that it is not innocence that
+makes men good. '_This_ is the man after God's own heart!' people
+sneer. Yes! Not because saints have a peculiar morality, and atone for
+adultery and murder by making or singing psalms, but because, having
+fallen into foul sin, he learned to abhor it, and with many tears, with
+unconquerable resolution, with deepened trust in God, set his face once
+more to press toward the mark. That is a lesson worth learning.
+
+And, again, David was not a hypocrite because he thus fell. All sin is
+inconsistent with devotion; but, thank God, we cannot say how much or
+how dark the sin must be which is incompatible with devotion, nor how
+much evil there may still lurk and linger in a heart of which the main
+set and aspiration are towards purity and God.
+
+And, again, the worst transgressions are not the passionate outbursts
+contradictory of the main direction of a life which sometimes come; but
+the habitual, though they be far smaller, evils which are honey-combing
+the moral nature. White ants will pick a carcase clean sooner than a
+lion. And many a man who calls himself a Christian, and thinks himself
+one, is in far more danger, from little pieces of chronic meanness in
+his daily life, or sharp practice in his business, than ever David was
+in his blackest evil.
+
+But the main lesson of all is that great and blessed one of the
+possibility of any evil and sin like this black one, being annihilated
+and caused to pass away through repentance and confession. It is to
+that aspect of our text that I turn, and ask you to look with me at the
+three things that come out of it: David's penitence; David's pardon
+consequent upon his penitence; and David's punishment, notwithstanding
+his penitence and pardon.
+
+I. First, then, the penitence.
+
+What a divine simplicity there is in the words of our text: 'David said
+unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.' That is all. In the
+original, two words are enough to revolutionise the man's whole life,
+and to alter all his relations to the divine justice and the divine
+Friend. 'I have sinned against the Lord.' Not an easy thing to say; and
+as the story shows us, a thing that David took a long time to mount up
+to.
+
+Remember the narrative. A year has passed since his transgression. What
+sort of a year has it been? One of the Psalms tells us, 'When I kept
+silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long; for day
+and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture was turned into the
+drought of summer.' There were long months of sullen silence, in which
+a clear apprehension and a torturing experience of divine
+disapprobation, like a serpent's fang, struck poison into his veins.
+His very physical frame seems to have suffered. His heart was as dry as
+the parched grass upon the steppes. That was what he got by his sin. A
+moment of turbid animal delight, and long days of agony; dumb suffering
+in which the sense of evil had not yet broken him down into a rain of
+sweet tears, but lay, like a burning consciousness, within his heart.
+
+And then came the prophet with his parable, so tender, so ingenious, so
+powerful. And the quick flash of generous indignation, which showed how
+noble the man was after all, with which he responded to the picture,
+unknowing that it was a picture of his own dastardly conduct, led on to
+the solemn words in which Nathan tore away the veil; and with a
+threefold lever, if I may so say, overthrew the toppling structure of
+his impenitence.
+
+First of all, and most chiefly, he seeks to win him to repentance by a
+picture of God's great love and goodness. 'I have done this and that
+and the other thing for thee. What hast thou done for Me?' Ah, that is
+the true beginning. You cannot frighten men into penitence, you may
+frighten them into remorse; and the remorse may or may not lead on to
+repentance. But bring to bear upon a man's heart the thought of the
+infinite and perfect love of God, and that is the solvent of all his
+obstinate impenitence, and melts him to cry, 'I have sinned.' And along
+with that element there is the other, the plain striking away of all
+disguises from the ugly fact of the sin. The prophet gives it its
+hideous name, and that is one element in the process which leads to
+true repentance. For so strange and subtle are the veils which we cast
+over our own evils, that it comes sometimes to us with a shock and a
+start when some word, that we know to connote wickedness of the deepest
+dye, is applied to them. David had very likely so sophisticated his
+conscience that, though he had been writhing under the sense that he
+was a wrongdoer, it came to him with a kind of ugly surprise when the
+naked words 'adultery' and 'murder' were pressed up against his
+consciousness.
+
+And the third element that brought him to his senses, and to his knees,
+was the threatening of punishment, which is salutary when it follows
+these other two, the revelation of a divine love and the unveiling of
+the essential nature of my own act; but which without these is but 'the
+hangman's whip' to which only inferior natures will respond. And these
+three, the appeal to God's love, the revelation of his own sin, the
+solemn warning of its consequences--these three brought to bear upon
+David's heart, broke him down into a passion of penitence in which he
+has only the two words to say, 'I have sinned against the Lord.' That
+is all. That is enough.
+
+And what is it? It is the recognition--which is essential to all real
+penitence--that I have not merely broken some impersonal law, or done
+something that hurts my fellows, but that I have broken the relations
+which I ought to sustain to a living, loving Person, who is God. We
+commit crimes against society, we commit faults against one another, we
+commit sins against God, and the very notion of sin involves, as its
+correlative, the thought of the divine Lawgiver.
+
+So, dear brethren, penitence goes deeper than a recognition of demerit
+and unworthiness. It is more than an acknowledgment of imperfection and
+breach of morality. It is something different altogether from the
+acknowledgment that I have committed a fault against my fellow. David
+had done Bathsheba and Uriah, and in them his whole kingdom, foul
+wrong, but, as he says in Psalm li., 'Against Thee, Thee _only,_ have I
+_sinned._' His account with these is of a less grave character, but
+'against Thee I sinned.'
+
+And in like manner, this penitence contains in it the recognition of
+transgression against a loving Friend and Father, which had been
+brought home to his mind by all the words of the rebuking prophet, who
+was a kind of incarnate conscience for him now. And it contains, still
+further, confession to God against whom he had sinned. The first
+impulse of a man when he dimly discerns how far he has departed from
+God's law, is that which the old story represents was the first impulse
+of the first sinners--to hide himself in the trees of the garden. The
+second impulse is to go to Him against whom we have sinned, and who
+only therefore can deal with the sin in the way of forgiveness, and to
+pour it all out before Him. Once an Apostle, when he caught a partial
+glimpse of his own demerit and transgression, said to the Master with a
+natural impulse, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!' But
+Peter had a deeper sense of his own sin, and a happier knowledge of
+what Christ could do for his sin, when his brother Apostle whispering
+to him in the boat, 'It is the Lord,' the traitor Apostle cast himself
+into the shallow water and floundered through it anyhow, to get as
+close as he could to the Master's feet.
+
+Do not go away from God because you feel that you have sinned against
+Him. Where should you go but to your mother's bosom, and hide your face
+there, if you have committed faults against her? Where should you go
+but to God if against Him you have transgressed? Look, my brother, at
+your own character and conduct; measure the deficiencies and
+imperfections, the transgressions and faults; ay! perhaps with some of
+you, the crimes against men and society and human laws; but see beneath
+all these a deeper thought; and stifle not the words that would come to
+your lips as a relief, like a surgeon's lancet struck into some foul
+gathering, 'I have sinned against the Lord.'
+
+II. And now, secondly, notice with me David's pardon consequent upon
+his repentance.
+
+Can there be anything more striking--I do not say dramatic, for the
+circumstances are far too serious for terms of art--can there be
+anything more in the nature of a gospel to us all than that brief
+dialogue? David said unto Nathan, 'I have sinned against the Lord.' And
+Nathan said unto David, 'The Lord also hath put away thy sin.'
+
+Immediate forgiveness, that is the first lesson that I would press upon
+you. Dear brethren, it is an experience which you may each repeat in
+your own history at this moment. It needs but the confession in order
+that the forgiveness should come. At this end of the telephone whisper
+your confession, and before it has well passed your lips there comes
+back the voice sweet as that of angels, 'The Lord hath forgiven thy
+sin.' One word, one motion of a heart aware of, and hating, and
+desiring to escape from, its evil, brings with a rush the whole fulness
+of fatherly and forgiving love into any heart. And that one confession
+may be the turning-point of a man's life, and may obliterate all the
+sinful past, and may bring him into loving, reconciled, harmonious
+relations with the Almighty Judge.
+
+Learn, too, not only the immediacy of the answer and the simplicity of
+the means, but learn how thorough and complete God's dealing with your
+sin may be. The original language of my text might be rendered, 'The
+Lord hath caused thy sin to pass away'; the thought being substantially
+that of some impediment or veil between man and Him which, with a touch
+of His hand, He dissolves as it were into vapour, and so leaves all the
+sky clear for His warmth and sunshine to pour down upon the heart. We
+do not need to enter upon theological language in talking about this
+great gift of forgiveness. It means substantially that howsoever you
+and I have piled up mountain upon mountain, Alp upon Alp, of our evils
+and transgressions, all pass away and become non-existent. Another word
+of the Old Testament expresses the same idea when it speaks about sin
+being 'covered.' Another word expresses the same idea when it speaks
+about God as 'casting' men's sins 'into the depths of the sea'--all
+meaning this one thing, that they no longer stand as barriers between
+the free flow of His love and our poor hearts. He takes away the sense
+of guilt, touches the wounded conscience, and there is healing in His
+hand. As, according to the old belief, the sovereign, by laying his
+hand upon sufferers from 'the King's evil' healed them and cleansed
+them, so the touch of His forgiving love takes away the sense of guilt
+and heals the spirit. He removes all the impediments between His love
+and us. His love can now come undisturbed. His deepest and solemnest
+judgments do not need to come; and no more does there stand frowning
+between us and Him the spectre of our past.
+
+People tell us that forgiveness is impossible, 'that whatsoever a man
+soweth, that must he also reap'; that law is law, and that the
+consequences cannot be averted. That is all quite true if there is not
+a God. It is not true if there is; and if there is no God, there is no
+sin. So if there is a God, there is forgiveness.
+
+Consequences, as I shall have to show you in a moment, may still
+remain, but pardon may be ours all the same. When you forgive your
+child, does it mean that you do not thrash it, or does it mean that you
+take it to your heart? And when God pardons, does it mean that He
+waives His laws, or does it mean that He lets us come into the whole
+warmth and sunshine of His love? Will you go there?
+
+Forgiveness was to Jews a thing difficult to apprehend. It was hard for
+them to understand the harmony of it with the rigid retribution on
+which their whole system of religion reposed. But you and I have come
+further into the light than Nathan and David had. And I have to preach
+a modification of the words of my text which is not a limitation of
+them, but the unveiling of their basis and the surest confirmation of
+them, when I say 'In Him'--Jesus Christ--'we have redemption through
+His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.'
+
+The New Testament teaches us that the Cross of Christ threw its power
+back upon former transgressions as well as forward upon future ones;
+and that in Him past ages, though they knew Him not, received
+remission. Christ is the Medium of the divine forgiveness; Christ's
+Cross is the ground of the divine pardon; Christ's sacrifice is the
+guarantee for us that the sin which He has borne He has borne away. 'By
+His stripes we are healed.' 'Wherefore, men and brethren, be it known
+unto you, that through this Man is preached unto _us_ the forgiveness
+of _our_ sins.'
+
+III. Third and lastly, look at the punishment which follows--shall I
+say _notwithstanding_ or _because of_?--the penitence and the pardon.
+
+In David's life there came the immediate retribution in kind, which was
+signalised as such by the divine message--the death of the child  'who
+was conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity.' But beyond that, look at
+David's life after his great fall. There was no more brightness in it.
+His own sin and example of lust loosed the bonds of morality in his
+household, and his son followed his example and improved upon it. And
+from that came Absalom's murder of his brother, and from that Absalom's
+exile, and from that Absalom's rebellion, and from that Absalom's
+death, which nearly killed his poor old father. And for all the rest of
+his days his home was troubled, and his last years ended with the
+turmoil of a disputed succession before his eyes were closed, all
+traceable to this one foul crime.
+
+Joab was the torment of David's later days, and Joab's power over him
+depended upon his having been the instrument of Uriah's murder; and so
+the master of the king, whose bidding he had done. Ahithophel was the
+brain of Absalom's conspiracy. His defection struck a sharp arrow into
+David's heart--'mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted.' He
+evidently hated the king with fierce hatred. He was Bathsheba's
+grandfather; and we are not going wrong, I think, in tracing his
+passionate hatred, and the peculiar form of insult which he counselled
+Absalom to adopt, to the sense of foul wrong which had been done to his
+house by David's crime.
+
+And so all through his days this poor old king had to do what you and I
+have to do--to bear the temporal results of sin. 'Be not deceived, God
+is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.'
+
+So 'of our pleasant vices the gods make whips to scourge us.' And it is
+in mercy that we have to drink as we have brewed, that we have to lie
+upon the beds that we have made; that in regard to outward
+consequences, and in regard to our own hearts and inward history, we
+are the architects of our own fortunes, and cannot escape the penalties
+of our sins and of our faults. Better to have it so than be cursed with
+impunity!
+
+Some of you young men are sowing diseases in your bones that will
+either make you invalids or will kill you before your time. All of us
+are bearing about with us, in some measure and sense, the issues, which
+are the punishments, of our evil. Let us thank Him and take up the
+praise of the old psalm, 'Thou wast a God that forgivest them, though
+Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' There is either merciful
+chastisement here, that we may be parted from our sins, or there is
+judgment hereafter.
+
+O my brother! let me beseech you, do not commit the suicide of
+impenitence, but go to Christ, in whom all our sins are taken away, and
+lay your hands on the head of that great Sacrifice, and 'the Lord shall
+cause to pass the iniquity of your sin.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S BANISHED ONES
+
+'God doth devise means, that His banished be not expelled from Him.' 2
+SAMUEL xiv. 14.
+
+
+David's good-for-nothing son Absalom had brought about the murder of
+one of his brothers, and had fled the country. His father weakly loved
+the brilliant blackguard, and would fain have had him back, but was
+restrained by a sense of kingly duty. Joab, the astute
+Commander-in-chief, a devoted friend of David, saw how the land lay,
+and formed a plan to give the king an excuse for doing what he wished
+to do. So he got hold of a person who is called 'a wise woman' from the
+country, dressed her as a mourner, and sent her with an ingeniously
+made-up story of how she was a widow with two sons, one of whom had
+killed the other, and of how the relatives insisted on their right of
+avenging blood, and demanded the surrender of the murderer; by which,
+as she pathetically said, 'the coal' that was left her would be
+'quenched.' The king's sympathy was quickly roused--as was natural in
+so impulsive and poetic a nature--and he pledged his word, and finally
+his oath, that the offender should be safe.
+
+So the woman has him in a trap, having induced him to waive justice and
+to absolve the guilty by an arbitrary act. Then she turns upon him with
+an application to his own case, and bids him free himself from the
+guilt of double measures and inconsistency by doing with his banished
+son the same thing--viz. abrogating law and bringing back the offender.
+In our text she urges still higher considerations--viz. those of God's
+way of treating criminals against His law, of whom she says that He
+spares their lives, and devises means-or, as the words might perhaps be
+rendered, 'plans plannings'--by which He may bring them back. She would
+imply that human power and sovereignty are then noblest and likest
+God's when they remit penalties and restore wanderers.
+
+I do not further follow the story, which ends, as we all know, with
+Absalom's ill-omened return. But the wise woman's saying goes very
+deep, and, in its picturesque form, may help to bring out more vividly
+some truths--all-important ones--of which I wish to beg your very
+earnest consideration and acceptance.
+
+I. Note, then, who are God's banished ones.
+
+The woman's words are one of the few glimpses which we have of the
+condition of religious thought amongst the masses of Israel. Clearly
+she had laid to heart the teaching which declared the great, solemn,
+universal fact of sin and consequent separation from God. For the
+'banished ones' of whom she speaks are no particular class of glaring
+criminals, but she includes within the designation the whole human
+race, or, at all events, the whole Israel to which she and David
+belonged. There may have been in her words--though that is very
+doubtful--a reference to the old story of Cain after the murder of his
+brother. For that narrative symbolises the consequences of all
+evil-doing and evil-loving, in that he was cast out from the presence
+of God, and went away into a 'land of wandering,' there to hide from
+the face of the Father. On the one hand, it was banishment; on the
+other hand, it was flight. So had Absalom's departure been, and so is
+ours.
+
+Strip away the metaphor, dear brethren, and it just comes to this
+thought, which I seek to lay upon the hearts of all my hearers now--you
+cannot be blessedly and peacefully near God, unless you are far away
+from sin. If you take two polished plates of metal, and lay them
+together, they will adhere. If you put half a dozen tiny grains of sand
+or dust between them, they will fall apart. So our sins have come
+between us and our God. They have not separated God from us, blessed be
+His name! for His love, and His care, and His desire to bless, His
+thought, and His knowledge, and His tenderness, all come to every soul
+of man. But they have rent us apart from Him, in so far as they make us
+unwilling to be near Him, incapable of receiving the truest nearness
+and blessedness of His presence, and sometimes desirous to hustle Him
+out of our thoughts, and, if we could, out of our world, rather than to
+expatiate in the calm sunlight of His presence.
+
+That banishment is self-inflicted. God spurns away no man, but men
+spurn Him, and flee from Him. Many of us know what it is to pass whole
+days, and weeks, and years, as practical Atheists. God is not in all
+our thoughts.
+
+And more than that, the miserable disgrace and solitude of a soul that
+is godless in the world is what many of us like. The Prodigal Son
+scraped all his goods together, and thought himself freed from a very
+unwelcome bondage, and a fine independent youth, when he went away into
+'the far country.' It was not quite so pleasant when provisions and
+clothing fell short, and the swine's trough was the only table that was
+spread before him. But yet there are many of us, I fear, who are
+perfectly comfortable away from God, in so far as we can get away from
+Him, and who never are aware of the degradation that lies in a soul's
+having lowered itself to this, that it had rather not have God
+inconveniently near.
+
+Away down in the luxurious islands of the Southern Sea you will find
+degraded Englishmen who have chosen rather to cast in their lot with
+savages than to have to strain and work and grow. These poor
+beach-combers of the Pacific, not happy in their degradation, but
+wallowing in it, are no exaggerated pictures of the condition, in
+reality, of thousands of us who dwell far from God, and far therefore
+from righteousness and peace.
+
+II. Notice God's yearning over His banished ones.
+
+The woman in our story hints at, or suggests, a parallel which, though
+inadequate, is deeply true. David was Absalom's father and Absalom's
+king; and the two relationships fought against each other in his heart.
+The king had to think of law and justice; the father cried out for his
+son. The young man's offence had neither altered his relationship nor
+affected the father's heart.
+
+All that is true, far more deeply, blessedly true, in regard to our
+relation, the wandering exiles' relation, to God. For, whilst I believe
+that the highest form of sonship is only realised in the hearts of men
+who have been made partakers of a new life through Jesus Christ, I
+believe, just as firmly and earnestly, that every man and woman on the
+face of the earth, by virtue of physical life derived from God, by
+virtue of a spiritual being, which, in a very real and deep sense,
+still bears the image of God, and by reason of His continued love and
+care over them, is a child of His. The banished son is still a son, and
+is '_His_ banished one.' If there is love--wonderful as the thought is,
+and heart-melting as it ought to be--there must be loss when the child
+goes away. Human love would not have the same name as God's unless
+there were some analogy between the two. And though we walk in dark
+places, and had better acknowledge that the less we speak upon such
+profound subjects the less likely we are to err, yet it seems to me
+that the whole preciousness of the revelation of God in Scripture is
+imperilled unless we frankly recognise this--that His love is like
+ours, delights in being returned like ours, and is like ours in that it
+rejoices in presence and knows a sense of loss in absence. If you think
+that that is too bold a thing to say, remember who it was that taught
+us that the father fell on the neck of the returning prodigal, and
+kissed him; and that the rapture of his joy was the token and measure
+of the reality of his regret, and that it was the father to whom the
+prodigal son was 'lost.' Deep as is the mystery, let nothing, dear
+brethren, rob us of the plain fact that God's love moves all around the
+worst, the unworthiest, the most rebellious in the far-off land, and
+'desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from
+his iniquity and live.'
+
+And it is you, _you_, whom He wants back; you whom He would fain rescue
+from your aversion to good and your carelessness of Him. It is you whom
+He seeks, according to the great saying of the Master, 'the Father
+seeketh' for worshippers in spirit and in truth.
+
+III. Note the formidable obstacles to the restoration of the banished.
+
+The words 'banished' and 'expelled' in our text are in the original the
+same; and the force of the whole would be better expressed if the same
+English word was employed as the equivalent of both. We should then see
+more clearly than the variation of rendering in our text enables us to
+see, that the being 'expelled' is no further stage which God devises
+means to prevent, but that what is meant is that He provides methods by
+which the banished should not be banished--that is, should be restored
+to Himself.
+
+Now, note that the language of this 'wise woman,' unconsciously to
+herself, confesses that the parallel that she was trying to draw did
+not go on all fours; for what she was asking the king to do was simply,
+by an arbitrary act, to sweep aside law and to remit penalty. She
+instinctively feels that that is not what can be done by God, and so
+she says that He 'devises means' by which He can restore His banished.
+
+That is to say, forgiveness and the obliteration of the consequences of
+a man's sin, and his restoration to the blessed nearness to God, which
+is life, are by no means such easy and simple matters as people
+sometimes suppose them to be. The whole drift of popular thinking
+to-day goes in the direction of a very superficial and easy gospel,
+which merely says, 'Oh, of course, of course God forgives! Is not God
+Love? Is not God our Father? What more do you want than that?' Ah! you
+want a great deal more than that, my friends. Let me press upon you two
+or three plain considerations. There are formidable obstacles in the
+way of divine forgiveness.
+
+If there are to be any pardon and restoration at all, they must be such
+as will leave untouched the sovereign majesty of God's law, and,
+untampered with, the eternal gulf between good and evil. That easygoing
+gospel which says, 'God will pardon, of course!' sounds very charitable
+and very catholic, but at bottom it is very cruel. For it shakes the
+very foundations on which the government of God must repose. God's law
+is the manifestation of God's character; and that is no flexible thing
+which can be bent about at the bidding of a weak good-nature. I believe
+that men are right in holding that certainly God must pardon, but I
+believe that they are fatally wrong in not recognising this--that the
+only kind of forgiveness which is possible for Him to bestow is one in
+which there shall be no tampering with the tremendous sanctions of His
+awful law; and no tendency to teach that it matters little whether a
+man is good or bad. The pardon, which many of us seem to think is quite
+sufficient, is a pardon that is nothing more noble than good-natured
+winking at transgression. And oh! if this be all that men have to lean
+on, they are leaning on a broken reed. The motto on the blue cover of
+the _Edinburgh Review_, for over a hundred years now, is true: 'The
+judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted.' David struck a fatal
+blow at the prestige of his own rule, when he weakly let his son off
+from penalty. And, if it were possible to imagine such a thing, God
+Himself would strike as fatal a blow at the justice and judgment which
+are the foundations of His throne, if His forgiveness was such as to be
+capable of being confounded with love which was too weakly indulgent to
+be righteous.
+
+Further, if there are to be forgiveness and restoration at all, they
+must be such as will turn away the heart of the pardoned man from his
+evil. The very story before us shows that it is not every kind of
+pardon which makes a man better. The scapegrace Absalom came back
+unsoftened, without one touch of gratitude to his father in his base
+heart, without the least gleam of a better nature dawning upon him, and
+went flaunting about the court until his viciousness culminated in his
+unnatural rebellion. That is to say, there is a forgiveness which
+nourishes the seeds of the crimes that it pardons. We have only to look
+into our own hearts, and we have only to look at the sort of people
+round us, to be very sure that, unless the forgiveness that is granted
+us from the heavens has in it an element which will avert our wills and
+desires from evil, the pardon will be very soon needed again, for the
+evil will very soon be done again.
+
+If there are to be forgiveness and restoration at all, they must come
+in such a fashion as that there shall be no doubt whatsoever of their
+reality and power. The vague kind of trust in a doubtful mercy, about
+which I have been speaking, may do all very well for people that have
+never probed the depths of their own hearts. Superficial notions of our
+sin, which so many of us have, are contented with superficial remedies
+for it. But let a man get a glimpse of his own real self, and I think
+that he will wish for something a great deal more solid to grip hold
+of, than nebulous talk of the kind that I have been describing. If once
+we feel ourselves to be struggling in the black flood of that awful
+river, we shall want a firmer hold upon the bank than is given to us by
+some rootless tree or other. We must clutch something that will stand a
+pull, if we are to be drawn from the muddy waters.
+
+People say to us, 'Oh, God will forgive, of course!' Does this world
+look like a place where forgiveness is such an easy thing? Is there
+anything more certain than that consequences are inevitable when deeds
+have been done, and 'that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also
+reap' and whatsoever he brews that shall he also drink? And is it into
+a grim, stern world of retribution like this that people will come,
+with their smiling, sunny gospel of a matter-of-course forgiveness,
+upon very easy terms of a slight penitence?
+
+Brethren, God has to 'devise means,' which is a strong way of saying,
+in analogy to the limitations of humanity, that He cannot, by an
+arbitrary act of His will, pardon a sinful man. His eternal nature
+forbids it. His established law forbids it. The fabric of His universe
+forbids it. The good of men forbids it. The problem is insoluble by
+human thought. The love of God is like some great river that pours its
+waters down its channel, and is stayed by a black dam across its
+course, along which it feels for any cranny through which it may pour
+itself. We could never save ourselves, but
+
+          'He that might the vengeance best have took,
+           Found out the remedy.'
+
+IV. And so the last word that I have to say is to note the triumphant,
+divine solution of these difficulties.
+
+The work of Jesus Christ, and the work of Jesus Christ alone, meets all
+the requirements. It vindicates the majesty of law, it deepens the gulf
+between righteousness and sin. Where is there such a demonstration of
+the awful truth that 'the wages of sin is death' as on that Cross on
+which the Son of God died for us and for all 'His banished ones'? Where
+is there such a demonstration of the fixedness of the divine law as in
+that death to which the Son of God submitted Himself for us all? Where
+do we learn the hideousness of sin, the endless antagonism between God
+and it, and the fatal consequences of it, as we learn them in the
+sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour? Where do we find the misery and
+desolation of banishment from God so tragically uttered as in that cry
+which rent the darkness of eclipse,' My God! My God! why hast Thou
+forsaken Me?'
+
+That work of Christ's is the only way by which it is made absolutely
+certain that sins forgiven shall be sins abhorred; and that a man once
+restored shall cleave to his Restorer as to his Life. That work is the
+only way by which a man can be absolutely certain that there is
+forgiveness, in spite of all the accusations of his own conscience; in
+spite of all the inexorable working out of penalties in the system of
+the world which seems to contradict the fond belief; in spite of all
+that a foreboding gaze tells, or ought to tell, of a judgment that is
+to follow.
+
+Brethren, God has devised a means. None else could have done so. I
+beseech you, realise these facts that I have been trying to bring
+before you, and the considerations that I have based upon them, so far
+as they commend themselves to your hearts and consciences; and do not
+be content with acquiescing in them, but act upon them. We are all
+exiles from God, unless we have been 'brought nigh by the blood of
+Christ.' In Him, and in Him alone, can God restore His banished ones.
+In Him, and in Him alone, can we find a pardon which cleanses the
+heart, and ensures the removal of the sin which it forgives. In Him,
+and in Him alone, can we find, not a peradventure, not a subjective
+certainty, but an external fact which proclaims that verily there is
+forgiveness for us all. I pray you, dear friends, do not be content
+with that half-truth, which is ever the most dangerous lie, of divine
+pardon apart from Jesus Christ. Lay your sins upon His head, and your
+hand in the hand of the Elder Brother, who has come to the far-off land
+to seek us, and He will lead you back to the Father's house and the
+Father's heart, and you will be 'no more strangers and foreigners, but
+fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God.'
+
+
+
+
+PARDONED SIN PUNISHED
+
+'And It came to pass after this, that Absalom prepared him chariots and
+horses, and fifty men to run before him. 2. And Absalom rose up early,
+and stood beside the way of the gate: and it was so, that when any man
+that had a controversy came to the king for judgment, then Absalom
+called unto him, and said, Of what city art thou? And he said, Thy
+servant is of one of the tribes of Israel. 3. And Absalom said unto
+him. See, thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed
+of the king to hear thee. 4. Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made
+judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might
+come unto me, and I would do him justice! 5. And it was so, that when
+any man came nigh to him to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand,
+and took him, and kissed him. 6. And on this manner did Absalom to all
+Israel that came to the king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts
+of the men of Israel. 7. And it came to pass after forty years, that
+Absalom said unto the king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow,
+which I have vowed unto the Lord, in Hebron. 8. For thy servant vowed a
+vow while I abode at Geshur in Syria, saying, If the Lord shall bring
+me again indeed to Jerusalem, then I will serve the Lord. 9. And the
+king said unto him, Go in peace. So he arose, and went to Hebron. 10.
+But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, As
+soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall say, Absalom
+reigneth in Hebron. 11. And with Absalom went two hundred men out of
+Jerusalem, that were called; and they went in their simplicity, and
+they knew not any thing. 12. And Absalom sent for Ahithophel the
+Gilonite, David's counsellor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he
+offered sacrifices. And the conspiracy was strong; for the people
+increased continually with Absalom.'--2 SAMUEL xv. 1-12.
+
+
+There was little brightness in David's life after his great sin. Nathan
+had told him, even while announcing his forgiveness, that the sword
+should never depart from his house; and this revolt of Absalom's may be
+directly traced to his father's disgraceful crime. The solemn lesson
+that pardoned sin works out its consequences, so that 'whatsoever a man
+soweth, that shall he also reap,' is taught by it. The portion of the
+story with which we are concerned has two stages,--the slow hatching of
+the plot, and its final outburst.
+
+I. Verses 1 to 6 give us the preparation of the mine. It takes four
+years, during which Absalom plays all the tricks usual to aspirants for
+the most sweet voices of the multitude. He seems to have been but a
+poor creature; but it does not take much brain to do a great deal of
+mischief. He was vain, headstrong, with a dash of craft and a large
+amount of ambition. He had no love for his father, and no ballast of
+high principle, to say nothing of religion. He was a spoiled child
+grown to be a man, with a child's petulance and unreason, but a man's
+passions. He loved his unfortunate sister, but it was as much wounded
+honour as love which led him to the murder of his elder brother Amnon.
+That crime cleared his way to the throne; and David's half-and-half
+treatment of him after it, neither sternly punishing nor freely
+pardoning, set the son against the father, and left a sense of injury.
+So he became a rebel.
+
+The story tells very vividly how he adopted the familiar tactics of
+pretenders. How old, and yet how modern, it reads! We who live in a
+country where everybody is an 'elector' of some sort, and candidates
+are plentiful, see the same things going on, in a little different
+dress, before our eyes. Absalom begins operations by dazzling people
+with ostentatious splendour. In better days Samuel had trudged on foot,
+driving a heifer before him, to anoint his father; and royalty had
+retained a noble simplicity in the hands of Saul and David. But 'plain
+living and high thinking' did not suit Absalom; and he had gauged the
+popular taste accurately enough in setting up his chariot with its
+fifty runners. That was a show something like a king, and, no doubt,
+much more approved than David's simplicity. But it was an evil omen to
+any one who looked below the surface. When luxury grows, devotion
+languishes. The senseless ostentation which creeps into the families of
+good men, and is sustained by their weak compliance with their spoiled
+children's wishes, does a world of harm. We in Lancashire have a
+proverb, 'Clogs, carriage, clogs,' which puts into three words the
+history of three generations, and is verified over and over again.
+
+How well Absalom has learned the arts of the office-seeker! Along with
+his handsome equipage he shows admirable devotion to the interests of
+his 'constituents.' He is early at the gate, so great is his appetite
+for work; he is accessible to everybody; he flatters each with the
+assurance that his case is clear; he gently drops hints of sad
+negligence in high quarters, which he could so soon set right, if only
+he were in power; and he will not have the respectful salutation of
+inferiors, but grasps every hard hand, and kisses each tanned cheek,
+with an affectation of equality very soothing to the dupes.
+'Electioneering' is much the same all the world over; and Absalom has a
+good many imitators nearer home.
+
+There was, no doubt, truth in the charge he made against David of
+negligence in his judicial and other duties. Ever since his great sin,
+the king seems to have been stunned into inaction. The heavy sense of
+demerit had taken the buoyancy out of him, and, though forgiven, he
+could never regain the elastic energy of purer days. The psalms which
+possibly belong to this period show a singular passivity. If we suppose
+that he was much in the seclusion of his palace, a heavily-burdened and
+spirit-broken man, we can understand how his condition tempted his
+heartless, dashing son to grasp at the reins which seemed to be
+dropping from his slack hands, and how his passivity gave opportunity
+for Absalom's carrying on his schemes undisturbed, and a colour of
+reasonableness to his charges. For four years this went on unchecked,
+and apparently unsuspected by the king, who must have been much
+withdrawn from public life not to have taken alarm. Nothing takes the
+spring out of a man like the humiliating sense of sin. The whole tone
+of David's conduct throughout the revolt is, 'I deserve it all. Let
+them smite, for God hath bidden them.' To this resourceless,
+unresisting submission to his enemies, sin had brought the daring
+soldier. It is not old age that has broken his courage and spirit, but
+the consciousness of his foul guilt, which weighs on him all the more
+heavily because he knows that it is pardoned.
+
+II. The second part of our subject tells of the explosion of the
+long-prepared mine. It was necessary to hoist the flag of revolt
+elsewhere than in Jerusalem, and some skill is shown in choosing
+Hebron, which had been the capital before the capture of the Jebusite
+city, and in which there would be natural jealousy of the new
+metropolis. The pretext of the sacrifice at Hebron, in pursuance of a
+vow made by Absalom in his exile, was meant to touch David's heart in
+two ways,--by appealing to his devotional feelings, and by presenting a
+pathetic picture of his suffering and devout son vowing in the land
+where his father's wrath had driven him. It is not the first time that
+religion has been made the stalking-horse for criminal ambition, nor is
+it the last. Politicians are but too apt to use it as a cloak for their
+personal ends. Absalom talking about his vow is a spectacle that might
+have made the most unsuspecting sure that there was something in the
+wind. Such a use of religious observances shows more than anything else
+could do, the utter irreligion of the man who can make it. A son
+rebelling against his father is an ugly sight, but rebellion disguised
+as religion adds to the ugliness. David suspects nothing; or, if he
+does, is too broken to resist, and, perhaps glad at any sign of grace
+in his son, or pleased to gratify any of his wishes, sends him away
+with a benediction. What a parting,--the last, though neither knew it!
+
+The plot had spread widely in four years, and messengers had been sent
+through all Israel to summon its adherents to Hebron. If David had been
+as popular as in his early days, it would have been impossible for such
+a widely spread conspiracy to have come so near a head without some
+faithful soul having been found to tell him of it. But obviously there
+was much smouldering discontent, arising, no doubt, from such causes as
+the pressure of taxation, the gloom that hung over the king, the
+partial paralysis of justice, the transference of the capital, the
+weight of wars, and, at lowest, the craving for something new. Few
+reigns or lives set in unclouded brightness. The western horizon is
+often filled with a bank of blackness. Strangely enough, Absalom
+invited two hundred men to accompany him, who were ignorant of the
+plot. That looks as if its strength was outside Jerusalem, as was
+natural. These innocents were sufficiently associated with Absalom to
+be asked to accompany him, and, no doubt, he expected to secure their
+complicity when he got them away. Unsuspecting people are the best
+tools of knaves. It is better not to be on friendly terms with Absalom,
+if we would be true to David. The last piece of preparation recorded is
+the summoning of Abithophel to come and be the brain of the plot. He
+had been David's wisest counsellor, and is probably the 'familiar
+friend, in whom I trusted,' whose defection the Psalmist mourns so
+bitterly, and whose treachery was a marvellous foreshadowing of the
+traitor who dipped in the dish with David's Lord. Note that he had
+already withdrawn from Jerusalem to his own city, from which he came at
+once to Hebron. Absalom could flatter and play the well-worn tricks of
+a pretender, but a subtler, cooler head was wanted now, and the
+treacherous son was backed up by the traitor friend. 'And the
+conspiracy was strong; for the people increased continually with
+Absalom.' What a tragical issue to the joyous loyalty of early days!
+What a strange madness must have laid hold on the nation to have led
+them to prefer such a piece of petulance and vanity to their
+hero-poet-king! What did it mean?
+
+The answer is not far to seek, and it is the great lesson of this
+story. David's sin was truly repented and freely forgiven, but not left
+unpunished. God is too loving to shield men from the natural
+consequences, in the physical and social world, of their sins. The
+penitent drunkard's hand shakes, and his constitution is not renewed,
+though his spirit is. Only, punishment is changed into discipline, when
+the heart rests in the assurance of pardon, and is accepted as a token
+of a Father's love. In every way God made of the vice the whip to
+scourge the sinner, and David, like us all, had to drink as he had
+brewed, though he was forgiven the sin.
+
+
+
+
+A LOYAL VOW
+
+'And the king's servants said unto the king, Behold, thy servants are
+ready to do whatsoever my lord the king shall appoint.'--2 SAMUEL xv.
+15.
+
+
+We stand here at the darkest hour of King David's life. Bowed down by
+the consciousness of his past sin, and recognising in the rebellion of
+his favourite son the divine chastisement, his early courage and
+buoyant daring seem to have ebbed from him wholly. He is forsaken by
+the mass of his subjects, he is preparing to abandon Jerusalem, and to
+flee as an exile, as he says himself so pathetically, 'whither I may.'
+And at that moment of deepest depression there comes one little gleam
+of consolation and one piece of chivalrous devotion which brightens the
+whole story. His special retainers, apparently a bodyguard mostly of
+foreigners, rally round him. Mostly foreigners, I say, for these hard
+words 'Cherethites and Pelethites' most probably mean inhabitants of
+the island of Crete, and Philistines. And as to six hundred of them, at
+all events, there can be no doubt, for they are expressly said to be
+'men of Gath who followed after him.' At all events, there was a little
+nucleus of men, not his own subjects, who determined to share his fate,
+whatever it was. And the words of my text are their words, 'Behold, thy
+servants are ready to do whatsoever the king shall appoint.' Or, as the
+word stands in the original, in an abrupt, half-finished sentence, even
+more pathetic, 'According to all that my lord the king shall appoint,
+behold thy servants.' These men were foreigners, not bound to render
+obedience to the king, but giving it because their hearts were touched.
+They were loyal amongst rebels, so many Abdiels, 'among the faithless,
+faithful only' these, and they avowed their determination to cleave to
+the sovereign of their choice at a time when his back was at the wall,
+and their determination to follow him meant only peril and privation.
+They were filled with a passionate personal attachment to the king, and
+that personal attachment was ready to manifest itself as a willing
+sacrifice, as such love always is ready.
+
+Now surely in all this there is a lesson for us. The heroism of men
+towards a man, the uncalculating devotion and magnificent
+self-sacrifice of which the poorest human soul is capable when touched
+to fine issues by some heart-love, are surely not all meant to be
+lavished on fellow-creatures, who, alas! generally receive the most of
+them. But these rude Philistines and Gittites, Goliath's
+fellow-townsmen, may preach to us Christians a lesson. Why should not
+we say as they said, 'According to all that my Lord the King shall
+appoint, behold Thy servants'?
+
+I. So then, first, our King's will ought to be our will.
+
+The obedience that is promised in these words is not the obedience of
+action only, but it is the bowing down of the heart. And for us
+Christian men there is neither peace nor nobleness in our lives, except
+in the measure in which the will of Jesus Christ and our wills are
+accurately conterminous and identical. Wheresoever the two coincide,
+there is strength for us; wheresoever they diverge, there are weakness
+and certain ruin. These two wills ought to be like two of Euclid's
+triangles, or other geometric figures, the one laid upon the other, and
+each line and curve and angle accurately corresponding and coinciding,
+so that the two cover precisely the same ground.
+
+Christ's will my will; that is religion. And you and I are Christians
+just in the measure in which that coincidence of wills is true about
+us, and not one hair's-breadth further, for all our professions.
+Wheresoever my will diverges from Christ, in that particular I am not
+His man; and 'Christian' simply means 'Christ's man.' I belong to Him
+when I think as He does, love as He does, will as He does, accept His
+commandment as the law of my life, His pattern as my example, His
+providence as sufficient and as good. Where we thus yield ourselves to
+Him, there we are strong, and so far, and only so far, have we a right
+to say that we are the King's servants at all.
+
+This absolute submission we do render to one another when our hearts
+are touched; and the fact that men can and do give it--husbands to
+wives, wives to husbands, children to parents, friends to one
+another--the fact that there is the capacity for that giving of one's
+self away, lodged deep in our nature, tells us what we are meant to do
+with it. 'Whose image and superscription hath it?' Was it meant that we
+should thus live in slavish submission even to the dearest loved ones?
+Surely not; for that is the destruction of individuality. No, but it
+was meant that we should lay our wills down at Christ's feet and say,
+'Not my will, but Thine,' and Thine mine because I have made it mine by
+love. Then there is rest, and then we have solved the secret of the
+world, and are what our Lord would have us to be. Oh! do not our
+relations to our dear ones, with all that infinite power of
+self-sacrifice that our love brings with it, rebuke the partial extent
+of our surrender to our Master? and may we not be ashamed when we
+contrast the joy that we feel in giving up to those that we love, and
+the reluctance with which, too often, we obey the Master's
+commandments, and the long years of repining and murmuring before we
+'submit,' as we call it, which too often means accept His providences
+as inevitable, though not as welcome? To be 'ready to do whatsoever my
+Lord the King shall choose,' believing that His choice is wisdom and
+kindness for us, and His commandments a blessing and a gift, is the
+attitude and temper for us all. Is there any other attitude to Jesus
+Christ which corresponds to our relation to Him, to what He has done
+for us, to what we say that He is to us? He has the right to us,
+because He has given us Himself. He asks nothing from us but that of
+which He has already set us the example. 'He gave Himself for us, as
+the Apostle says with emphasis that is often unnoticed. 'He _gave
+Himself_ for us' that He might '_purchase us_ for _Himself_.' He who
+would possess another must impart Himself, and love, that yields a
+whole man to the loved one, only springs when the loved one mutually
+yields her whole heart. The King does not command from above, but He
+comes down amongst us, and He says, 'I gave Myself for thee; what
+givest thou to Me?' O brethren, let us answer with that brave,
+chivalrous old Gittite:--'As the Lord liveth, and as my Lord the King
+liveth, surely in what place my Lord the King shall be, whether in
+death or life, even there also will Thy servant be.'
+
+II. Then notice again, still sticking to our story, that this yielding
+up of will, if it is worth anything, will become the more intense and
+fervent when surrounded by rebels.
+
+All Israel, with that poor feather-headed, vain Absalom, were on the
+one side, and David and these foreigners were on the other. Years of
+quiet uneventful life would never have brought out such magnificent
+heroism of devotion and self-surrender, as was crowded into that one
+moment of loyalty asserted in the face of triumphant rebels and
+traitors.
+
+In like manner, the more Christ's reign is set at nought by the people
+about us, and the less they recognise the blessedness and the duty of
+submission to Him, the more strong and unmistakable should be the
+utterance of our loyalty. We should grasp His hand tighter by reason of
+the storms that may rage round about us. And if we dwell amongst those
+who, in any measure, deny or neglect His merciful dominion, let us see
+to it that we all the more hoist our colours at our doors, and stand by
+them when they are hoisted, that nobody may mistake under which King we
+serve.
+
+You in your places of business, you young men in your warehouses, and
+all of us in our several spheres, have to come across many people who
+have no share in our loyalty and offer no allegiance to our King. That
+is the reason for intenser loyalty on our part. Never you mind what
+others say or do; do not take your orders from them. Better be with the
+handful that rally round David than with the crowds that run after
+Absalom! Better be amongst the few that are faithful than amongst the
+multitudes that depart! Dare to be singular, if it comes to that; and
+at all events remember that your relationship to your Master is a thing
+that concerns Him and you chiefly, and that you are not to take the
+pattern of your loyalty, nor the orders for your lives, from any lips
+but His own.
+
+Hush all other voices that would command, and hush them that you may
+listen to Him. It is always difficult enough for Christian men to
+ascertain, in perplexed circumstances, the clear path of duty; but it
+is impossible if, along with His voice, we let the buzz of the crowd be
+audible in our ears. There is only one way by which we can hear what
+our 'Lord the King appoints,' and that is by making a great stillness
+in our souls, and neither letting our own yelping inclinations give
+tongue, nor the babble of men round us, and their notions of life and
+of what is right, have influence upon us, but waiting to hear what God
+the Lord, speaking in Christ the King, has to say to us. And, remember,
+the more rebels there are, the more need for us to be conspicuously
+loyal to our King.
+
+III. Again, this complete yielding of ourselves in practical obedience
+and heart submission to command merits and providences is to be
+maintained, whatsoever it may lead to in the way of privation and
+difficulty.
+
+It was no holiday vow, made upon some parade day, that these brave
+foreigners were bringing to their king now, but it meant 'we are ready
+to suffer, starve, fight, lose everything, die if need be, to be true
+to thee.' And the very thought of the impending danger elevated the
+men's consciousness, and made heroes out of very common people. And
+perhaps that is the best effect of our difficulties and sorrows, that
+they strike fire sometimes (if they are rightly accepted and used) out
+of what seems to be only dead, lumpish matter, and many a Christian
+shoots up into a stature of greatness and nobleness in his sorrow, who
+was but a very commonplace creature when all things went well with him.
+That is the kind of obedience that Christ delights to accept, obedience
+that is ready for anything, and does not wait to make sure that there
+is no danger of forfeiting a whole skin and a quiet life, before it
+vows itself to service. Are we only to be 'fair-weather Christians,' or
+are we to be prepared for all the trials and sufferings that may befall
+us? A Christianity that does not bring any worldly penalties along with
+it is not worth much. Christians of Christ's pattern have generally to
+give up something for their Christianity. They give up nothing that it
+is not gain to lose, nothing that they are not better without, but they
+have to surrender much in which other people find great enjoyment, and
+which their weaker selves would delight in too. Are you ready, my
+brother, for that? 'Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving
+against sin.' The old days of heroism and martyrdom are done with, as
+far as we are concerned, whatever may lie in the future. But do we make
+willingly and gladly the surrenders and the self-abnegations that are
+demanded by our loyalty to our Master? Have we ever learned to say
+about any line of action that our poor, lower nature grasps at, and our
+higher, enlightened by communion with Jesus Christ, forbids: 'So did
+not I because of the fear of the Lord'? We can talk about following
+Christ's footsteps; do you think that if we had stood where these rude
+soldiers stood, or had anything as dark in prospect, as the price of
+our faithfulness to our King, as they had as the price of faithfulness
+to theirs, there would have rung from our lips the utterly sincere vow
+that sprang joyously from theirs: 'Behold Thy servants, ready to do
+whatever our Lord the King shall appoint'?
+
+IV. A final thought, which travels beyond my text, is that such
+thorough-going obedience, irrespective of consequences, is the secret
+of all blessedness.
+
+'Great peace have they which love Thy law': the peace of conscience;
+the peace of ceasing from that which is our worst enemy, self-will; the
+peace of self-surrender; the peace of feeling ''Tis His to command;
+'tis mine to obey'; the peace of casting the whole settling of the
+campaign on the King's shoulders, and of finding our duty restricted to
+tramping along with cheery heart on the path that He has appointed.
+That is worth having. Oh! if we could cease from self and lay our wills
+down before Him, then we should be quiet. The tranquil heart is the
+heart which has the law of Christ within it, and the true delight of
+life belongs to those who truly say, 'I delight to do Thy will.' So
+yielding, so obeying, so submitting, so surrendering one's self, life
+becomes quiet, and strong, and sweet. And, if I might so turn the story
+that we have been considering, the faithful soldiers who have been true
+to the King when His throne was contested, will march with laurelled
+heads in His triumphant train when He comes back after His final and
+complete victory, and reign with Him in the true City of Peace, where
+His will shall be perfectly done by loving hearts, and all His servants
+shall be kings.
+
+
+
+
+ITTAI OF GATH
+
+'And Ittai answered the king, and said, As the Lord liveth, and as my
+lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be,
+whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be.'--2
+SAMUEL xv. 21.
+
+
+It was the darkest hour in David's life. No more pathetic page is found
+in the Old Testament than that which tells the story of his flight
+before Absalom. He is crushed by the consciousness that his punishment
+is deserved--the bitter fruit of the sin that filled all his later life
+with darkness. His courage and his buoyancy have left him. He has no
+spirit to make a stand or strike a blow. If Shimei runs along the
+hillside abreast of him, shrieking curses as he goes, all he says is:
+'Let him curse; for the Lord hath bidden him.'
+
+
+So, heartbroken and spiritless, he leaves Jerusalem. And as soon as he
+has got clear of the city he calls a halt, in order that he may muster
+his followers and see on whom he may depend. Foremost among the little
+band come six hundred men from Gath--Philistines--from Goliath's city.
+These men, singularly enough, the king had chosen as his bodyguard;
+perhaps he was not altogether sure of the loyalty of his own subjects,
+and possibly felt safer with foreign mercenaries, who could have no
+secret leanings to the deposed house of Saul. Be that as it may, the
+narrative tells us that these men had 'come after him from Gath.' He
+had been there twice in the old days, in his flight from Saul, and the
+second visit had extended over something more than a year. Probably
+during that period his personal attraction, and his reputation as a
+brilliant leader, had led these rough soldiers to attach themselves to
+his service, and to be ready to forsake home and kindred in order to
+fight beside him.
+
+At all events here they are, 'faithful among the faithless,' as foreign
+soldiers surrounding a king often are--notably, for instance, the Swiss
+guard in the French Revolution. Their strong arms might have been of
+great use to David, but his generosity cannot think of involving them
+in his fall, and so he says to them: 'I am not going to fight; I have
+no plan. I am going where I can. You go back and "worship the rising
+sun." Absalom will take you and be glad of your help. And as for me, I
+thank you for your past loyalty. Mercy and peace be with you!'
+
+It is a beautiful nature that in the depth of sorrow shrinks from
+dragging other people down with itself. Generosity breeds generosity,
+and this Philistine captain breaks out into a burst of passionate
+devotion, garnished, in soldier fashion, with an unnecessary oath or
+two, but ringing very sincere and meaning a great deal. As for himself
+and his men, they have chosen their side. Whoever goes, they stay.
+Whatever befalls, they stick by David; and if the worst come to the
+worst they can all die together, and their corpses lie in firm ranks
+round about their dead king. David's heart is touched and warmed by
+their outspoken loyalty; he yields and accepts their service. Ittai and
+his noble six hundred tramp on, out of our sight, and all their
+households behind them. Now what is there in all that, to make a sermon
+out of?
+
+I. First, look at the picture of that Philistine soldier, as teaching
+us what grand passionate self-sacrifice may be evolved out of the
+roughest natures.
+
+Analyse his words, and do you not hear, ringing in them, three things,
+which are the seed of all nobility and splendour in human character?
+First, a passionate personal attachment; then, that love issuing, as
+such love always does, in willing sacrifice that recks not for a moment
+of personal consequences; that is ready to accept anything for itself
+if it can serve the object of its devotion, and will count life well
+expended if it is flung away in such a service. And we see, lastly, in
+these words a supreme restful delight in the presence of him whom the
+heart loves. For Ittai and his men, the one thing needful was to be
+beside him in whose eye they had lived, from whose presence they had
+caught inspiration; their trusted leader, before whom their souls bowed
+down. So then this vehement speech is the pure language of love.
+
+Now these three things,--a passionate personal attachment, issuing in
+spontaneous heroism of self-abandonment, and in supreme satisfaction in
+the beloved presence,--may spring up in the rudest, roughest nature. A
+Philistine soldier was not a very likely man in whom to find refined
+and lofty emotion. He was hard by nature, hardened by his rough trade;
+and unconscious that he was doing anything at all heroic or great.
+Something had smitten this rock, and out of it there came the pure
+refreshing stream. And so I say to you, the weakest and the lowest, the
+roughest and the hardest, the most selfishly absorbed man and woman
+among us, has lying in him and her dormant capacities for flaming up
+into such a splendour of devotion and magnificence of heroic
+self-sacrifice as is represented in these words of my text. A mother
+will do it for her child, and never think that she has done anything
+extraordinary; husbands will do such things for wives; wives for
+husbands; friends and lovers for one another. All who know the
+sweetness and power of the bond of affection know that there is nothing
+more gladsome than to fling oneself away for the sake of those whom we
+love. And the capacity for such love and sacrifice lies in all of us.
+Prosaic, commonplace people as we are, with no great field on which to
+work out our heroisms; yet we have it in us to love and give ourselves
+away thus, if once the heart be stirred.
+
+And lastly, this capacity which lies dormant in all of us, if once it
+is roused to action, will make a man blessed and dignified as nothing
+else will. The joy of unselfish love is the purest joy that man can
+taste; the joy of perfect self-sacrifice is the highest joy that
+humanity can possess, and they lie open for us all.
+
+And wherever, in some humble measure, these emotions of which I have
+been speaking are realised, there you see weakness springing up into
+strength, and the ignoble into loftiness. Astronomers tell us that
+sometimes a star that has shone inconspicuous, and stood low down in
+their catalogues as of fifth or sixth magnitude, will all at once flame
+out, having kindled and caught fire somehow, and will blaze in the
+heavens, outshining Jupiter and Venus. And so some poor, vulgar, narrow
+nature, touched by this Promethean fire of pure love that leads to
+perfect sacrifice, will 'flame in the forehead of the morning sky' an
+undying splendour, and a light for evermore.
+
+Brethren, my appeal to you is a very plain and simple one, founded on
+these facts:--You all have that capacity in you, and you all are
+responsible for the use of it. What have you done with it? Is there any
+person or thing in this world that has ever been able to lift you up
+out of your miserable selves? Is there any magnet that has proved
+strong enough to raise you from the low levels along which your life
+creeps? Have you ever known the thrill of resolving to become the
+bondservant and the slave of some great cause not your own? Or are you,
+as so many of you are, like spiders living in the midst of your web,
+mainly intent upon what you can catch by it? You have these capacities
+slumbering in you. Have you ever set a light to that inert mass of
+enthusiasm that lies within you? Have you ever woke up the sleeper?
+Look at this rough soldier of my text, and learn from him the lesson
+that there is nothing that so ennobles and dignifies a commonplace
+nature as enthusiasm for a great cause, or self-sacrificing love for a
+worthy heart.
+
+II. The second remark which I make is this:--These possibilities of
+love and sacrifice point plainly to God in Christ as their true object.
+
+'Whose image and superscription hath it?' said Christ, looking at the
+Roman _denarius_ that they brought and laid on His palm. If the
+Emperor's head is on it, why, then, he has a right to it as tribute.
+And then He went on to say, 'Render, therefore, unto Caesar the things
+which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.' So there
+are things that have God's image and superscription stamped on them,
+and such are our hearts, our whole constitution and nature. As plainly
+as the penny had the head of Tiberius on it, and therefore proclaimed
+that he was Emperor where it was current, so plainly does every soul
+carry in the image of God the witness that He is its owner and that it
+should be rendered in tribute to Him.
+
+And amongst all these marks of a divine possession and a divine
+destination printed upon human nature, it seems to me that none is
+plainer than this fact, that we can all of us thus give ourselves away
+in the abandonment of a profound and all-surrendering love. That
+capacity unmistakably proclaims that it is destined to be directed
+towards God and to find its rest in Him. As distinctly as some silver
+cup, with its owner's initials and arms engraved upon it, declares
+itself to be 'meet for the master's use,' so distinctly does your soul,
+by reason of this capacity, proclaim that it is meant to be turned to
+Him in whom alone all love can find its perfect satisfaction; for whom
+alone it is supremely blessed and great to lose life itself; and who
+only has authority over human spirits.
+
+We are made with hearts that need to rest upon an absolute love; we are
+made with understandings that need to grasp a pure, a perfect, and, as
+I believe, paradoxical though it may sound, a personal Truth. We are
+made with wills that crave for an absolute authoritative command, and
+we are made with a moral nature that needs a perfect holiness. And we
+need all that love, truth, authority, purity, to be gathered into one,
+for our misery is that, when we set out to look for treasures, we have
+to go into many lands and to many merchants, to buy many goodly pearls.
+But we need One of great price, in which all our wealth may be
+invested. We need that One to be an undying and perpetual possession.
+There is One to whom our love can ever cleave, and fear none of the
+sorrows or imperfections that make earthward-turned love a rose with
+many a thorn, One for whom it is pure gain to lose ourselves, One who
+is plainly the only worthy recipient of the whole love and
+self-surrender of the heart.
+
+That One is God, revealed and brought near to us in Jesus Christ. In
+that great Saviour we have a love at once divine and human, we have the
+great transcendent instance of love leading to sacrifice. On that love
+and sacrifice for us Christ builds His claim on us for our hearts, and
+our all. Life alone can communicate life; it is only light that can
+diffuse light. It is only love that can kindle love; it is only
+sacrifice that can inspire sacrifice. And so He comes to us, and asks
+that we should just love Him back again as He has loved us. He first
+gives Himself utterly for and to us, and then asks us to give ourselves
+wholly to Him. He first yields up His own life, and then He says: 'He
+that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.' The object, the true
+object, for all this depth of love which lies slumbering in our hearts,
+is God in Christ, the Christ that died for us.
+
+III. And now, lastly, observe that the terrible misdirection of these
+capacities is the sin and the misery of the world.
+
+I will not say that such emotions, even when expended on creatures, are
+ever wasted. For however unworthy may be the objects on which they are
+lavished, the man himself is the better and the higher for having
+cherished them. The mother, when she forgets self in her child, though
+her love and self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice may, in some
+respects, be called but an animal instinct, is elevated and ennobled by
+the exercise of them. The patriot and the thinker, the philanthropist,
+ay! even--although I take him to be the lowest in the scale--the
+soldier who, in some cause which he thinks to be a good one, and not
+merely in the tigerish madness of the battlefield, throws away his
+life--are lifted in the scale of being by their self-abnegation.
+
+And so I am not going to say that when men love each other passionately
+and deeply, and sacrifice themselves for one another, or for some cause
+or purpose affecting only temporal matters, the precious elixir of love
+is wasted. God forbid! But I do say that all these objects, sweet and
+gracious as some of them are, ennobling and elevating as some of them
+are, if they are taken apart from God, are insufficient to fill your
+hearts: and that if they are slipped in between you and God, as they
+often are, then they bring sin and sorrow.
+
+There is nothing more tragic in this world than the misdirection of
+man's capacity for love and sacrifice. It is like the old story in the
+Book of Daniel, which tells how the heathen monarch made a great feast,
+and when the wine began to inflame the guests, sent for the sacred
+vessels taken from the Temple of Jerusalem, that had been used for
+Jehovah's worship; and (as the narrative says, with a kind of shudder
+at the profanation), 'They brought the golden vessels that were taken
+out of the temple of the House of God, which was at Jerusalem, and the
+king and his princes, his wives and his concubines, drank in them. They
+drank wine and praised the gods.' So this heart of mine, which, as I
+said, has the Master's initials and His arms engraven upon it, in token
+that it is His cup, I too often fill with the poisonous and
+intoxicating draught of earthly pleasure and earthly affections; and as
+I drink it, the madness goes through my veins, and I praise gods of my
+own making instead of Him whom alone I ought to love.
+
+Ah, brethren! we should be our own rebukers in this matter, and the
+heroism of the world should put to shame the cowardice and the
+selfishness of the Church. Contrast the depth of your affection for
+your household with the tepidity of your love for your Saviour.
+Contrast the willingness with which you sacrifice yourself for some
+dear one with the grudgingness with which you yield yourselves to Him.
+Contrast the rest and the sense of satisfaction in the presence of
+those whom you love, and your desolation when they are absent, with the
+indifference whether you have Christ beside you or not. And remember
+that the measure of your power of loving is the measure of your
+obligation to love your Lord; and that if you are all frost to Him and
+all fervour to them, then in a very solemn sense 'a man's foes shall be
+they of his own household.' 'He that loveth father or mother more than
+Me is not worthy of Me.'
+
+And so let me gather all that I have been saying into the one earnest
+beseeching of you that you would bring that power of uncalculating love
+and self-sacrificing affection which is in you, and would fasten it
+where it ought to fix--on Christ who died on the cross for you. Such a
+love will bring blessedness to you. Such a love will ennoble and
+dignify your whole nature, and make you a far greater and fairer man or
+woman than you ever otherwise could be. Like some little bit of black
+carbon put into an electric current, my poor nature will flame into
+beauty and radiance when that spark touches it. So love Him and be at
+peace; give yourselves to Him and He will give you back yourselves,
+ennobled and transfigured by the surrender. Lay yourselves on His
+altar, and that altar will sanctify both the giver and the gift. If you
+can take this rough Philistine soldier's words in their spirit, and in
+a higher sense say, 'Whether I live I live unto the Lord, or whether I
+die I die unto the Lord; living or dying, I am the Lord's,' He will let
+you enlist in His army; and give you for your marching orders this
+command and this hope, 'If any man serve Me let him follow Me; and
+where I am there shall also My servant be.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WAIL OF A BROKEN HEART
+
+'Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself a
+pillar, which is in the king's dale; for he said, I have no son to keep
+my name in remembrance; and he called the pillar after his own name:
+and it is called unto this day, Absalom's Place. 19. Then said Ahimaaz
+the son of Zadok, Let me now run, and bear the king tidings, how that
+the Lord hath avenged him of his enemies. 20. And Joab said unto him.
+Thou shalt not bear tidings this day, but thou shalt bear tidings
+another day; but this day thou shalt bear no tidings, because the
+king's son is dead. 21. Then said Joab to Cushi, Go tell the king what
+thou hast seen. And Cushi bowed himself unto Joab, and ran. 22 Then
+said Ahimaaz the ton of Zadok yet again to Joab, But howsoever, let me,
+I pray thee, also run after Cushi. And Joab said, Wherefore wilt thou
+run, my son, seeing that thou hast no tidings ready? 23. But howsoever,
+said he, let me run. And he said unto him, Run. Then Ahimaaz ran by the
+way of the plain, and overran Cushi. 24. And David sat between the two
+gates: and the watchman went up to the roof over the gate unto the
+wall, and lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold a man running
+alone. 25. And the watchman cried, and told the king. And the king
+said, If he be alone, there is tidings in his mouth. And he came apace,
+and drew near. 26. And the watchman saw another man running: and the
+watchman called unto the porter, and said, Behold another man running
+alone. And the king said, He also bringeth tidings. 27. And the
+watchman said, Me thinketh the running of the foremost is like the
+running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok. And the king said, He is a good
+man, and cometh with good tidings. 28. And Ahimaaz called, and said
+unto the king, All is well. And he fell down to the earth upon his face
+before the king, and said, Blessed be the Lord thy God, which hath
+delivered up the men that lifted up their hand against my lord the
+king. 29. And the king said, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Ahimaaz
+answered, When Joab sent the king's servant, and me thy servant, I saw
+a great tumult, but I knew not what it was. 30. And the king said unto
+him, Turn aside, and stand here. And he turned aside, and stood still.
+31. And, behold, Cushi came; and Cushi said, Tidings, my lord the king:
+for the Lord hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up
+against thee. 32. And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man
+Absalom safe I And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and
+all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is.
+33. And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the
+gate, and wept; and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! My son,
+my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my
+son!--2 SAMUEL xviii. 18-33.
+
+
+The first verse of this passage and the one preceding it give a
+striking contrast between the actual and the designed burial-place of
+Absalom. The great pit among the sombre trees, where his bloody corpse
+was hastily flung, with three darts through his heart, and the rude
+cairn piled over it, were a very different grave from the ostentatious
+tomb 'in the king's dale,' which he had built to keep his memory green.
+This was what all his restless intrigues and unbridled passions and
+dazzling hopes had come to. He wanted to be remembered, and he got his
+wish; but what a remembrance! That gloomy pit preaches anew the vanity
+of 'vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself,' and tells us once more
+that
+
+                   Only the actions of the just
+                   Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'
+
+I. The first picture here shows a glimpse of the battlefield, and
+brings before us three men, each in different ways exhibiting how small
+a thing Absalom's death was to all but the heartbroken father, and each
+going his own road, heedless of what lay below the heap of stones. The
+world goes on all the same, though death is busy, and some
+heart-strings be cracked. The minute details which fill the most part
+of the story, lead up to, and throw into prominence, David's burst of
+agony at the close. The three men, Ahimaaz, Joab, and the Cushite
+(Ethiopian), are types of different kinds of self-engrossment, which is
+little touched by others' sorrows. The first, Ahimaaz, the young priest
+who had already done good service to David as a spy, is full of the
+joyous excitement of victory, and eager to run with what he thinks such
+good tidings. The word in verse 19, 'bear tidings,' always implies good
+news; and the youthful warrior-priest cannot conceive that the death of
+the head of the revolt can darken to the king the joy of victory, He is
+truly loyal, but, in his youthful impetuosity and excitement, cannot
+sympathise with the desolate father, who sits expectant at Mahanaim.
+Right feeling and real affection often fail in sympathy, for want of
+putting oneself in another's place; and, with the best intentions,
+wound where they mean to cheer. A little imagination; guided by
+affection, would have taught Ahimaaz that the messenger who told David
+of Absalom's death would thrust a sharper spear into his heart than
+Joab had driven into Absalom's.
+
+Joab is a very different type of indifference. He is too much
+accustomed to battle to be much flushed with victory, and has killed
+too many men to care much about killing another. He is cool enough to
+measure the full effect of the news on David; and though he clearly
+discerns the sorrow, has not one grain of participation in it. He has
+some liking for Ahimaaz, and so does not wish him to run, but dissuades
+him on the ground (verse 22, Revised Version) that he will win no
+reward. That is the true spirit of the mercenary, who cannot conceive
+of a man taking trouble unless he gets paid for it somehow, and will
+fight and kill, all in the way of business, without the least spark of
+enthusiasm for a cause. Hard stolidity and brutal carelessness shielded
+him from any 'womanish' tenderness. Absalom was dead, and he had killed
+him. It was a good thing, for it had put out the fire of revolt. No
+doubt David would be sorry, but that mattered little. Only it was
+better for the message to go by some one whose fate was of no
+consequence. So he picks out 'the Cushite,' probably an Ethiopian
+slave; and if David in his anguish should harm him, nobody will be hurt
+but a friendless stranger.
+
+The Cushite gets his orders; and he too is, in another fashion,
+careless of their contents and effect. Without a word, he bows himself
+to Joab, and runs, as unconcerned as the paper of a letter that may
+break a heart. Ahimaaz still pleads to go, and, gaining leave, takes
+the road across the Jordan valley, which was probably easier, though
+longer; while the other messenger went by the hills, which was a
+shorter and rougher road.
+
+II. The scene shifts to Mahanaim, where David had found refuge. He can
+scarcely have failed to take an omen from the name, which commemorated
+how another anxious heart had camped there, and been comforted, when it
+saw the vision of the encamping angels above its own feeble, undefended
+tents, and Jacob 'called the name of that place Mahanaim' (that is,
+'Two Camps'). How the change of scene in the narrative helps its
+vividness, and makes us share in the strain of expectancy and the
+tension of watching the approaching messengers! The king, restless for
+news, has come out to the space between the outer and inner gates, and
+planted a lookout on the gate-house roof. The sharp eyes see a solitary
+figure making for the city, across the plain. David recognises that,
+since he is alone, he must be a messenger; and now the question is,
+What has he to tell? We see him coming nearer, and share the suspense.
+Then the second man appears; and clearly something more had happened,
+to require two. What was it? They run fast; but the moments are long
+till they arrive. The watchman recognises Ahimaaz by his style of
+running; and David wistfully tries to forecast his tidings from his
+character. It is a pathetic effort, and reveals how anxiously his heart
+was beating.
+
+As soon as Ahimaaz is within earshot, though panting with running, no
+doubt, he shouts, with what breath is left, the one word, 'Peace!' and
+then, at David's feet, tells the victory, 'Blessed be the Lord thy
+God'; the triumph was Jehovah's gift, and in it He had shown Himself
+David's God, and vindicated His servant's trust. But Ahimaaz is more
+devout and thankful than David. The king has neither praise and
+thankfulness to God nor to man. He has no pleasure in the victory; no
+interest in the details of the fight; no thankfulness for a restored
+kingdom; no word of eulogium for his soldiers; nothing but devouring
+anxiety for his unworthy son. How chilling to Ahimaaz, all flushed with
+eagerness, and proud of victory, and panting with running, and hungry
+for some word of praise, it must have been, to get for sole answer the
+question about Absalom! He shrinks from telling the whole truth, which,
+indeed, the Cushite was officially despatched to tell; but his
+enigmatic story of a great tumult as he left the field, of which he did
+not know the meaning, was meant to prepare for the bitter news. So he
+is bid to stand aside, and no words more vouchsafed to him. A cool
+reception, unworthy of David! As Ahimaaz stood there, neglected, he
+would think that the politic Joab was right after all.
+
+The Cushite must have been close behind him, for he comes up as soon as
+the brief conversation is over. A deeper anxiety must have waited his
+tidings; for he must have something more to tell than victory. His
+first words add nothing to Ahimaaz's information. What, then, had he
+come for? David forebodes evil, and, with the monotony of a man
+absorbed in one anxiety, repeats verbatim his former question. Poor
+king! He more than half knew the answer, before it was given. The
+Cushite with some tenderness veils the fate of Absalom in the wish that
+all the king's enemies may be 'as that young man is.' But the veil was
+thin, and the attempt to console by reminding of the fact that the dead
+man was an enemy as well as a son, was swept away like a straw before
+the father's torrent of grief.
+
+III. The sobs of a broken heart cannot be analysed; and this wail of
+almost inarticulate agony, with its infinitely pathetic reiteration, is
+too sacred for many words. Grief, even if passionate, is not forbidden
+by religion; and David's sensitive poet-nature felt all emotions
+keenly. We are meant to weep; else wherefore is there calamity? But
+there were elements in David's mourning which were not good. It blinded
+him to blessings and to duties. His son was dead; but his rebellion was
+dead with him, and that should have been more present to his mind. His
+soldiers had fought well, and his first task should have been to honour
+and to thank them. He had no right to sink the king in the father, and
+Joab's unfeeling remonstrance, which followed, was wise and true in
+substance, though rough almost to brutality in tone. Sorrow which sees
+none of the blue because of one cloud, however heavy and thunderous, is
+sinful. Sorrow which sits with folded hands, like the sisters of
+Lazarus, and lets duties drift, that it may indulge in the luxury of
+unrestrained tears, is sinful. There is no tone of 'It is the Lord! let
+Him do what seemeth Him good,' in this passionate plaint; and so there
+is no soothing for the grief. The one consolation lies in submission.
+Submissive tears wash the heart clean; rebellious ones blister it.
+
+David's grief was the bitter fruit of his own sin. He had weakly
+indulged Absalom, and had probably spared the rod, in the boy's youth,
+as he certainly spared the sword when Absalom had murdered his brother.
+His own immorality had loosened the bonds of family purity, and made
+him ashamed to punish his children. He had let Absalom flaunt and
+swagger and live in luxury, and put no curb on him; and here was the
+end of his foolish softness. How many fathers and mothers are the
+destroyers of their children to-day in the very same fashion! That
+grave in the wood might teach parents how their fatal fondness may end.
+Children, too, may learn from David's grief what an unworthy son can do
+to stuff his father's pillow with thorns, and to break his heart at
+last.
+
+But there is another side to this grief. It witnesses to the depth and
+self-sacrificing energy of a father's love. The dead son's faults are
+all forgotten and obliterated by death's 'effacing fingers.' The
+headstrong, thankless rebel is, in David's mind, a child again, and the
+happy old days of his innocence and love are all that remain in memory.
+The prodigal is still a son. The father's love is immortal, and cannot
+be turned away by any faults. The father is willing to die for the
+disobedient child. Such purity and depth of affection lives in human
+hearts. So self-forgetting and incapable of being provoked is an
+earthly father's love. May we not see in this disclosure of David's
+paternal love, stripping it of its faults and excesses, some dim shadow
+of the greater love of God for His prodigals,--a love which cannot be
+dammed back or turned away by any sin, and which has found a way to
+fulfil David's impossible wish, in that it has given Jesus Christ to
+die for His rebellious children, and so made them sharers of His own
+kingdom?
+
+
+
+
+BARZILLAI
+
+'And Barzillai said unto the king, How long have I to live, that I
+should go up with the king unto Jerusalem? 35. I am this day fourscore
+years old: and can I discern between good and evil! can thy servant
+taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of
+singing men and singing women? wherefore then should thy servant be yet
+a burden unto my lord the king? 36. Thy servant will go a little way
+over Jordan with the king: and why should the king recompense it me
+with such a reward? 37. 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 behold thy servant Chimham; let him go
+over with my lord the king; and do to him what shall seem good unto
+thee.'-2 SAMUEL xix. 34-37.
+
+
+_To the Young._
+
+People often fancy that religion is only good to die by, and many
+exhortations are addressed to the young, founded on the possibility
+that an early death may be their lot. That, no doubt, is a very solemn
+consideration, but it is by no means the sole ground on which such an
+appeal may or should be rested. To some of you an early death is
+destined. To the larger number of you will be granted a life protracted
+to middle age, and to some of you silver hair will come, and you may
+see your children's children. I wish to win you seriously to look
+forward to the life on earth that is before you, and to the end to
+which it is likely to come, if you be spared in the world long enough.
+
+The little picture in these verses is a very beautiful one. David had
+been fleeing from his rebellious Absalom, and his adversity had
+winnowed his friends. He had crossed the Jordan to the hill-country
+beyond, and there, while he was lurking with his crown in peril, and a
+price on his head, and old friends dropping from him in their eagerness
+to worship the rising sun, this Barzillai with others brought him
+seasonable help (xvii. 23), When David returned victorious, Barzillai
+met him again. David offered to take him to Jerusalem and to set him in
+honour there, The old man answered in the words of our text.
+
+Now I take them for the sake of the picture of old age which they give
+us. Look at them: the intellectual powers are dimmed, all taste for the
+pleasures and delights of sense is gone, ambition is dead, capacity for
+change is departed. What is left? This old man lives in the past and in
+the future; the early child-love of the father and mother who, eighty
+years ago, rejoiced over his cradle, remains fresh; he cannot 'any more
+hear the voice of the singing men and women,' but he can hear the
+tones, clear over all these years, of the dear ones whom he first
+learned to love. The furthest past is fresh and vivid, and his heart
+and memory are true to it. Also he looks forward familiarly and calmly
+to the very near end, and lives with the thought of death. He keeps
+house with it now. It is nearer to him than the world of living men. In
+memory is half of his being, and in hope is the other half. All his
+hopes are now simplified and reduced to _one,_ a hope to die and be
+united again with the dear ones whom he had so long remembered. And so
+he goes back to his city, and passes out of the record--an example of a
+green and good old age.
+
+Now, young people, is not that picture one to touch your hearts? You
+think in your youthful flush of power and interest, that life will go
+on for ever as it has begun, and it is all but impossible to get you to
+look forward to what life must come to. I want you to learn from that
+picture of a calm, bright old age, a lesson or two of what life will
+certainly do to you, that I may found on these certainties the old, old
+appeal, 'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth'.
+
+I. Life will gradually rob you of your interest in all earthly things.
+
+Your time of life is full of ebullient feeling, and sees freshness,
+glory, and beauty everywhere. Even the least enthusiastic men are
+enthusiastic in their early days. You have physical strength, the
+keenness of unpalled senses, the delights of new powers, the
+blessedness of mere living. All this springs partly from physical
+causes, partly from the novelty of your position. Thank God! all young
+creatures are happy, and you among the rest.
+
+Now, I do not ask you to restrain and mortify these things. But I do
+ask you to remember the end. It is as certain that joys will pall, it
+is as certain that subjects of interest will be exhausted, it is as
+certain that powers will decay, as that they now are what they are. All
+these grave, middle-aged, careful people round you were like you once.
+You, if you live, will be like them. The spring tints are natural, but
+they are transient; the blossoms are not always on the fruit-trees.
+
+Think, then, of the End: to make you thankful; to stimulate you; but
+also to lead you to take for your object what will never pall. All
+created things go. Only the gospel provides you with a theme which
+never becomes stale, with objects which are inexhaustible.
+
+Here is a lesson for--
+
+(a) Thinkers: 'Knowledge, it shall vanish away.'
+
+(b) Sensualists: 'Man delights me not, nor woman either.' How old was
+he who said that?
+
+(c) Ambitious, self-advancing men.
+
+Is it worth your while to devote yourself to transient aims?
+
+Is it congruous with your dignity as immortal souls?
+
+Is it innocent or guilty?
+
+Is the gospel not a thing to live by as well as to die by?
+
+II. Life will certainly rob you of the power to change.
+
+Barzillai knew that David's court was no place for him; he had been
+bred on the mountains of Gilead, and his habits suited only a simple
+country life. The court might be better, but he could not fit into it.
+But there was his boy Chimham; take him, he was young enough to bend
+and mould.
+
+Now this is true in a far loftier way. I need not dwell on the
+universality of this law, how it applies to all manner of men, but I
+use it now in reference only to the gospel and your relation to it. You
+will never again be so likely to become a Christian, if you let these
+early days pass.
+
+You say, 'I will have my fling, sow my wild oats, will wait a little
+longer, and then'--and then what? You will find that it is infinitely
+harder to close with Christ than it would have been before.
+
+While you delay, you are stiffening into the habit of rejection. Custom
+is one of our mightiest friends or foes.
+
+While you delay, you are doing violence to conscience, and so weakening
+that to which the gospel appeals.
+
+While you delay, you are becoming more familiar with the unreceived
+message and so weakening the power of the gospel.
+
+While you delay, you are adding to the long list of your sins.
+
+While you delay, youth is slipping from you.
+
+Make a mark with a straw on the clay and it abides; hammer on the brick
+with iron and it only breaks. Youth is a brief season. It is the season
+for forming habit, for receiving impression, for building up character.
+'The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore shall he
+beg in harvest and have nothing.' Your present time is seed time. God
+forbid that I should say that it is impossible, but I do say that it is
+hard, for 'a man to be born again when he is old.'
+
+If you do become Christ's servant later in life, your whole condition
+will be different from what it would have been if you had begun when
+young to trust and love Him. Think of the difficulty of rooting out
+habits and memories. Think of the horrid familiarity with evil. Think
+of the painful contrition for wasted years, which must be theirs who
+are hired at the eleventh hour, after standing all the day idle.
+
+Contrast the experience of him who can say, 'I Thy servant fear God
+from my youth,' who has been led by God's mercy from childhood in the
+narrow way, who by early faith in Christ has been kept in the slippery
+ways of youth.
+
+Of the one we can but say, 'Is not this a brand plucked from the
+burning?' The other is 'innocent of much transgression.'
+
+I have small hope of changing middle-aged and old men. To you I turn,
+you young men and women, you children, and to each of you I say, 'Wilt
+thou not from this time say, My Father, Thou art the guide of my youth?'
+
+III. Life will certainly deepen your early impressions.
+
+The old Barzillai dying looks back to his early days.
+
+So I point the lesson: 'Keep thy heart with all diligence,' and let
+your early thoughts be bright and pure ones.
+
+Remember that you will never find any love like a father's and
+mother's. Don't do what will load your memories in after days with
+sharp reproaches.
+
+IV. Life will bring you nearer and nearer to the grave.
+
+Hope after hope dies out, and there is nothing left but the hope to
+die. How beautiful the facing of it so as to become calmly familiar
+with it, making it an object of hope, with bright visions of reunion!
+
+How can such an old age so bright and beautiful be secured? Surely the
+one answer is,--by faith in Jesus Christ.
+
+Think of an old Christian resting, full of years, full of memories,
+full of hopes, to whom the stir of the present is nothing, who has come
+so near the place where the river falls into the great sea that the
+sounds on the banks are unheard. It is calm above the cataract, and
+though there be a shock when the stream plunges over the precipice, yet
+a rainbow spans the fall, and the river peacefully mingles with the
+shoreless, boundless ocean.
+
+Dear young friends, 'what shall the end be'? It is for yourselves to
+settle. Oh, take Christ for your Lord! Then, though so far as regards
+the bodily life the 'youths shall faint and be weary,' as regards the
+true self the life may be one of growing maturity, and at last you may
+'come to the grave as a shock of corn that is fully ripe.'
+
+Trust, love, and serve Jesus, that thus calm, thus beautiful, may be
+your days here below, that if you die young you may die ripe enough for
+heaven, and that if God spares you to 'reverence and the silver hairs,'
+you may crown a holy life by a peaceful departure, and, sitting in the
+antechamber of death, may not grieve for the departure of youth and
+strength and buoyancy and activity, knowing that 'they also serve who
+only stand and wait,' and then may shake off the clog and hindrance of
+old age when you pass into the presence of God, and there, as being the
+latest-born of heaven, may more than renew your youth, and may enter on
+a life which weariness and decay never afflict, but with which immortal
+youth, with its prerogatives of endless hope, of keenest delight, of
+unwearying novelty, of boundless joy, abides for evermore.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID'S HYMN OF VICTORY
+
+'For Thou hast girded me with strength to battle: them that, rose up
+against me hast Thou subdued under me. 41. Thou hast also given me the
+necks of mine enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me. 42. They
+looked, but there was none to save; even unto the Lord, but He answered
+them not. 43. Then did I beat them as small as the dust of the earth, I
+did stamp them as the mire of the street, and did spread them abroad.
+44. Thou also hast delivered me from the strivings of my people, Thou
+hast kept me to be head of the heathen: a people which I knew not shall
+serve me. 45. Strangers shall submit themselves unto me: as soon as
+they hear, they shall be obedient unto me. 46. Strangers shall fade
+away, and they shall be afraid out of their close places. 47. The Lord
+liveth; and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the God of the rock of
+my salvation. 48. It is God that avengeth me, and that bringeth down
+the people under me, 49. And that bringeth me forth from mine enemies:
+Thou also hast lifted me up on high above them that rose up against me:
+Thou hast delivered me from the violent man. 50. Therefore I will give
+thanks unto Thee, O Lord, among the heathen, and I will sing praises
+unto Thy name. 51. He is the tower of salvation for His king; and
+sheweth mercy to His anointed, unto David, and to his seed for
+evermore.'--2 SAMUEL xxii. 40-51.
+
+
+The Davidic authorship of this great hymn has been admitted even by
+critics who are in general too slow to recognise it. One of these says
+that 'there is no Israelite king to whom the expressions in the psalm
+apply so closely as to David.' The favourite alternative theory that
+the speaker is the personified nation is hard to accept. The voice of
+individual trust and of personal experience sounds clear in the glowing
+words. Two editions of the hymn are preserved for us,--in Psalm xviii.
+and 2 Samuel. Slight variations exist in the two copies, which may
+probably be merely accidental. Nothing important depends on them. The
+text begins with the closing words of a description of God's arming the
+singer for his victories, and goes on to paint the tumult of battle and
+the rout of the foe (verses 40-43); then follows triumphant expectation
+of future wider victories (verses 44-46); and that leads up to the
+closing burst of grateful praise (verses 47-51).
+
+I. We are not to forget that what is described in verses 40-43 is a
+literal fight, with real swords against very real enemies. We may draw
+lessons of encouragement from it for our conflict with spiritual
+wickednesses, but we must not lose sight of the bloody combat with
+flesh and blood which the singer had waged. He felt that God had braced
+his armour on him, had given him the impenetrable 'shield' which he
+wore on his arm, and had strengthened his arms to bend the 'bow of
+steel.' We see him in swift pursuit, pressing hard on the flying foe,
+crushing them with his fierce charge, trampling them under foot. 'I did
+beat them small as the dust of the earth.' His blows fell like those of
+a great pestle, pulverising some substance in a mortar. 'I did stamp
+them as the mire of the streets,'--a vivid picture of trampling down
+the prostrate wretches, for which Psalm xviii. gives the less
+picturesque variant, 'did cast them out.' In their despair the
+fugitives shriek aloud for God's help, and the Psalmist has a stern joy
+in knowing their cries to be unheard.
+
+Now, such delight in an enemy's despair and destruction, such
+gratification at the vanity of his prayers, are far away from being
+Christian sentiments, and the gulf is not wholly bridged by the
+consideration that David felt himself to be God's Anointed, and enmity
+to him to be, consequently, treason against God. His feelings were most
+natural and entirely consistent with the stage of revelation in which
+he lived. They were capable of being purified into that triumph in the
+victory of good and the ruin of evil without which there is no vigorous
+sympathy with Christ's conflict. They kindle, by their splendid energy
+and condensed rapidity, an answering glow even in readers so far away
+from the scene as we are. But still they do belong to a lower level of
+feeling, and result from a less full revelation than belongs to
+Christianity. The light of battle which blazes in them is not the fire
+which Jesus longed to kindle on earth.
+
+But we may well take a pattern from the stern soldier's recognition
+that all his victory was due to God alone. The strength that he put
+forth was God's gift. It was God who subdued the insurgents, not David.
+The panic which made the foe take to flight was infused into them by
+God. No name but Jehovah's was to be carved on the trophy reared on the
+battlefield. The human victor was but the instrument of the divine
+Conqueror. Such lowly reference of all our power and success to Him
+will save us from overweening self-adulation, and is the surest way to
+retain the power which He gives, and which is lost most surely when we
+take the credit of it to ourselves.
+
+II. The enemies thus far have been from among his own subjects, but in
+verses 44-46 a transition is made to victory over 'strangers'; that is,
+foreign nations. The triumph over 'the strivings of my people' heartens
+the singer to expect that he will be' head of the nations.' The other
+version of the hymn (Psalm xviii.) reads simply '_the_ people.'
+
+The picture of hasty surrender 'as soon as they hear of me' is graphic.
+His very name conquers. 'The strangers shall submit themselves unto me'
+is literally 'shall lie,' or yield feigned obedience. They 'fade away'
+as if withered by the hot wind of the desert. 'They shall come limping'
+(as the word here used signifies), as if wounded in the fight, for
+which Psalm xviii. reads 'trembling.'
+
+Now this vision of extended conquests, based as it is on past smaller
+victories, carries valuable lessons. David here lays hold of the great
+promises to his house of a wide dominion, and expects the beginnings of
+their fulfilment to himself. And he _did_ extend his conquests beyond
+the territory of Israel. But we may take the hope as an instance in a
+particular direction of what should be the issue of all experience of
+God's mercies. 'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more
+abundant.' Smaller victories will be followed by greater. Our reception
+of God's favouring help should widen our anticipations. Our gratitude
+to Him should be 'a lively sense of favours to come.' Progressive
+victory should be the experience of every believer.
+
+We may see, too, dimly apparent through the large hope of the
+Psalmist-King, the prophecy of the worldwide victories of his Son, in
+whom the great promises of a dominion 'from sea to sea, and from the
+river unto the ends of the earth,' are fulfilled.
+
+III. Verses 46-51 make a noble close to a noble hymn, in which the
+singer's strong wing never flags, nor the rush of thought and feeling
+ever slackens. In it, even more absolutely than in the rest of the
+psalm, his victory is all ascribed to Jehovah. He alone acts, David
+simply receives. To have learned by experience that' He lives,' and is
+'my Rock,' and to gather all the feelings excited by the retrospect of
+a long life into 'Blessed be my Rock,' is to have reaped and garnered
+the richest harvest which earth can yield. So at last sings the man
+whose early years had been full of struggles and privations. A morning
+of tempest has cleared into sunny evening calm, as it will with us all
+if the tempest blows us into our true shelter.
+
+This psalm begins with a rapturous heaping together of the precious
+names of God, as the singer has had them revealed to him by experience.
+Foremost among these stands that one, 'my Rock,' which is caught up
+again in this closing burst of thanksgiving. That great Rock towers
+unchangeable above fleeting things. The river runs past its base, the
+woods nestling at its feet bud, and shed their pride of foliage, but it
+stands the same. David had many a time hid in 'the clefts of the rocks'
+in his years of wandering, and the figure is eloquent on his lips.
+
+These closing strains gather together once more the main points of the
+previous verses, his deliverance from domestic foes, and his conquests
+over external enemies. These are wholly God's work. True thankfulness
+delights to repeat its acknowledgments. God does not weary of giving,
+we should not weary of praising the Giver and His gifts. We renew our
+enjoyment of our long-past mercies by reiterating our thankfulness for
+them. They do not die as long as gratitude keeps their remembrance
+green.
+
+But the Psalmist's experience impels him to a vow (verse 50). He will
+give thanks to God among the nations. God's mercies bind, and, if
+rightly felt, will joyfully impel, the receiver to spread His name as
+far as his voice can reach. Love is sometimes silent, but gratitude
+must speak. The most unmusical voice is tuned to melody by God's great
+blessings received and appreciated, and they need never want a theme
+who can tell what the Lord has done for their souls. 'Then shall... the
+tongue of the dumb sing.' A dumb Christian is a monstrosity. We are
+'the secretaries of His praise,' and have been saved ourselves that we
+may declare His goodness.
+
+Verse 51 has been supposed by some to be a liturgical addition, on the
+ground that, if David were the author, he would not be likely to name
+himself thus. But there does not seem to be anything unnatural in his
+mentioning himself by name in such a connection, and the reference to
+his dynasty, based as it is on Nathan's promise, is most fitting. The
+last thought about his mercies which the humble gratitude of the
+Psalmist utters is that they were not given to him for any good in
+himself, nor to be selfishly enjoyed, but that they were bestowed on
+him because of the place that he filled in the divine purposes, and
+belonged to 'his seed' as truly as to himself. So lowly had his
+prosperity made him. So truly had he sunk himself in his office, and in
+the great things that God meant to do through him and his house. We
+know better than David did what these were, and how the promise on
+which he rested his hopes of the duration of his house is fulfilled in
+his Son, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and who bears God's
+name to all the nations.
+
+
+
+
+THE DYING KING'S LAST VISION AND PSALM
+
+'Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and
+the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob,
+and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, 2. The Spirit of the Lord spake
+by me, and His word was in my tongue. 3. The God of Israel said, the
+Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just,
+ruling in the fear of God. 4. And he shall be as the light of the
+morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the
+tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. 5.
+Although my house be not so with God; yet He hath made with me an
+everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all
+my salvation, and all my desire, although He make it not to grow. 6.
+But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away,
+because they cannot be taken with hands: 7. But the man that shall
+touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear; and they
+shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place.'--2 SAMUEL xxiii,
+1-7.
+
+
+It was fitting that 'the last words of David' should be a prophecy of
+the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no less than his
+consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. His dying eyes
+see on the horizon of the far-off future the form of Him who is to be a
+just and perfect Ruler, before the brightness of whose presence and the
+refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothe the
+world. As the shades gather round the dying monarch, the radiant glory
+to come brightens. He departs in peace, having seen the salvation from
+afar, and stretched out longing hands of greeting toward it. Then his
+harp is silent, as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings
+had snapped them.
+
+1. We have first a prelude extending to the middle of verse 3. In it
+there is first a fourfold designation of the personality of the
+Psalmist-prophet, and then a fourfold designation of the divine oracle
+spoken through him. The word rendered in verse 1 'saith' is really a
+noun, and usually employed with 'the Lord' following, as in the
+familiar phrase 'saith the Lord.' It is used, as here, with the
+genitive of the human recipient, in Balaam's prophecy, on which this is
+evidently modelled. It distinctly claims a divine source for the oracle
+following, and declares, at the outset, that these last words of David
+were really the faithful sayings of Jehovah. The human and divine
+elements are smelted together. Note the description of the human
+personality. First, the natural 'David the son of Jesse,' like 'Balaam
+the son of Beor' in the earlier oracle. The aged king looks back with
+adoring thankfulness to his early days and humble birth, as if he were
+saying, 'Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this
+grace given, that I should proclaim the coming King.' Then follow three
+clauses descriptive of what 'the son of Jesse' had been made by the
+grace of God, in that he had been raised on high from his low condition
+of a shepherd boy, and anointed as ruler, not only by Samuel and the
+people, but by the God of their great ancestor, whose career had
+presented so many points of resemblance to his own, the God who still
+wrought among the nation which bore the patriarch's name, as He had
+wrought of old; and that, besides his royalty, he had been taught to
+sing the sweet songs which already were the heritage of the nation.
+This last designation shows what David counted God's chief gift to
+him,--not his crown, but his harp. It further shows that he regarded
+his psalms as divinely inspired, and it proves that already they had
+become the property of the nation. This first verse heightens the
+importance of the subsequent oracle by dwelling on the claims of the
+recipient of the revelation to be heard and heeded.
+
+Similarly, the fourfold designation of the divine source has the same
+purpose, and corresponds with the four clauses of verse 1, 'The Spirit
+of the Lord spake in [or "into"] me.' That gives the Psalmist's
+consciousness that in his prophecy he was but the recipient of a
+message. It wonderfully describes the penetrating power of that inward
+voice which clearly came to him from without, and as clearly spoke to
+him within. Words could not more plainly declare the prophetic
+consciousness of the distinction between himself and the Voice which he
+heard in the depths of his spirit. It spoke in him before he spoke his
+lyric prophecy. 'His word was upon my tongue.' There we have the
+utterance succeeding the inward voice, and the guarantee that the
+Psalmist's word was a true transcript of the inward voice. 'The God of
+Israel said,' and therefore Israel is concerned in the divine word,
+which is not of private reference, but meant for all. 'The Rock of
+Israel spake,' and therefore Israel may trust the Word, which rests on
+His immutable faithfulness and eternal being.
+
+II. The divine oracle thus solemnly introduced and guaranteed must be
+worthy of such a prelude. Abruptly, and in clauses without verbs, the
+picture of the righteous Ruler is divinely flashed before the seer's
+inward eye. The broken construction may perhaps indicate that he is
+describing what he beholds in vision. There is no need for any
+supplement such as 'There shall be,' which, however true in meaning,
+mars the vividness of the presentation of the Ruler to the prophet's
+sight. David sees him painted on the else blank wall of the future.
+When and where the realisation may be he knows not. What are the
+majestic outlines? A universal sovereign over collective humanity,
+righteous and God-fearing. In the same manner as he described the
+vision of the King, David goes on, as a man on some height telling what
+he saw to the people below, and paints the blessed issues of the King's
+coming.
+
+It had been night before He came,--the night of ignorance, sorrow, and
+sin,--but His coming is like one of these glorious Eastern sunrises
+without a cloud, when everything laughs in the early beams, and, with
+tropical swiftness, the tender herbage bursts from the ground, as born
+from the dazzling brightness and the fertilising rain. So all things
+shall rejoice in the reign of the King, and humanity be productive,
+under His glad and quickening influences, of growths of beauty and
+fruitfulness impossible to it without these.
+
+The abrupt form of the prophecy has led some interpreters to construe
+it as, 'When a king over men is righteous... then it is as a morning,'
+etc. But surely such a platitude is not worthy of being David's last
+word, nor did it need divine inspiration to disclose to him that a just
+king is a great blessing. The only worthy meaning is that which sees
+here, in words so solemnly marked as a special revelation closing the
+life of David, 'the vision of the future and all the wonder that should
+be,' when a real Person should thus reign over men. The explanation
+that we have here simply the ideal of the collective Davidic monarchy
+is a lame attempt to escape from the recognition of prophecy properly
+so called. It is the work of poetry to paint ideals, of prophecy to
+foretell, with God's authority, their realisation. The picture here is
+too radiant to be realised in any mere human king, and, as a matter of
+fact, never was so in any of David's successors, or in the whole of
+them put together. It either swings _in vacuo,_ a dream unrealised, or
+it is a distinct prophecy from God of the reign of the coming Messiah,
+of whom David and all his sons, as anointed kings, were living
+prophecies. 'The Messianic idea entered on a new stage of development
+with the monarchy, and that not as if the history stimulated men's
+imaginations, but that God used the history as a means of further
+revelation by His prophetic Spirit.
+
+III. The difficult verse 5, whether its first and last clauses be taken
+interrogatively or negatively, in its central part bases the assurance
+of the coming of the king on God's covenant (2 Samuel vii.), which is
+glorified as being everlasting, provided with all requisites for its
+realisation, and therefore 'sure,' or perhaps 'preserved,' as if
+guarded by God's inviolable sanctity and faithfulness. The fulfilment
+of the dying saint's hopes depends on God's truth. Whatever sense might
+say, or doubt whisper, he silences them by gazing on that great Word.
+So we all have to do. If we found our hopes and forecasts on it, we can
+go down to the grave calmly, though they be not fulfilled, sure that
+'no good thing can fail us of all that He hath spoken.' Living or
+dying, faith and hope must stay themselves on God's word. Happy they
+whose closing eyes see the form of the King, and whose last thoughts
+are of God's faithful promise! Happy they whose forecasts of the
+future, nearer or more remote, are shaped by His word! Happy they who,
+in the triumphant energy of such a faith, can with dying lips proclaim
+that His promises overlap, and contain, all their salvation and all
+their desire!
+
+If we read the first and last clauses negatively, with Revised Version
+and others, they, as it were, surround the kernel of clear-eyed faith,
+in the middle of the verse, with a husk, not of doubt, but of
+consciousness how far the present is from fulfilling the great promise.
+The poor dying king looks back on the scandals of his later reign, on
+his own sin, on his children's lust, rebellion, and tragic deaths, and
+feels how far from the ideal he and they have been. He sees little
+token of growth toward realisation of that promise; but yet in spite of
+a stained past and a wintry present, he holds fast his confidence. That
+is the true temper of faith, which calls things that are not as though
+they were, and is hindered by no sense of unworthiness nor by any
+discouragements born of sense, from grasping with full assurance the
+promise of God. But the consensus of the most careful expositors
+inclines to take both clauses as questions, and then the meaning would
+be, 'Does not my house stand in such a relation to God that the
+righteous king will spring from it? It is, in this view, a triumphant
+question, expressing the strongest assurance, and the next clause would
+then lay bare the foundation of that relation of David's house as not
+its goodness, but God's covenant ('_for_ He hath made'). Similarly the
+last clause would be a triumphant question of certainty, asserting in
+the strongest manner that God would cause that future salvation for the
+world, which was wrapped up in the coming of the king, and in which the
+dying man was sure that he should somehow have a share, dead though he
+were, to blossom and grow, though he had to die as in the winter,
+before the buds began to swell. The assurance of immortality, and of a
+share in all the blessings to come, bursts from the lips that are so
+soon to be silent.
+
+IV. But the oracle cannot end with painting only blessings as flowing
+from the king's reign. If he is to rule in righteousness and the fear
+of the Lord, then he must fight against evil. If his coming causes the
+tender grass to spring, it will quicken ugly growths too. The former
+representation is only half the truth; and the threatening of
+destruction for the evil is as much a part of the divine oracle as the
+other. Strictly, it is 'wickedness'--the abstract quality rather than
+the concrete persons who embody it--which is spoken of. May we recall
+the old distinction that God loves the sinner while He hates the sin?
+The picture is vivid. The wicked--and all the enemies of this King are
+wicked, in the prophet's view--are like some of these thorn-brakes,
+that cannot be laid hold of, even to root them out, but need to be
+attacked with sharp pruning-hooks on long shafts, or burned where they
+grow. There is a destructive side to the coming of the King, shadowed
+in every prophecy of him, and brought emphatically to prominence in his
+own descriptions of his reign and its final issues. It is a poor
+kindness to suppress that side of the truth. Thorns as well as tender
+grass spring up in the quickening beams; and the best commentary on the
+solemn words which close David's closing song is the saying of the King
+himself: 'In the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather
+up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them.'
+
+
+
+
+THE ROYAL JUBILEE [Footnote: Preached on the occasion of Queen
+Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.]
+
+'... He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
+4. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth,
+even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the
+earth, by clear shining after rain.'--2 SAMUEL xxiii. 3, 4.
+
+
+One of the Psalms ascribed to David sounds like the resolves of a new
+monarch on his accession. In it the Psalmist draws the ideal of a king,
+and says such things as, 'I will behave myself wisely, in a perfect
+way. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. I hate the work of
+them that turn aside. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land,
+that they may dwell with me.' That psalm we may regard as the first
+words of the king when, after long, weary years, the promise of
+Samuel's anointing was fulfilled, and he sat on the throne.
+
+My text comes from what purports to be the last words of the same king.
+
+He looks back, and again the ideal of a monarch rises before him. The
+psalm, for it is a psalm, though it is not in the Psalter, is
+compressed to the verge of obscurity; and there may be many questions
+raised about its translation and its bearing. These do not need to
+occupy us now, but the words which I have selected for my text may,
+perhaps, best be represented to an English reader in some such sentence
+as this--'If (or when) one rules over men justly, ruling in the fear of
+God, then it shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth,
+even a morning without clouds.'  With such a monarch all the interests
+of his people will prosper. His reign will be like the radiant dawn of
+a cloudless day, and his land like the spring pastures when the fresh,
+green grass is wooed out of the baked earth by the combined influence
+of rain and sunshine. David's little kingdom was surrounded by giant
+empires, in which brute force, wielded by despotic will, ground men
+down, or squandered their lives recklessly. But the King of Israel had
+learned, partly by the experience of his own reign, and partly by
+divine inspiration, that such rulers are not true types of a monarch
+after God's own heart. This ideal king is neither a warrior nor a
+despot. Two qualities mark him, Justice and Godliness. Pharaoh and his
+like, oppressors, were as the lightning which blasts and scorches. The
+true king was to be as the sunshine that vitalises and gladdens. 'He
+shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that
+water the earth.'
+
+We do not need to ask the question here, though it might be very
+relevant on another occasion, whether this portraiture is a mere ideal,
+floating _in vacuo,_ or whether it is a direct prophecy of that
+expected Messianic king who was to realise the divine ideal of
+sovereignty. At all events we know that, in its highest and deepest
+significance, the picture of my text has lived and breathed human
+breath, in Jesus Christ, who both in His character and in His influence
+on the world, fulfilled the ideal that floated before the eyes of the
+aged king.
+
+I do not need to follow the course of thought in this psalm any
+farther. You will have anticipated my motive for selecting this text
+now. It seems to me to gather up, in vivid and picturesque form, the
+thoughts and feelings which to-day are thrilling through an Empire, to
+which the most extended dominion of these warrior kings of old was but
+a speck. On such an occasion as this I need not make any apology, I am
+sure, for diverging from the ordinary topics of pulpit address, and
+associating ourselves with the many millions who to-day are giving
+thanks for Queen Victoria.
+
+My text suggests two lines along which the course of our thoughts may
+run. The one is the personal character of this ideal monarch; the other
+is its effects on his subjects.
+
+I. Now, with regard to the former, the pulpit is, in my judgment, not
+the place either for the discussion of current events or the
+pronouncing of personal eulogiums. But I shall not be wandering beyond
+my legitimate province, if I venture to try to gather into a few words
+the reasons, in the character and public life of our Queen, for the
+thankfulness of this day. Our text brings out, as I have said, two
+great qualities as those on which a throne is to be established,
+Justice and Godliness. Now, the ancient type of monarch was the
+fountain of justice, in a very direct sense; inasmuch as it was his
+office, not only to pronounce sentence on criminals, but to give
+decisions on disputed questions of right. These functions have long
+ceased to be exercised by our monarchs, but there is still room for
+both of those qualities--the Justice which holds an even balance
+between parties and strifes, the Righteousness which has supreme regard
+to the primary duties that press alike upon prince and pauper, and the
+Godliness which, as I believe, is the root from which all
+righteousness, as between man and man, and as between prince and
+subject, must ever flow. Morality is the garb of religion; religion is
+the root of morality. He, and only he, will hold an even balance and
+discharge his obligations to man, whose life is rooted in, and his acts
+under the continual influence of, the fear of God which has in it no
+torment, but is the parent of all things good.
+
+We shall not be flatterers if we thankfully recognise in our Sovereign
+Lady the presence of both these qualities. I have spoken of the first
+inaugural words of the King of Israel, and the resolutions that he
+made. It is recorded that when, to the child of eleven years of age,
+the announcement was made that she stood near in the line of succession
+to the throne, the tremulous young lips answered, 'It is a great
+responsibility; but I will be good.' And all round the world to-day her
+subjects attest that the aged monarch has kept the little maiden's vow.
+Contrast that life with the lives of the other women who have sat on
+the throne of England. Think of the brilliant Queen, whose glories our
+greatest poets were not ashamed to sing, with the Tudor masterfulness
+in her, and not a little of the Tudor grossness and passion, and
+remember the blots that stained her glories. Think of her sister, the
+morbidly melancholy tool of priests, who goes down the ages branded
+with an epithet only too sadly earned. Think of another woman that
+ruled over England in name, the weak instrument of base intrigues. And
+then turn to this life which we are looking upon to-day. Think of the
+nameless scandals, the hideous immorality of the reigns that preceded
+hers, and you will not wonder that every decent man and every modest
+woman was thankful that, with the young girl, there came a breath of
+purer air into the foul atmosphere. I am old enough to remember
+hearing, as a boy, the talk of my elders as to the probabilities of
+insurrection if, instead of our Queen, there had come to the throne the
+brother of her two predecessors. The hopes of those early days have
+been more than fulfilled.
+
+
+It is not for us to determine the religious character of others, and
+that is too sacred a region for us to enter; but this we may say, that
+in all these sixty years of diversified trial, there has been no act
+known to us outsiders inconsistent with the highest motive, the fear of
+the Lord; and some of us who have worshipped in the humble Highland
+church where she has bowed have felt that on the throne of Britain sat
+a Christian.
+
+Nor need we forget how, from that root of fear of God, there has come
+that wondrous patience and faithfulness to duty, the form of 'Justice'
+which is possible for a constitutional monarch. We have little notion
+of how pressing and numerous and continual the royal duties must
+necessarily be. They have been discharged, even when the blow that
+struck all sunshine out of life left an irrepressible shrinking from
+pageantry and pomp. Joys come; joys go. Duties abide, and they have
+been done.
+
+Nor can we forget, either, how the very difficult position of a
+constitutional monarch, with the semblance of power and the reality of
+narrow restrictions, has been filled. Our Sovereign has never set
+herself against the will of the people, expressed by its legitimate
+representatives, even when that will may have imposed upon her the
+sanction of changes which she did not approve. And that is much to say.
+We have seen young despots whose self-will has threatened to wreck a
+nation's prosperity.
+
+Nor can we forget how all the immense influence of position and
+personality has been thrown on the side of purity and righteousness.
+Even we outsiders know how, more than once or twice, she has
+steadfastly set her face against the admission to her presence of men
+and women of evil repute, and has in effect repeated David's
+proclamation against vice and immorality at his accession: 'He that
+worketh wickedness shall not dwell within my house.'
+
+Nor must we forget, either, the simplicity, the beauty, the tenderness
+of her wedded and family life, her love of rural quiet, and of
+wholesome communion with Nature, and her eagerness to take her people
+into her confidence, as set forth in the book which, whatever its
+literary merits, speaks of her earnest appreciation of Nature and her
+wish for the sympathy of her subjects.
+
+Then came the bolt from the blue, that sudden crash that wrecked the
+happiness of a life. Many of us, I have no doubt, remember that dreary
+December Sunday morning when, while the nation was standing in
+expectation of another calamity from across the Atlantic, there flashed
+through the land the news of the Prince's death; thrilling all hearts,
+and bringing all nearer to her, the lonely widow, than they had ever
+been in her days of radiant happiness. How pathetically, silently,
+nobly, devoutly, that sorrow has been borne, it is not for us to speak.
+She has become one of the great company of sad and lonely hearts, and
+in her sadness has shown an eager desire to send messages of sympathy
+to all whom she could reach, who were in like darkness and sorrow.
+
+Brethren, I have ventured to diverge so far from the ordinary run of
+pulpit ministrations because I feel that to-day all of us, whatever may
+be our political or ecclesiastical relationships and proclivities, are
+one in thanking God for the monarch whose life has been without a
+stain, and her reign without a blot.
+
+II. Now let me say a word as to the other line of thought which my text
+suggests, the effect of such a reign on the condition of the subject.
+
+Now, of course, in the narrowly limited domain of that strange
+creation, a constitutional monarchy, there is far less opportunity for
+the Sovereign's direct influence on the Subject than there was in the
+ancient kingdoms of which David was thinking in his psalm. The
+marvellous progress of Britain during these sixty years is due, not to
+our Sovereign, but to a multitude of strenuous workers and earnest
+thinkers in a hundred different departments, as well as to the
+evolution of the gifts that come down to us from our ancient
+inheritance of freedom. But we shall much mistake if, for that reason,
+we set aside the monarch's character and influence as of no account in
+the progress,
+
+A supposition, which is a violent one, may be made which will set this
+matter in clearer light. Suppose that during these sixty years we had
+had a king on the throne of England like some of the kings we have had.
+The sentiment of loyalty is not now of such a character as that it will
+survive a vicious sovereign. If we had had such a monarch as I have
+hinted at, the loyalty of the good would for all these years have been
+suffering a severe strain, and the forces that make for evil would have
+been disastrously strengthened. Dangers escaped are unnoticed, but one
+twelvemonth of the reign of a profligate would shake the foundations of
+the monarchy, and would open the floodgates of vice; and we should then
+know how much the nation owed to the Queen whose life was pure, and who
+cast all her influence on the side of 'things that are lovely and of
+good report.'
+
+Take another supposition. Suppose that during these years of wonderful
+transition, when the whole aspect of English politics and society has
+been transformed, we had had a king like George III., who set his
+opinion against the nation's will constitutionally expressed. Then no
+man knows with what storm and tumult, with what strife and injury, the
+inevitable transition would have been effected. Be sure of this, that
+the wise self-effacement of our Sovereign during these critical years
+of change is largely the reason why they have been years of peace, in
+which the new has mingled itself with the old without revolution or
+disturbance. It is due to her in a very large degree that
+                 'Freedom broadens slowly down
+                  From precedent to precedent.'
+
+I need not dilate on the changed Britain that she looks out upon and
+rules to-day. I need not speak--there will be many voices to do that,
+in not altogether agreeable notes, for there will be a dash of too much
+self-complacency in them--about progress in material wealth, colonial
+expansion, the increase of education, the gentler manners, the new life
+that has been breathed over art and literature, the achievements in
+science and philosophy, the drawing together of classes, the bridging
+over of the great gulf between rich and poor by some incipient and
+tentative attempts at sympathy and brotherhood.
+
+Nor need I dwell upon the ecclesiastical signs of the times, in which,
+mingled as they are, there is at least this one great good, that never
+since the early days have so large a proportion of Christian men been
+'seeking after the things that make for peace,' and realising the
+oneness of all believers who hold the Headship of Christ.
+
+All this review falls more properly into other hands than mine. Only I
+would put in a caution--do not let us mingle self-conceit with our
+congratulations; and, above all, do not let us 'rest and be thankful.'
+There is much to be done yet. Listening ears can catch on every side
+vague sounds that tell of unrest and of the stirrings into wakefulness
+of
+                'The spirit of the years to come,
+                 Yearning to mix itself with life.'
+
+I seem to hear all around me the rushing in the dark of a mighty
+current that is bearing down upon us. Great social questions are
+rapidly coming to the front--the questions of distribution of wealth,
+abolition of privilege, the relations of labour and capital, and many
+others are clamant to be dealt with at least, if not solved. There Is
+much to be done before Jesus Christ is throned as King of England. War
+has to be frowned down; the brotherhood of man has to be realised,
+temperance has to be much more largely practised than it is.
+
+I need not go over the catalogue of _desiderata,_ of _agenda_--things
+that have to be done--in the near future. Only this I would
+say--Christian men and women are the last people who should be ready to
+'rest and be thankful,' for the principles of the Gospel that we
+profess, which have never been applied to the life of nations as they
+ought to be, will solve the questions which make the despair of so many
+in this generation. We shall best express our thankfulness for these
+past sixty years by each of us taking our part in the great movement
+which, in the inevitable drift of things to democracy, is going to
+'cast the kingdom old into another mould,' and which will, I pray, make
+our people more of what John Milton long ago called them, 'God's
+Englishmen.' We have taught the nations many things. Our Parliament is
+called the Mother of Parliaments. Ours is
+           'The land where, girt with friends or foes,
+            A man may say the thing he will.'
+
+It has taught the nations a tempered freedom, and that a monarchy may
+be a true republic. May we rise to the height of our privileges and
+responsibilities, and teach our subject peoples, not only mechanics,
+science, law, free trade, but a loftier morality, and the name of Him
+by whom kings reign and princes decree justice!
+
+We, members of the free Churches of England, come seldom under the
+notice of royalty, and have little acquaintance with courts, but we
+yield to none in our recognition of the virtues and in our sympathy
+with the sorrows of the Sovereign Lady, the good woman, who rules these
+lands, and we all heartily thank God for her to-day, and pray that for
+long years still to come the familiar letters V.R. may stand, as they
+have stood to two generations, as the symbol of womanly purity and of
+the faithful discharge of queenly duty.
+
+
+
+
+A LIBATION TO JEHOVAH
+
+'And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the
+water of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate! 16. And the
+three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew
+water out of the well of Beth-lehem, that was by the gate, and took it
+and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but
+poured it out unto the Lord. 17. And he said, Be it far from me, O
+Lord, that I should do this; is not this the blood of the men that went
+in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it. These
+things did these three mighty men.'--2 SAMUEL xxiii. 15-17.
+
+
+David's fortunes were at a low ebb. He was in hiding in his cave of
+Adullam, and a Philistine garrison held Bethlehem, his native place. He
+was little different from an outlaw at the head of a band of 'broken
+men,' but there were depths of chivalry and poetry in his heart.
+Sweltering in his cave in the fierce heat of harvest, he thought of his
+native Bethlehem; he remembered the old days when he had watered his
+flock at the well by its gate, or mingled with the people of the little
+town, in their evening assemblies round it. The memories of boyhood
+rose up radiant before him, and as he was immersed in the past, the
+grim present, the perils that threatened his life, the savage, gaunt
+rocks without a trace of greenness that girded him, the privations to
+which he was exposed, were all forgotten, and he longed for one more
+draught of the water that tasted so cool and sweet to memory. Three of
+his 'mighty men,' bound to him by loyal devotion and unselfish love,
+were ready to die to win for their chief a momentary gratification. So
+they slipped away from Adullam, 'brake through the host of the
+Philistines,' and brought back the longed-for draught. David's
+reception of the dearly-bought, sparkling gift was due to a noble
+impulse. The water seemed to him to be dyed with blood, and to be not
+water so much as 'lives of men.' It had become too precious to be used
+to satisfy his longing. It would be base self-indulgence to drink what
+had been won by such self-forgetting devotion. God only had the right
+to receive what men had risked their lives to obtain, and therefore he
+'poured it out unto the Lord.'
+
+The story gleams out of the fierce narratives in which it is embedded,
+like a flower blooming on some grim cliff. May we not learn lessons
+from it?
+
+I. David's longing.
+
+David, a fugitive in the cave, haunted by the 'nostalgia' that made
+Bethlehem seem so fair and dear, may stand for us as an example of the
+longings and thirsts that sometimes force themselves into consciousness
+in every soul. Below the bustle and strife of daily life, occupied as
+it must be with material and often ignoble things, below the hardness
+into which the world has compressed men's surface nature, there lies a
+yearning for the cool water that rises hard by the gate of our native
+home. True, it is with many of us overlaid for the most part by coarser
+desires, and may be as unlike our usual dominant longings and aims, as
+David's tender outbreak of sentiment was to the prevailing tenor of his
+life, in those days when he was an outlaw and a freebooter. But the
+longing, though often stifled, is not wholly quenched. It is
+misinterpreted by the man who is conscious of it, and far too often he
+tries to slake the thirst by fiery and drugged liquors which but make
+it more intense. Happy are they who know what it is that their parched
+palates crave, and have learned, while yet the knowledge avails, to
+say, 'My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God'! 'Blessed are they
+who thirst after' the water of the well of Bethlehem, 'for they shall
+be filled!'
+
+II. The three heroes' devotion.
+
+These three rough soldiers, lawless and fierce as they were, had been
+so mastered by their chief that they were ready to dare anything to
+pleasure him. Who would have looked for such delicacy of feeling and
+such enthusiastic self-surrender in such men?
+
+They stand as grand instances of the height of devotion of which the
+rudest nature is capable, when once its love and loyalty to the Beloved
+are evoked.
+
+How such deeds ennoble the lowest types of character, and make us think
+better of men, and more sadly of the contrast between their habitual
+characteristics and the possibilities that lie slumbering in their
+ignoble lives! There are sparks in the hard cold flint, if only they
+could be struck out. There is water in the rock, if only the right
+hand, armed with the wonder-working rod, smites it.
+
+
+Let us not judge men too harshly by what they do and are, but let us
+try to bring their sleeping possibilities into conscious exercise.
+
+Let us remember that love and self-sacrifice, which is the very outcome
+and natural voice of love, ennoble the most degraded.
+
+But these heroic three may suggest to us a sadder thought. They were
+ready to die for David; would they have been as ready to die for God?
+These noble emotions of love, leading to glad flinging away of life to
+pleasure the beloved, are freely given to men, but too often withheld
+from God, We lavish on our beloveds or on our chosen leaders, a
+devotion that ought to shame us, when contrasted with the scantiness of
+our grudging devotion and self-surrender to Him. If we loved God a
+tenth part as ardently as we love our wives or husbands or parents or
+children, and were willing to do and bear as much for Him as we are
+willing to bear for them, how different our lives would be! We can love
+utterly, enthusiastically, self-forget-tingly, absorbed in the beloved,
+and counting all surrender of self to, and the sacrifice of life itself
+for, him or her a delight. Many of us do love men so. Do we love God so?
+
+But these heroic three may suggest another thought. Their
+self-sacrificing love was illustrious; but there is a nobler, more
+wonderful, more soul-subduing instance of such love. They broke through
+the ranks of the Philistines to bring David a draught from the well of
+Bethlehem. Jesus has broken through the ranks of our enemies to bring
+us the water of which 'if a man drink, he shall live for ever.' If we
+would see the highest example of self-sacrificing love, we must turn to
+look, not on the instances of it that shine through the ages on the
+page of history, and make men thrill as they gaze, and think better of
+the human nature that can do such things, but on the Christ hanging on
+the Cross because He loved those who did not love Him, and giving His
+life a ransom for sinners.
+
+
+III. David's reception of the water.
+
+The chivalrous devotion of the three touched an answering chord in
+their chivalrous chief. His heart filled at the thought of what they
+had risked, and revolted from employing what had been thus won for no
+higher use than to gratify a piece of sentiment in himself. The
+sparkling water was too sacred to be taken for any baser use than as a
+libation to Jehovah. And who can doubt that the three were more fully
+repaid for their devotion, as David poured it out unto the Lord, than
+if he had drunk it eagerly up? His feeling and his act indicate
+beautiful delicacy of instinct, and swiftness of perception of how to
+requite the devotion of the three.
+
+We may separate into its two parts the generous impulse which sprang as
+one whole in David's breast. There was the shrinking from using the
+water to slake his thirst merely, and there was the resolve to pour it
+out as a libation to God. Both parts of that whole may yield us
+profitable thoughts.
+
+To risk their lives for the water was noble in the three; to have
+quaffed it as if it had been drawn like any other water from a well,
+would have been ignoble in David. There are things that it may be noble
+to give and ignoble to accept. There are sacrifices which we are not
+entitled to allow others to make for our sakes. Gratifications which
+can only be procured at the hazard of men's lives are too dearly bought.
+
+Would not a civilisation, that draws much of its comforts and
+appliances from 'sweated industries,' and is languidly amused by seeing
+men and women performers peril their lives nightly, and lose them too,
+for its gratification, be the better for copying David's recoil from
+drinking 'the blood of men that went in jeopardy of their lives'? Is
+there not 'blood' on many a woman's ball-dress, on many an article of
+luxury, on many an amusement?
+
+There are sacrifices which we have no right to accept from others. The
+three had no right to risk life for such a purpose, and David would
+have been selfish if he had drunk the water. Do not such thoughts lead
+us by contrast to Him who has done what none other can do? 'None of
+them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give his life a ransom
+for him'; but Jesus can and Jesus does, and what it would be
+impossible, and wrong if it were possible, for one man to do for
+another, He has done for us all, and what it would be base for a man to
+accept from another if that other could give it, it is blessed and the
+beginning of all nobleness of character for us to accept from Him.
+David would not drink because the cup seemed to him to be red with
+blood. Jesus offers to us a cup, not of cold water only but of 'water
+and blood,' and bids us drink of it and remember Him.
+
+The generous devotion of the three kindled answering emotions in
+David's breast. It would be a churlish soul that was not warmed into
+some faint replica of such self-sacrifice, and most of us would be
+ashamed of ourselves if we were unmoved by such love. But does the
+supreme example of it affect us as much as the lesser examples of it
+do? How many of us stand before it like the peaks of the Alps that
+front full south, and lift an unmelted breastplate of snow to the
+midday sun! How many of us have lived all our lives in presence of
+Jesus' infinite love and self-surrender for us each, and never have
+felt one transient touch of answering love!
+
+The other part of David's impulse was to offer to God what was too
+precious for his own use. That is the fitting destination of our most
+precious and prized possessions. And whatever is thus offered becomes
+more precious by being offered. The altar sanctifies and enhances the
+worth of the gift. What we give to God is more our own than if we had
+kept it to ourselves, and develops richer capacities of ministering to
+our delight. It is so with our greatest surrender, the surrender of
+ourselves. When we give ourselves to Jesus, He renders us back to
+ourselves, far better worth having than before. We are never so much
+our own as when we are wholly Christ's. And the same thing is true as
+to all our riches of mind, heart, or worldly wealth. If we wish to
+taste their most delicate and refined sweetness, let us give them to
+Jesus, and the touch of His hand, as He accepts them and gives them
+back to us, will leave a lingering fragrance that nothing else can
+impart. Was not the water from the well of Bethlehem sweeter to David
+as he poured it out unto the Lord than if he had greedily gulped it
+down?
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS
+
+
+
+
+DAVID APPOINTING SOLOMON
+
+'Then king David answered and said, Call me Bath-sheba. And she came
+into the king's presence, and stood before the king. 29. And the king
+sware, and said, As the Lord liveth, that hath redeemed my soul out of
+all distress, 30. Even as I sware unto thee by the Lord God of Israel,
+saying, Assuredly Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall
+sit upon my throne in my stead; even so will I certainly do this day.
+31. Then Bath-sheba bowed with her face to the earth, and did reverence
+to the king, and said, Let my lord king David live for ever. 32. And
+king David said, Call me Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and
+Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. And they came before the king. 33. The
+king also said unto them, Take with you the servants of your lord, and
+cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring him down to
+Gihon: 34. And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him
+there king over Israel: and blow ye with the trumpet, and say, God save
+king Solomon. 35. Then ye shall come up after him, that he may come and
+sit upon my throne; for he shall be king in my stead: and I have
+appointed him to be ruler over Israel and over Judah. 36. And Benaiah
+the son of Jehoiada answered the king, and said, Amen; the Lord God of
+my lord the king say so too. 37. As the Lord hath been with my lord the
+king, even so be he with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the
+throne of my lord king David. 38. So Zadok the priest, and Nathan the
+prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the
+Pelethites, went down, and caused Solomon to ride upon king David's
+mule, and brought him to Gihon. 39. And Zadok the priest took an horn
+of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the
+trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon.'--1 KINGS i.
+28-39.
+
+
+The earlier part of this chapter must be taken into account in order to
+get the right view of this incident. David's eldest surviving son,
+Adonijah, had claimed the succession, and gathered his partisans to a
+feast. Nathan, alarmed at the prospect of such a successor, had
+arranged with Bathsheba that she should go to David and ask his public
+confirmation of his promise to her that Solomon should succeed him, and
+that then Nathan should seek an audience while she was with the king,
+and, as independently, should prefer the same request.
+
+The plan was carried out, and here we see its results. The old king was
+roused to a flash of his ancient vigour, confirmed his oath to
+Bathsheba, and promptly cut the ground from under Adonijah's feet by
+sending for the three who had remained true to him--Nathan, Benaiah,
+and Zadok--and despatching them without a moment's delay to proclaim
+Solomon king, and then to bring him up to the palace and enthrone him.
+The swift execution of these decisive orders, and the burst of popular
+acclamation which welcomed Solomon's accession, shattered the nascent
+conspiracy, and its supporters scattered in haste, to preserve their
+lives. The story may be best dealt with, for our purpose, by taking
+this brief summary and trying to draw lessons from it.
+
+I. It points anew the truth that 'whatsoever a man soweth, that shall
+he also reap.' As Absalom, so Adonijah, had been spoiled by David's
+over-indulgence (verse 6), and having never had his wishes checked, was
+now letting his unbridled wishes hurry him into rebellion. Nor was that
+fault of David's the only one which brought about the miserable
+squabbles round his deathbed, as to who should wear the crown which had
+not yet fallen from his head. Eastern monarchies are familiar with
+struggles for the crown between the sons of different mothers when
+their father dies. David had indulged in a multitude of wives, and his
+last days were darkened by the resulting intrigues of his sons. No
+doubt, too, Solomon was disliked by his brethren as the child of
+Bathsheba, and the shame of David's crime was an obstacle in his
+younger son's way. Thus, as ever, his evil deeds came home to roost,
+and the poisonous seed which he had sown grew up and waved, a bitter
+harvest, which he had to reap. Repentance and forgiveness did not
+neutralise the natural consequences of his sin. Nor will they do so for
+us. God often leaves them to be experienced, that the experience may
+make us hate the sins the more.
+
+II. The sad defection to Adonijah of such tried friends as Joab and
+Abiathar has its lesson. The reason for Joab's treachery is plain. He
+had been steadily drifting away from David for years. His fierce temper
+could not brook the king's displeasure on account of his murders of
+Abner and Amasa, and his slaying of Absalom had made the breach
+irreparable. No doubt, David had made him feel that he loved and
+trusted him no longer; and his old comrade in many a fight, Benaiah,
+had stepped into the place which he had once filled. Professional
+rivalry had darkened into bitter bate. Joab commanded the native-born
+Israelites; Benaiah, the 'Cherethites and Pelethites,' who are now
+generally regarded as foreign mercenaries. They were David's bodyguard,
+and were probably as heartily hated by Joab and the other Israelite
+soldiers as they were trusted by David. So there were reasons enough
+for Joab's abetting an insurrection which would again make him the
+foremost soldier. He wanted to be indispensable, and would prop the
+throne as long as its occupant looked only to him as its defender.
+Besides, he probably felt that he would have little chance of winning
+distinction in a kingdom which was to be a peaceful one.
+
+Abiathar's motives are unexplained, but if we notice that he had been
+obliged to acquiesce in the irregular arrangement of putting the
+high-priest's office into commission, we can understand that he bore no
+goodwill to Zadok, his colleague, or to David for making the latter so.
+Self was at the bottom of these two renegades' action. The fair
+fellowship, which had been made the closer because of dangers and
+privations faced together, crumbled away before the disintegrating
+influences of petty personal jealousies. When once self-regard gets in,
+it is like the trickle of water in the cracks of a rock, which freezes
+in winter and splits the hardest stone. No common action for a great
+cause is possible without the suppression of sidelong looks towards
+private advantage. Joab and Abiathar tarnished a life's devotion and
+broke sacred bonds, because they thought of themselves rather than of
+God's will. Surely they must have had some pangs as they sat at
+Adonijah's feast, when they thought of the decrepit old king lying in
+his chamber up on Zion, and remembered what he and they had come
+through together.
+
+III. We may note the pathetic picture of decaying old age which is seen
+in David. He was not very old in years, being about seventy, but he was
+a worn-out man. His early hardships had told on him, and now he lay in
+the inner chamber, the shadow of himself. His love for Bathsheba had
+died down, as would appear both from her demeanour before him, and from
+her ignorance of his intentions as to his successor. She was little or
+nothing to him now. He seems to have been torpidly unaware of what was
+going on. The noise of Adonijah's revels had not disturbed his quiet.
+He had not even taken the trouble to designate his successor, though
+'the eyes of all Israel were upon him that he should tell who was to
+sit on his throne after him' (v. 20). Such neglect was criminal in the
+circumstances, and brings out forcibly the weary indifference which had
+crept over him. Contrast that picture with the early days of swift
+energy and eager interest in all things. Is this half-comatose old man
+the David who flashed like a meteor and struck swift as a thunderbolt
+but a few years before? Yes, and a like collapse of power befalls us
+all, if life is prolonged. Those who most need the lesson will be least
+touched by it; but let not the young glory in their strength, for it
+soon fades away; and let them give the vigour of their early days to
+God, that, when the years come in which they shall say, 'I have no
+pleasure in them,' they may be able, like David, to look back over a
+long life and say, with him, that the Lord 'hath redeemed my soul out
+of all adversity.'
+
+IV. We note the flash of fire which blazed up in the dying embers of
+David's life. The old lion could be roused yet, and could strike when
+roused. It took much to shake him out of his torpor. Nathan's plan of
+bringing the double influence of Bathsheba and himself to bear was
+successful beyond what he had hoped. All that they desired was a formal
+declaration of Solomon as successor. They knew that the king's name was
+still dear enough to all Israel to ensure that his wish would settle
+the succession; and they would have been content to have left the
+actual entrance of Solomon on office till after David's death, so sure
+were they that his word was still a spell. But the old king, shaking
+off his languor, as a lion does the drops from his mane, goes beyond
+their wishes, and strikes one decisive blow as with a great paw, and no
+second is needed. Without a moment's delay, he sends for the trusty
+three, and bids them act on the instant. So down to Gihon goes the
+procession, with the youthful prince seated on his father's mule, in
+token of his accession, the trusty bodyguard round him with Benaiah at
+their head, and the great prophet Nathan, side by side with the
+high-priest Zadok, representing the divine sanction of the solemn act.
+
+It would take stronger men than the spoiled Adonijah and his revellers
+to upset anything which that determined company resolved to do. The lad
+is anointed with the holy oil which Zadok as high-priest had the right
+to bring forth from the temporary sanctuary. That signified and
+effected the communication from above of qualifications for the kingly
+office, and indicated divine appointment. Then out blared the trumpets,
+and the glad people shouted 'God save the king!' What thoughts filled
+the young heart of Solomon as he stood silent there his vision in
+Gibeon may partly tell. But the distant roar of acclaim reached
+Adonijah and his gang as they sat at their too hasty banquet.
+
+They had begun at the wrong end. The feast should have closed, not
+inaugurated, the dash for the crown. They who feast when they should
+fight are likely to end their mirth with sorrow. David's one stroke was
+enough. They were as sure as Nathan and Bathsheba had been that the
+declaration of his wish would carry all Israel with it, and so they saw
+that the game was up, and there was a rush for dear life. The empty
+banqueting-hall proclaimed the collapse of a rebellion which had no
+brains to guide it, and no reason to justify it. Let us learn that,
+though 'the race is not always to the swift,' promptitude of action,
+when we are sure of God's will, is usually a condition of success. Life
+is too short, and the work to be done too pressing and great, to allow
+of dawdling. 'I made haste, and delayed not, but made haste to keep Thy
+commandments.' Let us learn, too, from Adonijah's fiasco, to see the
+end of a thing before we commit ourselves to it, and to have the work
+done first before we think of the feast.
+
+Nathan and Bathsheba and David all believed that God had willed
+Solomon's succeeding to the throne. No doubt, the reason for their
+belief was the divine word to David through Nathan (2 Samuel vii. 12),
+which designated a son not yet born as his successor, and therefore
+excluded Adonijah as well as Absalom. But, while they believed this,
+they did not therefore let Adonijah work his will, and leave God to
+carry out His purposes. Their belief animated their action. They knew
+what God willed, and therefore they worked strenuously to effect that
+will. We may bewilder our brains with speculations about the relation
+between God's sovereignty and man's freedom, but, when it comes to
+practical work, we have to put out the best and most that is in us to
+prevent God's will from being thwarted by rebellious men, and to ensure
+its being carried into effect through our efforts, 'for we are God's
+fellow-workers.'
+
+
+
+
+A YOUNG MAN'S WISE CHOICE OP WISDOM
+
+'In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God
+said, Ask what I shall give thee. 6. And Solomon said, Thou hast shewed
+unto Thy servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked
+before Thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart
+with Thee; and Thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that Thou
+hast given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. 7. And
+now, O Lord my God, Thou hast made Thy servant king instead of David my
+father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come
+in. 8. And Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people which Thou hast
+chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for
+multitude. 9. Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart to
+judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is
+able to judge this Thy so great a people? 10. And the speech pleased
+the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. 11. And God said unto him,
+Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long
+life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of
+thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern
+judgment; 12. Behold, I have done according to thy words: lo, I have
+given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none
+like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto
+thee. 13. And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked,
+both riches and honour: so that there shall not be any among the kings
+like unto thee all thy days. 14. And if thou wilt walk in My ways, to
+keep My statutes and My commandments, as thy father David did walk,
+then I will lengthen thy days. 15. And Solomon awoke; and, behold, It
+was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the
+covenant of the Lord, and offered up burnt offerings, and offered peace
+offerings, and made a feast to all his servants.'--1 KINGS iii. 5-15.
+
+
+The new king was apparently some nineteen or twenty years old on his
+accession. He stepped at once out of seclusion and idleness to bear the
+whole weight of the kingdom. The glories of David's reign, his brother
+Adonijah's pretensions to the crown, the smouldering hostility of
+Saul's old partisans, made his position difficult and his throne
+unsteady. No doubt, 'the weight of too much dignity' pressed on the
+youth, and this dream found a point of origin in his waking thoughts.
+God does not thus reveal Himself to men who seek Him not; and the offer
+in the vision is but the repetition of what Solomon felt in many a
+waking moment of meditation that God was saying to him, and the choice
+he makes in it is the choice that he had already made. He who seeks
+wisdom first is already wise.
+
+I. Note the wide possibilities opened by the divine offer. Our
+narrative brings that gracious offer into connection with Solomon's
+lavish sacrifice before the Tabernacle at Gibeon. 'God loveth a
+cheerful giver' and because these thousand burnt offerings meant
+devotion and thankfulness, therefore He who lets no man be the poorer
+for what he gives to Him, and is honoured most, not by our givings to,
+but by our takings from Him, comes in the quiet night, and puts the key
+of all His treasures into the young king's hands. In a very real sense
+this divine voice is but the putting into words of the fact as to every
+young life. The all but boundless possibilities before every young man
+and woman give solemnity to their position, which they too often do not
+recognise till youth is past. The future lies blank before them, ready
+to receive what they choose to write on its page. Once written, it is
+indelible. They are still free from the limitations of habit and
+associations. They have still the capacity and the opportunity of
+choice. There are limits, of course, but still it is scarcely
+exaggeration to say that a man may become almost anything he likes, if
+he strongly wills it when young, and sticks to his resolve. When the
+liquid iron flows from the blast furnace, it may be run into any mould;
+but it soon cools and hardens, and obstinately keeps its shape, in
+spite of hammers.
+
+If young men and women could but see the possibilities of their youth,
+and the issues that hang on early choice, as clearly as they will see
+them some day, there would be fewer wasted mornings of life and fewer
+gloomy sunsets. But the misery is that so many do not choose at all,
+but just let things slide, and allow themselves to be moulded by
+whatever influence happens to be strongest. For one man who goes wrong
+by deliberate choice, with open eyes, there are twenty who simply
+drift. Unfortunately, there is more evil than good in the world; and if
+a lad takes his colour from his surroundings, the chances are terribly
+against his coming to anything high, noble, or pure. This world is no
+place for a man who cannot say 'No.' If we are like the weeds in a
+stream, and let it decide which way we shall point, we shall be sure to
+point downwards. It would do much to secure the choice of the Good, if
+there were a clear recognition by all young persons of the fact that
+they have the choice to make, and are really making it unconsciously.
+If they could be brought, like Solomon, to put their ruling wish into
+plain words, many who are not ashamed to yield to unworthy desires
+would be ashamed to speak them out baldly. Let each ask himself,
+'Suppose that I had to say out what I want most, dare I avow before my
+own conscience, to say nothing of God, what it is?
+
+Looked at from a somewhat different point of view, God's offer to
+Solomon presupposes God's knowledge and approval of his wishes. He does
+not give blank cheques to those whom He cannot trust to fill them up
+rightly. When James and John tried to commit Jesus to a blind promise
+'that Thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall ask of Thee,' their
+answer was a question as to what they wished. 'Delight thyself also in
+the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' God loves
+us too well to let us have _carte blanche_ unless our wills run
+parallel with His. He is a foolish and cruel father who promises
+compliance with all his child's unknown wishes. Not such is our
+Father's loving discipline. It is to those who 'abide in Christ,' and
+have Him abiding in them, moulding their longings and prayers, that the
+great promise is sealed: 'Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be
+done unto you.'
+
+II. Note next the wise choice of wisdom. 'Had not Solomon been wise
+before, he had not known the worth of wisdom. The dunghill cocks of
+this world cannot know the price of this pearl; those that have it know
+that all other excellencies are but trash and rubbish unto it.'
+Solomon's prayer shows the temper with which he entered on his reign.
+There is no exultation; his serious and clear-eyed spirit sees in rule
+a heavy task. He contrasts his inexperienced rawness with the 'truth
+and righteousness' and veteran maturity of his great predecessor, and
+trembles to think that he, a mere lad, sits on David's throne. But he
+pleads with God that He has made him king, and implies that therefore
+God is bound to fit him for his office. That is the boldness permitted
+to faith,--to remind God of His own past acts, which pledge Him to give
+what He has put us into circumstances to need. With beautiful humility,
+Solomon dwells on his youth and inexperience, and on the vastness of
+the charge laid on him. All these considerations are the motives for
+his choice of a gift, and also pleas with God to grant his request.
+
+He asks for the practical wisdom needed for ruling in these old days,
+when the king was judge as well as ruler and captain. Was this the
+highest gift that he could have asked or received? Surely the deep
+longings of his father for communion with God were yet better. No doubt
+the 'wisdom' of the Book of Proverbs is religion and morality as well
+as true thinking, but the 'understanding heart to judge Thy people'
+which Solomon asked and received is narrower and more secular in its
+meaning. There is no sign in his biography that he ever had the deep
+inward devotion of his father. After the poet-psalmist came the prosaic
+and keen-sighted shrewd man of affairs. The one breathed his ardent
+soul into psalms, which feed devotion to-day; the other crystallised
+his discernment in 'three thousand proverbs,' and, though his 'songs
+were one thousand and five' they touched a lower range, both of poetry
+and religious feeling, than his father's, as may be expressed by
+calling them 'songs,' not 'psalms.'
+
+But though the request is not the highest, it may well be taken as a
+pattern by the young. Note the view of his position from which it
+rises. To Solomon dignity meant duty; and his crown was not a toy, but
+a task. The responsibilities, not the enjoyments, of his station were
+uppermost in his mind. That is the only right view to take. Youth is
+meant to be enthusiastic, and to feed its aspirations on noble ideals,
+and if, instead of that, it does as too many do, especially in
+countries where wealth abounds, namely, regards life as a garden of
+delights, or sometimes as a sty where young men may wallow in
+'pleasures,' then farewell to all hopes of high achievements or of an
+honourable career. Youthful ideals will fade fast enough; but alas for
+the life which had none to begin with! Note the sense of insufficiency
+for his task. Youth is prone to be over-confident, and to think that it
+can do better than its fathers, who were as confident in their time.
+There is a false humility which flattens the spirit and keeps from
+plain duty; and there is a true lowliness which feels that the task
+must be attempted, though the heart may shrink, and which impels to
+prayer for fitness not its own. He who tells God his consciousness of
+impotence, and asks Him to supply His strength to its weakness and His
+wisdom to its inexperience, will never shirk work because it is too
+great, nor ever fail to find power according to his need.
+
+III. Note God's answer. Solomon gets his wish, and much which he had
+not asked besides. The divine answer is in two parts. First, the
+reasons for the large gift; and second, the details of the gift. His
+not wishing material good was the very reason why he obtained it. That
+is not always so; for often enough a man whose whole nature is
+sharpened to one point, in the intensity of his desire to make money,
+will succeed. But what then? He will be none the better, but the
+poorer, for his wealth. But this is always true,--that the people who
+do not make worldly good their first object are the people who can be
+most safely trusted with it, and who get most enjoyment out of it.
+Whether in the precise form of the gift to Solomon or not, outward good
+does attend a life which sets duty before pleasure, and desires most to
+be able to do it. All earthly good is exalted by being put second, and
+degraded as well as corrupted by being put first. The water lapped up
+in the palm, as the soldier marches, is sweeter than the abundant
+draughts swilled down by self-indulgence. 'Seek ye first the kingdom of
+God, ... and all these things shall be added unto you.'
+
+Note the largeness of the gift. When God is pleased with a man's
+prayers, He gives more than was asked, and so teaches us to be ashamed
+of the smallness of our expectations, and widens our desires by His
+overlapping bestowments. First, He gives the wisdom asked. Dependence
+on God, rising from the sense of our own ignorance, has a wonderful
+power of bringing illumination, even as to small matters of practical
+duty. Solomon asked it, to guide him in his judicial decisions; and the
+first case to which it was applied, when received, was a miserable
+quarrel between two disreputable women. A devout heart, purged from
+self-conceit, is often gifted with a piercing wisdom before which the
+crafty shrewdness of the world is abashed. We cannot be 'wise as
+serpents' unless we are 'harmless as doves.' The world may think such
+'wisdom' folly, but she will be 'justified of her children.' Is the
+saying of James's Epistle a reminiscence of Solomon's dream, 'If any of
+you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, ... and it shall be given him'?
+
+Then follows the grant of the unasked goods,--riches, honour, and
+length of days. Surely we hear an echo of these promises in that
+magnificent description of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs: 'Length of
+days is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honour'
+These and similar gifts may or may not follow our choice of divine
+wisdom as our truest good If we have really chosen it, we shall regard
+them as make-weights, to be thankfully received and rightly used, but
+not as indispensable. If we pursue wisdom for the sake of getting
+these, we shall lose both it and them. If we have set our desires most
+earnestly on the most worthy things, which are God's love and a
+character hallowed by His grace, we shall be rich indeed, whether what
+the world calls wealth be ours or no; and our days will be long enough
+if in them we have been prepared for the fuller wisdom and undying life
+of heaven.
+
+Solomon realised his youthful aspirations. The only way to be sure of
+getting what we wish, is to wish what God desires to give,--even
+Himself,--and to ask it of Him. Solomon, like many a young man, outgrew
+his early 'dream.' Was he happier or wiser when he was a worn-out
+voluptuary, smiling with cynical scorn at his young self, or when, with
+generous enthusiasm, he felt the solemnity of life and the awfulness of
+duty, and asked God to help his insufficiency? Was not the dream truer
+and more real than the waking hours of profligacy and unreal
+'enjoyment'?
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT GAIN OF GODLINESS
+
+'And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under
+his fig tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days of Solomon. 26.
+And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and
+twelve thousand horsemen. 27. And those officers provided victual for
+king Solomon, and for all that came unto king Solomon's table, every
+man in his month: they lacked nothing. 28. Barley also and straw for
+the horses and dromedaries brought they unto the place where the
+officers were, every man according to his charge. 29. And God gave
+Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of
+heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore. 30. And Solomon's
+wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and
+all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan
+the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and
+his fame was in all nations round about. 32. And he spake three
+thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. 33. And he
+spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the
+hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of
+fowl and of creeping things, and of fishes. 34. And there came of all
+people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth,
+which had heard of his wisdom.'--1 KINGS iv. 25-34
+
+
+The glories of Solomon's reign kindle the writer of this Book of Kings
+to patriotic enthusiasm, all the more touching if, as is probable, he
+wrote during Israel's exile. The fair vision of the past would make the
+sad present still sadder. But it is not patriotism only which guides
+his pen; he recognises that Solomon's glory was the result of Solomon's
+religion, and by portraying it he would teach the eternal truth that
+godliness hath 'promise of the life that now is' as well as 'of that
+which is to come.' The passage brings out three characteristics of
+Solomon's reign and character: the peace enjoyed by Israel during his
+time, his wealth, and his wisdom.
+
+I. That beautiful phrase for a time of secure enjoyment of modest,
+material good in a simple state of agricultural society, 'dwelt safely,
+every man under his vine and under his fig tree' occurs frequently in
+the Old Testament, and breathes the very essence of a calm life of
+rural felicity and restful enjoyment of wholesome joys. How different
+from the feverish ideal predominant in our great cities to-day! Which
+is the nobler and the more likely to yield abiding content and to be
+the ally of high and serious thought--this antique picture of
+leisurely, unambitious lives, or the scramble for wealth which destroys
+repose, and is so busy getting that it has no time either rightly to
+enjoy, or nobly to expend, its wealth? Those who have their country's
+truest prosperity at heart may well sigh for the return of the vanished
+ideal of Solomon's days; and those who would make the most of
+themselves must in some measure seek to conform their own lives to it.
+
+But another view may be taken of this picture of national prosperity.
+Remember the time at which it was painted,--a time when the prosperity
+of a nation was thought to consist in conquest, and when the arts of
+peace were despised. How far beyond his era was the king who set his
+highest glory in securing for his people tranquil lives on their
+fertile homesteads, and condemned the vulgar glory of the conqueror!
+How far beyond his era was the writer who felt that the fairest page in
+his book was not that which told of battles and triumphs, but that
+which portrayed a peaceful reign, when swords were turned into
+ploughshares! The world has not yet learned that the highest function
+of government is to promote individual prosperity. The vulgar, wicked
+notion of 'glory' bewitches the nations still. A Europe, armed to the
+teeth and staggering under the weight of its weapons, has need to go to
+school to this old Hebrew ideal. 'They didn't know everything down in
+Judee,' but they knew that peace has nobler victories than war has. The
+people who see nothing in the world's history but natural evolution
+have a hard nut to crack in accounting for the singular fact that the
+Jew somehow or other had got hold of a truth to which the most advanced
+nations to-day have scarcely grown up.
+
+II. The wealth of Solomon is illustrated by his large equipment of
+chariots and horsemen. The older habits of the nation had not favoured
+the use of either, and their employment by Solomon was a sign of
+growing luxury, which had the seeds of evil in it. But the novelty was
+characteristic of the change coming over Israel in his day, and of its
+closer intercourse with other nations. The number of forty thousand for
+the stalls of the horses is an evident clerical error, which is
+corrected in the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles ix. 25 to the more
+probable number of four thousand. A well-organised staff looked after
+provisioning the cavalry and chariot horses wherever they were
+quartered. This one instance of Solomon's resources should be connected
+with the other details of these. The intention of all is, not only to
+magnify his wealth, but to bring out the fulfilment of the promise made
+to him as part of the reward of his prayer for wisdom, that he should
+have the inferior good which he had not asked, 'both riches and honour.'
+
+The principle which the writer of this book would confirm and exemplify
+is, that to the man who seeks first the kingdom of God and His
+righteousness all these things shall be added. Now the whole order of
+supernatural providences in the Old Testament was directed to making
+material prosperity depend on obedience to God. And we cannot assert
+that the New Testament order has the same purpose in view. 'Prosperity
+was the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the
+New.' But even in Old Testament times outward prosperity did not always
+follow godliness, and the problem which has tortured all generations
+had already been raised, as the Book of Job and Psalm lxxiii show.
+
+Undoubtedly, religion does contribute to prosperity. The natural
+tendency of the course of life which Christianity enjoins is to lead to
+moderate, modest success in a worldly point of view. Not many
+millionaires owe their millions to the practice of Christian virtues,
+but many a man owes his elevation from poverty to modest competence to
+the character and habits which his religion has stamped on him. People
+who get converted in the slums soon get out of the slums.
+
+But, whether Christianity helps a man to worldly success or not, it
+helps him to get all the good out of the world that the world can give.
+It may, or may not, give dainties, but it will make brown bread sweet.
+It may, or may not, give wealth, but it will make the 'little that a
+righteous man hath better than the riches of many wicked.' They who
+know no higher good than earth can yield know not the highest good of
+earth; they who put worldly prosperity and treasure second find them
+far more precious and sweet than when they ranked them as first.
+
+III. But the crown of Solomon's gifts was his wisdom. And his elevation
+of intellectual and moral endowments above material good is as
+remarkable as his similar elevation of peace above warlike fame, and
+suggests the same questions as to the source of ideas so far ahead of
+what was then the world's point of view. Observe that Solomon's
+'wisdom' in all its departments is traced to God its giver. Observe,
+too, that expression 'largeness of heart,' by which is meant, not width
+of quick sympathy or generosity, but what we should call comprehensive
+intellect. The 'heart' is the centre of the personal being, from which
+thoughts as well as affections flow, and the phrase here points to
+thoughts rather than to affections.
+
+Solomon, then, was a many-sided student, and his 'genius' showed itself
+in very various forms. He lived before the days of specialists. The
+region of knowledge was so limited that a man could be master in many
+departments. Nowadays the mass has become so unmanageable that, to know
+one subject thoroughly, we have to be ignorant of many, like the
+scholar who had given his life to the study of the Greek noun, and,
+dying, lamented that he had not confined himself to the dative case!
+Practical wisdom, which had its field In doing justice between his
+subjects; shrewd observation of life, with wit to discern resemblances
+and to put wisdom into homely, short sayings; poetic sensibility and
+the gift of melodious speech; and, added to these manifold endowments,
+interest in, and rudimentary knowledge of, natural history and botany,
+make the points specified as Solomon's wisdom.
+
+'A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's
+epitome,'--
+
+the first and greatest of the few students or philosophers who have sat
+on thrones.
+
+But the main thing to notice is that in Solomon we see exemplified the
+normal relation between religion and intellectual power and learning.
+Judge, artist, scientist, and all other thinkers and students, draw
+their power from God, and should use it for Him. And, on the other
+hand, Solomon's example is a rebuke to those narrow-minded Christians
+who look askance at men of learning, letters, or science, as well as to
+those still more narrow-minded men of intellectual ability who think
+that science and religion must be sworn foes. If our religion is what
+it should be, it will widen our understanding all round.
+
+'Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us
+dwell.'
+
+
+
+
+GREAT PREPARATIONS FOR A GREAT WORK
+
+'And Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had
+heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for
+Hiram was ever a lover of David. 2. And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying,
+3. Thou knowest how that David my father could not build an house unto
+the name of the Lord his God for the wars which were about him on every
+side, until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet. 4. But now
+the Lord my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is
+neither adversary nor evil occurrent. 6. And, behold, I purpose to
+build an house unto the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord spake unto
+David my father, saying, Thy son, whom I will set upon thy throne in
+thy room, he shall build an house unto My name. 6. Now therefore
+command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my
+servants shall be with thy servants: and unto thee will I give hire for
+thy servants according to all that thou shalt appoint: for thou knowest
+that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto
+the Sidonians. 7. And it came to pass, when Hiram heard the words of
+Solomon, that he rejoiced greatly, and said, Blessed be the Lord this
+day, which hath given unto David a wise son over this great people. 8.
+And Hiram sent to Solomon, saying, I have considered the things which
+thou sentest to me for: and I will do all thy desire concerning timber
+of cedar, and concerning timber of fir. 9. My servants shall bring them
+down from Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats
+unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be
+discharged there, and thou shalt receive them: and thou shalt
+accomplish my desire, in giving food for my household. 10. So Hiram
+gave Solomon cedar trees, and fir trees, according to all his desire.
+11. And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat, for food
+to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to
+Hiram year by year. 12. And the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as He
+promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they
+two made a league together.--1 KINGS v. 1-12.
+
+
+The building of the Temple was begun in the fourth year of Solomon's
+reign (1 Kings vi. 1). The preparations for so great a work must have
+taken much time, so that the arrangement with Hiram recorded in this
+passage was probably made very early in the reign. That probability is
+strengthened if we suppose, as we must do, that the embassy from Hiram
+mentioned in verse I was sent to congratulate Solomon on his accession.
+If so, the latter's proposal to get timber and stones from the Lebanon
+would be made at the very commencement of the reign. Three years would
+not be more than enough to get the material ready and transported.
+Great designs need long preparation. Raw haste wastes time;
+deliberation is as needful before beginning as rapid action is when we
+have begun.
+
+I. Verses 3-5 set forth very forcibly the motives which impelled the
+young king to the work, and may suggest to us the motives which should
+urge us to diligence in building a better temple than he reared. He
+begins by reference to his father's foiled wish, and to the reason why
+David could not build the house. Not only was it inappropriate that a
+warlike king should build it, but it was impossible that, whilst his
+thoughts were occupied and his resources taxed by war, he should devote
+himself to such a work. In Assyria and Egypt the great warrior kings
+are the great temple-builders, but a divine decorum forbade it to be so
+in Israel.
+
+Solomon next thankfully describes his own happier circumstances.
+Observe his designation of Jehovah in verse 4 as 'my God,' and compare
+with verse 3, where He is called David's God. The son had inherited the
+divine protection and the father's sense of personal relation to
+Jehovah. That is a better legacy than a throne. Well had it been for
+Solomon if he had held by the faith of his first days of royalty! Such
+a sense of a personal bond of love protecting on the one hand, and love
+trusting and obeying on the other, is the spring of all true service of
+God, whether it is busied in temple-building or in anything else.
+
+We note also the grateful recognition of benefits received, and the
+tracing of peace and outward prosperity to God's care. There was not a
+cloud in the sky. The horizon was clear all round, and it was 'the Lord
+my God,' who had made this ease for Solomon. We are often more ready to
+recognise God's hand in sorrows than in joys. When He smites, we try to
+say 'It is the Lord!' Do we try to say it when all things are smooth
+and bright?
+
+The effect of blessings should be thankfulness, and the proof of
+thankfulness is service. So Solomon did not take prosperity as an
+inducement to selfish luxurious repose, but heard in it God's call to a
+great task. If all the rich men and all the leisurely women who call
+themselves Christians would do likewise, there would be plenty of
+workers and of resources for Christ's service, which now sorely lacks
+both. How many of such 'lay up treasure for themselves, and are not
+rich toward God'! How many fritter away their leisure in vanities,
+having time for any amusement or folly, but none for Christian service!
+
+The man whom Jesus called 'Thou fool!' not the wise king, is the
+pattern for a sad number of professing Christians. 'Thou hast much
+goods laid up for many years.' What then? 'I purpose to build an house
+for the name of the Lord'? By no means. 'I will build greater barns,
+and that will give me something to do, and then I will take mine ease.'
+
+We note, too, that Solomon was impelled to his great work by the
+knowledge that God had appointed him to do it. The divine word
+concerning himself, spoken to his father, sounded in his ears, and gave
+him no rest till he had set about obeying it (v. 5). The motives of the
+great temple-builders of old, as they themselves expound them in
+hieroglyphics and cuneiform, were largely ostentation and the wish to
+outdo predecessors; but Solomon was moved by thankfulness and by
+obedience to his father's will, and still more, to God's destination of
+him. If we would look at our positions and blessings as he looked at
+his in the fair dawning of his reign, we should find abundant
+indications of God's will regarding our work.
+
+Solomon uses a remarkable expression as to the purpose of the Temple.
+It is to be 'an house for the _name_ of the Lord.' That is not the same
+as 'for the Lord.' Pagan temples might be intended by their builders
+for the actual residence of the god, but Solomon knew that the heaven
+of heavens could not contain Him, much less this house which he was
+about to build. We are fairly entitled, then, to lay stress on that
+phrase, 'the Name.' It means the whole self-revelation of God, or,
+rather, the character of God as made known by that self-revelation.
+
+The Temple was, then, to be the place in which the God who fills earth
+and heaven was to manifest Himself, and where His servants were to
+behold and reverence Him as manifested. The Shechinah was the symbol,
+and in one aspect was a part, of that self-revelation. However, in
+common speech the Temple was spoken of as the house of Jehovah. The
+same thought which is expressed in Solomon's fuller phrase underlay the
+expression,--_He_ dwelt 'not in temples made with hands' but His _name_
+was set there, and the structure was reared, not so much for Him as
+that worshippers might there meet Him.
+
+II. The rest of the passage deals with Solomon's request to Hiram, and
+the preparation of the material for the Temple. Solomon's first care
+was to secure timber and stone. His own dominions can never have been
+well wooded, and there are many indications that the great central knot
+of mountainous land, which included the greater part of his kingdom,
+was comparatively treeless. He therefore proposed to Hiram to supply
+timber from the great woods on Lebanon, which have now nearly died out,
+and offered liberal payment.
+
+The parallel account in 2 Chronicles makes Solomon offer specified
+quantities of provisions for Hiram's workmen, and makes Hiram accept
+the terms. Verse 11 of this chapter says that the provisions named
+there were for the Tyrian king's 'household.' This may possibly mean
+the workmen, who would be regarded as Hiram's slaves, but, more
+probably, 'household' means 'court,' and Solomon had not only to feed
+the army of workmen, but to supply as much again for the great
+establishment which Hiram kept up. The little slip of seacoast, with
+the mountain rising sharply behind, which made Hiram's kingdom, could
+not grow enough for his people's wants. His country was 'nourished' by
+Palestine, long centuries after this time (Acts xii. 20), and the same
+was the case in Solomon's period. In verse 11, the quantity of oil is
+impossibly small as compared with that of wheat. 2 Chronicles reads
+'twenty thousand' instead of 'twenty,' and the Septuagint inserts
+'thousand' in verse 11, which is probably correct.
+
+With all his Oriental politeness and probably real wish to oblige a
+powerful neighbour, Hiram was too true a Phoenician not to drive a good
+bargain. He was king of 'a nation of shopkeepers,' and was quite worthy
+of the position. 'Nothing for nothing' seems to have been his motto,
+even with friends. He would love Solomon, and send him flowery
+congratulations, and talk as if all he had was his ally's, but when it
+came to settling terms he knew what his cedars were worth, and meant to
+have their value.
+
+There are a good many people who get mixed up with religious work, and
+talk as if it were very near their hearts, who have as sharp an eye to
+their own advantage as he had. The man who serves God because he gets
+paid for it, does not serve Him. The Temple may be built of the timber
+and stones that he has supplied, but he sold them, and did not give
+them, therefore he has no part in the building.
+
+How different the uncalculating lavishness of Solomon! He knows no
+better use for treasures than to expend them on God's service, and 'all
+for love, and nothing for reward.' That Is the true temper for
+Christian work. He to whom Christ has given Himself should give himself
+to Christ; and he who has given himself should and will keep back
+nothing, nor seek for cheap ways of serving the Lord, He who gives all,
+be it two mites, or a fishing-boat and some torn nets, or great wealth
+like that which Solomon found in his father's treasuries and devoted to
+building the Temple, gives much; and he who gives less than he can
+gives little.
+
+Solomon's work was, after all, outward work, and fitter for that early
+age than the imitation of it would be now. The days for building
+temples and cathedrals are past. The universal religion hallows not
+Gerizim nor Jerusalem, but every place where souls seek God The
+spiritual religion asks for no shrines reared by men's hands; for Jesus
+Christ is the true Temple, where God's name is set, and where men may
+behold the manifested Jehovah, and meet with Him. But we have work to
+do for Christ, and a temple to build in our own souls, and a stone or
+two to lay in the great Temple which is being built up through the
+ages. Well for us if we use our resources and our leisure, for such
+ends with the same promptitude, thankful surrender, and sense of
+fulfilling God's purpose, as animated the young king of Israel!
+
+
+
+
+BUILDING IN SILENCE
+
+'. . . There was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of Iron heard In
+the house, while it was in building.'--1 KINGS vi 7.
+
+
+The Temple was built in silence. It 'rose like an exhalation.'
+
+'No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the mystic
+fabric sprung.'
+
+Perhaps it was merely for convenience of transport and to save time
+that the stones were dressed in the quarries, but more probably the
+silence was due to an instinct of reverence. We may fairly use it as
+suggesting two thoughts.
+
+I. How God's house is mostly built in silence. 'The Kingdom of God
+cometh not with observation.'
+
+(1) In reference to its advance in the world. Destructive work is
+noisy, constructive work is silent. God was in 'the still small voice,'
+not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. Christ's own career, how
+silent it was! Drums are loud and empty. The spread of the kingdom was
+unnoticed by the world's great ones--Caesars, philosophers, patricians,
+and it silently grew underground. Hence may flow--
+
+(a) An encouragement to those whose work is inconspicuous.
+
+(b) A lesson not to mistake noise and notoriety for spiritual progress.
+
+(c) Guidance as to our expectations of the advance of Christ's kingdom.
+It will transform society by slow, often unnoticed, degrees, by radical
+change of individuals' habits. The elevation of humanity will be slow,
+like the imperceptible rise of the Norwegian coast. Sudden changes are
+short-lived changes. 'Lightly come, lightly go.' What matures slowly
+will last long.
+
+(2) In reference to its growth in our souls.
+
+Silence is needed for that. There must be much still communion and
+quiet reflection. The advance in the Christian life is variously
+likened to a battle, since there are antagonists and struggle is needed
+to overcome; and to vegetable or corporeal growth, which the mysterious
+indwelling life works without effort and almost without consciousness,
+but it is also likened to the erection of a building, in which there is
+continuity, and each successive course of masonry is the foundation for
+that above it. That work of building is work that must be done in
+silence. If we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, we must
+silently drink in the sunshine and dew, and so prosperously pass from
+blade to ear, and thence to full corn in the ear.
+
+Surely nothing is more needed in these days of noisy advertisement, and
+measurement of the importance of things by the noise that they can
+make, than this lesson of the place of silence in Christian progress,
+both for individuals and for the Christian Church as a whole.
+
+II. How God's house is built of prepared stones.
+
+That is true, in one view of the matter, in regard to the Church on
+earth, for there must be the individual act of repentance and faith
+before a soul is fit to be built into the fabric of the Church.
+
+There is providential training of men for their tasks before these are
+given to them.
+
+But the highest application of the symbol which we venture to find in
+our text is to the relation between the earthly and the heavenly life.
+
+This world is the quarry where the stones are dressed for the Temple in
+the heavens.
+
+(_a_) Life is the chipping and hewing. The unnecessary pieces are
+struck off with heavy mallet and sharp chisel. Pain and sorrow are thus
+explained, if not wholly, yet sufficiently to bring about submission
+and trust.
+
+(_b_) The Builder has His plan clearly before Him, and works accurately
+to realise it. He perfectly knows what He means to build, and every
+stroke of the dressing-tool is accurately directed. There are no
+mistakes made in His quarrying.
+
+ (_c_) We may be sure that the prepared stones will be brought to
+the Temple site and built into it. There lie gigantic half-hewn pillars
+in abandoned quarries in Syria and Egypt. But no one will ever say of
+the divine Temple-Builder: He began to build and was not able to
+finish. It remains a problem how the old builders managed to transport
+these huge stones from the quarries to the site, but we may be sure
+that the Architect of the 'house not made with hands, eternal in the
+heavens,' knows how to bring every stone that has been prepared here,
+to the place prepared for it, and for which it has been prepared. We
+may repose on the Apostle's assurance that 'He that has begun a good
+work in you will perform it,' or rather on the more sure word of Jesus
+Himself, 'He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of
+My God.'
+
+
+
+
+THE KING 'BLESSING' HIS PEOPLE
+
+And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this
+prayer and supplication unto the Lord, he arose from before the altar
+of the Lord, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up to
+heaven. 55. And he stood, and blessed all the congregation of Israel
+with a loud voice, saying, 56. Blessed be the Lord, that hath given
+rest unto His people Israel, according to all that He promised: there
+hath not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised by
+the hand of Moses His servant. 57. The Lord our God be with us, as He
+was with our fathers: let Him not leave us, nor forsake us: 58. That He
+may incline our hearts unto Him, to walk in all His ways, and to keep
+His commandments, and His statutes, and His judgments, which He
+commanded our fathers. 59. And let these my words, wherewith I have
+made supplication before the Lord, be nigh unto the Lord our God day
+and night, that He maintain the cause of His servant, and the cause of
+His people Israel at all times, as the matter shall require: 60. That
+all the people of the earth may know that the Lord is God, and that
+there is none else. 61. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the
+Lord our God, to walk in His statutes, and to keep His commandments, as
+at this day. 62. And the king, and all Israel with him, offered
+sacrifice before the Lord. 63. And Solomon offered a sacrifice of
+peace-offerings, which he offered unto the Lord, two and twenty
+thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king
+and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord.'--1
+KINGS viii. 54-63.
+
+
+The great ceremonial of dedicating the Temple was threefold. The first
+stage was setting the ark in its place, which was the essence of the
+whole thing. God's presence was the true dedication, and that was
+manifested by the bright cloud that filled the sanctuary as soon as the
+ark was placed there. The second stage was the lofty and spiritual
+prayer, saturated with the language and tone of Deuteronomy, and
+breathing the purest conceptions of the character and nature of God,
+and all aglow with trust in Him. Then followed, thirdly, this 'Blessing
+of the Congregation.' The prayer had been uttered by the kneeling king.
+Now he stands up, and, with ringing tones that reach to the outskirts
+of the crowd, he gathers the spirit of his prayer into two petitions,
+preceded by praise for national blessings, and followed by exhortation
+to national obedience. A huge sacrifice of unexampled magnitude closes
+the whole.
+
+I. Note the thankful retrospect of the nation's past (verse 56).
+
+Solomon 'blessed the congregation' when, in their name, he lifted up
+his voice to bless the Lord, prayed that God would incline their hearts
+to keep His law, and would maintain their cause, and exhorted them to
+keep their hearts perfect with Him. We bless each other when we ask God
+to bless, and when we draw each other nearer Him. Standing there in the
+new Temple, with a united nation gathered before him, the cloud filling
+the house, and peace resting on all his land to its farthest border,
+the king looks back on the long road from Sinai and the desert, and
+sums up the whole history in one sentence. The end has vindicated the
+methods. There had been many a dark time when enemies had oppressed,
+and many a hard-fought field had been stained with Israel's blood; but
+all had tended to this calm hour, when Israel's multitudes were
+gathered in worship, and their unguarded homes were safe. There had
+been many heroes in the long line.
+
+'Time would fail' him 'to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of
+David and Samuel ... who ... turned to flight armies of aliens.' One
+name alone is worthy to be named,--the name of the true Deliverer and
+Monarch. It is the Lord who 'hath given rest unto His people.' We look
+on the past most wisely when we see in it all the working of one mighty
+Hand, and pass beyond the great names of history or the dear names
+which have made the light of our homes, to the ever-living God, who
+works through changing instruments; and 'the help that is done on
+earth, He doeth it Himself.' We read the past most truly when we see in
+all its vicissitudes God's unchanging faithfulness, and recognise that
+the foes and sorrows which often pressed sore upon us were no breach of
+His faithful promises, but either His loving chastisement for our
+faithlessness, or His loving discipline meant to perfect our
+characters. We read the past best from the vantage-ground of the
+Temple. From its height we understand the lie of the land. Communion
+with God explains much which is else inexplicable. Solomon's judgment
+of Israel's checkered history will be our judgment of our own when we
+stand in the higher courts of the heavenly home, and look from that
+height upon all the way by which the Lord our God hath led us. In the
+meantime, it is often a trial for faith to repeat these words; but the
+blessing that comes from believing them true is worth the effort to
+stifle our tears in order to say them.
+
+II. Note the prayer for obedient hearts (verses 57, 58). The proper
+subject-matter of this petition is 'that He may incline our hearts to
+walk in His ways,' and God's presence is invoked as a means thereto.
+The deepest desire of a truly religious soul is for the felt nearness
+of God. That goes before all other blessings, and contains them all.
+Nothing is so needful or so sweet as that The presence of God is the
+absence of evil, the evil both of pain and of sin, as surely as the
+rising sun is the routing of night's black hosts. 'The best of all is,
+God is with us.' The prayer again looks back to the past, and asks that
+the ancient experiences may be renewed. The generations of those who
+trust in God are knit together, and the wonders of old time are capable
+of repetition to-day. Faith can say with deeper meaning than the
+Preacher, 'That which hath been is that which shall be.' However
+varying may be the forms, the fact of a divine presence and help
+according to need is invariable, and they that have gone before have
+not exhausted the fountain, which will fill the vessel of the latest
+comer as it did that of the first. How beautifully the abiding God and
+the fleeting series of 'our fathers' is contrasted! A moment of
+triumph, when some work, like that of building the Temple, which has
+for ages been looked forward to, and into which the sacrifices and
+aspirations of a long line of dead toilers are built, brings strongly
+before all thoughtful men the continuity of a nation or a Church, and
+the transiency of its individual members. It should suggest the abiding
+God yet more strongly than it does the passing fathers. The mercy
+remains the same, while the receivers change. The sunshine and the tree
+are the same, though the leaves which glisten and grow in the light
+have but one summer to live.
+
+But Solomon desires that God may be with him and his people for one
+specific purpose. Is it to bring outward prosperity, or to extend their
+territory, or to give them victory? As in his choice in his dream, so
+now, he asks, not for these things, but for an inward influence on
+heart and will. What he wants most for himself and them is moral
+conformity to God's will. All must be right if that be right. The
+prayer implies that, without God's help, the heart will wander from the
+paths of duty. The weakness of human nature, and the consequent
+necessity for God's grace in order to obedience, were as deeply felt by
+the devout men of the Old Testament as by Apostles. They are felt by
+every man who has honestly tried to measure the sweep and inwardness of
+God's law, and to realise it in life. We need go but a very short way
+on the road to discover that temptations to diverge lie so thick on
+either side, and that our feet grow weary so soon, that we shall make
+but little progress without help from above.
+
+The synonyms for the law are worthy of notice. Why are there so many of
+these in the Old Testament? For the same reason that there are so many
+for 'money' in English,--because those who made the language thought so
+much about the thing, and delighted in it so much. As 'commandments,'
+it was solemnly imposed by rightful authority, and obedience was
+obligatory. The word rendered 'statutes' means something engraved, or
+written, and recalls the tables inscribed by God's finger. 'Judgments'
+are the divine decisions or sentences as to what is right, and
+therefore the infallible clue to the else bewildering labyrinth. To
+obey these commandments, to read that solemn writing, and to accept
+these decisions as our guides, is man's perfection and blessedness; and
+for that God's felt presence is indispensable.
+
+III. Note the prayer for God's defence (verses 59, 60). The proper
+subject-matter of this petition is that God would maintain the cause of
+king and nation; and it is preceded by a petition that, to that end,
+the preceding prayer may be answered, and is followed by the desire
+that thereby the knowledge of God may fill the earth. The prayer for
+outward blessings comes after the prayer for inward heart-obedience. Is
+not that the right order? Our prayers need to be prayed for, and a true
+desire is not contented with one utterance. To ask that what we have
+asked may be given is no vain repetition, nor a sign of weak faith, or
+undue anxiety. How bold the figure in asking that the prayer may lie
+before God day and night, like some suppliant at the foot of His throne!
+
+Note the grand aim of God's help of Israel,--the universal diffusion of
+His name among all the peoples of the earth. Solomon understood the
+divine vocation of Israel, and had risen above desiring blessings only
+for his own or his subjects' sake. Later ages fell from that elevation
+of feeling, and hugged their special privileges without a thought of
+the obligations which they involved. God's choice of Israel was not
+meant for the exclusion of the Gentiles, but as the means of
+transmitting the knowledge of God to them. The one nation was chosen
+that God's grace might fructify through it to all. The fire was
+gathered into a hearth, that the whole house might be warmed. But
+selfishness marred the divine plan, and Israel became a nonconductor,
+and the privileges selfishly kept became corrupt; as the miser's corn
+stored in his barns in famine breeds weevils. Christians need no more
+solemn lesson of what comes from selfishly hoarding spiritual blessings
+than the fate of Israel. God hath shined into our hearts, that we may
+give to others who sit in the dark the light which we possess; and if
+we fail to do so, the light will darken within us.
+
+IV. The blessing ends with one brief, all-comprehensive charge to the
+people, which seems based, by its 'therefore,' on the preceding thought
+of Jehovah as the only God. The only attitude corresponding to His sole
+and supreme Majesty is the entire devotion of heart, which leads to
+thoroughgoing obedience to His commandments. The word rendered
+'perfect' literally means 'entire' or 'sound,' and here expresses the
+complete devotion of the whole nature. Solomon meant that it should be
+complete, in contradistinction to any sidelong glances to idolatry. The
+principle underlying that 'therefore' is that, God being what He is,
+our only God and refuge, the only adequate hope and object of our
+nature, we should give our whole selves to Him. We, too, are tempted to
+bring Him divided hearts, and to carry some of our love and trust as
+offerings at other shrines. But if there be 'one God, and none other
+but He,' then to serve Him with all our heart and strength and mind is
+the dictate of common sense, and the only service which He can accept,
+or which can bring to our else distracted natures peace and
+satisfaction. His voice to us is, 'My son, give Me thy whole heart.'
+Our answer to Him should ever be that prayer, 'Lord, ... unite my heart
+to fear Thy name.' A divided heart is misery. Partial trust is
+distrust. 'Love me all in all, or not at all,' is the requirement of
+all deep, human love; and shall God ask less than men and women ask
+from and give to one another?
+
+
+
+
+'THE MATTER OF A DAY IN ITS DAY'
+
+'At all times, as the matter shall require.'--1 KINGS viii. 59.
+
+
+I have ventured to diverge from my usual custom, and take this fragment
+of a text because, in the forcible language of the original, it carries
+some very important lessons. The margin of our Bible gives the literal
+reading of the Hebrew; the sense, but not the vigorous idiom, of which
+is conveyed in the paraphrase in our version. 'At all times, as the
+matter shall require,' is, literally, 'the thing of a day in its day';
+and that is the only limitation which this prayer of Solomon places
+upon the petition that God would maintain the cause of His servants and
+of His people Israel. The kingly suppliant got a glimpse of very great,
+though very familiar, truths, and at that hour of spiritual
+illumination, the very high-water mark of his relations to God--for I
+suppose he was never half as good a man afterwards--he gave utterance
+to the great thought that God's mercies come to us day by day,
+according to the exigencies of the moment.
+
+Now, I think that in the words 'the matter of a day in its day' we may
+see both a principle in reference to God's gifts and a precept in
+reference to our actions. Let us look at these two things.
+
+I. A principle in reference to God's gifts.
+
+Of course, obviously--and I need not say more than a word about
+that--we find it so in regard to the outward blessings that are poured
+into our lives. We are taught, if the translation of the New Testament
+is correct, to ask, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' and to let
+to-morrow alone. Life comes to us pulsation by pulsation, breath by
+breath, by reason of the continual operation, in the material world, of
+the present God's present giving. He does not start us, at the
+beginning of our days, with a fund of physical vitality upon which we
+thereafter draw, but moment by moment He opens His hand, and lets life
+and breath and all things flow out to us moment by moment, for no
+creature would live for an instant except for the present working of a
+present God. If we only realised how the slow pulsation of the minutes
+is due to the touch of His finger on the pendulum, and how everything
+that we have, and the existence of us who have it, are results of the
+continuous welling out from the fountain of life, of ripple after
+ripple of the waters, everything would be more sacred, and more solemn,
+and fuller of God than, alas! it is.
+
+But the true region in which we may best find illustrations of this
+principle in reference to God's gifts is the region of the spiritual
+and moral bestowments which He in His love pours upon us. He does not
+flood us with them: He filters them drop by drop, for great and good
+reasons. I only mention three various forms of this one great thought.
+
+God gives us gifts adapted to the moment. 'The matter of a day,' the
+thing fitted for the instant, comes. In deepest reality, all is one
+gift, for in truth what God gives to us is Himself; or, if you like to
+put it so, His grace. That little word 'grace' is like a small window
+that opens out on to a great landscape, for it gathers up into one
+encyclopaediacal expression the whole infinite variety of beneficences
+and bestowments which come showering down upon us. That one gift is, as
+the Apostle puts it in one of his eloquent epithets, 'the _manifold_
+grace of God,' which word in the original is even more rich and
+picturesque, because it means the 'many-variegated' grace--like some
+rich piece of embroidery glowing with all manner of dyes and gold. So
+the one gift comes to us manifold, rich in its adaptation to, and its
+exquisite fitness for, the needs of the moment. The Rabbis had a
+tradition that the manna in the wilderness tasted to every man just
+what each man needed or wished most. It Is as though in some imperial
+city on a day of rejoicing, one found a fountain in the market-place
+pouring out, according to the wish of the people, various costly wines
+and refreshing drinks, God's gift comes to us with like variety--the
+'matter of a day in its day.'
+
+God never gives us the wrong medicine. In whatever variety of
+circumstances we stand, that one infinitely simple and yet infinitely
+complex gift contains what we specially want at the moment. Am I
+struggling? He extends a hand to steady me. Am I fighting? He is my
+'sword and shield, my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my
+high tower.' Am I anxious? He comes into my heart, and brings with Him
+a great peace, and all waves cease to toss and smooth themselves into a
+level plain. Am I glad? He comes to heighten the gladness by some touch
+of holier joy. Am I perplexed in mind? If I look to Him, 'His coming
+shall be as the morning,' and illumination will be granted. Am I
+treading a lonely path? There is One by my side who will neither
+change, nor fail, nor die. Whatever any man needs, at the moment that
+he needs it, that one great Gift will supply 'the matter of a day in
+its day.'
+
+God gives punctually. Many of us may have sometimes sent Christmas
+presents to India or Australia some weeks before. Some will arrive in
+time and some will be too late. God's gifts never reach us before the
+day, and they never come after the day. 'The Lord shall help her, and
+that right early,' said the grand psalm. What the Psalmist was thinking
+about was, I suppose, that miraculous intervention when the army of
+Sennacherib was smitten in a night. Timid and faithless souls in
+Jerusalem, as they looked over the walls and saw the encircling lines
+of the fierce foes drawing closer and closer round the doomed city,
+must have said, 'Our Lord delayeth His coming,' and could not stand the
+test of their faith and patience, involved in God's apparent
+indifference to the need of His people. To-morrow the assault is to be
+delivered. To-night
+
+        'The Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
+         And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed';
+
+and the would-be assailants, when that to-morrow dawned, were lying
+stiff and stark in their tents. God's help comes, not too soon, lest we
+should not know the blessedness of trusting in the dark; and not too
+late, lest we should know the misery of trusting in vain.
+
+Peter is lying in prison. Herod intends, after the Passover, to bring
+him out to the people. The scaffolding is ready. The first watch of the
+night passes, and the second. If once it is fairly light, escape is
+impossible. But in the grey dawn the angel touches the sleeper. He
+wakes while his guards sleep. There is no need for hurry. He who has
+God for his Deliverer has no occasion to 'go out with haste.' So, with
+strange and majestic leisureliness, the escaping prisoner is bid to put
+on his shoes and gird himself. No doubt, he cast many a scrutinising
+glance at the four sleeping legionaries whom a heedless movement might
+have wakened. When all is ready, he is led forth through all the wards,
+each being a separate peril, and all made safe to him. The first gate
+opens, and the second gate opens, and the iron gate that leads into the
+city opens, and quietly he and the angel go down the street. It is
+light enough for him to see his way to the house where the brethren are
+assembled. He gets safe behind Mary's door before it is light enough
+for the gaolers to discover his absence, and for the pursuers to be
+started in their search. The Lord did help him, and that right early--'
+the matter of a day in its day,'
+
+We shall find, if we leave our times in His hand, that the old simple
+faith has still a talismanic power to quiet us. His time is best, so be
+patient, and be trustful in your patience.
+
+Again, God gives gifts enough, and not more than enough. He serves out
+our rations for spirit as for body, as they do on shipboard, where the
+sailors have to take their pots and plates to the galley every day and
+for each meal, and get enough to help them over the moment's hunger.
+The manna fell morning by morning. 'He that gathered much had nothing
+over, he that gathered little had no lack.' So all the variety of our
+changeful conditions, besides its purpose of disciplining ourselves and
+of making character, has also the purpose of affording a theatre for
+the display, if I may use such cold language--or rather let me say
+affording an opportunity for the bestowment--of the infinitely varied,
+exquisitely adapted, punctual, and sufficient grace of God.
+
+II. But now, secondly, a word about the text as containing a precept
+for our action.
+
+Let me put what I have to say in three plain sentences.
+
+First, take short views of the future. Of course, we have to look
+ahead, and in reference to many things to take prudent forecasts, but
+how many of us there are who weaken ourselves and spoil to-day by being
+'over-exquisite to cast the fashion of uncertain evils'! It is a great
+piece of practical philosophy, and I am sure that it has much to do
+with our getting the best out of the present moment, that we should
+either take very short or very long views of the future. Either
+
+                'Let the unknown to-morrow
+                 Bring with it what it may,'
+
+or look beyond the last of the days into the unseen light of an
+unsetting sun. If I must anticipate, let me anticipate the ultimate,
+the changeless, the certain; and let me not condemn my faculty of
+picturing that which is to come, to look along the low ranges of
+earthly life, and torture myself by imagining all the possibilities of
+evil of which my condition admits, as being turned into certainties
+to-morrow. Take 'the matter of a day _in_ its day.' 'Sufficient unto
+the day is the evil thereof.' Let us make the minute what it ought to
+be, then God will make the whole what it ought to be.
+
+Again I say, let us fill each day with discharged duties. If you and I
+do not do the matter of the day in its day, the chances are that no
+to-morrow will afford an opportunity of doing it. So there will come
+upon us all, if we are unfaithful to this portioning out of tasks to
+times, that burden of an irrevocable past, and of the omitted duties
+that will stand reproving and condemning before us, whensoever we turn
+our eyes to them. 'It might have been, and it is not'; does a sadder
+speech than that fall from human lips? Brethren, the day, though it is
+short, is elastic; and no one knows how much of discharged service and
+accomplished work and fulfilled responsibilities can be crammed into
+its hours, until he has earnestly tried to fill each moment with the
+task which belongs to the moment. 'The sluggard will not plough by
+reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest and have
+nothing.' If our day is not filled full of work, some to-morrow will be
+filled full, in retrospect, of thorns and stings. Life is short; 'the
+night cometh when no man can work.' 'I must work the works of Him that
+sent me while it is day.'
+
+Lastly, I would say, keep open a continual communion with God, that day
+by day you may get what day by day you need. There are hosts of people
+who call themselves, and, in some kind of surface way, are, Christian
+people, who seem to think that they get all that they need of the grace
+of God in a lump, at the beginning of their Christian career, and who
+are living upon past communications and the memory of these, and are
+forgetting that they can no more live and be nourished upon past gifts
+of God's grace than upon the dinner that they ate this day last year.
+We must hang continually upon Him, if we are continually to receive
+from His hand. No past blessing will avail for present use.
+
+Dear friends, the purpose of this principle, which I have been trying
+to illustrate in God's way of dealing with us, is that we shall be
+content to be continually dependent, and consciously as well as
+continually dependent, upon Him. In the measure in which we keep our
+hearts open for the perpetual influx of His grace, in that measure
+shall we be ready for each day as it comes; for its trials and its
+joys, for its possibilities and its duties.
+
+This, too, must be remembered--that the days bolted together make
+months; and the months, years; and the years, life; and that life as a
+whole is 'a day'; and that there is a 'matter' of that day which can
+only be done in its day. Oh that none of us may be the subjects of that
+sad wail from a Saviour's heart and a Saviour's lips, which lamented,
+'If thou hadst known, at least, in this thy day, the things that belong
+to thy peace; but now'--the night has come, and the darkness of the
+night, and--'they are hid from thine eyes!'
+
+
+
+
+PROMISES AND THREATENINGS
+
+'And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the
+house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all Solomon's desire which
+he was pleased to do. 2. That the Lord appeared to Solomon the second
+time, as He had appeared unto him at Gibeon. 3. And the Lord said unto
+him, I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou hast made
+before Me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put My
+name there for ever; and Mine eyes and Mine heart shall be there
+perpetually, 4. And if thou wilt walk before Me, as David thy father
+walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness, to do according to
+all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep My statutes and My
+judgments: 5. Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon
+Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall
+not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel. 6. But if ye shall at
+all turn from following Me, ye or your children, and will not keep My
+commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and
+serve other gods, and worship them: 7. Then will I cut off Israel out
+of the land which I have given them; and this house which I have
+hallowed for My name, will I cast out of My sight; and Israel shall be
+a proverb and a byword among all people: 8. And at this house, which is
+high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss;
+and they shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and to
+this house? 9. And they shall answer, Because they forsook the Lord
+their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt,
+and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and
+served them: therefore hath the Lord brought upon them all this
+evil.'-1 KINGS ix. 1-9.
+
+
+The successful end of a great work is often the beginning of a great
+reaction. When the tension is slackened, the whole nature of the worker
+is relaxed, and the temptation to slothful self-indulgence is strong.
+God knows our frame, and mercifully times His manifestations to the
+moments of special need. So, when Solomon had finished his great task,
+'the Lord appeared the second time, as He had appeared at Gibeon.'
+There had been no manifest token of approval during all the years of
+building the Temple, for none was needed; but now there was danger that
+the finished work might be followed by languor and indifference, and
+therefore once more God spoke words of stimulus, both promises and
+warnings.
+
+A solemn alternative is set before the king, both parts of which are
+fitted to rouse his energy and inspire him to faithful obedience. The
+same alternatives are presented to each of us. In verses 3-5 God
+promises blessed results from clinging to Him and keeping His statutes;
+in verses 6-9 He mercifully threatens the tragic issues of departure.
+In applying these to ourselves we must remember that outward prosperity
+was attached to a devout life more closely in Israel than it is now.
+But, though the form of the blessings dependent on doing God's will
+alters, the reality remains unaltered.
+
+I. The promises to Solomon are preceded by the assurance that his
+prayer had been heard. The answer corresponds very beautifully to the
+petitions. God has 'put His name' in the Temple, as the descent of the
+Glory to rest between the cherubim visibly showed, and thus has
+fulfilled Solomon's petition; but the answer surpasses the prayer in
+that the presence of 'the Name' is promised 'for ever.' Similarly, in
+Psalm cxxxii., the answer to the petition 'Arise into Thy rest'
+transcends the petition which it answers, and adds the same promise of
+perpetuity, 'This is My rest for _ever_.' Again, Solomon had prayed,
+'that Thine eyes may be open towards this house,' and God answers with
+the expanded promise that not His eyes only, but His heart shall be
+there perpetually. He is 'able to do exceeding abundantly above all
+that we ask or think,' and He delights to surprise us with over-answers
+to our prayers. We cannot widen our desires so far but that His gifts
+will stretch beyond them on every side.
+
+But the promise of perpetual dwelling in the Temple is conditional, as
+appears in the latter part of God's answer, though no condition is
+stated at first. The promises to Solomon individually are all
+contingent. The all-important 'if' at the beginning of verse 4 governs
+the whole. The divine eulogium on David, which introduces these
+promises, suggests how mercifully God regards the imperfect lives of
+His servants. That merciful interpretation of conduct is removed by a
+whole universe from palliation of sin. It affords no ground for our
+thinking little of our inconsistencies. David's crime was sternly
+rebuked and sorely punished, but still his life, in its main drift and
+outline, could be presented as a pattern, as being marked by integrity
+of heart and uprightness. The moon shines like a disc of silver, though
+its surface is pitted with extinct volcanoes.
+
+We may note, too, the pregnant description in outline of the elements
+of a devout life, as here enjoined on Solomon. The first requisite is
+to walk before God; that is, to nourish a continual consciousness of
+His presence, and to regulate all actions and thoughts under the
+thrilling and purifying sense of being 'ever in the great Taskmaster's
+eye.' Only we are not to think of Him as only a Taskmaster, but as a
+loving Friend and Helper. A child is happy in its little work or play
+when it knows that its father is looking on with sympathy. The sense of
+God's eye being on us should 'make a sunshine in a shady place,' should
+lighten labour and sweeten care. It is at the root of practical
+obedience, as its place in this sequence shows; for there follow it, in
+verse 4, 'integrity of heart and uprightness,' on which again follow
+obedience to all God's commandments.
+
+First must come the clear recognition of God's relation to us. That
+recognition will influence our relation to Him, bending hearts to love
+and wills to submit, and the whole inward being to cleave to Him.
+Thence, and only thence, will issue in the life the streams of
+practical obedience. It is vain to seek to produce righteous deeds
+unless our hearts are right, and it is as vain to labour at making our
+hearts right unless thoughts of what God is to us have purified them.
+Morality is rooted in religion. On the other hand, no knowledge of the
+truth about God is worth anything unless it touches the hidden man of
+the heart, and then passes outward to mould conduct. 'Faith without
+works is dead.' Correct theology and glowing emotions lack their
+consummation if they do not impel to holy and God-pleasing living.
+
+The reward promised in verse 5 is for Solomon alone. His throne is to
+be 'established for ever.' The duration intended by that expression is
+therefore not absolutely unlimited, but equivalent to 'during thy
+lifetime.' Solomon could only affect himself by his obedience. The
+continuance of the kingdom after him depended on his successors. His
+possession of the throne during his life was the beginning of the
+fulfilment of the promise to David referred to in verse 5, but it was
+only the beginning, and, like all God's promises, it was contingent on
+obedience. We receive no outward kingdom if we are servants of God;
+but, in deepest truth, the righteous man is a king, 'lord of himself,
+though not of lands.' All creatures serve the soul that serves God, and
+all Christ's brethren share in His royalty.
+
+II. The second part of this divine utterance is addressed to the whole
+nation, as is marked by the 'ye' there compared with the 'thou' in
+verse 4, and it lays down for succeeding generations the conditions on
+which the new Temple, that stood glittering in the bright Eastern
+sunshine, should retain its pristine beauty. While the address to
+Solomon incited to obedience by painting its blessed consequences, that
+to the nation reaches the same end by the opposite path of darkly
+portraying the ruin that would be caused by departure from God. God
+draws by holding out a hand full of good things, and He no less
+lovingly drives by stretching out a hand armed with lightnings.
+
+A plain declaration of the evils that dog disobedience is as loving as
+a bright vision of the good that attends on submission. The sternest
+threatenings of Scripture are spoken that they may never need to be
+executed. There is no more foolish misconception of Christianity than
+that which calls it harsh because it reveals that 'the wages of sin is
+death.' Note that the threatenings come second, not first. God's heart
+is averse to smite. To lavish blessing is His delight, and judgment is
+'His work, His strange work,' forced on Him by sin.
+
+The special sin against which Israel was warned was that to which it
+was specially prone and tempted by its circumstances. When all the
+nations 'worshipped stocks and stones,' it was hard to 'keep thy faith
+so pure' as to have no share in the universal bewitchment. So the whole
+history of the people is one of lapses into idolatry and of
+chastisements leading to temporary amendment, until the long, sharp
+lesson of the Captivity eradicated the disposition to be as the nations
+around. No doubt, idolatry in its crudest forms is outgrown now in
+Western lands, but sense still craves material embodiment of the
+unseen, and still feels the pressure of the material and palpable.
+Hence the earthward direction of so many lives. Asthmatical patients
+often breathe more easily in the slums of a city than in pure mountain
+air, and sense-bound men find difficulty in respiration on the heights
+of a religion which minimises the appeal to sense.
+
+The penalty attached to departure from God was the loss of the land.
+Israel kept it on a tenure like that of some of our English nobility,
+who hold their estates on condition of doing some service to the
+sovereign. Of course, that connection between serving God and national
+prosperity involved continual supernatural intervention, and cannot be
+applied entirely to national prosperity now; but it still remains true
+that moral and religious corruption saps the foundations of a people's
+well-being, and, when carried far enough, destroys a people's
+existence. The solemn threat of becoming 'a proverb and a byword' among
+all peoples is quoted, apparently from Deuteronomy xxviii. 37, and has
+been only too terribly fulfilled for weary centuries.
+
+The promise in verse 3, that God's eyes and heart should be perpetually
+on the Temple, has now the condition attached that Israel should cleave
+to the Lord. Otherwise it will be cast out of His sight, and be a mark
+for scorn and wonder. The vivid representation of a dialogue between
+passers-by is quoted from Deuteronomy xxix. 24-26, where it is spoken
+in reference to the nation. It carries the solemn thought that God's
+name is made known among the heathen by the punishment of His
+unfaithful people, not less really, and sometimes more strikingly, than
+by the blessings bestowed on the obedient. If we will not magnify Him
+by joyous service, by rewarding which, with good He can magnify
+Himself, He will magnify Himself on us by retribution, the more severe
+as our blessings have been the greater. The lightning-scathed tree,
+standing white in the forest, witnesses to the power of the flash, as
+its leafy sisters in their green beauty proclaim the energy of the
+sunshine. Israel has, perhaps, been a more convincing witness for God,
+in its homeless centuries, than ever it was when at rest in the good
+land. 'If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also
+spare not thee.'
+
+
+
+
+A ROYAL SEEKER AFTER WISDOM
+
+'And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning
+the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. 2. And
+she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare
+spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come
+to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart. 3. And
+Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from
+the king, which he told her not. 4. And when the queen of Sheba had
+seen all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he had built, 5. And the
+meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance
+of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent
+by which he went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more
+spirit in her. 6. And she said to the king, It was a true report that I
+heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. 7. Howbeit I
+believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and,
+behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth
+the fame which I heard. 8. Happy are thy men, happy are these thy
+servants, which stand continually before thee, and that hear thy
+wisdom. 9. Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighteth in thee, to
+set thee on the throne of Israel: because the Lord loved Israel for
+ever, therefore made He thee king, to do judgment and justice. 10. And
+she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices
+very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such
+abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king
+Solomon. 11. And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir,
+brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones.
+12. And the king made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the
+Lord, and for the king's house, harps also and psalteries for singers:
+there came no such almug trees, nor were seen unto this day. 13. And
+king Solomon gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever
+she asked, besides that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty. So
+she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants.'--1 KINGS
+x. 1-13.
+
+
+We feel the breath of a new era in the accounts of Solomon's reign. One
+most striking peculiarity is the friendly intercourse with the nations
+around. The horizon has widened, and, instead of wars with Philistines
+and Ammon, we have alliances with Egypt, Tyre, and, in the present
+passage, with Sheba, a district of Southern Arabia. The expansion was
+fruitful of both good and evil. It brought new ideas and much wealth;
+but it brought, too, luxury and idolatry. Still Israel was meant to be
+'a light to lighten the Gentiles,' and in this picturesque story of the
+wisdom-seeking queen, we have the true relation of Israel to the
+nations in its purest form. The details of the narrative. Interesting
+as they are, need not occupy us long.
+
+The queen had heard the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the
+Lord, by which seems to be meant his reputation of being gifted with
+deep knowledge of the divine character as revealed to him. The
+questions which occupy earnest souls in all lands and ages were
+stirring in the heart of this woman-chief. The only way, in these old
+days, to learn the wisdom of the wise, was to go to them. So the
+streets of Jerusalem saw the strange sight of the long train which had
+come toiling up from Arabia, laden with its characteristic produce,
+gold and spices and precious stones, in the enumeration of which is
+reflected the wonder of the beholders at the unaccustomed procession.
+But better than all her wealth was the eager woman's thirst for truth.
+Surely it is a very unworthy and unlikely explanation of her 'hard
+questions' and purpose to suppose that she came only for a duel of
+wit,--to pose Solomon with half-playful riddles. The journey was too
+toilsome, the gifts too large, the accent of conviction in her
+subsequent words too grave, for that. She was a seeker after truth, and
+probably after God, and had known the torture of the eternal questions
+which rise in the mind, and, once having risen, leave no rest till they
+are answered.
+
+So she came, though half incredulous, hoping to find some solution to
+what 'was in her heart,' and as thirsty for the answer as her country's
+sands for water. Only they who have known the pain of carrying such
+questions, like a fire in their bones, can know the joy which she felt
+when she found one to whom she could speak them. It is something of a
+drop to pass from Solomon's wisdom to the list of the splendours of his
+household, and the effect which these produced on the queen; but the
+whole account of Solomon's reign is marked by the same naive blending
+of wisdom and material wealth. In those days, outward prosperity was
+the sign of divine favour. But even in those days they knew that wisdom
+was 'better than rubies.' The two elements were both at their height in
+Solomon's reign, and the lower of them finally got uppermost, and
+wrecked him. Plain living and high thinking are better than 'wisdom,'
+which lets itself down to make much of 'the meat of the table,' and a
+retinue of servants in fine clothes. How many of us would listen much
+more respectfully to wisdom, if it lived in a palace, than in 'dens and
+caves of the earth'? The queen's words in verses 6 to 9 are graceful
+with a woman's tact, and full of feeling. She confesses that she had
+come half-doubting, even though she risked the journey, and fervently
+avows how far fame had been unlike itself in this instance, and had
+diminished, and not magnified. Then she envies the servants who wait on
+him, because they are so near the fountain, and finally breaks into
+praise of Solomon's God, whose love to Israel was shown in giving it
+such a king. One does not know whether praise of God or compliments to
+Solomon were most in her mind. The words scarcely sound as if she had
+become a worshipper of God. He is to her but 'thy God.' But we may
+believe that she carried away some seed which grew up. Then, with
+munificent interchange of gifts, she and her train glide out of the
+story, and we lose them in the dark. The account of the wealth brought
+by Hiram's ships comes singularly in, breaking the narrative of the
+queen. Its insertion seems to indicate some connection between the
+fleet and her, and to suggest that Sheba and Ophir were near each other
+(which would put Ethiopia, where some have located it, out of court),
+and that she heard of Solomon through it.
+
+The whole incident may be regarded as an illustration of the spirit
+that should mark all seekers after truth, whether earthly or heavenly.
+This queen had to win a victory over national prejudices, over the
+disabilities of her sex, over the temptations of her station, to travel
+far, and face dangers, and to incur great cost. It was surely no mere
+playful errand on which she was bent. She was smitten with the sacred
+impulse to 'follow knowledge like a sinking star.' Seldom, indeed, have
+rulers made progresses from their dominions for such an end, and seldom
+have two of them met to confer on such subjects. We shall not rightly
+measure the relative importance of things unless we resolutely set
+ourselves to look at them with eyes purged from the illusions of sense,
+and cleared to see how much better than wealth and all outward good is
+the possession of truth. All sacrifices made to win it are richly
+repaid, and wise investments. Even in regard to lower kinds of truth,
+to win them is worth the effort of a life; and, in regard to the
+highest kind, which is the personal Truth, he is the wise man who
+counts all earthly good but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of
+it. This queen points the path by which all pilgrims of the truth must
+travel. It is not to be won without effort, without conquest of
+prejudices, repression of weakness, sacrifices of delights, and long
+effort. There must be humility, which will gladly learn, if there is
+ever to be its possession.
+
+           'Nor can the man that moulds in idle cell
+            Unto her happy mansion attain.'
+
+But in our days, the easier the attainment, the less the appreciation.
+The queen of Sheba had no books, and she travelled far to get wisdom.
+We are flooded with all appliances, and many of us would not cross the
+road to get Solomon's wisdom, but would do much to be invited to feast
+at his table, or to secure some of the queen's camels' load.
+
+This story brings out the true ideal of Israel's relation to the
+nations. Solomon is the embodiment of his people. His reign is marked
+by largely increased and amicable relations with his neighbours. These
+were not all wholesome, and ultimately led to much mischief. But, while
+the purely commercial connection with Tyre was defective, in that there
+was no attempt to bring Hiram and the men who worked for the Temple to
+any knowledge of the God of the Temple, and the relation with Egypt was
+more unsatisfactory still, in that it meant only the importation of
+corrupting luxuries and the marriage with an Egyptian princess, an
+idolatress, this relation with the queen of Sheba was the true one.
+Solomon did in it what Israel was meant to do for the world. He
+attracted a seeker from afar, and imparted to her the wisdom that God
+had given him. He answered the torturing questions and won the
+confidence of this woman who was groping in the dark, till he led her
+by the hand to the light. A bond of friendship knit them together, and
+mutual gifts cemented their amity.
+
+All this is but the putting into concrete form of God's purpose in
+choosing Israel for His own. It was not meant to retain or to enclose,
+but to diffuse, the light. The world can only get blessing by one man
+or people getting it first. As well charge the builder of the
+lighthouse with partiality because he puts the bright lamps in that
+narrow room, as find fault with the divine method of making the earth
+know His name. The lighthouse is reared that the beams may stream out
+over the tossing, nightly sea. So God appointed to His people of old
+their task. So He has appointed the same task to His Church to-day. We
+ought to attract seekers from afar, to win their frank speech when they
+come, to be able to answer their anxious questions, and to bind them to
+ourselves in grateful bonds. In these days there are multitudes
+harassed by the modern forms of the same old, ever-pressing riddles
+which burdened this ancient queen's heart; and that Church but ill
+discharges its office which repels rather than draws the seekers, or
+has no word of illumination for them if they come.
+
+But the highest use to be made of the story is that which Christ made
+of it. It stands as a perpetual witness against those who are too blind
+to see the beauty, or too careless to be drawn to listen to the wisdom,
+of a present Christ. The sacrifices which men can make for lower
+objects are the most powerful rebukes of their unwillingness to make
+sacrifices for the highest, just as their capacity of love and trust is
+of their not loving and trusting Him. The same energy and effort which
+this queen put forth to reach Solomon, and which men eagerly put forth
+for some temporal good, would suffice to bring them to the feet of the
+great Teacher. Her longing for wisdom, her discernment of the person
+who could give it, and her toilsome journey, rebuke men's indifference
+to Christ's gifts, their failure to recognise His sweetness and power
+to make blessed, and their laziness and self-indulgence, which will not
+take a hundredth part of the pains to secure heaven which they
+cheerfully expend, and that often in vain, to secure earth. Will the
+'Queen of the south' stand alone as witness in that day, or will there
+not be many out of other lands, who, like her, stretched out their
+hands to the dimly descried but yearned-for light, and came nearer to
+it, though they seemed far off, than many who lived in its full blaze
+and never cared for it? Will it be only Christ's contemporaries who
+will be condemned by heathen seekers after God, or will there be many
+of ourselves, convicted of stolid indifference to the Christ who has
+been beside us all our lives, and has prayed us 'with much entreaty'
+and in vain, to 'receive the gift'?
+
+They who find their way to Him, and tell Him all that is in their
+hearts, will have all their questions solved. We have not far to go;
+for 'a greater than Solomon is here.' If we betake ourselves to Him,
+and learn of Him, we too shall find that 'the half was not told us';
+for Christ possessed is sweeter than all expectation, however
+high-pitched it may be, and to win Him is the only gain in which there
+is no disappointment, either at first or at last. We may all have the
+blessedness of His servants, 'which stand continually before' Him, and
+not only 'hear' but receive into their spirits His 'wisdom.'
+
+
+
+
+THE FALL OF SOLOMON
+
+'For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away
+his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord
+his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5. For Solomon went
+after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the
+abomination of the Ammonites. 6. And Solomon did evil in the sight of
+the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as did David his father.
+7. Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of
+Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the
+abomination of the children of Ammon. 8. And likewise did he for all
+his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.
+9. And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned
+from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice, 10. And
+had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after
+other gods: but he kept not that which the Lord commanded. 11.
+Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of
+thee, and thou hast not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have
+commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give
+it to thy servant. 12. Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for
+David thy father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.
+13. Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one
+tribe to thy son for David My servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake
+which I have chosen.'--1 KINGS xi. 4-13.
+
+
+Scripture never blinks the defects of its heroes. Its portraits do not
+smooth out wrinkles, but, with absolute fidelity, give all faults. That
+pitiless truthfulness is no small proof of its inspiration. If these
+historical books were simply fragments of national records, owning no
+higher source than patriotism, they would never have blurted out the
+errors and sins of David and Solomon as they do. Where else are there
+national histories of which the very central idea is the laying bare of
+national sins and chastisements? or where else are there legends of the
+people's heroes which tell their sins without apology or reticence? The
+difference in tone augurs a different origin. The Old Testament
+histories are not written to tell Israel's glories, or even, we may
+say, to recount its history, but to tell God's dealings with Israel,--a
+very different theme, and one which finds its material equally in the
+glories and in the miseries, which respectively follow its obedience
+and disobedience. So Solomon's fall is told in the same frank way as
+his wisdom and wealth; for what is of importance is not Solomon so much
+as God's dealings with Solomon, when his heart was turned away. We are
+told that the narrative of Solomon's reign is an ideal picture. Strange
+idealising which leaves the ideal king wallowing in a sty of sensuality
+and an apostate from Jehovah!
+
+Here we are simply told of the two things,--his sin, and the divine
+judgment which it drew after it.
+
+I. Verses 4-8 tell the black story of Solomon's apostasy. What was its
+extent? Did he himself take part in idolatrous worship, or simply, with
+the foolish fondness of an old sensualist, let these foreign women have
+their shrines? The darker supposition seems correct. The expression
+that he 'went after other gods' is commonly used to mean actual
+idolatry; and his wives could scarcely have been said to have 'turned
+away his heart,' if all that he did was to wink at, or even to
+facilitate, their worship. But, on the other hand, he does not seem to
+have abandoned Jehovah's worship. The charge against him is that 'his
+heart was not perfect,' or wholly devoted to the Lord, or, as verse 6
+puts it, that he 'went not fully' after the Lord. His was a case of
+halting between two opinions, or rather, of trying to hold both at
+once. He wanted to be a worshipper of Jehovah and of these idols also.
+
+Was his apostasy final? Yes, so far as we can gather from the
+narrative. Not only is there no statement of his repentance, but the
+silence with which he receives the divine announcement of retribution
+is suspicious; and the prophecy of Ahijah to Jeroboam, which obviously
+comes later in time than the threatenings of the text, treats the
+idolatry as still existing (verse 33). Further, we learn from 2 Kings
+xxiii.13 that the shrines which he built stood till Josiah's time. If
+Solomon had ever abandoned his idolatry, he would not have left them
+standing. So we seem to have in him a case of a fall which knew no
+recovery, an eclipse which did not pass. The Book of Ecclesiastes, if
+of his composition, would somewhat lighten the darkness of such an end;
+but his authorship of it is now all but universally given up.
+
+So there, on Olivet's southern ridge, right opposite the Temple, stood
+the three altars, and there the king worshipped; and, if he did, he
+would have a crowd of imitators. The lessons of such a fall are many.
+First, it teaches the destructive effect of yielding to sensual
+indulgence. Solomon's unbridled and monstrous polygamy sapped his
+manhood and his principle, darkened his clear spirit, blinded his keen
+eye, and turned a youth of noble aspiration and a manhood of noble
+accomplishment into an old age without dignity, reverence, or calm. All
+his wisdom was worth little if it could not keep him master of himself.
+A young man who lets his passions run away with him is less to be
+condemned than an old sensualist. God means that reason should govern
+impulses and desires, and that conscience should govern all and be
+governed by His will. The vessel is sure to be wrecked when the
+officers are sent below and the mutineers get hold of the helm.
+
+Second, it warns us that till the very end of life a fall is possible.
+This ship went down when the voyage was nearly over. In sight of port
+it struck, and that not for want of beacons. What pathetic warning lies
+in that phrase, 'when Solomon was old'! After so many years of high
+aims, so many temptations overcome, with such habits of wisdom and
+kingly nobility, after such prayers and visions, he fell; and, if _he_
+fell, who can be sure of standing? No length of life spent in holy
+thoughts and service secures us against the possibility of disastrous
+fall. Only one thing does,--'Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe!'
+John Bunyan saw a door opening down to hell hard by the gates of the
+Celestial City. When a man that has been had in reputation for wisdom
+and honour shames the record of his life by a great splash of mud on
+the white page, near its end, he seldom returns. An old apostate is
+usually finally an apostate.
+
+Third, may we not venture to see a warning here against marriages in
+which there is not unity in the deepest things, and a common faith?
+'When you run in double harness, take a good look at the other horse.'
+If a young Christian man or woman enters on such a union with one who
+is not a Christian, it is a great deal more probable that, in the end,
+there will be two unbelievers than that there will be two Christians.
+
+We have nothing to do with pronouncing on Solomon's final condition,
+But he stands on the page of this history, a sad, enigmatical figure, a
+warning to all young people to take heed that the attrition of the
+world does not rub off the bloom of early religion, or make them
+cynically ashamed of the unselfishness of their early desires. There is
+no sadder sight than an old man whose youthful enthusiasm for goodness
+and belief in the super-excellency of wisdom have withered, leaving him
+a hard worldling or a gross sensualist. Better the early days, when he
+was obscure and poor, and believed in wisdom and in the God of wisdom,
+than the late ones, when worldly success has spoiled him!
+
+II. Verses 9-13 give the divine retribution announced. The immediate
+connection of sin and punishment is the teaching intended by this close
+juxtaposition of these two halves of our narrative. However long the
+chastisement may be in bursting, the divine resolve to send it is
+instantaneously consequent on the crime. The chain that binds departure
+from God with loss of blessing may be of many or few links, but it is
+riveted on when the evil is done. How gravely, as with the voice of an
+indictment drawn in heaven, the aggravations of Solomon's crime are set
+out, in that he had sinned against 'the Lord' who had appeared to him
+twice (once in his youthful vision, and once after the completion of
+the Temple), 'and had commanded him concerning' the very sin that he
+had done. Sin is made more heinous by the abundance of God's favours
+and the plainness of His commands. If we would remember God's
+appearances to us and for us, and meditate on His revealed will, we
+should be more impregnable to the assaults of temptation.
+
+We do not learn _how_ the Lord said this to Solomon. Possibly it was by
+the same prophet who afterwards announced to Jeroboam his destiny; but,
+however announced, it seems to have been received in sullen silence,
+and to have wrought no softening nor change. Like all God's
+threatenings, it was spoken that it might not be inflicted. Solomon was
+threatened before the prophet spoke to Jeroboam; and if Solomon had
+repented, Jeroboam would never have been spoken to. But he is too far
+gone to be stopped, though he has God's own word for it that he is
+ruining his kingdom by his sin. We have as clear declarations of worse
+results from ours; but they do not stop some of us. How strange it is
+that men will put out their hands to grasp their sins, even though they
+have to stretch across the smoke of the pit for them!
+
+Note how forbearance delays and diminishes retribution. The separation
+of the kingdom is deferred, and one tribe is left to the Davidic house;
+probably Judah is meant, and Benjamin is omitted as being small.
+Observe, too, how we have a double instance of the law of God's
+providence which visits the father's deeds on the children. The
+consequences of David's goodness fall on Solomon, and the consequences
+of Solomon's evil fall on Rehoboam. Stated in the language of the
+secular historian, that is to say that the consequences of great
+national virtues or crimes are seldom reaped by the generation that
+sowed the seed and did the deed, but take time to mature and work
+themselves out. Stated in the language of Scripture, it is, 'The
+fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on
+edge.' The separation of the kingdom was not brought about by miracle,
+but came in the natural course of things. A people ground down by heavy
+taxation and forced labour, to keep up the luxury of a court containing
+all that disgusting crowd of wives and concubines, was ripe for revolt,
+and when the sceptre fell into the hands of a headstrong fool, and
+there was a capable leader on the other side, discontent soon became
+rebellion, and rebellion soon became triumphant. It all flowed as
+naturally as possible from the same fountain as the idolatry of which
+it was the punishment; and so it teaches once more the great truth that
+'the world's history is the world's judgment,' and that the so-called
+'natural consequences' of our deeds are, even here and now, God's
+retribution for our deeds.
+
+What a lesson as to God's great patience is here! What a solemn glimpse
+into man's power to counterwork God's purpose! So soon after its
+establishment did the house of David prove unworthy, and the experiment
+fail. Yet that long-suffering purpose is not turned aside, but
+persistently and patiently goes on its way, altering its methods, but
+keeping its end unaltered, bending even sin to minister to its design,
+pitying and warning the sinner ere it strikes the blow that the sinner
+has made needful.
+
+Behind the figure of Solomon we see another. The wisest of men fell
+shamefully, captured by coarse lust, and apparently steeled against all
+remonstrances from Heaven. 'A greater than Solomon is here.' The faults
+of the human kings of Israel prophesy of the true King, who is to be
+the substance of which they were but faint shadows, and whose manhood
+was stained by no flaw, nor His kingdom ever rent from His pure hands.
+Solomon was wise, but Christ is 'Wisdom.' Solomon built a Temple, but
+also altars to false gods overtopping it across the valley; and his
+Temple was burned with fire. But Christ is the true Temple as well as
+Priest and Sacrifice. Solomon was by name 'the peaceful,' and his land
+had outward rest, darkened at the last by war and rebellion. But Christ
+is the Prince of Peace, and of His dominion there shall be no end.
+Solomon is the great example of the sad truth that the loftiest and
+wisest share in the universal sinfulness. Christ is the one flawless
+Man, who makes those who take Him for their King wise and peaceful,
+prosperous, and in due time sinless, like Himself.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW GARMENT BENT
+
+'And Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite of Zereda, Solomon's
+servant, whose mother's name was Zeruah, a widow woman, even he lifted
+up his hand against the king. 27. And this was the cause that he lifted
+up his hand against the king: Solomon built Millo, and repaired the
+breaches of the city of David his father. 28. And the man Jeroboam was
+a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was
+industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of
+Joseph. 29. And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of
+Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way;
+and he had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in
+the field: 30. And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and
+rent it in twelve pieces: 31. And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten
+pieces: for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend
+the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to
+thee: 32. (But he shall have one tribe for My servant David's sake, and
+for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the
+tribes of Israel:) 33. Because that they have forsaken Me, and have
+worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh the god of
+the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon, and have not
+walked in My ways, to do that which is right in Mine eyes, and to keep
+My statutes and My judgments, as did David his father. 34. Howbeit I
+will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand: but I will make him
+prince all the days of his life for David My servant's sake, whom I
+chose because he kept My commandments and My statutes: 35. But I will
+take the kingdom out of his ion's hand, and will give it unto thee,
+even ten tribes. 36. And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David
+My servant may have a light alway before Me in Jerusalem, the city
+which I have chosen Me to put My name there. 37. And I will take thee,
+and thou shalt reign according to all that thy soul desireth, and shalt
+be king over Israel. 38. And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all
+that I command thee, and wilt walk in My ways, and do that is right in
+My sight, to keep My statutes and My commandments, as David My servant
+did; that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built
+for David, and will give Israel unto thee. 39. And I will for this
+afflict the seed of David, but not for ever. 40. Solomon sought
+therefore to kill Jeroboam. And Jeroboam arose, and fled into Egypt,
+unto Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of
+Solomon. 41. And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did,
+and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of
+Solomon? 42. And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all
+Israel was forty years. 43. And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was
+buried in the city of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in
+his stead.'--1 KINGS xi. 26-43.
+
+Solomon falls into the background in the last part of the story of his
+reign, and his enemies are more prominent than himself. So long as he
+walked with God, he was of importance for the historian; but as soon as
+he forsook God, and was consequently forsaken of His wisdom, he becomes
+as insignificant as an empty vessel which has once held sweet perfume,
+or a piece of carbon through which the electric current has ceased to
+flow. The sunbeam has left that peak, and shines on other summits.
+Never was there a sadder eclipse.
+
+We are here told first how the instrument for shattering Solomon's
+kingdom was shaped by himself. It is the old story of a young man of
+mark, attracting the eyes of the king, being promoted to offices of
+trust, which at once stir ambition, and give prominence and influence
+which seem to afford a possibility of gratifying it. The passion for
+building, so common in Eastern kings, and the cause of so much misery
+to their subjects, had grown on Solomon; and as his later days were
+harassed by war, and he had lost the safe defence of God's arm,
+Jerusalem had to be enclosed by a wall. His father had been able to
+leave a 'breach' because the Lord was a wall round him and his city;
+and if Solomon had kept in his paths, he would have had no need to add
+to the fortifications. The preservation of ancestral piety is for
+nations and individuals a surer protection than the improvement of
+ancestral outward defences. Jeroboam made himself conspicuous by his
+energy (for that rather than 'valour' must be the meaning of the word),
+and so got promotion. It was natural, but at the same time dangerous,
+to put him in command of the forced labour of his own tribe, as the
+narrative shows us was done; for 'the house of Joseph' is the tribe of
+Ephraim, to which, according to the correct translation of verse 26, he
+belonged. In such an office he would be thrown among his kinsmen, and
+would at once gain influence and learn to sympathise with their
+discontent, or, at any rate, to know where the sore places were, if he
+ever wanted to inflame them. One can easily fancy the grumblings of the
+Ephraimites dragged up to Jerusalem to the hated labour, which Samuel
+had predicted (1 Samuel viii. 16), and how facile it would be for the
+officer in charge to fan discontent or to win friends by judicious
+indulgence. How long this went on we do not know, but the fire had
+smouldered for some time under the unconscious king's very eyes, when
+it was fanned into a flame by Ahijah's breath.
+
+That is the second stage in the story,--the spark on the tinder. We
+have heard nothing of prophets during Solomon's reign; but now this man
+from Shiloh, the ancient seat of the Tabernacle, meets the ambitious
+young officer in some solitary spot, with the message which answered to
+his secret thoughts and made his heart beat fast. The symbolic action
+preceding the spoken word, as usual, supplied the text, of which the
+word was the explanation and expansion. How pathetic is the newness of
+the garment! Unworn, strong, and fresh, it yet is rent in pieces. So
+the kingdom is so recent, with such possibilities of duration, and yet
+it must be shattered! Thus quickly has the experiment broken down! It
+is little more than a century since Saul's anointing, little more than
+seventy years since the choice of David, and already the fabric, which
+had such fair promise of perpetuity, is ready to vanish away. If we may
+say so, that 'new garment' represents the divine disappointment and
+sorrow over the swift corruption of the kingdom. It was probably merely
+some loose square of cloth which Ahijah tore, with violence
+proportioned to its newness, into twelve pieces, ten of which he thrust
+into the astonished Jeroboam's hands. The commentary followed.
+
+Ahijah's prophecy is substantially the same as the previous
+threatenings to Solomon, which had done no good. Their incipient
+fulfilment in the wars with Edom and Syria had been equally futile; and
+therefore God, who never strikes without warning, and never warns
+without striking if men do not heed, now drops the message into ears
+that were only too ready to hear. The seed fell on prepared soil, and
+Jeroboam's half-formed plans would be consolidated and fixed. The scene
+is like that in which the witches foretell to Macbeth his dignity.
+Slumbering ambitions are stirred, and a half-inclined will is finally
+determined by the glimpse into the future. How easily men are persuaded
+that God speaks, and how willing they are to obey, when their
+inclinations jump with Heaven's commandments! The prophet's message
+makes the separation of the kingdoms a direct divine act, and yet it
+was the breaking up of a divine institution. God's dealings have to be
+shaped according to facts, and He changes His methods, and lets the
+feebleness of His creatures and their sins mould His august procedure.
+The divine Potter, like mere human artisans, has His spoiled pieces of
+work, and, with infinite resource and patience as infinite, re-shapes
+the clay into other forms. The separation of the kingdoms was a divine
+act, and yet it is treated often in the later books as a crime and
+rebellion. God works out His purposes through men's deeds, and their
+motives determine whether their acts are sins or obedience. A man may
+be a rebel while he is doing the will of God, if what he does be done
+at the bidding of his own selfishness. The separation of the kingdoms
+was God's doing, but it was brought about by the free action of men
+obeying most secular impulses of political discontent, and led by a
+cunning, self-seeking schemer.
+
+Note that the prophecy is in three parts. First, verses 31-33 announce
+the punishment, with the reservation of a dwindled dominion to the
+Davidic house, for the sake of their great ancestor and of God's choice
+of Jerusalem, and solemnly charge on the people the idolatry which the
+king had introduced. The second part (verses 34-36) postpones the
+execution of the sentence till after Solomon's death, and assigns the
+same two reasons for this further forbearance. The third part (verses
+37-39) promises Jeroboam the kingdom, and lays down the conditions on
+which the favours promised to David and his house may be his. The whole
+closes with the assurance that the affliction of the seed of David is
+not to be for ever.
+
+The punishment was heavy; for the disruption of the kingdom meant the
+wreck of all the prosperity of Solomon's earlier days, the hopeless
+weakness of the divided tribes as against the formidable powers that
+pressed in on them from north and south, frequent intestine wars,
+bitter hatred instead of amity. Yet there was another side to it; for
+the very failure of the human kings made the Messianic hope the more
+bright, like a light glowing in the deepening darkness, and tumult and
+oppression might teach those whom prosperity and peace had only
+corrupted. The great lesson for us is the ruin which follows on
+departure from God. We do not see national sins followed with equal
+plainness or swiftness by national judgments; but the history of Israel
+is meant to show on a large scale what is always true, in the long run,
+both for nations and for individuals, that 'it is an evil thing and a
+bitter' to depart from the living God.
+
+Mark, too, that the judgment is wrought out by perfectly natural
+causes. The separation follows old lines of cleavage. The strength of
+David's kingdom lay in the south; and Ephraim was too powerful a tribe
+and too proud of its ancient glories, to acquiesce cheerfully in the
+pre-eminence of Judah. The oppression of forced labour and heavy
+taxation was put forward as the reason for the revolt, and, no doubt,
+was the reason for the readiness with which the ten tribes rallied to
+Jeroboam's flag. There are two ways of writing history. You can either
+leave God out, or trace all to Him. The former way calls itself
+'scientific' and 'positive.' The latter is the Bible way. Perhaps, if
+modern history were written on the same principles as the Books of
+Kings, the divine hand would be as plainly visible,--only it requires
+an inspired historian to do it. The way of bringing about the judgment
+for departing from God has changed, but the judgment remains the same
+to-day as when Ahijah rent his garment.
+
+Between verses 39 and 40 we must suppose an attempt at armed rebellion
+by Jeroboam. That is implied by the expression that he 'lifted his hand
+against the king' (verses 26, 27). That attempt must have been put down
+by Solomon. And that it should have been made shows how little Jeroboam
+was influenced by religious motives. The prophet's words had set him
+all afire with ambitious hopes, and he paid no heed to the distinct
+assurance that Solomon was to be 'prince all the days of his life.' He
+stretched out a rash, self-willed hand to snatch the promised crown,
+and broke God's commandment even while he pretended to be keeping it.
+How different David's conduct in like circumstances! He took no steps
+to bring about the fulfilment of Samuel's promise at his anointing, but
+patiently waited for God to do as He had said, in His own time, and
+meantime continued his lowly work. God's time is the best time; and he
+who greedily grasps at a premature fulfilment of promised good will
+have to pay for it by defeat and exile from the modest good that he had.
+
+Jeroboam's flight to Egypt brings that ill-omened name on the page for
+the first time since the Exodus. It has given occasion to an
+extraordinary addition to the Septuagint, professing to tell his
+adventures there,--how he was high in Shishak's favour, and married a
+princess. That is apparently pure legend; but his residence there was
+important, as the beginning of Egypt's interference in Israel's
+affairs. It is an old trick of aggressive nations to side with a
+pretender to the throne of a country which they covet, and benevolently
+to strengthen him that he may weaken it. No doubt it was as Jeroboam's
+ally that Shishak invaded Judah in the fifth year of Rehoboam, and
+plundered the Temple and the palace. It was a bad beginning for a king
+of Israel to be a pensioner of Egypt.
+
+The narrative closes with the sad, reticent formula which ends each
+reign, and in Solomon's case hides so much that is tragic and dark.
+This was all that could be said about the end of a career that had
+begun so nobly. If more had been said, the record would have been
+sadder; and so the pitying narrative casts the veil of the stereotyped
+summary over the miserable story. There are many instances in history
+of lives of genius and enthusiasm, of high promise and partial
+accomplishment, marred and flung away, but none which present the great
+tragedy of wasted gifts, and blossoms never fruited, in a sharper, more
+striking form than the life of the wise king of Israel, who 'in his
+latter days' was 'a fool.' The goodliest vessel may be shipwrecked in
+sight of port. Solomon was not an old man, as we count age, when he
+died; for he reigned forty years, and was somewhere about twenty when
+he became king. But it was 'when he was old' that he fell, and that
+through passion which should have been well under control long before.
+The sun went down in a thick bank of clouds, which rose from undrained
+marshes in his soul, and stretched high up in the western horizon. His
+career, in its glory and its shame, preaches the great lesson which the
+Book of Ecclesiastes puts into his mouth as 'the conclusion of the
+whole matter': 'Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the
+whole duty of man.'
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO SPLIT A KINGDOM
+
+And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for all Israel were come to Shechem to
+make him king. 2. And it came to pass, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
+who was yet in Egypt, heard of it (for he was fled from the presence of
+king Solomon, and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt); 3. That they sent and
+called him. And Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came, and
+spake unto Rehoboam, saying, 4. Thy father made our yoke grievous: now
+therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy
+yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee. 6. And he
+said unto them, Depart yet for three days, then come again to me. And
+the people departed. 6. And king Rehoboam consulted with the old men,
+that stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, How
+do ye advise that I may answer this people? 7. And they spake unto him,
+saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt
+serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they
+will be thy servants for ever. 8. But he forsook the counsel of the old
+men, which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that
+were grown up with him, and which stood before him: 9. And he said unto
+them, What counsel give ye that we may answer this people, who have
+spoken to me, saying, Make the yoke which thy father did put upon us
+lighter? 10. And the young men that were grown up with him spake unto
+him, saying, Thus shalt thou speak unto this people that spake unto
+thee, saying, Thy father made our yoke heavy, but make thou it lighter
+unto us; thus shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be
+thicker than my father's loins. 11. And now whereas my father did lade
+you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father hath
+chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. 12.
+So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the
+king had appointed, saying, 'Come to me again the third day. 13. And
+the king answered the people roughly, and forsook the old men's counsel
+that they gave him; 14. And spake to them after the counsel of the
+young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to
+your yoke: my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise
+you with scorpions. 15. Wherefore the king hearkened not unto the
+people; for the cause was from the Lord, that He might perform His
+saying, which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Jeroboam the
+son of Nebat. 16. So when all Israel saw that the king hearkened not
+unto them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we
+in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your
+tents, O Israel: now see to thine own house, David. So Israel departed
+unto their tents. 17. But as for the children of Israel which dwelt in
+the cities of Judah, Rehoboam reigned over them.'--1 KINGS xii. 1-17.
+
+
+
+The separation of the kingdom of Solomon into two weak and hostile
+states is, in one aspect, a wretched story of folly and selfishness
+wrecking a nation, and, in another, a solemn instance of divine
+retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this
+account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable
+motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one
+sentence (verse 15) draws back the curtain for a moment, and shows us
+the true cause. There is something very striking in that one flash,
+which reveals the enthroned God, working through the ignoble strife
+which makes up the rest of the story. This double aspect of the
+disruption of the kingdom is the main truth about it which the
+narrative impresses on us.
+
+As to the mere details of the incident, as a political revolution, they
+are in four stages. First come the terms of allegiance offered to the
+new king. Rehoboam goes to Shechem, because 'Israel was gone' there.
+The choice of the place is suspicious; for it was in the tribe of
+Ephraim, and had been for a time the centre of national life; and its
+selection at once indicated discontent with the preponderance of
+Jerusalem, and a wish to assert the importance of the central tribes.
+No doubt, the choice of the latter city for the capital had caused
+heart-burning, even during David's time.
+
+Adopting the reading of the Revised Version, we see another suspicious
+sign in the recall of Jeroboam, and his selection as spokesman; for he
+had been in rebellion against Solomon (1 Kings xi. 26), and therefore
+an exile. Probably he had now been the instigator of the discontent of
+which he became the mouthpiece; and, in any case, his appearance as the
+leader was all but a declaration of war. His former occupation as
+superintendent of the forced labour exacted from his own tribe taught
+him where the shoe pinched, and the weight of the yoke would not be
+lessened in his representations.
+
+No doubt, the luxury and splendour of Solomon's brilliant reign had an
+under side of oppression, even though forced labour was not exacted
+from Israelites (1 Kings ix. 22); but probably the severity was
+exaggerated in these complaints, which were plainly the pretext for a
+revolt of which tribal jealousy was the main cause, and Jeroboam's
+ambition the spark that set light to the train. Certainly there was
+ignoring of the benefits of the peaceful reign, which had brought
+security and commerce. But there was enough truth in the complaint to
+make it plausible and effective for catching the people. Had they a
+right to suspend their allegiance on compliance with their terms?
+
+Israel was neither a despotism, nor simply a constitutional monarchy.
+God appointed the kings, and had ordained the Davidic house to the
+throne; and therefore this making terms was, in effect, asserting
+independence of God's will. Jeroboam was scheming for a crown. The
+people were shaking off their submission to God. It is very doubtful if
+concession would have conciliated them. There is nothing elevated, not
+to say religious, in their motives or acts.
+
+Then comes Rehoboam on the scene. The one sensible thing that he did
+was to take three days to think. Whether or no his little finger was
+thicker than his father's loins, his head was not half so wise.
+Ecclesiastes, speaking in Solomon's name, reckons it a great evil that
+he must leave his labour to his successor; 'and who knoweth whether he
+shall be a wise man or a fool?' Certainly Rehoboam had little 'wisdom'
+either of the higher or lower kind. It was the lower kind which the old
+counsellors of his father gave him,--that wisdom which is mere cunning
+directed to selfish ends, and careless of honour or truth. 'Flatter
+them to-day, speak them fair, promise what you do not mean to keep, and
+then, when you are firm in the saddle, let them feel bit and spur.'
+That was all these grey-headed men had learned. If that was what passed
+for 'wisdom' in Solomon's later days, we need not wonder at revolt.
+
+To act on such motives is bad enough, but to put them into plain words,
+and offer them as the rule of a king's conduct, is a depth of cynical
+contempt for truth and kingly honour that indicates only too clearly
+how rotten the state of Israel was. Have we never seen candidates for
+Parliament and the like on one side of the water, and for Congress,
+Senate, or Presidency on the other, who have gone to school to the old
+men at Shechem? The prizes of politicians are often still won by this
+stale device. The young counsellors differ only in the means of gaining
+the object. Neither set has the least glimmer of the responsibility of
+the office, nor ever thinks that God has any say in choosing the king.
+Naked, undisguised selfishness animates both; only, as becomes their
+several ages, the one set recommends crawling and the other bluster.
+Think of Saul hiding among the staff, David going back to his sheep
+after he was anointed, Solomon praying for wisdom to guide this people,
+and measure the depth of descent to this ignoble scramble for the
+sweets of royalty!
+
+According to I Kings xiv. 21, Rehoboam was forty-one at this time, so
+his contemporaries could not have been very young. But possibly the
+number in the present text is an error for twenty-one, which would
+agree better with the tone of the reference to age here, and with the
+rash counsel. Note the recurrence, both in Rehoboam's question in verse
+9 and in the young advisers' answer in verse 10, of the obnoxious
+speech of the people. That may be accidental, but it sounds as if both
+he and they were keeping their anger warm by repeating the offensive
+complaint.
+
+The Revised Version reads, 'My little finger is thicker,' etc., and so
+makes the sentence not a threat, but the foundation of the following
+threat in an arrogant and empty assertion of greater power. The fool
+always thinks himself wiser than the wise dead; the 'living dog'
+fancies that his yelp is louder than the roar of 'the dead lion.' What
+can be done with a Rehoboam who brags that he is better than Solomon?
+
+The threat which follows is inconceivably foolish; and all the more so
+because it probably did not represent any definite intention, and
+certainly was backed by no force adequate to carry it out. Passion and
+offended dignity are the worst guides for conduct. Threats are always
+mistakes. A sieve of oats, not a whip, attracts a horse to the halter.
+If Rehoboam had wished to split the kingdom, he could have found no
+better wedge than this blustering promise of tyranny.
+
+Next in this miserable story of imbecility and arrogance comes the
+answer to the assembly. Shechem had seen many an eventful hour, but
+never one heavier with important issues than that on which the united
+Israel met for the last time, and there, in the rich valley with Ebal
+and Gerizim towering above them, heard the fateful answer of this
+braggart. A dozen rash words brought about four hundred years of
+strife, weakness, and final destruction. And neither the foolish
+speaker nor any man in that crowd dreamed of the unnumbered evils to
+flow from that hour. Since issues are so far beyond our sight, how
+careful it becomes us to be of motives! Angry counsels are always
+blunders. No nation can prosper when moderate complaints are met by
+threats, and 'spirited conduct,' asserting dignity, is a sign of
+weakness, not of strength. For nations and individuals that is true.
+
+Here the historian draws back the curtain. On earth stand the insolent
+king and the now mutinous people, each driving at their ends, and
+neither free of sin in their selfishness. A stormy scene of passion,
+without thought of God, rages below, and above sits the Lord, working
+His great purpose by men's sin. That divine control does not in the
+least affect the freedom or the guilt of the actors. Rehoboam's
+disregard of the people's terms was 'a thing brought about of the
+Lord,' but it was Rehoboam's sin none the less. That which, looked at
+from the mere human side, is the sinful result of the free play of
+wrong motives, is, when regarded from the divine side, the determinate
+counsel of God. The greatest crime in the world's history was at the
+same time the accomplishment of God's most merciful purpose. Calvary is
+the highest example of the truth, which embraces all lesser instances
+of the wrath of man, which He makes to praise Him and effect His deep
+designs.
+
+Again, the rending of the kingdom was the punishment of sin, especially
+Solomon's sin of idolatry, which was closely connected with the
+extravagant expenditure that occasioned the separation. So the
+so-called natural consequences of transgression constitute its temporal
+punishment in part, and behind all these our eyes should be
+clear-sighted enough to behold the operative will of God. This one
+piercing beam of light, cast on that scene of insolence and rebellion,
+lights up all history, and gives the principle on which it must be
+interpreted, if it is not to be misread.
+
+Again, the punishment of sin, whether that of a community or of a
+single person, is sin. The separation was sin, on both sides; it led to
+much more. It was the consequence of previous departure. So ever the
+worst result of any sin is that it opens the door, like a thief who has
+crept in through a window, to a band of brethren.
+
+Lastly, we have the fierce rejoinder to the empty boast of Rehoboam,
+and the definitive disruption of the nation. Jeroboam must have fanned
+the flame skilfully, or it would not have burst out so quickly. There
+is no hesitation, nor any regret. The ominous cry, which had been heard
+before, in Sheba's abortive revolt, answers Rehoboam with instantaneous
+and full-throated defiance. Rancorous tribal hatred is audible in it.
+Long pent up jealousy and dislike of the dynasty of David has got
+breath at last: 'To your tents, O Israel! now see to thine own house,
+David!'
+
+That roar from a thousand voices meant a good deal more than the cowed
+king's vain threats did. The angry men who raised it, and were the
+tools of a crafty conspirator, the frightened courtiers and king who
+heard it, were alike in their entire oblivion of their true Lord and
+Monarch. 'God was not in all their thoughts.' An enterprise begun in
+disregard of Him is fated to failure. The only sure foundations of a
+nation are the fear of the Lord and obedience to His will. If politics
+have not a religious basis, the Lord will blow upon them, and they will
+be as stubble.
+
+
+
+
+POLITICAL RELIGION
+
+'Then Jeroboam built Shechera in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and
+went out from thence, and built Penuel. 26. And Jeroboam said in his
+heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David: 27. If this
+people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem,
+then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even
+unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to
+Rehoboam king of Judah. 28. Whereupon the king took counsel, and made
+two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up
+to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of
+the land of Egypt. 29. And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put
+he in Dan. 30. And this thing became a sin: for the people went to
+worship before the one, even unto Dan. 31. And he made an house of high
+places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of
+the sons of Levi. 32. And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth
+month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is
+in Judah; and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Beth-el,
+sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed In Beth-el
+the priests of the high places which he had made. 33. So he offered
+upon the altar which he had made in Beth-el the fifteenth day of the
+eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart;
+and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon
+the altar, and burnt incense.--1 KINGS xii. 25-33
+
+
+The details of this section need no long elucidation; for the one fact
+which it records, namely, the establishment of the calf worship in
+Israel, is the main point to consider. As for details, we need touch
+them lightly. The 'building' of Shechem and Penuel is probably to be
+understood as 'fortifying'; for, in regard to the former town, we know
+from the preceding section that it _was_ a town before the disruption,
+and the same is probably true of the latter. Two fortresses, one in the
+heart of his kingdom, one on the eastern border, where attack might be
+expected, were Jeroboam's first care.
+
+In estimating his conduct, the fact must be remembered that Ahijah had
+promised him God's protection and the establishment of his kingdom in
+his family, on the sole condition of obedience. If he had believed the
+prophet, something else than building strongholds would have been his
+prime aim. But he evidently thought that promises were all very well,
+but thick walls were better. The two things recorded of him are quite
+of a piece; and the writer seems, by putting them thus side by side, to
+wish us to note their identity of motive and similarity in character.
+
+The establishment of the calf worship was entirely due, according to
+this historian, to dread that religious unity would heal the schism of
+political duality, and that Jeroboam's kingdom and life would be
+sacrificed to the magnetism which would draw the revolted northern
+tribes back to render allegiance, where they went up to worship. The
+calculation was reasonable: but why, in estimating chances, did
+Jeroboam leave out God's promise? That should have kept him at ease.
+The calves and the castles were signs of fear and of slight regard to
+the prophet's word. No doubt, when it suited him, he could vindicate
+rebellion on the plea of obeying God. The plea would have sounded more
+genuine if he had shown that he trusted God.
+
+The calves were probably suggested by his Egyptian experiences, where
+he had seen sacred bulls worshipped living, and mummied dead. But the
+remembrance of Aaron and the golden calf was evidently present to him,
+as the almost verbal quotation of Aaron's words shows. If so, the whole
+transaction is still more accentuated as a revolt against the ritual of
+the central sanctuary. 'The much-calumniated Aaron is our example. He
+was mastered by his brother, but he was right, and we go back to the
+old original worship of our fathers.'
+
+Jeroboam was among the first to employ the expedient, so often resorted
+to since, of white-washing old-world criminals, in order to provide an
+ancestry for modern heresies. The calves seem to have been doubled
+simply as a matter of convenience. When once the principle of saving
+trouble comes in, in religion, it generally plays a great part. If it
+were too much to go to Jerusalem, it would soon be too much to go to
+Bethel, and so Dan must be provided for the north. The calves were
+symbols of Jehovah, not of other gods, as must be carefully noted. The
+making of them implied all that followed; for a god must have shrine
+and priesthood and sacrifice and festivals. The Levites refusing to
+serve, and probably losing their inheritance, fled to Judah, and a new
+priesthood was made 'from among all the people' (Rev. Ver.), The Feast
+of Tabernacles was retained but its date shifted forward a month,
+perhaps because the harvest, which it closed, was later in the north,
+but evidently with the design of, as it were, underscoring the
+religious separation.
+
+The latter part of this passage should perhaps be attached more closely
+to the next chapter, and understood as describing the one instance of
+Jeroboam's sacrificing which was so grimly interrupted by the
+denunciation by the anonymous prophet from Judah. Such are the outlines
+of the facts. What are the lessons taught by them?
+
+I. There is that one already mentioned,--the folly and sin of seeking
+to help God to fulfil His promises by our poor efforts at making their
+fulfilment sure to sense. No doubt many of His promises are contingent
+on our activity in material things; and no man has a right to expect
+that' his bread shall be given him,' for instance, unless he
+contributes the 'sweat of his brow' towards it. But Jeroboam had had
+the conditions of safety and stability clearly laid down. They were,
+obedience after the pattern of David (1 Kings xi. 38). So there was no
+need for building Shechem and Penuel, nor for casting calves and
+serving them. The heavens will stand without our rearing brickwork
+pillars to hold them up. But it takes much faith to trust God's bare
+word, and we are all apt to feel safer if we have something for sense
+to grasp. On the open plain, God guards those who trust Him more
+securely than if they lay in cities 'fenced up to heaven. 'Jerusalem
+shall be inhabited as towns without walls. ... For I, saith the Lord,
+will be unto her a wall of fire round about.'
+
+II. Another lesson taught here is the sin of degrading religion to be a
+mere instrument for securing personal ends. Jeroboam has had many
+followers among politicians, The average 'statesman' looks on all
+religions as equally true or untrue, and is ready to be polite to any
+of them, if he can carry his measures thereby. The long history of the
+relations of Church and State in the Old World has been little else
+than the State's hiring and muzzling the Church for its own advantage,
+and the protests of a faithful few against the degradation of State
+patronage and consequent control.
+
+In England, Jeroboam and his calves used to be the favourite shocking
+example of the sin of schism, with which High Church orators were fond
+of pelting Nonconformists. The true lesson from him and them is
+precisely the opposite one; namely, the weakening of religion, when it
+is favoured and endowed by the civil power. The priests of Bethel, who
+were the creatures of Jeroboam, were not likely to be his or his
+successors rebukers. When Amos the prophet spoke bold words against a
+king, it was Amaziah the priest who gave the shameful counsel, 'O thou
+seer, flee into the land of Judah, and prophesy there; but prophesy no
+more at Bethel: for it is the king's sanctuary.' Is there no such thing
+known as a flaming profession of religion, because it is respectable,
+or opens the way to some good position? Does nobody pose in public,
+especially about election times, as a liberal supporter of Churches and
+a devout Church-member, with an eye mainly to votes? Do political
+parties think it a good thing to get the religious people to go for
+their ticket? Or, to take less base instances, is there not a whole
+school who estimate Christianity mainly as valuable as a social force,
+and, without any deep personal recognition of its loftier aspects,
+think it well that it should be generally accepted, especially by other
+people, as it makes them easier to govern, and cements the social
+fabric?
+
+Christianity is something more than social cement. Jeroboam's policy
+was a great success, as policy. It both united his kingdom and
+definitively separated it from Judah. But it was a success purchased at
+the price of degrading religion into the lackey of a court. Samson went
+to sleep on Delilah's lap, and she cut off the clustering locks in
+which his strength lay.
+
+III. The true nature of idolatry is brought out in the incident.
+Jeroboam did not draw Israel away to worship other gods. No charge of
+that sort is ever made against the calf worship. The images were meant,
+just as Aaron's, of which they were a reproduction, was meant, to be
+symbols of Jehovah. The true object of worship was worshipped in a
+false way. No matter though the image represented Him, its worship was
+idol worship. There is no ground in the narrative for the surmise of
+Stanley,--who in this, as usual, simply says ditto to Ewald,--that
+Jeroboam's motive was the desire to prevent Israel's adopting false
+gods, and that the calves were a compromise by which he hoped to stem
+the tide of apostasy to Baal worship. The single motive stated in the
+text is policy inspired by fear. Jeroboam did not care enough about the
+worship of Jehovah to mould his statecraft with the view of conserving
+it. If he had so cared, he could not have set up the calves. His doing
+so is uniformly regarded in Scripture as idolatry pure and simple; and
+though it is clearly distinguished from the worship of false gods, it
+is none the less branded as rebellion against Jehovah.
+
+A visible representation of Jehovah was as much an idol as a similar
+one of Baal would have been. It necessarily degraded the conception of
+Him. It brought sense into dangerous prominence as an aid to worship.
+The symbol might at first, and to the more devout, be a mere symbol,
+and transparent; but it would soon become opaque, and from symbol turn
+embodiment, and thence pass to being the very deity represented. It is
+a feat of abstraction impossible for the ordinary man, to worship
+before an idol, and not to worship the idol. The strange, awful
+fascination which idolatry exercised is perhaps gone now from the
+civilised world. But the lesson remains ever in season, that it is
+dangerous work to bring in sense as an ally of devotion, because
+outward things, which at first may be only symbols and helps, are
+almost certain to become something more.
+
+IV. Jeroboam may stand, finally, as a type of the men who suppose
+themselves to be worshipping God when they are only following their own
+wills. All his ceremonial had this damning characteristic, that it was
+'devised of his own heart'; and so it was himself that was enshrined in
+his new house of the high places, and himself to whom the sacrifices
+were offered. Absolute obedience to God's will, whatever perils may
+seem to attend it, is true worship. Wherever apparent devotion to Him
+is mingled with burning incense to our own net, the mixture ruins the
+devotion. 'Obedience is better than sacrifice.' Temptations to take our
+own way will often appear as the dictates of sound policy, and to
+neglect them as culpable carelessness. But such paltering with plain
+commandments is as ruinous as sinful, and is not to be atoned for by
+outward worship.
+
+What did Jeroboam win by his intrusion of self-will into the region
+which ought to be sacred to perfect obedience? A troubled reign and the
+destruction of his house after one generation. One more thing he won;
+namely, that terrible epithet, which becomes almost a part of his name,
+'Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.' What a title to
+be branded on a man's forehead for ever! It is always a mistake to
+disobey God. Every sin is a blunder as well as a crime. This only is
+the safe motto for churches and individuals, in all the details of
+worship and of life: 'Lo, I come to do Thy will, O Lord, and Thy law is
+within my heart.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RECORD OF TWO KINGS
+
+'In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah began Omri to reign
+over Israel, twelve years: six years reigned he in Tirzah. 24. And he
+bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and built
+on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, after the
+name of Shemer, owner of the hill, Samaria. 25. But Omri wrought evil
+in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all that were before him.
+26. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in
+his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke the Lord God of
+Israel to anger with their vanities. 27. Now the rest of the acts of
+Omri which he did, and his might that he shewed, are they not written
+in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? 28. So Omri slept
+with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria: and Ahab his son reigned
+in his stead. 29. And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of
+Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel: and Ahab the son
+of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years. 30. And
+Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that
+were before him. 31. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light
+thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he
+took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethibaal king of the Zidonians,
+and went and served Baal, and worshipped him. 32. And he reared up an
+altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. 33.
+And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of
+Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.'-1
+KINGS xvi. 23-33.
+
+
+Jeroboam's son and successor was killed by Baasha, Baasha's son and
+successor was killed by Zimri, who reigned for a week, and then burned
+the palace and died in the flames. A struggle for the throne followed
+between Omri, the commander-in-chief, and Tibni, 'Tibni died, and Omri
+reigned.' So, in fifty years, the kingdom that was to relieve Israel
+from oppression staggered through seas of blood, and four kings, or
+would-be kings, died by violence.
+
+Omri's dynasty lasted about as long, namely, through the reigns of four
+kings, and was then swept away like the others, in blood and fire. The
+text gives a meagre outline of the reigns of himself and his son Ahab,
+of which perhaps the meagreness is the most significant feature. The
+only fact told of the father is that he built Samaria, and his whole
+reign is summed up in the damning sentence that he 'walked in the way
+of Jeroboam.' We learn from the Moabite stone that he waged successful
+war against that country, and that it was tributary to Israel for forty
+years. In Micah vi. 16, mention is made of the statutes of Omri, as if
+he had given edicts for idolatry. The reign of Ahab is similarly
+summarised. His marriage with Jezebel, and the flood of Baal worship
+which that let loose over the land, are told with horror, in
+preparation for Elijah's appearance like a dark background that throws
+up a brilliant figure.
+
+The lessons to be drawn from these severely condensed records, cut down
+to the bone, as it were, are plain. The first of them is, that when a
+life is over, the one thing which lasts, or is worth thinking about, is
+the man's relation to God and His will. Here are twelve years' reign in
+the one case, and twenty-two in the other, all boiled down, so to
+speak, into half a dozen sentences, and estimated according to one
+standard only. What has become of all the eager strife, the joys and
+sorrows, the hopes and fears, that burned so fiercely for awhile? All
+died down into a handful of grey ashes. And what lies in them like a
+lump of solid metal that has been melted out of the huge heap of days
+and deeds that fed the fire? The man's relation to God. That abides;
+that is recorded; that determines everything else about him. Waving
+forests that once had sunshine pouring down on their green fronds are
+represented in a thin seam of coal. Our lives will all come down to
+this at last. How did he stand towards God and His will is the final
+question that will be asked about each of us, and the answer to it is
+the only thing that concerns the dead--or the living either. Men write
+voluminous biographies of each other. How little their judgments matter
+to the dead men! Praise or blame are equally indifferent to them. But
+what matters is, whether God will have to record of us what is recorded
+of these two wretched kings, or whether He will recognise that the main
+drift of our poor lives was to serve Him and do His will. He was a
+great scholar; he made a huge fortune; he rose to be a peer; she was a
+noted beauty, a leader of fashion, a queen of society--what will all
+such epitaphs be worth, if God's finger carves silently below them, 'He
+did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord'?
+
+Another lesson from these two reigns is the certain widening of the
+smallest departure from God. Jeroboam professed to retain the worship
+of Jehovah, and to introduce only a small alteration in setting up a
+symbol of Him. He would vehemently have asserted that he was no
+idolater, and would have shuddered at the very notion of bowing down to
+the gods of the nations, but in less than fifty years a temple to the
+Sidonian Baal rose in Samaria, and his worship, with its foul
+sensuality, was corrupting all Israel. However acute the angle of
+departure, the line has only to be prolonged, and the distance between
+it and that from which it diverged will be the distance between heaven
+and hell, Let no one say: 'Thus far and no farther will I go.' There is
+no stopping at will on that course, any more than a man sliding down a
+steeply sloping sheet of smooth ice can pull himself up before he
+plunges over the edge into the abyss below. That is true as to all
+departures from God and His law, but it is eminently true as to every
+tampering with the spirituality of worship. Jeroboam's symbolism led
+straight to Ahab's unblushing pagan worship of the hideous Sidonian
+Baal. The craving for symbolical and sensuous accessories of worship,
+which is strong in most Churches in this aesthetic generation, is
+perilous. Material aids to worship there must be, so long as we are in
+the flesh, but the fewer and simpler they are the better, for they are
+aids which very swiftly become hindrances.
+
+Another lesson from Ahab's reign is the need of detachment from
+entangling alliances, if we would keep ourselves right with God. It was
+Israel's calling to be separate from the nations. It was Israel's
+temptation either to mix with them, or to keep aloof from them in
+contempt and hatred. Ahab's marriage with Jezebel was, no doubt,
+thought by his father a clever stroke of policy, assuring them of an
+ally. But it flooded the nation with the cruel and lustful cult of
+Baal, and that finally ruined Ahab and his house. God's servants can
+never mingle themselves with His enemies without harm, unless they
+mingle with them for the purpose of turning them into His servants. If
+we prefer the company of those who do not love Jesus, our love to Him
+must be faint, and will soon be fainter. If Ahab takes Jezebel for his
+wife, Ahab will soon take Jezebel's foul god for his god.
+
+
+
+
+A PROPHET'S STRANGE PROVIDERS
+
+'And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said
+unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there
+shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. 2. And
+the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, 3. Get thee hence, and turn
+thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before
+Jordan. 4. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I
+have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. 5. So he went and did
+according unto the word of the Lord, for he went and dwelt by the brook
+Cherith, that is before Jordan. 6. And the ravens brought him bread and
+flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank
+of the brook. 7. And it came to pass after a while, that the brook
+dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. 8. And the word
+of the Lord came unto him, saying, 9. Arise, get thee to Zarephath,
+which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a
+widow woman there to sustain thee. 10. So he arose and went to
+Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow
+woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said,
+Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.
+11. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring
+me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand. 12. And she said, As
+the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a
+barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two
+sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may
+eat it, and die. 13. And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as
+thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it
+unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. 14. For thus saith
+the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither
+shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain
+upon the earth. 15. And she went and did according to the saying of
+Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. 16. And the
+barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according
+to the word of the Lord, which He spake by Elijah.'-1 KINGS xvii. 1-16.
+
+
+The worst times need the best men. The reign of Ahab brought a great
+outburst of Baal worship, imported by his Phoenician wife, which
+threatened to sweep away every trace of the worship of Jehovah. The
+feeble king was absolutely ruled by the strongwilled Jezebel, and
+everything seemed rushing down to ruin. One man arrests the downward
+movement, and with no weapon but his word, and no support but his own
+dauntless courage, which was the child of his faith, works a revolution
+in Israel. 'Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a
+greater than' Elijah the Tishbite. Bugged, stern, solitary, he has no
+commission to reveal new truth. He is not a 'prophet,' like later ones
+whose words were revelation.
+
+Little is preserved of his sayings. His task was to reform and restore,
+not to advance; and his endowments of 'spirit and power' corresponded
+to his work. The striking peculiarities of this heroic figure will
+appear as we go on with his history. For the present, we have to
+consider the three points of this narrative.
+
+I. The Prophet and the King.--The startling suddenness of Elijah's leap
+into the arena, where he appears without preface or explanation, helps
+the impression of extraordinary force which his whole career makes. He
+crashes into the midst of Ahab's court like a thunderbolt. What did
+Jezebel think of this wild man from the other side of Jordan, with his
+long hair and his loose mantle, who thus fronted Ahab and her? Nothing
+is told us of his descent; it is even questionable whether the reading
+which calls him 'the Tishbite' is correct. We only know that he was of
+Gilead, and therefore used to a ruder, freer, simpler life than that in
+kings' palaces.
+
+The natural conclusion from the narrative is that the prophet and the
+king had never met before; and, if so, the stern brevity of the threat
+is even more remarkable. In any case, the absence of explanation of
+reasons for the drought, or of credentials of Elijah, or of offers of
+mercy on condition of repentance, give a peculiarly grim aspect to the
+message, and make it a dangerous one to carry to such a hearer as Ahab,
+stirred up by Jezebel. When God commands us to speak, no thought of
+peril must make us dumb. If the 'word of the Lord' is to sound from our
+lips with power, it must first have absolute sway over ourselves. One
+man with God at his back, who fears nothing, can work marvels.
+
+God's servant is men's master. The vision of God's Presence paled the
+splendour, and blunted the perils, of the court of Samaria. Ahab was
+but a poor puppet in the sight of eyes that 'saw the Lord sitting on
+His throne, high and lifted up.' So the very first words of Elijah lay
+bare the secret spring of his fiery energy and courage. 'Before whom I
+stand,'--that is the thought to put nerve, daring, and disregard of
+earth into a man.
+
+James's comment on this incident assumes that the declaration to Ahab
+followed earnest prayer that it might not rain, and that the 'word'
+which should end the drought was also prayer. The truest lover of his
+country or of any men may sometimes have to wish for losses and
+sorrows. Elijah did not open and shut the heavens, but his prayer had
+power to move the Hand that 'openeth and no man shutteth.'
+
+II. The Prophet and the Ravens.--One would like to know how Elijah made
+his escape from Ahab; but the whole story is marked by sudden
+appearances and disappearances. He flashes into sight and flames for a
+moment, and then is swallowed up in the dark again. The exact position
+of the brook Cherith is doubtful. It would seem most natural to look
+for it across Jordan, as safer and more familiar ground to Elijah than
+any of the tributaries on the western side. At all events, somewhere
+among the savage rocks in some wady with a trickle of water down it,
+and rank vegetation that would help to hide him, he lurked for an
+indefinite period, alone with God.
+
+Why did he flee? Not only for safety, but that the period of the
+drought might be prolonged till it had done its work, and that the
+prophet might learn more lessons for his calling. Good Obadiah would
+have made a place for the chief of the prophets in his caves; but the
+man who is to do work like Elijah's must live in solitude. Cherith was
+part of the training for Carmel. The flight thither was as much an act
+of obedient faith as was the appearance before the king. However the
+necessity of flight was impressed on the prophet, it _was_ impressed on
+him as manifestly not his own plan, but God's command; and though the
+journey was a weary one, and the appointed place of refuge
+inhospitable, the command was unhesitatingly obeyed. He was not left to
+wonder how he was to be fed when he got there, but God gave him, what
+He seldom gives--a previous assurance of miraculous provision, which
+obviously met some unspoken thought. We do not usually know how we are
+to be fed in the solitude till we get there; but if our doubting hearts
+object, 'But, Lord, there is nothing at Cherith but a brook and some
+ravens,' He sometimes gives us assurance that these will be enough.
+Whether or no, the duty is the same,--to follow God's voice, whether it
+take us face to face with Ahab and Jezebel or into the wild gorge.
+
+Note that the same words are employed about the ravens and the widow:
+'I have commanded the... to feed thee.' God has ways of reaching the
+mysterious animal instinct and the mysterious human will, and each, in
+its own way, obeys. It is needless to try to pare down the miracle by
+saying that, of course, ravens would haunt the water-courses in
+drought, and that the food which they brought might be for their young,
+and so on. The daily regularity of the supply takes it out of the
+natural category, to say nothing of the remarkable breed which the
+ravens must have been of, if they brought their young ones' food within
+reach and let the prophet take it.
+
+People take offence at the abundance of miracles in the lives of Elijah
+and Elisha, and assert that some of them, this among the rest, are for
+unworthily trivial occasions. But the grave crisis in Israel is to be
+taken into account, which involved the necessity for unusual
+manifestations of divine power, and very evident credentials for the
+prophets; and the preparation of Elijah for his tremendous struggle
+was, even to our eyes, surely an adequate end for miracle. How could he
+doubt that God had sent him and would care for him, with such memories
+as those of his winged purveyors? How could he doubt future words which
+should come to him, when he recalled how marvellously this one had been
+fulfilled? The silence of the ravine, the long days and nights of
+solitude, the punctual arrival of his food, would all tend to weld his
+faith into yet more close-knit strength. If we may so say, it was worth
+God's while to work miracles, to make Elijah. The highest end of
+creation is the production of God-fearing men. All things serve the
+soul that serves God.
+
+III. The Prophet and the Widow.--The little stream that came down the
+wady dried up 'after a while'; and Elijah, no doubt, would wonder what
+was to be done next, as he saw it daily sending a thinner thread to
+Jordan. But he was not told till the channel was dry, and the pebbles
+in its bed bleaching in the sun. God makes us sometimes wait on beside
+a diminishing rivulet, and keeps us ignorant of the next step, till it
+is dry. Patience is an element in strength. It was a far cry from
+Cherith to Zarephath, right across the kingdom of Ahab; and to run for
+refuge to a dependency of Zidon, Jezebel's country, looked like putting
+his head in the lion's mouth. But the same 'command' which the ravens
+had obeyed had smoothed his way.
+
+So he girded up his loins, and left, no doubt reluctantly, the brook
+for a city. How his heart would bow in adoring thankfulness, when the
+first person he saw outside the little 'city' was 'the widow'! He knew
+her; did she know him? The natural interpretation of verse 9 is that,
+at the time when God spoke to Elijah, he had already 'commanded' the
+woman. But the despondent tone of her answer seems against that idea;
+and perhaps we are to suppose that, just as the ravens were commanded
+and knew not by whom, so this woman received the command, when she saw
+the travel-stained and gaunt stranger, through her womanly impulses of
+compassion, not knowing who moved them nor what she did when she
+sheltered the man whose life was, at that moment, the most important in
+the world. The motions of pity and charity are of God, and He commands
+us to help when He sets before us those who need help.
+
+The whole incident was a lesson to the prophet. He might well have
+thought that God had sent him to a strange helper in this poor widow
+with her empty cupboard; and it must have taken some faith on his part
+to reassure her with his cheery 'Fear not!' The prediction of the
+undiminishing stores demanded as much faith from its speaker as from
+its hearer.
+
+It was a lesson in faith for the woman too. Her use of the phrase 'the
+Lord thy God' may imply some inclination to the worship of Jehovah, and
+so there may have been a little glimmer of faith in her; but she was
+full of sorrow and despair, and yet willing to help the stranger with
+the 'little water in a vessel,' though the 'morsel of bread in thine
+hand' was beyond her power. Elijah's apparently selfish demand that his
+wants should be looked after first was a test of her faith. Sometimes
+self-denying duty is made clearly imperative on us, before we hear the
+promise which, believed, will make it easy. They who have ears to hear
+the command, and hearts to obey, even if it seem to strip them of all,
+will soon hear the assurance that secures abundance. The barrel would
+have been empty by nightfall, if the meal in it had been used for the
+woman and her son. The continuance of supply depended on her obedience,
+which, in its turn, depended on faith in the prophet as a messenger of
+God. 'There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.' The use of earthly
+goods for God's service may not be rewarded with the increase of them;
+but, if the barrel is not kept full of meal, the heart will be kept
+full of peace, which is better. No sacrifice for God is ever thrown
+away. He remains in no man's debt.
+
+The incident has a further bearing, as an instance of a divine
+benediction resting on heathendom. The synagogue at Nazareth pointed
+that lesson for us. Elijah and the widow both learned that the God of
+Israel is the God of all the earth, and that His prophets have a
+mission to every race. The woman rebuked, by her pity and self-denying
+benevolence, the prejudices of Israel; the prophet foreshadowed, by his
+familiar abode with one won from idolatry to the worship of God, the
+universal aspect of the Jewish religion, and its destiny to overleap
+the narrow bounds of the nation. Charity and pity have no geographical
+limits. Much less can the love of God and the light of His revelation
+be bounded by any narrower circle than the circumference of the world.
+
+
+
+
+ELIJAH STANDING BEFORE THE LORD
+
+And Elijah the Tishbite ... said ... As the Lord God of Israel liveth,
+before whom I stand.--1 KINGS xvii. 1.
+
+
+This solemn and remarkable adjuration seems to have been habitual upon
+Elijah's lips in the great crises of his life. We never find it used by
+any but himself, and his scholar and successor, Elisha. Both of them
+employ it under similar circumstances, as if unveiling the very secret
+of their lives, the reason for their strength, and for their undaunted
+bearing and bold fronting of all antagonism. We find four instances in
+their two lives of the use of the phrase. Elijah bursts abruptly on the
+stage and opens his mouth for the first time to Ahab, to proclaim the
+coming of that terrible and protracted drought; and he bases his
+prophecy on that great oath, 'As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand.'
+And again, when he is sent to confront Ahab once more at the close of
+the period, the same mighty word comes, 'As the Lord of Hosts liveth,
+before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him this day.' And
+then again, Elisha, when he is brought before the three confederate
+kings, who taunt, and threaten, and flatter, to try to draw smooth
+things from his lips, and get his sanction to their mad warfare, turns
+upon the poor creature that called himself the King of Israel with a
+superb contempt that stayed itself on that same great name and tells
+him, 'As the Lord liveth before whom I stand, were it not that I had
+regard for the King of Judah, I would not look toward you or see you,'
+And lastly, when the grateful Naaman seeks to change the whole
+character of Elisha's miracle, and to turn it into the coarseness of a
+thing done for reward, once again the temptation is brushed aside with
+that solemn word, 'As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will
+receive none.'
+
+So at every crisis where these prophets were brought full front with
+hostile power; where a tremendous message was laid upon their hearts
+and lips to utter; where natural strength would fail; where they were
+likely to be daunted or dazzled by temptations, by either the sweetness
+or the terrors of material things, these two great heroes of the Old
+Covenant, out of sight the strongest men in the old Jewish history,
+steady themselves by one thought,--God lives, and I am His servant.
+
+For that phrase, 'before whom I stand,' obviously means chiefly 'whom I
+serve.' It is found, for instance, in Deuteronomy, where the priest's
+office is thus defined: 'The sons of Levi shall stand before the Lord
+to minister unto Him.' And in the same way, it is used in the Queen of
+Sheba's wondering exclamation to Solomon, 'Blessed are thy servants,
+and blessed are the men that stand before thy face continually.'
+
+So that the consciousness that they were servants of the living God was
+the very secret of the power of these men. This expression, which thus
+started to their lips in moments of strain and trial, lets us see into
+the very inmost heart of their strength. These two great lives, which
+fill so large a apace in the records of the past, and will be
+remembered for ever, were braced and ennobled thus. The same grand
+thought is available to brace and ennoble our little lives, that will
+soon be forgotten but by a loving heart or two, and yet may be as full
+of God and of God's service as those of any of the great of old. We too
+may use this secret of power, 'The Lord liveth, before whom I stand.'
+
+What thoughts then, which may tend to lift and invigorate our days, are
+included in these words? The first is surely this--Life a constant
+vision of God's presence.
+
+How distinct and abiding must the vision of God have been, which burned
+before the inward eye of the man that struck out that phrase! 'Wherever
+I am, whatever I do, I am before Him. To my purged eye, there is the
+Apocalypse of heaven, and I behold the great throne, and the solemn
+ranks of ministering spirits, my fellow-servants, hearkening to the
+voice of His word.' No excitement of work, no strain of effort, no
+distraction of circumstances, no glitter of gold, no dazzle of earthly
+brightness, dimmed that vision for these prophets. In some measure, it
+was with them as it shall be perfectly with all one day, 'His servants
+serve Him, and see His face,'--action not interrupting vision, nor
+vision weakening action. To preserve thus fresh and unimpaired, amidst
+strenuous work and many temptations, the clear consciousness of being
+'ever in the great Taskmaster's eye,' needs resolute effort and much
+self-restraint. It is hard to set the Lord always before us; but it is
+possible, and in the measure in which we do it, we shall not be moved.
+
+How nobly the steadfastness and superiority to all temptations which
+such a vision gives, are illustrated by the occasions, in these
+prophets' lives, in which this expression came to their lips! The
+servant of the Heavenly King speaks from his present intuition. As he
+speaks, he sees the throne in the heavens, and the Sovereign Ruler
+there, and the sight bears him up from quailing before the earthly
+monarchs whom he had to beard, and in connection with whom three out of
+the four instances of the use of the phrase occur. How small Ahab and
+his court must have looked to eyes that were full of the undazzling
+brightness of the true King of Israel, and the ordered ranks of _His_
+attendants! How little the greatness! How tawdry the pomp! How impotent
+the power, and how toothless the threats! The poor show of the earthly
+king paled before that awful vision, as a dim candle will show black
+against the sun. 'I stand before the living God, and thou, O Ahab! art
+but a shadow and a noise.' Just as we may have looked upon some
+mountain scene, where all the highest summits were wrapt in mist, and
+the lower hills looked mighty and majestic, until some puff of wind
+came and rolled up the curtain that had shrined and hidden the icy
+pinnacles and peaks that were higher up. And as that solemn white
+apocalypse rose and towered to the heavens, we forgot all about the
+green hills below, because our eyes beheld the mighty summits that live
+amongst the stars, and sparkle white through eternity.
+
+My brethren, here is our defence against being led away by the gauds
+and shows of earth's vulgar attractions, or being terrified by the poor
+terrors of its enmity. Go with that talisman in your hand, 'The Lord
+liveth, before whom I stand,' and everything else dwindles down into
+nothingness, and you are a free man, master and lord of all things,
+because you are God's servants, seeing all things aright, because you
+see them all in God, and God in them all.
+
+Still further, we may say that this phrase is the utterance and
+expression of a consciousness that life was echoing with the voice of
+the divine command. Elijah stands before the Lord, not only feeling in
+his thrilling spirit that God is ever near him, but also that His word
+is ever coming forth to him, with imperative authority. That is the
+prophet's conception of life. Wherever he is, he hears a voice saying,
+'This is the way, walk ye in it.' Every place where he stands is as the
+very holy place of the oracles of the Most High, the spot in the
+innermost shrine where the voice of God is audible, All circumstances
+are the voice of God, commanding or restraining. He is evermore
+pursued, nay, rather upheld and guided, by an all-embracing law. That
+law is no mere utterance of cold impersonal duty,--a thought which may
+make men slaves, but never makes them good. But it is the voice of the
+living God, loving and beloved, whose tender care for His children
+modulates His tone, while He commands them for their good. He speaks
+because He loves; His law is life. The heart that hears Him speak is
+filled with music.
+
+Ahab and Jehoram, and all the kings of the earth, may thunder and
+lighten, may threaten and flatter, may command and forbid, as they
+list. They and their words are nought to him whose trembling ears have
+heard, and whose obedient heart has received, a higher command, and to
+whom, 'across the storm,' comes the deeper voice of the one true
+Commander, whom alone it is a glory absolutely to obey, even 'the Lord,
+before whom I stand.' People talk about the consciousness of 'a
+mission.' The important point, on the settling of which depends the
+whole character of our lives, is--Who do you suppose gave you your
+'mission'? Was it any _person_ at all? or have you any consciousness
+that any will but your own has anything to say about your life? These
+prophets had found One whom it was worth while to obey, whatever came
+of it, and whoever stood in the way. May it be so with you and me, my
+friend! Let us try always to feel that in the commonest things we may
+hear the command of God; that the trifles of each day--trifles though
+they be--vibrate and sound with the reverberation of His great voice;
+that in all the outward circumstances of our lives, as in all the deep
+recesses of our hearts, we may trace the indications and rudiments of
+His will concerning us, which He has perfectly given us in that Gospel
+which is 'the law of liberty,' and in Him who is the Gospel and the
+perfect Law. Then quietly, without bluster or mock-heroics, or making a
+fuss about our independence, we can put all other commands and
+commanders in their right place, with the old words, 'With me it is a
+very small matter to be judged of you, or of man's judgment; He that
+judgeth me,' and He that commandeth me, 'is the Lord,' In answer to all
+the noise about us we can face round like Elijah, and say, 'As the Lord
+liveth, before whom I stand.' He is my 'Imperator,' the Autocrat and
+Commander of my life; and Him, and Him only, must I serve. What
+calmness, what dignity that would put into our lives! The never-ceasing
+boom of the great ocean, as it breaks on the beach, drowns all smaller
+sounds. Those lives are noble and great in which that deep voice is
+ever dominant, sounding on through all lesser voices, and day and night
+filling the soul with command and awe.
+
+Then, still further, we may take another view of these words. They are
+the utterance of a man to whom his life was not only bright with the
+radiance of a divine presence, and musical with the voice of a divine
+command, but was also, on his part, full of conscious obedience. No man
+could say such a thing of himself who did not feel that he was
+rendering a real, earnest, though imperfect obedience to God. So,
+though in one view the words express a very lowly sense of absolute
+submission before God, in another view they make a lofty claim for the
+utterer. He professes that he stands before the Lord, girt for His
+service, watching to be guided by His eye, and ready to run when He
+bids. It is the same lofty sense of communion and consecration, issuing
+in authority over others, which Elijah's true brother in later days,
+Paul the Apostle, put forth when he made known to his companions in
+shipwreck the will of 'the God, whose I am, and whom I serve.' We may
+well shrink from making that claim for ourselves, when we think of the
+poor, perfunctory service and partial consecration which our lives
+show. But let us rejoice that even we may venture to say, 'Truly I am
+Thy servant'; if only we, like the Psalmist, rest the confession on the
+perfectness of what He has done for us, rather than on the imperfection
+of what we have done for Him; and lay, as its foundation, 'Thou hast
+loosed my bonds.' Then, though we must ever feel how poor our service,
+and how unprofitable ourselves, how little we deserve the honour, and
+how impossible that we should ever earn the least mite of wages; yet we
+may, in all lowliness, think of ourselves as set free that we may
+serve, and lift our eyes, as the eyes of a servant turn towards his
+master, to 'the living Lord, before whom we stand.
+
+Such a life is necessarily a happy life. The one misery of man is
+self-will, the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own
+wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. If we 'stand before
+God,' then that means that our wills are brought into harmony with His.
+And that means that the one poison drop is squeezed out of our lives,
+and that sweetness and joy are infused into them. For what disturbs us
+in this world is not 'trouble' but our opposition to trouble. The true
+source of all that frets and irritates, and wears away our lives, is
+not in external things, but in the resistance of our wills to the will
+of God expressed by external things. I suppose that we shall never here
+bring these wills of ours into perfect correspondence with His, any
+more than we shall ever, with our shaking hands and blunt pencils, draw
+a perfectly straight line. But if will and heart are brought even to a
+rude approach to parallelism with His, if we accept His voice when He
+takes away, and obey it when He commands, we shall be quiet and
+peaceful. We shall be strong and unwearied, freed from corroding cares
+and exhausting rebellions, which take far more out of a man than any
+work does. 'Thy word was found, and I did eat it.' When we thus take
+God's command into our spirits, and feed upon it with will and
+understanding, it becomes, as the Psalmist found it, the 'joy and
+rejoicing of our hearts.' Elijah-like, we shall 'go in the strength of
+that meat many days.' The secret of power and of calm is--yield your
+will to the loving Lord, and stand ever before Him with, 'Here am I,
+send me!'
+
+We may add one more remark to these various views of the significance
+of this expression, to which the last instance of its use may help us.
+Here it is: 'And Naaman said, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy
+servant. But he said, As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will
+receive none.'
+
+The thought, which made all Elisha's life bright with the light of
+God's presence, which filled his ear with the unremitting voice of a
+Divine Law, which swayed and bowed his will to joyful obedience,
+chilled and deadened his desires for all earthly rewards. 'I am not thy
+servant. I am God's servant. It is not your business to pay my wages. I
+cannot dishonour my Master by taking payment from thee for doing His
+work. I look for everything from Him, for nothing from thee.'
+
+And is there not a broad general truth involved there, namely, that
+such a life as we have been describing will find its sole reward where
+it finds its inspiration and its law? The Master's approval is the
+servant's best wages. If we truly feel that 'the Lord _liveth_, before
+whom we stand, 'we shall want nothing else for our work but His smile,
+and we shall feel that the light of His face is all that we need. That
+thought should deaden our love for outward things. How little we need
+to care about any payment that the world can give for anything we do!
+If we feel, as we ought, that we are God's servants, that will lift us
+clear above the low aims and desires which meet us. How little we shall
+care for money, for men's praise, for getting on in the world! How the
+things that we fever our souls by pursuing, and fret our hearts when we
+lose, will cease to attract! How small and vulgar the 'prizes' of life,
+as people call them, will appear! 'The Lord liveth, before whom I
+stand,' should be enough for us, and instead of all these motives to
+action drawn from the rewards of this world, we ought to 'labour that,
+whether present or absent, we may be well-pleasing to Him.'
+
+Not the fading leaves of the victor's wreath, laurel though they be,
+nor the corruptible things as silver and gold, whereof earth's diadems
+and rewards are fashioned, but the incorruptible crown that fadeth not
+away, which His hand will give, should fire our hope, and shine before
+our faith. Not Naaman's gifts but God's approval is Elisha's reward.
+Not the praise from lips that will perish, or the 'hollow wraith of
+dying fame,' but Christ's 'Well done! good and faithful servant,'
+should be a Christian's aim.
+
+May we, brethren, possess the 'spirit and the power of Elias';--the
+spirit, in that we know ourselves to be the servants of the living God;
+and then we shall have some measure of his dauntless power and heroic
+unworldliness!
+
+Still better, may we have the Spirit of Him who was '_the_ Servant of
+the Lord,' diviner in His gentle meekness than the fiery prophet in his
+lonely strength! Make yours the mind that was in Christ, that you too
+may say, 'Lo, I come! in the volume of the book it is written of me, I
+delight to do Thy will, yea, Thy law is within my heart.'
+
+
+
+
+OBADIAH
+
+_To the Young_
+
+'... I thy servant fear the Lord from my youth.--1 KINGS xviii.12.
+
+
+This Obadiah is one of the obscurer figures in the Old Testament. We
+never hear of him again, for there is no reason to accept the Jewish
+tradition which alleges that he was Obadiah the prophet. And yet how
+distinctly he stands out from the canvas, though he is only sketched
+with a few bold outlines! He is the 'governor over Ahab's house,' a
+kind of mayor of the palace, and probably the second man in the
+kingdom. But though thus high in that idolatrous and self-willed court,
+he has bravely kept true to the ancient faith. Neither Jezebel's
+flatteries nor her frowns have moved him. But there, amid apostasy and
+idolatry he stands, probably all alone in the court, a worshipper of
+Jehovah. His name is his character, for it means 'servant of Jehovah.'
+It was not a light thing to be a worshipper of the God of Israel in
+Ahab's court. The feminine rage of the fierce Sidonian woman, whom Ahab
+obeyed in most things, burned hot against the enemies of her father's
+gods, and hotter, perhaps, against any one who thwarted her imperious
+will. Obadiah did both, in that audacious piece of benevolence when he
+sheltered the Lord's prophets--one hundred of them--and saved them from
+her cruel search. The writer of the book very rightly marks this brave
+antagonism to the outburst of the queen's wrath as a signal proof of a
+more than ordinary devotion to the worship and fear of Jehovah. His
+firmness and his religion did not prevent his retaining his place of
+honour and dignity. That says something for Ahab, and more perhaps for
+Obadiah.
+
+Most of you believe that you ought to 'fear the Lord': but you are apt
+to put off, and so I wish to urge on you that you should give your
+hearts to Jesus Christ at once.
+
+I. The blessedness of youthful religion.
+
+(a) It guards from many temptations, and keeps a character innocent of
+much transgression.
+
+Think of the dangers that lie thick in the streets of every great city,
+and of a lad coming up from a country home of godliness, where he was
+surrounded by a mother's love and an atmosphere of purity, and launched
+into some lonely lodging, or some factory or warehouse with many
+tempters. Nothing will be such a help to resistance and victory as to
+be able to say, 'So did not I because of the fear of the Lord.'
+
+(_b_) It will save from remorse. Even if a man 'sobers down' after
+'sowing his wild oats,' which is a very problematical 'if,' what bitter
+memories of wasted days, what polluting memories of filthy ones, will
+haunt him! And if he does not sober down, what then?
+
+It is folly to begin life on a wrong tack, in regard to which the best
+that you can say is that you do not mean to continue it. If you do not,
+then the wise thing is to get at once on to the road on which you do
+mean to continue, and to save the weary work of retracing steps and the
+painful consciousness of having made a false start. Are you so sure
+that you will wish, or that it will be possible, to face right about
+and get on to a new line? Fishermen catch lobsters and the like by
+means of baskets with one opening, the withes of which are so set that
+the entrance is easy, but that a ring of sharp points oppose all
+attempts at turning back and getting out. The world lays 'pots' of that
+sort, and many a young man and woman glides smoothly in, and finds it
+impossible to get out.
+
+(_c_) It usually leads to a deeper and more peaceful and harmonious
+religion than is attained by those who have given the world the better
+part of their days, and have only the last fragment of them to give to
+God. Obadiah had feared God from his youth, and that had a good deal to
+do with his brave stand against Jezebel. It is a grand thing to enlist
+habit on the side of godliness.
+
+II. The foes of youthful religion.
+
+There are foes within .... the strong self-reliance and bounding life
+proper to youth, without which at the opening of the flower, the bloom
+would be poor and the fruit little, ... the power of appeals to the
+unjaded and physically strong senses, ... the difficulty at such a
+stage of life of looking forward and soberly regarding the end.
+
+There are foes without ....the crowds of tempters of both sexes, men
+and women who take a devilish pleasure in polluting innocent minds, ...
+the companions whose jeers are worse to face than a battery, ... the
+inconsistencies of so-called Christians, the anti-Christian literature
+which is peculiarly fascinating to the young, with its brave show of
+breaking with mouldy tradition and enthroning reason and emancipating
+from rusty fetters.
+
+III. The too probable alternative to youthful religion.
+
+It is but too likely that, if a man does not 'fear the Lord' from 'his
+youth,' he will never fear Him. Thank God, there is no time nor
+condition of life in which the wicked man cannot 'forsake his way,' or
+'the unrighteous man his thoughts,' and 'turn to the Lord' with the
+assurance that 'He will abundantly pardon.' But it is sadly too plain
+to observation, and to the experience of some of us, that obstacles
+grow with years, that habits and associations grip with increasing
+power, that in all things our natures become less flexible, the supple
+sapling becoming gnarled and tough, that a middle-aged or old man is
+more inextricably 'tied and bound by the cords of his sins,' than a
+young one is.
+
+Sin lies to us by first saying, 'It is too soon to be religious,' and
+then it lies to us by saying, 'It is too late.'
+
+The inclination diminishes.
+
+The Gospel long heard and long put aside, loses power.
+
+Contrast the beauty of a course of life, begun on the same lines as
+those on which it ends, and being like 'the shining light, that shineth
+more and more unto the meridian of the day,' with one which gave the
+greater part of its years to 'the world, the flesh, and the devil,' or
+at least to one's godless self, and the dregs of it only to God.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIAL BY FIRE
+
+'And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose yon one bullock for
+yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name
+of your gods, but put no fire under. 26. And they took the bullock
+which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of
+Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there
+was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar
+which was made. 27. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked
+them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he Is talking, or he
+is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and
+must be awaked. 28. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after
+their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon
+them. 29. And it came to pass, when midday was passed, and they
+prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice,
+that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.
+30. And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the
+people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that
+was broken down. 31. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the
+number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the
+Lord came, saying, Israel shall be thy name: 32. And with the stones he
+built an altar in the name of the Lord: and he made a trench about the
+altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. 33. And he put
+the wood in order, and cut the bullock in nieces, and laid him on the
+wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt
+sacrifice, and on the wood. 34. And he said, Do it the second time. And
+they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And
+they did it the third time. 35. And the water ran round about the
+altar; and he filled the trench also with water. 36. And it came to
+pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah
+the prophet came near, and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of
+Israel, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel, and that
+I am Thy servant, and that I have done all these things at Thy word.
+37. Hear me, O Lord, hear me: that this people may know that Thou art
+the Lord God, and that Thou hast turned their heart back again. 38.
+Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and
+the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that
+was in the trench. 39. And when all the people saw it, they fell on
+their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is
+the God.--1 KINGS xviii. 25-39.
+
+The place, the purpose, and the actors in this scene, make it among the
+grandest in history. A nation, with its king, has come together, at the
+bidding of one man, to settle no less a question than whom they shall
+worship. There, on the slope of Carmel, with the brassy heaven gleaming
+hard and dry above them, and the yellow, burnt-up plain of Jezreel at
+their feet, the expectant people stand. The assembly was a singular
+proof of Elijah's ascendency; for Ahab's bluster had sunk, cowed in his
+presence, and he had meekly done the prophet's bidding in summoning
+'all Israel' and the eight hundred and fifty Baal and Asherah prophets,
+for an unexplained purpose. The false priests would come unwillingly;
+but they came.
+
+Then Elijah takes the command, and, though utterly alone, towers above
+the crowd in the courage of his undaunted confidence in his message.
+His words have the ring of authority as he rebukes indecision, and
+calls for a clear adhesion to Baal or Jehovah. If the people had
+answered, the trial by fire would have been needless. But their silence
+shows that they waver, and therefore he makes his proposal to them.
+
+Note that the priests are not consulted, nor is Ahab. The former would
+have had some excuse for shirking the sharp issue; but the people's
+assent forced them to accept the ordeal,--reluctantly enough, no doubt.
+
+I. The vain cries to a deaf God. It is strange that one of the parties
+to the test has power to determine its conditions, especially as
+Elijah's prophetic authority was one of the things in dispute; but it
+is a sign of the magnetic power which one bold man with absolute
+confidence in his own convictions exercises over men. The Baal prophets
+are given every advantage in priority of action. Error is best unmasked
+by being allowed free opportunity to do its best; for the more
+favourable the circumstances of trial, the more signal the defeat.
+God's servants must never be suspected of unfair tricks in their
+controversy with error. They can afford to let it try first. Notice the
+substitution of 'your god,' in the Revised Version, for 'your gods' in
+the Authorised Version. That is obviously right; for the only question
+was about one god,--namely, Baal.
+
+So, in the early morning, with all the people gazing at them, the Baal
+priests or prophets begin their attempt. It was easy to prepare the
+sacrifice, and lay it on the altar,--though, no doubt, it was done
+sullenly, with foreboding of the coming exposure. The whole account of
+the wild invocations of the priests may suggest some of the
+characteristics of idolatry, and touch our hearts with pity, as well as
+with the sense of its absurdity, which animated Elijah's mockery.
+
+Note, then, the vivid picture, in verse 27, of the long hours of vain
+crying. On the one hand, we hear the wild chorus echoing among the
+rocks; on the other, we feel the dead silence in the heavens.
+
+The monotonous and almost mechanical repetition of the invocation,
+prolonged till the syllables have no meaning to the yelling crowd, is
+characteristic of the frenzied excitement so common in idolatry. To
+call such howlings prayer, degrades the name. They are the very
+opposite of that sacred communion of a believing soul with the God whom
+it knows, trusts, and beseeches with submission. Neither knowledge nor
+trust is in these shrieks, which seek to propitiate the stern god by
+repeating his name as a kind of charm. Heathenism has no true prayer.
+Wild cries and passionate desires, flung upwards to an unloved god, are
+not prayer; and that solace and anchor of the troubled soul is wanting
+in all the dreary lands given up to idolatry.
+
+The melancholy persistence of the unanswered cries may stand as a
+symbol of the tragic obstinacy with which their devotees cling to their
+vain gods,--a rebuke to us with a more enlightened faith. The silence,
+which was the only answer, is put in strong contrast with the
+continuous roar of the four hundred and fifty,--so long and loud the
+hoarse cries here, so unmoved the stillness in the careless heaven.
+That, too, is typical of heathenism, which is sad with unavailing cries
+and ignorant of answers to any. As the day wore on, and the voices grew
+hoarse, and hope declined, more violent bodily exercise was resorted
+to, and the shouting crowd danced (or, perhaps, as the margin says,
+'limped,'--a picturesque and contemptuous word for the grotesque
+contortions around the altar), as if that might bring the answer. That
+again is a feature common to all heathenism. No wonder that Elijah's
+scorn broke forth vehemently at such a sight. Noon was the hour of the
+sun's greatest power, and, since Baal was probably a solar deity, it
+was the hour when, if ever, he would spare one of his abundant fiery
+beams to light the pyre. So Elijah's taunts came just when they were
+most biting, and none can say that they were undeserved. His fiery zeal
+and his naturally stern character broke out in the bitter irony with
+which he imagines a variety of undignified positions for Baal.
+
+Sarcasm is not the highest weapon, and the 'spirit of Elijah' is not
+the spirit of Jesus; but the exposure of the absurdity of idolatry is
+legitimate, and even ridicule may have its place in pricking
+wind-distended bladders. A man throttling a serpent may be excused
+using anything that comes handy for the purpose. But, at the same time,
+the right attitude for us as Christians in the presence of that awful
+fact of idolatry, is neither contempt nor scientific curiosity, but
+pity deep as Christ's, and earnest resolve to help our darkened
+brethren. The taunts stirred to fiercer excitement and more extravagant
+acts, as ridicule is wont to do, and therein proves itself an
+unreliable instrument of controversy. Laughing at a man generally makes
+him more obstinate. The priests answered Elijah by savagely gashing
+their half-naked bodies with knives and lances,--a ready way to make
+blood come, but not to bring fire. The frenzy became wilder as the day
+declined, and at last, covered with blood, hoarse with shouting,
+panting with their gymnastics, they 'prophesied,' having wrought
+themselves into that state of excitement in which incoherent rhapsodies
+burst from their lips. What a scene to call worship! That is what
+millions of men are ready to practise to-day. And all the while there
+is no voice, no answer, no care for them, in the pitiless sky. The very
+genius of idolatry is set before us in that tumultuous crowd on Carmel.
+
+II. The sacrifice of faith and the answer by fire. We pass from a scene
+of wild commotion into an atmosphere of sacred calm in verse 30. The
+contrast is striking. The fiery fervours of the day are past, and the
+sun is sinking behind the top of Carmel, and there is much to do before
+it sets. Elijah with his own hands, as would appear, repairs a ruined
+altar among the woods. Probably it had been erected for secret worship
+of Jehovah by some faithful amid the national apostasy, when access to
+Jerusalem was forbidden them, and had been destroyed by Ahab in his
+crusade against Jehovah worshippers. The selection of the twelve stones
+was symbolical of the unbroken unity of the nation, and was Elijah's
+protest against the very existence of the Northern kingdom, and its
+assumption of the name of 'Israel' The writer explains what was meant,
+when he reminds us that Israel was the name given to Jacob, and
+therefore, as he would have us infer, was the common property of all
+his descendants. Judah was a part of Israel, and Israel should be an
+undivided whole, uniting in all its tribes in bringing offerings to
+Jehovah.
+
+It was a daring thing to do before Ahab's face; but the weak king was,
+for the time, subjugated by the imperious will and courage of Elijah.
+The building of the altar, with its mute witness to God's purpose,
+would touch some hearts in the gazing, silent crowd. The next step was,
+of course, meant to make the miracle more conspicuous by drenching
+everything with water, probably brought, even in that drought, from the
+perennial fountain near at hand. Perhaps, too, the number of barrels
+was intended, again, as symbolical of the twelve tribes.
+
+One can fancy the wonder and eagerness of the people, and the dark
+frowns of the baffled and exhausted Baal priests, as they gradually
+came out of their frenzy, and knew that they had lost their
+opportunity. The tranquil though earnest prayer of the prophet is in
+sharpest contrast with the meaningless bellowings to Baal. Note in it
+the solemn invocation. The great Name, which all listening to him had
+deposed from rule over them, is set in the front; and the ancestral
+worship, as well as the divine gifts and dealings with the patriarchs,
+is pleaded with God as the reason for His answer now. The name of
+'Israel' instead of the more common 'Jacob,' has the same force as in
+verse 31.
+
+Note the substance of the petitions. The deepest desire of a truly
+devout soul is that God would make His name known. Zeal for God's
+honour and love for men who have gone astray from Him, conspire to make
+that the head and front of His true servant's prayers. It is God, not
+his own credit, about which Elijah thinks first. For himself, all that
+he desires is to be known as an obedient servant, and as not having
+done anything at the bidding of his own will or judgment, but in
+accordance with the all-commanding Voice.
+
+Clearly we must suppose that in all the ordering of this sublime trial
+by fire, Elijah had been acting 'at Thy word,' even though we have no
+other record of the fact. He had no right to expect an answer unless he
+had been bidden to propose the test. God will honour the drafts which
+He bids us draw on Him; but to suspend our own or other people's faith
+in Him, on the issue of some experiment whether He will answer prayers,
+is not faith, but rash presumption, unless it is in obedience to a
+distinct command. Elijah had such a command, and therefore he could ask
+God to vindicate his action, and to prove that he was God's servant.
+His last petition is beautiful, both in its consciousness of power with
+God and recognition of his place as a prophet, and in its lowly
+subordination of all personal aims to the restoration of Israel to the
+true worship. He asks, with reiteration which is earnestness and faith,
+and therefore the sharpest contrast to the mechanical repetition by
+Baal's priests, that God would hear him; but his sole object in that
+prayer is, not that his name may be exalted as a prophet, or that any
+good may come to him, but that the blinded eyes may be opened, and the
+hearts, that have been so sadly led astray, be brought back to the
+worship of their fathers' God.
+
+The whole brief prayer, in its calm confidence; its adoring recognition
+of the name and past dealings of Jehovah as the ground of trust; its
+throbbing of earnest desire for the manifestation of His character
+before men; its consciousness of personal relation to God, which
+humbles rather than puffs up; its beseeching for an answer, and its
+closing petition, which comes round again to its first, that men may
+know God, and fasten their hearts on Him,--may well stand as a pattern
+of prayer for us.
+
+The short prayer of faith does in a moment what all the long day of
+crying could not do. The language in which the answer is described
+emulates the rapidity of the swift tongues of fire which licked up
+sacrifice, altar, and water. They were the tokens of acceptance,
+reminding of the consuming of the first sacrifices in the Tabernacle,
+and, like them, inaugurating a new beginning of the worship of God. The
+burning of the altar, as well as of the sacrifice, expressed the
+acceptance of the people whom it, by its twelve stones, symbolised. And
+the people, on their part, were--for the time, at all events--swept
+away by the miracle, and by the force of the prophet's example and
+authority. Short-lived their faith may have been, as certainly it was
+superficial; but the fire had for the time melted their hearts, and set
+them flowing in the ancient channels of devotion. The faith that is
+founded on miracle may be deepened into something better; but unless it
+is, it speedily dies away. The faith that is due to the influence of
+some strong personality may lead on to an independent faith, based on
+personal experience; but, unless it does, it too will perish.
+
+We may find a modern reproduction of the test of Carmel in the
+impotence of all other schemes and methods of social and spiritual
+reformation and the power of the Gospel. In it and its effects God
+answers by fire. Let the opposers, who are so glib in demonstrating the
+failure of Christianity, do the same with their enchantments, if they
+can.
+
+
+
+
+ELIJAH'S WEAKNESS, AND ITS CUBE
+
+'And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had
+slain all the prophets with the sword. 2. Then Jezebel sent a messenger
+unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make
+not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time.
+3. And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to
+Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. 4. But
+he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat
+down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might
+die; and said, It is enough: now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am
+not better than my fathers. 5. And as he lay and slept under a juniper
+tree, behold, then, an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and
+eat. 6. And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the
+coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and
+laid him down again. 7. And the angel of the Lord came again the second
+time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is
+too great for thee. 8. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in
+the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the
+mount of God. 9. And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there,
+and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said unto him,
+What doest thou here, Elijah? 10. And he said, I have been very jealous
+for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy
+covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the
+sword; and I, even I only, am left: and they seek my life, to take it
+away. 11. And He said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the
+Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent
+the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the
+Lord was not In the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the
+Lord was not in the earthquake: 12. And after the earthquake a fire,
+but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small
+voice. 13. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his
+face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the
+cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him and said, What doest
+then here, Elijah! 14. And he said, I have been very jealous for the
+Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken Thy
+covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the
+sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it
+away. 15. And the Lord said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the
+wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king
+over Syria: 16. And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king
+over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou
+anoint to be prophet in thy room. 17. And it shall come to pass, that
+him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that
+escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. 18. Yet I have left
+me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto
+Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.'--1 KINGS xix. 1-18.
+
+
+The miracle on Carmel cowed, if it did not convince, Ahab, so that he
+did not oppose the slaughter of the Baal prophets; but Jezebel was made
+of sterner stuff, and her passionate idolatry was proof against even a
+sign from heaven. Obstinacy in error is often a rebuke to tremulous
+faith in God. She fiercely puts her back to the wall, and defies Elijah
+and his God. Her threat to the prophet has a certain audacity of
+frankness almost approaching generosity. She will give her victim fair
+play. This woman is 'magnificent in sin.' The Septuagint prefixes to
+her oath, 'As surely as thou art Elijah and I Jezebel,' which adds
+force to it. It also reads, by a very slight change in the Hebrew, in
+verse 3, 'he was afraid,' for 'he saw,'--which is possibly right, as
+giving his motive for escape more distinctly.
+
+I. We may note, first, the prophet's flight (verses 3-8). Beersheba, on
+the southern border of the kingdom of Judah, was eloquent of memories
+of the patriarchs, but though it was nearly a hundred miles from
+Jezreel, Jezebel's arm was long enough to reach the fugitive there, and
+therefore he plunged deeper into the dreary southern desert. He left
+behind him his servant, his 'young man,' as the original has it, whom
+Rabbinical tradition identified with the miraculously resuscitated son
+of the widow of Zarephath, and supposed to become afterwards the
+prophet Jonah. Thus alone but for the company of his own gloomy
+thoughts, and wearied with toilsome travel in the sun-smitten waste, he
+took shelter under the shadow of a solitary shrub (the Hebrew
+emphatically calls it '_one_ juniper,' or rather 'broom-plant'), and
+there the waves of depression went over him.
+
+His complaint is not to be wondered at, though it was wrong. The very
+overstrain of the scene on Carmel brought reaction. The height of the
+crest of one wave measures the depth of the trough of the next, and no
+mortal spirit can keep itself at the sublime elevation reached by
+Elijah when alone he fronted and converted a nation. The supposed
+necessity for flight, coming so immediately after apparent victory,
+showed him how hollow the change in the people was. What had become of
+all the fervency of their shout, 'The Lord, He is the God!' if they
+could leave Jezebel the power to carry out her threat? Solitude and the
+awful desert increased his gloom. The strong man had become weak, and
+it was ebb-tide with him. His prayer was petulant, impatient,
+presumptuous. What right had he to settle what was 'enough'? If he
+really wished to die, he could have found death at Jezreel, and had no
+need to travel a hundred miles to seek a grave. He was weary of his
+work, and profoundly disappointed by what he hastily concluded was its
+failure, and in a fit of faithless despondency he forgot reverence,
+submission, and obedience.
+
+If Elijah can become weak, and his courage die out, and his zeal become
+torpid apathy and cowardly wish to shuffle off responsibility and shirk
+work, who shall stand? The lessons of self-distrust, of the nearness to
+one another of the most opposite emotions in our weak natures, of the
+depth of gloom into which the boldest and brightest servant of God may
+fall as soon as he loses hold of God's hand, never had a more striking
+instance to point them than that mighty prophet, sitting huddled
+together in utter despondency below the solitary retem bush, praying
+his foolish prayer for death.
+
+The meal to which an angel twice waked him was God's answer to his
+prayer, telling him both that his life was still needful and that God
+cared for him. Perhaps one of Elijah's reasons for taking to the desert
+was the thought that he might starve there, and so find death. At all
+events, God for the third time miraculously provides his food. The
+ravens, the widow of Zarephath, an angel, were his caterers; and,
+instead of taking away his life, God Himself sends the bread and water
+to preserve it. The revelation of a watchful, tender Providence often
+rebukes gloomy unbelief and shames us back to faith. We are not told
+whether the journey to Horeb was commanded, or, like the flight from
+Jezreel, was Elijah's own doing; but, in any case, he must have
+wandered in the desert, to have taken forty days to reach it.
+
+II. The second stage is the vision at Horeb (verses 9-14). The history
+of Israel has never touched Horeb since Moses left it, and it is not
+without significance that we are once more on that sacred ground. The
+parallel between Moses and Elijah is very real. These two names stand
+out above all others in the history of the theocracy, the one as its
+founder, the other as its restorer; both distinguished by special
+revelations, both endowed with exceptional force of character and power
+of the Spirit; the one the lawgiver, the other the head of the
+prophetic order; both having something peculiar in their departure, and
+both standing together, in witness of their supremacy in the past, and
+of their inferiority in the future, by Jesus on the Mount of
+Transfiguration. The associations of the place are marked by the use of
+the definite article, which is missed in the Authorised Version,--'the
+cave,' that same cleft in the rock where Moses had stood. Note, too,
+that the word rendered 'lodged' is literally 'passed the night,' and
+that therefore we may suppose that the vision came to Elijah in the
+darkness.
+
+That question, 'What doest thou here?' can scarcely be freed from a
+tone of rebuke; but, like Christ's to the travellers to Emmaus, and
+many another interrogation from God, it is also put in order to allow
+of the loaded heart's relieving itself by pouring out all its griefs.
+God's questions are the assurance of His listening ear and sympathising
+heart. This one is like a little key which opens a great sluice. Out
+gushes a full stream. His forty days' solitude have done little for
+him. A true answer would have been, 'I was afraid of Jezebel.' He takes
+credit for zeal, and seems to insinuate that he had been more zealous
+for God than God had been for Himself. He forgets the national
+acknowledgment of Jehovah at Carmel, and the hundred prophets protected
+by good Obadiah. Despondency has the knack of picking its facts. It is
+colour-blind, and can only see dark tints. He accuses his countrymen,
+as if he would stir up God to take vengeance.
+
+How different this weak and sinful wail over his solitude from the
+heroic mention of it on Carmel, when it only nerved his courage I
+(verse 22). The divine manifestation which followed is evidently meant
+to recall that granted to Moses on the same spot. 'The Lord passed by'
+is all but verbally quoted from Exodus xxxiv. 6, and the truth that had
+been proclaimed in words to Moses was enforced by symbol to Elijah. If
+the vision was in the night, as verse 9 suggests, it becomes still more
+impressive. The fierce wind that roared among the savage peaks, the
+shock that made the mountains reel, and the flashing flames that
+lighted up the wild landscape, were all phenomena of one kind, and at
+once expressed God's lordship over all destructive agencies of nature,
+and symbolised the more vehement and disturbing forms of energy, used
+by Him for the furtherance of His purposes in the field of history or
+of revelation. Elijah's ministry was of such a sort, and he had now to
+learn the limitations of his work, and the superiority of another type,
+represented by the 'sound of gentle stillness.'
+
+It is the same lesson which Moses learned there, when he heard that the
+Lord is 'a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and
+plenteous in mercy and truth.' It was exemplified in the gentle Elisha,
+the successor of Elijah. It reached far beyond the time then present,
+and was indeed a Messianic prophecy, declaring the inmost character of
+Him in whom 'the Lord is,' in an altogether special sense. Elijah as a
+prophet brought no new knowledge, and uttered no far-reaching
+predictions; but he received one of the deepest and clearest prophecies
+of the gentleness of God's highest Messenger, and on Horeb saw afar off
+what he saw fulfilled on the Mountain of Transfiguration. Nor is his
+vision exhausted by its Messianic reference. It contains an eternal
+truth for all God's servants. Storm, earthquake, and fire may be God's
+precursors, and needed sometimes to prepare His way; but gentleness is
+'the habitation of His throne,' and they serve Him best, and are
+nearest Him whom they serve, who are meek in heart and gentle among
+enemies, 'as a nurse cherisheth her children.' Love is the victor, and
+the sharpest weapons of the Christian are love and lowliness.
+
+The lesson was not at first grasped by Elijah, as his repetition of his
+complaint, word for word, with almost dogged obstinacy, shows. The best
+of us are slow to learn God's lessons, and a habit of faithless gloom
+is not soon overcome. It is much easier to get down into the pit than
+to struggle out of it.
+
+III. The commission for further service, which closes the scene, is a
+further rebuke to the prophet. He is bidden to retrace his way and to
+take refuge in the desert lying to the south and east of Damascus,
+where he would be safe from Jezebel, and still not far from the scene
+of his activity. The instructions given to anoint a king of Syria and
+one of Israel were not fulfilled by Elijah, but by his successor; and
+we have to suppose that further commands were given to him on that
+subject. The third injunction, to anoint his successor, was obeyed at
+once on his journey, though Ahelmeholah, on Gilboa, was dangerously
+near Jezreel. The designation of these future instruments of God's
+purpose was at once a sign to Elijah that his own task was drawing to a
+close (having reached its climax on Carmel), and that God had great
+designs beyond him and his service. The true conception of our work is
+that we sire only links in a chain, and that we can be done without.
+'God removes the workers and carries on the work.' To anoint our
+successor is often a bitter pill; but self-importance needs to be taken
+down, and it is blessed to lose ourselves in gazing into the future of
+God's work, when we are gone from the field.
+
+Further, the commissions met Elijah's despondency in another way; for
+they assured him of the divine judgments on the house of Ahab, and of
+the use of the Syrian king as a rod to chastise Israel. He had thought
+God too slow in avenging His dishonoured name, and had been taught the
+might of gentleness; but now he also learns the certainty of
+punishment, while the enigmatical promise that Elisha should 'slay'
+those who escaped the swords of Hazael and Jehu dimly points to the
+merciful energy of that prophet's word, his only sword, which shall
+slay but to revive, and wound to heal. 'I have hewed them by the ...
+words of my mouth.'
+
+Finally, the revelation of the seven thousand--a round number, which
+expresses the sacredness as well as the numerousness of the elect,
+hidden ones--rebukes the hasty assumption of his being left alone,
+'faithful among the faithless.' God has more servants than we know of.
+Let us beware of feeding either our self-righteousness or our
+narrowness or our faint-heartedness with the fancy that we have a
+monopoly of faithfulness, or are left alone to witness for God.
+
+
+
+
+PUTTING ON THE ARMOUR
+
+And the king of Israel answered and said. Tell him. Let not him that
+girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.'--1
+KINGS xx. 11.
+
+
+_For the Young_.
+
+
+Ahab, King of Israel, was but a poor creature, and, like most weak
+characters, he turned out a wicked one, because he found that there
+were more temptations to do wrong than inducements to do right. Like
+other weak people, too, he was torn asunder by the influence of
+stronger wills. On the one side he had a termagant of a wife, stirring
+him up to idolatry and all evil, and on the other side Elijah
+thundering and lightning at him; so the poor man was often reduced to
+perplexity. Once in his lifetime he did behave like a king, with some
+flash of dignity. My text comes from that incident. His next neighbour,
+and, consequently, his continual enemy, was the king of Damascus. He
+had made a raid across the border and was dictating terms so severe as
+to invite even Ahab to courageous opposition. His back was at the wall,
+and he mustered up courage to say 'No!' That provoked a bit of
+blustering bravado from the enemy, who sent back a message, 'The gods
+do also unto me and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for
+handfuls for all the people that follow me.' And then Ahab replied in
+the words of our text. They have a dash of contempt and sarcasm, all
+the more galling because of their unanswerable common-sense. 'The time
+to crow and clap your wings is _after_ you have fought. Samaria is not
+a heap of dust just yet. Threatened men live long.' The battle began,
+and the bully was beaten; and for once Ahab tasted the sweets of
+success.
+
+Now, I have nothing more to do with Ahab and the immediate application
+of his message, but I wish to apply it to my young friends, whom I have
+taken it upon me to ask now to listen to two or three homely words to
+them in this sermon.
+
+You are beginning the fight; some of us old people are getting very
+near the end of it. And I would fain, if I could, see successors coming
+to take the places which we shall soon have to vacate. So my message to
+you, dear friends, young men and young women, is this, 'Let not him
+that putteth on the harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.'
+
+I. Now, look for a moment at the general view of life that is implied
+in this saying thus understood.
+
+There is nothing that the bulk of people are more unwilling to do than
+steadily to think about what life as a whole, and in its deepest
+aspects, is. And that disinclination is strong, as I suppose, in the
+average young man or young woman. That comes, plainly enough, from the
+very blessings of your stage of life. Unworn health, a blessed
+inexperience of failures and limitations, the sense of undeveloped
+power within you, the natural buoyancy of early days, all tend to make
+you rather live by impulse than by reflection. And I should be the last
+man in the world to try to damp the noble, buoyant, beautiful
+enthusiasms with which Nature has provided that we should all begin our
+course. The world will do that soon enough; and there is no sadder
+sight than that of a bitter old man, who has outlived, and smiles
+sardonically at, his youthful dreams. But I do wish to press upon you
+all this question, Have you ever tried to think to yourself, 'Now what,
+after all, is this life that is budding within me and dawning before
+me--what is it, in its deepest reality, and what am I to do with it?'
+
+There are some of us to whom, so far as we have thought at all, life
+presents itself mainly as a shop, a place where we are to 'buy and
+sell, and get gain,' and use our evenings, after the day's work is
+over, for such recreation as suits us. And there are young men among my
+hearers who, with the flush of their physical manhood upon them, and
+perhaps away from the restraints of home, and living in gloomy town
+lodgings, with no one to look after them, are beginning to think that
+life after all is a kind of pigs' trough, with plenty of foul wash in
+it for whoso chooses to suck it up--a garden of not altogether pure
+delights, a place where a man may gratify the 'lusts of the flesh.'
+
+But, dear brethren, whilst there are many other noble metaphors under
+which we can set forth the essential character of this mysterious,
+tremendous life of ours, I do not know that there is one that ought to
+appeal more to the slumbering heroism which lies in every human soul,
+and to the enthusiasms which, unless you in your youth cherish, you
+will in your manhood be beggared indeed, than that which this picture
+of my text suggests. After all, life is meant to be one long conflict.
+We are like the fellahin that one sometimes sees in Eastern lands, who
+cannot go out to plough in their fields, or reap their harvests,
+without a gun slung on their backs; for the condition under which we
+work in this world is that everything worth doing has to be done at the
+cost of opposition and antagonism, and that no noble service or
+building is possible without brave, continuous conflict. Even upon the
+lower levels of life that is so. No man learns a science or a trade
+without having to fight for it. But high above these lower levels,
+there is the one on which we all are called to walk, the high level of
+duty, and no man does what his conscience tells him, or refrains from
+that which his conscience sternly forbids, without having to fight for
+it. We are in the lists and compelled to draw the sword. And if we do
+not realise this, that all nobility all greatness, all wisdom, all
+success, even of the lowest and most vulpine kind, are won by conflict,
+we shall never do anything in the world worth doing. You are a soldier,
+whether you will or no, and life is a fight, whether you recognise the
+fact or not.
+
+So, standing at the beginning, do not fancy that there is opening
+before you a scene of enjoyment, or that you are stepping into a world
+in which you can take your ease, and come out successfully at the other
+end. It is not so; and you will find that out before long. Better that
+you should settle it in your minds at first. When you were born you
+were enrolled on the roll-call of the regiment; and now you have to do
+a man's part in the battle.
+
+II. Note the boastful temper which is sure to be beaten.
+
+No doubt there is something inspiring in the spectacle of the young
+warrior standing there, chafing at the lists, eagerly pulling on his
+gauntlets, fitting on his helmet, and longing to be in the thick of the
+fight. No doubt, as I have already said, there is something in your
+early days which makes such buoyant hopes and anticipations of success
+natural, and which gives you, as a great gift, that expectation of
+victory. I do not wish to shatter any of your enthusiasms or ideals,
+but I do wish to suggest a consideration or two that may calm and sober
+them.
+
+So I ask, have you ever estimated, are you now estimating rightly, what
+it is that you have to fight for? To make yourselves pure, wise,
+strong, self-governing, Christlike men, such as God would have you to
+be. That is not a small thing for a man to set himself to do. You may
+go into the struggle for lower purposes, for bread and cheese, or
+wealth or fame, or love, or the like, with a comparatively light heart;
+but if there once has dawned upon a young soul the whole majestic sweep
+of possibilities in its opening life, then the battle assumes an aspect
+of solemnity and greatness that silences all boasting. Have you
+considered what it is that you have to fight for?
+
+Have you considered the forces that are arrayed against you? 'What act
+is all its thought had been?' Hand and brain are never paired. There is
+always a gap between the conception and its realisation. The painter
+stands before his canvas, and, while others may see beauty in it, he
+only sees what a small fragment of the radiant vision that floated
+before his eye his hand has been able to preserve. The author looks on
+his book and thinks what a poor, wretched transcript of the thoughts
+that inspired his pen it is. There is ever this same disproportion
+between the conception and accomplishment. Therefore, all we old people
+feel, more or less, that our lives have been failures. We set out as
+you do, thinking that we were going to build a tower whose top should
+reach to heaven, and we are contented if, at the last, we have
+scrambled together some little wooden shanty in which we can live. We
+thought as you do; you will come to think as we do. So you had better
+begin now, and not go into the fight boasting, or you will come out of
+it conscious of being beaten.
+
+Have you realised how different it is to dream things and to do them?
+In our dreams we are, as it were, working _in vacuo_. When we come to
+acts, the atmosphere offers resistance. It is easy to imagine ourselves
+victorious in circumstances where things are all going rightly and are
+bending according to our own desires, but when we come to the grim
+world, where there are things that resist and people are not plastic,
+it is a very different matter. You do not yet understand, as you will
+some day, the fatal limitations of power that hem us all round and the
+obstinate way that circumstances have of not falling in with our
+wishes. And you have not yet learned how completely and constantly
+failure accompanies success, like its shadow. The old Egyptians had no
+need to put a skeleton at their tables, nor the Romans to set a mocker
+behind the hero as he rode in triumph up to the Capitol. The world
+provides the skeleton at the banquet, and circumstances supply the
+mocker to add a dash of failure to all our triumphs.
+
+Have you ever realised how certainly, into the brightest and most
+buoyant and successful lives, there will come crushing sorrows, blows
+as from an unseen hand in the dark, that fell a man? O friend! when one
+thinks of the miseries and the misfortunes, the sorrows and the losses,
+the broken and bleeding hearts that began life buoyant, elastic,
+hopeful, perhaps boasting, like you, there ought to be a sobering tint
+cast over our brightest visions.
+
+I suppose that our colleges are full of students who are going, to far
+outstrip their professors, that every life-school has a dozen lads who
+have just begun to handle brush and easel, and are going to put
+Raffaelle in the shade. I suppose that every lawyer's office has a
+budding Lord Chancellor or two in it. And I suppose that that sharp
+criticism of us fumblers in the field, and half-expressed thought, 'How
+much better I could do it!' belong to youth by virtue of its youth. It
+is a crude form of undeveloped power, but it wants a great deal of
+sobering down, and I am trying now to let out a little of the blood,
+and to bring you to a clear conception of the very limited success
+which is likely to attend you. All we old people, whose deficiencies
+and limitations you see so clearly, had the same dreams, impossible as
+it may appear to you, fifty years ago. We were going to be the men, and
+wisdom was going to die with us, and you see what we have made of it.
+You will not do much better.
+
+Have you ever taken stock honestly of your own resources? 'What king,
+going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and
+counteth the cost, whether with his ten thousand he can meet him that
+cometh against him with twenty thousand?' Boast if you like, but
+calculate first, and boast after that, if you can.
+
+Your worst enemy is yourself. When you are counting your resources and
+saying, 'I have this, that, and the other thing,' do not forget to say,
+'I have a part of me, that takes all the rest of me all its time to
+keep it down and prevent it from becoming master.' You have traitors in
+the fortress who are in communication with the enemy outside, and may
+go over to him openly in the very crisis of the fight. You have to take
+that fact into account, and it ought to suppress boasting whilst you
+are putting on the harness.
+
+You are not old enough to remember, as some of us do, the delirious
+enthusiasm with which, in the last Franco-German war, the Emperor and
+the troops left Paris, and how, as the train steamed out of the
+station, shouts were raised, 'A. Berlin!' Ay! and they never got
+farther than Sedan, and there an Emperor and an army were captured. Go
+into the fight bragging, and you will come out of it beaten.
+
+III. Note the confidence which is not boasting.
+
+I can fancy some of you saying, 'These gloomy views of yours will lead
+to nothing but absolute despair. You have been telling us that success
+is impossible; that we are bound to fight, and are sure to be beaten.
+What are we to do? Throw up the sponge, and say, "Very well! then I may
+as well have my fling, and give up all attempts to be any better than
+my passions and my senses would lead me to be."' And if there is
+nothing more to be said about the fight than has been already said,
+that _is_ the conclusion. 'Let us eat and drink,' not only 'for
+to-morrow we die,' but 'for to-day we are sure to be beaten.' But I
+have only been speaking about this self-distrust as preliminary to what
+is the main thing that I desire to urge upon you now, and it is this:
+You do not need to be beaten. There is no room for boasting, but there
+is room for absolute confidence. You, young men and women, standing at
+the entrance of the amphitheatre where the gladiators fight, may dash
+into the arena with the most perfect confidence that you will come out
+with your shield preserved and your sword unbroken.
+
+There is one way of doing it. 'Be of good cheer! I have overcome the
+world.' That was not the boast of a man putting on the harness, but the
+calm utterance of the conquering Christ when He was putting it off. He
+has conquered that you may conquer. Remember how the Apostle, who has
+preserved for us that note of triumph at the end of Christ's life, has,
+like some musician with a favourite phrase, modulated and varied it in
+his letter written long after, when he says, 'This is the victory that
+overcometh the world, even our faith.' My dear young friends, distrust
+yourselves utterly, and trust Jesus Christ absolutely, and give
+yourselves to Him, to be His servants and soldiers till your lives'
+end. Then you will not be beaten, for it is written of those who move
+in the light, wearing the victor's palm: 'These are they who overcame
+by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of His testimony.' That blood
+secures our victory in a threefold fashion. By that great death of
+Jesus Christ all our past sins may be forgiven, and they no longer have
+power to tyrannise over us. In His sacrifice for us there are motives
+given to us for noble, grateful, Godlike living, stronger than all the
+temptations that can arise from our own hearts, or from the evils
+around us. And if we put our humble trust in Him, then that faith opens
+the door for the entrance into our hearts, in simple reality, of a
+share in His conquering life which will make us victorious over the
+world, the flesh, and the devil.
+
+'This is the victory that overcometh the world,' and the youngest,
+feeblest Christian who lays his or her hand in Christ's strong hand,
+may look out upon all the embattled antagonisms that front them, and
+say, 'He will cover my head in the day of battle, and teach my hands to
+war and my fingers to fight.'
+
+Dear young friends, people sometimes preach to you that you should be
+Christians, because life is uncertain and death is drawing near, and
+after death the judgment. I preach that too; but the gospel that I seek
+to press upon you now is not merely a thing to die by, but it is _the_
+thing to live by; and it is the only power by which we shall be sure of
+overcoming the armies of the aliens. This confidence in Christ will
+take away from you no shred of your natural, youthful, buoyant
+elasticity, but it will save you from much transgression and from
+bitter regrets.
+
+One last word. There is possible a triumph which is not boasting, for
+him who puts _off_ the harness. The war-worn soldier has little heart
+for boasting, but he may be able to say, 'I have not been beaten.' The
+best of us, when we come to the end, will have to recognise in
+retrospect failures, deficiencies, palterings with evil, yieldings to
+temptation, sins of many sorts, that will put all boasting out of our
+thoughts. But, whilst that is so, there is sometimes granted to the
+man, who has been faithful in his adherence to Jesus Christ, a gleam of
+sunshine at eventime, which foretells Heaven's welcome and 'Well
+done!', before it is uttered. He was no self-righteous braggart, but a
+very rigid judge of himself, who, close by the headsman's block that
+ended his life, said: 'I have fought a good fight; I have finished my
+course; I have kept the faith.' 'Put on the whole armour of God,' and
+when the time comes to put it off, you will have a peaceful assurance
+as far removed from despair as it is from boasting. Distrust
+yourselves; do not underestimate your enemies; understand that life is
+warfare; trust utterly to Jesus Christ, and He will see to it that you
+are not conquered, will give you the calm confidence of which we have
+been speaking here, and a share hereafter in the throne which He
+promises to him that overcometh. If you will trust yourselves to Him,
+and take service in His army, you cannot be too certain of victory. If
+you fling yourself into the battle in your own strength, with however
+high a hope, and fight without the Captain for your ally, you cannot
+escape defeat.
+
+
+
+
+ROYAL MURDERERS
+
+
+
+'And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth the Jezreelite had
+a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, hard by the palace of Ahab king of
+Samaria. 2. And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard,
+that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my
+house: and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it
+seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money. 3. And
+Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the
+inheritance of my fathers unto thee. 4. And Ahab came into his house
+heavy and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite
+had spoken to him: for he had said, I will not give thee the
+inheritance of my fathers. And he laid him down upon his bed, and
+turned away his face, and would eat no bread. 5. But Jezebel his wife
+came to him, and said unto him. Why is thy spirit so sad, that thou
+eatest no bread? 6. And he said unto her, Because I spake unto Naboth
+the Jezreelite, and said unto him, Give me thy vineyard for money: or
+else, if it please thee, I will give thee another vineyard for it: and
+he answered, I will not give thee my vineyard. 7. And Jezebel his wife
+said unto him, Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and
+eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the vineyard
+of Naboth the Jezreelite. 8. So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and
+sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to
+the nobles that were in his city, dwelling with Naboth. 9. And she
+wrote in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high
+among the people: 10. And set two men, sons of Belial, before him, to
+bear witness against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God and the
+king. And then carry him out, and stone him, that he may die. 11. And
+the men of his city, even the elders and the nobles who were the
+inhabitants in his city, did as Jezebel had sent unto them, and as it
+was written in the letters which she had sent unto them. 12. They
+proclaimed a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people. 13. And
+there came in two men, children of Belial, and sat before him: and the
+men of Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth, in the
+presence of the people, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and the king.
+Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him with
+stones, that he died. 14. Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, Naboth is
+stoned, and is dead. 15. And it came to pass, when Jezebel heard that
+Naboth was stoned, and was dead, that Jezebel said to Ahab, Arise, take
+possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused
+to give thee for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead. 16. And it
+came to pass, when Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, that Ahab rose up
+to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession
+of it.'-1 KINGS xxi. 1-16.
+
+
+There are three types of character in this story, all bad, but in
+different ways. Ahab is wicked and weak; Jezebel, wicked and strong;
+the elders of Jezreel, wicked and subservient. Amongst them they commit
+a great crime, which was the last drop in the full cup of the king's
+sins, and brought down God's judgment on him and his house.
+
+I. We have to look at the weakly wicked Ahab. His wish for Naboth's
+vineyard was a mere selfish whim. He was willing to give more for it
+than it was worth. It suited his convenience for a kitchen-garden. In
+the true spirit of an Eastern despot, he expected everything to yield
+to his caprice, and did not think that a subject had any rights. What
+business has a poor man with sentiment? Naboth is to go, and a handful
+of silver will set all right. Samuel's warning of what a king would be
+and do was fulfilled. This highhanded interference with private rights
+was what Israel's revolt had led to. The sturdy Naboth was influenced
+not only by love for the bit of land which his fathers had cultivated
+for more years than Ahab had reigned days, but by obedience to the law
+of God; and he was not afraid to show himself a Jehovah worshipper, by
+his solemn appeal to 'the Lord,' as well as by the fact of his refusal.
+The brusque, flat refusal shows that some independence was left in the
+nation.
+
+The weak rage and childish sulking of Ahab are very characteristic of a
+feeble and selfish nature, accustomed to be humoured and not thwarted.
+These fits of temper seem to have been common with him; for he was in
+one at the end of the preceding chapter, as he is now. The 'bed' on
+which he flung himself is probably the couch for reclining on at table,
+and, if so, the picture of his passion is still more vivid. Instead of
+partaking of the meal, he turns his face to the wall, and refuses food.
+'No meat will down with him for want of a salad, because wanting
+Naboth's vineyard for a garden of herbs.' As he lies there, like a
+spoiled child, all because he could not get his own way, he may serve
+for an example of the misery of unbridled selfishness and unregulated
+desires. An acre or two of land was a small matter to get into such a
+state about, and there are few things that are worth a wise or a strong
+man's being so troubled. Hezekiah might 'turn his face to the wall' in
+the extremity of sickness and earnestness of prayer; but Ahab in doing
+it is only a poor, feeble creature who has weakly set his heart on what
+is not his, and weakly whimpers because he cannot have it.
+
+To be thus at the mercy of our own ravenous desires, and so utterly
+miserable when they are thwarted, is unworthy of manhood, and is sure
+to bring many a bitter moment; for there are more disappointments than
+gratifications in store for such a one. We may learn from Ahab, too,
+the certainty that weakness will darken into wickedness. Such a mood as
+his always brings some Jezebel or other to suggest evil ways of
+succeeding. In this wicked world there are more temptations to sin than
+helps to virtue, and the weak man will soon fall into some of the
+abundant traps laid for him. Unless we have learned to say 'No' with
+much emphasis, because we are 'strong in the Lord,' we shall fall.
+'This did not I because of the fear of the Lord.' To be weak is to be
+miserable, and any sin may come from it.
+
+II. Jezebel is a type of a different sort of wickedness. She is wicked
+and strong. Notice how she takes the upper hand at once, in her abrupt
+question, not without a spice of scorn; and note how Ahab answers,
+bemoaning himself, putting in the forefront his fair proposal, and
+making Naboth's refusal ruder than it really had been, by suppressing
+its reason. Then out flashes the imperious will of this masterful
+princess, who had come from a land where royalty was all-powerful, and
+who had no restraints of conscience. She darts a half-contemptuous
+question at Ahab, to stir him to action; for nothing moves a weak man
+so much as the fear of being thought weak. 'Dost thou govern?' implies,
+'If thou dost, thou mayest trample on a subject.' It should mean, 'If
+thou dost, thou must jealously guard the subject's rights.' What a
+proud consciousness of her power speaks in that 'I will give thee the
+vineyard'! It is like Lady Macbeth's 'Give me the dagger!' No more is
+said. She can keep her own counsel, and Ahab suspects that some
+violence is to be used, which he had better not know. So, again, his
+weakness leads him astray. He does not wish to hear what he is willing
+should be done, if only he has not to do it. So feeble men hoodwink
+conscience by conniving at evils which they dare not perpetrate, and
+then enjoying their fruits, and saying, 'Thou canst not say I did it.'
+
+Jezebel had Ahab's signet, the badge of authority, which she probably
+got from him for her unspoken purpose. Her letter to the elders of
+Jezreel speaks out, with cynical disregard of decency, the whole ugly
+conspiracy. It is direct, horribly plain, and imperative. There is a
+perfect nest of sins hissing and coiled together in it. Hypocrisy
+calling religion in to attest a lie, subornation of evidence, contempt
+for the poor tools who are to perjure themselves, consciousness that
+such work will only be done by worthless men, cool lying, ferocity, and
+murder,--these are a pretty company to crowd into half a dozen lines.
+Most detestable of all is the plain speaking which shows her hardened
+audacity and conscious defiance of all right. To name sin by its true
+name, and then to do it without a quiver, is a depth of evil reached by
+few men, and perhaps fewer women.
+
+The plot gives a colour of legality, which is probably often unobserved
+by readers. Naboth was to be accused of treason: 'renouncing God and
+the king'; and that was, according to the law of Moses, a charge which,
+if proved, merited capital punishment. But it is Satan accusing sin for
+Jezebel, the Baal worshipper, who had done her best to root out the
+name of Jehovah, to accuse Naboth of departing from God. Much
+highhanded oppression must have gone before such outspoken contempt of
+justice; and, if Ahab represents the fatal connection of weakness and
+wickedness, Jezebel is an instance of the fatal audacity with which a
+strong character may come, by long indulgence in self-willed
+gratification of its own desires, to trample down all obstacles and go
+crashing through all laws, human and divine. The climax of sin is to
+see a deed to be sinful, and to do it all the same. Such a pre-eminence
+in evil is not reached at a bound, but it can be reached; and every
+indulgence in passion, and every gratifying of desire against which
+conscience protests, is a step toward it. Therefore, if we shrink from
+such a goal, let us turn away from the paths that lead to it. 'No
+mortal man is supremely foul all at once.' Therefore resist the
+beginnings of evil. Elijah was strong by natural temperament, and so
+was Jezebel. But the strength of the prophet was hallowed by obedience,
+and, like some great river, poured blessings where it flowed. Jezebel's
+strength was lawless, and foamed itself away in fury, like some
+devastating torrent that spreads ruin whithersoever it bursts out. 'Be
+strong' is good advice, but it needs the supplement, 'Let all your
+deeds be done in charity,' and the foundation,' Be strong in the Lord,
+and in the power of His might.'
+
+III. The last set of actors in this pitiful tragedy are the
+subserviently wicked elders. The narrative sets their slavish
+compliance in a strong light. It puts emphasis on the tie between them
+and Naboth, in that they 'dwelt in his city,' and so should have had
+neighbourly feeling. It lays stress on their cowardly motive and their
+complete execution of orders, both by reiterating that they acted 'as
+Jezebel had sent' and 'as it was written,' and by taking the letter
+clause by clause, in the narrative of the shameful parody of justice
+which they acted. It suggests both their eagerness to do her pleasure,
+and her impatient waiting, in her palace, by the message sent in hot
+haste as soon as the brave peasant proprietor was dead. 'It is ill
+sitting at Rome and striving with the Pope,' as the proverb has it. No
+doubt these cowards were afraid for their own necks, and were too near
+the royal tigress to venture disobedience. But their swift,
+unremonstrating, and complete obedience indicates the depth of
+degradation and corruption to which they and the nation had sunk, and
+the terror exercised by their upstart king and his Sidonian wife.
+
+Cowardice is always contemptible, and wickedness is always odious; but
+when the two come together, and a man has no other reason for his sin
+than 'I was afraid,' each makes the other blacker. Israel had cast off
+the fear of the Lord, which would have preserved it from the ignoble
+terror of men, and the consequence was that it trembled before an
+angry, unscrupulous woman. It had revolted from Rehoboam and his
+foolish bluster about whips and scorpions, and the consequence was a
+worse slavery. If we fear God, we need have no other fear. The sun puts
+out a fire. If we rebel against Him, we do not become free, but fall
+under a heavy yoke. It is never prudent to do wrong. The worst
+consequences of resistance to powerful evil are easier to bear than
+those of compliance, though it may seem the safer. Better be lying dead
+beneath a heap of stones, like the sturdy Naboth, who could say 'No' to
+a king, than be one of his stoners, who killed their innocent neighbour
+to pleasure Jezebel!
+
+Her indecent triumph at the success of the plot, and her utter
+callousness, are expressed in her words to Ahab, in which the main
+point is the taking possession of the vineyard. The death of its owner
+is told with exultation, as being nothing but the sweeping aside of an
+obstacle. Ahab asks no questions as to how this opportune clearing away
+of hindrance came about. He knew, no doubt, well enough that there had
+been foul play; but that does not matter to him, and such a trifle as
+murder does not slacken his glad haste to get his new toy. There was
+other red on the vines than their clustering grapes, as he soon found
+out, when Elijah's grim figure, like an embodied conscience, met him
+there. Whoever reaches out to grasp a fancied good by breaking God's
+law, may get his good, but he will get more than he expected along with
+it,--even an accusing voice that prophesies evil. Elijah strides among
+the leafy vines in the field bought by crime. Ahab meant to make it a
+garden of pot-herbs. 'Surely the bitter wormwood of divine revenge grew
+abundantly therein.'
+
+
+
+
+AHAB AND ELIJAH
+
+'And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy!'--1 KINGS
+xxi. 20.
+
+
+The keynote of Elijah's character is force-the force of righteousness.
+The New Testament, you remember, speaks of the 'power of Elias.' The
+outward appearance of the man corresponds to his function and his
+character. Gaunt and sinewy, dwelling in the desert, feeding on locusts
+and wild honey, with a girdle of camel's skin about his loins, he
+bursts into the history, amongst all that corrupt state of society,
+with the force of a hammer that God's hand wields. The whole of his
+career is marked by this one thing,--the strength of a righteous man.
+And then, on the other hand, this Ahab;--the keynote of _his_ character
+is the weakness of wickedness, and the wickedness of weakness. Think of
+him. Weakly longing--as idle and weak minds in lofty places always
+do--after something that belongs to somebody else; with all his
+gardens, coveting the one little herb-plot of the poor Naboth; weak and
+worse than womanly, turning his face to the wall and weeping when he
+cannot get it; weakly desiring to have it, and yet not knowing how to
+set about accomplishing his wish; and then--as is always the case, for
+there are always tempters everywhere for weak people--that beautiful
+fiend by his side, like the other queen in our great drama, ready to
+screw the feeble man that she is wedded to, to the sticking-place, and
+to dare anything to grasp that on which the heart was set. And so the
+deed is done: Naboth safe stoned out of the way; and Ahab goes down to
+take possession! The lesson of that is, my friend,--Weak dallying with
+forbidden desires is sure to end in wicked clutching at them. Young
+men, take care! You stand upon the beetling edge of a great precipice,
+when you look over, from your fancied security, at a wrong thing; and
+to strain too far, and to look too fixedly, leads to a perilous danger
+of toppling over and being lost! If you know that a thing cannot be won
+without transgression, do not tamper with hankerings for it. Keep away
+from the edge, and '_shut_ your eyes from beholding vanity.'
+
+But my business now is rather with the consequences of this apparently
+successful sin, than with what went before it. The king gets the crime
+done, shuffles it off himself on to the shoulders of his ready tools in
+the little village, goes down to get his toy, and gets it--but he gets
+Elijah along with it, which was more than he reckoned on. When, all
+full of impatience and hot haste to solace himself with his new
+possession, he rushes down to seize the vineyard, he finds there,
+standing at the gate, waiting for him--black-browed, motionless, grim,
+an incarnate conscience--the prophet whom he had not seen for years,
+the prophet that he had last seen on Carmel, bearding alone the
+servants of Baal, and executing on them the solemn judgment of death;
+and there leaps at once to his lip, 'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?'
+
+I. I find here, in the first place, this broad principle: Pleasure won
+by sin is peace lost.
+
+It does not need that there should be a rebuking prophet standing by to
+work out that law. God commits the execution of it to the natural
+operations of our own consciences and our own spirits. Here is the fact
+in men's natures on which it partly depends: when sin is yet tempting
+us, it is loved; when sin in done, it is loathed. Action and reaction,
+as the mechanicians tell us, are equal and contrary. The more violent
+the blow with which we strike upon the forbidden pleasure, the further
+back the rebound after the stroke. When sin tempts--when there hangs
+glittering before a man the golden fruit which he knows that he ought
+not to touch--then, amidst the noise of passion or the sophistry of
+desire, conscience is silenced for a little while. No man sins without
+knowing that it is wrong, without knowing that in the long run it is a
+mistake; but at the instant, in the delirium of yielding, as in moments
+of high physical excitement, he is blind and deaf, deaf to the voice of
+reason, blind to the sight of consequences. Conscience and consequence
+are alike lost sight of. Like a mad bull, the man that is tempted
+lowers his head and shuts his eyes, and rushes right on. The moment
+that the sin is done, that moment the passion or desire which tempted
+to it is satiated, and ceases to exist for the time. It is gone as a
+motive. Like some savage beast, being fed full, it lies down to sleep.
+There is a vacuum left in the heart, the noise is stilled, and
+then--and then--conscience begins to speak. Or, to take another image,
+the passion, the desires, the impulses that lead us to do wrong
+things--they are like a crew that mutiny, and take for a moment the
+wheel from the steersman and the command from the captain, but then,
+having driven the ship on the rocks, the mutineers get intoxicated, and
+lie down and sleep. Passion fulfils itself, and expires. The desire is
+satisfied, and it turns into a loathing. The tempter draws us to him,
+and then unveils the horrid face that lies beneath the mask. When the
+deed is done and cannot be undone, then comes satiety; then comes the
+reaction of the fierce excitement, the hot blood begins to flow more
+slowly; then rises up in the heart conscience; then rises up in majesty
+in the soul reason; then flashes and flares before the eye the vivid
+picture of the consequences. His 'enemy' has found the sinner. He has
+got the vineyard--ay, but Elijah is there, and his dark and stern
+presence sucks all the brightness and the sunniness out of the
+landscape; and Naboth's blood stains the leaves of Naboth's garden!
+There is no sin which is not the purchase of pleasure at the price of
+peace.
+
+Now, you will say that all that is true in regard to the grosser forms
+of transgression, but that it is not true in regard to the less vulgar
+and sensual kinds of crime. Of course it is most markedly observable
+with regard to the coarsest kind of sins; but it is as true, though
+perhaps not in the same degree--not in the same prominent, manifest way
+at any rate--in regard to every sin that a man does. There is never an
+evil thing which--knowing it to be evil--we commit, which does not rise
+up to testify against us. As surely as (in the words of our great
+philosopher poet) 'lust dwells hard by hate,' and as surely as
+to-night's debauch is followed by to-morrow's headache, so surely--each
+after its kind, and each in its own region--every sin lodges in the
+human heart the seed of a quick-springing punishment, yea, is its own
+punishment. When we come to grasp the sweet thing that we have been
+tempted to seize, there is a serpent that starts up amongst all the
+flowers. When the evil act is done--opposite of the prophet's roll--it
+is sweet in the lips, but oh! it is bitter afterwards. 'At the last it
+biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder!'
+
+Then, you may say again, 'All that is very much exaggerated. That is
+not the sort of feeling which men that go on persistently doing wrong
+things, cherish. They live quietly and contentedly enough. "There are
+no bands in their death, and their strength is firm."' All that would
+be true if men's consciences kept sensitive in the midst of men's sins,
+but they do not; and so it cannot be that every transgression has thus
+its quick result in loss of peace. I grant you at once that it is quite
+possible for men to sin away the delicacy and susceptibility of their
+consciences. I dare say there are people here now who, after they have
+done a wrong thing, go on very quietly, with no knowledge of those
+agonies that I have been speaking about, with scarcely ever a prick of
+conscience for their sin. But what then? I did not say that all sin
+purchased pleasure by inflictions of agony; but I do say, that all sin
+purchases pleasure by loss of peace. The silence of a seared conscience
+is not peace. For peace you want something more than that a conscience
+shall be dumb. For peace you want something more than that you shall be
+able to live without the daily sense and sting of sin. You want not
+only the negative absence of pain, but the positive presence of a
+tranquillising guest in your heart--that conscience of yours testifying
+with you, blessing you in its witness, and shedding abroad rest and
+comfort. It is easy to kill a conscience--after a fashion at least. It
+is easy to stifle it. It is easy to come to that depth of wrongdoing
+that one gets used to it, and does it without caring. But oh! that cold
+vacuum, that dead absence in such a spirit of all healthy
+self-communing, that painful suspicion, 'If I look into myself, and be
+quiet for a little while, and take stock of my own character, and see
+what I am, the balance will be on the wrong side,'--that is _not_
+peace. As the old historian says about the Roman armies that marched
+through a country, burning and destroying every living thing, 'They
+make a solitude, and they call it peace.' And so men do with their
+consciences. They stifle them, sear them, forcibly silence them,
+somehow or other; and then, when there is a dead stillness in the
+heart, broken by no voice of either approbation or blame, but doleful
+like the unnatural quiet of a deserted city, then they call that peace,
+and the man's uncontrolled passions and unbridled desires dwell
+solitary in the fortress of his own spirit! You _may_ almost attain to
+that. Do you think it is a goal to be set before you as an ideal of
+human nature? The loss of peace is certain--the presence of agony is
+most likely--from every act of sin.
+
+And so, it is not only a _crime_ that men commit when they do wrong,
+but it is a _blunder_. Sin is not only guilt, but it is a mistake. 'The
+game is not worth the candle,' according to the French proverb. The
+thing that you buy is not worth the price you pay for it. Sin is like a
+great forest-tree that we may sometimes see standing up green in its
+leafy beauty, and spreading a broad shadow over half a field; but when
+we get round on the other side, there is a great dark hollow in the
+very heart of it, and corruption is at work there. It is like the
+poison-tree in travellers' stories, tempting weary men to rest beneath
+its thick foliage, and insinuating death into the limbs that relax in
+the fatal coolness of its shade. It is like the apples of Sodom, fair
+to look upon, but turning to acrid ashes on the unwary lips. It is like
+the magician's rod that we read about in old books. There it lies; and
+if, tempted by its glitter, or fascinated by the power that it proffers
+you, you take it in your hand, the thing starts into a serpent with
+erected crest and sparkling eye, and plunges its quick barb into the
+hand that holds it, and sends poison through all the veins. Do not
+touch it, my brother! Every sin buys pleasure at the price of peace.
+Elijah is always waiting at the gate of the ill-gotten possession.
+
+II. In the second place, Sin is blind to its true friends and its real
+foes.
+
+'Hast thou found me, _O mine enemy?'_ Elijah was the best friend that
+Ahab had in his kingdom. And that Jezebel there, the wife of his bosom,
+whom he loved and thanked for this new toy, she was the worst foe that
+hell could have sent him. Ay, and so it is always. The faithful
+rebuker, the merciful inflicter of pain, is the truest friend of the
+wrongdoer. The worst enemy of the sinful heart is the voice that either
+tempts it into sin, or lulls it into self-complacency. And this is one
+of the most certain workings of evil desires in our spirits, that they
+pervert for us all the relations of things, that they make us blind to
+all the moral truths of God's universe. Sin is blind as to itself,
+blind as to its own consequences, blind as to who are its friends and
+who are its foes, blind as to earth, blind as to another world, blind
+as to God. The man who walks in the 'vain show' of transgression, whose
+heart is set upon evil,--he fancies that ashes are bread, and stones
+gold (as in the old fairy story); and, on the other hand, he thinks
+that the true sweet is the bitter, and turns away from God's angels and
+God's prophets, with, 'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' That is the
+reason, my friend, of not a little of the infidelity that haunts this
+world--that sin, perverted and blinded, stumbles about in its darkness,
+and mistakes the face of the friend for the face of the foe. God sends
+you in mercy a conscience to prick and sting you that you may be kept
+right; and you think that _it_ is your enemy. God sends in His mercy
+the discipline of life, pains and sorrows, to draw us away from the
+wrong, to make us believe that the right in this world and the next is
+life, and that holiness is happiness for evermore. And then, when,
+having done wrong, God's merciful messenger of a sharp sorrow finds us
+out, we say, 'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' and begin to wonder
+about the mysteries of Providence, and how it comes that there is evil
+in the creation of a good God. Why, physical evil is the best friend of
+the man that is subject to moral evil. Sorrow is the truest blessing to
+a sinner. The best thing that can befall any of us is that God shall
+not let us alone in any wrong course, without making us feel His rod,
+without hedging up our way with thorns, and sending us by His grace
+into a better one. There is no mystery in sorrow. There is a mystery in
+sin; but sorrow following on the back of sin is the true friend, and
+not the enemy, of the wrong-doing spirit.
+
+And then, again, God sends us a gospel full of dark words about evil.
+It deals with that fact of sin, as no other system ever did. There is
+no book like the Bible for these two things,--for the lofty notion that
+it has about what man may be and ought to be; and for the low notion
+that it has of what man is. It does not degrade human nature, because
+it tells us the truth about human nature as it is. Its darkest and
+bitterest sayings about transgression, they are veiled promises, my
+brother. It does not make the consequences of sin which it writes down.
+You and I make them for ourselves, and it tells us of them. Did the
+lighthouse make the rock that it stands on? Is it to be blamed for the
+shipwreck? If a man _will_ go full tilt against the thing that he knows
+will ruin him, what is the right name for him who hedges it up with a
+prickly fence of thorns, and puts a great light above it, and writes
+below, 'If thou comest here thou diest'? Is that the work of an enemy?
+And yet that is why people talk about the gloomy views of the gospel,
+about the narrow spirit of Christianity, about the harsh things that
+are here! The Bible did not make hell. The Bible did not make sin the
+parent of sorrow. The Bible did not make it certain that 'every
+transgression and disobedience' should reap its 'just recompense of
+reward.' We are the causes of their coming upon ourselves; and the
+Bible but proclaims the end to which the paths of sin must lead, and
+beseechingly calls to us all, 'Turn ye, turn ye! why will ye die?' And
+yet when it comes to you, how many of you turn away from it, and say,
+'It is mine enemy'! How many shrink from its merciful knife, that cuts
+into all the wounds of the festering spirit! How many of you feel as if
+'the truth that is in Jesus' was a hard and bitter truth; when all the
+while its very heart's blood is love, and the very secret of its
+message is the tenderest compassion, the most yearning sympathy, for
+every soul amongst us!
+
+Ay, and more than that:--sin makes us fancy that God Himself is our
+enemy; and sin makes that thought of God that ought to be most blessed
+and most sweet to us, the terror of our souls. You have the power, my
+friend, by your own wrongdoing, of perverting the whole universe, and,
+worst of all, of distorting the image of the merciful Father, of the
+loving God. God loves. God is the Father. God watches over us. God will
+not let us alone when we transgress, God in His love has appointed that
+sin shall breed sorrow. But _we_--we do wrong; and then, for God's
+Providence, and God's Gospel, and God's Son, and God Himself, there
+rises up in our hearts a hostile feeling, and we think that He is
+turned to be our enemy, and fights against us! But oh! He only fights
+against us that we may submit to, and love, Him. Will you, then, have
+it that God's highest mercy should be your greatest sorrow, that your
+truest friend should be your worst foe? You can make the choice. To you
+God and His truth are like that ark of His covenant which to Dagon and
+the Philistines was a curse, but to the house of Obededom was a
+blessing. He and His gospel are to you like that pillar that was
+darkness and trouble to the hosts of the Egyptians, but light by night
+to His children. To you, my brother, the gospel may be either 'the
+savour of life unto life, or the savour of death unto death!' If He
+comes to you with rebuke, and meets you when you are at the very door
+of your sin, and busy with your transgression,--usher Him in, and thank
+Him, and bless Him for words of threatening, for merciful severity, for
+conviction of sin;--because conviction of sin is the work of the
+Comforter; and all the threatenings and all the pains that follow and
+track, like swift hounds, the committer of evil, are sent by Him who
+loves too wisely not to punish transgression, and loves too well to
+punish without warning, and desires only when He punishes that we
+should turn from our evil way, and escape the condemnation. An enemy,
+or a friend,--which is God in His truth to you?
+
+III. Lastly, the sin which mistakes the friendly appeal for an enemy,
+lays up for itself a terrible retribution. Elijah comes to Jezreel and
+prophesies the fall of Ahab. The next peal, the next flash, fulfil the
+prediction. There, where he did the wrong, he suffered. In Jezreel,
+Ahab died. In Jezreel, Jezebel died. That plain was the battlefield for
+the subsequent discomfiture of Israel. Over and over again there
+encamped upon it the hosts of the spoilers. Over and over again its
+soil ran red with the blood of the children of Israel; and at last, in
+the destruction of the kingdom, Naboth was avenged and God's word
+fulfilled. The threatened evil was foretold that it might lead the king
+to repentance, and that thus it might never need to be more than a
+threat. But, though Ahab was partially penitent, and partially listened
+to the prophet's voice, yet for all that, he went on in his evil way.
+Therefore the merciful threatening becomes a stern prophecy, and is
+fulfilled to the very letter.
+
+So, when God's message comes to us, friends, if we listen not to it,
+and turn not to its gentle rebuke, Oh! then we gather up for ourselves
+an awful futurity of judgment, when threatening will darken into
+punishment, and the voice that rebuked will swell into the voice of
+final condemnation. When a man fancies that God's prophet is his enemy,
+and dreams that his finding him out is a calamity and a loss, that man
+may be certain that something worse will find him out some day. His
+sins will find him out, and that is worse than the prophet's coming. My
+friend, picture to yourself this--a human spirit shut up, with the
+companionship of its forgotten and dead transgressions. There is a
+resurrection of acts as well as of bodies. Think what it will be for a
+man to sit surrounded by that ghastly company, the ghosts of his own
+sins!--and as each forgotten fault and buried badness comes, silent and
+sheeted, into that awful society, and sits itself down there, think of
+him greeting each with the question, 'Thou too? What! are ye all here?
+Hast _thou_ found me, O mine enemy?' and from each bloodless spectral
+lip there tolls out the answer, the knell of his life, 'I _have_ found
+thee, because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the
+Lord.' Ah, my friend! if that were all we had to say, it might well
+stiffen us into stony despair. Thank God--thank God! such an issue is
+not inevitable. Christ speaks to you. Christ is your _Friend_. He loves
+you, and He speaks to you now--speaks to you of your danger, but in
+order that you may never rush into it and be engulfed by it; speaks to
+you of your sin, but in order that you may say to Him, 'Take Thou it
+away, O merciful Lord'; speaks to you of justice, but in order that you
+may never sink beneath the weight of His stroke; speaks to you of love,
+in order that you may know, and fully know, the depth of His
+graciousness. When He says to you, 'I love thee; love thou Me: I have
+died for thee; trust Me, live _by_ Me, and live _for_ Me, 'will you not
+say to Him, 'My Friend, my Brother, my Lord, and my God'?
+
+
+
+
+UNPOSSESSED POSSESSIONS
+
+'And the king of Israel said unto his servants, Know ye that Ramoth in
+Gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the
+king of Syria?'--1 KINGS xxii. 3.
+
+
+This city of Ramoth in Gilead was an important fortified place on the
+eastern side of the Jordan, and had, many years before the date of our
+text, been captured by its northern neighbours in the kingdom of Syria.
+A treaty had subsequently been concluded and broken a war followed
+thereafter, in which Ben-hadad, King of Syria, had bound himself to
+restore all his conquests. He had not observed that article of peace,
+and the people of Israel had not been strong enough to enforce it until
+the date of our text; but then, backed up by a powerful alliance with
+Jehoshaphat of Judah, they determined to make a dash to get back what
+was theirs, but whilst theirs was also not theirs.
+
+Now, I have nothing more to do with Ahab and Jehoshaphat, but I wish to
+turn the words of my test, and the thoughts that may come from them,
+into a direction profitable to ourselves. 'Know ye that Ramoth in
+Gilead is ours?' and yet it had to be got out of the hands of the King
+of Syria.
+
+I. What is ours and not ours.
+
+Every Christian man has large tracts of unannexed territory, unattained
+possibilities, unenjoyed blessings, things that are his and yet not
+his. How much more of God you and I have a right to than we have the
+possession of! The ocean is ours, but only the little pailful that we
+carry away home to our own houses is of use to us. The whole of God is
+mine if I am Christ's, and a dribble of God is all that comes into the
+lives of most of us.
+
+How much inward peace is ours? It is meant that there should never pass
+across a Christian's soul more than a ripple of agitation, which may
+indeed ruffle and curl the surface; but deep down there should be the
+tranquillity of the fathomless ocean, unbroken by any tempests, and yet
+not stagnant, because there is a vital current running through it, and
+every drop is being drawn upward to the surface and the sunlight. There
+may be a peace in our hearts deep as life; a tranquillity which may be
+superficially disturbed, but is never thoroughly, and down in its
+depths, broken. And yet, let some little petty annoyance come into our
+daily life, and what a pucker we are in! Then we forget all about the
+still depths in which we ought to be living; and fears and hopes and
+loves and ambitions disturb our souls, just as they do the spirits of
+the men that do not profess to have any holdfast in God. The peace of
+God is ours; but, ah! in how sad a sense it is true that the peace of
+God is _not_ ours!
+
+What 'heights'--for Ramoth means 'high places'--what heights of
+consecration there are which are ours according to the divine purpose
+and according to the fulness of God's gift! It is meant, and it is
+possible, and well within the reach of every Christian soul, that he or
+she should live, day by day, in the continual and utter surrender of
+himself or herself to the will of God, and should say, 'I do the little
+I can do, and leave the rest with Thee'; and should say again, 'All is
+right that seems most wrong, If it be His sweet will.' But instead of
+this absolute submission and completeness and joyfulness of surrender
+of ourselves to Him, what do we find? Reluctance to obey, regret at
+providences, Self dominant or struggling hard against the partial
+domination of the will of God in our hearts. The mind which was in
+Jesus Christ, who was able to say, 'It is written of Me, lo! I come to
+do Thy will, O Lord!' is ours by virtue of our being Christians; but,
+alas! in practical realisation how sadly it is not ours!
+
+What noble possibilities of service, what power in the world, are
+bestowed on Christ's people!' All power is given unto Me in heaven and
+in earth,' says He. 'And He breathed on them, and said, As My Father
+hath sent Me, even so send I you.' The divine gift to the Christian
+community, and to the individuals that compose it--for there are no
+gifts given to the community, but to the individuals that make it
+up--is of fulness of power for all their work. And yet look how, all
+through the ages, the Church has been beaten by the corruption of the
+world; and how to-day many of us are standing, either utterly careless
+and callous about the diseases that we have the medicine to cure, or in
+desperation looking about for other healing for the social and moral
+condition of the community than that which is granted to us in Jesus
+Christ. 'Know ye that Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and
+take it not out of the hands of the King of Syria?'
+
+There is ever so much in the world which belongs to our Master, and
+therefore belongs to us, and which the Church is bound to lay its hand
+upon and claim for its own and for its Lord's. For remember, brethren,
+that all the gifts at which I have been glancing--and I might have
+largely increased the catalogue--all these spiritual endowments of
+peace, and safety, and purity, and joy, of religious elevation, and
+consecration, and power for service, and the like--are ours by a
+threefold title and charter. God's purpose, which is nothing less for
+every one of us than that we should be 'filled with all the fulness of
+God,' and that He should 'supply all our need, according to His riches
+in glory,'--that is the first of the parchments on which our title
+depends. And the second title-deed is Christ's purchase; for the
+efficacy of His death and the power of His triumphant life have secured
+for all who trust Him the whole fulness of this divine gift. And the
+third of our claims and titles is the influence of that Holy Spirit
+whom Jesus Christ gives to every one of His children to dwell in him.
+There is in you, working in you, if you have any faith in that Lord, a
+power that is capable of making you perfectly pure, perfectly blessed,
+strong with an immortal strength, and glad with a 'joy that is
+unspeakable and full of glory.'
+
+Oh! then, let us think of the awful contrast between what is ours and
+what we have. It is ours by the divine intention, by the divine gift in
+its fulness and all-sufficiency, and yet think of the poor, partial
+realisation of it that has passed into our experience. Be sure that you
+have what you have, and that you make your own what God has made yours.
+
+II. Then, let me suggest, again, how our text hints for us, not only
+the difference between possession and realisation, but also our strange
+contentment in imperfect possession.
+
+Ahab's remonstrances with his servants, which make the starting-point
+of my remarks, seem to suggest that there were two reasons for their
+acquiescence in the domination of a foreign power on a bit of their
+soil. They had not realised that Ramoth was theirs, and they were too
+lazy and cowardly to go and take it. Ignorance of the fulness of the
+gift, and slothful timidity in daring everything in the effort to make
+it ours, explain a great deal of the present condition of Christian
+people.
+
+Is not that condition of passive acquiescence in their small present
+attainments, and of careless indifference to the great stretch of the
+unattained, the characteristic of the mass of professing Christians?
+They have got a foothold on a new continent, and their possession of it
+is like the world's drawing of the map of Africa when we were children,
+which had a settlement dotted here and there along the coast, and all
+the broad regions of the interior were blank. The settlers huddle
+together upon the fringe of barren sand by the salt water, and never
+dream of pressing forward into the heart of the land. And so, too, many
+of us are content with what we have got, a little bit of God, when we
+might have Him all; a settlement on the fringe and edge of the land,
+when we might traverse the whole length of it; and behold! it is all
+ours.
+
+That unfamiliarity with the thought of unattained possibilities in the
+Christian life is a damning curse of thousands of people who call
+themselves Christians. They do not think, they never realise--and some
+of us are guilty in this respect--they never realise that it is
+possible for them to be all unlike what they are now, and that, instead
+of the miserable partial hallowing of their nature, and the poor,
+weak--I was going to say strength, but it is not worth calling strength,
+that they possess, they might be as the angels of God: 'the weakest as
+David,' and David as a very angel of heaven itself. Why is it, why is
+it, that there is this unfamiliarity?
+
+And then, another reason for the woful disproportion between what we
+have and what we utilise is the love of ease, such as kept these
+Israelites from going up to Ramoth-Gilead. It was a long way off; there
+was a river to be forded; there were heights to be climbed; there were
+weary marches to be taken; there were hard knocks going in front of the
+walls of Ramoth before they got inside it; and on the whole it was more
+comfortable to sit at home, or look after their farms and their
+merchandise, than to embark on the quixotic attempt to win back a city
+that had not been theirs for ever so long, and that they had got on
+very well without.
+
+And so it is with hosts of Christian people; we do not realise how much
+we have that we never get any good out of. And, in the second place, we
+had rather just stay where we are, and make the best of the world as it
+is, and the desires of our hearts go in another direction than for our
+increase in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour. Ah,
+brethren! if we had a claim to some great property, or any other wealth
+that we really cared about, should we be so very indifferent as to
+asserting our rights? Should we not fight to the death, some of us, for
+the last inch of soil, for the last ounce of treasure, that belonged to
+us? When you really value a thing, you secure the greatest possible
+amount of it; and there is very little margin between what you own and
+what you use.
+
+And if there is such a tremendous difference between the breadth of the
+one and the narrowness of the other in our Christian life, there can be
+no reason for it except this, that we do not care enough about
+spiritual blessings and forces to make the effort that is needed to win
+and keep, and get the good of, all that is ours.
+
+And is not that something like despising the birthright? Is it not a
+criminal thing for Christian people thus to neglect, and to put aside,
+and never to seek to obtain, all these great gifts of God? There they
+lie at our doors, and they are ours for the taking. Suppose a carrier
+brought you a whole waggon full of precious goods, and put them down at
+your door, and you were not at the trouble to open your doors, or to
+carry the goods into your cellars. That would not look as if you cared
+much either for the goods or for the giver. And I wonder how many of us
+are chargeable with that criminal despising of God's gifts, which is
+clearly the explanation of our letting them lie rotting, as it were, at
+our gates? We are starving paupers in the midst of plenty.
+
+'My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory, by
+Christ Jesus,' says Paul. You have the right to them all. Draw cheques
+against the capital that is lodged in your name in that great bank.
+
+III. And so, lastly, my text suggests the effort that is needed to make
+our own ours.
+
+'We be still, and take it not out of the hands of the King of Syria.'
+Then these things that are ours, by God's gift, by Christ's purchase,
+by the Spirit's influence, will need our effort to secure them. And
+that is no contradiction, nor any paradox. God does exactly in the same
+way with regard to a great many of His natural gifts as He does with
+regard to His spiritual ones. He gives them to us, but we hold them on
+this tenure, that we put forth our best efforts to get and to keep
+them. His giving them does not set aside our taking. However much we
+tried we could not take them out of His hand if it were clenched. Open
+as His hand is, and stretched out to us as it is, the gifts that
+sparkle in it are not transferred to our hands unless we ourselves put
+forth an effort.
+
+So let me say that one large part of the discipline by which men make
+their own their own is by familiarising themselves with the thought of
+the larger possibilities of unattained possessions which God has given
+them. That is true in everything. To recognise our present
+imperfection, and to see stretching before us glorious and immense
+possibilities, opening out into a vista where our eyesight fails us to
+travel to its end, is the very salt of life in every region. Artist,
+student, all of us 'are saved by hope,' in a very much wider sense than
+the Apostle meant by that great saying. And whosoever has once lost, or
+felt becoming dim, the vision before him of a possible better than his
+present best, in any region, is in that region condemned to grow no
+more. If we desire to have any kind of advancement, it is only possible
+for us, when there gleams ever before us the untravelled road, and we
+see at the end of it unattained brightnesses and blessings.
+
+And we Christian people have an endless prospect of that sort
+stretching before us. Oh, if we looked at it oftener, 'having respect
+unto the recompense of the reward,' we should find it easier to dash at
+any Ramoth-Gilead, and get it out of the hands of the strongest of the
+enemies that may bar our way to it. Let us familiarise ourselves with
+the thought of our present imperfection, and of our future
+completeness, and of the possibilities which may become actualities,
+even here and now; and let us not fitfully use what power we have, but
+make the best of what graces are ours, and enjoy and expatiate in the
+spiritual blessings of peace and rest which Christ has already given to
+us. 'To him that hath shall be given,' and the surest way to lose what
+we have is to neglect to increase it.
+
+And, above all, let us keep nearer to our Master, and live more in
+fellowship with our Lord, and that will help us to deny ourselves to
+ungodliness and worldly lusts. It is the prevalence of these, and the
+absence of self-denial, that ruins most of the Christian lives that are
+ruined in this world. If a man wants to be what he is not, he must
+cease to be what he is.
+
+Self-sacrifice, and the emptying of our hearts of trash and trifles, is
+the only way to get our hearts filled with God and with His blessing.
+Let us keep near Jesus Christ. If we have Him for ours we have peace,
+we have power, we have purity. 'He of God is made unto us' all in all,
+and every gift that may adorn humanity, and make our lives joyous and
+ourselves noble, is given to us in Jesus Christ. Let us put away from
+ourselves, then, this slothful indifference to our unattained
+possessions. 'Know ye that Ramoth is ours?' 'Let us be still' no
+longer. 'All things are yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or
+things present, or things to come: all are yours if ye are Christ's.'
+
+
+
+
+AHAB AND MICAIAH
+
+'And Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides,
+that we might enquire of him? 8. And the king of Israel said unto
+Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we
+may enquire of the Lord: but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good
+concerning me, but evil.'--1 KINGS xxii. 7,8.
+
+
+An ill-omened alliance had been struck up between Ahab of Israel and
+Jehoshaphat of Judah. The latter, who would have been much better in
+Jerusalem, had come down to Samaria to join in an assault on the
+kingdom of Damascus; but, like a great many other people, Jehoshaphat
+first made up his mind without asking God, and then thought that it
+might be well to get some kind of varnish of a religious sanction for
+his decision. So he proposes to Ahab to inquire of the Lord about this
+matter. One would have thought that that should have been done before,
+and not after, the determination was made. Ahab does not at all see the
+necessity for such a thing, but, to please his scrupulous ally, he
+sends for his priests. They came, four hundred of them, and of course
+they all played the tune that Ahab called for. It is not difficult to
+get prophets to pat a king on the back, and tell him, 'Do what you
+like.'
+
+But Jehoshaphat was not satisfied yet. Perhaps he thought that Ahab's
+clergy were not exactly God's prophets, but at all events he wanted an
+independent opinion; and so he asks if there is not in all Samaria a
+man that can be trusted to speak out. He gets for answer the name of
+this 'Micaiah the son of Imlah.' Ahab had had experience of him, and
+knew his man; and the very name leads him to an explosion of passion,
+which, like other explosions, lays bare some very ugly depths. 'I hate
+him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.'
+
+That is a curious mood, is it not? that a man should know another to be
+a messenger of God, and therefore know that his words are true, and
+that if he asked his counsel he would be forbidden to do the thing that
+he is dead set on doing, and would be warned that to do it was
+destruction; and that still he should not ask the counsel, nor ever
+dream of dropping the purpose, but should burst out in a passion of
+puerile rage against the counsellor, and will have none of his
+reproofs. Very curious! But there are a great many of us that have
+something of the same mood in us, though we do not speak it out as
+plainly as Ahab did. It lurks more or less in us all, and it largely
+determines the attitude that some of us take to Christianity and to
+Christ. So I wish to say a word or two about it.
+
+I. My text suggests the inevitable opposition between a message from
+God, and man's evil.
+
+No doubt, God is love; and just because He is, it is absolutely
+necessary that what comes from Him, and is the reflex and cast, so to
+speak, of His character, should be in stern and continual antagonism to
+that evil which is the worst foe of men, and is sure to lead to their
+death. It is because God is love, that 'to the froward He shows Himself
+froward.' and opposes that which, unopposed and yielded to, will ruin
+the man that does it. So this is one of the characteristic marks of all
+true messages from God, that men who will not part with their evil call
+them 'stern,' 'rigid,' 'gloomy,' 'narrow' Yes, of course; because God
+must look upon godless lives with disapprobation, and must desire by
+all means to draw men away from that which is drawing them away _from_
+Him and to their death.
+
+Now, I suppose I need not spend time in enumerating or describing the
+points in the attitude of Christianity towards the solemn fact of human
+sin, which correspond to Ahab's complaint that the prophet spake always
+'not good concerning him, but evil.' The 'gospel' of Jesus Christ
+proves its name to be true, and that it _is_ 'good news,' not only by
+its graciousness, its promises, its offers, and the rich blessings of
+eternal life with which its hands are full, but by its severity, as men
+call it. One characteristic of the gospel is the altogether unique
+place which the fact of sin fills in it. There is no other religion on
+the face of the earth that has so grasped and made prominent this
+thought: 'All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.' There is
+none that has painted human nature as it is in such dark colours,
+because there is none that knows itself to be able to change human
+nature into such radiance of glory and purity. The gospel has, if I
+might so say, on its palette a far greater range of pigments than any
+other system. Its blacks are blacker; its whites are whiter; its golds
+are more lustrous than those of other painters of human nature as it is
+and as it may become. It is a mark of its divine origin that it
+unfalteringly looks facts in the face, and will not say smooth things
+about men as they are.
+
+Side by side with that characteristic of the dark picture which it
+draws of us, as we are in ourselves, is its unhesitating restraint or
+condemnation of deep-seated desires and tendencies. It does not come to
+men with the smooth words on its lips, 'Do as thou wilt.' It does not
+seek for favour by relaxing bonds, but it rigidly builds up a wall on
+either side of a narrow path, and says, 'Walk within these limits and
+thou art safe. Go beyond them a hair's-breadth, and thou perishest.' It
+may suit Ahab's prophets to fling the reins on the neck of human
+nature; God's prophet says, 'Thou shalt not,' That is another of the
+tests of divine origin, that there shall be no base compliance with
+inclinations, but rigid condemnation of many of our deep desires.
+
+Side by side with these two, there is a third characteristic that the
+Word, which is the outcome and expression of the divine love, is
+distinguished by its plain and stern declarations of the bitter
+consequences of evil-doing. I need not dwell upon these, brethren. They
+seem to me to be far too solemn to be spoken of by a man to men in
+other words than Scripture's. But I beseech you to remember that this,
+too, is the characteristic of Christ's message. So a man should feel,
+when he thinks of the dark and solemn things that the Old Testament
+partially, and the New Testament more clearly, utter as to the death
+which is the outcome of sin, that these are indeed the very voice of
+infinite love pleading with us all. Brother I do not so misapprehend
+facts as to think that the restraints and threatenings and dark
+pictures which Christ and His servants have drawn are anything but the
+utterance of the purest affection.
+
+II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to look for a moment at the strange
+dislike which this attitude of Christianity kindles.
+
+I have said that Ahab's mental condition was a very odd one. Strange as
+it is, it is, as I have already remarked, in some degree a very
+frequent one. There are in us all, as we see in many regions of life,
+the beginnings of the same kind of feeling. Here, for example, is a
+course that I am quite sure, if I pursue it, will land me in evil. Does
+the drunkard take a glass the less, because he knows that if he goes on
+he will have a drunkard's liver and die a miserable death? Does the
+gambler ever take away his hand from the pack of cards or the dice-box,
+because he knows that play means, in the long run, poverty and
+disgrace? When a man sets his will upon a certain course, he is like a
+bull that has started in its rage. Down goes the head, and, with eyes
+shut, he will charge a stone wall or an iron door, though he knows it
+will smash his skull. Men are very foolish animals; and there is no
+greater mark of their folly than the conspicuous and oft-repeated fact
+that the clearest vision of the consequences of a course of conduct is
+powerless to turn a man from it, when once his passions, or his will,
+or, worse still, his weakness, or, worst of all, his habits, have bound
+him to it.
+
+Take another illustration. Do we not all know that honest friends have
+sometimes fallen out of favour, perhaps with ourselves, because they
+have persistently kept telling us what our consciences and common-sense
+knew to be true, that if we go on by that road we shall be suffocated
+in a bog? A man makes up his mind to a course of conduct. He has a
+shrewd suspicion that an honest friend will condemn him, and that the
+condemnation will be right. What does he do, therefore? He never
+consults his friend, but if by chance that friend should say what was
+expected of him, he gets angry with his adviser and doggedly goes his
+own road. I suppose we all know what it is to treat our consciences in
+the style in which Ahab treated Micaiah. We do not listen to them
+because we know what they will say before they have said it; and we
+call ourselves sensible people! Martin Luther once said, 'It is neither
+safe nor _wise_ to do anything against conscience.' But Ahab put
+Micaiah in prison; and we shut up our consciences in a dungeon, and put
+a gag in their mouths, and a muffler over the gag, that we may hear
+them say no word, because we know that what we are doing, and we are
+doggedly determined to do, is wrong.
+
+But the saddest illustration of this infatuation is to be found in the
+attitude that many men take in regard to Christianity. There is a great
+craving to-day, more perhaps than there has been in some other periods
+of the world's history, for a religion which shall adorn, but shall not
+restrain; for a religion which shall be toothless, and have no bite in
+it; for a religion that shall sanction anything that it pleases our
+sovereign mightiness to want to do. We should all like to have God's
+sanction for our actions. But there are a great many of us who will not
+take the only way to secure that--viz. to do the actions which He
+commands, and to abstain from those which He forbids. Popular
+Christianity is a very easy-fitting garment; it is like an old shoe
+that you can slip off and on without any difficulty. But a religion
+which does not put up a strong barrier between you and many of your
+inclinations in not worth anything. The mark of a message from God is
+that it restrains and coerces and forbids and commands. And some of you
+do not like it because it does.
+
+There is a great tendency in this day to cut out of the Old and New
+Testaments all the pages that say things like this, 'The soul that
+sinneth it shall die'; or things like this, 'This is the condemnation,
+that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than
+light'; or things like this, 'Then shall the wicked go away into outer
+darkness.' Brethren, men being what they are, and God being what He is,
+there can be no divine message without a side of what the world calls
+threatening, or what Ahab called' prophesying evil.' I beseech you, do
+not be carried away by the modern talk about Christianity being gloomy
+and dark, or fancy that we put a blot and an excrescence upon the pure
+religion of the Man of Nazareth, when we speak of the death that
+follows sin, and of the darkness into which unbelief carries a man.
+
+III. Once more, let me say a word about the intense folly of such an
+attitude.
+
+Ahab hated Micaiah. Why? Because Micaiah told him what would come to
+him as the fruit of his own actions. That was foolish. It is no less
+foolish for people to take up a position of dislike, and to turn away
+from the gospel of Jesus Christ because it speaks in like manner. I
+said that men are very foolish animals; there is surely nothing in all
+the annals of human stupidity more stupid than to be angry with the
+word that tells you the truth about what you are bringing down upon
+your heads. It is absurd, because Micaiah did not make the evil, but
+Ahab made it; and Micaiah's business was only to tell him what he was
+doing. It is absurd, because the only question to be asked is. Are the
+warnings true? are the threatenings representations of what really will
+come? are the prohibitions reasonable? And it is absurd, because, if
+these things are so--if it is true that the soul that sinneth dies, and
+will die; if it is true that you, who have heard of the name and the
+salvation of Jesus Christ over and over again, and have turned away
+from it, will, if you continue in that negligence and unbelief, reap
+bitter fruits here and hereafter therefrom--if these things are true,
+surely the man that tells you so, and the gospel that tells you so,
+deserve better treatment than Ahab's petulant hatred or your stolid
+indifference and neglect.
+
+Would you think it wise for a sea-captain to try to take the clapper
+out of the bell that floats and tolls above a shoal on which his ship
+will be wrecked if it strikes? Would it be wise to put out the
+lighthouse lamps, and then think that you had abolished the reef? Does
+the signalman with his red flag make the danger of which he warns, and
+is it not like a baby to hate and to neglect the message that comes to
+you and says, 'Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die'?
+
+IV. So, lastly, I notice the end of this foolish attitude.
+
+Ahab was told in plain words by Micaiah, before the interview closed,
+that he would never come back again in peace. He ordered the bold
+prophet into prison, and rode away gaily, no doubt, to his campaign.
+Weak men are very often obstinate, because they are not strong enough
+to rise to the height of changing a purpose when reason condemns it.
+This weak man was always obstinate in the wrong place, as so many of us
+are. So away he went, down from Samaria, across the plain, down to the
+fords of the Jordan. But when he had crossed to the other side, and was
+coming near his objective point, the memories of Micaiah in prison at
+Samaria began to sit heavy on his soul.
+
+So he tried to deceive divine judgment, and got up an ingenious scheme
+by which his ally was to go into the field in royal pomp, and he to
+slip into it disguised. A great many of us try to hoodwink God, and it
+does not answer. The man who 'drew the bow at a venture' had his hand
+guided by a higher Hand. Ahab was plated all over with iron and brass,
+but there is always a crevice through which God's arrow can find its
+way; and, where God's arrow finds its way, it kills. When the night
+fell, he was lying dead on his chariot floor, and the host was
+scattered, and Micaiah, the prisoner, was avenged; and his word had
+taken hold on the despiser of it.
+
+So it always will be. So it will be with us, dear brethren, if we do
+not give heed to our ways and listen to the word which may be bitter in
+the mouth, but, eaten, turns sweet as honey. Nailing the index of the
+barometer to 'set fair' will not keep off the thunderstorm, and no
+negligence or dislike of divine threatenings will arrest the slow,
+solemn march, inevitable as destiny, of the consequences of our doings.
+Things will be as they will be. Believed or unbelieved, the avalanche
+will come.
+
+Dear brethren, there is one way to get Micaiah on your side. Listen to
+him, and then he will speak good to you, and not what you foolishly
+call evil. Let God's word convince you of sin. Let it bring you to the
+Cross for pardon. Jesus Christ addresses each of us in the Apostle's
+words: 'Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?'
+The sternest threatenings in the Bible come from the lips of that
+infinite Love. If you will listen to Him, if you will yield yourselves
+to Him, if you will take Him for your Saviour and your Lord, if you
+will cast your confidence and anchor your love upon Him, if you will
+let Him restrain you, if you will consult Him about what He would have
+you do, if you will accept His prohibitions as well as His permissions,
+then His word and His act to you, here and hereafter, will be only good
+and not evil, all the days of your life.
+
+Remember Ahab lying dead on the floor of his chariot in a pool of his
+own blood, and bethink yourselves of what despising the threatenings,
+and turning away from the rebukes and prohibitions of the divine word,
+come to. These threatenings are spoken that they may never need to be
+put in effect. If you give heed to them they will never be put in
+effect in regard to you, if you neglect them and 'will none of' God's
+'reproof,' they will come down on you like a mighty rock loosed from
+the mountain, and will grind you to powder.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARIOT OF FIRE
+
+'And it came to pass, when the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by
+a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. 2. And Elijah
+said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to
+Beth-el. And Elisha said unto him, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul
+liveth, I will not leave thee. 80 they went down to Beth-el 3, And the
+sons of the prophets that were at Beth-el came forth to Elisha and said
+unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy
+head to-day? And he said, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace. 4. And
+Elijah laid unto him, Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord
+hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy
+soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho. 5. And the
+sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha, and laid unto
+him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head
+to-day? And he answered, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace. 6. And
+Elijah said unto him, Tarry, I pray thee, here: for the Lord hath sent
+me to Jordan. And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth,
+I will not leave thee. And they two went on. 7. And fifty men of the
+eons of the prophets went, and stood to view afar off: and they two
+stood by Jordan. 8. And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it
+together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and
+thither, so that they two went over on dry ground. 9. And it came to
+pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what
+I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said,
+I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. 10. And he
+said, Thou hast asked a hard thing; nevertheless, if thou see me when I
+am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not
+be so. 11. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked,
+that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and
+parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
+heaven.'--2 KINGS ii. 1-11.
+
+
+Elijah's end is in keeping with his career. From his first abrupt
+appearance it had been fitly symbolised by the stormy wind and flaming
+fire which he heard and saw at Horeb, and now these were to be the
+vehicles which should sweep him into the heavens. He came like a
+whirlwind, he burned like a fire, and in fire and whirlwind he
+disappeared. The story is wonderful in pathos and simplicity. Surely
+never was such a miracle told so quietly. The actual ascension is
+narrated in a sentence. Its preliminaries take up the rest of this
+narrative.
+
+I. This journey from Gilgal to the eastern side of Jordan is minutely
+described in its stages. Apparently this Gilgal is not the well-known
+place so called, which was down in the Jordan valley close to Jericho,
+else the road from it to Bethel could not have been called a going down
+(v. 2). It probably lay to the north of Bethel, which would then be
+between it and Jericho, where the Jordan was to be passed. Elijah was
+not sent on an aimless round of farewell visits, but by the direct road
+to his destination. Note that he and Elisha and the 'sons of the
+prophets' all know that he is near his end. How this came about we are
+not told, and need not speculate; but though all knew, none seems to
+have known that the others knew. Elijah does not explain to Elisha why
+he wished him to stay behind, nor Elisha to Elijah why he was so
+resolved to keep by him. The knowledge and the silence would give
+peculiar solemnity and sweet bitterness to these last hours. How often
+a similar combination weighs on the hearts of a household, who all know
+that a dear one is soon to be taken away, and yet can only be silent
+about what is uppermost in their thoughts!
+
+Why did Elijah wish Elisha to stay behind? Apparently to spare him the
+pain of seeing his master depart. With loving concealment, he tried to
+make Elisha suppose that his errand to Bethel and then to Jericho was
+but a common one, to be soon despatched. It was a little touch of
+tenderness in the strong, rough man. Note, too, the gradual disclosure
+to Elijah of the places to which he was to go. He is only bid to go to
+Bethel, and not till he gets there is he further sent on to Jericho,
+and, presumably, only when there is directed to cross Jordan. God does
+not show all the road at once, even if it lead to glory, but step by
+step, and a second stage only when we have obediently traversed the
+first. We get light as we go. Elisha's clinging to his master till the
+very last is but too intelligible to many of us who have gone through
+the same sorrow, and counted each moment of companionship with some
+dear one about to leave earth as priceless gain, to be treasured in the
+sacredest recesses of memory for evermore.
+
+It has been thought that the object of the visits to Bethel and Jericho
+was to give parting directions to the schools of the prophets at each
+place; but that is read into the narrative, which gives no hint that
+Elijah had any communication with these. Rather the contrary is
+implied, both in the fact that the 'sons of the prophets' came to the
+travellers, not the travellers to them, and in their addressing Elisha,
+as if some awe of the master kept them from speaking to him. An Elijah
+marching to his chariot of fire was not a man for raw youths to
+approach lightly. Their question is met by Elisha with curtness and
+scant courtesy, which indicates that it was asked in no sympathetic
+spirit, but from mere love of telling bad news, and of vulgar
+excitement. Even the gentle Elisha is stirred to rebuke the gossiping
+chatterers, who intrude their curiosity into that sacred hour. There
+are abundance of such busy-bodies always ready to buzz about any
+bleeding heart, and sorrow has often to be stern in order to be
+unmolested.
+
+II. The second stage is the passage of Jordan. The verbal repetition of
+the same dialogue at Jericho as at Bethel increases the impression of
+prolonged loving struggle between the two prophets. At last, they stand
+on the western bank of Jordan, at their feet the spot where the
+hurrying river had been stayed by the ark till the tribes had passed
+over, before them the mountains bordering Elijah's homeland of Gilead
+on the left, and away on the right the lone peak where Moses had died
+'by the mouth of the Lord.' The soil was redolent of the miracles of
+the Mosaic age, and the dividing of the waters by Elijah is meant to
+bring the present into vital connection with that past, and to
+designate him as parallel with the former leader. Note the vigour with
+which he twists his characteristic mantle into a kind of rod, and
+strikes the waters strongly. The repetition of the former miracle is a
+sign that the unexhausted Power which wrought it is with Elijah. The
+God of yesterday is the God of to-day, and nothing that was done in the
+past but will be repeated in essence, though not in form, in the
+present. 'As we have heard so have we seen.' The former miracle had
+been done for a nation; this is performed for two men. It teaches the
+preciousness of His individual servants in God's eyes. The former had
+been done through the ark; this, by the prophet's mantle. Power is
+lodged in the faithful messenger. God's strength dwells in those who
+love Him. The former miracle had been the close of the desert
+wanderings and the gateway to Canaan. Though Elijah's face is turned in
+the opposite direction, does not its repetition suggest that for him,
+too, the impending translation was to be the end of wilderness
+weariness and toil, and the entrance on rest?
+
+III. Elisha's request is the next stage in the story. How far they two
+'went on' is not told. The Bible does not foster the craving to know
+the exact situation where sacred things happened, the gratification of
+which might feed superstition, but could not increase reverence.
+Possibly they had drawn near the eastern hills, and were out of sight
+of the fifty curious gazers on the other hank. Elijah at last spoke the
+truth which both knew. How true to nature is that reticence kept up
+till the last moment, and then broken so tenderly!--'Ask what I shall
+do for thee, before.' Probably he did not mean any supernatural gift,
+but simply some parting token of love; for he is startled at the
+response of Elisha. A true disciple can desire nothing more than a
+portion of his master's spirit. 'It is enough for the disciple that he
+be as his Master.' They covet wisely and with a noble covetousness who
+most desire spiritual gifts to fit them for their vocation. It was an
+unworldly soul which asked but for such a legacy.
+
+The 'double portion' does not mean twice as much as Elijah's portion
+had been, but twice as much as other 'sons of the prophets' would
+receive. Elisha reckoned himself Elijah's first-born spiritual son, and
+asked for the elder brother's share, because he had been designated as
+successor, and would require more than others for his work. The new
+sense of responsibility is coming on him, and teaching him his need.
+Well for us if higher positions make us lowlier, in the consciousness
+of our own unfitness without divine help! Elijah knows that his spirit
+was not his to give, and can only refer his successor to the Fountain
+from which he had drawn; for the sign which he gives is obviously not
+within his power to determine. If the Lord shows the ascending master
+to him who is left, He will give the servant his desire.
+
+A portion of their 'spirit' is the very thing which teachers and
+prophets cannot give. They may give their systems or their methods,
+their favourite ideas or cut-and-dry maxims and principles, and so
+leave a race of pygmies who give themselves airs as being their
+disciples, but their spirit they cannot impart. Contrast with this
+limitation of power confessed by Elijah, His consciousness who breathed
+on eleven poor men, and said, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost.' No man could
+say that without absurdity or blasphemy. The gift impossible to man is
+the very characteristic gift of Jesus, who 'has power over the Spirit
+of holiness.'  Must He not thereby be 'declared to be the Son of God'?
+
+IV. The climax of this lesson is that stupendous scene of the
+translation. Note how the 'Behold' suggests the suddenness of the
+appearance of the fiery chariot, which came flaming between the two men
+eagerly talking, and drove them apart. The description of the
+departure, in its brevity and incompleteness, sounds like the report of
+the only eye-witness, who had the fiery chariot between him and Elijah,
+and was too bewildered to see precisely what happened. All he knew was
+the sudden appearance of the fiery equipage, and then that, suddenly,
+and apparently swiftly, a rushing mighty wind swept away chariot and
+prophet into the heavens. He saw it, as the next verse after this
+passage tells us, only long enough to break into one rapturous and yet
+lamenting cry, and then all vanished, and he stood alone with an
+apparently empty heaven above him, the whirlwind sunk to calm, and
+Elijah's mantle at his feet.
+
+The teaching of the event is plain. As for the pre-Mosaic ages the
+translation of Enoch, and for the earlier Mosaic epoch the mysterious
+death of Moses, so for the prophetic period the carrying to heaven of
+Elijah, witnessed of a life beyond death, and of death as the wages of
+sin, which God could remit, if He willed, in the case of faithful
+service. Enoch and Elijah were led round the head of the valley on the
+heights, and reached the other side without having to go down into the
+cold waters flowing in the bottom; and though we cannot tread their
+path, the joy of their experience has not ceased to be a joy to us, if
+we walk with God. Death is still the coming of the chariot and horses
+of fire to bear the believer home. The same exclamation which fell from
+Elisha's lips, as he saw the chariot sweep up the sky, was spoken over
+him as he lay sick 'of the sickness whereof he should die.'
+
+But the most instructive view of Elijah's translation is its parallel
+and contrast with Christ's Ascension. The one was by outward means; the
+other by inward energy. Storm and fire bore Elijah up into a region
+strange to him. Christ 'ascended up where He was before,' returning by
+the propriety of His nature to His eternal dwelling-place. The one is
+accomplished with significant disturbance, of whirlwind and flame; the
+other is gentle, like the life which it closed, and the last sight of
+Him was with extended hands of blessing. Each life closed in a manner
+corresponding to its character. The one was swift and sudden. The other
+was a slow, solemn motion, vividly described as being 'borne upwards'
+and as 'going into heaven.' The one bore a mortal into 'heaven.' In the
+other, the Son of God, our great High Priest, 'hath passed through the
+heavens,' and now, far above them all, He is 'Head over all things.'
+
+
+
+
+THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST
+
+'And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold,
+there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them
+both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.'--2 KINGS
+ii. 11.
+
+'And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them,
+and carried up into heaven.'--LUKE xxiv. 51.
+
+
+These two events, the translation of Elijah and the Ascension of our
+Lord, have sometimes been put side by side in order to show that the
+latter narrative is nothing but a 'variant' of the former. See, it is
+said, the source of your New Testament story is only the old legend
+shaped anew by the wistful regrets of the early disciples. But to me it
+seems that the simple comparison of the two narratives is sufficient to
+bring out such fundamental difference in the ideas which they
+respectively embody as amount to opposition, and make any such theory
+of the origin of the latter absurdly improbable, I could wish no better
+foil for the history of the Ascension than the history of Elijah's
+rapture. The comparison brings out contrasts at every step, and there
+is no readier way of throwing into strong relief the meaning and
+purpose of the former, than holding up beside it the story of the
+latter. The real parallel makes the divergences the more remarkable,
+for likeness sharpens our perception of unlikeness, and no contrast is
+so forcible as the contrast of things that correspond. I am much
+mistaken if we shall not find almost every truth of importance
+connected with our Lord's Ascension emphasised for us by the comparison
+to which we now proceed.
+
+I. The first point which may be mentioned is the contrast between the
+manner of Elijah's translation, and that of our Lord's Ascension.
+
+It is perhaps not without significance that the place of the one event
+was on the uplands or in some of the rocky gorges beyond Jordan, and
+that of the other, the slopes of Olivet above Bethany. The lonely
+prophet, who had burst like a meteor on Israel from the solitudes of
+Gilead, whose fervour had ever and again been rekindled by return to
+the wilderness, whose whole career had isolated him from men, found the
+fitting place for that last wonder amidst the stern silence where he
+had so often sought asylum and inspiration. He was close to the scenes
+of mighty events in the past. There, on that overhanging peak, the
+lawgiver whose work he was continuing, and with whom he was to be so
+strangely associated on the Mount of Transfiguration, had made himself
+ready for his lonely grave. Here at his feet, the river had parted for
+the victorious march of Israel. Away down on his horizon the sunshine
+gleamed on the waters of the Dead Sea; and thus, on his native soil,
+surrounded by memorials of the Law which he laboured to restore, and of
+the victories which he would fain have brought back, and of the
+judgments which he saw again impending over Israel, the stern, solitary
+ascetic, the prophet of righteousness, whose single arm stayed the
+downward course of a nation, passed from his toil and his warfare.
+
+What a different set of associations cluster round the place of
+Christ's Ascension--'Bethany,' or, as it is more particularly specified
+in the Acts, 'Olivet'! In the very heart of the land, close by and yet
+out of sight of the great city, in no wild solitude, but perhaps in
+some dimple of the hill, neither shunning nor courting spectators, with
+the quiet home where He had rested so often in the little village at
+their feet there, and Gethsemane a few furlongs off, in such scenes did
+the Christ 'whose delights were with the sons of men,' and His life
+lived in closest companionship with His brethren, choose the place
+whence He should 'ascend to their Father and His Father.' Nor perhaps
+was it without a meaning that the Mount which received the last print
+of His ascending footstep was that which a mysterious prophecy
+designated as destined to receive the first print of the footstep of
+the Lord coming at a future day to end the long warfare with evil.
+
+But more important than the localities is the contrasted manner of the
+two ascents. The prophet's end was like the man. It was fitting that he
+should be swept up the skies in tempest and fire. The impetuosity of
+his nature, and the stormy energy of his career, had already been
+symbolised in the mighty and strong wind which rent the rocks, and in
+the fire that followed the earthquake; and similarly nothing could be
+more appropriate than that sudden rapture in storm and whirlwind,
+escorted by the flaming chivalry of heaven.
+
+Nor is it only as appropriate to the character of the prophet and his
+work that this tempestuous translation is noteworthy. It also suggests
+very plainly that Elijah was lifted to the skies by power acting on him
+from without. He did not ascend; he was carried up; the earthly frame
+and the human nature had no power to rise. 'No man hath ascended into
+heaven.' The two men of whom the Old Testament speaks were alike in
+this, that 'God _took_ them.' The tempest and the fiery chariot tell us
+how great was the exercise of divine power which bore the gross
+mortality thither, and how unfamiliar was the sphere into which it
+passed.
+
+How full of the very spirit of Christ's whole life is the contrasted
+manner of His Ascension! The silent gentleness, which did not strive
+nor cry nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets, marks Him even
+in that hour of lofty and transcendent triumph. There is no outward
+sign to accompany His slow upward movement through the quiet air. No
+blaze of fiery chariots, nor agitation of tempest is needed to bear Him
+heavenwards. The outstretched hands drop the dew of His benediction on
+the little company, and so He floats upward, His own will and
+indwelling power the royal chariot which bears Him, and calmly 'leaves
+the world and goes unto the Father.' The slow, continuous movement of
+ascent is emphatically made prominent in the brief narratives, both by
+the phrase in Luke, 'He was carried up,' which expresses continuous
+leisurely motion, and by the picture in the Acts, of the disciples
+gazing into heaven 'as He went up,' in which latter word is brought
+out, not only the slowness of the movement, but its origin in His own
+will and its execution by His own power.
+
+Nor is this absence of any vehicle or external agency destroyed by the
+fact that 'a cloud' received Him out of their sight, for its purpose
+was not to raise Him heavenward, but to hide Him from the gazers' eyes,
+that He might not seem to them to dwindle into distance, but that their
+last look and memory might be of His clearly discerned and loving face.
+Possibly, too, it may be intended to remind us of the cloud which
+guided Israel, the glory which dwelt between the cherubim, the cloud
+which overshadowed the Mount of Transfiguration, and to set forth a
+symbol of the Divine Presence welcoming to itself, His battle fought,
+the Son of His love.
+
+Be that as it may, the manner of our Lord's Ascension by His own
+inherent power is brought into boldest relief when contrasted with
+Elijah's rapture, and is evidently the fitting expression, as it is the
+consequence, of His sole and singular divine nature. It accords with
+His own mode of reference to the Ascension, while He was on earth,
+which ever represents Him not as _being taken_, but as _going_: 'I
+leave the world and go to the Father.' 'I ascend to My Father and your
+Father.' The highest hope of the devoutest souls before Him had been,
+'Thou wilt afterwards take me to glory.' The highest hope of devout
+souls since Him has been, 'We shall be caught up to meet the Lord.' But
+this Man ever speaks of Himself as able when He will, by His own power,
+to rise where no man hath ascended. His divine nature and pre-existence
+shine clearly forth, and as we stand gazing at Him blessing the world
+as He rises into the heavens, we know that we are looking on no mere
+mysterious elevation of a mortal to the skies, but are beholding the
+return of the Incarnate Lord, who willed to tarry among our earthly
+tabernacles for a time, to the glory where He was before, 'His own calm
+home, His habitation from eternity.'
+
+II. Another striking point of contrast embraces the relation which
+these two events respectively bear to the life's work which had
+preceded them.
+
+The falling mantle of Elijah has become a symbol known to all the
+world, for the transference of unfinished tasks and the appointment of
+successors to departed greatness. Elisha asked that he might have a
+double portion of his master's spirit, not meaning twice as much as his
+master had had, but the eldest son's share of the father's possessions,
+the double of the other children's portion. And, though his master had
+no power to bestow the gift, and had to reply as one who has nothing
+that he has not received, and cannot dispose of the grace that dwells
+in him, the prayer was answered, and the feebler nature of Elisha was
+fitted for the continuance of the work which Elijah left undone.
+
+The mantle that passed from one to the other was the symbol of office
+and authority transferred; the functions were the same, whilst the
+holders had changed. The sons of the prophets bow before the new
+master; 'the spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.'
+
+So the world goes on. Man after man serves his generation by the will
+of God, and is gathered to his fathers; and a new arm grasps the mantle
+to smite Jordan, and a new voice speaks from his empty place, and men
+recognise the successor, and forget the predecessor.
+
+We turn to Christ's Ascension, and there we meet with nothing analogous
+to this transference of office. No mantle falling from His shoulders
+lights on any of that group, none are hailed as His successors. What He
+has done bears and needs no repetition whilst time shall roll, whilst
+eternity shall last. His work is unique: 'the help that is done on
+earth, He doeth it all Himself.' His Ascension completed the witness of
+heaven, begun at His resurrection, that 'He has offered one sacrifice
+for sins, for ever.' He has left no unfinished work which another may
+perfect. He has done no work which another may do again for new
+generations. He has spoken all truth, and none may add to His words. He
+has fulfilled all righteousness, and none may better His pattern. He
+has borne all the world's sin, and no time can waste the power of that
+sacrifice, nor any man add to its absolute sufficiency. This King of
+men wears a crown to which there is no heir. This Priest has a
+priesthood which passes to no other. This 'Prophet' does 'live for
+ever,' The world sees all other guides and helpers pass away, and every
+man's work is caught up by other hands and carried on after he drops
+it, and the short memories and shorter gratitudes of men turn to the
+rising sun; but one Name remains undimmed by distance, and one work
+remains unapproached and unapproachable, and one Man remains whose
+office none other can hold, whose bow none but He can bend, whose
+mantle none can wear. Christ has ascended up on high and left a
+finished work for all men to trust, for no man to continue.
+
+III. Whilst our Lord's Ascension is thus marked as the seal of a work
+in which He has no successor, it is also emphatically set forth, by
+contrast with Elijah's translation, as the transition to a continuous
+energy for and in the world.
+
+Clearly the other narrative derives all its pathos from the thought
+that Elijah's work is done. His task is over, and nothing more is to be
+hoped for from him. But that same absence from the history of Christ's
+Ascension, of any hint of a successor, to which we have referred in the
+previous remarks, has an obvious bearing on His present relation to the
+world as well as on the completeness of His unique past work.
+
+When Christ ascended up on high, He relinquished nothing of His
+activity for us, but only cast it into a new form, which in some sense
+is yet higher than that which it took on earth. His work for the world
+is in one aspect completed on the Cross, but in another it will never
+be completed until all the blessings which that Cross has lodged in the
+midst of humanity, have reached their widest possible diffusion and
+their highest possible development. Long ages ago He cried, 'It is
+finished,' but we may be far yet from the time when He shall say, 'It
+is done'; and for all the slow years between His own word gives us the
+law of His activity, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.'
+
+Christ's Ascension is no withdrawal of the Captain of our salvation
+from the field where we are left to fight, nor has He gone up to the
+mountain, leaving us alone to tug at the oar, and shiver in the cold
+night air. True, there may seem a strange contrast between the present
+condition of the Lord who 'was received up into heaven, and sitteth on
+the right hand of God,' and that of the servants wandering through the
+world on _His_ business; but the contrast is harmonised by the next
+words, 'the Lord also working with them.' Yes, He has gone up to sit at
+the right hand of God. That session at God's right hand to which the
+Ascension is chiefly of importance as the transition, means the repose
+of a perfected redemption, the communion of the Son with the Father,
+the exercise of all the omnipotence of God, the administration of the
+world's history. He has ascended that He might fill all things, that He
+might pour out His Spirit upon us, that the path to God may be trodden
+by our lame feet, that the whole resources of the divine nature may be
+wielded by the hands that were nailed to the Cross, that the mighty
+purpose of salvation may be fulfilled.
+
+Elijah knew not whether his spirit could descend upon his follower. But
+Christ, though, as we have said, He left no legacy of falling mantle to
+any, left His Spirit to His people. What Elisha gained, Elijah lost.
+What Elisha desired, Elijah could not give nor guarantee. How firm and
+assured beside Elijah's dubious 'Thou hast asked a hard thing,' and his
+'If thou see me, it shall be so,' is Christ's 'It is expedient for you
+that I go away. For if I go not away the Comforter will not come, but
+if I depart, I will send Him unto you.'
+
+Manifold are the forms of that new and continuous activity of Christ
+into which He passed when He left the earth: and as we contrast these
+with the utter helplessness any longer to counsel, rebuke or save, to
+which death reduces those who love us best, and to which even his
+glorious rapture into the heavens brought the strong prophet of fire,
+we can take up, with a new depth of meaning, the ancient words that
+tell of Christ's exclusive prerogative of succouring and inspiring from
+within the veil: 'Thou hast ascended on high; Thou hast led captivity
+captive; Thou hast received gifts for men.'
+
+IV. The Ascension of Christ is still further set forth, in its very
+circumstances, by contrast with Elijah's translation, as bearing on the
+hopes of humanity for the future.
+
+The prophet is caught up to the glory and repose for himself alone, and
+the sole share which the gazing follower or the sons of the prophets
+straining their eyes there at Jericho, had in his triumph, was a
+deepened conviction of his prophetic mission, and perhaps some clearer
+faith in a future life. Their wonder and sorrow, Elisha's immediate
+exercise of his new power, the prophets' immediate transference of
+their allegiance to their new head, show that on both sides it was felt
+that they had no part in the event beyond that of awe-struck beholders.
+No light streamed from it on their own future. The path they had to
+tread was still the common road into the great darkness, as solitary
+and unknown as before. The chariot of fire parted their master from the
+common experience of humanity as from their fellowship, making him an
+exception to the sad rule of death, which frowned the grimmer and more
+inexorable by contrast with his radiant translation.
+
+The very reverse is true of Christ's Ascension. In Him our nature is
+taken up to the throne of God. His Resurrection assures us that 'them
+which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him,' His passage to the
+heavens assures us that 'they who are alive and remain shall be caught
+up together with them,' and that all of both companies shall with Him
+live and reign, sharing His dominion, and moulded to His image.
+
+If we would know of what our manhood is capable, if we would rise to
+the height of the hopes which God means that we should cherish, if we
+would gain a living grasp of the power that fulfils them, we have to
+stand there, gazing on the piled cloud that sails slowly upwards, the
+pure floor for our Brother's feet. As we watch it rising with a motion
+which is rest, we have the right to think, 'Thither the Forerunner is
+for us entered.' We see there what man is meant for, what men who love
+Him attain. True, the world is still full of death and sorrow, man's
+dominion seems a futile dream and a hope that mocks, but 'we see
+Jesus,' ascended up on high, and in Him we too are 'made to sit
+together in heavenly places.' The Breaker is gone up before them. Their
+King shall pass before them, and the Lord at the head of them.'
+
+There is yet another aspect in which our Lord's Ascension bears on our
+hopes for the future, namely, as connected with His coming again. In
+that respect, too, the contrast of Elijah's translation may serve to
+emphasise the truth. Prophecy, indeed, in its latest voice, spoke of
+sending Elijah the prophet before the coming of the day of the Lord,
+and Rabbinical legends delighted to tell how he had been carried to the
+Garden of Eden, whence he would come again, in Israel's sorest need.
+But the prophecy had no thought of a personal reappearance, and the
+dreams are only dreams such as we find in the legendary history of many
+nations. As Elisha recrossed the Jordan, he bore with him only a mantle
+and a memory, not a hope.
+
+'Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same
+Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like
+manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.' How grand is the use in
+these mighty words of the name Jesus, the name that speaks of His true
+humanity, with all its weakness, limitations, and sorrow, with all its
+tenderness and brotherhood! The man who died and rose again, has gone
+up on high. He will so come as He has gone. 'So'--that is to say,
+personally, corporeally, visibly, on clouds, perhaps to that very spot,
+'and His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives.' Thus
+Scripture teaches us ever to associate together the departure and the
+coming of the Lord, and always when we meditate on His Ascension to
+prepare a place for us, to think of His real presence with us through
+the ages, and of His coming again to receive us to Himself.
+
+That parting on Olivet cannot be the end. Such a leave-taking is the
+prophecy of happy greetings and an inseparable reunion. The King has
+gone to receive a kingdom, and to return. Memory and hope coalesce, as
+we think of Him who is passed into the heavens, and the heart of the
+Church has to cherish at once the glad thought that its Head and helper
+has entered within the veil, and the still more joyous one, which
+lightens the days of separation and widowhood, that the Lord will come
+again.
+
+So let us take our share in the 'great joy' with which the disciples
+returned to Jerusalem, left like sheep in the midst of wolves as they
+were, and 'let us set our affection on things above, where Christ is,
+sitting at the right hand of God.'
+
+
+
+
+ELIJAH'S TRANSLATION AND ELISHA'S DEATHBED
+
+And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of
+Israel, and the horsemen thereof.'--2 KINGS ii. 12.
+
+'...And Joash, the King of Israel, came down unto him, and wept over
+his face, and said. O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and
+the horsemen thereof.'--2 KINGS xiii. U.
+
+
+The scenes and the speakers are strangely different in these two
+incidents. The one scene is that mysterious translation on the further
+bank of the Jordan, when a mortal was swept up to heaven in a fiery
+whirlwind, and the other is an ordinary sick chamber, where an old man
+was lying, with the life slowly ebbing out of him. The one speaker is
+the successor of the great prophet, on whom his spirit in a large
+measure fell; the other, an idolatrous king, young, headstrong, who had
+despised the latter prophet's teaching while he lived, but was now for
+the moment awed into something like seriousness and reverence by his
+death.
+
+Now the remarkable thing is that this unworthy monarch should have come
+to the dying prophet, and should have strengthened and cheered him by
+the quotation of his own words, spoken so long ago, as if he would say
+to him, 'All that thou didst mean when thou didst stand there in
+rapturous adoration, watching the ascending Elijah, is as true about
+thee, lying dying here, of a common and lingering sickness. My father,
+my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.' Seen or
+unseen, these were present. The reality was the same, though the
+appearances were so different.
+
+I We have in the first case the chariot and horsemen seen.
+
+To feel the force of the exclamation on the lips of Joash, we must try
+to make clear to ourselves what its original meaning was. What did
+Elisha intend when he stood beyond Jordan, and in wonder and awe
+exclaimed, 'The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof'?
+
+It does not seem to me that the interpretation of the words now in
+favour is at all satisfactory. It tells us that the expression is to be
+taken as in apposition with the exclamation 'My father, my father'; and
+that both the one phrase and the other mean--Elijah! Yet what a
+preposterous and strange metaphor it would be to call a man a chariot
+and pair, or a chariot and cavalry! It seems to me that the very
+statement of this explanation, in plain English, condemns it as
+untenable. It is surely less probable that Elisha in that exclamation
+was describing Elijah than that he was speaking of that wondrous
+chariot of fire and horses of fire that had come between him and his
+master, and that his exclamation was one of surprised adoration as he
+gazed with wide-opened eyes on the burning angel-hosts, and saw his
+master mysteriously able to bear that fire, ringed round by these
+flaming squadrons, possibly standing unscathed on the floor of the
+chariot, and swept with it and all the celestial pomp, by the
+whirlwind, into heaven.
+
+But why should he say 'the chariot of _Israel_'? I think we take for
+granted too readily that 'Israel' here means the nation. You will
+remember that that name was not originally that of the nation, but of
+its progenitor and founder, given to Jacob as the consequence and
+record of that mysterious wrestling by the brook. And I think we get a
+nobler signification for the words before us if, instead of applying
+the name to the nation, we apply it here to the individual. When Elijah
+and Elisha crossed Jordan they were not far from the spot where that
+name was given to Jacob, 'the supplanter,' whom discipline and
+communion with God had elevated into Israel. And they were near another
+of the sites consecrated by his history, the place where, just before
+the change of his name, the angels of God met him and 'he called the
+name of the place Mahanaim.' That means '_the two camps_,' the one,
+Jacob's defenceless company of women and children, the other, their
+celestial guards.
+
+It seems reasonable to suppose that, in all probability, a reminiscence
+of that old story of the manifestation of the armed angels of God as
+the defenders and servants of His children broke from Elisha's lips. As
+he looks upon that strange appearance of the chariot and horses of fire
+that parted him and his friend, he sees once more 'the chariot of
+Israel and the horsemen thereof,' the reappearance of the shining
+armies whose presence had of old declared that 'the angel of the Lord
+encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.' And now
+the same hosts in their immortal youth, unweakened by the ages which
+have brought earthly warriors to dust and their swords to rust, are
+flaming and flashing there in the midday sun. What was their errand,
+and why did they appear? They came, as God's messengers, to bear His
+servant to His presence. They attested the commission and devotion of
+the prophet. Their agency was needful to lift a mortal to skies not
+native to him. Strange that a body of flesh should be able to endure
+that fiery splendour! Somewhere in the course of that upward movement
+must this man, who was caught up to meet the Lord in the air, have been
+'changed.' His guards of honour were not only for tokens of his
+prophetic work, but for witnesses of the unseen world and in some sort
+pledges, suited to that stage of revelation, of life and immortality.
+
+How striking is the contrast between the translation of Elijah and the
+Ascension of Christ! He who ascended up where He was before needed no
+whirlwind, nor chariot of fire, nor extraneous power to elevate Him to
+His home. Calmly, slowly, as borne upwards by indwelling affinity with
+heaven, He floated thither with outstretched hands of blessing. The
+servant angels did not need to surround Him, but, clad no longer in
+fiery armour, but 'in white apparel,' the emblem of purity and peace,
+they stood by the disciples and comforted them with hope. Elijah was
+carried to heaven. Christ went. The angels disappeared with the prophet
+and left Elisha to grieve alone. They lingered here after Christ had
+gone, and turned tears into rainbows flashing with the hues of hope.
+
+II. We have in our second text the chariot and horsemen present though
+unseen.
+
+We are now in a position to appreciate the meaning of Joash's
+repetition to Elisha of his own words, spoken under such different
+circumstances.
+
+Elisha was by no means so great a prophet as Elijah. His work had not
+been so conspicuous, his character was not so strong, though perhaps
+more gentle. No such lofty and large influence had been granted to him
+as had been given to the fiery Tishbite to wield, nor did he leave his
+mark so deep upon the history of the times or upon the memory of
+succeeding generations. But such as it had been given him to be he had
+been. He was a continuer, not an originator. There had been a long
+period during which he appears to have lived in absolute retirement,
+exercising no prophetic functions. We never hear of him during the
+interval between the anointing of Jehu to the Israelitish monarchy and
+the time of his own death, and that period must have extended over
+nearly fifty years. After all these years of eclipse and seclusion he
+was lying dying somewhere in a corner, and the king, young but
+impressible, although, on the whole, not reliable nor good, came down
+to the prophet's home, and there, standing by the pallet of the dying
+man, repeated the words, so strangely reminiscent of a very different
+event--' My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen
+thereof!'
+
+And what does that exclamation mean? Two things. One is this, that the
+angels of the Divine Presence are with us as truly, in life, when
+unseen as if seen. So far as we know, it was only to Elisha that the
+vision had been granted of that chariot of fire and horses of fire. We
+read that at Elijah's translation on the other side of Jordan, and
+consequently at no great distance off, there stood a company of the
+sons of the prophets from Jericho to see what would happen, but we do
+not read that they did see. On the contrary, they were inclined to
+believe that Elijah had been caught up and flung away somewhere on the
+mountains, and that it was worth while to organise search-parties to go
+after him. It was only Elisha that saw, and Elijah did not know whether
+he would see or not, for he said to him, 'If thou shalt see me when I
+am taken from thee, then' thy desire shall be granted.
+
+The angels of God are visible to the eyes that are fit to see them; and
+those eyes can always see them. It does not matter whether in a miracle
+or in a common event--it does not matter whether on the stones by the
+banks of Jordan or in a close sick chamber, they are visible for those
+who, by pure hearts and holy desires, have had their vision purged from
+the intrusive vulgarities and dazzling brightnesses of this poor, petty
+present, and can therefore see beneath all the apparent the real that
+blazes behind it.
+
+The scenes at Jordan and in the death-chamber are not the only times in
+Elisha's life when we read of these chariots and horses of fire. There
+was another incident in his career in which the same phrase occurs.
+Once his servant was terrified at the sight of a host compassing the
+little city where Elisha and he were, with horses and chariots, and
+came to his master with alarm and despair, crying, 'Alas! my master,
+how shall we do?' The prophet answered with superb calmness, 'Fear not:
+for they that be with us are more than they that be with them ....
+Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened
+the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was
+full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.' They had
+always been there, though no one saw them. They were there when no one
+but Elisha saw them. They were no more there when the young man saw
+them than they had been before. They did not cease to be there when the
+film came over his eyes again, and the common round took him back to
+the trivialities of daily life.
+
+And so from the mouth of this not very devout king the prophet was
+reminded of his own ancient experiences, and invited to feel that,
+unseen or seen, the solemn forms stood 'bright-harnessed,' and strong,
+'in order serviceable,' ranged about him for his defence and blessing.
+
+And are they not round about us? If a man can but look into the
+realities of things, will he see only the work of men and of the forces
+of nature? Will there not be--far more visible as they are far more
+real than any of these--the forces of the Eternal Presence and ever
+operative Will of our Father in Heaven? We need not discuss the
+personality of angels. An angel is the embodiment of the will and
+energy of God, and we have that will and energy working for us, whether
+there are any angel persons about us or not. Scripture declares that
+there are, and that they serve us. We may be sure that if only we will
+honestly try to purge our eyes from the illusions and temptations of
+'things seen and temporal,' the mountain or the sick chamber will be to
+us equally full of the angel forms of our defenders and companions.
+
+Do we see them for ourselves; and, not less important, do we, like
+Elisha, lying there on his deathbed, help else blind men to see them,
+and make every one that comes beside us, even if he be as little
+impressible and as little devout as this king Joash was, recognise that
+in our chambers there sit, and round our lives there flutter and sing,
+sweet and strong angel wings and voices? Will anybody, looking at you,
+be constrained to feel that with and around you are the angels of God?
+
+Still further, another cognate application of these great words is that
+one which is more directly suggested by their quotation by Joash. It
+does not matter in what way the end of life comes. The reality is the
+same to all devout men; though one be swept to heaven in a whirlwind,
+and another lady slowly away in old age, or 'fall sick of the sickness
+wherewith he should die.' Each is taken to God in a chariot of fire.
+The means are of little moment, the fact remains the same, however
+diverse may be the methods of its accomplishment. The road is the same,
+the companions the same, the impelling--I was going to say the
+locomotive--power, is the same, and the goal is the same.
+
+Of Enoch we read, 'He was not, for God took him.' Of Elijah we read,
+'He went up in a whirlwind to heaven.' Of Elisha we read, 'He died and
+they buried him.' And of all three--the two who were translated that
+they should not see death, and the one who died like the rest of us--it
+is equally true that 'God took' them, and that they were taken to Him.
+So for ourselves and for our dear ones we may look forward or backward,
+to deathbeds of weariness, of lingering sickness, of long pain and
+suffering, or of swift dissolution, and piercing beneath the surface
+may see the blessed central reality and thankfully feel that Death,
+too, is God's angel, who' does His commandments, hearkening to the
+voice of God's word' when in his dark hearse he carries us hence.
+
+
+
+
+GENTLENESS SUCCEEDING STRENGTH
+
+'He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went
+back, and stood by the bank of Jordan; 14. And he took the mantle of
+Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the
+Lord God of Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they
+parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over. 15. And when the sons
+of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The
+spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and
+bowed themselves to the ground before him. 16. And they said unto him,
+Behold now, there be with thy servants fifty strong men; let them go,
+we pray thee, and seek thy master: lest peradventure the Spirit of the
+Lord hath taken him up, and cast him upon some mountain, or into some
+valley. And he said, Ye shall not send. 17. And when they urged him
+till he was ashamed, he said, Send. They sent therefore fifty men; and
+they sought three days, but found him not. 18. And when they came again
+to him, (for he tarried at Jericho,) he said unto them, Did I not say
+unto you, Go not! 19. And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold,
+I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth:
+but the water is naught, and the ground barren. 20. And he said, Bring
+me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. 21.
+And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in
+there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there
+shall not be from thence any more death or barren land. 22. So the
+waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha
+which he spake.'--2 KINGS ii. 13-22.
+
+
+The independent activity of Elisha begins with verse 13. How short the
+gap between the two prophets, and how easily filled it is! Not the
+greatest are indispensable. God lays aside one tool, but only to take
+up another. He has inexhaustible stores. The work goes on, though the
+workers change, and there is little time for mere mourning, and none
+for idle sorrow. Elisha's first miracle is almost an experiment. The
+mantle which lay at his feet had been thrown over him by Elijah when he
+was called to his service, and it was now a token that office and power
+had devolved on him. His first steps tread closely in Elijah's track;
+as those of wise and humble men, called to higher work, will mostly do.
+The repetition of the miracle by the same means, and the invocation of
+the Lord as the 'God of Elijah,'--a new name, to be set by the side of
+'the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob'--express the humility which
+seeks to shelter itself behind the example of its mighty predecessor.
+The form of the invocation as a question indicates that Elisha had not
+yet attained certainty as to his power, as not yet having proved it.
+'Where is the Lord God of Elijah?' is not the question of unbelief, but
+neither is it the voice of full confidence, which asks no such
+question, because it knows Him to be with it. It is the cry, 'Oh that
+Thou mayest be here, even with unworthy me! and art Thou not here?' The
+faith was real, though young, and clouded with some film of doubt. But,
+being real, it was answered; and it was because of Elisha's trust, not
+Elijah's mantle, that the waters parted. God will listen to a man
+pleading that ancient deeds may be repeated to-day, and, by answering
+the cry addressed to Him as the God of saints and martyrs of old, will
+embolden us to cry to Him as our very own God. We may learn from that
+first half-tentative miracle the spirit in which men should take up the
+work of those that are gone, the lowliness fitting for beginners, the
+wisdom of seeking to graft new work on the old stock, the encouragement
+from remembering the divine wonders through His servants in the past,
+and the true way to assure ourselves of our God-given power; namely, by
+attempting great things for Him, in dependence on His promise.
+
+The miracle was wrought partly for Elisha, and partly for others who
+were to acknowledge his authority. These sons of the prophets, who
+stood on the eastern bank of Jordan, had probably not been witnesses of
+the translation, even if their position commanded a view of the spot.
+Purer eyes and more kindred spirits than theirs were needed for that.
+
+But they saw Elisha returning alone, and the waters parting before him,
+and, no doubt, as he came nearer, would recognise what he bore in his
+hand--Elijah's well-known mantle. They hasten to recognise him as the
+head of the prophets, and their acknowledgment accurately expresses his
+place and work. Elijah's spirit rests on him, even though the two men
+and their careers are very different, and in some respects opposite.
+Elisha is distinctly secondary to Elijah. He is in no sense an
+originator, either of fresh revelations or of new impulses to
+obedience. He but carries on what Elijah had begun, inherits a work,
+and is Elijah's 'Timothy' and 'son in the faith.' The same Spirit was
+on him, though the form of his character and gifts was in strong
+contrast to the stormier genius of his mightier predecessor. Elisha had
+no such work as Elijah--no foot-to-foot and hand-to-hand duels with
+murderous kings or queens; no single-handed efforts to stop a nation
+from rushing down a steep place into the sea; no fiery energy; no
+bursts of despair. He moved among kings and courts as an honoured guest
+and trusted counsellor. He did not dwell apart, like Elijah, the strong
+son of the desert; but, born in the fertile valley of the Jordan, he
+lived a life 'kindly with his kind,' and his delights were with the
+sons of men. His miracles are mostly works of mercy and gentleness,
+relieving wants and sicknesses, drying tears and giving back dear ones
+to mourners. He is as complete a contrast to his stern, solitary,
+forceful predecessor, as the 'still small voice' was to the roar of the
+wind or the crackling hiss of the flames.
+
+But, nevertheless, 'there are diversities of operations, but the same
+God.' It is well to remember that one type of excellence does not
+exhaust the possibilities of goodness, nor the resources of the
+inspiring Spirit. The comparative merits of strength and gentleness
+will always be variously estimated; but God's work needs them both, and
+both may join hands as serving the same Lord in diverse ways, which are
+all needed. We should seek to widen our discernment to the extent of
+the rich variety of forms of good and of service which God gives.
+Elijah and Elisha, Paul and Timothy, Luther and Melanchthon, are all
+His servants. Well is it when the strong can recognise the power of the
+gentle, and the gentle can discern the tenderness of the strong, and
+when each is forward to say of the other, 'He worketh the work of the
+Lord, as I also do.'
+
+The search after Elijah, insisted on by the sons of the prophets, is of
+importance only as showing their low thoughts and Elisha's gentle
+spirit. He is their head, but he holds the reins loosely. Fancy anybody
+'urging' Elijah 'till he was ashamed'! The shame would very soon have
+mantled the cheek of the urger. But though, no doubt, Elisha would tell
+what had happened, these 'prophets' only think that Elijah has been
+miraculously borne somewhither, as he had been before, and seem to have
+no notion of what has really happened. How hard it is to heave heavy
+men up to any height of spiritual vision! How vulgar minds always take
+refuge in the most commonplace explanations that they can find of high
+truths! 'Gone up to heaven! Not he! He is lying, living or dead, in
+some gorge or on some hillside. Let us go and look for him!' There is
+nothing on which some people pride themselves more than upon being
+practical--which generally means prosaic, and often means blind to
+God's greatest deeds. To go scouring wady and mountain for a man who
+had been taken up into heaven was practical common sense indeed! But
+Elisha's gentleness is to be noted. He let them have their own way.
+Often that is the only plan for convincing people of their errors. And,
+when the fifty scouts come back empty-handed, all he says is a quiet
+'Did I no say unto you, Go not?' 'The servant of the Lord must not
+strive,' but 'in meekness' instruct 'those that oppose themselves'; and
+the effectual instruction is often to let them take their own course.
+
+The miracle of healing the waters is of the beneficent kind usual with
+Elisha, inaugurates his course with blessing, and typifies the healing
+power which God through him would exert on men. Jericho had been
+recently rebuilt in spite of the curse against its builders. The
+bitterness of the spring seems to have been part of the malediction;
+for men would not be so foolish as to rebuild a city which had only
+impure water to depend on. However that may be, the main lesson of the
+miracle, beyond its revelation of the spirit of gentle compassion in
+Elisha, is the symbolical one. The new cruse and the salt are emblems
+of the divine gift which cleanses the human heart. Salt is an emblem of
+purification, and its emblematic meaning prevails here over its natural
+properties; for the last thing to cure a brackish spring was to put
+salt into it. The very inadequacy, as well as inappropriateness, of the
+remedy, points the miraculous and symbolical character of the whole. A
+jar full of salt could do little to a gushing fountain. But it figured
+the cleansing power which God will bring to bear on us, if we will; and
+it taught the great truth that sin must be cleansed at the
+fountain-head in the heart, not half a mile down the stream, in the
+deeds. Put the salt in the spring, and the outflow will be sweet.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE OIL FLOWS
+
+'And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto
+her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a
+vessel more. And the oil stayed.'--2 KINGS iv. 6.
+
+
+The series of miracles ascribed to Elisha are very unlike most of the
+wonderful works of even the Old Testament, and still more unlike those
+of the New. For about a great many of them there seems to have been no
+special purpose, either doctrinal or otherwise, but simply the relief
+of trivial and transient distresses. This story, from which my text is
+taken, is one of that sort. One of the sons of the prophets had died in
+Shunem. He left a widow and two little children. The creditor,
+according to the Mosaic law, had the right, which he was about to put
+in practice, of taking the children to be bondmen. And so the
+penniless, helpless woman comes to Elisha, as a kind of
+deliverer-general from all sorts of distresses, and tells him her
+pitiful tale. He asks her what she wants him to do, and she has no
+counsel to give. Then the thing to do strikes _him._ He asks what she
+has in the house. It was a poor, bare hovel of a place. There was not
+anything in it save a pot of oil, which was all her property. He sends
+her to borrow vessels, of all sorts and sizes. He takes the pot of oil,
+and shuts the door. Then she sets the two boys fetching and carrying;
+and herself taking up the one possession that she has, in faith she
+pours; and dish after dish is filled, and still she pours; and they
+were all filled, and she kept on pouring. Then she said, 'Bring some
+more'; and the boys answered, 'There are not any more,' so then the oil
+stopped.
+
+There was no very special reason for all this. It is not at all like
+most Biblical miracles. I do not suppose it had any symbolical
+intention; but I venture to do a little gentle violence to the
+incident, and to see in the staying of the oil when no more vessels
+were brought to be filled, a lesson addressed to us all, and it is
+this: God keeps giving Himself as long as we bring that into which He
+can pour Himself. And when we stop bringing, He stops giving.
+
+Now, if I may venture to be fanciful for once, let me tell you of three
+vessels that we have to bring if we would have the oil of the Divine
+Spirit poured into us.
+
+I. The vessel of desire.
+
+God can give us a great many things that we do not wish, but He cannot
+give us His best gift, and that is Himself, unless we desire it. He
+never forces His company on any man, and if we do not wish for Him He
+cannot give us Himself, His Spirit, or the gifts of His Spirit. For
+instance, He cannot make a man wise if he does not wish to be
+instructed. He cannot make a man holy if he has no aspiration after
+holiness. He cannot save a man from his sins if the man holds on to his
+sin with both hands, like some shellfish with its claws when you try to
+drag it out of its cleft in the rock. He cannot give the oil unless we
+bring the vessels of our hearts opened by our desires.
+
+If God could He would. 'Ye have not because ye ask not.' But we are
+never to forget that God is not led to begin His giving because we
+petition Him, but that the infinitude of His stores, and the endless,
+changeless, unmotived, perfect love of His heart, make
+self-communication--I was going to use a very strong word, and I do not
+know that it is too strong--necessary to the blessedness of the blessed
+God, and, long before we ever thought of Him, or sought anything from
+Him, there was pouring out from Him all the fulness of His love: just
+as we may conceive of the sunshine raying out before the orbs that were
+to circle round it had been completely shaped, but were still diffused
+and nebulous.
+
+But, while God is always giving, our capacity to receive determines the
+degree of our individual possession of Him. Or, to put it in the
+plainest words--we have as much of God as we can take in; and the
+principal factor in settling how much we can take is--how much we wish.
+Measure the reality and intensity of desire, and you measure capacity.
+As the atmosphere rushes into every vacuum, or as the sea runs up into
+and fills every sinuosity of the shore, so wherever a heart opens, and
+the unbroken coast-line is indented, as it were, by desire, in rushes
+the tide of the divine gifts. You have God in the measure in which you
+desire Him.
+
+Only remember that that desire which brings God must be more than a
+feeble, fleeting wish. Wishing is one thing; _willing_ is quite
+another. Lazily wishing and strenuously desiring are two entirely
+different postures of mind; the former gets nothing and the latter gets
+everything, gets God, and with God all that God can bring.
+
+But the wish must not only rise to intensity and earnestness, but it
+must be steadfast. Suppose these two little boys of the widow had held
+their vessels below the spout of the oil-pot with tremulous hands,
+while they looked away at something else, sometimes keeping the vessels
+right under, and sometimes shifting them on one side, it would have
+been slow work filling the unsteadily held vessels. So it is in regard
+to receiving God's best gift. Our desires must be unwavering. A cup
+held by a shaking hand will spill its contents, or will never receive
+them. 'Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the
+Lord.' The steadfast wish is the wish that is answered.
+
+Is it not a strange indifference to our true good that we who have
+learned, as most of us have learned only too well, that in this world
+to wish is not to have, should turn away from the possibility that lies
+before us each, of passing from this disappointing world of vain
+longings into a region where we cannot wish anything that we do not
+get? There is only one thing about which it is true that, if you want,
+and as much as you want, you will have; and that thing is found when we
+turn away our wishes from the false, fleeting, and surface
+satisfactions of earth, and fasten them upon God, 'Who is able to do
+exceeding abundantly above all that we ... think.' Wish for Him, and
+you have what you have wished. Wish for anything else, and you may have
+it or you may not, but depend upon it the fish is never half as big
+when it is out of the water as it felt to be when it was tugging at the
+hook.
+
+II. Another vessel that we have to bring is the vessel of our
+expectancy.
+
+Desire is one thing; confident anticipation that the desire will be
+fulfilled is quite another. And the two do not certainly go together
+anywhere except in this one region, and there they do go, linked arm in
+arm. For whatsoever, in the highest of all regions, we wish, we have
+the right without presumption to believe that we shall receive.
+Expectation, like desire, opens the heart.
+
+There are some expectations, even in lower regions, that fulfil
+themselves. Doctors will tell you that a very large part of the
+curative power of their medicine depends upon the patient's
+anticipation of recovery. If a man expects to die when he takes to his
+bed, the chances are that he will die; and if a man expects to get
+better, Death will have a fight before it conquers him. There are
+hundreds of cases, in all departments of life, where he who sets
+himself to a task with assured persuasion that he is going to do such
+and such a thing will do it. 'Screw your courage to the sticking-place,
+and we'll not fail,' said the heroine in the tragedy; and there is a
+great truth in her fierce encouragement.
+
+All these illustrations fall far beneath the Christian aspect of the
+thought that what we expect from God we receive. That is only another
+way of putting 'According to thy faith be it unto thee.' It is exactly
+what Jesus Christ said when He promised, 'Whatsoever things ye ask when
+ye stand praying believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.'
+
+I am afraid that a great many of us often have expectations fainter
+than desires; and that we should be very much surprised if the thing
+that we ask for, in the prayers that we so often repeat by rote, were
+granted to us. You will hear men praying for holiness, for clean
+hearts, for progress in the Christian life, for a hundred other such
+blessings. They do not expect that anything is going to come in
+consequence, and they would be mightily at a loss what to do with the
+gift if it did come. The absence of expectancy in our public petitions
+is to me one of the saddest features in the Christian life of this day.
+If you expect little, you will get little; and we do expect far less
+than we ought. We cannot raise our confident expectations too high; for
+'He is able to do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we ask' as
+well as 'think.' The Apostle has set the limit of our expectations, in
+the same context, and here it is: 'That we may be filled with all the
+fulness of God.' There are two limits: one is the boundless
+illimitableness of God's perfection, and the possibilities of our
+possession of Him are not exhausted until we have reached that infinite
+completeness. But then, there is a practical, working limit for each of
+us; and that is--what do you desire? and what do you expect? God can
+give more than we can ask or think, but He cannot at the moment give
+more than we expect or desire.
+
+True, the vessels that we bring to be filled with the oil are not like
+the vessels that the fatherless boys brought. These were of a definite
+capacity; and the little cup when it was filled was filled, and there
+was an end of it. But the vessels that we bring are elastic, and widen
+out. The more that is put into them the more they can hold, so that
+there is no bound to the capacity of a heart for the reception and
+inrush of God; and there will not be a bound through all the ages of a
+growing possession of Him in eternity. But for to-day, desire and
+expectancy determine the measure of the gift.
+
+III. Lastly, one more vessel that we have to bring is obedience.
+
+'If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.' _There_
+is one case of the general principle that wishes and anticipations are
+all right and well, but unless they are backed up and verified by
+conduct, even wishes and anticipations will not bring God's gift. For
+it is possible for a man who, in his better moments of devotion, has
+some desires after a loftier range of goodness and a completer
+conformity to God than he ordinarily has, to rise from his knees and
+rush into the world, and there live in some lust, or uncleanness, or
+vice, or indulgence, or absorption in the cares of this life, in such a
+way as that desires and anticipations shall vanish. If we fill our
+vessels full, before we take them to the source of supply, with all
+manner of baser liquids, there will be no room for the oil. We may
+contradict and stifle our desires by our conduct, and by it make our
+expectations perfectly impossible to be fulfilled. Are our daily doings
+of such a nature as that the Spirit of God, which is symbolised by the
+oil, can come into our hearts; or are we quenching and grieving Him so
+that He
+
+                  'Can but listen at the gate
+                   And hear the household jar within'?
+
+Desire, Expectancy, and Obedience--these three must never be separated
+if we are to receive the gift of Himself, which God delights and waits
+to give. All spiritual possessions and powers grow by use, even as
+exercised muscles are strengthened, and unused ones tend to be
+atrophied. It is possible, by neglect of God and of the gift given to
+us, to incur the stern sentence passed on the slothful servant--'Take
+it from him.' By disobedience and negligence we choke the channel
+through which God's gifts can flow to us. So, brethren, bring these
+three vessels, and you will not go away with them empty. 'Open thy
+mouth wide, and I will fill it.'
+
+
+
+
+A MIRACLE NEEDING EFFORT
+
+'So she went, and came unto the man of God to mount Carmel. And it came
+to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off, that he said to Gehazi
+his servant, Behold, yonder is that Shunammite: 26. Run now, I pray
+thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well
+with thy husband! is it well with the child? And she answered, It is
+well. 27. And when she came to the man of God to the hill, she caught
+him by the feet: but Gehazi came near to thrust her away. And the man
+of God said, Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her: and the
+Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me. 28. Then she said, Did
+I desire a son of my lord! did I not say, Do not deceive met 29. Then
+he said to Gehazi, Gird up thy loins, and take my staff in thine hand,
+and go thy way: if thou meet any man, salute him not; and if any salute
+thee, answer him not again: and lay my staff upon the face of the
+child. 30. And the mother of the child said, As the Lord liveth, and as
+thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And he arose, and followed her.
+31. And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the face
+of the child; but there was neither voice, nor hearing. Wherefore he
+went again to meet him, and told him, saying, The child is not awaked.
+32. And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was
+dead, and laid upon his bed. 33. He went in therefore, and shut the
+door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord. 34. And he went up, and
+lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon
+his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and stretched himself upon the
+child: and the flesh of the child waxed warm. 35. Then he returned, and
+walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon
+him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.
+36. And he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called
+her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son. 37.
+Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the
+ground, and took up her son, and went out.'--2 KINGS iv. 25-37.
+
+
+The story of Elisha is almost entirely a record of his miracles, and
+the story of his miracles is almost entirely a record of deeds of
+beneficence. Exception has been taken to it on the ground of the
+strange accumulation of supernatural works, which have been said to
+make it like some mediaeval saint's legend. But why should it not be
+true that, after Elijah had proclaimed the truth, his successor's
+function was to enforce it chiefly by his acts, and to seek to draw
+Israel back to God by 'the cords of love' and the gentle compulsion of
+mercies? The careful consideration of the work of the two prophets
+makes the peculiarities of Elisha's perfectly intelligible. This story
+of the great lady at Shunem, her joy over her only child and his
+piteous death 'on her knees,' is one of the tenderest and sweetest
+pages in the history. Late won and early lost, the poor boy lies pale
+and dead on Elisha's bed at Shunem, while the mother hurries across the
+plain of Jezreel to Carmel,--a distance of some fifteen or sixteen
+miles,--where Elisha was then living, probably near the place of
+Elijah's sacrifice. This passage begins with her approach.
+
+I. Note first the meeting (verses 25-28). Somewhere on the slopes of
+Carmel, commanding a view of the plain stretching away in the blue
+distance eastward, sat the prophet. His eye was keen, though probably
+he was now old, and he recognised the lady at a distance, as she rode
+swiftly towards the mountain. He appears to have suspected that this
+unusual visit meant some calamity, and his gentle heart went out
+towards his hostess and friend. Gehazi could not get back sooner than
+she could come, but sympathy could not sit passive and watch her
+approach. So the instinctively despatched message beautifully witnesses
+the prophet's keen affection, and, as it were, the eager leap of his
+sympathy. So swift and ready to flash into act is the fellow-feeling of
+the Highest with the sorrows of us all; so should be the compassion of
+each with another. The higher in gifts or office in the kingdom a man
+is, the more is he bound to carry his sympathy in an outstretched hand.
+It is worth very little when it comes slowly. It is priceless when it
+runs to meet the mourner before she speaks.
+
+The detailed question put into Gehazi's mouth describes the circle
+within which this woman's heart moved,--her husband, her child,
+herself. If these were well, nothing could be very ill; if ill, nothing
+could be well. But the message, which came so warm from Elisha's lips,
+had been cooled on the road, and sounded formal from Gehazi. It is hard
+for selfish indifference to carry tender words without freezing them.
+The bearer of sympathy must be sympathetic. As Gehazi spoiled Elisha's
+message, so we Christians too often do our Master's, and cool it down
+to our own temperature. The fact that Gehazi had done so is suggested
+by the curt answer, 'Peace!' It is often quoted as the language of
+resignation, but it seems much rather to be evasion of the question,
+and that because her sorrow shrank from unveiling itself to the
+questioner. Nothing makes grief dumb so surely as prying and yet
+indifferent intrusion. A tenderer hand than Gehazi's is needed to
+unlock the sad secret of that burdened breast.
+
+It was perhaps partly pique at her silencing him, and partly mere
+unfeeling attention to 'propriety,' which made the servant wish to
+check the convulsive grasp of the feet, which the master allowed.
+Underlings are more careful of what they suppose to be their superior's
+dignity than he is. Much is permitted to love and sorrow, by a prophet,
+which would be repressed by smaller men. 'Her soul is bitter within
+her' pardons much, and only unfeeling critics will be punctilious in
+dealing with even the extravagances of grief. But Elisha had another
+reason than pity. He wished to know her pain, and therefore he let her
+cling to his feet; for only there would she find her tongue. Does there
+not shine through the figure of the gentle prophet the image of the
+gentler Christ, who will not have the poorest and foulest spurned from
+His feet, though it be 'a woman who was a sinner,' and lets us come as
+close to Him as we will, even to hide our faces on His breast, that we
+may pour out all our sorrows and sins to Him?
+
+The limitations of the prophet's knowledge he frankly owns. How much
+better would it have been for the Church if its teachers had been more
+willing to copy his modesty, and said about a great many things, 'The
+Lord hath hid it from me'!
+
+The mother's answer is indeed the cry of a 'bitter' heart. Its abrupt
+questions and its reticence as to the child's death are pathetically
+true to nature, and sound yet across all these centuries as if the
+bitter cry were for a grief of to-day. 'Did I desire a son?' She
+upbraids Elisha and Elisha's God for having forced on her an unasked
+blessing. 'Did I not say, Do not deceive me?' She did (verse 16); and
+she upbraids Elisha again for a worse deceit than she had meant then,
+by mocking her with a gift which was wrenched from her hands so
+suddenly and soon. How many a sad heart is to-day tempted to raise this
+cry of anguish! And how patient is Elisha with wild words, and how he
+discerns, beneath the apparent rough reproach, the misery which it
+implies and the petition which it veils! Elisha's Lord is no less
+tender in His judgment of our hasty, whirlwind words, when our hearts
+are sore; and if only we speak them to Him and cling to His feet, He
+translates them into the petitions which they mean, and is swift to
+answer the meaning and pass by the sound of our bitter cry.
+
+II. We note the ineffectual experiment of the staff (verses 29-31). The
+supposition that Gehazi was sent in such haste with the hope that the
+touch of the staff might bring back life, is dismissed as 'impossible'
+by most commentators, who have therefore some difficulty in saying what
+he was sent for. Some of the Rabbis answered, 'To prevent
+putrefaction,' which would set in soon on that harvest day. Others say
+that the intention was to 'prevent more life escaping from him.' But
+'dead' is not usually supposed to be an adjective admitting of
+comparison. Others find the reason in the wish to deliver Israel from
+the superstitious veneration of such things as the staff, by showing
+that it was powerless. But verse 31 plainly implies that the result of
+Gehazi's attempt was not what had been expected. Why need there be any
+hesitation in taking the natural meaning, and supposing that Elisha
+sent his servant quickly, 'if peradventure' the touch of his staff
+might suffice, and followed in person, because he did not know whether
+it would. There is nothing unworthy of a prophet who had just confessed
+his ignorance in the supposition. His unobtrusive spirit delighted to
+hide its power behind material vehicles, as is seen in most of his
+miracles; and, if he remembered how he himself, in his early days, had
+parted the waters with his master's cloak, he might think it possible
+that his servant should work a miracle with his staff.
+
+The Shunemite quotes his own words on that far-off day; and perhaps she
+was reminded of them by perceiving the analogy of the two incidents.
+But her clinging to Elisha shows her doubt of the success of the
+attempt; and she was right. Why did the staff fail? Perhaps because of
+its bearer. Gehazi always appears unfavourably, and Elisha's staff
+loses its power in such hands. The mightiest instruments are weak when
+selfishness and coldness wield them. An unworthy minister can make the
+Gospel itself impotent. It is an awful thing to carry 'the rod of Thy
+strength' and to hinder its exerting its energy. But possibly the
+non-success of the attempt was meant to teach Elisha and us that
+miracles of life-giving are not to be wrought so easily, but need the
+effort of the prophet himself. We cannot delegate the work of God, and
+no sending of others will do instead of going ourselves. Such things
+are not achieved without much personal toil, pains, and self-sacrifice.
+
+III. So we come to the last step, the communication of life (verses
+32-37). It was noon when the child died. The mother's journey would
+take three or four hours, and the return at least as much. It would
+then be dark when the two reached her desolate home. She had laid the
+boy on Elisha's bed, as if even that brought her some comfort. It is
+difficult to say whether 'them twain' (verse 33) means him and the
+mother, or him and the child; but the expression of the next verse,
+'went up,' suggests that the prayer with shut door was in the lower
+part of the house, and that the mother's cry was joined to the
+prophet's petitions. Such prayer is the true preparation for such a
+miracle. Beautiful consideration, born of sympathy, led him to shut out
+curious onlookers, and then to go up alone to the little chamber where
+that pale, tiny corpse lay. No eye but a mother's could have seen what
+followed without profanation; and a mother's heart would have been torn
+by hopes and fears if she had seen.
+
+The actual miracle is remarkable for two peculiarities--the effort
+required and the slowness of the process. Of course, there is a
+profound and beautiful use to be made of the prophet's action in laying
+himself upon the dead child, mouth to mouth, and hand to hand, if we
+regard it as symbolic of that closeness of approach to our nature, dead
+in sins, which the Lord of life makes in His incarnation and in His
+continual drawing near. It is His own life which Jesus imparts, and it
+is imparted because He comes near and touches us. It is the warmth of
+His own heart which passes into those who live by derivation of life
+from Him. And Elisha may well stand as symbol of Jesus in this miracle.
+But besides that use of the narrative, which is no mere fanciful
+playing with it, we should also note the difference between the prophet
+and Christ in their miracles. Jesus raises the dead by His bare word.
+His expressed will is all-sufficient. Elisha prays, and then puts forth
+somewhat prolonged efforts, from which at first there is no effect, and
+which drain him of force, so that he is obliged to pause and leave the
+chamber, and gather himself together for a renewal of them. The ease of
+the one sets the difficulty of the other in a strong light. And the
+life which came back with a rush, in full stream, at Christ's bidding,
+comes only by degrees at Elisha's prayer and work. The one worker is
+the Lord of life, who speaks and it is done; the other is but the
+channel of power, and the appearance of effort and gradualness in
+result is owing to the narrowness of the channel, not to the inadequacy
+of the power.
+
+In all Elisha's gentleness and lowliness there is yet a certain dignity
+as God's prophet; and it was not fitting that he should come from the
+scene of such a miracle with the glow of it upon him, to seek for the
+mother. So he summons her by Gehazi, and then, with beautiful delicacy,
+leaves her to go alone into the chamber. None are to see the transports
+of her joy, not even the author of it. How beautiful, too, are the
+quiet words, 'Take up thy son'! She has no words; but, for all answer,
+comes close to him (there is no 'in' in verse 37), and once again, but
+with what different feelings, clasps his feet. Not even Gehazi, or any
+other stickler for propriety, has the heart to thrust her back this
+time. The story draws a curtain over that meeting in the prophet's
+chamber. Sad hearts who have vainly longed for such a moment, can fancy
+the rapture. But the day will come, not here, but in the upper chamber,
+when parted ones shall clasp each other again; and many a mourner shall
+hear Jesus say from the throne what He once said from the Cross,
+'Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother.'
+
+
+
+
+NAAMAN'S WRATH
+
+'And Elisha sent a messenger unto Naaman, saying, Go and wash in Jordan
+seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be
+clean. 11. But Naaman was wroth, and went away.'--2 KINGS v. 10,11.
+
+
+These two figures are significant of much beyond themselves. Elisha the
+prophet is the bearer of a divine cure. Naaman, the great Syrian noble,
+is stricken with the disease that throughout the Old Testament is
+treated as a parable of sin and death. He was the commander-in-chief of
+the army of Damascus, high in favour at Ben-hadad's court; his
+reputation and renown were on every tongue, _but_ he was a leper. There
+is a 'but' in every fortune, as there is a 'but' in every character.
+
+So he comes to the prophet's humble home in Samaria, and we find him
+waiting, a suppliant at the gate, with his cavalcade of attendants, and
+a present worth many thousands of pounds in our English money.
+
+How does the prophet receive his distinguished visitor? In all the rest
+of his actions we find Elisha gentle, accessible, forgetful of his
+dignity. Here his conduct would be discourteous if there were not a
+reason for it. He is reserved, unsympathetic, keeps the great man at
+the staff-end, will not even come out to receive him as common courtesy
+might have suggested; sends him a curt message of direction, with not a
+word more than was necessary.
+
+And then, naturally enough, the hot soldier begins to explode. His
+pride is touched; he has not been received with due deference. If the
+prophet would have come out and chanted incantations over him, and made
+mystical motions of his hands above the shining patches of his leprous
+skin, he could have believed in the cure. But there was nothing in the
+injunction given for his superstition to lay hold of. His patriotic
+susceptibilities are roused. If he is to be cleansed by bathing, are
+not the crystal streams of his own city, the glory of Damascus, better
+than the turbid and muddy Jordan that belongs to Israel? So he flounced
+away, and would have sacrificed his hope of cure to his passion if his
+servants had not brought him to common-sense by their cool
+remonstrance. He would have done any great thing which he had been set
+to do; he had already done a great thing in taking the long journey,
+and being ready to expend all that vast amount of treasure, and so
+surely there need be no difficulty in his complying, were it only as an
+experiment, with the very simple and easy terms which the prophet had
+enjoined.
+
+Now, all these points may be so put as to suggest for us
+characteristics of that gospel which is God's cure for our leprosy. And
+the whole story shows us as in a glass what human nature would like the
+gospel to be, and how we sick men quarrel with our physic, and stumble
+at those very characteristics of the gospel which are its main glory
+and the secret of its power. My only purpose in this sermon is to bring
+out two or three of these as lying on the surface of the story before
+us.
+
+I. First, then, God's cure puts us all on one level.
+
+Naaman wished to be treated like a great man that happened to be a
+leper; Elisha treated him like a leper that happened to be a great man.
+'I thought, he will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the
+name of the Lord his God.' The whole question about his treatment turns
+on this, Whether is the important thing his disease or his dignity? He
+thought it was his dignity, the prophet thought it was his disease. And
+so he served him as he would have served any one else that in similar
+circumstances, and for a like necessity, had come to him.
+
+And now, if you will generalise that, it just comes to this--that
+Christianity brushes aside all the surface differences of men, and goes
+in its treatment of them straight to the central likenesses, the things
+which, in all mankind, are identical. There are the same wants, the
+same sorrows, the same necessity for the same cleansing beneath the
+queen's robes and the peer's ermine, the workman's jacket and the
+beggar's rags.
+
+Whatever differences of culture, of station, of idiosyncrasy there may
+be, these are but surface and accidental. We are all alike in this,
+that we 'have sinned, and come short of the glory of God'; and our
+Great Physician, in His great remedy, insists upon treating us all as
+patients, and not as this, that, or the other, kind of patients. The
+cholera, when it lays hold of ladies and gentlemen, deals with them in
+precisely the same fashion that it does when it lays hold of waifs on
+the dunghill; and a wise doctor will treat the Prince of Wales just as
+he will treat the Prince of Wales's stable-boy. Christianity has
+nothing to say, in the first place, to the accidents that separate us
+one from the other, but insists on looking at us all as standing on the
+one level and partaking of the one characteristic. We may be wise or
+foolish, we may be learned or ignorant, we may be rich or poor, we may
+be high or low, we may be barbarian or civilised, but we are all
+sinners. The leprosy runs through us all, according to the diagnosis of
+Christianity, and our Elisha deals with Naaman as he deals with the
+poorest footboy in Naaman's cavalcade who is afflicted with the same
+disease.
+
+Now that rubs against our self-importance; a great many of us would be
+quite willing to go to heaven, but we do not like to go in a common
+caravan. We want to have a compartment to ourselves, and to travel in a
+manner becoming our position. We are quite willing to be healed, but we
+would like to be healed with due deference. You are an educated man, a
+student; you do not like to take the same place as the most unlettered,
+and to feel that the common fact of sin puts you, in a very solemn
+respect, upon the level of these narrow foreheads and unlettered
+people. And so some of you turn away because Christianity, with such
+impartiality and persistency, insists upon the identity of the fact of
+sin in us all, and passes by the little diversities on which we plume
+ourselves, and which part us the one from the other. Dear brethren, I
+am sure that some of my audience have been kept away from the gospel by
+this humbling characteristic of it, that at the very beginning it
+insists on bringing us all into the one category; and I venture to ask
+you to ponder with yourselves this question, Is it not wise, is it not
+necessary that the physician should look only at the disease and think
+nothing of all the other facts of the patient's character or life?
+Surely, surely, it is a fact that we are transgressors, and surely it
+is a fact that if we be transgressors that is the most important thing
+about us--far more important than all these diversities of which I have
+been speaking. They are skin-deep, this is the central truth, that we
+have souls which ought to stand in a living relation of glad obedience
+to our Father in heaven; and which, alas! do stand in an attitude often
+of sulky alienation, often of indifference, and not seldom of
+rebellion. If so, then it is both wise and kind to deal with that
+solemn fact first. In wisdom and in mercy Christianity deals with all
+men as sinners, needing chiefly to be healed of that disease. 'The
+Scripture hath concluded all under sin'--shut up the whole race as in a
+great chamber, that so cleansing and forgiveness might reach them all.
+They are gathered together as patients in a hospital are gathered, that
+their sickness may be medicined and their wounds dressed.
+
+For this impartiality of the gospel, putting us all on one level, and
+its determination to deal with us all as sinners, is but the other side
+of, and the preparation for, that blessed universality of a sacrifice
+for all, and a gospel for the whole world. Do not quarrel with your
+physic because the Physician insists upon dealing with you as sick men.
+
+II. Then take another of the thoughts that come out of the incident
+before us. God's cure puts the messengers of the cure well away in the
+background.
+
+Naaman, heathen-like, wanted something sensuous for his confidence in
+the prophet's cure to lay hold upon. If the prophet would only have
+come out, and done like the sorcerers and magic-workers of whom he had
+had experience; if he would have come weaving mystical incantations,
+and calling upon the God whom he worshipped, but whom Naaman did not,
+and making passes with his hands over the leprous places--then there
+would have been something for his sense to build upon, and he would
+have been ready to believe in the prophet's power to cure. But that was
+the very thing which the prophet did not want him to believe in. Elisha
+desired to conceal himself, and to make God's power prominent. He
+wished to cure Naaman's soul of the leprosy of idolatry as well as to
+cure his body; and we see, in the sequel of the story, that the very
+simplicity of the means enjoined and the absence of any human agency,
+which at first staggered the sensuous nature and offended the pride of
+Naaman, at last led him to see and confess that there was no God in all
+the earth but in Israel. Therefore the prophet keeps in the background.
+His part is not to cure, but to bring God's cure. He is only a voice.
+He brings the sick man and God's prescription face to face, and there
+leaves him. Naaman would have liked to force him into the place of a
+magician, in whom miracle-working power resided. Elisha will only take
+the place of a herald who proclaims how God's power may be brought to
+heal. So men have always sought to turn the messengers of God's cure
+into miracle-workers. Making the ministers of God's word into priests
+who by external acts convey grace and forgiveness, is a superstition
+that has its roots deep in human nature. It is not that the priests
+have made themselves so much as that the people have made the priests.
+Here is an instance in a rude form of the tendency which has been at
+work in all generations, and has been the corruption of Christianity
+from the beginning, and is doing mischief every day--the tendency to
+place one's confidence in a man who is supposed to be, in some
+mysterious manner, the bearer of a grace that will cure and cleanse.
+And the prophet's position in our story brings out very clearly the
+position which all Christian ministers hold. They are nothing but
+heralds, their personality disappears, they are merely a voice. All
+that they have to do is to bring men into contact with God's own word
+of command and promise, and then to vanish.
+
+Christianity has no 'priests,' Christianity has no 'sacraments.'
+Christianity has no external rites which bring grace or help except in
+so far as by their aid the soul is brought into contact with the truth,
+and by meditation and faith is thus made capable of receiving more of
+Christ's Spirit. Our only commission is to bring to you God's message
+of how you may be healed. When we have said, 'Wash, and be clean,' as
+plainly, earnestly, and lovingly as we can, we have done all our
+appointed office. We are heralds, and nothing more. Our business is to
+preach, not to do rites, or minister sacraments. Our business is to
+preach, not to argue. We are neither priests nor professors, but
+preachers. We have to deliver the message given to us faithfully. We
+have to ring out the proclamation loudly. The virtue of a town crier is
+that he make people hear and understand. The virtue of a messenger is
+that he repeats precisely what he was told. And a Christian minister
+has to lift up his voice and not be afraid, to see to it that his
+speech be plain, and that it do not overlay the message with fripperies
+of ornament, or affectations, or personalities, and to plead earnestly
+and lovingly with men to come to the divine Healer. John Baptist's
+description of himself is true of them. With rare self-abnegation, he
+would only reply to the question, 'Who art thou?' with 'I am a voice.'
+His personality was nothing. His message was all. A musical string
+cannot be seen as it vibrates. So the man should be lost in his
+proclamation. We are heralds and nothing more, and the more we keep in
+the background and the less our hearers depend on us, the better. If
+you want priests who will 'call on the name of their God, and wave
+their hands over the place,' and convey grace and healing to you by
+anything that they do for or to you, you will have to go beyond the
+limits of New Testament Christianity to find them. So men quarrel with
+their medicine because their cure is purely a spiritual process,
+depending on spiritual forces, and sense cries out for sacred rites and
+persons to be the channels of God's healing.
+
+III. And now, lastly, God's cure wants nothing from you but to take it.
+
+Naaman's servants were quite right: 'My father! If the prophet had bid
+thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?' Yes! Of
+course he would, and the greater the better. Men will stand, as Indian
+fakirs do, with their arms above their heads until they stiffen there.
+They will perch themselves upon pillars, like Simeon Stylites, for
+years, till the birds build their nests in their hair: they will
+measure all the distance from Cape Comorin to Juggernaut's temple with
+their bodies along the dusty road. They will give the fruit of their
+body for the sin of their soul. They will wear hair shirts and scourge
+themselves. They will fast and deny themselves. They will build
+cathedrals and endow churches. They will do as many of you do, labour
+by fits and starts all through your lives at the endless task of making
+yourselves ready for heaven, and winning it by obedience and by
+righteousness. They will do all these things and do them gladly, rather
+than listen to the humbling message that says, 'You do not need to do
+anything--wash!' Is it your washing, or the water, that will clean you?
+Wash and be clean! Ah, my brother! Naaman's cleansing was only a test
+of his obedience, and a token that it was God who cleansed him. There
+was no power in Jordan's waters to take away the taint of leprosy. Our
+cleansing is in that blood of Jesus Christ that has the power to take
+away all sin, and to make the foulest amongst us pure and clean.
+
+But the two commandments--that of the symbol in my text, that of the
+reality in the Christian gospel--are alike in this respect, that both
+the one and the other are a confession that the man himself has no part
+in his own cleansing. And so Naamans, in all generations, who were
+eager to do some great thing, have stumbled, and turned away from that
+gospel which says, 'It is finished!' 'Not by works of righteousness
+which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us.' Dear brother, you
+can do nothing. You do not need to do anything. It is a hard pill for
+my pride to swallow, to be indebted to absolute mercy, which I have
+done nothing to bring, for all my hope, but it is a position that we
+have to take. Hard to take for all of us, very hard for you who have
+never looked in the face the solemn fact of your own sinfulness, and
+pondered upon the consequences of that; but most blessed if only you
+will open your eyes to see that the stern refusal to accept anything
+from us as working out our salvation is but the other side of the great
+truth that Christ's death is all-sufficient, and that in Him the
+foulest may be clean.
+
+                'Nothing in my hand I bring.'
+
+If you bring anything you cannot grasp the Cross. Do not try to eke out
+Christ's work with yours; do not build upon penitence, or feelings, or
+faith, or anything, but build only upon this: 'When I had nothing to
+pay He frankly forgave me all.' And build upon this: 'Christ alone has
+died for me'; and Christ alone is all-sufficient. 'Wash and be clean';
+accept and possess; believe and live!
+
+
+
+
+NAAMAN'S IMPERFECT FAITH
+
+'And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came
+and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no
+God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a
+blessing of thy servant. 16. But he said, As the Lord liveth, before
+whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it; but he
+refused. 17. And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be
+given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will
+henceforth offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other gods,
+but unto the Lord. 18. In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that
+when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he
+leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow
+down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this
+thing. 19. And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a
+little way. 20. But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said,
+Behold, my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at
+his hands that which he brought: but, as the Lord liveth, I will run
+after him, and take somewhat of him. 21. So Gehazi followed after
+Naaman: and when Naaman saw him running after him, he lighted down from
+the chariot to meet him, and said, Is all well? 22. And he said, All is
+well. My master hath sent me, saying, Behold, even now there be come to
+me from mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets: give
+them, I pray thee, a talent of silver, and two charges of garments. 23.
+And Naaman said, Be content, take two talents. And he urged him, and
+bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of garments
+and laid them upon two of his servants; and they bare them before him.
+24. And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand, and
+bestowed them in the house: and he let the men go, and they departed.
+25. But he went in, and stood before his master. And Elisha said unto
+him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi? And he said, Thy servant went no
+whither. 26. And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee, when
+the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to
+receive money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards,
+and sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants? 27. 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. 15-27.
+
+Like the Samaritan leper healed by Jesus, Naaman came back to give
+glory to God. Samaria was quite out of his road to Damascus, but
+benefit melted his heart, and the pride, which had been indignant that
+the prophet did not come out to him, faded before thankfulness, which
+impelled him to go to the prophet. God's gifts should humble, and
+gratitude is not afraid to stoop. Elisha would not see Naaman before,
+for he needed to be taught; but he gladly welcomes him into his
+presence now, for he has learned his lesson. Sometimes the best way to
+attract is to repel, and the true servant of God consults not his own
+dignity, but others' good, whichever he does.
+
+I. The first point is the offer and refusal of the gift. The benefited
+is liberal and the benefactor disinterested. Naaman was a convert to
+pure monotheism. His avowal is clear and full. But what a miserable
+conclusion he draws with that 'therefore'! He should have said,
+'Therefore I come to trust under the shadow of His wings.' But he is
+not ready to give himself, and, like some of the rest of us, thinks to
+compound by giving money. When the outward giving of goods is token of
+inward surrender of self, it is accepted. When it is a substitute for
+that, it is rejected. No doubt, too, Naaman thought that Elisha was,
+like the sorcerers of heathenism, very accessible to gifts; and if he
+had come to believe in Elisha's God, he had yet to learn the
+loving-kindness of the God in whom he had come to believe. He had to
+learn next that 'the gift of God' was not 'purchased with money' and
+the prophet's acceptance of his present would have dimmed Elisha's own
+character, and that of his God, in the newly opened eyes of Naaman.
+
+Elisha's answer begins with the solemn adjuration which we first hear
+from Elijah. In its use here, it not only declares the unalterable
+determination of Elisha, but reveals its grounds. To a man who feels
+ever the burning consciousness that he is in the presence of God, all
+earthly good dwindles into nothing. How should talents of silver and
+gold, and changes of raiment, have worth in eyes before which that
+awful, blessed vision flames? A candle shows black against the sun. If
+we walk all the day in the light of God's countenance, we shall not see
+much brightness to dazzle us in the pale and borrowed lights of earth.
+The vivid realisation of God in our daily lives is the true shield
+against the enticements of the world. Further, the consciousness of
+being God's servant, which is implied in the expression 'before whom I
+stand,' makes a man shrink from receiving wages from men. 'To his own
+Master he standeth or falleth,' and will be scrupulously careful that
+no taint of apparent self-seeking shall spoil his service, in the eyes
+of men or in the judgment of the 'great Taskmaster.' Elisha felt that
+the honour of his order, and, in some sense, of his God, in the eyes of
+this half-convert, depended on his own perfect and transparent
+disinterestedness. Therefore, although he made no scruple of taking the
+Shunemite's gifts, and probably lived on similar offerings, he
+steadfastly refused the enormous sum proffered by Naaman. 'The labourer
+is worthy of his hire,' but if accepting it is likely to make people
+think that he did his work for the sake of it, he must refuse it. A
+hireling is not a man who is paid for his work, but one who works for
+the sake of the pay. If once a professed servant of God falls under
+reasonable suspicion of doing that, his power for good is ended, as it
+should be.
+
+II. The next point to notice is the alloy in the gold, or the
+imperfection of Naaman's new convictions. He had been cured of his
+leprosy at once, but the cure of his soul had to be more gradual. It is
+unreasonable to expect clear sight, with the power of rightly
+estimating magnitudes, from a man seeing for the first time. But though
+Naaman's shortcomings are very natural and excusable, they are plainly
+shortcomings. Note the two forms which they take,--superstition and
+selfish compromise. What good would a couple of loads of soil be, and
+could he not have taken that from the roadside without leave? The
+connection between the two halves of verse 17 makes his object plain.
+He wished the earth 'for' he would not sacrifice but to Jehovah. That
+is, he meant to use it as the foundation of an altar, as if only some
+of the very ground on which Jehovah had manifested Himself was sacred
+enough for such a purpose. He did not, indeed, think of 'the Lord' as a
+local deity of Israel, as his ample confession of faith in verse 15
+proves; but neither had he reached the point of feeling that the Being
+worshipped makes the altar sacred. No wonder that he did not unlearn in
+an hour his whole way of thinking of religion! The reliance on
+externals is too natural to us all, even with all our training in a
+better faith, to allow of our wondering at or severely blaming him. A
+sackful of earth from Palestine has been supposed to make a whole
+graveyard a 'Campo Santo'; and, no doubt, there are many good people in
+England who have carried home bottles of Jordan water for christenings.
+Does not the very name of 'the Holy Land' witness to the survival of
+Naaman's sentimental error?
+
+The other tarnish on the clear mirror was of a graver kind. Notice that
+he does not ask Elisha's sanction to his intended compromise, but
+simply announces his intention, and hopes for forgiveness. It looks ill
+when a man, in the first fervour of adopting a new faith, is casting
+about for ways to reconcile it with the public profession of his old
+abandoned one. We should have thought better of Naaman's monotheism, if
+he had not coupled his avowal of it, where it was safe to be honest,
+with the announcement that he did not intend to stand by his avowal
+when it was risky. It would have required huge courage to have gone
+back to Damascus and denied Rimmon; and our censure must be lenient,
+but decided.
+
+Naaman was the first preacher of a doctrine of compromise, which has
+found eminent defenders and practisers, in our own and other times. To
+separate the official from the man, and to allow the one to profess in
+public a creed which the other disavows in private, is rank immorality,
+whoever does or advocates it. The motive in this case was, perhaps, not
+so much cowardice as selfish unwillingness to forfeit position and
+favour at court. He wants to keep all the good things he has got; and
+he tries to blind his conscience by representing the small compliance
+of bowing as almost forced on him by the grasp of the bowing king, who
+leaned on his hand. But was it necessary that he should be the king's
+favourite? A deeper faith would have said, 'Perish court favour and
+everything that hinders me from making known whose I am.' But Naaman is
+an early example of the family of 'Facing-both-ways,' and of trying to
+'make the best of both worlds.' But his sophistication of conscience
+will not do, and his own dissatisfaction with his excuse peeps out
+plainly in his petition that he may be forgiven. If his act needed
+forgiveness, it should not have been done, nor thus calmly announced.
+It is vain to ask forgiveness beforehand for known sin about to be
+committed.
+
+Elisha is not asked for his sanction, and he neither gives nor refuses
+it. He dismissed Naaman with cold dignity, in the ordinary conventional
+form of leave-taking. His silence indicated at least the absence of
+hearty approval, and probably he was silent to Naaman because, as he
+said about the Shunemite's trouble, the Lord had been silent to him,
+and he had no authoritative decision to give. Let us hope that Naaman's
+faith grew and stiffened before the time of trial came, and that he did
+not lie to God in the house of Rimmon. Let us take the warning that we
+are to publish on the housetops what we hear in the ear, and that, if
+in anything we should be punctiliously sincere, it is in the profession
+of our faith.
+
+III. The last point is Gehazi's avarice, and what he got by it. How
+differently the same sight affected the man who lived near God and the
+one who lived by sense! Elisha had no desires stirred by the wealth in
+Naaman's train. Gehazi's mouth watered after it. Regulate desires and
+you rule conduct. The true regulation of desires is found in communion
+with God. Gehazi had a sordid soul, like Judas; and, like the traitor
+Apostle, he was untouched by contact with goodness and unworldliness.
+Perhaps the parallel might be carried farther, and both were moved with
+coarse contempt for their master's silly indifference to earthly good.
+That feeling speaks in Gehazi's soliloquy. He evidently thought the
+prophet a fool for having let 'this Syrian' off so easily. He was fair
+game, and he had brought the wealth on purpose to leave it. Profanity
+speaks in uttering a solemn oath on such an occasion. The putting side
+by side of 'the Lord liveth' and 'I will run after him' would be
+ludicrous if it were not horrible. How much profanity may live close
+beside a prophet, and learn nothing from him but a holy name to sully
+in an oath!
+
+The after part of the story suggests that Naaman was out of sight of
+the city before he saw Gehazi coming after him. The cunning liar timed
+his arrival well. The courtesy of Naaman in lighting down from his
+chariot to receive the prophet's servant shows how real a change had
+been wrought upon him, even though there were imperfections in him.
+Gehazi's story is well hung together, and has plenty of 'local colour'
+to make it probable. Such glib ingenuity in lying augurs long practice
+in the art. If he had been content with a small fee, he needed only to
+have told the truth; but his story was required to put a fair face on
+the amount of his request. And in what an amiable light it sets Elisha!
+He would not take for himself, but he has nothing to give to the two
+imaginary scholars, who have come from some of the schools of the
+prophets in the hill-country of Ephraim, thirsting for instruction. How
+sweet the picture, and what a hard heart that could refuse the request!
+Truly said Paul, 'The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.'
+Any sin may come from it, and be done to gratify it. 'Honestly if you
+can, but get it,' was Gehazi's principle, as it is that of many a man
+in the Christian Churches of this day. Greed of gain is a sin that
+seldom keeps house alone. Naaman no doubt was glad to give, both
+because he was grateful, and because, like most people in high
+positions, he was galled by the sense of obligation to a man beneath
+him in rank. So back went Gehazi, with the two Syrian slaves carrying
+his baggage for him, and he chuckling at his lucky stroke, and
+pleasantly imagining how to spend his wealth.
+
+'The tower' in verse 24 is more correctly 'the hill,' and it was
+probably there where the little group would come in sight of Elisha's
+house. So Gehazi gets rid of the porters before they could be seen or
+speak to any one, and manages his load for a little way himself,
+carefully hides it in the house, and, seeing the men safely off,
+appears obsequious and innocent before Elisha. The prophet's gift of
+supernatural knowledge was intermittent, as witness his ignorance of
+the Shunemite's sorrow; but Gehazi must have known its occasional
+action, and we can fancy that his heart sank at the ominous question,
+so curt in the original, and conveying so clearly the prophet's
+knowledge that he had been away from the house: 'Whence, Gehazi?' One
+lie needs another to cover it, and every sin is likely to beget a
+successor. So, with some tremor, but without hesitation, he tries to
+hide his tracks. Did not Elisha's eye pierce the wretched hypocrite as
+with a dart? and did not his voice ring like a judgment trumpet, as he
+confounded the silent sinner with the conviction that the prophet
+himself had been at the spot, though his body had remained in the
+house? So, at last, will men be reduced to stony dumbness, when they
+discover that an Eye which can see deeper than Elisha's has been gazing
+on all their secret sins. The question, 'Is this a time to receive?'
+etc., suggests the special reasons, in Naaman's new faith, for
+conspicuous disregard of wealth, in order that he might thereby learn
+the free love of Elisha's God and of Jehovah's servant, both of which
+had been tarnished by Gehazi's ill-omened greed. The long enumeration
+following on 'garments' includes, no doubt, the things that Gehazi had
+solaced his return with the thought of buying, and so adds another
+proof that his heart was turned inside out before the prophet.
+
+His punishment is severe; but his sin was great. The leprosy was a
+fitting punishment, both because it had been Naaman's, from which
+obedient reliance on God had set him free, and because of its
+symbolical meaning, as the type of sin. Gehazi got his coveted money,
+but he got something else along with it, which he did not bargain for,
+and which took all the sweetness out of it. That is always the case.
+'Ill-gotten gear never prospers'; and, if a man has set his heart on
+worldly good, he may succeed in amassing a fortune, but the leprosy
+will cleave to him, and his soul will be all crusted and foul with that
+living death. How many successful men, perhaps high in reputation in
+the Church as in the world, would stand 'lepers as white as snow,' if
+we had God's eyes to see them with!
+
+
+
+
+SIGHT AND BLINDNESS
+
+'Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with
+his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. 9. And
+the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that them
+pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down. 10. And
+the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and
+warned him of, and saved himself there, not once nor twice. 11.
+Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this
+thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not shew
+me which of us is for the king of Israel? 12. And one of his servants
+said, None, my Lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel,
+telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy
+bedchamber. 13. And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send
+and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.
+14. Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host:
+and they came by night, and compassed the city about. 15. And when the
+servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an
+host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant
+said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? 16. And he answered,
+Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with
+them. 17. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his
+eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man;
+and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots
+of fire round about Elisha. 18. And when they came down to him, Elisha
+prayed unto the Lord, and said, Smite this people, I pray Thee, with
+blindness. And He smote them with blindness according to the word of
+Elisha.'--2 KINGS vi 8-18.
+
+
+The revelation of the angel guard around Elisha is the important part
+of this incident, but the preliminaries to it may yield some
+instruction. The first point to be noted is the friendly relations
+between the king and the prophet. The king was probably Joram, who had
+given up Baal worship, though still retaining the calves at Bethel and
+Dan (2 Kings iii 2). The whole tone of things is changed from the
+stormy days of Elijah. The prophet is frequently an inhabitant of the
+capital, and a trusted counsellor. No doubt much of this improvement
+was owing to Elijah's undaunted denunciation, but much, too, was due to
+Elisha's gentle persuasion. We are often tempted to do injustice to the
+sterner predecessors when we see how the gentler ways of their
+followers seem to accomplish more than theirs did. Unless winter storms
+had come first, spring sunshine would draw forth few flowers. All
+honour to the heroes who begin the fight, and do not see the victory.
+
+The Syrian king's way of warfare was not by a regular continued
+invasion, but by dashes across the border on undefended places; and
+time after time he found himself out in his calculations, and troops
+enough to beat him off massed where he meant to strike. No wonder that
+he suspected treachery. The prompt answer of his servants implies that
+Elisha's intervention was well known by them, and measures the
+reputation in which he stood. Let no one suppose that thwarting Syria
+was an unworthy use of a supernatural gift. The preservation of Israel
+and the revelation of God were worthy ends, and all that is accessory
+to a worthy end is worthy. It is foolish to call anything a trifle
+which serves a great purpose.
+
+Joram had learned to obey the prophet, and his people and their enemies
+had learned that Elisha was a prophet. That was much. He had no great
+revelations of the deep things of God to give to his generation or to
+posterity, but he gave directions as to practical life which bore on
+the wellbeing of the state; and that office was not less divinely
+conferred. It is a good thing when God's servants are not afraid to
+make their voices heard in politics, and a safeguard for a nation when
+their counsels are taken. The quiet prophet was more to Israel than an
+army.
+
+The 'great host' sent to capture Elisha shows the terror which he had
+inspired, and the importance attached to getting possession of him. It
+is, too, an odd instance of the inconsistency of godless men, in that
+it never occurs to the Syrian king that Elisha, who knew all his
+schemes, might know this one too, or that horses and chariots were of
+little use against a man who had Heaven to back him. Dothan lay on an
+isolated hill in a wide plain, and could easily be surrounded. A
+night-march offered the chance of a surprise, which seems to have been
+prevented by the unusually early rising of Elisha's servant, the young
+successor of Gehazi. Apparently he had gone out of the little city
+before he discovered the besiegers, and then rushed back in terror.
+Note the strongly contrasted pictures of the lad and his master,--the
+one representing the despair of sense, the other the confidence of
+faith. The lad's passionate exclamation was most natural, and fear
+darkening to bewildered helplessness is reasonable to men who only see
+the material and visible dangers and enemies that beset every life. The
+wonder is, not that we should sometimes be afraid, but that we should
+ever be free from fear, if we look only at visible facts. Worse foes
+ring us round than those whose armour glittered in the morning sunshine
+at Dothan, and we are as helpless to cope with them as that frightened
+youth was. Any man who calmly reflects on the possibilities and
+certainties of his life will find abundant reason for a sinking heart.
+So much that is dreadful and sad may come, and so much must come, that
+the boldest may well shrink, and the most resourceful cry 'Alas! how
+shall we do?' It is not courage, but blindness, which enables godless
+men to front life so unconcernedly.
+
+How nobly the calmness of Elisha shows beside the lad's alarm! Probably
+both were now outside the city, as the immediately following verse
+speaks of the mountain as the scene. If so, Elisha had gone forth to
+meet the enemy, and that must have brought fresh terror to his servant.
+The quiet 'Fear not!' was of little use without the assurance of the
+next clause; for there is no more idle expenditure of breath than in
+telling a man not to be afraid, and doing nothing to remove the grounds
+of his fear. That is all that the world can do to comfort or hearten.
+'Fear not?' the youth might well have said. 'It is all very easy to say
+that; but look there! How can I help being afraid?' There is only one
+way to help it, and that is to believe that 'they that be with us are
+more than they that be with them.' The true and only conqueror of
+reasonable fear is still more reasonable trust. The two parts played by
+the servant and the prophet are united in the man who cleaves to Jesus
+Christ as his defence. He would not cling so close to Him but for the
+fear that tightens his grip. He would tremble far more but for that
+grip. He who says in his heart, 'What time I am afraid, I will trust in
+Thee,' will presently get to saying, 'I will trust, and not be afraid.'
+
+Note, further, the sight seen by opened eyes. Elisha did not pray that
+the heavenly guards might come; for they were there already. Nor does
+it appear that he saw them; for he did not need that heightened
+condition of spiritual perception which appears to be meant by the
+opening of the eyes. And what a sight the trembling young man saw!
+Where he had seen only barren rock or sparse vegetation, he saw that
+same fiery host that had attended Elijah in his translation, now
+enclosing the unarmed prophet and himself within a flaming ring. The
+manifestation, not the presence, of the angel guards was the miracle.
+It was a momentary unveiling of what always was, and would be after the
+curtain was drawn again. I suppose that no reverent reader of Scripture
+can doubt the existence of angelic beings, or their office to 'minister
+to the heirs of salvation.' To us, indeed, who know Him who is the
+'Head of all principalities and powers,' the doctrine of angelic
+ministration is of less importance than that of Christ's divine help;
+but the latter truth does not supersede the former, though its
+brightness throws the other, about which we know so much less, into
+comparative shadow. But we may still learn from this transient
+disclosure of 'the things that are,' the permanent truth of the
+ever-active presence of divinely sent helps and guards, with all who
+trust in Him.
+
+This manifestation has several features of resemblance to that given to
+Jacob, in his most defenceless hour, when he saw beside his unprotected
+camp of women and children 'God's host,' and, in a rapture of thankful
+wonder, named the place 'Mahanaim,'--'Two Camps.' The sight teaches us
+that God's messengers are ever near, and then most near when needed
+most. It tells us, too, that they come in the form needed. They are
+warriors when we are ringed about by foes, counsellors when we are
+perplexed, comforters when we mourn. Their shapes are as varied as our
+needs, and ever correspond to 'the present distress.' They come in
+power sufficient to conquer. There was force enough circling the
+prophet to have annihilated all the Syrians. True, they did not draw
+their celestial swords, but they were there, and their presence was
+enough for the triumphant faith of the guarded men. What living thing
+could come through that wall of fire?
+
+Our eyes are blinded and we need to have them cleared, if not in the
+same manner as this lad's, yet in an analogous way. We look so
+constantly at the things seen that we have no sight for the unseen.
+Worldliness, sin, unbelief, sense and its trifles, time and its
+transitoriness, blind the eyes of our mind; and we need those of sense
+to be closed, that these may open. The truest vision is the vision of
+faith. It is certain, direct, and conclusive. The world says, 'Seeing
+is believing'; the gospel says, 'Believing is seeing.' If we would but
+live near to Jesus Christ, pray to Him to touch our blind eyeballs, and
+turn away from the dazzling unrealities which sense brings, we should
+find Him 'the master-light of all our seeing,' and be sure of the
+eternal, invisible things, with an assurance superior to that given by
+the keenest sight in the brightest sunshine. When we are blind to
+earth, we see earth glorified by angel presences, and fear and despair
+and helplessness and sorrow flee away from our tranquil hearts. If, on
+the other hand, we fix our gaze on earth and its trifles, there will
+generally be more to alarm than to encourage, and we shall do well to
+be afraid, if we do not see, as in such a case we shall certainly not
+see, the fiery wall around us, behind which God keeps His people safe.
+
+Note, finally, the blindness. Elisha's dealing with the advancing host
+of Syria can only be rightly estimated by looking beyond the limits of
+the text. His object was to carry the whole army into Samaria, that
+they might there be won by giving them bread to eat and water to drink,
+and so heaping coals of fire on their head. The prophet, who was in so
+many points a foreshadowing of the gospel type of excellence, was the
+first to show the right way to conquer. Nineteen centuries of so-called
+Christianity have not brought 'Christendom' to practise Elisha's recipe
+for finishing a war. It succeeded in his hands; for, after that feast
+and liberation of a captured army, 'the bands of Syria came no more
+into the land of Israel.' How could they, as long as the remembrance of
+that kindness lasted? Pity that the same sort of treatment were not
+tried to-day!
+
+The blindness which fell on the Syrians does not seem to have been
+total loss of sight,--for, if so, they could not have followed Elisha
+to Samaria, nearly fifteen miles off,--but rather an ocular affection
+which prevented them from recognising what they saw. It was a
+supernatural impediment in any case, however far it extended. God did
+'according to the word of Elisha,' a wonderful inversion of the
+ordinary formula. But that was because Elisha was doing according to
+the word of the Lord. The prayers which are 'according to His will' are
+the answered prayers.
+
+They who see not the angels, see nothing clearly. There is a mist over
+every eye that beholds only the things of time, which prevents it from
+seeing these as they are, and from recognising a prophet when he is
+before them. If we would rightly estimate the objects of sense, we must
+discern, shining through them, the far loftier and greater things of
+eternity. That flaming background is needed to supply a scale by which
+to measure the others. The flat plain of Lombardy is most beautiful
+when its flatness is seen girdled by the giant Alps, where lies the
+purity of the snow which feeds the rivers that fertilise the levels
+below.
+
+
+
+
+'IMPOSSIBLE,--ONLY I SAW IT'
+
+'Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord,
+Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour he sold for a
+shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of
+Samaria. 2. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man
+of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven,
+might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine
+eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. 3. And there were four leprous men at
+the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we
+here until we die? 4. If we say, We will enter into the city, then the
+famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still
+here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of
+the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us,
+we shall but die. 5. And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the
+camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of
+the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there. 6. For the Lord had
+made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise
+of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to
+another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the
+Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. 7. Wherefore
+they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their
+horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their
+life. 8. And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp,
+they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence
+silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and
+entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid
+it. 9. Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day
+of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning
+light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may
+go and tell the king's household. 10. So they came and called unto the
+porter of the city: and they told them, saying, We came to the camp of
+the Syrians, and, behold, there was no man there, neither voice of man,
+but horses tied, and asses tied, and the tents as they were. 11. And he
+called the porters; and they told it to the king's house within. 12.
+And the king arose in the night, and said unto his servants, I will now
+shew you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we be hungry;
+therefore are they gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the
+field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them
+alive, and get into the city  13. And one of his servants answered and
+said, Let some take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain,
+which, are left in the city, (behold, they are as all the multitude of
+Israel that are left in it: behold, I say, they are even as all the
+multitude of the Israelites that are consumed:) and let us send and
+see. 14. They took therefore two chariot horses; and the king sent
+after the host of the Syrians, saying, Go and see. 15. And they went
+after them unto Jordan: and, lo, all the way was full of garments and
+vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. And the
+messengers returned, and told the king. 16. And the people went out,
+and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. So a measure of fine flour was
+sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according
+to the word of the Lord.'--2 KINGS vii. 1-16.
+
+
+The keynote of this incident lies in the promise in the first verse.
+The whole story illustrates man's too frequent rejection of God's
+promise, and God's wonderful way of fulfilling it.
+
+I. We note first the promise which common-sense finds incredible. It
+came from Elisha when all seemed desperate. The wonderfully vivid
+narrative in the previous chapter tells a pitiful tale of women boiling
+their children, of unclean food worth more than its weight in silver,
+of a king worked up to a pitch of frenzy and murderous designs, and
+renouncing his allegiance to Jehovah. Such faith as he had was strained
+to the breaking point, and his messenger was sent to tell the prophet
+that the king would not 'wait for the Lord any longer.' That was the
+moment chosen to speak the promise. It came, as God's helps, both of
+promise and act, so often come, at the very nick of time, when faith is
+ready to fail and human aid is vain. Before we had learned our hopeless
+state, they would come too soon for our good; after faith had wholly
+parted from its moorings, they would come too late.
+
+Note the precision and confidence of the promise. The hour of the
+fulfilment, and the price of flour and the cheaper barley are stated.
+Man's promises are vague; God's are specific. Mark, too, the entire
+silence of the promise as to the mode of its fulfilment. Probably
+Elisha knew as little as any one, how it was going to be accomplished.
+The particularity and vagueness combined are remarkable. A hint as to
+how the thing was to be done would have made the belief in the fact so
+much easier. Yes, and just because it would have smoothed the road for
+worthless belief, it was not given, but the apparently impossible
+promise was left in nakedness, for any one who needed sense to animate
+his faith, to scoff at. Is not that emphatic assertion of the fact, and
+emphatic silence as to the 'how,' a frequent characteristic of God's
+promises? If ever we are kept in the dark as to the latter, it is for
+our good, and for the encouragement of our growth in utter dependence
+and perfect trust. It is not well for the trusting soul to ask too
+curiously about methods intervening between the promise in the present
+and its accomplishment in the future. It is better for peace and the
+simplicity of our trust, that we should be content to cling to the
+faithful word, and to 'believe... that it shall be even as it was told'
+us, without troubling ourselves about His way of effecting His
+purposes. Passengers are not admitted to the engine-room, nor allowed
+on the bridge. Let them leave all the working of the ship to the
+captain.
+
+II. The noble who blurted out his incredulity had a great deal to say
+for himself from the common-sense and worldly point of view. But he
+need not have sneered, in the same breath, at old miracles and new. His
+sarcasm about 'windows in heaven' refers to the story of the flood; and
+perhaps there is a hint of allusion to the manna. He neither believed
+these ancient deeds, nor the promise for to-morrow. Why not? Simply
+because he--wise as he thought himself--could not see any way of
+bringing it about. There are many of us yet who have the same modest
+opinion of our own acuteness, and go on the supposition that what we do
+not see is invisible, and what we cannot do, or imagine done, is
+impossible. Why should not the Lord 'make windows in heaven' if He
+please? Or, how does the pert objector know that that is the only way
+of fulfilling the promise? He will be taught that he has not quite
+exhausted all the possibilities open to Omnipotence, and that something
+much simpler than windows in heaven can do what is wanted. Unbelief
+which rejects God's plain promises because it does not see how they can
+be fulfilled is common enough still, and is as unreasonable as it is
+impertinent. Elisha was as ignorant as this nobleman was, of the means,
+but his faith fixed its eyes on the faithful word, and trusted, while
+sense, self-conceit, and worldliness, a mole pretending to have an
+eagle's eye, declared that to be impossible which it could not see the
+way to bring about, and thereby exposed only its own blind arrogance.
+
+III. Elisha's answer (v. 2) sounds like Elijah. The utmost gentleness
+is stirred to pronounce condemnation on self-confident unbelief, and a
+gentler gentleness than Elisha's, even Christ's, shrinks not from
+executing the sentence. Is not the sentence on this scoffing lord the
+very sentence pronounced ever on unbelief? In his case, it was
+fulfilled by the crowd that pressed, in their ravenous hunger, through
+the gate, and trod him down; but in ordinary cases, in our days, the
+natural operation of unbelief is to shut men out from the fruition, of
+which faith is the necessary and only condition. It is no avenging and
+arbitrarily imposed exclusion, but the necessary result of self-made
+disqualification, which brings on the unbeliever the doom, 'Thou shalt
+not eat thereof.' The blessings of the religious life on earth, and the
+glories of its perfection in heaven, are only enjoyable through faith.
+These are not so plainly visible to the unbelieving heart as the scene
+at the gate was to the nobleman; but, in some measure, even those who
+do not possess them do, in some lucid moments, see their worth. It is
+one sad part of the sad lives of godless men that they have their
+seasons of calm weather, when, in the clearer atmosphere, they catch
+glimpses of their true good, but that they yet do not behold it long
+and close enough to be smitten with the desire to possess it; and so
+the sight remains inoperative, or adds to their condemnation. Not to
+taste is the sadder fate, because there has been sight. To have eyes
+opened at last to our own folly, and to see the rich provision of God's
+table, when it is too late, will be a chief pang of future
+retribution,--as it sometimes is of present god-lessness.
+
+IV. Passing over for the present the account of the discovery by the
+four lepers, we may next note God's way of fulfilling His promise. A
+panic would spread fast in an undisciplined army, and history supplies
+examples of the swift change into a mob under the influence of
+groundless terror. There is nothing wonderful in the helter-skelter
+rush for the Jordan, or in the road being littered with abandoned
+baggage. The divine intervention produced the impression which
+naturally brought the flight about, and the coincidence of the prophecy
+and the panic which fulfilled it stamp both as divinely originated. But
+if we looked on events as devoutly, and saw into their true character
+as deeply as the author of the Books of Kings does, we should see that
+many a similar coincidence, which we trace no farther than to men or
+circumstances, was due to the same divine cause which made the Syrians
+to hear 'the noise of a great host.' Track the river of life to its
+source, and you come to God.
+
+'The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth.' Imaginary terrors are apt to
+beset those who have no trust in God. If we fear Him, we need have no
+other fear; but if we have not Him for our anchorage, we shall be
+driven by gusts of passion and terror. The unseen possibilities of
+attack and defeat may well terrify a man who has not the unseen God to
+keep him calm.
+
+Windows in heaven, then, were not needed, and the arrogance which said
+'Impossible!' had not measured all the resources of God. A very wise
+scientist here in England proved that the Atlantic could not be crossed
+by a steamer, and the first steamer that did cross took out copies of
+his book. How foolish men's demonstrations of impossibility look beside
+God's deliverances! We have not gone through all the chambers of His
+storehouse, and 'His ways are far above, out of our sight.' Let us hold
+fast by the faith that His arm is strong to do whatever His lips are
+gracious to engage, nor let our inability to see where the river gets
+through the mountains ever make us doubt that it will reach the sunlit
+ocean.
+
+V. We may throw together the remaining parts of the incident, as
+showing how the fulfilled promise was received. These four lepers had
+heard nothing of it, when despair made them venturesome. How reckless
+they were, and how they harp on the one gloomy word 'die'! The thought
+was familiar to them, and yet, lepers though they were, life was sweet,
+and a chance of prolonging it, even as slaves, was worth trying. They
+chose twilight, that they might be unobserved. We can see them creeping
+cautiously, with beating hearts, towards the camp, expecting every
+moment to be challenged, and possibly slain. How their caution would
+diminish and their wonder grow, as they passed from end to end, and
+found no one! There stood the horses and asses, left behind lest their
+footfalls should betray the flight, and every tent empty of men and
+full of spoil. The lepers seem to have gone right through the camp
+before they ventured to begin plundering; for the 'uttermost part' in
+verse 5 and that in verse 8 are naturally understood of its opposite
+extremities. Then, secure against surprise, they eat and drink as
+ravenously as men who had been starving so long would do. Twilight had
+deepened into darkness before hunger and greed were satisfied. Not till
+then did they awake to their duty; and even when they bethink
+themselves, it is fear of punishment, not care for a city full of
+hungry men, that moves them. But their tardy awaking to duty is couched
+in words which carry a great truth, especially to all who have tasted
+the Bread of Life. It is 'not well' to 'hold our peace' in 'a day of
+good tidings.' If we have good news, especially _the_ good news, its
+possession obliges us to impart it. If we have tasted the graciousness
+of the Lord, we are bound to tell of the stores we have found. 'He that
+withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him.' 'Of how much sorer
+punishment...shall he be thought worthy,' who keeps to himself the food
+of the world?
+
+Lepers were strange messengers of good, but the message graces the
+bringer, and they who tell good tidings are sure of a welcome. God does
+not choose great men for the heralds of His mercy, but the
+qualification is personal experience. These four could only say, 'We
+have seen and tasted,' but that was enough. The king's caution was very
+natural, and would have been quite blameless, if God's promise had not
+been spoken the day before. But that made the slowness to believe a
+sin. Feeling one's way over untried ice is prudent; but if we have
+previously been told that it will bear, it proves our distrust of him
+who told us. The despatch of the chariots to make a reconnaissance was
+needless trouble. But men are always apt to think that faith is but a
+shaky ground of certitude unless it be backed up by sense. When God
+gives us His word to trust to, we are wisest if we trust to it alone,
+and we may save ourselves the trouble of sending out scouts to see if
+it is really beginning to be fulfilled. Elisha had no need to wait the
+report of the charioteers before he believed in the fulfilment of the
+promise, which others had found incredible when spoken, and too good to
+be true even when fulfilled. Let us trust God, whether sense can attest
+the incipient accomplishment of His words or no.
+
+
+
+
+SILENT CHRISTIANS
+
+'Then they said one to another, We do not well; this day is a day of
+good tidings, and we hold our peace; if we tarry till the morning
+light, some mischief will come upon us; now therefore come, that we may
+go and tell the king's household.'--2 KINGS vii. 9.
+
+
+The city of Samaria was closely besieged, and suffering all the horrors
+of famine. Women were boiling and eating their children, and the most
+revolting garbage was worth its weight in silver. Four starving lepers,
+sitting by the gate, plucked up courage from the extremity of their
+distress, and looking in each other's bloodshot eyes, whispered one to
+another, with their hoarse voices: 'If we say we will enter into the
+city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we
+sit still here we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto
+the host of the Syrians; if they save us alive we shall live; and if
+they kill us we shall but die.' So in the twilight they stole away. As
+they come near the camp there is a strange silence; no guards, no stir.
+They creep to the first tent and find it empty; and then another, and
+another, and another, till at last it admits of no doubt that certainly
+the enemy has gone, leaving all his baggage behind him, So for awhile
+they feast and plunder--small blame to them! And then conscience wakes,
+and the same thought occurs to each of them: 'This is not patriotic;
+this is scarcely human; it is a shame for us to be sitting here gorging
+ourselves whilst a city is starving within a stone's-throw.' So they
+say one to another in the words of my text.
+
+Now these men's consciousness of the obligation imposed upon them by
+the knowledge of glad news, their self-reproach for their silence,
+their conviction that retribution would fall on them if it continued,
+and their resolve therefore to clear themselves, may all be transferred
+to higher regions, and may fairly illustrate Christian responsibilities
+and duties.
+
+I wish to say one or two very homely, plain things about Christian
+men's obligation to speech, and the sin of their silence. My remarks
+will have no special reference to any particular forms of Christian
+activity, but if I succeed in impressing on any a deeper sense of duty
+in reference to declaring the Gospel than they possess, then all forms
+of it will be prosecuted with greater vigour and consecration.
+
+I. I wish first to dwell for a moment on that--I was going to use a
+plain word and say--_hideous_; I will substitute a milder term, and
+say--_remarkable_, fact of Christian silence.
+
+I take this congregation as a fair average representative of the
+ordinary habitudes of professing Christians of this generation. How
+many men and women there are sitting in these pews, who, if I asked
+them the question, would say that they were Christians? and what
+proportion of these, if I asked them the further question, 'Did you
+ever tell anybody anything about Jesus Christ?' would say, 'No, never!'
+I know this, that in regard to all the recognised and associated forms
+of Christian work which cluster round a Christian congregation, it is
+the same handful of people that do them all. It is just like the bits
+of glass in a kaleidoscope, there are not many of them though you can
+shake them up into a great number of patterns, but they are always the
+very same bits. So I could go through pew after pew, if it would not be
+very personal, and find men and women, one after another--rows of
+them--that, so far as any of the united work of a church goes, are
+absolutely idle. They are worthy kind of people, too, with some real
+religion in them; but yet, partly from shyness, partly from indolence,
+partly because (as they think) they have so much else to do, and for a
+number of other reasons that I do not need to dwell upon, they fall
+into the great army of idlers, and are just so much dead weight and
+surplusage, as far as the work of the Church is concerned.
+
+Now I do not mean to say that, because professing Christian people do
+not work in any recognised forms of Christian service which are
+attached to a congregation, therefore they are not doing anything. God
+forbid! There are many of you, for instance, mothers of families, whose
+best service is to speak about Jesus Christ to your children, and to
+live according as you speak, and that is work enough for you. There are
+many more of us, who, for various legitimate reasons, are precluded
+from taking part in organised forms of Christian service. Do not so
+fatally misunderstand me as to suppose that I am merely beating a drum
+to get recruits for societies. What I want to impress upon every
+Christian person listening to me now is simply this, the anomaly of the
+fact, if it be a fact, that you are a _dumb_ Christian. You can all
+speak, if you will; you all have people with whom your speech is
+weighty and powerful. There are doors open before each of you. Ask
+yourselves, have you gone in at the open doors? or is it true about you
+that you have never felt the obligation to make your Master known to
+others, or, at all events, have never felt it so strongly that it
+compelled you to obey? The strange fact of Christian silence is one
+that I emphasise to begin with.
+
+II. Let me say a word next about the sin of this silence.
+
+These four poor lepers had not had much kindness dealt out to them in
+their lives, and they might have been pardoned if in their moment of
+joy they had remained in the isolation to which they had been condemned
+by reason of their disease. But they think to themselves of the hollow
+eyes in Samaria there, and the hideous meals, that might stay hunger
+but brought no nourishment, and of the king with sackcloth beneath his
+royal robes, and, forgetting everything but their abundance and these
+people's empty stomachs, they say, '_Not thus_ must we do,' as the
+Hebrew might be translated, 'this is a day of good tidings, and we hold
+our peace; and that is a sin. And if we continue dumb, then before
+morning some kind of punishment will come down upon us.'
+
+Now, let me put what I have to say on this matter into two sentences.
+
+First of all, I say that such silence is inhuman. You would all
+recognise that in the case of an actual, literal, instead of a
+metaphorical, famine. What would you say about a man who contented
+himself with sitting in his own back room, where nobody could see his
+abundance, and feasting to the full, whilst his fellow-citizens were
+dying of starvation? Why! you would say he was a brute. And if
+Christian people believed as thoroughly that men and women without 'the
+Bread of God which comes down from Heaven' were starving and dying of
+hunger, as they believe that men without literal bread must die, there
+would not be so many dumb ones amongst them; and they would feel more
+distinctly than any of us feel now, the responsibility that is laid
+upon them, and the inhumanity of the sin.
+
+Dear brethren! God has made this strange brotherhood of humanity in
+which we live, all intertwined and intertangled together, mainly in
+order that there may be scope for brotherly impartation to the needy,
+of the gifts that each possesses. And He has given to each of us
+something or other which, by the very terms of the gift and the purpose
+of the bestowment, we are bound to impart to others. The meaning of our
+being born into the brotherhood of humanity is that God's grace, in
+some shape or other, may fructify through us to all; and I say that the
+man who possesses any kind of gift, and, especially, God's highest
+gifts of wisdom and of knowledge, and most of all, the highest gift of
+spiritual knowledge and moral and religious truth, and keeps them to
+himself, in his idleness is sinfully active, and in his selfishness is
+inhuman and cruel. The very constitution of humanity says to us that
+'we do not well,' if in the 'day of good tidings' of any sort 'we hold
+our peace.' The possession of mere physical or abstract truth does not
+turn its possessors into its apostles, but the possession of moral and
+spiritual truth does. We are, every one of us, responsible for all the
+eyes which we could have opened and which are still dark, and for every
+soul that gropes in ignorance, if we possess something that would
+enlighten its darkness.
+
+But then, further, let me say that this sin of silence is in sheer
+contradiction of every principle of Christianity. Why has God given you
+His grace, do you suppose? For what purpose comes it that you are
+Christians? Were you converted that you might go by yourselves into a
+solitary heaven, do you think? Are you important enough to be an
+ultimate end of God's mercy? Or are you indeed an end, but only that in
+your turn you might be a means of transmitting? Does the electric
+influence terminate when it reaches you, or is it turned on to you that
+from you it may be passed to others? The very purpose of the existence
+of a Christian Church is counterworked and thwarted by dumb Christians.
+We Nonconformists can talk abundantly when ecclesiastical assumptions
+have to be fought against, about the priesthood of all believers. Very
+well, if that principle is a true one--and it _is_ a true one--it has
+other applications than simply controversial, and is meant for other
+uses than simply that you should brandish it in the face of sacerdotal
+claims and priest-ridden churches. 'Ye are all priests,' that is to
+say, the meaning of the existence of a Christian Church is to raise up
+a cloud of witnesses, and make every lip vocal with the name of Jesus
+Christ the Lord. And you, dear brethren, you, the idlers of a church
+and congregation, are doing all that you can to thwart the divine
+purpose, and to destroy the very meaning of the existence of the church
+to which you belong.
+
+And let me remind you, too, that such silence is clearly contrary to
+all Christian principle, inasmuch as one main purpose of the Gospel
+being given us is to shift our centre from ourselves, first to Christ,
+and then, if I may so say, to others. The very thing from which
+Christianity is meant to deliver us is the very thing that these idle,
+silent believers are indulging in, namely, the possession of God's
+gifts for their own profit and enjoyment. What is the use of your
+saying that you are Christian people if, in your very religion, you are
+practising the very vice that Jesus Christ has come to destroy?
+Selfishness is the opposite, the formal contradiction, of Christianity,
+and in the measure in which your religion is self-regarding, it is no
+religion at all. You are doing your best to counterwork the very main
+purpose of the Gospel upon yourselves, when in silence you possess, or
+fancy that you possess, the gift of His love.
+
+And then, still further, let me remind you that this absolutely
+un-Christian character of silence is manifested, if you consider that
+the end of the Gospel for each of us is to bring us into full and happy
+sympathy with Christ, and likeness to Him. And how is that purpose
+being effected in His professed 'followers,' if they know nothing of
+the experience of looking on the world with Christ's eyes, or of the
+thrill of pity caught from Him, and have no sympathy with, in the sense
+of any reflected experience of, the sense of obligation to help the
+helpless which nailed Him to the Cross? We say that we are followers of
+One who 'so loved the world' that He died for it; we say that we long
+to be transformed into His likeness, and yet we put away from ourselves
+the spirit that regards our brethren as He regarded us all; and never
+dream of copying, howsoever feebly in our lives and efforts, the
+pattern that was set before us in His death.
+
+O dear brethren! 'if a man see his brother have need, and shutteth up
+his bowels of compassion against him, how dwelleth the love of God in
+him?' And if a Christian looks upon a world without Christ, and has
+only a tepid sympathy and a faint realisation of the misery, and never
+does anything to lighten it by a grain, how can he pretend that he
+takes Jesus Christ for his Pattern and Example? Silence is manifestly a
+sin by reason of its inhumanity, and its contrariety to every principle
+of the Gospel.
+
+III. Now, still further, let me point you to the retribution on silence.
+
+These four men, no doubt, had some superstitious idea that mischief
+might come to them in the darkness. But they expressed a truth when
+they said, 'If we be silent, some evil'--or, as the word might be
+translated, 'some _punishment_ will find us.' I desire to lay this on
+your hearts, dear brethren, that like all other selfish things, the
+silence of the Christian does him harm instead of good.
+
+For instance, if you want to learn anything, set yourself to teach it.
+In trying to spread the name of Jesus Christ by your own personal
+effort, you will get a firmer hold of the truths that you attempt to
+impress upon others. I do not know any better cure for a great deal of
+unwholesome and superfluous speculation than to go into the slums and
+see what it is that tells there. That is a test of what is central and
+what is surface, in Christianity. I do not know any better discipline
+for a man whose religion is suffering from too much leisure and
+curiosity than to take a course of evangelistic work. He will find out
+then where the power is, and a great many cobwebs will be blown away.
+Be sure of this, that convictions unspoken, like plants grown in a
+cellar, will get very white in the stems, and will bear no fruit. Be
+sure of this, that a religion which is dumb will very soon tend to lose
+its possession of the truth, and that if you carry that great gift hid
+away in your heart it will be like locking up some singing-bird in a
+box. When you come to open it, the bird will be dead. There are, I have
+no doubt, many whom I am now addressing whose religion has all but, if
+not entirely, ebbed away from them, mainly because they have all their
+days been dumb Christians. That is one part of the punishment.
+
+And another part is that silence is avenged by the dying out of the
+sympathies which inspire speech. It is the punishment of the selfish
+man that he becomes more selfish. It is the punishment of the heart,
+which never expands in sympathy, that its walls shrivel and contract,
+until there is scarcely blood enough between them to be impelled
+through the veins. Feelings which it is joy and nobleness to possess
+are nurtured and strengthened by expression; and the silent Christian
+is punished by becoming at last utterly indifferent to the woes of the
+world and to the spread of the Gospel. I think I could lay my finger,
+if I dared, on some of my audience who have got perilously near to that
+point.
+
+And then again let me remind you that there is another form of the
+punishment, and that is the loss of all the blessed experience of the
+reaper's joy; and let me point you in a sentence to the final time of
+retribution. There shall stand in that last day, as Scripture teaches
+us, humble workers before the Throne who will say, 'Behold! I, and the
+children whom Thou hast given me.' And there will stand some before the
+Throne, solitary; and I wonder if they will not feel lonely when they
+go into heaven, and find not a soul there to look them in the eyes and
+say, 'Thou didst lead me to the Christ, and I am here to welcome thee.'
+'He that soweth and he that reapeth shall rejoice together.' Do you not
+think that then there will steal a shadow of shame across the spirit of
+the servant who stood idle in the market-place all the day with the
+wretched excuse, 'No man hath hired me,' when the Master had hired him
+beforehand, and given him such wages in advance?
+
+O dear brethren! the cure for silence is to keep near that Master, and
+to drink in His Spirit; and then, as I beseech you to do, think, think,
+think of your obligations in the light of the Cross until you can say,
+'Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints is this _grace
+given_,' not this burden imposed, 'that I, even I, should preach' the
+Name that is above every name. 'Open Thou my lips, and my mouth _shall_
+shew forth Thy praise.'
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture, by 
+Alexander Maclaren
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+Project Gutenberg's Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander Maclaren
+#4 in our series by Alexander Maclaren
+
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+Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture
+       Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel,
+       Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VII
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8068]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 11, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks, Anne Folland
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+EXPOSITIONS OF
+HOLY SCRIPTURE
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+
+DEUTERONOMY, JOSHUA, JUDGES, RUTH, AND FIRST BOOK OF
+SAMUEL
+
+SECOND SAMUEL, FIRST KINGS, AND SECOND KINGS _CHAPTERS I to
+VII_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY
+
+
+GOD'S FAITHFULNESS (Deut. vii. 9)
+THE LESSON OF MEMORY (Deut. viii. 2)
+THE EATING OF THE PEACE-OFFERING (Deut. xii. 18)
+PROPHETS AND THE PROPHET (Deut. xviii. 9-22)
+A CHOICE OF MASTERS (Deut. xxviii. 47, 48)
+THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW (Deut. xxx. 11-20)
+GOD'S TRUE TREASURE IN MAN (Deut. xxxii. 9; TITUS ii. l4)
+THE EAGLE AND ITS BROOD (Deut. xxxii. 11)
+THEIR ROCK AND OUR ROCK (Deut. xxxii. 31)
+GOD AND HIS SAINTS (Deut. xxxiii. 3)
+ISRAEL THE BELOVED (Deut. xxxiii. 12)
+'AT THE BUSH' (Deut. xxxiii. 16)
+SHOD FOR THE ROAD (Deut. xxxiii. 25)
+A DEATH IN THE DESERT (Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6)
+
+
+THE BOOK OF JOSHUA
+
+
+THE NEW LEADER'S COMMISSION (Joshua i. 1-11)
+THE CHARGE TO THE SOLDIER OF THE LORD (Joshua i. 7, 8)
+THE UNTRODDEN PATH AND THE GUIDING ARK (Joshua iii. 4)
+'THE WATERS SAW THEE; THEY WERE AFRAID' (Joshua iii. 5-17)
+STONES CRYING OUT (Joshua iv. 10-24)
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE LORD'S HOST (Joshua v. 14)
+THE SIEGE OF JERICHO (Joshua vi. 10, 11)
+RAHAB (Joshua vi. 25)
+ACHAN'S SIN, ISRAEL'S DEFEAT (Joshua vii. 1-12)
+THE SUN STAYED (Joshua x. 12)
+UNWON BUT CLAIMED (Joshua xiii. 1-6)
+CALEB-A GREEN OLD AGE (Joshua xiv. 6)
+THE CITIES OF REFUGE (Joshua xx. 1-9)
+THE END OF THE WAR (Joshua xxi. 43-45; xxii. 1-9)
+THE NATIONAL OATH AT SHECHEM (Joshua xxiv. 19-28)
+
+
+THE BOOK OF JUDGES
+
+
+A SUMMARY OF ISRAEL'S FAITHLESSNESS AND GOD'S PATIENCE (Judges ii. 1-10)
+ISRAEL'S OBSTINACY AND GOD'S PATIENCE (Judges ii. 11-23)
+RECREANT REUBEN (Judges v. 16, R.V.)
+'ALL THINGS ARE YOURS' (Judges v. 20; Job v. 23)
+LOVE MAKES SUNS (Judges v. 31)
+GIDEON'S ALTAR (Judges vi. 24)
+GIDEON'S FLEECE (Judges vi. 37)
+'FIT, THOUGH FEW'(Judges vii. 1-8)
+A BATTLE WITHOUT A SWORD (Judges vii. 13-23)
+STRENGTH PROFANED AND LOST (Judges xvi. 21-31)
+
+
+THE BOOK OF RUTH
+
+
+GENTLE HEROINE, A GENTILE CONVERT (Ruth i. 16-22)
+
+
+THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+
+THE CHILD PROPHET (1 Samuel iii. 1-14)
+FAITHLESSNESS AND DEFEAT (1 Samuel iv. 1-18)
+REPENTANCE AND VICTORY (1 Samuel vii, 1-12)
+'MAKE US A KING' (1 Samuel viii. 4-20)
+THE OLD JUDGE AND THE YOUNG KING (1 Samuel ix. 16-27)
+THE KING AFTER MAN'S HEART (1 Samuel x. 17-27)
+SAMUEL'S CHALLENGE AND CHARGE (1 Samuel xii. 1-15)
+OLD TRUTH FOR A NEW EPOCH (1 Samuel xii. 13-25)
+SAUL REJECTED (1 Samuel xv. 10-23)
+THE SHEPHERD-KING (1 Samuel xvi. 1-13)
+THE VICTORY OF UNARMED FAITH (1 Samuel xvii. 32-51)
+A SOUL'S TRAGEDY (1 Samuel xviii. 5-16)
+JONATHAN, THE PATTERN OF FRIENDSHIP (1 Samuel xx.1-13)
+LOVE FOR HATE, THE TRUE _QUID PRO QUO_ (1 Samuel xxiv.4-17)
+LOVE AND REMORSE (1 Samuel xxvi. 5-12; 21-25)
+SAUL (1 Samuel xxviii. 15)
+'WHAT DOEST THOU HERE?' (1 Samuel xxix. 3; I Kings
+xix. 9)
+THE SECRET OF COURAGE (1 Samuel xxx. 6)
+AT THE FRONT OR THE BASE (1 Samuel xxx. 24)
+THE END OF SELF-WILL (1 Samuel xxxi. 1-13)
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY
+
+
+GOD'S FAITHFULNESS
+
+'Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God,
+which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him.'--DEUT. vii.
+9.
+
+
+'Faithful,' like most Hebrew words, has a picture in it. It means
+something that can be (1) leant on, or (2) builded on.
+
+This leads to a double signification--(1) trustworthy, and that because
+(2) rigidly observant of obligations. So the word applies to a steward,
+a friend, or a witness. Its most wonderful and sublime application is
+to God. It presents to our adoring love--
+
+I. God as coming under obligations to us.
+
+A marvellous and blessed idea. He limits His action, regards Himself as
+bound to a certain line of conduct.
+
+1. Obligations from His act of creation.
+
+'A faithful Creator,' bound to take care of those whom He has made. To
+supply their necessities. To satisfy their desires. To give to each the
+possibility of discharging its ideal.
+
+2. Obligations from His past self.
+
+'God is faithful by whom ye were called,' therefore He will do all that
+is imposed on Him by His act of calling.
+
+He cannot begin without completing. There are no abandoned mines. There
+are no half-hewn stones in His quarries, like the block at Baalbec. And
+this because the divine nature is inexhaustible in power and
+unchangeable in purpose.
+
+3. Obligations from His own word.
+
+A revelation is presupposed by the notion of faithfulness. It is not
+possible in heathenism. 'Dumb idols,' which have given their
+worshippers no promises, cannot be thought of as faithful. By its grand
+conception of Jehovah as entering into a covenant with Israel, the Old
+Testament presents Him to our trust as having bound Himself to a known
+line of action. Thereby He becomes, if we may so phrase it, a
+constitutional monarch.
+
+That conception of a Covenant is the negation of caprice, of arbitrary
+sovereignty, of mystery. We know the principles of His government. His
+majestic 'I wills' cover the whole ground of human life and needs for
+the present and the future. We can go into no region of life but we
+find that God has defined His conduct to us there by some word spoken
+to our heart and binding Him.
+
+4. Obligations from His new Covenant and highest word in Jesus Christ.
+
+'He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.'
+
+II. God as recognising and discharging these obligations.
+
+That He will do so comes from His very nature. With Him there is no
+change of disposition, no emergence of unseen circumstances, no failure
+or exhaustion of power.
+
+That He does so is matter of fact. Moses in the preceding context had
+pointed to facts of history, on which he built the 'know therefore' of
+the text. On the broad scale the whole world's history is full of
+illustrations of God's faithfulness to His promises and His threats.
+The history of Judaism, the sorrows of nations, and the complications
+of national events, all illustrate this fact.
+
+The personal history of each of us. The experience of all Christian
+souls. No man ever trusted in Him and was ashamed. He wills that we
+should put Him to the proof.
+
+III. God as claiming our trust.
+
+He is faithful, worthy to be trusted, as His deeds show.
+
+Faith is our attitude corresponding to His faithfulness. Faith is the
+germ of all that He requires from us. How much we need it! How firm it
+might be! How blessed it would make us!
+
+The thought of God as 'faithful' is, like a precious stone, turned in
+many directions in Scripture, and wherever turned it flashes light.
+Sometimes it is laid as the foundation for the confidence that even our
+weakness will be upheld to the end, as when Paul tells the Corinthians
+that they will be confirmed to the end, because 'God is faithful,
+through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son' (1 Cor. i.
+9). Sometimes there is built on it the assurance of complete
+sanctification, as when he prays for the Thessalonians that their
+'whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the
+coming of our Lord' and finds it in his heart to pray thus because
+'Faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it' (1 Thess. v.
+24). Sometimes it is presented as the steadfast stay grasping which
+faith can expect apparent impossibilities, as when Sara 'judged Him
+faithful who had promised' (Heb. xi. 11). Sometimes it is adduced as
+bringing strong consolation to souls conscious of their own feeble and
+fluctuating faith, as when Paul tells Timothy that 'If we are
+faithless, He abideth faithful; for He cannot deny Himself' (2 Tim. ii.
+13). Sometimes it is presented as an anodyne to souls disturbed by
+experience of men's unreliableness, as when the apostle heartens the
+Thessalonians and himself to bear human untrustworthiness by the
+thought that though men are faithless, God 'is faithful, who shall
+establish you and keep you from evil' (2 Thess. in. 2, 3). Sometimes it
+is put forward to breathe patience into tempted spirits, as when the
+Corinthians are comforted by the assurance that 'God is faithful, who
+will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able' (1 Cor. x.
+13). Sometimes it is laid as the firm foundation for our assurance of
+pardon, as when John tells us that 'If we confess our sins, He is
+faithful and just to forgive us our sins' (1 John i. 9). And sometimes
+that great attribute of the divine nature is proposed as holding forth
+a pattern for us to follow, and the faith in it as tending to make us
+in a measure steadfast like Himself, as when Paul indignantly rebuts
+his enemies' charge of levity of purpose and vacillation, and avers
+that 'as God is faithful, our word toward you is not yea and nay' (2
+Cor. L 18).
+
+
+
+
+THE LESSON OF MEMORY
+
+'Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these
+lofty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to
+know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His
+commandments, or no.'--DEUT. viii.2.
+
+
+The strand of our lives usually slips away smoothly enough, but days
+such as this, the last Sunday in a year, are like the knots on a
+sailor's log, which, as they pass through his fingers, tell him how
+fast it is being paid out from the reel, and how far it has run off.
+
+They suggest a momentary consciousness of the swift passage of life,
+and naturally lead us to a glance backwards and forwards, both of which
+occupations ought to be very good for us. The dead flat upon which some
+of us live may be taken as an emblem of the low present in which most
+of us are content to pass our lives, affording nowhere a distant view,
+and never enabling us to see more than a street's length ahead of us.
+It is a good thing to get up upon some little elevation and take a
+wider view, backwards and forwards.
+
+And so now I venture to let the season preach to us, and to confine
+myself simply to suggesting for you one or two very plain and obvious
+thoughts which may help to make our retrospect wise and useful. And
+there are two main considerations which I wish to submit. The first is
+--what we ought to be chiefly occupied with as we look back; and
+secondly, what the issue of such a retrospect ought to be.
+
+I. With what we should be mainly occupied as we look back. Memory, like
+all other faculties, may either help us or hinder us. As is the man, so
+will be his remembrance. The tastes which rule his present will
+determine the things that he likes best to think about in the past.
+There are many ways of going wrong in our retrospects. Some of us, for
+instance, prefer to think with pleasure about things that ought never
+to have been done, and to give a wicked immortality to thoughts that
+ought never to have had a being. Some men's tastes and inclinations are
+so vitiated and corrupted that they find a joy in living their
+badnesses over again. Some of us, looking back on the days that are
+gone, select by instinctive preference for remembrance, the vanities
+and frivolities and trifles which were the main things in them whilst
+they lasted. Such a use of the great faculty of memory is like the
+folly of the Egyptians who embalmed cats and vermin. Do not let us be
+of those, who have in their memories nothing but rubbish, or something
+worse, who let down the drag-net into the depths of the past and bring
+it up full only of mud and foulnesses, and of ugly monsters that never
+ought to have been dragged into the daylight.
+
+Then there are some of us who abuse memory just as much by picking out,
+with perverse ingenuity, every black bit that lies in the distance
+behind us, all the disappointments, all the losses, all the pains, all
+the sorrows. Some men look back and say, with Jacob in one of his
+moods, 'Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life!' Yes!
+and the same man, when he was in a better spirit, said, and a great
+deal more truly, 'The God that fed me all my life long, the Angel which
+redeemed me from all evil.' Do not paint like Rembrandt, even if you do
+not paint like Turner. Do not dip your brush only in the blackness,
+even if you cannot always dip it in molten sunshine.
+
+And there are some of us who, in like manner, spoil all the good that
+we could get out of a wise retrospect, by only looking back in such a
+fashion as to feed a sentimental melancholy, which is, perhaps, the
+most profitless of all the ways of looking backwards.
+
+Now here are the two points, in this verse of my text, which would put
+all these blunders and all others right, telling us what we should
+chiefly think about when we look back, and from what point of view the
+retrospect of the past must be taken in order that it should be
+salutary. 'Thou shalt remember all the way by which the Lord thy God
+hath led thee.' Let memory work under the distinct recognition of
+divine guidance in every part of the past. That is the _first_
+condition of making the retrospect blessed. 'To humble thee and to
+prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest
+keep His commandments, or no'; let us look back with a clear
+recognition of the fact that the use of life is to test, and reveal,
+and to make, character. This world, and all its outward engagements,
+duties, and occupations, is but a scaffolding, on which the builders
+may stand to rear the true temple, and when the building is reared you
+may do what you like with the scaffolding. So we have to look back on
+life from this point of view, that its joys and sorrows, its ups and
+downs, its work and repose, the vicissitudes and sometimes contrariety
+of its circumstances and conditions, are all for the purpose of making
+_us_, and of making plain to ourselves, what we are. 'To humble
+thee,' that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us
+to say: 'I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak
+rag of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be
+able to resist or to do.' That is one main lesson that life is meant to
+teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering and
+shocks of time, by reason of sorrows and failures, by reason of joys,
+too, and fruition,--'Lord, I come to Thee as depending upon Thee for
+everything,' has wrung its supreme good out of life, and has fulfilled
+the purpose of the Father, who has led us all these years, to humble us
+into the wholesome diffidence that says: 'Not in myself, but in Thee
+are all my strength and my hope.'
+
+I need not do more than remind you of the other cognate purposes which
+are suggested here. Life is meant, not only to bring us to humble self-
+distrust, as a step towards devout dependence on God, but also to
+reveal us to ourselves; for we only know what we are by reflecting on
+what we have done, and the only path by which self-knowledge can be
+attained is the path of observant recollection of our conduct in daily
+life.
+
+Another purpose for which the whole panorama of life is made to pass
+before us, and for which all the gymnastic of life exercises us, is
+that we may be made submissive to the great Will, and may keep His
+commandments.
+
+These thoughts should be with us in our retrospect, and then our
+retrospect will be blessed: First, we are to look back and see God's
+guidance everywhere, and second, we are to judge of the things that we
+remember by their tendency to make character, to make us humble, to
+reveal us to ourselves, and to knit us in glad obedience to our Father
+God.
+
+II. And now turn to the other consideration which may help to make
+remembrance a good, viz., the issues to which our retrospect must tend,
+if it is to be anything more than sentimental recollection.
+
+First, let me say: Remember and be thankful. If what I have been saying
+as to the standard by which events are to be tried be true; if it be
+the case that the main fact about things is their power to mould
+persons and to make character, then there follows, very plainly and
+clearly, that all things that come within the sweep of our memory may
+equally contribute to our highest good.
+
+Good does not mean pleasure. Bright-being may not always be well-being,
+and the highest good has a very much nobler meaning than comfort and
+satisfaction. And so, realising the fact that the best of things is
+that they shall make us like God, then we can turn to the past and
+judge it wisely, because then we shall see that all the diversity, and
+even the opposition, of circumstances and events, may co-operate
+towards the same end. Suppose two wheels in a great machine, one turns
+from right to left and the other from left to right, but they fit into
+one another, and they both produce one final result of motion. So the
+moments in my life which I call blessings and gladness, and the moments
+in my life which I call sorrows and tortures, may work into each other,
+and they will do so if I take hold of them rightly, and use them as
+they ought to be used. They will tend to the highest good whether they
+be light or dark; even as night with its darkness and its dews has its
+ministration and mission of mercy for the wearied eye no less than day
+with its brilliancy and sunshine; even as the summer and the winter are
+equally needful, and equally good for the crop. So in our lives it is
+good for us, sometimes, that we be brought into the dark places; it is
+good for us sometimes that the leaves be stripped from the trees, and
+the ground be bound with frost.
+
+And so for both kinds of weather, dear brethren, we have to remember
+and be thankful. It is a hard lesson, I know, for some of us. There may
+be some listening to me whose memory goes back to this dying year as
+the year that has held the sorest sorrow of their lives; to whom it has
+brought some loss that has made earth dark. And it seems hard to tell
+quivering lips to be thankful, and to bid a man be grateful though his
+eyes fill with tears as he looks back on such a past. But yet it is
+true that it is good for us to be drawn, or to be driven, to Him; it is
+good for us to have to tread even a lonely path if it makes us lean
+more on the arm of our Beloved. It is good for us to have places made
+empty if, as in the year when Israel's King died, we shall thereby have
+our eyes purged to behold the Lord sitting on the Royal Seat.
+
+               'Take it on trust a little while,
+                  Thou soon shalt read the mystery right,
+                In the full sunshine of His smile.'
+
+And for the present let us try to remember that He dwelleth in the
+darkness as in the light, and that we are to be thankful for the things
+that help us to be near Him, and not only for the things that make us
+outwardly glad. So I venture to say even to those of you who may be
+struggling with sad remembrances, remember and be thankful.
+
+I have no doubt there are many of us who have to look back, if not upon
+a year desolated by some blow that never can be repaired, yet upon a
+year in which failing resources and declining business, or diminished
+health, or broken spirits, or a multitude of minute but most disturbing
+cares and sorrows, do make it hard to recognise the loving Hand in all
+that comes. Yet to such, too, I would say: 'All things work together
+for good,' therefore all things are to be embraced in the thankfulness
+of our retrospect.
+
+The second and simple practical suggestion that I make is this:
+Remember, and let the memory lead to contrition. Perhaps I am speaking
+to some men or women for whom this dying year holds the memory of some
+great lapse from goodness; some young man who for the first time has
+been tempted to sensuous sin; some man who may have been led into
+slippery places in regard to business integrity. I draw a 'bow at a
+venture' when I speak of such things--perhaps some one is listening to
+me who would give a great deal if he or she could forget a certain past
+moment of this dying year, which makes their cheeks hot yet whilst they
+think of it. To such I say: Remember, go close into the presence of the
+black thing, and get the consciousness of it driven into your heart;
+for such remembrance is the first step to deliverance from the load,
+and to your passing, emancipated from the bitterness, into the year
+that lies before you.
+
+But even if there are none of us to whom such remarks would specially
+apply, let us summon up to ourselves the memories of these bygone days.
+In all the three hundred and sixty-five of them, my friend, how many
+moments stand out distinct before you as moments of high communion with
+God? How many times can you remember of devout consecration to Him? How
+many, when--as visitors to the Riviera reckon the number of days in the
+season in which, far across the water, they have seen Corsica--you can
+remember this year to have beheld, faint and far away, 'the mountains
+that are round about' the 'Jerusalem that is above'? How many moments
+do you remember of consecration and service, of devotion to your God
+and your fellows? Oh! what a miserable, low-lying stretch of God-
+forgetting monotony our lives look when we are looking back at them in
+the mass. One film of mist is scarcely perceptible, but when you get a
+mile of it you can tell what it is--oppressive darkness. One drop of
+muddy water does not show its pollution, but when you have a pitcherful
+of it you can see how thick it is. And so a day or an hour looked back
+upon may not reveal the true godlessness of the average life, but if
+you will take the twelvemonth and think about it, and ask yourself a
+question or two about it, I think you will feel that the only attitude
+for any of us in looking back across a stretch of such brown barren
+moorland is that of penitent prayer for forgiveness and for cleansing.
+
+But I dare say that some of you say: 'Oh! I look back and I do not feel
+anything of that kind of regret that you describe; I have done my duty,
+and nobody can blame me. I am quite comfortable in my retrospect. Of
+course there have been imperfections; we are all human, and these need
+not trouble a man.' Let me ask you, dear brother, one question: Do you
+believe that the law of a man's life is, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy
+God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
+strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself'? Do you
+believe that that is what you ought to do? Have you done it? If you
+have not, let me beseech you not to go out of this year, across the
+artificial and imaginary boundary that separates you from the next,
+with the old guilt upon your back, but go to Jesus Christ, and ask Him
+to forgive you, and then you may pass into the coming twelvemonth
+without the intolerable burden of unremembered, unconfessed, and
+therefore unforgiven, sin.
+
+The next point that I would suggest is this: Let us remember in order
+that from the retrospect we may gain practical wisdom. It is
+astonishing what unteachable, untamable creatures men are. They learn
+wisdom about all the little matters of daily life by experience, but
+they do not seem to do so about the higher. Even a sparrow comes to
+understand a scarecrow after a time or two, and any rat in a hole will
+learn the trick of a trap. But you can trick men over and over again
+with the same inducement, and, even whilst the hook is sticking in
+their jaws, the same bait will tempt them once more. That is very
+largely the case because they do not observe and remember what has
+happened to them in bygone days.
+
+There are two things that any man, who will bring his reason and
+common-sense to bear upon the honest estimate and retrospect of the
+facts of his life, may be fully convinced of. These are, first, his own
+weakness. One main use of a wise retrospect is to teach us where we are
+weakest. What an absurd thing it would be if the inhabitants of a Dutch
+village were to let the sea come in at the same gap in the same dyke a
+dozen times! What an absurd thing it would be if a city were captured
+over and over again by assaults at the same point, and did not
+strengthen its defences there! But that is exactly what you do; and all
+the while, if you would only think about your own past lives wisely and
+reasonably, and like men with brains in your heads, you might find out
+where it was that you were most open to attack; what it was in your
+character that most needed strengthening, what it was wherein the devil
+caught you most quickly, and might so build yourselves up in the most
+defenceless points.
+
+Do not look back for sentimental melancholy; do not look back with
+unavailing regrets; do not look back to torment yourselves with useless
+self-accusation; but look back to see how good God has been, and look
+back to see where you are weak, and pile the wall, higher there, and so
+learn practical wisdom from retrospect.
+
+Another phase of the practical wisdom which memory should give is
+deliverance from the illusions of sense and time. Remember how little
+the world has ever done for you in bygone days. Why should you let it
+befool you once again? If it has proved itself a liar when it has
+tempted you with gilded offers that came to nothing, and with beauty
+that was no more solid than the 'Easter-eggs' that you buy in the
+shops--painted sugar with nothing inside--why should you believe it
+when it comes to you once more? Why not say: 'Ah! once burnt, twice
+shy! You have tried that trick on me before, and I have found it out!'
+Let the retrospect teach us how hollow life is without God, and so let
+it draw us near to Him.
+
+The last thing that I would say is: 'Let us remember that we may hope.
+It is the prerogative of Christian remembrance, that it merges into
+Christian hope. The forward look and the backward look are really but
+the exercise of the same faculty in two different directions. Memory
+does not always imply hope, we remember sometimes because we do not
+hope, and try to gather round ourselves the vanished past because we
+know it never again can be a present or a future. But when we are
+occupied with an unchanging Friend, whose love is inexhaustible, and
+whose arm is unwearied, it is good logic to say: 'It has been,
+therefore it shall be.'
+
+With regard to this fleeting life, it is a delusion to say 'to-morrow
+shall be as this day, and much more abundant'; but with regard to the
+life of the soul that lives in God, that is true, and true for ever.
+The past is a specimen of the future. The future for the man who lives
+in Christ is but the prolongation, and the heightening into superlative
+excellence and beauty, of all that is good in the past and in the
+present. As the radiance of some rising sun may cast its bright beams
+into the opposite sky, even so the glowing past behind us flings its
+purples and its golds and its scarlets on to the else dim curtain of
+the future.
+
+Remember that you may hope. A paradox, but a paradox that is a truth in
+the case of Christians whose memory is of a God that has loved and
+blessed them whose hope is in a God that changes never; whose memory is
+charged with 'every good and perfect gift that came down from the
+Father of Lights,' whose hope is in that same Father, 'with whom is no
+variableness, neither shadow of turning.' So on every stone of
+remembrance, every Ebenezer on which is graved: 'Hitherto hath the Lord
+helped us,' we can mount a telescope--if I may so say--that will look
+into the furthest glories of the heavens, and be sure that the past
+will be magnified and perpetuated in the future. Our prayer may
+legitimately be; 'Thou hast been my help, leave me not, neither forsake
+me!' And His answer will be: 'I will not leave thee until I have done
+that which I have spoken to thee of.' Remember that you may hope, and
+hope because you remember.
+
+
+
+
+THE EATING OF THE PEACE-OFFERING
+
+'But thou must eat them before the Lord thy God in the place which the
+Lord thy God shall choose, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy
+manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy
+gates: and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God in all that thou
+puttest thine hands unto.'--DEUT. xii. 18.
+
+
+There were three bloody sacrifices, the sin-offering, the burnt-
+offering, and the peace-offering. In all three expiation was the first
+idea, but in the second of them the act of burning symbolised a further
+thought, namely, that of offering to God, while in the third, the
+peace-offering, there was added to both of these the still further
+thought of the offerer's participation with God, as symbolised by the
+eating of the sacrifice. So we have great verities of the most
+spiritual religion adumbrated in this external rite. The rind is hard
+and forbidding, the kernel is juicy and sweet.
+
+I. Communion with God based on atonement.
+
+II. Feeding on Christ.
+
+What was sacrifice becomes food. The same Person and facts, apprehended
+by faith, are, in regard to their bearing on the divine government, the
+ground of pardon, and in regard to their operation within us, the
+source of spiritual sustenance. Christ for us is our pardon; Christ in
+us is our life.
+
+III. The restoration to the offerer of all which he lays on God's
+altar.
+
+The sacrifice was transformed and elevated into a sacrament. By being
+offered the sacrifice was ennobled. The offerer did not lose what he
+laid on the altar, but it came back to him, far more precious than
+before. It was no longer mere food for the body, and to eat it became
+not an ordinary meal, but a sacrament and means of union with God. It
+was a hundredfold more the offerer's even in this life. All its savour
+was more savoury, all its nutritive qualities were more nutritious. It
+had suffered a fiery change, and was turned into something more rich
+and rare.
+
+That is blessedly true as to all which we lay on God's altar. It is far
+more ours than it ever was or could be, while we kept it for ourselves,
+and our enjoyment of, and nourishment from, our good things, when
+offered as sacrifices, are greater than when we eat our morsel alone.
+If we make earthly joys and possessions the materials of our sacrifice,
+they will not only become more joyful and richer, but they will become
+means of closer union with Him, instead of parting us from Him, as they
+do when used in selfish disregard of Him.
+
+Nor must we forget the wonderful thought, also mirrored in this piece
+of ancient ritual, that God delights in men's sacrifices and surrenders
+and services. 'If I were hungry, I would not tell thee,' said the
+Psalmist in God's name in regard to outward sacrifices; 'Will I eat the
+flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?' But he does 'eat' the
+better sacrifices that loving hearts or obedient wills lay on His
+altar. He seeks for these, and delights when they are offered to Him.
+'He hungered, and seeing a fig tree by the wayside, He came to it.' He
+still hungers for the fruit that we can yield to Him, and if we will,
+He will enter in and sup with us, not disdaining to sit at the poor
+table which we can spread for Him, nor to partake of the humble fare
+which we can lay upon it, but mending the banquet by what He brings for
+_our_ nourishment, and hallowing the hour by His presence.
+
+
+
+
+PROPHETS AND THE PROPHET
+
+'When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,
+thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. 10.
+There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his
+daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an
+observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, 11. Or a charmer, or a
+consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12. For
+all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because
+of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before
+thee. 13. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. 14. For these
+nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times,
+and unto diviners: but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered
+thee so to do. 15. The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet
+from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye
+shall hearken; 16. According to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy
+God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again
+the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any
+more, that I die not. 17. And the Lord said unto me, They have well
+spoken that which they have spoken. 18. I will raise them up a Prophet
+from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put My words in His
+mouth; and He shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him. 19.
+And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto My words
+which He shall speak in My name, I will require it of him. 20. But the
+prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in My name, which I have
+not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other
+gods, even that prophet shall die. 21. And if thou say in thine heart,
+How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? 22. When a
+prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor
+come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the
+prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of
+him.'--DEUT. xviii. 9-22.
+
+
+It is evident from the connection in which the promise of 'a prophet
+like unto Moses' is here introduced that it does not refer to Jesus
+only; for it is presented as Israel's continuous defence against the
+temptation of seeking knowledge of the divine will by the illegitimate
+methods of divination, soothsaying, necromancy, and the like, which
+were rampant among the inhabitants of the land. A distant hope of a
+prophet in the far-off future could afford no motive to shun these
+superstitions. We cannot understand this passage unless we recognise
+that the direct reference is to the institution of the prophetic order
+as the standing means of imparting the reliable knowledge of God's
+will, possessing which, Israel had no need to turn to them 'that peep
+and mutter' and bring false oracles from imagined gods. But that
+primary reference of the words does not exclude, but rather demands,
+their ultimate reference to Him in whom the divine word is perfectly
+enshrined, and who is the bright, consummate flower of the prophetic
+order, which 'spake of Him,' not only in its individual predictions,
+but by its very existence.
+
+A glance must be given to the exhaustive list of pretenders to
+knowledge of the future or to power of shaping it magically, which
+occurs in verses 10,11, and suggests a terrible picture of the burdens
+of superstition which weighed on men in these days of ignorance, as the
+like burdens do still, wherever Jesus is not known as the one Revealer
+of God, and the sole Lord of all things. Of the eight terms employed,
+the first three refer to different means of reading the future, the
+next two to different means of influencing events, and the last three
+to different ways of consulting the dead. The first of these eight
+properly refers to drawing lots, but includes other methods; the second
+is an obscure word, which is supposed by some to mean a 'murmurer,' and
+may refer rather to the low mutterings of the soothsayer than to the
+method of his working; the third is probably a general expression for
+an interpreter of omens, especially of those given by the play of
+liquid in a 'cup,' such as Joseph 'divined' by.
+
+Two names for magicians follow, of which the former seems to mean one
+who worked with charms such as African or American Indian 'medicine
+men' use, and the latter, one who binds by incantations, or one who
+ties magic knots, which are supposed to have the power of hindering the
+designs of the person against whom they are directed. The word employed
+means 'binding,' and maybe used either literally or metaphorically. The
+malicious tying of knots in order to work harm is not dead yet in some
+backward corners of Britain. Then follow three names for traffickers
+with spirits,--those who raise ghosts as did the witch of Endor, those
+who have a 'familiar spirit,' and those who in any way consult the
+dead. It is a grim catalogue, bearing witness to the deep-rooted
+longing in men to peer into the darkness ahead, and to get some
+knowledge of the purposes of the awful unseen Power who rules there.
+The longing is here recognised as legitimate, while the methods are
+branded as bad, and Israel is warned from them, by being pointed to the
+merciful divine institution which meets the longing.
+
+It is clear, from this glance at the context, that the 'prophet'
+promised to Israel must mean the order, not the individual; and it is
+interesting to note, first, the relation in which that order is
+presented as standing towards all that rabble of diviners and
+sorcerers, with their rubbish of charms and muttered spells. It sweeps
+them off the field, because it is truly what they pretend to be. God
+knows men's longings, and God will meet them so far as meeting them is
+for men's good. But the characteristics of the prophet are set in
+strong contrast to those of the diviners and magicians, and lift the
+order high above all the filth and folly of these others. First, the
+prophet is 'raised up' by God; the individual holder of the office has
+his 'call' and does not 'prophesy out of his own heart.' The man who
+takes this office on himself without such a call is _ipso facto_
+branded as a false prophet. Then he is 'from the midst of thee, of thy
+brethren,'--springing from the people, not an alien, like so many of
+these wandering soothsayers, but with the national life throbbing in
+his veins, and himself participant of the thoughts and emotions of his
+brethren. Then he is to be 'like unto' Moses,--not in all points, but
+in his receiving direct communications from God, and in his authority
+as God's messenger. The crowning characteristic, 'I will put My words
+into his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command
+him,' invests his words with divine authority, calls for obedience to
+them as the words of God Himself, widens out his sphere far beyond that
+of merely foretelling, brings in the moral and religious element which
+had no place in the oracles of the soothsayer, and opens up the
+prospect of a continuous progressive revelation throughout the ages
+('all that I _shall_ command him'). We mutilate the grand idea of
+the prophet in Israel if we think of his work as mainly prediction, and
+we mutilate it no less if we exclude prediction from it. We mutilate it
+still more fatally if we try to account for it on naturalistic
+principles, and fail to see in the prophet a man directly conscious of
+a divine call, or to hear in his words the solemn accents of the voice
+of God.
+
+The loftiness and the limitations of 'the goodly fellowship of the
+prophets' alike point onwards to Jesus Christ. In Him, and in Him
+alone, the idea of the prophet is fully realised. The imperfect
+embodiments of it in the past were prophecies as well as prophets. The
+fact that God has 'spoken unto the fathers by the prophets,' leads us
+to expect that He will speak 'to us in a Son,' and that not by
+fragments of His mighty voice, but in one full, eternal, all-embracing
+and all-sufficient Word. Every divine idea, which has been imperfectly
+manifested in fragmentary and sinful men and in the material creation,
+is completely incarnated in Him. He is the King to whom the sins and
+the saintlinesses of Israel's kings alike pointed. He is the Priest,
+whom Aaron and his sons foreshadowed, who perfectly exercises the
+sympathy which they could only feel partially, because they were
+compassed with infirmity and self-regard, and who offers the true
+sacrifice of efficacy higher than 'the blood of bulls and goats.' He is
+the Prophet, who makes all other means of knowing the divine will
+unnecessary, hearing whom we hear the very voice of God speaking in His
+gentle words of love, in His authoritative words of command, in His
+illuminating words of wisdom, and speaking yet more loudly and heart-
+touchingly in the eloquence of deeds no less than divine; who is 'not
+ashamed to call us brethren,' and is 'bone of our bone and flesh of our
+flesh'; who is like, but greater than, the great lawgiver of Israel,
+being the Son and Lord of the 'house' in which Moses was but a servant.
+'To Him give all the prophets witness,' and the greatest of them was
+honoured when, with Moses, Elijah stood on the Mount of
+Transfiguration, subordinate and attesting, and then faded away when
+the voice proclaimed, 'This is My beloved Son, hear Him,'--and they
+'saw no one save Jesus only.'
+
+
+
+
+A CHOICE OF MASTERS
+
+'Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with
+gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; 48. Therefore shalt
+thou serve thine enemies ... in want of all things: and He shall put a
+yoke of iron upon thy neck, until He have destroyed thee.'--DEUT.
+xxviii. 47, 48
+
+
+The history of Israel is a picture on the large scale of what befalls
+every man.
+
+A service--we are all born to obedience, to depend on and follow some
+person or thing. There is only a choice of services; and he who boasts
+himself free is but a more abject slave, as the choice for a nation is
+either the rule of settled order and the sanctities of an established
+law, or the usurpation of a mob and the intolerable tyranny of
+unbridled and irresponsible force.
+
+I. The service of God or the service of our enemies.
+
+Israel was the servant in turn of Egypt, Philistia, Edom, Assyria,
+Babylon, Syria, and Rome. It was every invader's prey. God's invisible
+arm was its only guard from these, and an all-sufficient guard as long
+as it leaned on Him. When it turned from Him it fell under their yoke.
+Its lawful Lord loved it; its tyrants hated it.
+
+So with us. We have to serve God or enemies. Our lusts, our passions,
+the world, evil habits--in a word, our sins ring us round. God is the
+only defence against them.
+
+The contrast between the one and the many--a king or an ochlocracy. The
+contrast of the loving Lord and the hostile sins.
+
+II. A service which is honour or a service which is degradation.
+
+God alone is worthy of our absolute submission and service. How low a
+man sinks when he is ruled by any lesser authority! Such obedience is a
+crime against the dignity of human nature, and the soul is not without
+a galling sense of this now and then, when its chains rattle.
+
+III. A service which is freedom because it is rendered by love, or a
+service which is hard slavery.
+
+'With joy for the abundance of all things.' How sin palls upon us, and
+yet we commit it. The will is overborne, conscience is stifled.
+
+IV. A service which feeds the spirit or a service which starves it.
+
+The soul can only in God get what it wants. Prison fare is what it
+receives in the other service. The unsatisfying character of all sin;
+it cloys, and yet leaves one hungry. It is 'that which satisfieth not.'
+'Broken cisterns which hold no water.'
+
+V. A service which is life or a service which is death.
+
+The dark forebodings of the text grow darker as it goes on. The grim
+slavery which it threatens as the only alternative to joyful service of
+God is declared to be lifelong 'penal servitude,' and not only is there
+no deliverance from it, but it directly tends to wear away the life of
+the hopeless slaves. For the words that follow our text are 'and he
+shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.'
+That is dismally true in regard to any and every life that has shaken
+off the service of God which is perfect freedom, and has persisted in
+the service of sin. Such service is suicidal; it rivets an iron yoke on
+our necks, and there is no locksmith who can undo the shackles and lift
+it off, so long as we refuse to take service with God. Stubbornly
+rebellious wills forge their own fetters. Like many a slave-owner, our
+tyrants have a cruel delight in killing their slaves, and our sins not
+only lead to death, but are themselves death.
+
+But there is a bright possibility before the most down-trodden vassal
+of sin. 'The bond-servant abideth not in the house for ever.' He is not
+a son of the house, but has been brought into it, stolen from his home.
+He may be carried back to his Father's house, and there 'have bread
+enough and to spare,' if a deliverer can be found. And He has been
+found. Christ the Son makes us free, and if we trust Him for our
+emancipation we 'shall be free indeed,' 'that we, being delivered out
+of the hand of our enemies, should serve Him without fear, in holiness
+and righteousness before Him all our days.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW
+
+'For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden
+from thee, neither is it far off. 12. It is not in heaven, that thou
+shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us,
+that we may hear it, and do it? 13. Neither is it beyond the sea, that
+thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto
+us, that we may hear it, and do it? 14. But the word is very nigh unto
+thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. 15. See,
+I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; 16.
+In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in
+His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His
+judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply; and the Lord thy God
+shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. 17. But
+if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be
+drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; 18. I denounce unto
+you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not
+prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go
+to possess it. 19. I call heaven and earth to record this day against
+you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:
+therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: 20. That
+thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice,
+and that thou mayest cleave unto Him: for He is thy life, and the
+length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord
+sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give
+them.'--DEUT. xxx. 11-20.
+
+
+This paragraph closes the legislation of this book, the succeeding
+chapters being in the nature of an epilogue or appendix. It sums up the
+whole law, makes plain its inmost essence and its tremendous
+alternatives. As in the closing strains of some great symphony, the
+themes which have run through the preceding movements are woven
+together in the final burst of music. Let us try to discover the
+component threads of the web.
+
+The first point to note is the lofty conception of the true essence of
+the whole law, which is enshrined here. 'This commandment which I
+command thee this day' is twice defined in the section (vs. 16, 20),
+and in both instances 'to love Jehovah thy God' is presented as the
+all-important precept. Love is recognised as the great commandment.
+Leviticus may deal with minute regulations for worship, but these are
+subordinate, and the sovereign commandment is love. Nor is the motive
+which should sway to love omitted; for what a tender drawing by the
+memories of what He had done for Israel is put forth in the name of
+'Jehovah, _thy_ God!' The Old Testament system is a spiritual
+system, and it too places the very heart of religion in love to God,
+drawn out by the contemplation of his self-revelation in his loving
+dealings with us. We have here clearly recognised that the obedience
+which pleases God is obedience born of love, and that the love which
+really sets towards God will, like a powerful stream, turn all the
+wheels of life in conformity to His will. When Paul proclaimed that
+'love is the fulfilling of the law,' he was only repeating the teaching
+of this passage, when it puts 'to walk in His ways,' or 'to obey His
+voice,' after 'to love Jehovah thy God.' Obedience is the result and
+test of love; love is the only parent of real obedience.
+
+The second point strongly insisted on here is the blessedness of
+possessing such a knowledge as the law gives. Verses 11-14 present that
+thought in three ways. The revelation is not that of duties far beyond
+our capacity: 'It is not too hard for thee.' No doubt, complete
+conformity with it is beyond our powers, and entire, whole-hearted, and
+whole-souled love of God is not attained even by those who love Him
+most. Paul's position that the law gives the knowledge of sin, just
+because it presents an impossible elevation in its ideal, is not
+opposed to the point of view of this context; for he is thinking of
+complete conformity as impossible, while it is thinking of real, though
+imperfect, obedience as within the reach of all men. No man can love as
+he ought; every man can love. It is blessed to have our obligations all
+gathered into such a commandment.
+
+Again, the possession of the law is a blessing, because its
+authoritative voice ends the weary quest after some reliable guide to
+conduct, and we need neither try to climb to heaven, nor to traverse
+the wide world and cross the ocean, to find certitude and enlightenment
+enough for our need. They err who think of God's commandments as
+grievous burdens; they are merciful guide-posts. They do not so much
+lay weights on our backs as give light to our eyes.
+
+Still further, the law has its echo 'in thy heart.' It is 'graven on
+the fleshly tables of the heart,' and we all respond to it when it
+gathers up all duty into 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,' and our
+consciences say to it, 'Thou speakest well.' The worst man knows it
+better than the best man keeps it. Blurred and illegible often, like
+the half-defaced inscriptions disinterred from the rubbish mounds that
+once were Nineveh or Babylon, that law remains written on the hearts of
+all men.
+
+A further point to be well laid to heart is the merciful plainness and
+emphasis with which the issues that are suspended on obedience or
+disobedience are declared. The solemn alternatives are before every man
+that hears. Life or death, blessing or cursing, are held out to him,
+and it is for him to elect which shall be realised in his case. Of
+course, it may be said that the words 'life' and 'death' are here used
+in their merely physical sense, and that the context shows (vs. 17, 18)
+that life here means only 'length of days, that thou mayest dwell in
+the land.' No doubt that is so, though we can scarcely refuse to see
+some glimmer of a deeper conception gleaming through the words, 'He is
+thy life,' though it is but a glimmer. We have no space here to enter
+upon the question of how far it is now true that obedience brings
+material blessings. It was true for Israel, as many a sad experience
+that it was a bitter as well as an evil thing to forsake Jehovah was to
+show in the future. But though the connection between well-doing and
+material gain is not so clear now, it is by no means abrogated, either
+for nations or for individuals. Moral and religious law has social and
+economic consequences, and though the perplexed distribution of earthly
+good and ill often bewilders faith and emboldens scepticism, there
+still is visible in human affairs a drift towards recompensing in the
+world the righteous and the wicked.
+
+But to us, with our Christian consciousness, 'life' means more than
+living, and 'He is our life' in a deeper and more blessed sense than
+that our physical existence is sustained by His continual energy. The
+love of God and consequent union with Him give us the only true life.
+Jesus is 'our life,' and He enters the spirit which opens to Him by
+faith, and communicates to it a spark of His own immortal life. He that
+is joined to Jesus lives; he that is separated from Him 'is dead while
+he liveth.'
+
+The last point here is the solemn responsibility for choosing one's
+part, which the revelation of the law brings with it. 'I have set
+before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse, therefore
+choose life.' We each determine for ourselves whether the knowledge of
+what we ought to be will lead to life or to death, and by choosing
+obedience we choose life. Every ray of light from God is capable of
+producing a double effect. It either gladdens or pains, it either gives
+vision or blindness. The gospel, which is the perfect revelation of God
+in Christ, brings every one of us face to face with the great
+alternative, and urgently demands from each his personal act of choice
+whether he will accept it or neglect or reject it. Not to choose to
+accept _is_ to choose to reject. To do nothing is to choose death.
+The knowledge of the law was not enough, and neither is an intellectual
+reception of the gospel. The one bred Pharisees, who were 'whited
+sepulchres'; the other breeds orthodox professors, who have 'a name to
+live and are dead.' The clearer our light, the heavier our
+responsibility. If we are to live, we have to 'choose life'; and if we
+do not, by the vigorous exercise of our will, turn away from earth and
+self, and take Jesus for our Saviour and Lord, loving and obeying whom
+we love and obey God, we have effectually chosen a worse death than
+that of the body, and flung away a better life than that of earth.
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S TRUE TREASURE IN MAN
+
+'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
+inheritance.'--DEUT, xxxii.9.
+
+'Jesus Christ (Who) gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from
+all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people.'--TITUS ii.
+14.
+
+
+I choose these two texts because they together present us with the
+other side of the thought to that which I have elsewhere considered,
+that man's true treasure is in God. That great axiom of the religious
+consciousness, which pervades the whole of Scripture, is rapturously
+expressed in many a psalm, and never more assuredly than in that one
+which struggles up from the miry clay in which the Psalmist's 'steps
+had well-nigh slipped' and soars and sings thus: 'The Lord is the
+portion of my inheritance and of my cup; Thou maintainest my lot,' 'The
+lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly
+heritage.'
+
+You observe the correspondence between these words and those of my
+first text: 'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
+inheritance.' The correspondence in the original is not quite so marked
+as it is in our Authorised Version, but still the idea in the two
+passages is the same. Now it is plain that persons can possess persons
+only by love, sympathy, and communion. From that it follows that the
+possession must be mutual; or, in other words, that only he can say
+'Thou art mine' who can say 'I am Thine.' And so to possess God, and to
+be possessed by God, are but two ways of putting the same fact. 'The
+Lord is the portion of His people, and the Lord's portion is His
+people,' are only two ways of stating the same truth.
+
+Then my second text clearly quotes the well-known utterance that lies
+at the foundation of the national life of Israel: 'Ye shall be unto Me
+a peculiar treasure above all people,' and claims that privilege, like
+all Israel's privileges, for the Christian Church. In like manner Peter
+(1 Pet. ii. 9) quotes the same words, 'a peculiar people,' as properly
+applying to Christians. I need scarcely remind you that 'peculiar' here
+is used in its proper original sense of belonging to, or, as the
+Revised Version gives it, 'a people for God's own possession' and has
+no trace of the modern signification of 'singular.' Similarly we find
+Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians giving both sides of the idea of
+the inheritance in intentional juxtaposition, when he speaks (i. 14) of
+the 'earnest of our inheritance ... unto the redemption of God's own
+possession.' In the words before us we have the same idea; and this
+text besides tells us how Christ, the Revealer of God, wins men for
+Himself, and what manner of men they must be whom He counts as His.
+
+Therefore there are, as I take it, three things to be spoken about now.
+First, God has a special ownership in some people. Second, God owns
+these people because He has given Himself to them. Third, God
+possesses, and is possessed by, His inheritance, that He may give and
+receive services of love. Or, in briefer words, I have to speak about
+this wonderful thought of a special divine ownership, what it rests
+upon, and what it involves.
+
+I. God has special ownership in some people.
+
+'The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His
+inheritance.' Put side by side with those other words of the Old
+Testament: 'All souls are Mine,' or the utterance of the 100th Psalm
+rightly translated: 'It is He that hath made us, and to Him we belong.'
+There is a right of absolute and utter ownership and possession
+inherent in the very relation of Creator and creature; so that the
+being made is wholly and altogether at the disposal, and is the
+property, of Him that makes him.
+
+But is that enough for God's heart? Is that worth calling ownership at
+all? An arbitrary tyrant in an unconstitutional kingdom, or a slave-
+owner, may have the most absolute right of property over his subject or
+his slave; may have the right of entire disposal of all his industry,
+of the profit of all his labour; may be able to do anything he likes
+with him, may have the power of life and death; but such ownership is
+only of the husk and case of a man: the man himself may be free, and
+may smile at the claim of possession. 'They may '_own_' the body,
+and after that have no more than they can do.' That kind of authority
+and ownership, absolute and utter, to the point of death, may satisfy a
+tyrant or a slave-driver, it does not satisfy the loving heart of God.
+It is not real possession at all. In what sense did Nero own Paul when
+he shut him up in prison, and cut his head off? Does the slave-owner
+own the man whom he whips within an inch of his life, and who dare not
+do anything without his permission? Does God, in any sense that
+corresponds with the longing of infinite love, own the men that
+reluctantly obey Him, and are simply, as it were, tools in His hands?
+He covets and longs for a deeper relationship and tenderer ties, and
+though all creatures are His, and all men are His servants and His
+possession, yet, like certain regiments in our own British army, there
+are some who have the right to bear in a special manner on their
+uniform and on their banners the emblazonment, 'The King's Own.' 'The
+Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.'
+
+Well, then, the next thought is that the special relationship of
+possession is constituted by mutual love. I said at the beginning of
+these remarks that as concerns men's relations, the only real
+possession is through love, sympathy, and communion, and that that must
+necessarily be mutual. We have a perfect right to apply the human
+analogy here; in fact, we are bound to do it if we would rightly
+understand such words as those of my text; and it just leads us to
+this, that the one thing whereby God reckons that He possesses a man at
+all is when His love falls upon that man's heart and soaks into it, and
+when there springs up in the heart a corresponding emotion and
+affection. The men who welcome the divine love that goes through the
+whole world, seeking such to worship it, and to trust it, and to become
+its own; and who therefore lovingly yield to the loving divine will,
+and take it for their law--these are the men whom He regards as His
+'portion' and 'the lot of His inheritance.' So that God is mine, and
+that 'I am God's,' are two ends of one truth; 'I possess Him,' and 'I
+am possessed by Him,' are but the statement of one fact expressed from
+two points of view. In the one case you look upon it from above, in the
+other case you look upon it from beneath. All the sweet commerce of
+mutual surrender and possession which makes the joy of our hearts, in
+friendship and in domestic life, we have the right to lift up into this
+loftier region, and find in it the last teaching of what makes the
+special bond of mutual possession between God and man.
+
+And deep words of Scripture point in that direction. Those parables of
+our Lord's: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, in their
+infinite beauty, whilst they contain a great deal besides this, do
+contain this in their several ways; the money, the animal, the man
+belong to the woman of the house, to the shepherd, to the father. Each
+is 'lost' in a different fashion, but the most clear revelation is
+given in the last parable of the three, which explains the other two.
+The son was 'lost' when he did not love the father; and he was 'found'
+by the father when he returned the yearning of the father's heart.
+
+And so, dear brethren, it ever is; the one thing that knits men to God
+is that the silken cord of love let down from Heaven should by our own
+hand be wrapped round our own hearts, and then we are united to Him. We
+are His and He is ours by the double action of His love manifested by
+Him, and His love received by us.
+
+Now there is nothing in all that of favouritism. The declaration that
+there are people who have a special relationship to the divine heart
+may be so stated as to have a very ugly look, and it often has been so
+stated as to be nothing more than self-complacent Pharisaism, which
+values a privilege principally because its possession is an insult to
+somebody else that has it not.
+
+There has been plenty of Christianity of that sort in the world, but
+there is nothing of it in the thoughts of these texts rightly looked
+at. There is only this: it cannot but be that men who yield to God and
+love Him, and try to live near Him and to do righteousness, are His in
+a manner that those who steel themselves against Him and turn away from
+Him are not. Whilst all creatures have a place in His heart, and are
+flooded with His benefits, and get as much of Him as they can hold, the
+men who recognise the source of their blessing, and turn to it with
+grateful hearts, are nearer Him than those that do not do so. Let us
+take care, lest for the sake of seeming to preserve the impartiality of
+His love, we have destroyed all in Him that makes His love worth
+having. If to Him the good and the bad, the men who fear Him and the
+men who fear Him not, are equally satisfactory, and, in the same
+manner, the objects of an equal love, then He is not a God that has
+pleasure in righteousness; and if He is not a God that 'has pleasure in
+righteousness,' He is not a God for us to trust to. We are not giving
+countenance to the notion that God has any step-children, any petted
+members of His family, when we cleave to this--they that have welcomed
+His love into their hearts are nearer to Him than those that have
+closed the door against it.
+
+And there is one more point here about this matter of ownership on
+which I dwell for a moment, namely, that this conception of certain men
+being in a special sense God's possession and inheritance means also
+that He has a special delight in, and lofty appreciation of, them. All
+this material creation exists for the sake of growing good men and
+women. That is the use of the things that are seen and temporal; they
+are like greenhouses built for the great Gardener's use in striking and
+furthering the growth of His plants; and when He has got the plants He
+has got what He wanted, and you may pull the greenhouse down if you
+like. And so God estimates, and teaches us to estimate, the relative
+value and greatness of the material and the spiritual in this fashion,
+that He says to us in effect: 'All these magnificences and magnitudes
+round you are small and vulgar as compared with this--a heart in which
+wisdom and divine truth and the love and likeness of God have attained
+to some tolerable measure of maturity and of strength.' These are His
+'jewels,' as the Roman matron said about her two boys. The great Father
+looks upon the men that love Him as His jewels, and, having got the
+jewels, the rock in which they were embedded and preserved may be
+crushed when you like. 'They shall be Mine,' saith the Lord, 'My
+treasures in that day of judgment which I make.'
+
+And so, my brother, all the insignificance of man, as compared with the
+magnitude and duration of the universe, need not stagger our faith that
+the divinest thing in the universe is a heart that has learnt to love
+God and aspires after Him, and should but increase our wonder and our
+gratitude that He has been mindful of man and has visited him, in order
+that He might give Himself to men, and so might win men for Himself.
+
+II. That brings me, and very briefly, to the other points that I desire
+to deal with now. The second one, which is suggested to us from my
+second text in the Epistle to Titus, is that this possession, by God,
+of man, like man's possession of God, comes because God has given
+Himself to man.
+
+The Apostle puts it very strongly in the Epistle to Titus: 'The
+glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who
+gave Himself for us that He might purify unto Himself _a people for a
+possession_.' Israel, according to one metaphor, was God's 'son,'
+begotten by that great redeeming act of deliverance from the captivity
+of Egypt (Deut. xxxii. 6-19). According to another metaphor, Israel was
+God's bride, wooed and won for His own by that same act. Both of these
+figures point to the thought that in order to get man for His own He
+has to give Himself to man.
+
+And the very height and sublimity of that truth is found in the
+Christian fact which the Apostle points to here. We need not depart
+from human analogies here either. Christ gave Himself to us that He
+might acquire us for Himself. Absolute possession of others is only
+possible at the price of absolute surrender to them. No human heart
+ever gave itself away unless it was convinced that the heart to which
+it gave itself had given itself to it.
+
+And on the lower levels of gratitude and obligation, the only thing
+that binds a man to another in utter submission is the conviction that
+that other has given himself in absolute sacrifice for him. A doctor
+goes into the wards of an hospital with his life in his hands, and
+because he does, he wins the full confidence and affection of those
+whom he treats. You cannot buy a heart with anything less than a heart.
+In the barter of the world it is not 'skin for skin,' but it is 'self
+for self'; and if you want to own me, you must give yourself altogether
+to me. And the measure in which teachers and guides and preachers and
+philanthropists of all sorts make conquests of men is the measure in
+which they make themselves sacrifices for men.
+
+Now all that is true, and is lifted to its superlative truth, in the
+great central fact of the Christian faith. But there is more than human
+analogy here. Christ is not only self-sacrifice in the sense of
+surrender, but He is sacrifice in the sense of giving Himself for our
+redemption and forgiveness. He has not only given Himself to us, He has
+given Himself for us. And there, and on that, is builded, and on that
+alone has He a right to build, or have we a right to yield to it, His
+claim to absolute authority and utter command over each of us.
+
+He has died for us, therefore the springs of our life are at His
+disposal; and the strongest motives which can sway our lives are set in
+motion by His touch. His death, says this text, redeems us from
+iniquity and purifies us. That points to its power in delivering us
+from the service and practice of sin. He buys us from the despot whose
+slaves we were, and makes us His own in the hatred of evil and the
+doing of righteousness. Moved by His death, we become capable of
+heroisms and martyrdoms of devotion to Him. Brethren, it is only as
+that self-sacrificing love touches us, which died for our sins upon the
+Cross, that the diabolical chain of selfishness will be broken from our
+affections and our wills, and we shall be led into the large place of
+glad surrender of ourselves to the sweetness and the gentle authority
+of His omnipotent love.
+
+III. The last thought that I suggest is the issues to which this mutual
+possession points. God owns men, and is owned by them, in order that
+there may be a giving and receiving of mutual services of love.
+
+'The Lord's portion is His people.' That in the Old Testament is always
+laid as the foundation of certain obligations under which He has come,
+and which He will abundantly discharge. What is a great landlord
+expected to do to his estate? 'What ought I to have done to my
+vineyard?' the divine Proprietor asks through the mouth of His servant
+the prophet. He ought to till it, He ought not to starve it, He ought
+to fence it, He ought to cast a wall about it, He ought to reap the
+fruits. And He does all that for His inheritance. God's honour is
+concerned in His portion not being waste. It is not to be a 'garden of
+the sluggard,' by which people who pass can see the thorns growing
+there. So He will till it, He will plough it, He will pick out the
+weeds, and all the disciplines of life will come to us, and the
+ploughshare will be driven deep into the heart, that 'the peaceable
+fruit of righteousness' may spring up. He will fence His vineyard.
+Round about His inheritance His hand will be cast, within His people
+His Spirit will dwell. No harm shall come near thee if thy love is
+given to Him; safe and untouched by evil thou shalt walk if thou walk
+with God. 'He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of Mine eye.' The
+soul that trusts Him He takes in charge, and before any evil can fall
+to it 'the pillared firmament must be rottenness, and earth be built on
+stubble.' 'He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him
+against that day.' 'The Lord's portion is His people,' and 'none shall
+pluck them out of His hand.'
+
+And on the other side, we belong to God in Christ. What do we owe Him?
+What does the vineyard owe the husbandman? Fruit. We are His, therefore
+we are bound to absolute submission. 'Ye are not your own.' Life,
+circumstances, occupations, all--we hold them at His will. We have no
+more right of property in anything than a slave in the bad old days had
+in his cabin and patch of ground. They belonged to the master to whom
+he belonged. Let us recognise our stewardship, and be glad to know
+ourselves His, and all events and things which we sometimes think ours,
+His also.
+
+We are His, therefore we owe absolute trust. The slave has at least
+this blessing in his lot, that he need have no anxieties; nor need we.
+We belong to God, and He will take care of us. A rich man's horses and
+dogs are well cared for, and our Owner will not leave us unheeded. Our
+well-being involves His good name. Leave anxious thought to masterless
+hearts which have to front the world with nobody at their backs. If you
+are God's you will be looked after.
+
+We are His, therefore we are bound to live to His praise. That is the
+conclusion which one Old Testament passage draws. 'This people have I
+formed for Myself; they shall show forth My praise' (Isaiah xliii. 21).
+The Apostle Peter quotes these words immediately after those from
+Exodus, which describe Israel as 'a people for God's own possession,'
+when he says 'that ye should show forth the praise of Him who hath
+called you.' Let us, then, live to His glory, and remember that the
+servants of the King are bound to stand to their colours amid rebels,
+and that they who know the sweetness of possessing God, and the
+blessedness of yielding to His supreme control, should acknowledge what
+they have found of His goodness, and 'tell forth the honour of His
+name, and make His praise glorious.' Let not all the magnificent and
+wonderful expenditure of divine longing and love be in vain, nor run
+off your hearts like water poured upon a rock. Surely the sun's flames
+leaping leagues high, they tell us, in tongues of burning gas, must
+melt everything that is near them. Shall we keep our hearts sullen and
+cold before such a fire of love? Surely that superb and wonderful
+manifestation of the love of God in the Cross of Christ should melt
+into running rivers of gratitude all the ice of our hearts.
+
+'He gave Himself for me!' Let us turn to Him and say: 'Lo! I give
+myself to Thee. Thou art mine. Make me Thine by the constraint of Thy
+love, so utterly, and so saturate my spirit with Thyself, that it shall
+not only be Thine, but in a very deep sense it shall be Thee, and that
+it may be "no more I that live, but Christ that liveth in me."'
+
+
+
+
+THE EAGLE AND ITS BROOD
+
+'As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth
+abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings.'--DEUT.
+xxxii. 11.
+
+
+This is an incomplete sentence in the Authorised Version, but really it
+should be rendered as a complete one; the description of the eagle's
+action including only the two first clauses, and (the figure being
+still retained) the person spoken of in the last clauses being God
+Himself. That is to say, it should read thus, 'As an eagle stirreth up
+his nest, fluttereth over his young, _He_ spreads abroad His
+wings, takes them, bears them on His pinions.' That is far grander, as
+well as more compact, than the somewhat dragging comparison which,
+according to the Authorised Version, is spread over the whole verse and
+tardily explained, in the following, by a clause introduced by an
+unwarranted 'So'--'the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no
+strange god with him.'
+
+Now, of course, we all know that the original reference of these words
+is to the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and their training
+in the desert. In the solemn address by Jehovah at the giving of the
+law (Exodus xix. 4), the same metaphor is employed, and, no doubt, that
+passage was the source of the extended imagery here. There we read, 'Ye
+know what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings,
+and brought you unto Myself.' The meaning of the glowing metaphor, with
+its vivid details, is just that Jehovah brought Israel out of its fixed
+abode in Goshen, and trained it for mature national life by its varied
+desert experiences. As one of the prophets puts the same idea, 'I
+taught Ephraim to go,' where the figure of the parent bird training its
+callow fledglings for flight is exchanged for that of the nurse
+teaching a child to walk. While, then, the text primarily refers to the
+experience of the infant nation in the forty years' wanderings, it
+carries large truths about us all; and sets forth the true meaning and
+importance of life. There seem to me to be three thoughts here, which I
+desire to touch on briefly: first, a great thought about God; then an
+illuminating thought about the true meaning and aspect of life; and
+lastly a calming thought about the variety of the methods by which God
+carries out our training.
+
+I. Here is a great thought about God.
+
+Now, it may come as something of a shock if I say that the bird that is
+selected for the comparison is not really the eagle, but one which, in
+our estimation, is of a very much lower order--viz. the carnivorous
+vulture. But a poetical emblem is not the less fitting, though, besides
+the points of resemblance, the thing which is so used has others less
+noble. Our modern repugnance to the vulture as feeding on carcasses was
+probably not felt by the singer of this song. What he brings into view
+are the characteristics common to the eagle and the vulture; superb
+strength in beak and claw, keenness of vision almost incredible,
+magnificent sweep of pinion and power of rapid, unwearied flight. And
+these characteristics, we may say, have their analogues in the divine
+nature, and the emblem not unfitly shadows forth one aspect of the God
+of Israel, who is 'fearful in praises,' who is strong to destroy as
+well as to save, whose all-seeing eye marks every foul thing, and who
+often pounces on it swiftly to rend it to pieces, though the sky seemed
+empty a moment before.
+
+But the action described in the text is not destructive, terrible, or
+fierce. The monarch of the sky busies itself with tender cares for its
+brood. Then, there is gentleness along with the terribleness. The
+strong beak and claw, the gaze that can see so far, and the mighty
+spread of wings that can lift it till it is an invisible speck in the
+blue vault, go along with the instinct of paternity: and the fledglings
+in the nest look up at the fierce beak and bright eyes, and know no
+terror. The impression of this blending of power and gentleness is
+greatly deepened, as it seems to me, if we notice that it is the male
+bird that is spoken about in the text, which should be rendered: 'As
+the eagle stirreth up _his_ nest and fluttereth over _his_ young.'
+
+So we just come to the thought that we must keep the true balance
+between these two aspects of that great divine nature--the majesty, the
+terror, the awfulness, the soaring elevation, the all-penetrating
+vision, the power of the mighty pinion, one stroke of which could crush
+a universe into nothing; and, on the other side, the yearning instinct
+of Fatherhood, the love and gentleness, and all the tender ministries
+for us, His children, to which these lead. Brethren, unless we keep
+hold of both of these in due equipoise and inseparably intertwining, we
+damage the one which we retain almost as much as the one which we
+dismiss. For there is no love like the love that is strong, and can be
+fierce, and there is no condescension like the condescension of Him who
+is the Highest, in order that He may be, and because He is ready to be,
+the lowest. Modern tendencies, legitimately recoiling from the one-
+sidedness of a past generation, are now turning away far too much from
+the Old Testament conceptions of Jehovah, which are concentrated in
+that metaphor of the vulture in the sky. And thereby we destroy the
+love, in the name of which we scout the wrath.
+
+                    'Infinite mercy, but, I wis,
+                     As infinite a justice too.'
+
+'As the vulture stirreth up his nest,'--that is the Old Testament
+revelation of the terribleness and gentleness of Jehovah. 'How often
+would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth
+her chickens under her wing?'--that is the New Testament modification
+of the image. But you never could have had the New unless you first had
+had the Old. And you are a foolish man if, in the name of the sanctity
+of the New, you cast away the teaching of the Old. Keep both the
+metaphors, and they will explain and confirm each other.
+
+II. Here we have an illuminating thought of the meaning of life.
+
+What is it all for? To teach us to fly, to exercise our half-fledged
+wings in short flights, that may prepare us for, and make it possible
+to take, longer ones. Every event that befalls us has a meaning beyond
+itself; and every task that we have to do reacts upon us, the doers,
+and either fits or hinders us for larger work. Life as a whole, and in
+its minutest detail, is worthy of God to give, and worthy of us to
+possess, only if we recognise the teaching that is put into picturesque
+form in this text--that the meaning of all which God does to us is to
+train us for something greater yonder. Life as a whole is 'full of
+sound and fury, signifying nothing,' unless it is an apprenticeship
+training. What are we here for? To make character. That is the aim and
+end of all--to make character; to get experience; to learn the use of
+our tools. I declare it seems to me that the world had better be wiped
+out altogether, incontinently, unless there is a world beyond, where a
+man shall use the force which here he made his own. 'Thou hast been
+faithful in a few things; behold I will make thee ruler over many
+things.' No man gets to the heart of the mystery of life or has in his
+hand the key which will enable him to unlock all the doors and
+difficulties of human experience, unless he gets to this--that it is
+all meant as training.
+
+If we could only carry that clear conviction with us day by day into
+the little things of life, what different things these, which we call
+the monotonous trifles of our daily duties, would become! The things
+may be small and unimportant, but the way in which we do them is not
+unimportant. The same fidelity may be exercised, and must be brought to
+bear, in order to do the veriest trifle of our daily lives rightly, as
+needs to be invoked, in order to get us safely through the crises and
+great times of life. There are no great principles for great duties,
+and little ones for little duties. We have to regulate all our conduct
+by the same laws. Life is built up of trifles, as mica-flakes, if there
+be enough of them, make the Alpine summits towering thousands of feet
+into the blue. Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it
+is made in the small ones. So, life is meant for discipline, and unless
+we use it for that, however much enjoyment we get out of it, we misuse
+it.
+
+III. Lastly, there is here a calming thought as to the variety of God's
+methods with us.
+
+'As the eagle stirreth up his nest.' No doubt the callow brood are much
+warmer and more comfortable in the nest than when they are turned out
+of it. The Israelites were by no means enamoured with the prospect of
+leaving the flesh-pots and the onions and the farmhouses that they had
+got for themselves in Goshen, to tramp with their cattle through the
+wilderness. They went after Moses with considerable disinclination.
+
+Here we have, then, as the first thing needed, God's loving compulsion
+to effort. To 'stir up the nest' means to make a man uncomfortable
+where he is;--sometimes by the prickings of his conscience, which are
+often the voices of God's Spirit; sometimes by changes of
+circumstances, either for the better or for the worse; and oftentimes
+by sorrows. The straw is pulled out of the nest, and it is not so
+comfortable to lie in; or a bit of it develops a sharp point that runs
+into the half-feathered skin, and makes the fledgling glad to come
+forth into the air. We all shrink from change. What should we do if we
+had it not? We should stiffen into habits that would dwarf and weaken
+us. We all recoil from storms. What should we do if we had them not?
+Sea and air would stagnate, and become heavy and putrid and
+pestilential, if it were not for the wild west wind and the hurtling
+storms. So all our changes, instead of being whimpered over, and all
+our sorrows, instead of being taken reluctantly, should be recognised
+as being what they are, loving summonses to effort. Then their pressure
+would be modified, and their blessing would be secured when their
+purpose was served.
+
+But the training of the father-eagle is not confined to stirring up the
+nest. What is to become of the young ones when they get out of it, and
+have never been accustomed to bear themselves up in the invisible ether
+about them? So 'he fluttereth over his young.' It is a very beautiful
+word that is employed here, which 'flutter' scarcely gives us. It is
+the same word that is used in the first chapter of Genesis, about the
+Spirit of God '_brooding_ on the face of the waters'; and it
+suggests how near, how all-protecting with expanded wings, the divine
+Father comes to the child whose restfulness He has disturbed.
+
+And is not that true? Had you ever trouble that you took as from Him,
+which did not bring that hovering presence nearer you, until you could
+almost feel the motion of the wing, and be brushed by it as it passed
+protectingly above your head? Ah, yes! 'Stirring the nest' is meant to
+be the precursor of closer approach of the Father to us; and if we take
+our changes and our sorrows as loving summonses from Him to effort, be
+sure that we shall realise Him as near to us, in a fashion that we
+never did before.
+
+That is not all. There is sustaining power. 'He spreadeth abroad his
+wings; he taketh them; beareth them on his wings.' On those broad
+pinions we are lifted, and by them we are guarded. It matters little
+whether the belief that the parent bird thus carries the young, when
+wearied with their short flights, is correct or not. The truth which
+underlies the representation is what concerns us. The beautiful
+metaphor is a picturesque way of saying, 'In all their afflictions He
+was afflicted; and the Angel of His presence saved them.' It is a
+picturesque way of saying, 'Thou canst do all things through Christ
+which strengtheneth thee.' And we may be very sure that if we let Him
+'stir up our nests' and obey His loving summons to effort, He will come
+very near to strengthen us for our attempts, and to bear us up when our
+own weak wings fail. The Psalmist sang that angels' hands should bear
+up God's servant. That is little compared with this promise of being
+carried heavenwards on Jehovah's own pinions. A vile piece of Greek
+mythology tells how Jove once, in the guise of an eagle, bore away a
+boy between his great wings. It is foul where it stands, but it is
+blessedly true about Christian experience. If only we lay ourselves on
+God's wings--and that not in idleness, but having ourselves tried our
+poor little flight--He will see that no harm comes to us.
+
+During life this training will go on; and after life, what then? Then,
+in the deepest sense, the old word will be true, 'Ye know how I bore
+you on eagle's wings and brought you _to Myself_'; and the great
+promise shall be fulfilled, when the half-fledged young brood are
+matured and full grown, 'They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they
+shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.'
+
+
+
+
+THEIR ROCK AND OUR ROCK
+
+'Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being
+Judges.' DEUT. xxxii. 31.
+
+
+Moses is about to leave the people whom he had led so long, and his
+last words are words of solemn warning. He exhorts them to cleave to
+God. The words of the text simply mean that the history of the nation
+had sufficiently proved that God, their God, was 'above all gods.' The
+Canaanites and all the enemies whom Israel had fought had been beaten,
+and in their awe of this warrior people acknowledged that their idols
+had found their lord. The great suit of 'Jehovah _versus_ Idols'
+has long since been decided. Every one acknowledges that Christianity
+is the only religion possible for twentieth century men. But the words
+of the text lend themselves to a wider application, and clothe in a
+picturesque garb the universal truth that the experience of godless men
+proves the futility of their objects of trust, when compared with that
+of him whose refuge is in God.
+
+I. God is a Rock to them that trust Him.
+
+We note the singular frequency of that designation in this song, in
+which it occurs six times. It is also found often in the Psalms. If
+Moses were the singer, we might see in this often-repeated metaphor a
+trace of influence of the scenery of the Sinaitic peninsula, which
+would he doubly striking to eyes accustomed to the alluvial plains of
+Egypt. What are the aspects of the divine nature set forth by this
+name?
+
+(1) Firm foundation: the solid eternity of the rock on which we can
+build.
+
+Petra: faithfulness to promises, unchanging.
+
+(2) Refuge: 'refuge from the storm'; 'my rock and my fortress and my
+high tower.'
+
+(3) Refreshment: rock from which water gushed out; and (4) Repose:
+'shadow of a great rock'; 'shadow from the heat.'
+
+Trace the image through Scripture, from this song till Christ's parable
+of the man who 'built his house on a rock.'
+
+II. Every man's experience shows him that there is no such refuge
+anywhere else.
+
+We do not assert that every man consciously comes to that conclusion.
+All we say is that he would do so if he rightly pondered the facts. The
+history of every life is a history of disappointment. Take these
+particulars just stated and ask yourselves: What does experience say as
+to the possibility of our possessing such blessings apart from God?
+There is no need for us to exaggerate, for the naked reality is sad
+enough. If God is not our best Good, we have no solid good. Every other
+'rock' crumbles into sand. Else why this restless change, why this
+disquiet, why the constant repetition, generation after generation, of
+the old, old wail, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity'? Why does every
+heart say Amen to the poet and the dramatist singing of 'the fever and
+the fret,' the tragic fare of man's life?
+
+Our appeal is not to men in the flush of excitement, but to them in
+their hours of solitary sane reflection. It is from 'Philip drunk to
+Philip sober.' We each have material for judging in our own case, and
+in the cases of some others. The experiment of living with other
+'rocks' than God has been tried for millenniums now. What has been the
+issue? You know what Christianity claims that it can do to make a life
+stable and safe. Do you know anything else that can? You know what
+Christian men will calmly say that they have found. Can you say as
+much? Let us hear some dying testimonies. Hearken to Jacob: 'The God
+which hath fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which
+redeemed me from all evil.' Hearken to Moses: 'The Rock, His work is
+perfect, for all His ways are judgment, a God of faithfulness and
+without iniquity, just and right is He.' Hearken to Joshua: 'Not one
+good thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God
+spake.' Hearken to David: 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not
+want .... Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
+life.' Hearken to Paul: 'The Lord stood by me and strengthened me, and
+I was delivered ... the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and
+will save me unto His heavenly kingdom.' What man who has chosen to
+take refuge or build on men and creatures can look backward and forward
+in such fashion?
+
+III. Every man's own nature tells him that God is his true Rock.
+
+Again I say that here I do not appeal to the surface of our
+consciousness, nor to men who have sophisticated themselves, nor to
+people who have sinned themselves, into hardness, but to the voice of
+the inner man which speaks in the depths of each man's being.
+
+There is the cry of Want: the manifest want of the soul for God.
+
+There is the voice of Reason.
+
+There is the voice of Conscience.
+
+IV. Yet many of us will not take God for our Rock.
+
+Surely it is a most extraordinary thing that men should be 'judges,'
+being convinced in their deepest consciousness that God is the only
+Foundation and Refuge, and yet that the conviction should have
+absolutely no influence on their conduct. The same stark, staring
+inconsequence is visible in many other departments of life, but in this
+region it works its most tragic results. The message which many of my
+hearers need most is--follow out your deepest convictions, and be true
+to the inward voice which condenses all your experience into the one
+counsel to take God for the 'strength of your hearts and your portion
+for ever,' for only in Him will you find what you need for life and
+strength and riches. If He is 'our Rock,' then we shall have a firm
+foundation, a safe refuge, inexhaustible refreshment and untroubled
+rest. Lives founded on aught beside are built on sand and will be full
+of tremors and unsettlements, and at last the despairing builder and
+his ruined house will be washed away with the dissolving 'sandbank and
+shoal of time' on which he built.
+
+
+
+
+GOD AND HIS SAINTS
+
+'He loved the people; all His saints are in Thy hand: and they sat down
+at Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 3.
+
+
+The great ode of which these words are a part is called 'the blessing
+wherewith Moses blessed the children of Israel before his death.' It is
+mainly an invocation of blessing from Heaven on the various tribes, but
+it begins, as the national existence of Israel began, with the
+revelation of God on Sinai, and it lays that as the foundation of
+everything. It does not matter, for my purposes, in the smallest
+degree, who was the author of this great song. Whoever he was, he has,
+by dint of divine inspiration and of his own sympathy with the inmost
+spirit of the Old Covenant, anticipated the deepest things of Christian
+truth; and these are here in the words of our text.
+
+I. The first thing that I would point out is the Divine Love which is
+the foundation of all.
+
+'He loved the people.' That is the beginning of everything. The word
+that this singer uses is one that only appears in this place, and if we
+regard its etymology, there lies in it a very tender and beautiful
+expression of the warmth of the divine love, for it is probably
+connected with words in an allied language which mean the _bosom_
+and a _tender embrace_, and so the picture that we have is of that
+great divine Lover folding 'the people' to His heart, as a mother might
+her child, and cherishing them in His bosom.
+
+Still further, the word is in a form in the Hebrew which implies that
+the act spoken about is neither past, present, nor future only, but
+continuous and perpetual. Thus it suggests to us the thought of
+timeless, eternal love, which has no beginning, and therefore has no
+end, which does not grow, and therefore will never decline nor decay,
+but which runs on upon one lofty level, with neither ups nor downs, and
+with no variation of the impulse which sends it forth; always the same,
+and always holding its objects in the fervent embrace of which the text
+speaks.
+
+Further, mark the place in this great song where this thought comes in.
+As I said, it is laid as the beginning of everything. 'We love Him
+because He first loved us' was the height to which the last of the
+Apostles attained in the last of his writings. But this old singer,
+with the mists of antiquity around him, who knew nothing about the
+Cross, nothing about the historical Christ, who had only that which
+modern thinkers tell us is a revelation of a wrathful God, somehow or
+other rose to the height of the evangelical conception of God's love as
+the foundation of the very existence of a people who are His. Like an
+orchid growing on a block of dry wood and putting forth a gorgeous
+bloom, this singer, with so much less to feed his faith than we have,
+has yet borne this fair flower of deep and devout insight into the
+secret of things and the heart of God. 'He loved the people'--
+therefore He formed them for Himself; therefore He brought them out of
+bondage; therefore He came down in flashing fire on Sinai and made
+known His will, which to know and do is life. All begins from the
+tender, timeless love of God.
+
+And if the question is asked, Why does God thus love? the only answer
+is, Because he is God. 'Not for your sakes, O house of Israel ... but
+for Mine own name's sake.' The love of God is self-originated. In it,
+as in all His acts, He is His own motive, as His name, 'I am that I
+am,' proclaims. It is inseparable from His being, and flows forth
+before, and independent of, anything in the creature which could draw
+it out. Men's love is attracted by their perception or their
+imagination of something loveable in its objects. It is like a well,
+where there has to be much work of the pump-handle before the gush
+comes. God's love is like an artesian well, or a fountain springing up
+from unknown depths in obedience to its own impulse. All that we can
+say is, 'Thou art God. It is Thy nature and property to be merciful.'
+
+'God loved the people.' The bed-rock is the spontaneous, unalterable,
+inexhaustible, ever-active, fervent love of God, like that with which a
+mother clasps her child to her maternal breast. The fair flower of this
+great thought was a product of Judaism. Let no man say that the God of
+Love is unknown to the Old Testament.
+
+II. Notice how, with this for a basis, we have next the guardian care
+extended to all those that answer love by love.
+
+The singer goes on to say, mixing up his pronouns, in the fashion of
+Hebrew poetry, somewhat arbitrarily, 'all _His_ saints are in
+_Thy_ hand.' Now, what is a 'saint'? A man who answers God's love
+by his love. The notion of a saint has been marred and mutilated by the
+Church and the world. It has been taken as a special designation of
+certain selected individuals, mostly of the ascetic and monastic type,
+whereas it belongs to every one of God's people. It has been taken by
+the world to mean sanctimoniousness and not sanctity, and is a term of
+contempt rather than of admiration on their lips. And even those of us,
+who have got beyond thinking that it is a title of honour belonging
+only to the aristocracy of Christ's Kingdom, are too apt to mistake
+what it really does mean. It may be useful to say a word about the
+Scriptural use and true meaning of that much-abused term. The root idea
+of sanctity or holiness is not moral character, goodness of disposition
+and of action, but it is separation from the world and consecration to
+God. As surely as a magnet applied to a heap of miscellaneous filings
+will pick out every little bit of iron there, so surely will that love
+which He bears to the people, when it is responded to, draw to itself,
+and therefore draw out of the heap, the men that feel its impulse and
+its preciousness. And so 'saint' means, secondly, righteous and pure,
+but it means, first, knit to God, separated from evil, and separated by
+the power of His received love.
+
+Now, brethren, here is a question for each of us: Do I yield to that
+timeless, tender clasp of the divine Father and Mother in one? Do I
+answer it by my love? If I do, then I am a 'saint,' because I belong to
+Him, and He belongs to me, and in that commerce I have broken with the
+world. If we are true to ourselves, and true to our Lord, and true to
+the relation between us, the purity of character, which is popularly
+supposed to be the meaning of _holiness_, will come. Not without
+effort, not without set-backs, not without slow advance, but it will
+come; for he that is consecrated to the Lord is 'separated' from
+iniquity. Such is the meaning of 'saint.'
+
+'All His saints are in Thy hand.' The first metaphor of our text spoke
+of God's bosom, to which He drew the people and folded them there. This
+one speaks of His 'hand.' They lie in it. That means two things. It
+means absolute security, for will He not close His fingers over His
+palm to keep the soul that has laid itself there? And 'none shall pluck
+them out of My Father's hand.' No one but yourself can do that. And you
+can do it, if you cease to respond to His love, and so cease to be a
+saint. Then you will fall out of His hand, and how far you will fall
+God only knows.
+
+Being in God's hand means also submission. Loyola said to his black
+army, 'Be like a stick in a man's hand.' That meant utter submission
+and abnegation of self, the willingness to be put anywhere, and used
+anyhow, and done anything with. And if I by my reception of, and
+response to, that timeless love, am a saint belonging to God, then not
+only shall I be secure, but I must be submissive. 'All His saints are
+in Thy hand.' Do not try to get out of it; be content to let it guide
+you as the steersman's hand turns the spokes of the wheel and directs
+the ship.
+
+Now, there is a last thought here. I have spoken of the foundation of
+all as being divine love, of the security and guardian care of the
+saints, and there follows one thought more:--
+
+III. The docile obedience of those that are thus guarded.
+
+As the words stand in our Bible, they are as follow:--'They sat down at
+Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words.' These two clauses make
+up one picture, and one easily understands what it is. It represents a
+group of docile scholars, sitting at the Master's feet. He is teaching
+them, and they listen open-mouthed and open-eared to what he says, and
+will take his words into their lives, like Mary sitting at Christ's
+feet, whilst Martha was bustling about His meal. But, beautiful as that
+picture is, there has been suggested a little variation in the words
+which gives another one that strikes me as being even more beautiful.
+There are some difficulties of language with which I need not trouble
+you. But the general result is this, that perhaps instead of 'sitting
+down at Thy feet' we should read 'followed at Thy feet.' That suggests
+the familiar metaphor of a guide and those led by him who, without him,
+know not their road. As a dog follows his master, as the sheep their
+shepherd, so, this singer felt, will saints follow the God whom they
+love. Religion is imitation of God. That was a deep thought for such a
+stage of revelation, and it in part anticipates Christ's tender words:
+'He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His
+voice.' They follow at His feet. That is the blessedness and the power
+of Christian morality, that it is keeping close at Christ's heels, and
+that instead of its being said to us, 'Go,' He says, 'Come,' and
+instead of our being bid to hew out for ourselves a path of duty, He
+says to us, 'He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall
+have the light of life.' They follow at His feet, as the dog at his
+master's, as the sheep at their shepherd's.
+
+They 'receive His words.' Yes, if you will keep close to Him, He will
+turn round and speak to you. If you are near enough to Him to catch His
+whisper He will not leave you without guidance. That is one side of the
+thought, that following we receive what He says, whereas the people
+that are away far behind Him scarcely know what His will is, and never
+can catch the low whisper which will come to us by providences, by
+movements in our own spirits, through the exercise of our own faculties
+of judgment and common-sense, if only we will keep near to Him. 'Be ye
+not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose
+mouths must be held in with bit and with bridle, else they will not
+come near to thee,' but walk close behind Him, and then the promise
+will be fulfilled: 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' A glance tells
+two people who are in sympathy what each wishes, and Jesus Christ will
+speak to us, if we keep close at His heels.
+
+They that follow Him will 'receive His words' in another sense. They
+will take them in, and His words will not be wasted. And they will
+receive them in yet another sense. They will carry them out and do
+them, and His words will not be in vain.
+
+So, dear brethren, the peace, the strength, the blessedness, the
+goodness, of our lives flow from these three stages, which this singer
+so long ago had found to be the essence of everything, recognition of
+the timeless tenderness of God, the yielding to and answering that
+love, so that it separates us for Himself, the calm security and happy
+submission which follow thereon, the imitation of Him in daily life,
+and the walking in His steps, which is rewarded and made more perfect
+by hearing more distinctly the whisper of His loving, commanding voice.
+
+
+
+
+ISRAEL THE BELOVED
+
+'The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him; and the Lord
+shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between His
+shoulders.'--DEUT. xxxiii. 12.
+
+
+Benjamin was his father's favourite child, and the imagery of this
+promise is throughout drawn from the relations between such a child and
+its father. So far as the future history of the tribes is shadowed in
+these 'blessings' of this great ode, the reference of the text may be
+to the tribe of Benjamin, as specially distinguished by Saul having
+been a member of it, and by the Temple having been built on its soil.
+But we find that each of the promises of the text is repeated
+elsewhere, with distinct reference to the whole nation. For example,
+the first one, of safe dwelling, reappears in verse 28 in reference to
+Israel; the second one, of God's protecting covering, is extended to
+the nation in many places; and the third, of dwelling between His
+shoulders, is in substance found again in chap. i. 31, 'the Lord thy
+God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son.' So that we may give the
+text a wider extension, and take it as setting forth under a lovely
+metaphor, and with a restricted reference, what is true of all God's
+children everywhere and always.
+
+I. Who are the 'beloved of the Lord'?
+
+The first answer to that question must be--all men. But these great
+blessings, so beautifully shadowed in this text, do not belong to all
+men; nor does the designation, 'the beloved of the Lord,' belong to all
+men, but to those who have entered into a special relation to Him. In
+these words of the Hebrew singer there sound the first faint tones of a
+music that was to swell into clear notes, when Jesus said: 'If a man
+love Me, he will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will
+come unto him, and make Our abode with him.' They who are knit by faith
+and love to God's only-begotten and beloved Son, by that union receive
+'power to become the sons of God,' and share in the love which is ever
+pouring out from the Father's heart on 'the Son of His love.'
+
+II. What are their blessed privileges?
+
+The three clauses of the text express substantially the same idea, but
+with a striking variety of metaphors.
+
+1. They have a sure dwelling-place.
+
+There is a very slight change of rendering of the first clause, which
+greatly increases its 'force, and preserves the figure that is obscured
+by the usual translation. We should read 'shall dwell safely
+_on_,' rather than '_by_, Him.' And the effect of that small
+change in the preposition is to bring out the thought that God is
+regarded as the foundation on which His beloved build their house of
+life, and dwell in security and calm. If we are sons through the Son,
+we shall build our houses or pitch our tents on that firm ground, and,
+being founded on the Rock of ages, they will not fall when all created
+foundations reel to the overthrow of whatever is built on _them_.
+It is not companionship only, blessed as that is, that is promised
+here. We have a larger privilege than dwelling _by_ Him, for if we
+love His Son, we build _on_ God, and 'God dwelleth in us and we in
+Him.'
+
+What spiritual reality underlies the metaphor of dwelling or building
+on God? The fact of habitual communion.
+
+Note the blessed results of such grounding of our lives on God through
+such habitual communion. We shall 'dwell safely.' We may think of that
+as being objective safety--that is, freedom from peril, or as being
+subjective--that is, freedom from care or fear, or as meaning
+'trustfully,' confidently, as the expression is rendered in Psalm xvi.
+9 (margin), which is for us the ground of both these. He who dwells in
+God trustfully dwells both safely and securely, and none else is free
+either from danger or from dread.
+
+2. They have a sure shelter.
+
+God is for His beloved not only the foundation on which they dwell in
+safety, but their perpetual covering. They dwell safely because He is
+so. There are many tender shapes in which this great promise is
+presented to our faith. Sometimes God is thought of as covering the
+weak fugitive, as the arching sides of His cave sheltered David from
+Saul. Sometimes He is represented as covering His beloved, who cower
+under His wings, 'as the hen gathereth her chickens' when hawks are in
+the sky. Sometimes He appears as covering them from tempest, 'when the
+blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall,' and 'the
+shadow of a great rock' shields from its fury. Sometimes He is pictured
+as stretching out protection over His beloved's heads, as the Pillar of
+cloud lay, long-drawn-out, over the Tabernacle when at rest, and 'on
+all the Glory was a defence.' But under whatever emblem the general
+idea of a covering shelter was conceived, there was always a
+correlative duty on our side. For the root-meaning of one of the Old
+Testament words for 'faith' is 'fleeing to a refuge,' and we shall not
+be safe in God unless by faith we flee for refuge to Him in Christ.
+
+3. They have a Father who bears them on His shoulders.
+
+The image is the same as in chap. i. already referred to. It recurs
+also in Isaiah (xlvi. 3, 4), 'Even to hoar hairs will I carry you, and
+I have made and I will bear, yea, I will carry, and will deliver'; and
+in Hosea (xi. 3), 'I taught Ephraim to go; I took them on My arms.'
+
+The image beautifully suggests the thought of the favourite child
+riding high and happy on the strong shoulder, which lifts it above
+rough places and miry ways. The prose reality is: 'My grace is
+sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.'
+
+The Cross carries those who carry it. They who carry God in their
+hearts are carried by God through all the long pilgrimage of life.
+Because they are thus upheld by a strength not their own, 'they shall
+run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint,' and though
+marches be long and limbs strained, they shall 'go from strength to
+strength till every one of them appears before God in Zion.'
+
+
+
+'AT THE BUSH'
+
+'.. The goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.'-DEUT. xxxiii. 16.
+
+
+I Think this is the only reference in the Old Testament to that great
+vision which underlay Moses' call and Israel's deliverance. It occurs
+in what is called 'the blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God,
+blessed the children of Israel before his death,' although modern
+opinion tends to decide that this hymn is indeed much more recent than
+the days of Moses. There seems a peculiar appropriateness in this
+reference being put into the mouth of the ancient Lawgiver, for to him
+even Sinai, with all its glories, cannot have been so impressive and so
+formative of his character as was the vision granted to him when
+solitary in the wilderness. It is to be noticed that the characteristic
+by which God is designated here never occurs elsewhere than in this one
+place. It is intended to intensify the conception of the greatness, and
+preciousness, and all-sufficiency of that 'goodwill.' If it is that 'of
+Him that dwelt in the bush,' it is sure to be all that a man can need.
+I need not remind you that the words occur in the blessing pronounced
+on 'Joseph'--that is, the two tribes which represented Joseph--in which
+all the greatest material gifts that could be desired by a pastoral
+people are first called down upon them, and then the ground of all
+these is laid in 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.' 'The
+blessing--let it come on the head of Joseph.'
+
+So then here, first, is a great thought as to what for us all is the
+blessing of blessings--God's 'goodwill.' 'Goodwill'-the word, perhaps,
+might bear a little stronger rendering. 'Goodwill' is somewhat tepid. A
+man may have a good enough will, and yet no very strong emotion of
+favour or delight, and may do nothing to carry his goodwill into
+action. But the word that is employed here, and is a common enough one
+in Scripture, always carries with it a certain intensity and warmth of
+feeling. It is more than 'goodwill'; it is more than 'favour'; perhaps
+'delight' would be nearer the meaning. It implies, too, not only the
+inward sentiment of complacency, but also the active purpose of action
+in conformity with it, on God's part. Now it needs few words to show
+that these two things, which are inseparable, do make the blessing of
+blessings for every one of us--the delight, the complacency, of God in
+us, and the active purpose of good in God for us. These are the things
+that will make a man happy wherever he is.
+
+If I might dwell for a moment upon other scriptural passages, I would
+just recall to you, as bringing up very strongly and beautifully the
+all-sufficiency and the blessed effects of having this delight and
+loving purpose directed towards us like a sunbeam, the various great
+things that a chorus of psalmists say that it will do for a man. Here
+is one of their triumphant utterances: 'Thou wilt bless the righteous;
+with favour wilt Thou compass him as with a shield.' That crystal
+battlement, if I may so vary the figure, is round a man, keeping far
+away from him all manner of real evil, and filling his quiet heart as
+he stands erect behind the rampart, with the sense of absolute
+security. That is one of the blessings that God's favour or goodwill
+will secure for us. Again, we read: 'By Thy favour Thou hast made my
+mountain to stand strong.' He that knows himself to be the object of
+the divine delight, and who by faith knows himself to be the object of
+the divine activity in protection, stands firm, and his purposes will
+be carried through, because they will be purposes in accordance with
+the divine mind, and nothing has power to shake him. So he that grasps
+the hand of God can say, not because of his grasp, but because of the
+Hand that he holds, 'The Lord is at my right hand; I shall not be
+greatly moved. By Thy favour Thou hast made our mountain to stand
+strong.' And again, in another analogous but yet diversified
+representation, we read: 'In Thee shall we rejoice all the day, and in
+Thy favour shall our horn be exalted.' That is the emblem, not only of
+victory, but of joyful confidence, and so he who knows himself to have
+God for his friend and his helper, can go through the world keeping a
+sunny face, whatever the clouds may be, erect and secure, light of
+heart and buoyant, holding up his chin above the stormiest waters, and
+breasting all difficulties and dangers with a confidence far away from
+presumption, because it is the consequence of the realisation of God's
+presence. So the goodwill of God is the chiefest good.
+
+Now, if we turn to the remarkable designation of the divine nature
+which is here, consider what rivers of strength and of blessedness flow
+out of the thought that for each of us 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt
+in the bush' may be our possession.
+
+What does that pregnant designation of God say? That was a strange
+shrine for God, that poor, ragged, dry desert bush, with apparently no
+sap in its gray stem, prickly with thorns, with 'no beauty that we
+should desire it,' fragile and insignificant, yet it was 'God's house.'
+Not in the cedars of Lebanon, not in the great monarchs of the forest,
+but in the forlorn child of the desert did He abide. 'The goodwill of
+Him that dwelt in the bush' may dwell in you and me. Never mind how
+small, never mind how sapless, never mind how lightly esteemed among
+men, never mind though we make a very poor show by the side of the
+'oaks of Bashan' or the 'cedars of Lebanon.' It is all right; the Fire
+does not dwell in them. 'Unto this man will I look, and with him will I
+dwell, who is of a humble and a contrite heart, and who trembleth at My
+word.' Let no sense of poverty, weakness, unworthiness, ever draw the
+faintest film of fear across our confidence, for even with us He will
+sojourn. For it is 'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush' that we
+evoke for ours.
+
+Again, what more does that name say? He 'that dwelt in the bush' filled
+it with fire, and it 'burned and was not consumed.' Now there is good
+ground to object to the ordinary interpretation, as if the burning of
+the bush which yet remains unconsumed was meant to symbolise Israel,
+or, in the New Testament application, the Church which, notwithstanding
+all persecution, still remains undestroyed. Our brethren of the
+Presbyterian churches have taken the Latin form of the words in the
+context for their motto--_Nec Tamen Consumebatur_. But I venture
+to think that that is a mistake; and that what is meant by the symbol
+is just what is expressed by the verbal revelation which accompanied
+it, and that was this: 'I AM THAT I AM.' The fire that did not burn out
+is the emblem of the divine nature which does not tend to death because
+it lives, nor to exhaustion because it energises, nor to emptiness
+because it bestows, but after all times is the same; lives by its own
+energy and is independent. 'I am that I have become,'--that is what men
+have to say. 'I am that I once was not, and again once shall not be,'
+is what men have to say. 'I am that I am' is God's name. And this
+eternal, ever-living, self-sufficing, absolute, independent, unwearied,
+inexhaustible God is the God whose favour is as inexhaustible as
+Himself, and eternal as His own being. 'Therefore the sons of men shall
+put their trust beneath the shadow of Thy wings,' and, if they have
+'the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush,' will be able to say,
+'Because Thou livest we shall live also.'
+
+What more does the name say? He 'that dwelt in the bush' dwelt there in
+order to deliver; and, dwelling there, declared 'I have seen the
+affliction of My people, and am come down to deliver them.' So, then,
+if the goodwill of that eternal, delivering God is with us, we, too,
+may feel that our trivial troubles and our heavy burdens, all the needs
+of our prisoned wills and captive souls, are known to Him, and that we
+shall have deliverance from them by Him. Brethren, in that name, with
+its historical associations, with its deep revelations of the divine
+nature, with its large promises of the divine sympathy and help, there
+lie surely abundant strengths and consolations for us all. The
+goodwill, the delight, of God, and the active help of God, may be ours,
+and if these be ours we shall be blessed and strong.
+
+Do not let us forget the place in this blessing on the head of Joseph
+which my text holds. It is preceded by an invoking of the precious
+things of Heaven, and 'the precious fruits brought forth by the sun...
+of the chief things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things
+of the lasting hills, and the precious things of the earth and the
+fulness thereof.' They are all heaped together in one great mass for
+the beloved Joseph. And then, like the golden spire that tops some of
+those campaniles in Italian cities, and completes their beauty, above
+them all there is set, as the shining apex of all, 'the goodwill of Him
+that dwelt in the bush.' That is more precious than all other precious
+things; set last because it is to be sought first; set last as in
+building some great structure the top stone is put on last of all; set
+last because it gathers all others into itself, secures that all others
+shall be ours in the measure in which we need them, and arms us against
+all possibilities of evil. So the blessing of blessings is the
+'goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush.'
+
+In my text this is an invocation only; but we can go further than that.
+You and I can make sure that we have it, if we will. How to secure it?
+One of the texts which I have already quoted helps us a little way
+along t he road in answer to that question, for it says, 'Thou, Lord,
+wilt bless the righteous. With favour wilt thou compass him as with a
+shield.' But it is of little use to tell me that if I am 'righteous'
+God will 'bless me,' and 'compass me with favour.' If you will tell me
+how to become righteous, you will do me more good. And we have been
+told how to be righteous--'If a man keep My commandments My Father will
+love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.' If we
+knit ourselves to Jesus Christ, and we can all do that if we like, by
+faith that trusts Him, and by love, the child of faith, that obeys Him,
+and grows daily more like Him--then, without a doubt, that delight of
+God in us, and that active purpose of good in God's mind towards us,
+will assuredly be ours; and on no other terms.
+
+So, dear brethren, the upshot of my homily is just this--Men may
+strive and scheme, and wear their finger-nails down to the quick, to
+get some lesser good, and fail after all. The greatest good is
+certainly ours by that easy road which, however hard it may be
+otherwise, is made easy because it is so certain to bring us to what we
+want. Holiness is the condition of God's delight in us, and a genuine
+faith in Christ, and the love which faith evokes, are the conditions.
+So it is a very simple matter You never can be sure of getting the
+lower good You can be quite sure of getting the highest. You never can
+be certain that the precious things of the earth and the fulness
+thereof will be yours, or that if they were, they would be so very
+precious; but you can be quite sure that the 'goodwill of Him that
+dwelt in the bush' may lie like light upon your hearts, and be strength
+to your limbs.
+
+And so I commend to you the words of the Apostle, 'Wherefore we labour
+that, whether present or absent, we may be well-pleasing to Him.' To
+minister to God's delight is the highest glory of man. To have the
+favour of Him that dwelt in the bush resting upon us is the highest
+blessing for man. He will say 'Well done! good and faithful servant.'
+'The Lord taketh pleasure'--wonderful as it sounds--'in them that fear
+Him, in them that hope in His mercy,' and that, hoping in His mercy,
+live as He would have them live.
+
+
+
+
+SHOD FOR THE ROAD
+
+'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy
+strength be.' DEUT. xxxiii. 25.
+
+
+There is a general correspondence between those blessings wherewith
+Moses blessed the tribes of Israel before his death, and the
+circumstances and territory of each tribe in the promised land. The
+portion of Asher, in whose blessing the words of our text occurs, was
+partly the rocky northern coast and partly the fertile lands stretching
+to the base of the Lebanon. In the inland part of their territory they
+cultivated large olive groves, the produce of which was trodden out in
+great rock-hewn cisterns. So the clause before my text is a benediction
+upon that industry-'let him dip his foot in oil.' And then the metaphor
+naturally suggested by the mention of the foot is carried on into the
+next words, 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' the tribe being
+located upon rocky sea-coast, having rough roads to travel, and so
+needing to be well shod. The substance, then, of that promise seems to
+be--strength adequate to, and unworn by, exercise; while the second
+clause, though not altogether plain, seems to put a somewhat similar
+idea in unmetaphorical shape. 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be,'
+probably means the promise of power that grows with growing years.
+
+So, then, we have first that thought that God gives us an equipment of
+strength proportioned to our work,--shoes fit for our road. God does
+not turn people out to scramble over rough mountains with thin-soled
+boots on; that is the plain English of the words. When an Alpine
+climber is preparing to go away into Switzerland for rock work, the
+first thing he does is to get a pair of strong shoes, with plenty of
+iron nails in the soles of them. So Asher had to be shod for his rough
+roads, and so each of us may be sure that if God sends us on stony
+paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and will not send us out on
+any journey for which He does not equip us well.
+
+There are no difficulties to be found in any path of duty, for which he
+that is called to tread it is not prepared by Him that sent him.
+Whatsoever may be the road, our equipment is calculated for it, and is
+given to us from Him that has appointed it.
+
+Is there not a suggestion here, too, as to the sort of travelling we
+may expect to have? An old saying tells us that we do not go to heaven
+in silver slippers, and the reason is because the road is rough. The
+'primrose way' leads somewhere else, and it may be walked on
+'delicately.' But if we need shoes of iron and brass, we may pretty
+well guess the kind of road we have before us. If a man is equipped
+with such coverings on his feet, depend upon it that there will be use
+for them before he gets to the end of his day's journey. The thickest
+sole will make the easiest travelling over rocky roads. So be quite
+sure of this, that if God gives to us certain endowments and equipments
+which are only calculated for very toilsome paths, the roughness of the
+road will match the stoutness of the shoes.
+
+And see what He does give. See the provision which is made for patience
+and strength, for endurance and courage, in all the messages of His
+mercy, in all the words of His love, in all the powers of His Gospel,
+and then say whether that looks as if we should have an easy life of it
+on our way home. Those two ships that went away a while ago upon the
+brave, and, as some people thought, desperate task of finding the North
+Pole--any one that looked upon them as they lay in Portsmouth Roads,
+might know that it was no holiday cruise they were meant for. The
+thickness of the sides, the strength of the cordage, the massiveness of
+the equipment, did not look like pleasure-sailing.
+
+And so, dear brethren, if we think of all that is given to us in God's
+Gospel in the way of stimulus and encouragement, and exhortation, and
+actual communication of powers, we may calculate, from the abundance of
+the resources, how great will be the strain upon us before we come to
+the end, and our 'feet stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.'  Go into
+some of the great fortresses in continental countries, and you will
+find the store-rooms full of ammunition and provisions; bread enough
+and biscuits enough, as it seems, for half the country, laid up there,
+and a deep well somewhere or other in the courtyard. What does that
+mean? It means fighting, that is what it means. So if we are brought
+into this strong pavilion, so well provisioned, so massively fortified
+and defended, that means that we shall need all the strength that is to
+be found in those thick walls, and all the sustenance that is to be
+found in those gorged magazines, and all the refreshment that is to be
+drawn from that free, and full, and inexhaustible fountain, before the
+battle is over and the victory won. Depend upon it, the promise 'Thy
+shoes shall be iron and brass.' means, 'Thy road shall be rocky and
+flinty'; and so it is.
+
+And yet, thank God! whilst it is true that it is very hard and very
+difficult for many of us, and hard and difficult--even if without the
+'very'--for us all, it is also true that we have the adequate provision
+sufficient for all our necessities--and far more than sufficient! It is
+a poor compliment to the strength that He gives to us to say that it is
+enough to carry us through. God does not deal out His gifts to people
+with such an economical correspondence to necessities as that. There is
+always a wide margin. More than we can ask, more than we can think,
+more than we can need is given us.
+
+If He were to deal with us as men often deal with one another, asking
+us, 'Well, how much do you want? cannot you do with a little less?
+there is the exact quantity that you need for your support'--if you got
+your bread by weight and your water by measure, it would be a very poor
+affair. See how He actually does--He says, 'Child, there is Mine own
+strength for you'; and we think that we honour Him when we say, 'God
+has given us enough for our necessities!' Rather the old word is always
+true: 'So they did eat and were filled; and they took up of the
+fragments that remained seven baskets-full,' and after they were
+satisfied and replete with the provision, there was more at the end
+than when they began.
+
+That suggests another possible thought to be drawn from this promise,
+namely, that it assures not only of strength adequate to the
+difficulties and perils of the journey, but also of a strength which is
+not worn out by use.
+
+The 'portion' of Asher was the rocky sea-coast. The sharp, jagged rocks
+would cut to pieces anything made of leather long before the day's
+march was over; but the travellers have their feet shod with metal, and
+the rocks which they have to stumble over will only strike fire from
+their shoes. They need not step timidly for fear of wearing them out;
+but, wherever they have to march, may go with full confidence that
+their shoeing will not fail them. A wise general looks after that part
+of his soldiers' outfit with special care, knowing that if _it_
+gives out, all the rest is of no use. So our Captain provides us with
+an inexhaustible strength, to which we may fully trust. We shall not
+exhaust it by any demands that we can make upon it. We shall only
+brighten it up, like the nails in a well-used shoe, the heads of which
+are polished by stumbling and scrambling over rocky roads.
+
+So we may be bold in the march, and draw upon our stock of strength to
+the utmost. There is no fear that it will fail us. We may put all our
+force into our work, we shall not weaken the power which 'by reason of
+use is exercised,' not exhausted. For the grace which Christ gives us
+to serve Him, being divine, is subject to no weariness, and neither
+faints nor fails. The bush that burned unconsumed is a type of that
+Infinite Being who works unexhausted, and lives undying, after all
+expenditure is rich, after all pouring forth is full. And of His
+strength we partake.
+
+Whensoever a man puts forth an effort of any kind whatever--when I
+speak, when I lift my hand, when I run, when I think-there is waste of
+muscular tissue. Some of my strength goes in the act, and thus every
+effort means expenditure and diminution of force. Hence weariness that
+needs sleep, waste that needs food, languor that needs rest. We belong
+to an order of being in which work is death, in regard to our physical
+nature; but our spirits may lay hold of God, and enter into an order of
+things in which work is not death, nor effort exhaustion, nor is there
+loss of power in the expenditure of power.
+
+That sounds strange, and yet it is not strange. Think of that electric
+light which is made by directing a strong stream upon two small pieces
+of carbon. As the electricity strikes upon these and turns their
+blackness into a fiery blaze, it eats away their substance while it
+changes them into light. But there is an arrangement in the lamp by
+which a fresh surface is continually being brought into the path of the
+beam, and so the light continues without wavering and blazes on. The
+carbon is our human nature, black and dull in itself; the electric beam
+is the swift energy of God, which makes us 'light in the Lord.' For the
+one, decay is the end of effort; for the other, there is none. 'Though
+our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.'
+Though we belong to the perishing order of nature by our bodily frame,
+we belong to the undecaying realm of grace by the spirit that lays hold
+upon God. And if our work weary us, as it must do so long as we
+continue here, yet in the deepest sanctuary of our being, our strength
+is greatened by exercise. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.' 'Thy
+raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these
+forty years.' 'Stand, therefore, having your feet shod with the
+preparedness of the Gospel of peace.'
+
+But this is not all. There is an advance even upon these great promises
+in the closing words. That second clause of our text says more than the
+first one. 'Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,' that promises us powers
+and provision adapted to, and unexhausted by, the weary pilgrimage and
+rough road of life. But 'as thy days, so shall thy strength be,' says
+even more than that. The meaning of the word rendered 'strength' in our
+version is very doubtful, and most modern translators are inclined to
+render it 'rest.' But if we adhere to the translation of our version,
+we get a forcible and relevant promise, which fits on well to the
+previous clause, understood as it has been in my previous remarks. The
+usual understanding of the words is 'strength proportioned to thy day,'
+an idea which we have found already suggested by the previous clause.
+But that explanation rests on, or at any rate derives support from, the
+common misquotation of the words. They are not, as we generally hear
+them quoted, 'As thy day, so shall thy strength be,'--but 'day' is in
+the plural, and that makes a great difference. 'As thy days, so shall
+thy strength be,' that is to say: the two sums--of 'thy days' and of
+'thy strength'--keep growing side by side, the one as fast as the other
+and no faster. The days increase. Well, what then? The strength
+increases too. As I said, we are allied to two worlds. According to the
+law of one of them, the outer world of physical life, we soon reach the
+summit of human strength. For a little while it is true, even in the
+life of nature, that our power grows with our days. But we soon reach
+the watershed, and then the opposite comes to be true. Down, steadily
+down, we go. With diminishing power, with diminishing vitality, with a
+dimmer eye, with an obtuser ear, with a slower-beating heart, with a
+feebler frame, we march on and on to our grave. 'As thy days, so shall
+thy weakness be,' is the law for all of us mature men and women in
+regard to our outward life.
+
+But, dear brethren, we may be emancipated from that dreary law in
+regard to the true life of our spirits, and instead of growing weaker
+as we grow older, we may and we should grow stronger. We may be and we
+should be moving on a course that has no limit to its advance. We may
+be travelling on a shining path through the heavens, that has no noon-
+tide height from which it must slowly and sadly decline, but tends
+steadily and for ever upwards, nearer and nearer to the very fountain
+itself of heavenly radiance. 'The path of the just is as the shining
+light, which shineth more and more till the noon-tide of the day.' But
+the reality surpasses even that grand thought, for it discloses to us
+an endless approximation to an infinite beauty, and an ever-growing
+possession of never exhausted fulness, as the law for the progress of
+all Christ's servants. The life of each of us may and should be
+continual accession and increase of power through all the days here,
+through all the ages beyond. Why? Because 'the life which I live, I
+live by the faith of the Son of God.' Christ liveth in me. It is not my
+strength that grows, so much as God's strength in me which is given
+more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If
+my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal
+energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I
+shall be becoming purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will,
+gentler, liker Christ, every way fitter for His service, and for larger
+service, as the days increase.
+
+Those of us who have reached middle life, or perhaps gone a little over
+the watershed, ought to have this experience as our own in a very
+distinct degree. The years that are past ought to have drawn us
+somewhat away from our hot pursuing after earthly and perishable
+things. They should have added something to the clearness and
+completeness of our perception of the deep simplicity of God's gospel.
+They should have tightened our hold and increased our possession of
+Christ, and unfolded more and more of His all-sufficiency. They should
+have enriched us with memories of God's loving care, and lighted all
+the sky behind with a glow which is reflected on the path before us,
+and kindles calm confidence in His unfailing goodness. They should have
+given us power and skill for the conflicts that yet remain, as the Red
+Indians believe that the strength of every defeated and scalped enemy
+passes into his conqueror's arm. They should have given force to our
+better nature, and weakening, progressive weakening, to our worse. They
+should have rooted us more firmly and abidingly in Him from whom all
+our power comes, and so have given us more and fuller supplies of His
+exhaustless and ever-flowing might.
+
+So it may be with us if we abide in Him, without whom we are nothing,
+but partaking of whose strength 'the weakest shall be as David, and
+David as an angel of God.'
+
+If for us, drawing nearer to the end is drawing nearer to the light,
+our faces will be brightened more and more with that light which we
+approach, and our path will be 'as the shining light which shines more
+and more unto the noon-tide of the day,' because we are closer to the
+very fountain of heavenly radiance, and growingly bathed and flooded
+with the outgoings of His glory. 'As thy days, so shall thy strength
+be.'
+
+The promise ought to be true for us all. It _is_ true for all who
+use the things that are freely given to them of God. And whilst thus it
+is the law for the devout life here, its most glorious fulfilment
+remains for the life beyond. There each new moment shall bring new
+strength, and growing millenniums but add fresh vigour to our immortal
+life. Here the unresting beat of the waves of the sea of time gnaws
+away the bank and shoal whereon we stand, but there each roll of the
+great ocean of eternity shall but spread new treasures at our feet and
+add new acres to our immortal heritage. 'The oldest angels,' says
+Swedenborg, 'look the youngest.' When life is immortal, the longer it
+lasts the stronger it becomes, and so the spirits that have stood for
+countless days before His throne, when they appear to human eyes,
+appear as--'young men clothed in long white garments,'--full of unaging
+youth and energy that cannot wane. So, whilst in the flesh we must obey
+the law of decay, the spirit may be subject to this better law of life,
+and 'while the outward man perisheth, the inward man be renewed day by
+day.' 'Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men
+shall utterly fall; but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their
+strength.'
+
+
+
+
+A DEATH IN THE DESERT
+
+'So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab,
+according to the word of the Lord. 6. And he buried him in a valley in
+the land of Moab, ... but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this
+day.'--DEUT. xxxiv.5, 6.
+
+
+A fitting end to such a life! The great law-giver and leader had been
+all his days a lonely man; and now, surrounded by a new generation, and
+all the old familiar faces vanished, he is more solitary than ever. He
+had lived alone with God, and it was fitting that alone with God he
+should die.
+
+How the silent congregation must have watched, as, alone, with 'natural
+strength unabated,' he breasted the mountain, and went up to be seen no
+more! With dignified reticence our chapter tells us no details. He
+'died there,' in that dreary solitude, and in some cleft he was buried,
+and no man knows where. The lessons of that solitary death and unknown
+tomb may best be learned by contrast with another death and another
+grave--those of the Leader of the New Covenant, the Law-giver and
+Deliverer from a worse bondage, and Guide into a better Canaan, the Son
+who was faithful over His own house, as Moses was 'faithful in all his
+house, as a servant.' That lonely and forgotten grave among the savage
+cliffs was in keeping with the whole character and work of him who lay
+there.
+
+  Here,--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
+    Lightnings are loosened,
+  Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
+    Peace let the dew send!
+  Lofty designs must close in like effects;     Loftily lying,
+  Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
+    Living and dying.'
+
+Contrast that grave with the sepulchre in the garden where Jesus lay,
+close by a city wall, guarded by foes, haunted by troops of weeping
+friends, visited by a great light of angel faces. The one was hidden
+and solitary, as teaching the loneliness and mystery of death; the
+other revealed light in the darkness, and companionship in the
+loneliness. The one faded from men's memory because it was nothing to
+any man; no impulses, nor hopes, nor gifts, could come from it. The
+other forever draws hearts and memories, because in it was wrought out
+the victory in which all our hopes are rooted. An endured cross, an
+empty grave, an occupied throne, are as the threefold cord on which all
+our hopes hang. Moses was solitary as God's servant in life and death,
+and oblivion covered his mountain grave. Christ's 'delights were with
+the sons of men.' He lived among them, and all men 'know his sepulchre
+to this day.'
+
+I. Note, then, first, as a lesson gathered from this lonely death, the
+penalty of transgression.
+
+One of the great truths which the old law and ordinances given by Moses
+were intended to burn in on the conscience of the Jew, and through him
+on the conscience of the world, was that indissoluble connection
+between evil done and evil suffered, which reaches its highest
+exemplification in the death which is the 'wages of sin.' And just as
+some men that have invented instruments for capital punishment have
+themselves had to prove the sharpness of their own axe, so the
+lawgiver, whose message it had been to declare, 'the soul that sinneth
+it shall die,' had himself to go up alone to the mountain-top to
+receive in his own person the exemplification of the law that had been
+spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, in a moment of passion  (with
+many palliations and excuses), he smote the rock that he was bidden to
+address, and forgot therein, and in his angry words to the rebels, that
+he was only an instrument in the divine hand. It was a momentary
+wavering in a hundred and twenty years of obedience. It was one failure
+in a life of self-abnegation and suppression. The stern sentence came.
+
+People say, 'A heavy penalty for a small offence.' Yes; but an offence
+of Moses could not be a small offence.' _Noblesse oblige!_ The
+higher a man rises in communion with God, and the more glorious the
+message and office which are put into his hands, the more intolerable
+in him is the slightest deflection from the loftiest level. A splash of
+mud, that would never be seen on a navvy's clothes, stains the white
+satin of a bride or the embroidered garment of a noble. And so a little
+sin done by a loftily endowed and inspired man ceases to be small.
+
+Nor are we to regard that momentary lapse only from the outside and the
+surface. One little mark under the armpit of a plague-sufferer tells
+the physician that the fatal disease is there. A tiny leaf above ground
+may tell that, deep below, lurks the root of a poison plant. That
+little deflection, coming as it did at the beginning of the resumption
+of his functions by the Lawgiver after seven-and-thirty years of
+comparative abeyance, and on his first encounter with the new
+generation that he had to lead, was a very significant indication that
+his character had begun to yield and suffer from the strain that had
+been put upon it; and that, in fact, he was scarcely fit for the
+responsibilities that the new circumstances brought. So the penalty was
+not so disproportionate to the fault as it may seem.
+
+And was the penalty such a very great one? Do you think that a man who
+had been toiling for eighty years at a very thankless task would
+consider it a very severe punishment to be told, 'Go home and take your
+wages'? It did not mean the withdrawal of the divine favour. 'Moses and
+Aaron among his priests. ... Thou wast a God that forgavest them,
+though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' The penalty of a
+forgiven sin is never hard to bear, and the penalty of a forgiven sin
+is very often punctually and mercifully exacted.
+
+But still we are not to ignore the fact that this lonely death, with
+which we are now concerned, is of the nature of a penal infliction. And
+so it stands forth in consonance with the whole tone of the Mosaic
+teaching. I admit, of course, that the mere physical fact of the
+separation between body and spirit is simply the result of natural law.
+But that is not the death that you and I know. Death as we know it, the
+ugly thing that flings its long shadows across all life, and that comes
+armed with terrors for conscience and spirit, is 'the wages of sin,'
+and is only experienced by men who have transgressed the law of God. So
+far Moses in his life and in his death carries us--that no
+transgression escapes the appropriate punishment; that the smallest sin
+has in it the seeds of mortal consequences; that the loftiest saint
+does not escape the law of retribution.
+
+And no further does Moses with his Law and his death carry us. But we
+turn to the other death. And there we find the confirmation, in an
+eminent degree, of that Law, and yet the repeal of it. It is confirmed
+and exhausted in Jesus Christ. His death was 'the wages of sin.' Whose?
+Not His. Mine, yours, every man's. And because He died, surrounded by
+men, outside the old city wall, pure and sinless in Himself, He therein
+both said 'Amen' to the Law of Moses, and swept it away. For all the
+sins of the world were laid upon His head, He bore the curse for us
+all, and has emptied the bitter cup which men's transgressions have
+mingled. Therefore the solitary death in the desert proclaims 'the
+wages of sin'; that death outside the city wall proclaims 'the gift of
+God,' which is 'eternal life.'
+
+II. Another of the lessons of our incident is the withdrawal, by a hard
+fate, of the worker on the very eve of the completion of his work.
+
+For all these forty years there had gleamed before the fixed and
+steadfast spirit of the sorely tried leader one hope that he never
+abandoned, and that was that he might look upon and enter into the
+blessed land which God had promised. And now he stands on the heights
+of Moab. Half a dozen miles onwards, as the crow flies, and his feet
+would tread its soil. He lifts his eyes, and away up yonder, in the far
+north, he sees the rolling uplands of Gilead, and across the deep gash
+where the Jordan runs, he catches a glimpse of the blue hills of
+Naphtali or of Galilee, and the central mountain masses of Ephraim and
+Manasseh, where Ebal and Gerizim lift their heads; and then, further
+south, the stony summits of the Judaean hills, where Jerusalem and
+Bethlehem lie, and, through some gap in the mountains, a gleam as of
+sunshine upon armour tells where the ocean is. And then his eye falls
+upon the waterless plateau of the South, and at his feet the fertile
+valley of Jordan, with Jericho glittering amongst its palm trees like a
+diamond set in emeralds, and on some spur of the lower hill bounding
+the plain, the little Zoar. This was the land which the Lord had
+promised to the fathers, for which he had been yearning, and to which
+all his work had been directed all these years; and now he is to die,
+as my text puts it, with such pathetic emphasis, 'there in Moab,' and
+to have no part in the fair inheritance.
+
+It is the lot of all epoch-making men, of all great constructive and
+reforming geniuses, whether in the Church or in the world, that they
+should toil at a task, the full issues of which will not be known until
+their heads are laid low in the dust. But if, on the one hand, that
+seems hard, on the other hand there is the compensation of 'the vision
+of the future and all the wonder that shall be,' which is granted many
+a time to the faithful worker ere he closes his eyes. But that is not
+the fate of epoch-making and great men only; it is the law for our
+little lives. If these are worth anything, they are constructed on a
+scale too large to bring out all their results here and now. It is easy
+for a man to secure immediate consequences of an earthly kind; easy
+enough for him to make certain that he shall have the fruit of his
+toil. But quick returns mean small profits; and an unfinished life that
+succeeds in nothing may be far better than a completed one, that has
+realised all its shabby purposes and accomplished all its petty
+desires. Do you, my brother, live for the far-off; and seek not for the
+immediate issues and fruits that the world can give, but be contented
+to be of those whose toil waits for eternity to disclose its
+significance. Better a half-finished temple than a finished pigstye or
+huckster's shop. Better a life, the beginning of much and the
+completion of nothing, than a life directed to and hitting an earthly
+aim. 'He that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life
+everlasting,' and his harvest and garner are beyond the grave.
+
+III. Again, notice here the lesson of the solitude and mystery of
+death.
+
+Moses dies alone, with no hand to clasp his, none to close his eyes;
+but God's finger does it. The outward form of his death is but putting
+into symbol and visibility the awful characteristics of that last
+moment for us all. However closely we have been twined with others,
+each of us has to unclasp dear hands, and make that journey through the
+narrow, dark tunnel by himself. We live alone in a very real sense, but
+we each have to die as if there were not another human being in the
+whole universe but only ourselves. But the solitude may be a solitude
+with God. Up there, alone with the stars and the sky and the
+everlasting rocks and menacing death, Moses had for companion the
+supporting God. That awful path is not too desolate and lonely to be
+trodden if we tread it with Him.
+
+Moses' lonely death leads to a society yonder. If you refer to the
+thirty-second chapter you will find that, when he was summoned to the
+mountain, God said to him, 'Die in the mount whither thou goest up, and
+be gathered to thy people.' He was to be buried there, up amongst the
+rocks of Moab, and no man was ever to visit his sepulchre to drop a
+tear over it. How, then, was he 'gathered to his people'? Surely only
+thus, that, dying in the desert alone, he opened his eyes in 'the
+City,' surrounded by 'solemn troops and sweet societies' of those to
+whom he was kindred. So the solitude of a moment leads on to blessed
+and eternal companionship.
+
+So far the death of Moses carries us. What does the other death say?
+Moses had none but God with him when he died. There is a drearier
+desolation than that, and Jesus Christ proved it when He cried, 'My
+God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' That was solitude indeed, and
+in that hour of mysterious, and to us unfathomable, desertion and
+misery, the lonely Christ sounded a depth, of which the lawgiver in His
+death but skimmed the surface. Christ was parted from God in His death,
+because He bore on Him the sins that separate us from our Father, and
+in order that none of us may ever need to tread that dark passage
+alone, but may be able to say, 'I will fear no evil, for Thou art with
+me'--Thou, who hast trodden every step in its rough and dreary path,
+uncheered by the presence which cheers us and millions more. Christ
+died that we might live. He died alone that, when we come to die, we
+may hold His hand and the solitude may vanish.
+
+Then, again, our incident teaches us the mystery that wrapped death to
+that ancient world, of which we may regard that unknown and forgotten
+sepulchre as the visible symbol. Deep darkness lies over the Old
+Testament in reference to what is beyond the grave, broken by gleams of
+light, when the religious consciousness asserted its indestructibility,
+in spite of all appearance to the contrary; but never growing to the
+brightness of serene and continuous assurance of immortal life and
+resurrection. We may conceive that mysteriousness as set forth for us
+by that grave that was hidden away in the defiles of Moab, unvisited
+and uncared for by any.
+
+We turn to the other grave, and there, as the stone is rolled away, and
+the rising sunshine of the Easter morning pours into it, we have a
+visible symbol of the life and immortality which Jesus Christ then
+brought to light by His Gospel. The buried grave speaks of the
+inscrutable mystery that wrapped the future: the open sepulchre
+proclaims the risen Lord of life, and the sunlight certainty of future
+blessedness which we owe to Him. Death is solitary no more, though it
+be lonely as far as human companionship is concerned; and a mystery no
+more, though what is beyond is hidden from our view, and none but
+Christ has ever returned to tell the tale, and He has told us little
+but the fact that we shall live with Him.
+
+We rejoice that we have not to turn to a grave hid amongst the hills
+where our dead Leader lies, but to an open sepulchre by the city wall
+in the sunshine, from whence has come forth the ever-living 'Captain of
+our salvation.'
+
+IV. The last lesson is the uselessness of a dead leader to a generation
+with new conflicts.
+
+Commentators have spent a great deal of ingenuity in trying to assign
+reasons why God concealed the grave of Moses. The text does not say
+that God concealed it at all. The ignorance of the place of his
+sepulchre does not seem to have been part of the divine design, but
+simply a consequence of the circumstances of his death, and of the fact
+that he lay in an enemy's land, and that they had had something else to
+do than go to look for the grave of a dead commander. They had to
+conquer the land, and a living Joshua was what they wanted, not a dead
+Moses.
+
+So we may learn from this how easily the gaps fill. 'Thirty days'
+mourning,' and says my text, with almost a bitter touch,' so the days
+of mourning for Moses were ended.' A month of it, that was all; and
+then everybody turned to the new man that was appointed for the new
+work. God has many tools in His tool-chest, and He needs them all
+before the work is done. Joshua could no more have wielded Moses' rod
+than Moses could have wielded Joshua's sword. The one did his work, and
+was laid aside. New circumstances required a new type of character--the
+smaller man better fitted for the rougher work. And so it always is.
+Each generation, each period, has its own men that do some little part
+of the work which has to be done, and then drop it and hand over the
+task to others. The division of labour is the multiplication of joy at
+the end, and 'he that soweth and he that reapeth rejoice together.'
+But whilst the one grave tells us, 'This man served his generation by
+the will of God, and was laid asleep and saw corruption,' the other
+grave proclaims One whom all generations need, whose work is
+comprehensive and complete, who dies never. 'He liveth and was dead,
+and is alive for evermore.' Christ, and Christ alone, can never be
+antiquated. This day requires Him, and has in Him as complete an answer
+to all its necessities as if no other generation had ever possessed
+Him. He liveth for ever, and for ever is the Shepherd of men.
+
+So Aaron dies and is buried on Hor, and Moses dies and is buried on
+Pisgah, and Joshua steps into his place, and, in turn, he disappears.
+The one eternal Word of God worked through them all, and came at last
+Himself in human flesh to be the Everlasting Deliverer, Redeemer,
+Founder of the Covenant, Lawgiver, Guide through the wilderness,
+Captain of the warfare, and all that the world or a single soul can
+need until the last generation has crossed the flood, and the wandering
+pilgrims are gathered in the land of their inheritance. The dead Moses
+pre-supposes and points to the living Christ. Let us take Him for our
+all-sufficing and eternal Guide.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF JOSHUA
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW LEADERS COMMISSION
+
+'Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass,
+that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' minister,
+saying, 2. Moses My servant is dead: now therefore arise, go over this
+Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to
+them, even to the children of Israel. 3. Every place that the sole of
+your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto
+Moses. 4. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great
+river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the
+great sea, toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. 5.
+There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of
+thy life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail
+thee, nor forsake thee. 6. Be strong and of a good courage; for unto
+this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I sware
+unto their fathers to give them. 7. Only be thou strong and very
+courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law,
+which Moses My servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right
+hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.
+8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou
+shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do
+according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy
+way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. 9. Have not I
+commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither
+be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou
+goest. 10. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying,
+11. Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you
+victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go
+in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess
+it.'--JOSHUA I. 1-11.
+
+
+The closest connection exists between Deuteronomy and Joshua. The
+narrative may be read as running on without a break. It turns away from
+the lonely grave up on the mountain to the bustling camp and the new
+leader. No man is indispensable. God's work goes on uninterrupted. The
+instruments are changed, but the Master-hand is the same, and lays one
+tool aside and takes another out of the tool-chest as He will. Moses is
+dead,--what then? Does his death paralyse the march of the tribes? No;
+it is but the ground for the ringing command, 'Therefore arise, go over
+this Jordan.' The immediate installation of his successor, and the
+uninterrupted continuance of the advance, do not mean that Moses is not
+honoured or is forgotten, for the narrative lovingly links his
+honorific title, 'the servant of the Lord,' with the mention of his
+death; and God Himself does the same, for he is thrice referred to in
+the divine command to Joshua, as the recipient of the promise of the
+conquest, as the example of the highest experience of God's all-
+sufficing companionship, and as the medium by which Israel received the
+law. Joshua steps into the empty place, receives the same great
+promise, is assured of the same Presence, and is to obey the same law.
+The change of leaders is great, but nothing else is changed; and even
+it is not so great as faint hearts in their sorrow are apt to think,
+for the real Leader lives, and Moses and Joshua alike are but the
+transmitters of His orders and His aids to Israel.
+
+The first command given to Joshua was a trial of his faith, for 'Jordan
+was in flood' (Joshua iii. l5),--and how was that crowd to get across,
+when fords were impassable and ferry-boats were wanting, to say nothing
+of the watchful eyes that were upon them from the other bank? To cross
+a stream in the face of the enemy is a ticklish operation, even for
+modern armies; what must it have been, then, for Joshua and his horde?
+Not a hint is given him as to the means by which the crossing is to be
+made possible. He has Jehovah's command to do it, and Jehovah's promise
+to be with him, and that is to be enough. We too have sometimes to face
+undertakings which we cannot see how to carry through; but if we do see
+that the path is one appointed by God, and will boldly tread it, we may
+be quite sure that, when we come to what at present seems like a
+mountain wall across it, we shall find that the glen opens as we
+advance, and that there is a way,--narrow, perhaps, and dangerous, but
+practicable. 'One step enough for me' should be our motto. We may trust
+God not to command impossibilities, nor to lead us into a _cul de
+sac._
+
+The promise to Moses (Deut. ii. 24) is repeated almost verbally in
+verse 4. The boundaries of the land are summarily given as from 'the
+wilderness' in the south to 'this Lebanon' in the north, and from the
+Euphrates in the east to the Mediterranean in the west. 'The land of
+the Hittites' is not found in the original passage in Deuteronomy, and
+it seems to be a designation of the territory between Lebanon and the
+Euphrates, which we now know to have been the seat of the northern
+Hittites, while the southern branch was planted round Hebron and the
+surrounding district. But these wide boundaries were not attained till
+late in the history, and were not long retained. Did the promise, then,
+fail? No, for it, like all the promises, was contingent on conditions,
+and Israel's unfaithfulness cut short its extent of territory. We, too,
+fail to possess all the land destined for us. Our charter is much wider
+than our actual wealth. God gives more than we take, and we are content
+to occupy but a corner of the broad land which He has given us. In like
+manner Joshua did not realise to the full the following promise of
+uniform victory, but was defeated at Ai and elsewhere. The reason was
+the same,--the faithlessness of the people. Unbelief and sin turn a
+Samson into a weakling, and make Israel flee before the ranks of the
+Philistines.
+
+The great encouragement given to Joshua in entering on his hard and
+perilous enterprise is twice repeated here: 'As I was with Moses, so
+will I be with thee.' Did Joshua remember how, nearly forty years
+since, he had fronted the mob of cowards with the very same assurance,
+and how the answer had been a shower of stones? The cowards are all
+dead,--will their sons believe the assurance now? If we do believe that
+God is with us, we shall be ready to cross Jordan in flood, and to meet
+the enemies that are waiting on the other bank. If we do not, we shall
+not dare greatly, nor succeed in what we attempt. The small successes
+of material wealth and gratified ambition may be ours, but for all the
+higher duties and nobler conflicts that become a man, the condition of
+achievement and victory is steadfast faith in God's presence and help.
+
+That assurance--which we may all have if we cling to Jesus, in whom God
+comes to be with every believing soul--is the only basis on which the
+command to Joshua, thrice repeated, can wisely or securely be rested.
+It is mockery to say to a man conscious of weakness, and knowing that
+there are evils which must surely come, and evils which may possibly
+come, against which he is powerless, 'Don't be afraid' unless you can
+show him good reason why he need not be. And there is only one reason
+which can still reasonable dread in a human heart that has to front
+'all the ills that flesh is heir to,' and sees behind them all the grim
+form of death. He ought to be afraid, unless--unless what? Unless he
+has heard and taken into his inmost soul the Voice that said to Joshua,
+'I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee: be strong and of a good
+courage,' or, still more sweet and peace-bringing, the Voice that said
+to the frightened crew of the fishing-boat in the storm and the
+darkness,' It is I; be not afraid.' If we know that Christ is with us,
+it is wise to be strong and courageous; if we are meeting the tempest
+alone, the best thing we can do is to fear, for the fear may drive us
+to seek for His help, and He ever stretches out His hand to him who is
+afraid, as he ought to be, when he feels the cold water rising above
+his knees, and by his very fear is driven to faith, and cries, 'Lord,
+save; I perish!'
+
+Courage that does not rest on Christ's presence is audacity rather than
+courage, and is sure to collapse, like a pricked bladder, when the
+sharp point of a real peril comes in contact with it. If we sit down
+and reckon the forces that we have to oppose to the foes that we are
+sure to meet, we shall find ourselves unequal to the fight, and, if we
+are wise, shall 'send the ambassage' of a humble desire to the great
+King, who will come to our help with His all-conquering powers. Then,
+and only then, shall we be safe in saying,' I will not fear what man
+can do unto me, or devils either,' when we have said,' In God have I
+put my trust,' and have heard Him answering, 'I will not fail thee, nor
+forsake thee.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARGE TO THE SOLDIER OF THE LORD
+
+'Only be then strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to
+do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded thee...
+that thou mayest prosper wheresoever thou goest. 8. This book of the
+law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shall meditate therein
+day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is
+written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then
+thou shalt have good success.'--JOSHUA i. 7,8.
+
+
+This is the central portion of the charge given to the successor of
+Moses. Joshua was a very small man in comparison with his predecessor.
+He was no prophet nor constructive genius; he was not capable of the
+heights of communion and revelation which the lofty spirit of Moses was
+able to mount. He was only a plain, fiery soldier, with energy, swift
+decision, promptitude, self-command, and all the military virtues in
+the highest degree. The one thing that he needed was to be 'strong and
+courageous'; and over and over again in this chapter you will find that
+injunction pealed into his ears. He is the type of the militant servant
+of the Lord, and the charge to him embodies the duties of all such.
+
+I. We have here the duty of courageous strength.
+
+Christianity has altered the perspective of human virtues, has thrown
+the gentler ones into prominence altogether unknown before, and has
+dimmed the brilliancy of the old heroic type of character; but it has
+not struck those virtues out of its list. Whilst the perspective is
+altered, there is as much need in the lowliest Christian life for the
+loftiest heroism as ever there was. For in no mere metaphor, but in
+grim earnest, all Christian progress is conflict, and we have to fight,
+not only with the evils that are within, but, if we would be true to
+the obligations of our profession and loyal to the commands of our
+Master, we have to take our part in the great campaign which He has
+inaugurated and is ever carrying on against every abuse and oppression,
+iniquity and sin, that grinds down the world and makes our brethren
+miserable and servile. So, then, in these words we have directions in
+regard to a side of the Christian character, indispensable to-day as
+ever, and the lack of which cannot be made up for by any amount of
+sweet and contemplative graces.
+
+Jesus Christ is the type of both. The Conqueror of Canaan and the
+Redeemer of the world bear the same name. The Jesus whom we trust was a
+Joshua. And let us learn the lesson that neither the conqueror of the
+typical and material land of promise nor the Redeemer who has won the
+everlasting heaven for our portion could do their work without the
+heroic side of human excellence being manifestly developed. Do you
+remember 'He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem'? Do you
+remember that the Apostle whom a hasty misconception has thought of as
+the gentlest of the Twelve, because he had most to say about love, is
+the Apostle that more emphatically than any other rings into our ears
+over and over again the thought of the Christ, militant and victorious,
+the Hero as well as the patient Sufferer, the 'Captain of our
+salvation'? And so let us recognise how both the gentler and the
+stronger graces, the pacific and the warlike side of human excellence,
+have their highest development in Jesus Christ, and learn that the
+firmest strength must be accompanied with the tenderest love and
+swathed in meekest gentleness. As another Apostle has it in his
+pregnant, brief injunctions, ringing and laconic like a general's word
+of command, 'Quit you like men I be strong! let all your deeds be done
+in love!' Braid the two things together, for the mightiest strength is
+the love that conquers hate, and the only love that is worthy of a man
+is the love that is strong to contend and to overcome.
+
+'Be strong.' Then strength is a duty; then weakness is a sin. Then the
+amount of strength that we possess and wield is regulated by ourselves.
+We have our hands on the sluice. We may open it to let the whole full
+tide run in, or we may close it till a mere dribble reaches us. For the
+strength which is strength, and not merely weakness in a fever, is a
+strength derived, and ours because derived. The Apostle gives the
+complete version of the exhortation when he says: 'Finally, my
+brethren,' that Omega of command which is the Alpha of performance, 'be
+strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.' Let Christ's
+strength in. Open the heart wide that it may come. Keep yourself in
+continual touch with God, the fountain of all power. Trust is strength,
+because trust touches the Rock of Ages.
+
+For this reason the commandment to be strong and of good courage is in
+the text based upon this: 'As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.
+I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.' Our strength depends on
+ourselves, because our strength is the fruit of our faith. And if we
+live with Him, grasping His hand and, in the realising consciousness of
+our own weakness, looking beyond ourselves, then power will come to us
+above our desire and equal to our need. The old victories of faith will
+be reproduced in us when we say with the ancient king, 'Lord! We know
+not what to do, but our eyes are up unto Thee.' Then He will come to
+us, to make us 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.'
+'Wait on the Lord and He will strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on
+the Lord.'
+
+But courage is duty, too, as well as strength. Power and the
+consciousness of power do not always go together. In regard to the
+strength of nature, courage and might are quite separable. There may be
+a strong coward and a weak hero. But in the spiritual region, strength
+and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with
+us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint
+of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate
+its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the
+duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the
+duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with the weakness
+that is against me, and of being bold because I know that more and
+'greater is He that is with me than are they that be with them.'
+
+II. So much, then, for the first of the exhortations here. Now look
+next at the duty of implicit obedience to the word of command.
+
+That is another soldierly virtue, the exercise of which sheds a
+nobility over the repulsive horrors of the battlefield. Joshua had to
+be fitted to command by learning to obey, and, like that other soldier
+whose rough trade had led him to some inkling of Christ's authority by
+its familiarising him with the idea of the strange power of the word of
+command, had to realise that he himself was 'under authority' before he
+could issue his orders.
+
+Courage and strength come first, and on them follows the command to do
+all according to the law, to keep it without deflection to right or
+left, and to meditate on it day and night. These two virtues make the
+perfect soldier-courage and obedience. Daring and discipline must go
+together, and to know how to follow orders is as essential as to know
+how to despise dangers.
+
+But the connection between these two, as set forth in this charge, is
+not merely that they must co-exist, but that courage and strength are
+needed for, and are to find their noblest field of exercise in,
+absolute acceptance of, and unhesitating, swift, complete, unmurmuring
+obedience to, everything that is discerned to be God's will and our
+duty.
+
+For the Christian soldier, then, God's law is his marching orders. The
+written word, and especially the Incarnate Word, are our law of
+conduct. The whole science of our warfare and plan of campaign are
+there. We have not to take our orders from men's lips, but we must
+often disregard them, that we may listen to the 'Captain of our
+salvation.' The soldier stands where his officer has posted him, and
+does what he was bid, no matter what may happen. Only one voice can
+relieve him. Though a thousand should bid him flee, and his heart
+should echo their advices, he is recreant if he deserts his post at the
+command of any but him who set him there. Obedience to others is
+mutiny. Nor does the Christian need another law to supplement that
+which Christ has given him in His pattern and teaching. Men have
+appended huge comments to it, and have softened some of its plain
+precepts which bear hard on popular sins. But the Lawgiver's law is one
+thing, and the lawyers' explanations which explain it away or darken
+what was clear enough, however unwelcome, are quite another. Christ has
+given us Himself, and therein has given a sufficient directory for
+conduct and conflict which fits close to all our needs, and will prove
+definite and practical enough if we honestly try to apply it.
+
+The application of Christ's law to daily life takes some courage, and
+is the proper field for the exercise of Christian strength. 'Be very
+courageous that thou mayest observe.' If you are not a bold Christian
+you will very soon get frightened out of obedience to your Master's
+commandments. Courage, springing from the realisation of God's helping
+strength, is indispensable to make any man, in any age, live out
+thoroughly and consistently the principles of the law of Jesus Christ.
+No man in _this_ generation will work out a punctual obedience to
+what he knows to be the will of God, without finding out that all the
+'Canaanites' are not dead yet; but that there are enough of them left
+to make a very thorny life for the persistent follower of Jesus Christ.
+
+And not only is there courage needed for the application of the
+principles of conduct which God has given us, but you will never have
+them handy for swift application unless, in many a quiet hour of
+silent, solitary, patient meditation you have become familiar with
+them. The recruit that has to learn on the battle-field how to use his
+rifle has a good chance of being dead before he has mastered the
+mysteries of firing. And Christian people that have their Christian
+principles to dig out of the Bible when the necessity comes, will
+likely find that the necessity is past before they have completed the
+excavation. The actual battle-field is no place to learn drill. If a
+soldier does not know how his sword hangs, and cannot get at it in a
+moment, he will probably draw it too late.
+
+I am afraid that the practice of such meditation as is meant here has
+come to be, like the art of making ecclesiastical stained glass, almost
+extinct in modern times. You have all so many newspapers and magazines
+to read that the Bible has a chance of being shoved out of sight,
+except on Sundays and in chapels. The 'meditating' that is enjoined in
+my text is no mere intellectual study of Scripture, either from an
+antiquarian or a literary or a theological point of view, but it is the
+mastering of the principles of conduct as laid down there, and the
+appropriating of all the power for guidance and for sustaining which
+that word of the Lord gives. Meditation, the familiarising ourselves
+with the ethics of Scripture, and with the hopes and powers that are
+treasured in Jesus Christ, so that our minds are made up upon a great
+many thorny questions as to what we ought to do, and that when crises
+or dangers come, as they have a knack of coming, very suddenly, and are
+sprung upon us unexpectedly, we shall be able, without much difficulty,
+or much time spent in perplexed searching, to fall back upon the
+principles that decide our conduct--that is essential to all successful
+and victorious Christian life.
+
+And it is the secret of all blessed Christian life. For there is a
+lovely echo of these vigorous words of command to Joshua in a very much
+more peaceful form in the 1st Psalm: 'Blessed is the man that walketh
+not in the counsel of the ungodly, ... but his delight is in the law of
+the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night'--the very
+words that are employed in the text to describe the duty of the
+soldier--therefore 'all that he doeth shall prosper.'
+
+III. That leads to the last thought here--the sure victory of such bold
+obedience.
+
+'Thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest'; 'Thou shalt make thy
+way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success,' or, as the last
+word might be rendered, 'then shalt thou _act wisely_' You may not
+get victory from an earthly point of view, for many a man that lives
+strong and courageous and joyfully obeying God's law, as far as he
+knows it and because he loves the Lawgiver, goes through life, and
+finds that, as far as the world's estimate is concerned, there is
+nothing but failure as his portion. Ah I but the world's way is not the
+true way of estimating victory. 'Be of good cheer, I have overcome the
+world,' said Jesus Christ when within arm's-length of the Cross. And
+His way is the way in which we must conquer the world, if we conquer it
+at all. The success which my text means is the carrying out of
+conscientious convictions of God's will into practice. That is the only
+success that is worth talking about or looking for. The man that
+succeeds in obeying and translating God's will into conduct is the
+victor, whatever be the outward fruits of his life. He may go out of
+the field beaten, according to the estimate of men that can see no
+higher than their own height, and little further than their own finger
+tips can reach; he may himself feel that the world has gone past him,
+and that he has not made much of it; he may have to lie down at last
+unknown, poor, with all his bright hopes that danced before him in
+childhood gone, and sore beaten by the enemies; but if he is able to
+say in the strength that Christ gives, 'I have finished my course; I
+have kept the faith,' his 'way has prospered,' and he has had' good
+success.' 'We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.'
+
+THE UNTRODDEN PATH AND THE GUIDING ARK
+
+'Come not near unto the ark, that ye may know the way by which ye must
+go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.'--JOSHUA iii. 4.
+
+It was eminently true of Israel that they had 'not passed this way
+heretofore,' inasmuch as the path which was opening before them,
+through the oozy bed of the river, had never been seen by human eye,
+nor trodden by man's foot. Their old leader was dead. There were only
+two of the whole host that had ever been out of the desert in their
+lives. They had a hard task before them. Jericho lay there, gleaming
+across the plain, among the palm-trees, backed by the savage cliffs, up
+the passes in which they would have to fight their way. So that we need
+not wonder that, over and over again, in these early chapters of this
+book, the advice in reiterated, 'Be of good courage. Be strong and fear
+not!' They needed special guidance, and they received very special
+guidance, and my text tells us what they had to do, in order to realise
+the full blessing and guidance that was given them. 'Let there be a
+space of 2000 cubits by measure between you and the ark'--three-
+quarters of a mile or thereabouts--'do not press close upon the heels
+of the bearers, for you will not be able to see where they are going if
+you crowd on them. Be patient. Let the course of the ark disclose
+itself before you try to follow it, that ye may know the way by which
+ye must go, for ye have not passed this way heretofore.'
+
+I. Note the untrodden path.
+
+I suppose that most of us have to travel a very well-worn road, and
+that our course, in the cases of all except those in early life, is
+liker that of a millhorse than an untrodden path. Most of us are
+continually treading again in the prints of our own footsteps. A long,
+weary stretch of monotonous duties, and the repetition of the same
+things to-day that we did yesterday is the destiny of most of us.
+
+Some of us, perhaps, may be standing upon the verge of some new scenes
+in our lives. Some of you young people may have come up to a great city
+for the first time to carve out a position for yourselves, and are for
+the first time encompassed by the temptations of being unknown in a
+crowd. Some of you may be in new domestic circumstances, some with new
+sorrows, or tasks, or difficulties pressing upon you, calling for
+wisdom and patience. It is quite likely that there may be some who, in
+the most prosaic and literal sense of the words, are entering on a path
+altogether new and untrodden. But they will be in the minority, and for
+the most of us the days that were full of new possibilities are at an
+end, and we have to expect little more than the monotonous repetition
+of the habitual, humdrum duties of mature life. We have climbed the
+winding paths up the hill, and most of us are upon the long plateau
+that stretches unvaried, until it begins to dip at the further edge.
+And some of us are going down that other side of the hill.
+
+But whatever may be the variety in regard to the mere externals of our
+lives, how true it is about us all that even the most familiar duties
+of to-day are not quite like the same duties when they had to be done
+yesterday; and that the path for each of us--though, as we go along, we
+find in it nothing new--is yet an untrodden path! For we are not quite
+the same as we were yesterday, though our work may be the same, and the
+difference in us makes it in some measure different.
+
+But what mainly makes even the most well-beaten paths new at the
+thousandth time of traversing them is our ignorance of what may be
+waiting round the next turn of the road. The veil that hangs before and
+hides the future is a blessing, though we sometimes grumble at it, and
+sometimes petulantly try to make pinholes through it, and peep in to
+see a little of what is behind it. It brings freshness into our lives,
+and a possibility of anticipation, and even of wonder and expectation,
+that prevents us from stagnating. Even in the most habitual repetition
+of the same tasks 'ye have not passed this way heretofore.' And life
+for every one of us is still full of possibilities so great and so
+terrible that we may well feel that the mist that covers the future is
+a blessing and a source of strength for us all.
+
+Our march through time is like that of men in a mist, in which things
+loom in strangely distorted shapes, unlike their real selves, until we
+get close up to them, and only then do we discover them.
+
+So for us all the path is new and unknown by reason of the sudden
+surprises that may be sprung upon us, by reason of the sudden
+temptations that may start up at any moment in our course, by reason of
+the earthquakes that may shatter the most solid-seeming lives, by
+reason of the sudden calamities that may fall upon us. The sorrows that
+we anticipate seldom come, and those that do come are seldom
+anticipated. The most fatal bolts are generally from the blue. One
+flash, all unlooked for, is enough to blast the tree in all its leafy
+pride. Many of us, I have no doubt, can look back to times in our lives
+when, without anticipation on our parts, or warning from anything
+outside of us, a smiting hand fell upon some of our blessings. The
+morning dawned upon the gourd in full vigour of growth, and in the
+evening it was stretched yellow and wilted upon the turf. Dear
+brethren, anything may come out of that dark cloud through which our
+life's course has to pass, and there are some things concerning which
+all that we know is that they must come.
+
+These are very old threadbare thoughts; I dare say you think it was not
+worth your while to come to hear them, nor mine to speak them; but if
+we would lay them to heart, and realise how true it is about every step
+of our earthly course that 'ye have not passed this way heretofore,' we
+should complain less than we do of the weariness and prosaic character
+of our commonplace lives, and feel that all was mystical and great and
+awful; and yet most blessed in its possibilities and its uncertainties.
+
+II. Note, again, the guiding ark.
+
+It was a new thing that the ark should become the guide of the people.
+All through the wilderness, according to the history, it had been
+carried in the centre of the march, and had had no share in the
+direction of the course. That had been done by the pillar of cloud.
+But, just as the manna ceased when the tribes got across the Jordan and
+could eat the bread of the land, the miracle ending and they being left
+to trust to ordinary means of supply at the earliest possible moment,
+so there ensued an approximation to ordinary guidance, which is none
+the less real because it is granted without miracle. The pillar of
+cloud ceased to move before the people in the crossing of the Jordan,
+and its place was taken by the material symbol of the presence of God,
+which contained the tables of the law as the basis of the covenant. And
+that ark moved at the commandment of the leader Joshua, for he was the
+mouthpiece of the divine will in the matter. And so when the ark moved
+at the bidding of the leader, and became the guide of the people, there
+was a kind of a drop down from the pure supernatural of the guiding
+pillar.
+
+For us a similar thing is true. Jesus Christ is the true Ark of God.
+For what was the ark? the symbol of the divine Presence; and Christ is
+the reality of the divine Presence with men. The whole content of that
+ark was the 'law of the Lord,' and Jesus Christ is the embodied law of
+the present God. The ark was the sign that God had entered into this
+covenant with these people, and that they had a right to say to Him,
+'Thou art our God, and we are Thy people,' and the same double
+assurance of reciprocal possession and mutual delight in possession is
+granted to us in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.
+
+So He becomes the guiding Ark, the Shepherd of Israel. His presence and
+will are our directors. The law, which is contained and incorporated in
+Him, is that by which we are to walk. The covenant which He has
+established in His own blood between God and man contains in itself not
+only the direction for conduct, but also the motives which will impel
+us to walk where and as He enjoins.
+
+And so, every way we may say, by His providences which He appoints, by
+His example which He sets us, by His gracious word in which He sums up
+all human duties in the one sweet obligation, 'Follow Me,' and even
+more by His Spirit that dwells in us, and whispers in our ears, 'This
+is the way; walk ye in it,' and enlightens every perplexity, and
+strengthens all feebleness, and directs our footsteps into the way of
+peace; that living and personal Ark of the covenant of the Lord of the
+whole earth is still the guide of waiting and docile hearts. Jesus
+Christ's one word to us is, 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.
+And where I am'--of course, seeing he is a follower--'there shall also
+My servant be.'
+
+The one Pattern for us, the one Example that we need to follow, the one
+Strength in our perplexities, the true Director of our feet, is that
+dear Lord, if we will only listen to Him. And that direction will be
+given to us in regard to the trifles, as in regard to the great things
+of our lives.
+
+III. And so the last thought that is here is the watchful following.
+
+'Come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye ought to
+go.' In a shipwreck, the chances are that the boats will be swamped by
+the people scrambling into them in too great a hurry. In the
+Christian life most of the mistakes that people make arise from their
+not letting the ark go far enough ahead of them before they gather up
+their belongings and follow it. An impatience of the half-declared
+divine will, a running before we are sent, an acting before we are
+quite sure that God wills us to do so-and-so, are at the root of most
+of the failures of Christian effort, and of a large number of the
+miseries of Christian men. If we would only have patience! Three-
+quarters of a mile the ark went ahead before a man lifted a foot to
+follow it, and there was no mistake possible then.
+
+Now do not be in a hurry to act. 'Raw haste' is 'half-sister to delay.'
+We are all impatient of uncertainty, either in opinion or in conduct;
+but if you are not quite sure what God wants you to do, you may be
+quite sure that He does not at present want you to do anything. Wait
+till you see what He does wish you to do. Better, better far, to spend
+hours in silent--although people that know nothing about what we are
+doing may call it indolent--waiting for the clear declaration of God's
+will, than to hurry on paths which, after we have gone on them far
+enough to make it a mortification and a weariness to turn back, we
+shall find out to have been not His at all, but only our own mistakes
+as to where the ark would have us go.
+
+And that there may be this patience the one thing needful-as, indeed,
+it is the one thing needful for all strength of all kinds in the
+Christian life--is the rigid suppression of our own wills. That is the
+secret of goodness, and its opposite is the secret of evil. To live by
+my own will is to die. Nothing but blunders, nothing but miseries,
+nothing but failures, nothing but remorse, will be the fruit of such a
+life. And a great many of us who call ourselves Christians are not
+Christians in the sense of having Christ's will for our absolute law,
+and keeping our own will entirely in subordination thereto. As is the
+will, so is the man, and whoever does not bow himself absolutely, and
+hush all the babble of his own inclinations and tastes and decisions,
+in order that that great Voice may speak, has small chance of ever
+walking in the paths of righteousness, or finding that his ways please
+the Lord.
+
+Suppress your own wills, dwell near God, that you may hear His lightest
+whisper. 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' What is the use of the
+glance of an eye if the man for whom it is meant is half a mile off,
+and staring about him at everything except the eye that would guide?
+And that is what some of us that call ourselves Christian people are.
+God might look guidance at us for a week, and we should never know that
+He was doing it; we have so many other things to look after. And we are
+so far away from Him that it would need a telescope for us to see His
+face. 'I will guide thee with Mine eye.' Keep near Him, and you will
+not lack direction.
+
+
+And so, dear brethren, if we stay ourselves on, and wait patiently for,
+Him, and are content to do what He wishes, and never to run without a
+clear commission, nor to act without a full conviction of duty, then
+the old story of my text will repeat itself in our daily life, as well
+as in the noblest form in the last act of life, which is death. The
+Lord will move before us and open a safe, dry path for us between the
+heaped waters; and where the feet of our great High Priest, bearing the
+Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, stood, amidst the slime and the mud,
+we may plant our firm feet on the stones that He has left there. And so
+the stream of life, like the river of death, will be parted for
+Christ's followers, and they will pass over on dry ground, 'until all
+the people are passed clean over Jordan.'
+
+
+
+
+'THE WATERS SAW THEE; THEY WERE AFRAID'
+
+'And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the
+Lord will do wonders among you. 6. And Joshua spake unto the priests,
+saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the
+people. And they took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the
+people. 7. And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to
+magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I
+was with Moses, so I will be with thee. 8 And thou shalt command the
+priests that bear the ark of the covenant, saying, When ye are come to
+the brink of the water of Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan. 8.
+And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, Come hither, and hear the
+words of the Lord your God. 10. And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know
+that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive
+out from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites,
+and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the
+Jebusites. 11. Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the
+earth passeth Over before you into Jordan. 12. Now therefore take you
+twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man. 13.
+And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the
+priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall
+rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be out
+off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand
+upon an heap. 14. And it came to pass, when the people removed from
+their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of
+the covenant before the people; 15. And as they that bare the ark were
+come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were
+dipped in the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks
+all the time of harvest,) 16. That the waters which came down from
+above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that
+is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the
+plain, even the salt sea failed, and were cut off: and the people
+passed over right against Jericho. 17. And the priests that bare the
+ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst
+of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all
+the people were passed clean over Jordan.'--JOSHUA iii 5-17.
+
+
+The arrangement of the narrative of the passage of Jordan, which
+occupies chapters iii. and iv., is remarkable, and has led to
+suggestions of interpolation and blending of two accounts, which are
+quite unnecessary. It is divided into four sections,--the preparations
+(Joshua in. 1-6), the passage (Joshua in. 7-17), the lifting of the
+memorial stones from the river's bed and the fixing of one set of them
+in it (Joshua iv. 1-14), the return of the waters, and the erection of
+the second set of memorial stones at Gilgal (Joshua iv. 15-24).
+
+Each section closes with a summary of the whole transaction, after the
+common manner of Old Testament history, which gives to a hasty reader
+the impression of confusion and repetition; but a little attention
+shows a very symmetrical arrangement, negativing the possibility of
+interpolation. The last three sections are all built on the same lines.
+In each there is a triple division,--God's command to Joshua, Joshua's
+communication of it to the people, and the actual fact, fulfilling
+these. So each stage passes thrice before the view, and the
+impressiveness of the history is heightened by our seeing it first in
+the mirror of the divine Word, and then in the orders of the commander,
+before we see it as a thing actually happening.
+
+Verses 5 and 6 of the chapter belong to the section which deals with
+the preparation. General instructions had been already issued that the
+host was to follow the ark, leaving two thousand cubits between them
+and it; but nothing had been said as to how Jordan was to be crossed.
+No doubt many a question and doubt had been muttered by the watch-
+fires, as the people looked at the muddy, turbid stream, swirling in
+flood. The spies probably managed to swim it, but that was a feat
+worthy to be named in the epitaph of heroes (1 Chron. xii. 15), and
+impossible for the crowd of all ages and both sexes which followed
+Joshua. There was the rushing stream, swollen as it always is in
+harvest. How were they to get over? And if the people of Jericho, right
+over against them, chose to fall upon them as they were struggling
+across, what could hinder utter defeat? No doubt, all that was
+canvassed, in all sorts of tones; but no inkling of the miracle seems
+to have been given.
+
+God often opens His hand by one finger at a time, and leaves us face to
+face with some plain but difficult duty, without letting us see the
+helps to its performance, till we need to use them. If we go right on
+the road which He has traced out, it will never lead us into a blind
+alley. The mountains will part before us as we come near what looked
+their impassable wall; and some narrow gorge or other, wide enough to
+run a track through, but not wide enough to be noticed before we are
+close on it, will be sure to open. The attitude of expectation of God's
+help, while its nature is unrevealed, is kept up in Joshua's last
+instruction. The people are bidden to 'sanctify themselves, because to-
+morrow the Lord will do wonders' among them. That sanctifying was not
+external, but included the hallowing of spirit by docile waiting for
+His intervention, and by obedience while the manner of it was hidden.
+The secret of to-morrow is partly made known, and the faith of the
+people is nourished by the mystery remaining, as well as by the light
+given. The best security for to-morrow's wonders is to-day's
+sanctifying.
+
+The command to the priests discloses to them a little more, in bidding
+them pass over before the people, but the additional disclosure would
+only be an additional trial of faith; for the silence as to how so
+impossible a command was to be made possible is absolute. The swollen
+river had obliterated all fords; and how were priests, staggering under
+the weight of the ark on their shoulders, to 'pass over'? The question
+is not answered till the ark is on their shoulders. To-day often sees
+to-morrow's duty without seeing how it is to be done. But the bearers
+of the ark need never fear but that the God to whom it belongs will
+take care of it and of them. The last sentence of verse 6 is the
+anticipatory summary which closes each section.
+
+In verses 7-17 we have the narrative of the actual crossing, in its
+three divisions of God's command (vs. 7-8), Joshua's repetition of it
+(vs. 9-13), and the historical fact (vs. 14-17). The final instructions
+were only given on the morning of the day of crossing. The report of
+God's commands given in verses 7 and 8 is condensed, as is evident from
+the fuller statement of them in Joshua's address to the people, which
+immediately follows. In it Joshua is fully aware of the manner of the
+miracle and of the details of the crossing, but we have no record of
+his having received them. The summary of that eventful morning's
+instructions to him emphasises first the bearing of the miracle on his
+reputation. The passage of the Red Sea had authenticated the mission of
+Moses to the past generation, who, in consequence of it, 'believed God
+and His servant Moses.' The new generation are to have a parallel
+authentication of Joshua's commission. It is noteworthy that this is
+not the purpose of the miracle which the leader announces to the people
+in verse 10. It was a message from God to himself, a kind of gracious
+whisper meant for his own encouragement. What a thought to fill a man's
+heart with humble devotion, that God would work such a wonder in order
+to demonstrate that He was with him! And what a glimpse of more to
+follow lay in that promise, 'This day will I _begin_ to magnify
+thee I'
+
+The command to the priests in verse 8 is also obviously condensed; for
+Joshua's version of it, which follows, is much more detailed, and
+contains particular instructions, which must have been derived from the
+divine word to him on that morning.
+
+We may pass on, then, to the second division of the narrative; namely,
+Joshua's communication of God's commands to the people. Observe the
+form which the purpose of the miracle assumes there. It is the
+confirmation of the divine Presence, not with the leader, but with the
+people and their consequent victory. Joshua grasped the inmost meaning
+of God's Word to himself, and showed noble self-suppression, when he
+thus turned the direction of the miracle. The true servant of God knows
+that God is with him, not for his personal glorification, but for the
+welfare of God's people, and cares little for the estimation in which
+men hold him, if they will only believe that the conquering God is with
+them. We too often make great leaders and teachers in the church opaque
+barriers to hide God from us, instead of transparent windows through
+which He shines upon His people. We are a great deal more ready to say,
+'God is with him,' than to add, 'and therefore God is with us, in our
+Joshuas, and without them.'
+
+Observe the grand emphasis of that name, 'the living God,' tacitly
+contrasted with the dead idols of the enemies, and sealing the
+assurance of His swift and all-conquering might. Observe, too, the
+triumphant contempt in the enumeration of the many tribes of the foe
+with their barbarous names. Five of them had been enough, when named by
+the spies' trembling lips, to terrify the congregation, but here the
+list of the whole seven but strengthens confidence. Faith delights to
+look steadily at its enemies, knowing that the one Helper is more than
+they all. This catalogue breathes the same spirit as Paul's rapturous
+list of the foes impotent to separate from the love of God. Mark, too,
+the long-drawn-out designation of the ark, with its accumulation of
+nouns, which grammatical purists have found difficult,--'the ark of the
+covenant of the Lord of all the earth'; where it leads they need not
+fear to follow. It was the pledge of His presence, it contained the Ten
+Words on which His covenant was concluded. That covenant enlisted on
+their side Him who was Lord of the swollen river as of all the fierce
+clans beyond; and with His ark in front, their victory was sure. If
+ever the contemplation of His power and covenant relation was in place,
+it was on that morning, as Israel stood ranked for the march that was
+to lead them through Jordan, and to plant their feet on the soil of
+Canaan. Nor must we omit the peculiar appropriateness of this solemn
+designation, on the occasion of the ark's first becoming the leader of
+the march. Hitherto it had been carried in the centre; now it was moved
+to the van, and took the place of the pillar, which blazed no more. But
+the guidance was no less divine. The simple coffer which Bezaleel had
+made was as august and reliable a symbol of God's presence as the
+pillar; and the tables of the law, shut in it, were henceforth to be
+the best directors of the nation.
+
+Then follows the command to elect twelve representatives of the tribes,
+for a purpose not yet explained; and then, at the last moment, the
+manner of crossing is disclosed, to the silencing of wise doubters and
+the confirmation of ignorant faith. The brief anticipatory announcement
+of the miracle puts stress on the arrest of the waters at the instant
+when the priests' feet touched them, and tells what is to befall the
+arrested torrent above the point where the ark stood, saying nothing
+about the lower stretch of the river, and just hinting by one word
+'heap' the parallel between this miracle and that of the passing of the
+Red Sea: 'The floods stood upright as an heap' (Exod. xv. 8).
+
+Verses 14-17 narrate the actual crossing. One long sentence, like the
+roll of an Atlantic wave, or a long-drawn shout of triumph, masses
+together the stages of the march; the breaking up of the encampment;
+the solemn advance of the ark, watched by the motionless crowd; its
+approach to the foaming stream, running bank-full, as is its wont in
+the early harvest months; the decisive moment when the naked feet of
+the priests were dipped in the water. What a hush of almost painful
+expectation would fall on the gazers! Then, with a rush of triumph, the
+long sentence pours on, like a river escaping from some rocky gorge,
+and tells the details of the transcendent fact. Looking up stream, the
+water 'stood'; and, as the flow above went on, it was dammed up, and,
+as would appear, swept back to a point not now known, but apparently
+some miles up. Looking down the course, the water flowed naturally to
+the Dead Sea; and, in effect, the whole bed southwards was quickly left
+bare, giving room for the advance of the people with wide-extended
+front, while the priests, with the ark on their shoulders, stood silent
+in the midst of the bed, between the heaped waters and the hasting
+host. Verse 17 gives the usual summary sentence, which partly
+anticipates what is still to follow, but here comes in with special
+force, as gathering up the whole wonderful scene, and recounting once
+more, and not without a ring of astonished triumph, how the priests
+stood firm on dry ground in that strange place, 'until all the nation
+were passed clean over Jordan'
+
+From verses 7 and 10 we learn the purpose of this miracle as being
+twofold. It was intended to stamp the seal of God's approbation on
+Joshua, and to hearten the people by the assurance of God's fighting
+for them. The leader was thereby put on the level of Moses, the people,
+on that of the generation before whom the Red Sea had been divided. The
+parallel with that event is obvious and significant. The miracle which
+led Israel into the wilderness is repeated as they pass from it. The
+first stage of their deliverance and the second are begun with
+analogous displays of divine power. The same arm which cleft the sea is
+stretched out, after all sins, for the new generation, and 'is not
+shortened that it cannot save.' God does not disdain to duplicate His
+wonders, even for very unworthy servants. The unchanging, long-
+suffering patience, and the unwearied strength to which all generations
+in succession can turn with confidence, are wonderfully set forth by
+these two miracles. And though we have passed into the higher stage,
+where miracles have ceased, the principle which dictated the
+parallelism still holds good, and we too can look back to all these
+ancient wonders, and be sure that they are done over and over again
+according to our needs. 'As we have heard, so have we seen,' might have
+been Israel's song that day, as it may be ours every day.
+
+The beautiful application made of the parted waters of Jordan in
+Christian literature, which sees in them the prophecy of conquered
+death, is perhaps scarcely in accordance with truth, for the divided
+Jordan was the introduction, not to peace, but to warfare. But it is
+too deeply impressed on the heart to be lightly put aside, and we may
+well allow faith and hope to discern in the stream, whose swollen
+waters shrink backwards as soon as the ark is borne into their turbid
+and swift current, an emblem of that dark flood that rolled between the
+host of God and their home, and was dried up as soon as the pierced
+foot of the Christ touched its cold waters.
+
+'What ailest thee, thou sea, that thou fleest; thou Jordan, that thou
+turnest back?' Christ has gone up before us. He has shaken His hand
+over the river, and caused men to go over dry shod.
+
+
+
+
+STONES CRYING OUT
+
+'For the priests which bare the ark stood in the midst of Jordan, until
+every thing was finished that the Lord commanded Joshua to speak unto
+the people, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua: and the
+people hasted and passed over. 11. And it came to pass, when all the
+people were clean passed over, that the ark of the Lord passed over,
+and the priests, in the presence of the people. 12. And the children of
+Reuben, and the children of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, passed
+over armed before the children of Israel, as Moses spake unto them: 13.
+About forty thousand prepared for war passed over before the Lord unto
+battle, to the plains of Jericho. 14. On that day the Lord magnified
+Joshua in the sight of all Israel; and they feared him, as they feared
+Moses, all the days of his life. 15. And the Lord spake unto Joshua,
+saying, 16. Command the priests that bare the ark of the testimony,
+that they come up out of Jordan. 17. Joshua therefore commanded the
+priests, saying, Come ye up out of Jordan. 18. And it came to pass,
+when the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord were
+come up out of the midst of Jordan, and the soles of the priests' feet
+were lifted up unto the dry land, that the waters of Jordan returned
+unto their place, and flowed over all his banks, as they did before.
+19. And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first
+month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho. 80. And
+those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in
+Gilgal. 21. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your
+children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean
+these stones? 22. Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel
+came over this Jordan on dry land. 23. For the Lord your God dried up
+the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the
+Lord your God did to the Red sea, which He dried up from before us,
+until we were gone over: 24. That all the people of the earth might
+know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the
+Lord your God for ever.'--JOSHUA iv. 10-24.
+
+
+This chapter is divided into two sections. The first (from verses 1 to
+14) has as its main subject the bringing up of the twelve memorial
+stones from the bed of Jordan; the second (verse 15 to the end) gives
+the conclusion of the whole incident. The plan of arrangement, already
+pointed out in a former chapter, is very plain in this. Each section
+has God's commands to Joshua, Joshua's to the people, and the execution
+of these. To each is appended a summary, which anticipates the more
+detailed particulars that follow. Our text begins in the middle of the
+first section, but we must glance at the preceding verses. These tell
+how, when the people were all across, Joshua, who had apparently
+remained on the eastern bank with the twelve representatives of the
+tribes, received God's command to tell these the purpose for which they
+had been chosen, and to set them to execute it. This additional
+instruction is the explanation of the apparent discrepancy between
+Joshua iii. 12 and iv. 2. Verses 4-8 tell Joshua's communication of the
+instructions to the men; verse 8 narrates the execution of them by each
+man's wrenching up from the river's bed a great stone, with which he
+toiled through the muddy ooze to the western shore, and thence over the
+hot plain to Gilgal, where the host camped; verse 9 tells that twelve
+other stones were set up where the priests had stood, and were visible
+at some time after date, when it was written; but when that was, or
+whether the verse is part of the original or a later note, we cannot
+say. At any rate, there were two memorials, one on the bank, one in the
+stream--'a grand jury of great stones,' as Thomas Fuller calls them.
+There is no difficulty in supposing that the monument in the river was
+firm enough to resist its current, and high enough to be visible either
+above the surface or beneath the ordinarily shallow water.
+
+I. The first picture here brought before us is that of the motionless
+ark in the midst of what had been Jordan. There is an obvious intention
+to contrast the stillness of the priests, bearing it on their
+shoulders, and standing rooted in that strange place all these long
+hours, with the hurry around. 'The priests stood ... and the people
+hasted.' However broad the front and swift the march, the crossing must
+have taken many hours. The haste was not from fear, but eagerness. It
+was 'an industrious speed and mannerly quickness, as not willing to
+make God wait upon them, in continuing a miracle longer than necessity
+did require.' When all were over, then came the twelve and Joshua, who
+would spend some time in gathering the stones and rearing the memorial
+in the river-bed. Through all the stir the ark was still. Over all the
+march it watched. So long as one Israelite was in the channel it
+remained, a silent presence, to ensure his safety. It let their rate of
+speed determine the length of its standing there. It waited for the
+slowest foot and the weariest laggard. God makes His 'very present
+help' of the same length as our necessities, and lets us beat the time
+to which He conforms. Not till the last loiterer has struggled to the
+farther shore does He cease by His presence to keep His people safe on
+the strange road which by His presence He has opened for them.
+
+The silent presence of the ark is enough to dam up the stream. There is
+vehement action around, but the cause of it all is in absolute repose.
+God moves all things, Himself unmoved. He 'worketh hitherto,' and no
+intensity of energy breaks the depth of His perfect rest. His activity
+implies no effort, and is followed by no exhaustion. The ark is still,
+while it holds back a swollen river for hours. The centre of the
+swiftest revolution is a point of rest.
+
+The form of the miracle was a condescension to weak faith, to which
+help was ministered by giving sense something to grasp. It was easier
+to believe that the torrent would not rush down on them when they could
+look at the priests standing there motionless, with the visible symbol
+of God's presence on their shoulders. The ark was no more the cause of
+the miracle than were its carriers; but, just as Jesus helped one blind
+man by laying moistened earth on his eyes, and another by sending him
+to Siloam to wash, so God did here. Children learn best when they have
+something to look at. Sight is sometimes the servant of faith.
+
+We need not dwell on the summary, beginning with verse 11, which
+anticipates the subject of the next section, and adds that the fighting
+men of the tribes who had already received their inheritance on the
+east bank of Jordan, loyally kept their promise, and marched with their
+brethren to the campaign.
+
+II. Verses 15-18 finish the story with the return of the waters to
+their bed. The triple division appears again. First God commands
+Joshua, who then transmits the command to the people, who, in turn,
+then obey. And thus at each stage the divine causality, Joshua's
+delegated but absolute authority, and the people's prompt obedience,
+are signalised; and the whole incident, in all its parts, is set forth
+as on the one hand a conspicuous instance of God's interposition, and,
+on the other, of Israel's willing service.
+
+We can fancy how the people who had reached the western shore lined the
+bank, gazing on the group in the channel, who still stood waiting God's
+command to relieve them at their post. The word comes at last, and is
+immediately obeyed. May we not learn the lesson to stand fixed and
+patient wherever God sets us, as long as He does not call us thence?
+God's priests should be like the legionary on guard in Pompeii, who
+stuck to his post while the ashes were falling thick, and was smothered
+by them, rather than leave his charge without his commander's orders.
+One graphic word pictures the priests lifting, or, as it might be
+translated, 'plucking,' the soles of their feet from the slimy bottom
+into which they had settled down by reason of long standing still. They
+reach the bank, marching as steadily with their sacred burden as might
+be over so rough and slippery a road. The first to enter were the last
+to leave the river's bed. God's ark 'goes before us,' and 'is our
+rearward.' He besets us behind and before, and all dangerous service is
+safe if begun and ended in Him. The one point made prominent is the
+instantaneous rush back of the impatient torrent as soon as the curb
+was taken off. Like some horse rejoicing to be free, the tawny flood
+pours down, and soon everything looks 'as aforetime,' except for the
+new rock, piled by human hands, round which the waters chafed. The
+dullest would understand what had wrought the miracle when they saw the
+immediate consequence of the ark's leaving its place. Cause and effect
+seldom come thus close together in God's dealings; but sometimes He
+lets us see them as near each other as the lightning and the thunder,
+that we may learn to trace them in faith, when centuries part them. How
+the people would gaze as the hurrying stream covered up their path, and
+would look across to the further shore, almost doubting if they had
+really stood there that morning I They were indeed 'Hebrews'--men from
+the other side-now, and would set themselves to the dangerous task
+before them with courage. 'Well begun is half done'; and God would not
+divide the river for them to thrust them into a tiger's den, where they
+would be torn to pieces. Retreat was impossible now. A new page in
+their history was turned. The desert was as unreachable as Egypt, The
+passage of the Jordan rounded off the epoch which the passage of the
+Bed Sea introduced, and began a new era.
+
+That parallelism of the two crossings is suggested by the notice of
+date in verse 19. 'The tenth day of the first month' was just forty
+years to a day since the first Paschal lamb had been chosen, and four
+days short of the Passover, which was solemnised at Gilgal (Joshua v.
+10) where they encamped that night. It was a short march from the point
+of crossing, and a still shorter from Jericho. It would have been easy
+to fall upon the invaders as they straggled across the river, but no
+attempt was made to dispute the passage, though, no doubt, many a keen
+pair of eyes watched it from the neighbouring hills. In the beginning
+of the next chapter we are told why there was this singular supineness.
+'Their heart melted, neither was there spirit in them any more,' or, in
+more modern language, panic laid hold of the enemy, and they could not
+pluck up courage to oppose the advance of Israel. If we add this result
+to those mentioned in chapter in., we find sufficient motive for the
+miracle to take it out of the class of purposeless, legendary wonders.
+Given the importance of Israel as the depositaries of revelation, there
+is nothing unreasonable in a miracle which so powerfully contributed to
+their conquest of Canaan, and we have yet to learn that there is
+anything unreasonable in the belief that they were the depositaries of
+revelation. The fundamental postulate of the Old Testament is a
+supernatural revelation, and that opens the door for any miracle
+needful for its accomplishment. It is folly to seek to conciliate by
+minimising the miraculous element. However much may be thrown out to
+the wolves, they will not cease to pursue and show their teeth. We
+should be very slow to pronounce on what is worthy of God; but any man
+who believes in a divine revelation, given to the world through Israel,
+may well believe in such a miracle as this at such a moment of their
+history.
+
+III. The memorial stones (verses 20-24). Gilgal, the first encampment,
+lay defenceless in the open plain, and the first thing to be done would
+be to throw up some earthwork round the camp. It seems to have been the
+resting-place of the ark and probably of the non-combatants, during the
+conquest, and to have derived thence a sacredness which long clung to
+it, and finally led, singularly enough, to its becoming a centre of
+idolatrous worship. The rude circle of unhewn stones without
+inscription was, no doubt, exactly like the many prehistoric monuments
+found all over the world, which forgotten races have raised to keep in
+everlasting remembrance forgotten fights and heroes. It was a
+comparatively small thing; for each stone was but a load for one man,
+and it would seem mean enough by the side of Stonehenge or Carnac, just
+as Israel's history is on a small scale, as compared with the world-
+embracing empires of old. Size is not greatness; and Joshua's little
+circle told a more wonderful story than its taller kindred, or Egyptian
+obelisks or colossi.
+
+These grey stones preached at once the duty of remembering, and the
+danger of forgetting, the past mercies of God. When they were reared,
+they would seem needless; but the deepest impressions get filled up by
+degrees, as the river of time deposits its sands on them. We do not
+forget pain so quickly as joy, and most men have a longer and keener
+remembrance of their injurers than of their benefactors, human or
+divine. The stones were set up because Israel remembered, but also lest
+Israel should forget. We often think of the Jews as monsters of
+ingratitude; but we should more truly learn the lesson of their
+history, if we regarded them as fair, average men, and asked ourselves
+whether our recollection of God's goodness to us is much more vivid
+than theirs. Unless we make distinct and frequent efforts to recall, we
+shall certainly forget 'all His benefits.' The cultivation of thankful
+remembrance is a very large part of practical religion; and it is not
+by accident that the Psalmist puts it in the middle, between hope and
+obedience, when he says 'that they might set their hope in God, and
+not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments' (Psalm lxxviii.7).
+
+The memorial stones further proclaimed the duty of parental instruction
+in God's mercies. They speak of a time when tradition was the vehicle
+of history; when books were rare, and monuments were relied upon to
+awaken curiosity which a father's words would satisfy. Notwithstanding
+all differences in means of obtaining knowledge, the old law remains in
+full force, that the parent is the natural and most powerful instructor
+in the ways of God. The Jewish father was not to send his child to some
+Levite or other to get his question answered, but was to answer it
+himself. I am afraid that a good many English parents, who call
+themselves Christians, are too apt to say, 'Ask your Sunday-school
+teacher,' when such questions are put to them. The decay of parental
+religious teaching is working enormous mischief in Christian
+households; and the happiest results would follow if Joshua's homely
+advice were attended to, '_Ye_ shall let your children know.'
+
+The same principle which led to the erection of this simple monument
+reaches its highest and sacredest instance in the institution of the
+Lord's Supper, in which Jesus, with wonderful lowliness, condescends to
+avail Himself of material symbols in order to secure a firmer place in
+treacherous memories. He might well have expected that such stupendous
+love could never be forgotten; but He 'knoweth our frame,' and trusts
+some share in keeping His death vividly in the hearts of His people to
+the humble ministry of bread and wine, Strange that we should need to
+be reminded of the death which it is life to remember! Blessed that,
+needing it, we have the need so tenderly met, and that He does not
+disdain to accept loving memories which slumber till stirred by such
+poor reminders of His unspeakable love!
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE LORD'S HOST
+
+And he said, Nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.
+JOSHUA v. 14.
+
+
+The army of Israel was just beginning a hard conflict under an untried
+leader. Behind them the Jordan barred their retreat, in front of them
+Jericho forbade their advance. Most of them had never seen a fortified
+city, and had no experience nor engines for a siege. So we may well
+suppose that many doubts and fears shook the courage of the host, as it
+drew around the doomed city. Their chief had his own heavy burden. He
+seems to have gone apart to meditate on what his next step was to be.
+Absorbed in thought, he lifts up his eyes mechanically, as brooding men
+will, not expecting to see anything, and is startled by the silent
+figure of 'a man with a sword drawn' in his hand, close beside him.
+There is nothing supernatural in his appearance; and the immediate
+thought of the leader is, 'Is this one of the enemy that has stolen
+upon my solitude?' So, promptly and boldly, he strides up to him with
+the quick challenge: 'Whose side are you on? Are you one of us, or from
+the enemy's camp?' And then the silent lips open. 'Upon neither the one
+nor the other. I am not on your side, you are on mine, for as Captain
+of the Lord's host, am I come up.' And then Joshua falls on his face,
+recognises his Commander-in-Chief, owns himself a subordinate, and asks
+for orders. 'What saith my Lord unto his servant?'
+
+Now let us try to gather the meaning and the lessons of this striking
+incident.
+
+I. I see in it a transient revelation of an eternal truth.
+
+I believe, as the vast majority of careful students of the course of
+Old Testament revelation and its relation to the New Testament
+completion believe, that we have here not a record of the appearance of
+a created superhuman person, but that of a preliminary manifestation of
+the Eternal Word of God, who, in the fulness of time, 'became flesh and
+dwelt among us.'
+
+You will observe that there run throughout the whole of the Old
+Testament notices of the occasional manifestation of a mysterious
+person who is named '_the_ Angel,' 'the Angel of the Lord.' For
+instance, in the great scene in the wilderness, where the bush burned
+and was not consumed, he who appeared is named 'the Angel of the Lord';
+and his lips declare 'I am that I am.' In like manner, soon after, the
+divine voice speaks to Moses of 'the Angel in whom is My name.'
+
+When Balaam had his path blocked amongst the vineyards, it was a
+_replica_ of the figure of my text that stayed his way, a man with
+a drawn sword in his hand, who spoke in autocratic and divine fashion.
+When the parents of Samson were apprised of the coming birth of the
+hero, it was 'the Angel of the Lord' that appeared to them, accepted
+their sacrifice, declared the divine will, and disappeared in a flame
+of fire from the altar. A psalm speaks of 'the Angel of the Lord' as
+encamping round about them that fear him, and delivering them. Isaiah
+tells us of the 'Angel of his face,' who was 'afflicted in all Israel's
+afflictions, and saved them.' And the last prophetic utterance of the
+Old Testament is most distinct and remarkable in its strange
+identification and separation of Jehovah and the Angel, when it says,
+'the Lord shall suddenly come to His Temple, even the Angel of the
+Covenant.' Now, if we put all these passages--and they are but select
+instances--if we put all these passages together, I think we cannot
+help seeing that there runs, as I said, throughout the whole of the Old
+Testament a singular strain of revelation in regard to a Person who, in
+a remarkable manner, is distinguished from the created hosts of angel
+beings, and also is distinguished from, and yet in name, attributes,
+and worship all but identified with, the Lord Himself.
+
+If we turn to the narrative before us, we find there similar phenomena
+marked out. For this mysterious 'man with the sword drawn' in his hand,
+quotes the very words which were spoken at the bush, when he says,
+'Loose thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest
+is holy.' And by fair implication, He would have us to identify the
+persons in these two great theophanies. He ascribes to Himself, in the
+further conversation in the next chapter, directly divine attributes,
+and is named by the sacred name; 'The Lord said unto Joshua, see, I
+have given into thy hand Jericho and its king.'
+
+If we turn to the New Testament, we find that there under another image
+the same strain of thought is presented. The Word of God, who from
+everlasting 'was with God, and was God,' is represented as being the
+Agent of Creation, the Source of all human illumination, the Director
+of Providence, the Lord of the Universe. 'By him were all things, and
+in him all things consists.' So, surely, these two halves make a whole;
+and the Angel of the Lord, separate and yet so strangely identified
+with Jehovah, who at the crises of the nation's history, and stages of
+the development of the process of Revelation, is manifested, and the
+Eternal Word of God, whom the New Testament reveals to us, are one and
+the same.
+
+This truth was transiently manifested in our text. The vision passed,
+the ground that was hallowed by His foot is undistinguished now in the
+sweltering plain round the mound that once was Jericho. But the fact
+remains, the humanity, that was only in appearance, and for a few
+minutes, assumed then, has now been taken up into everlasting union
+with the divine nature, and a Man reigns on the Throne, and is
+Commander of all who battle for the truth and the right. The eternal
+order of the universe is before us here.
+
+It only remains to say a word in reference to the sweep of the command
+which our vision assigns to the Angel of the Lord. 'Captain of the
+Lord's host' means a great deal more than the true General of Israel's
+little army. It does mean that, or the words and the vision would cease
+to have relevance and bearing on the moment's circumstances and need.
+But it includes also, as the usage of Scripture would sufficiently
+show, if it were needful to adduce instances of it, all the ordered
+ranks of loftier intelligent beings, and all the powers and forces of
+the universe. These are conceived of as an embattled host, comparable
+to an army in the strictness of their discipline and their obedience to
+a single will. It is the modern thought that the universe is a Cosmos
+and not a Chaos, an ordered unit, with the addition of the truth beyond
+the reach and range of science, that its unity is the expression of a
+personal will. It is the same thought which the centurion had, to
+Christ's wonder, when he compared his own power as an officer in a
+legion, where his will was implicitly obeyed, to the power of Christ
+over diseases and sorrows and miseries and death, and recognised that
+all these were His servants, to whom, if His autocratic lips chose to
+say 'Go,' they went, and if He said, 'Do this,' they did it.
+
+So the Lord of the universe and its ordered ranks is Jesus Christ. That
+is the truth which was flashed from the unknown, like a vanishing
+meteor in the midnight, before the face of Joshua, and which stands
+like the noonday sun, unsetting and irradiating for us who live under
+the Gospel.
+
+II. I see here the Leader of all the warfare against the world's evil.
+
+'The Captain of the Lord's host.' He Himself takes part in the fight.
+He is not like a general who, on some safe knoll behind the army, sends
+his soldiers to death, and keeps his own skin whole. But He _has_
+fought, and He _is_ fighting. Do you remember that wonderful
+picture in two halves, at the end of one of the Gospels, 'the Lord went
+up into Heaven and sat at the right hand of God, ... they went forth
+everywhere preaching the Word'? Strange contrast between the repose of
+the seated Christ and the toils of His peripatetic servants! Yes,
+strange contrast; but the next words harmonise the two halves of it;
+'the Lord also working with them, and confirming the word with signs
+following.' The Leader does not so rest as that He does not fight; and
+the servants do not need so to fight, as that they cannot rest. Thus
+the old legends of many a land and tongue have a glorious truth in them
+to the eye of faith, and at the head of all the armies that are
+charging against any form of the world's misery and sin, there moves
+the form of the Son of Man, whose aid we have to invoke, even from His
+crowned repose at the right hand of God. 'Gird thy sword upon Thy
+thigh, O Most Mighty, and in Thy majesty ride forth prosperously, and
+Thy right hand shall teach Thee terrible things.'
+
+If this, then, be for us, as truly as for Joshua and his host, a
+revelation of who is our true leader, surely all of us in our various
+degrees, and especially any of us who have any 'Quixotic crusade' for
+the world's good on our consciences and on our hands, may take the
+lessons and the encouragements that are here. Own your Leader; that is
+one plain duty. And recognise this fact, that by no other power than by
+His, and with no other weapons than those which He puts into our hands,
+in His Cross and meekness, can a world's evils be overcome, and the
+victory be won for the right and the truth. I have no faith in crusades
+which are not under the Captain of our salvation. And I would that the
+earnest men, and there are many of them, the laborious and the self-
+sacrificing men in many departments of philanthropy and benevolence and
+social reformation--who labour unaware of who is their Leader, and not
+dependent upon His help, nor trusting in His strength--would take to
+heart this vision of my text, and see beside them the 'man with the
+drawn sword in his hand,' the Christ with the 'sharp two-edged sword
+going out of his mouth,' by whom, and by whom alone, the world's evil
+can be overcome and slain.
+
+Own your General; submit to His authority; pick the weapons that He can
+bless; trust absolutely in His help. We _may_ have, we _shall_
+have, in all enterprises for God and man that are worth doing, 'need
+of patience,' just as the army of Israel had to parade for six weary days
+round Jericho blowing their useless trumpets, whilst the impregnable walls
+stood firm, and the defenders flouted and jeered their aimless procession.
+But the seventh day will come, and at the trumpet blast down will go the
+loftiest ramparts of the cities that are 'walled up to heaven' with a rush
+and a crash, and through the dust and over the ruined rubbish Christ's
+soldiers will march and take possession. So trust in your Leader, and be
+sure of the victory, and have patience and keep on at your work.
+
+Do not make Joshua's mistake. 'Art Thou for us?'--'Nay! Thou art for
+_me._' That is a very different thing. We have the right to be
+sure that God is on our side, when we have made sure that we are on
+God's. So take care of self-will and self-regard, and human passions,
+and all the other parasitical insects that creep round philanthropic
+religious work, lest they spoil your service. There is a great deal
+that calls itself after Jehu's fashion, 'My zeal for the Lord,' which
+is nothing better than zeal for my own notions and their preponderance.
+Therefore we must strip ourselves of all that, and not fancy that the
+cause is ours, and then graciously admit Christ to help us, but
+recognise that it is _His_, and lowly submit ourselves to His
+direction, and what we do, do, and when we fight, fight, in His name
+and for His sake.
+
+III. Here is the Ally in all our warfare with ourselves.
+
+That is the worst fight. Far worse than all these Hittites and Hivites,
+and the other tribes with their barbarous names, far worse than all
+external foes, are the foes that each man carries about in his own
+heart. In that slow hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot struggle I do not
+believe that there is any conquering power available for a man that can
+for a moment be compared with the power that comes through submission
+to Christ's command and acceptance of Christ's help. He has fought
+every foot of the ground before us. We have to 'run the race'--to take
+another metaphor--'that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,' the
+great Leader, and in His own self the Perfecter of the faith which
+conquers. In Him, His example, the actual communication of His divine
+Spirit, and in the motives for brave and persistent conflict which flow
+from His Cross and Passion, we shall find that which alone will make us
+the victors in this internecine warfare. There can be no better
+directory given to any man than to tread in Christ's footsteps, and
+learn how to fight, from Him who in the wilderness repelled the triple
+assault with the single 'It is written'; thus recognising the word and
+will of God as the only directory and defence.
+
+Thus, brethren, if we humbly take service in His ranks, and ask Him to
+show us where our foes within are, and to give us the grace to grapple
+with them, and cast them out, anything is possible rather than ultimate
+defeat, and however long and sore the struggle may be, its length and
+its severity are precious parts of the discipline that makes us strong,
+and we shall at last be more than conquerors through Him that loveth
+us.
+
+IV. Lastly, I see here the Power which it is madness to resist.
+
+Think of this vision. Think of the deep truths, partially shadowed and
+symbolised by it. Think of Christ, what He is, and what resources He
+has at His back, of what are His claims for our service, and our loyal,
+militant obedience. Think of the certain victory of all who follow Him
+amongst 'the armies of Heaven, clad in fine linen, clean and white.'
+Think of the crown and the throne for him that 'overcomes.'
+
+Remember the destructive powers that sleep in Him: the 'drawn sword in
+His hand,' the 'two-edged sword out of His mouth' the 'wrath of the
+Lamb.' Think of the ultimate certain defeat of all antagonisms; of that
+last campaign when He goes forth with the 'name written on His vesture
+and on His thigh "King of kings and Lord of lords."' Think of how He
+'strikes through kings in the day of His wrath, and fills the place
+with the bodies of the dead'; and how His 'enemies become His
+footstool.'
+
+Ponder His own solemn word, 'He that is not with Me, is against Me.'
+There is no neutrality in this warfare. Either we are for Him or we are
+for His adversary. 'Under which King? speak or die!' As sensible men,
+not indifferent to your highest and lasting well-being, ask yourselves,
+'Can I, with my ten thousand, meet Him with His twenty thousand?' Put
+yourselves under His orders, and He will be on your side. He will teach
+your hands to war, and your fingers to fight; will cover your heads in
+the day of battle, and bring you at last, palm-bearing and laurel-
+crowned, to that blissful state where there will still be service, and
+He still be the 'Captain of the Lord's host,' but where 'swords will be
+beaten into ploughshares' and the victors shall need to 'learn war no
+more.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SIEGE OF JERICHO
+
+'And Joshua had commanded the people, saying, Ye shall not shout, nor
+make any noise with your voice, ... until the day I bid you shout; then
+shall ye shout. 11. So the ark of the Lord compassed the city, going
+about it once: and they came into the camp, and lodged in the camp.'--
+JOSHUA vi.10, 11.
+
+The cheerful uniform obedience of Israel to Joshua stands in very
+remarkable contrast with their perpetual murmurings and rebellions
+under Moses. Many reasons probably concurred in bringing about this
+change of tone. For one thing the long period of suspense was over; and
+to average sense-bound people there is no greater trial of faith and
+submission than waiting, inactive, for something that is to come. Now
+they are face to face with their enemies, and it is a great deal easier
+to fight than to expect; and their courage mounts higher as dangers
+come nearer. Then there were great miracles which left their impression
+upon the people, such as the passage of the Jordan, and so on.
+
+So that the Epistle to the Hebrews is right when it says, 'By faith the
+walls of Jericho fell down after they were compassed about seven days.'
+And that faith was as manifest in the six days' march round the city,
+as on the seventh day of victorious entrance. For, if you will read the
+narrative carefully, you will see that it says that the Israelites were
+not told what was to be the end of that apparently useless and aimless
+promenade. It was only on the morning of the day of the miracle that it
+was announced. So there are two stages in this instance of faith. There
+is the protracted trial of it, in doing an apparently useless thing;
+and there is the victory, which explains and vindicates it. Let us look
+at these two points now.
+
+I. Consider that strange protracted trial of faith.
+
+The command comes to the people, through Joshua's lips, unaccompanied
+by any explanation or reasons. If Moses had called for a like obedience
+from the people in their wilderness mood, there would have been no end
+of grumbling. But whatever some of them may have thought, there is
+nothing recorded now but prompt submission. Notice, too, the order of
+the procession. First come the armed men, then seven white-robed
+priests, blowing, probably, discordant music upon their ram's horn
+trumpets; then the Ark, the symbol and token of God's presence; and
+then the rereward. So the _Ark_ is the centre; and it is not only
+Israel that is marching round the city, but rather it is God who is
+circling the walls. Very impressive would be the grim silence of it
+all. Tramp, tramp, tramp, round and round, six days on end, without a
+word spoken (though no doubt taunts in plenty were being showered down
+from the walls), they marched, and went back to the camp, and subsided
+into inactivity for another four-and-twenty hours, until they 'turned
+out' for the procession once more.
+
+Now, what did all that mean? The blast of the trumpet was, in the
+Jewish feasts, the solemn proclamation of the presence of God. And
+hence the purpose of that singular march circumambulating Jericho was
+to declare 'Here is the Lord of the whole earth, weaving His invisible
+cordon and network around the doomed city.' In fact the meaning of the
+procession, emphasised by the silence of the soldiers, was that God
+Himself was saying, in the long-drawn blasts of the priestly trumpet,
+'Lift up your heads, O ye gates! even lift them up, ye everlasting
+doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.' Now, whatever Jericho and
+its people thought about that, Israel, according to the commentary of
+the New Testament, had to some extent, at all events, learnt the
+lesson, and knew, of course very rudimentarily and with a great deal of
+mere human passion mingled with it, but still knew, that this was God's
+summons, and the manifestation of God's presence. And so round the city
+they went, and day by day they did the thing in which their faith
+apprehended its true meaning, and which, by reason of their faith, they
+were willing to do. Let us take some lessons from that.
+
+Here is a confidence in the divine presence, manifested by
+unquestioning obedience to a divine command.
+
+                       'Theirs not to make reply,
+                        Theirs not to reason why.'
+
+Joshua had spoken; God had spoken through him. And so here goes! up
+with the Ark and the trumpets, and out on to the hot sand for the
+march! It would have been a great deal easier to have stopped in the
+tents. It was disheartening work marching round thus. The sceptical
+spirit in the host--the folk of whom there are many great-grandchildren
+living to-day, who always have objections to urge when disagreeable
+duties are crammed up against their faces--would have enough to say on
+that occasion, but the bulk of the people were true, and obeyed. Now,
+we do not need to put out the eyes of our understanding in order to
+practise the obedience of faith. And we have to exercise common-sense
+about the things that seem to us to be duties.
+
+But this is plain, that if once we see a thing to be, in Christian
+language, the will of our Father in heaven, then everything is settled;
+and there is only one course for us, and that is, unquestioning
+submission, active submission, or, what is as hard, passive submission.
+
+Then here again is faith manifesting itself by an obedience which was
+altogether ignorant of what was coming. I think that is quite plain in
+the story, if you will read it carefully, though I think that it is not
+quite what people generally understand as its meaning. But it makes the
+incident more in accordance with God's uniform way of dealing with us
+that the host should be told on the morning of the first day of the
+week that they were to march round the city, and told the same on the
+second day, and on the third the same, and so on until the sixth; and
+that not until the morning of the seventh, were they told what was to
+be the end of it all. That is the way in which God generally deals with
+us. In the passage of the Jordan, too, you will find, if you will look
+at the narrative carefully, that although Joshua was told what was
+coming, the people were not told till the morning of the day, when the
+priests' feet were dipped in the brink of the water. We, too, have to
+do our day's march, knowing very little about tomorrow; and we have to
+carry on all through life 'doing the duty that lies nearest us,'
+entirely ignorant of the strange issues to which it may conduct. Life
+is like a voyage down some winding stream, shut in by hills, sometimes
+sunny and vine-clad, like the Rhine, sometimes grim and black, like an
+American canon. As the traveller looks ahead he wonders how the stream
+will find a passage beyond the next bend; and as he looks back, he
+cannot trace the course by which he has come. It is only when he rounds
+the last shoulder that he sees a narrow opening flashing in the
+sunshine, and making a way for his keel. So, seeing that we know
+nothing about the issues, let us make sure of the motives; and seeing
+that we do not know what to-morrow may bring forth, nor even what the
+next moment may bring, let us see that we fill the present instant as
+full as it will hold with active obedience to God, based upon simple
+faith in Him. He does not open His whole hand at once; He opens a
+finger at a time, as you do sometimes with your children when you are
+trying to coax them to take something out of the palm. He gives us
+enough light for the moment, He says, 'March round Jericho; and be sure
+that I mean something. What I do mean I will tell you some day.' And so
+we have to put all into His hands.
+
+Then here, again, is faith manifesting itself by persistency. A week
+was not long, but it was a long while during which to do that one
+apparently useless thing and nothing else. It would take about an hour
+or so to march round the city, and there were twenty-three hours of
+idleness. Little progress in reducing Jericho was made by the progress
+round it, and it must have got rather wearisome about the sixth day.
+Familiarity would breed monotony, but notwithstanding the deadly
+influences of habit, the obedient host turned out for their daily
+round. 'Let us not be weary in well-doing,' for there is a time for
+everything. There is a time for sowing and for reaping, and in the
+season of the reaping 'we shall reap, if we faint not.' Dear brethren!
+we all get weary of our work. Custom presses upon us, 'with a weight
+heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.' It is easy to do things with
+a spurt, but it is the keeping on at the monotonous, trivial, and
+sometimes unintelligible duties that is the test of a man's grit, and
+of his goodness too. So, although it is a very, very threadbare lesson
+--one that you may think it was not worth while for me to bring you all
+here to receive--I am sure that there are few things needed more by us
+all, and especially by those of us who are on the wrong side of middle
+life, as people call it--though I think it is the right side in many
+respects--than that old familiar lesson. Keep on as you have begun, and
+for the six weary days turn out, however hot the sun, however
+comfortable the carpets in the tent, however burning the sand, however
+wearisome and flat it may seem to be perpetually tramping round the
+same walls of the same old city; keep on, for in due season the trumpet
+will sound and the walls will fall.
+
+II. So that brings me to the second stage--viz., the sudden victory
+which vindicates and explains the protracted trial of faith.
+
+I do not need to tell the story of how, on the seventh day, the host
+encompassed the city seven times, and at last they were allowed to
+break the long silence with a shout. You will observe the prominence
+given to the sacred seven, both in the number of days, of circuits
+made, and the number of the priests' trumpets. Probably the last day
+was a Sabbath, for there must have been one somewhere in the week, and
+it is improbable that it was one of the undistinguished days. That was
+a shout, we may be sure, by which the week's silence was avenged, and
+all the repressed emotions gained utterance at last. The fierce yell
+from many throats, which startled the wild creatures in the hills
+behind Jericho, blended discordantly with the trumpets' clang which
+proclaimed a present God; and at His summons the fortifications toppled
+into hideous ruin, and over the fallen stones the men of Israel
+clambered, each soldier, in all that terrible circle of avengers that
+surrounded the doomed city, marching straight forward, and so all
+converging on the centre.
+
+Now, we can discover good reasons for this first incident in the
+campaign being marked by miracle. The fact that it was the first is a
+reason. It is a law of God's progressive revelation that each new epoch
+is inaugurated by miraculous works which do not continue throughout its
+course. For instance, it is observable that, in the _Acts of the
+Apostles,_ the first example of each class of incidents recorded
+there, such as the first preaching, the first persecution, the first
+martyrdom, the first expansion of the Gospel beyond Jews, its first
+entrance into Europe, has usually the stamp of miracle impressed on it,
+and is narrated at great length, while subsequent events of the same
+class have neither of those marks of distinction. Take, for example,
+the account of Stephen, the first martyr. He saw 'the heavens opened'
+and the Son of Man 'standing at the right hand of God.' We do not read
+that the heavens opened when Herod struck off the head of James with
+the sword. But was Jesus any the less near to help His servant?
+Certainly not.
+
+In like manner it was fitting that the first time that Israel crossed
+swords with these deadly and dreaded enemies should be marked by a
+miraculous intervention to hearten God's warriors. But let us take care
+that we understand the teaching of any miracle. Surely it does not
+secularise and degrade the other incidents of a similar sort in which
+no miracle was experienced. The very opposite lesson is the true one to
+draw from a miracle. In its form it is extraordinary, and presents
+God's direct action on men or on nature, so obviously that all eyes can
+see it. But the conclusion to be drawn is not that God acts only in a
+supernatural' manner, but that He is acting as really, though in a less
+obvious fashion, in the 'natural' order. In these turning-points, the
+inauguration of new stages in revelation or history, the cause which
+always produces all nearer effects and the ultimate effects, which are
+usually separated or united (as one may choose to regard it) by many
+intervening links, are brought together. But the originating power
+works as truly when it is transmitted through these many links as when
+it dispenses with them. Miracle shows us in abbreviated fashion, and
+therefore conspicuously, the divine will acting directly, that we may
+see it working when it acts indirectly. In miracle God makes bare His
+arm,' that we may be sure of its operation when it is draped and
+partially hid, as by a vesture, by second causes.
+
+We are not to argue that, because there is no miracle, God is not
+present or active. He was as truly with Israel when there was no Ark
+present, and no blast of the trumpet heard. He was as truly with Israel
+when they fought apparently unhelped, as He was when Jericho fell. The
+teaching of all the miracles in the Old and the New Testaments is that
+the order of the universe is maintained by the continual action of the
+will of God on men and things. So this story is a transient revelation
+of an eternal fact. God is as much with you and me in our fights as He
+was with the Israelites when they marched round Jericho, and as
+certainly will He help. If by faith we endure the days of often blind
+obedience, we shall share the rapture of the sudden victory.
+
+Now, I have said that the last day of this incident was probably a
+Sabbath day. Does not that suggest the thought that we may take this
+story as a prophetic symbol? There is for us a week of work, and a
+seventh day of victory, when we shall enter, not into the city of
+confusion which has come to nought, but into the city which 'hath the
+foundations, whose builder and maker is God.' The old fathers of the
+Christian Church were not far wrong, when they saw in this story a type
+of the final coming of the Lord. Did you ever notice how St. Paul, in
+writing to the Thessalonians about that coming, seems to have his mind
+turned back to the incident before us? Remember that in this incident
+the two things which signalised the fall of the city were the trumpet
+and the shout. What does Paul say? 'The Lord Himself shall descend from
+heaven with a _shout_, with the voice of the archangel, and with
+the _trump_ of God.' Jericho over again! And then, 'Babylon is
+fallen, is fallen!' 'And I saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of
+heaven, like a bride adorned for her husband.'
+
+
+
+
+RAHAB
+
+'And Joanna paved Rahab the harlot alive... and she dwelleth in Israel
+even unto this day.'--JOSHUA vi. 25.
+
+
+This story comes in like an oasis in these terrible narratives of
+Canaanite extermination. There is much about it that is beautiful and
+striking, but the main thing is that it teaches the universality of
+God's mercy, and the great truth that trust in Him unites to Him and
+brings deliverance, how black soever may have been the previous life.
+
+I need not tell over again the story, told with such inimitable
+picturesqueness here: how the two spies, swimming the Jordan in flood,
+set out on their dangerous mission and found themselves in the house of
+Rahab, a harlot; how the king sent to capture them, how she hid them
+among the flax-stalks bleaching on the flat roof, confessed faith in
+Israel's God and lied steadfastly to save them, how they escaped to the
+Quarantania hills, how she 'perished not' in the capture, entered into
+the community of Israel, was married, and took her place--hers!--in the
+line of David's and Christ's ancestresses.
+
+The point of interest is her being, notwithstanding her previous
+position and history, one of the few instances in which heathen were
+brought into Israel. The _Epistle to the Hebrews_ and _James_
+both refer to her. We now consider her story as embodying for us some
+important truths about faith in its nature, its origin, its power.
+
+I. Faith in its constant essence and its varying objects.
+
+Her creed was very short and simple. She abjured idols, and believed
+that Jehovah was the one God. She knew nothing of even the Mosaic
+revelation, nothing of its moral law or of its sacrifices. And yet the
+_Epistle to the Hebrews_ has no scruple in ascribing faith to her.
+The object of that Epistle is to show that Christianity is Judaism
+perfected. It labours to establish that objectively there has been
+advance, not contradiction, and that subjectively there is absolute
+identity. It has always been faith that has bound men to God. That
+faith may co-exist with very different degrees of illumination. Not the
+creed, but the trust, is the all-important matter. This applies to all
+pre-Christian times and to all heathen lands. _Our_ faith has a
+fuller gospel to lay hold of. Do not neglect it.
+
+Beware lest people with less light and more love get in before you,
+'who shall come from the east and the west.'
+
+II. Faith in its origin in fear.
+
+There are many roads to faith, and it matters little which we take, so
+long as we get to the goal. This is one, and some people seem to think
+that it is a very low and unworthy one, and one which we should never
+urge upon men. But there are a side of the divine nature and a mode of
+the divine government which properly evoke fear.
+
+God's moral government, His justice and retribution, are facts.
+
+Fear is an inevitable and natural consequence of feeling that His
+justice is antagonistic to us. The work of conscience is precisely to
+create such fear. Not to feel it is to fall below manhood or to be
+hardened by sin.
+
+That fear is meant to lead us to God and love. Rahab fled to God. Peter
+'girt his fisher's coat to him,' and lost his fear in the sunshine of
+Christ's face, as a rainbow trembles out of a thunder-cloud when
+touched by sunbeams.
+
+We have all grounds enough to _fear_.
+
+Urge these as a reason for _trust_.
+
+III. Faith in its relation to the previous life.
+
+It is a strange instance of blindness that attempts have been made to
+soften down the Bible's plain speaking about Rahab's character.
+
+In her story we have an anticipation of New Testament teaching.
+
+The 'woman that was a sinner.'
+
+Mary Magdalene.
+
+'Then drew near all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him.'
+
+She shows us that there is no hopeless guilt. None is so in regard to
+the effects of sin on a soul. There is no heart so indurated as that
+its capacity for being stirred by the divine message is killed.
+
+There is none hopeless in regard to God.
+
+His love embraces all, however bad. The bond which unites to Him is not
+blamelessness of life but simple trust.
+
+The grossest vice is not so thorough a barrier as self-satisfied self-
+righteousness.
+
+A thin slice of crystal will bar the entrance of air more effectually
+than many folds of stuff.
+
+IV. Faith in its practical effects.
+
+Rahab's story shows how living faith, like a living stream, will cut a
+channel for itself, and must needs flow out into the life.
+
+Hence James is right in using her as an example of how 'we are
+justified by works and not by faith only,' and the author of the
+_Epistle to the Hebrews_ is equally right in enrolling her in his
+great muster-roll of heroes and heroines of faith, and asserting that
+'by faith' she 'perished not among them who believed not.' The one
+writer fastens on a later stage in her experience than does the other.
+James points to the rich fruit, the Epistle to the Hebrews goes deeper
+and lays bare the root from which the life rose to the clusters.
+
+The faith that saves is not a barren intellectual process, nor an idle
+trust in Christ's salvation, but a practical power. If genuine it
+_will_ mould and impel the life.
+
+So Rahab's faith led her, as ours, if real, will lead us, to break with
+old habits and associations contrary to itself. She ceased to be 'Rahab
+the harlot,' she forsook 'her own people and her father's house.' But
+her conquest of her old self was gradual. A lie was a strange kind of
+first-fruits of faith. Its true fruit takes time to flower and swell
+and come to ripeness and sweetness.
+
+So we should not expect old heads on young shoulders, nor wonder if
+people, lifted from the dunghills of the world, have some stench and
+rags of their old vices hanging about them still. That thought should
+moderate our expectations of the characters of converts from
+heathenism, or from the degraded classes at home. And it should be
+present to ourselves, when we find in ourselves sad recurrences of
+faults and sins that we know should have been cast out, and that we
+hoped had been so.
+
+This thought enhances our wondering gratitude for the divine long-
+suffering which bears with our slow progress. Our great Teacher never
+loses patience with His dull scholars.
+
+V. Faith as the means of deliverance and safety.
+
+From external evils it delivers us or not, as God may will. James was
+no less dear, and no less faithful, than John, though he was early
+'slain with the sword,' and his brother died in extreme old age in
+Ephesus. Paul looked forward to being 'delivered from every evil work,'
+though he knew that the time of his being 'offered' was at hand,
+because the deliverance that he looked for was his being 'saved
+_into_ His heavenly kingdom.'
+
+That true deliverance is infallibly ours, if by faith we have made the
+Deliverer ours.
+
+There is a more terrible fall of a worse city than Jericho, in that day
+when 'the city of the terrible ones shall be laid low,' and _our_
+Joshua brings it 'to the ground, even to the dust.' 'In that same day
+shall this song be sung in the land of Judah: we have a strong city,
+salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks,' and into that
+eternal home He will certainly lead all who are joined to Him, and
+separated from their foul old selves, and from 'the city of
+destruction,' by faith in Him.
+
+
+
+
+ACHAN'S SIN, ISRAEL'S DEFEAT
+
+'But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing:
+for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the
+tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the Lord
+was kindled against the children of Israel. 2. And Joshua sent men from
+Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Beth-ei,
+and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men
+went up and viewed Ai. 3. And they returned to Joshua, and said unto
+him, Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand
+men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither;
+for they are but few. 4. So there went up thither of the people about
+three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai. 5. And the men
+of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from
+before the Irate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down;
+wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water. 6. And
+Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the
+ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and
+put dust upon their heads. 7. And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God,
+wherefore hast Thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver
+us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had
+been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan! 8. O Lord, what shall
+I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies! 9. For the
+Canaanites, and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and
+shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what
+wilt Thou do unto Thy great name? 10. And the Lord said unto Joshua,
+Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? 11. Israel hath
+sinned, and they have also trangressed My covenant which I commanded
+them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also
+stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own
+stuff. 12. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before
+their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because
+they were accursed; neither will I be with you any more, except ye
+destroy the accursed from among you.'--JOSHUA vii. 1-12.
+
+
+This passage naturally parts itself into--1. The hidden sin (v. 1); 2.
+The repulse by which it is punished (vs. 2-5); 3. The prayer of
+remonstrance (vs. 6-9); and 4. The answer revealing the cause (vs. 10-
+12). We may briefly note the salient points in these four divisions,
+and then consider the general lessons of the whole.
+
+I. Observe, then, that the sin is laid at the doors of the whole
+nation, while yet it was the secret act of one man. That Is a strange
+'for' in verse 1--the people did it; 'for' Achan did it. Observe, too,
+with what bitter particularity his descent is counted back through
+three generations, as if to diffuse the shame and guilt over a wide
+area, and to blacken the ancestors of the culprit. Note also the
+description of the sin. Its details are not given, but its inmost
+nature is. The specification of the 'Babylonish garment,' the 'shekels
+of silver,' and the 'wedge of gold,' is reserved for the sinner's own
+confession; but the blackness of the deed is set forth in its principle
+in verse 1. It was a 'breach of trust,' for so the phrase 'committed a
+trespass' might be rendered. The expression is frequent in the
+Pentateuch to describe Israel's treacherous departure from God, and has
+this full meaning here. The sphere in which Achan's treason was
+evidenced was 'in the devoted thing.' The spoil of Jericho was set
+aside for Jehovah, and to appropriate any part of it was sacrilege. His
+sin, then, was double, being at once covetousness and robbing God.
+Achan, at the beginning of Israel's warfare for Canaan, and Ananias, at
+the beginning of the Church's conquest of the world, are brothers alike
+in guilt and in doom. Note the wide sweep of 'the anger of the Lord,'
+involving in its range not only the one transgressor, but the whole
+people.
+
+II. All unconscious of the sin, and flushed with victory, Joshua let no
+grass grow under his feet, but was prepared to push his advantage to
+the utmost with soldierly promptitude. The commander's faith and
+courage were contagious, and the spies came back from their perilous
+reconnaissance of Ai with the advice that a small detachment was enough
+for its reduction. They had not spied the mound in the middle of
+Achan's tent, or their note would have been changed. Three thousand, or
+three hundred, would have been enough, if God had been with them. The
+whole army would not have been enough since He was not. The site of Ai
+seems to have been satisfactorily identified on a small plateau among
+the intricate network of wild wadys and bare hills that rise behind
+Jericho. The valley to the north, the place where the ambush lay at the
+successful assault, and a great mound, still bearing the name 'Et Tel'
+(the heap), are all there. The attacking force does not seem to have
+been commanded by Joshua. The ark stayed at Gilgal, The contempt for
+the resistance likely to be met makes the panic which ensued the more
+remarkable. What turned the hearts of the confident assailants to
+water? There was no serious fighting, or the slaughter would have been
+more than thirty-six. 'There went up ... about three thousand and
+they'--did what? fought and conquered? Alas, no, but 'they fled before
+the men of Ai,' rushing in wild terror down the steep pass which they
+had so confidently breasted in the morning, till the pursuers caught
+them up at some 'quarries,' where, perhaps, the ground was difficult,
+and there slew the few who fell, while the remainder got away by
+swiftness of foot, and brought back their terror and their shame to the
+camp. As the disordered fugitives poured in, they infected the whole
+with their panic. Such unwieldy undisciplined hosts are peculiarly
+liable to such contagious terror, and we find many instances in
+Scripture and elsewhere of the utter disorganisation which ensues. The
+whole conquest hung in the balance. A little more and the army would be
+a mob; and the mob would break into twos and threes, which would get
+short shrift from the Amorites.
+
+Ill. Mark, then, Joshua's action in the crisis. He does not try to
+encourage the people, but turns from them to God. The spectacle of the
+leader and the elders prone before the ark, with rent garments and
+dust-bestrewn hair, in sign of mourning, would not be likely to hearten
+the alarmed people; but the defeat had clearly shown that something had
+disturbed the relation to God, and the first necessity was to know what
+it was. Joshua's prayer is perplexed, and not free from a wistful,
+backward look, nor from regard to his own reputation; but the soul of
+it is an earnest desire to know the 'wherefore' of this disaster. It
+traces the defeat to God, and means really, 'Show me wherefore Thou
+contendest with me.' No doubt it runs perilously near to repeating the
+old complaints at Kadesh and elsewhere, which are almost verbally
+reproduced in its first words. But the same things said by different
+people are not the same; and Joshua's question is the voice of a faith
+struggling to find footing, and his backward look is not because he
+doubts God's power to help, or hankers after Egypt, but because he sees
+that, for some unknown reason, they have lost the divine protection.
+His reference to himself betrays the crushing weight of responsibility
+which he felt, and comes not from carefulness for his own good fame so
+much as from his dread of being unable to vindicate himself, if the
+people should turn on him as the author of their misfortunes. His fear
+of the news of the check at Ai emboldening not only the neighbouring
+Amorites (highlanders) of the western Palestine, but the remoter
+Canaanites (lowlanders) of the coast, to make a combined attack, and
+sweep Israel out of existence, was a perfectly reasonable forecast of
+what would follow. The naive simplicity of the appeal to God, 'What
+wilt Thou do for Thy great name?' becomes the soldier, whose words went
+the shortest way to their aim, as his spear did. We cannot fancy this
+prayer coming from Moses; but, for all that, it has the ring of faith
+in it, and beneath its blunt, simple words throbs a true heart.
+
+IV. The answer sounds strange at first. God almost rebukes him for
+praying. He gives Joshua back his own 'wherefore' in the question that
+sounds so harsh, 'Wherefore art thou thus fallen upon thy face?' but
+the harshness is only apparent, and serves to point the lesson that
+follows, that the cause of the disaster is with Israel, not with God,
+and that therefore the remedy is not in prayer, but in active steps to
+cast out 'the unclean thing.' The prayer had asked two things,--the
+disclosure of the cause of God's having left them, and His return. The
+answer lays bare the cause, and therein shows the conditions of His
+return. Note the indignant accumulation of verbs in verse 11,
+describing the sin in all its aspects. The first three of the six point
+out its heinousness in reference to God, as sin, as a breach of
+covenant, and as an appropriation of what was specially His. The second
+three describe it in terms of ordinary morality, as theft, lying, and
+concealment; so many black sides has one sin when God's eye scrutinises
+it. Note, too, the attribution of the sin to the whole people, the
+emphatic reduplication of the shameful picture of their defeat, the
+singular transference to them of the properties of 'the devoted thing'
+which Achan has taken, and the plain, stringent conditions of God's
+return. Joshua's prayer is answered. He knows now why little Ai has
+beaten them back. He asked, 'What shall I say?' He has got something of
+grave import to say. So far this passage carries us, leaving the
+pitiful last hour of the wretched troubler of Israel untouched. What
+lessons are taught here?
+
+First, God's soldiers must be pure. The conditions of God's help are
+the same to-day as when that panic-stricken crowd ignominiously fled
+down the rocky pass, foiled before an insignificant fortress, because
+sin clave to them, and God was gone from them. The age of miracles may
+have ceased, but the law of the divine intervention which governed the
+miracles has not ceased. It is true to-day, and will always be true,
+that the victories of the Church are won by its holiness far more than
+by any gifts or powers of mind, culture, wealth, eloquence, or the
+like. Its conquests are the conquests of an indwelling God, and He
+cannot share His temples with idols. When God is with us, Jericho is
+not too strong to be captured; when He is driven from us by our own
+sin, Ai is not too weak to defeat us. A shattered wall keeps us out, if
+we fight in our own strength. Fortifications that reach to heaven fall
+flat before us when God is at our side. If Christian effort seems ever
+fruitless, the first thing to do is to look for the 'Babylonish
+garment' and the glittering shekels hidden in our tents. Nine times out
+of ten we shall find the cause in our own spiritual deficiencies. Our
+success depends on God's presence, and God's presence depends on our
+keeping His dwelling-place holy. When the Church is 'fair as the moon,'
+reflecting in silvery whiteness the ardours of the sun which gives her
+all her light, and without such spots as dim the moon's brightness, she
+will be 'terrible as an army with banners.' This page of Old Testament
+history has a living application to the many efforts and few victories
+of the churches of to-day, which seem scarce able to hold their own
+amid the natural increase of population in so-called Christian lands,
+and are so often apparently repulsed when they go up to attack the
+outlying heathenism.
+
+            'His strength was as the strength of ten,
+             Because his heart was pure,'
+
+is true of the Christian soldier.
+
+Again, we learn the power of one man to infect a whole community and to
+inflict disaster on it. One sick sheep taints a flock. The effects of
+the individual's sin are not confined to the doer. We have got a fine
+new modern word to express this solemn law, and we talk now of
+'solidarity,' which sounds very learned and 'advanced.' But it means
+just what we see in this story; Achan was the sinner, all Israel
+suffered. We are knit together by a mystical but real bond, so that 'no
+man,' be he good or bad, 'liveth to himself,' and no man's sin
+terminates in himself. We see the working of that unity in families,
+communities, churches, nations. Men are not merely aggregated together
+like a pile of cannon balls, but are knit together like the myriad
+lives in a coral rock. Put a drop of poison anywhere, and it runs by a
+thousand branching veins through the mass, and tints and taints it all.
+No man can tell how far the blight of his secret sins may reach, nor
+how wide the blessing of his modest goodness may extend. We should
+seek to cultivate the sense of being members of a great whole, and to
+ponder our individual responsibility for the moral and religious health
+of the church, the city, the nation. We are not without danger from an
+exaggerated individualism, and we need to realise more constantly and
+strongly that we are but threads in a great network, endowed with
+mysterious vitality and power of transmitting electric impulses, both
+of good and evil.
+
+Again, we have one more illustration in this story of the well-worn
+lesson,--never too threadbare to be repeated, until it is habitually
+realised,--that God's eye sees the hidden sins. Nobody saw Achan carry
+the spoil to his tent, or dig the hole to hide it. His friends walked
+across the floor without suspicion of what was beneath. No doubt, he
+held his place in his tribe as an honourable man, and his conscience
+traced no connection between that recently disturbed patch on the floor
+and the helter-skelter flight from Ai; but when the lot began to be
+cast, he would have his own thought, and when the tribe of Judah was
+taken, some creeping fear would begin to coil round his heart, which
+tightened its folds, and hissed more loudly, as each step in the lot
+brought discovery nearer home; and when, at last, his own name fell
+from the vase, how terribly the thought would glare in on him,--'And
+God knew it all the while, and I fancied I had covered it all up so
+safely.' It is an awful thing to hear the bloodhounds following up the
+scent which leads them straight to our lurking-place. God's judgments
+may be long in being put on our tracks, but, once loose, they are sure
+of scent, and cannot be baffled. It is an old, old thought, 'Thou God
+seest me'; but kept well in mind, it would save from many a sin, and
+make sunshine in many a shady place.
+
+Again, we have in Achan a lesson which the professing Christians of
+great commercial nations, like England, sorely need. I have already
+pointed out the singular parallel between him and Ananias and Sapphira.
+Covetousness was the sin of all three. It is the sin of the Church to-
+day. The whole atmosphere in which some of us live is charged with the
+subtle poison of it. Men are estimated by their wealth. The great aim
+of life is to get money, or to keep it, or to gain influence and
+notoriety by spending it. Did anybody ever hear of church discipline
+being exercised on men who committed Achan's sin? _He_ was stoned
+to death, but we set _our_ Achans in high places in the Church.
+Perhaps if we went and fell on our faces before the ark when we are
+beaten, we should be directed to some tent where a very 'influential
+member' of Israel lived, and should find that to put an end to his
+ecclesiastical life had a wonderful effect in bringing back courage to
+the army, and leading to more unmingled dependence on God. Covetousness
+was stoned to death in Israel, and struck with sudden destruction in
+the Apostolic Church. It has been reserved for the modern Church to
+tolerate and almost to canonise it; and yet we wonder how it comes that
+we are so often foiled before some little Ai, and so seldom see any
+walls falling by our assault. Let us listen to that stern sentence,  'I
+will not be with you any more, except ye destroy the devoted thing from
+among you.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SUN STAYED
+
+Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon.'-JOSHUA x. 12
+
+
+'The last time,' what a sad sound that has! In all minds there is a
+shrinking from the last time of doing even some common act. The walk
+down a street that we have passed every day for twenty years, and never
+cared in the least about, and the very doorsteps and the children in
+the streets, have an interest for us, as pensively we leave the
+commonplace familiar scene.
+
+On this last Sunday of another year, there comes a tone of sober
+meditation over us, as we think that it _is_ the last. I would
+fain let the hour preach. I have little to say but to give voice to its
+lessons.
+
+My text is only taken as a starting-point, and I shall say nothing
+about Joshua and his prayer. I do not discuss whether this was a
+miracle or not. It seems, at any rate, to be taken by the writer of the
+story as one. What a picture he draws of the fugitives rushing down the
+rocky pass, blind in their fear, behind them the flushed and eager
+conqueror, the burst of the sudden tempest and far in the west the
+crescent moon, the leader on the hilltop with his prayer for but one
+hour or two more of daylight to finish the wild work so well begun!
+And, says the story, his wish was granted, and no day has been 'like
+it before or since, in which the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a
+man.' Once, and only once, did time seem to stand still; from the
+beginning till now it has been going steadily on, and even then it only
+seemed to stand. That day seemed longer, but life was passing all the
+same.
+
+And so the first thought forced upon us here by our narrative and by
+the season is the old one, so commonplace and yet so solemn.
+
+I. Life inexorably slides away from us.
+
+Once, and only once, it seemed to pause. How often since has Joshua's
+prayer been prayed again! By the fearful,--the wretch to be hanged at
+eight o'clock to-morrow morning, the man whom the next train will part
+from all he loves. By the hopeful,--the child wearying for the
+holidays, the bridegroom,
+
+             'Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds!'
+
+By the suffering,--
+
+             'Would God it were evening!'
+
+By the martyr amid the flames,
+
+             'Come quickly, Lord Jesus!'
+
+But all in vain. We cannot expand the moments to hours, nor compress
+the hours to moments. Leaden or winged, the hours are hours. The cold-
+blooded pendulum ticks on, equable and unaltered, and after sixty
+minutes, no sooner and no later, the hour strikes. 'There is a time
+for every purpose.'
+
+How solemn is the thought of that constant process! It goes on for
+ever, like the sea fog creeping up from the wide ocean and burying life
+and sunshine in its fatal folds, or like the ever-flowing river, or
+like the fall plunging over the edge of the cliff, or like the motions
+of the midnight sky. Each moment in its turn passes into the colourless
+stony past, and the shadow creeps up the hillside.
+
+And how unnoticed it is! We only know motion by the jolts. The
+revolution of the earth and its rush along its orbit are unfelt by us.
+We are constantly startled to feel how long ago such and such a thing
+took place. The mother sees her little girl at her knee, and in a few
+days, as it seems, finds her a woman. How immense is our life in the
+prospect, how awfully it collapses in the retrospect! Only by seeing
+constellation after constellation set, do we know that the heavens are
+in motion. We have need of an effort of serious reflection to realise
+that it is of _us_ and of _our_ lives that all these old commonplaces
+are true.
+
+That constant, unnoticed progress has an end. Our life is a definite
+period, having a bounded past behind it, a present, and a bounded
+future before it. We have a sandglass and it runs out. We are like men
+sliding down a rope or hauling a boat towards a fixed point. The sea is
+washing away our sandy island, and is creeping nearer and nearer to
+where we stand, and will wash over us soon. No cries, nor prayers, nor
+wishes will avail. It is vain for _us_ to say, 'Sun! stand thou
+still!'
+
+II. Therefore our chief care should be to finish our work in our day.
+
+Joshua had his day lengthened; we can come to the same result by
+crowding ours with service. What is the purpose of life? Is it a shop?
+or a garden? a school? No. Our 'chief end' is to become like God and a
+little to help forward His cause. All is intended to develop character;
+all life is disciplinary.
+
+God's purpose should be our desire. That desire should mould all our
+thoughts and acts. There should be no mere sentimental regrets for the
+past, but the spirit of consecration should affect our thoughts about
+it. There should be penitence, thankfulness, not vain mourning over
+what is gone. There should be no waste or selfish use of the present.
+What is it given us for but to use for God?
+
+Strenuous work is the true way to lengthen each day. Time is infinitely
+elastic. The noblest work is to do 'the works of Him that sent me.'
+There should be no care for the future. It is in His hand. There will
+be room in it for doing all His will.
+
+                  'Lord, it belongs not to my care,
+                   Whether I die or live.'
+
+III. If so, the passing day will have results that never pass.
+
+Joshua's day was long enough for his work, and that work was a victory
+which told on future generations. So life, short as it is, will be long
+enough for all that we have to do and learn and be.
+
+Christ's servant is immortal till his work is done.
+
+God gives every man time enough for his salvation.
+
+What may we bring out of life? Character, Christ-likeness, thankful
+memories, union with God, capacity for heaven. The transient leaves the
+abiding. The flood foams itself away, but deposits rich soil on the
+plain.
+
+IV. Thus the passing away of what must pass may become a joy.
+
+Why should we be sad? There are reasons enough, as many sad, lonely
+hearts among us know too well To some men dark thoughts of death and
+judgment make the crumbling away of life too gloomy a fact to be
+contemplated, but it may and should be calm joy to us that the weary
+world ends and a blessed life begins. We may count the moments and see
+them pass, as a bride watches the hours rolling on to her marriage
+morning; not, indeed, without tremor and sadness at leaving her old
+home, but yet with meek hope and gentle joy.
+
+It is possible for men to see that life is but 'as a shadow that
+declineth,' and yet to be glad. By faith in Christ, united to 'Him Who
+is for ever and ever,' our souls shall 'triumph over death and thee, O
+time.'
+
+We need not cry, 'Sun! stand still!' but rather, 'Come quickly, Lord
+Jesus!'
+
+Then Time shall be 'the lackey to eternity,' and Death be the porter of
+heaven's gate, and we shall pass from the land of setting suns and
+waning moons and change and sorrow, to that land where 'thy sun shall
+no more go down,' and 'there shall be no more time.'
+
+
+
+
+UNWON BUT CLAIMED
+
+'There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed, ... them will I
+drive out from before the children of Israel; only divide thou it by
+lot unto Israel for an inheritance'--Joshua xiii. 1-8.
+
+Joshua was now a very old man and had occupied seven years in the
+conquest. His work was over, and now he had only to take steps to
+secure the completion by others of the triumph which he would never
+see. This incident has many applications to the work of the Church in
+the world, but not less important ones to individual progress, and we
+consider these mainly now.
+
+I. The clear recognition of present imperfection.
+
+That is essential in all regions, 'Not as though'; the higher up, the
+more clearly we see the summit. The ideal grows loftier, as partially
+realised. The mountain seems comparatively low and easy till we begin
+to climb. We should be continually driven by a sense of our
+incompleteness, and drawn by the fair vision of unattained
+possibilities. In all regions, to be satisfied with the attained is to
+cease to grow.
+
+This is eminently so in the Christian life, with its goal of absolute
+completeness.
+
+How blessed this dissatisfaction is! It keeps life fresh: it is the
+secret of perpetual youth.
+
+Joshua's work was incomplete, as every man's must be. We each have our
+limitations, the defects of our qualities, the barriers of our
+environment, the brevity of our day of toil, and we have to be content
+to carry the fiery cross a little way and then to give it up to other
+hands. There is only One who could say,' It is done.' Let us see that
+we do our own fragment.
+
+II. The confident reckoning on complete possession.
+
+Joshua's conquest was very partial. He subdued part of the central
+mountain nucleus, but the low-lying stretch of country on the coast,
+Philistia and the maritime plain up to Tyre and Sidon and other
+outlying districts, remained unsubdued. Yet the whole land was now to
+be allotted out to the tribes. That allotment must have strengthened
+faith in their ultimate possession, and encouraged effort to make the
+ideal a reality, and to appropriate as their own in fact what was
+already theirs in God's purpose. So a great part of Christian duty, and
+a great secret of Christian progress, is to familiarise ourselves with
+the hope of complete victory. We should acquire the habit of
+contemplating as certainly meant by God to be ours, complete conformity
+to Christ's character, complete appropriation of Christ's gifts. God
+bade Jeremiah buy a 'field that was in Anathoth' at the time an
+invading army held the land. A Roman paid down money for the ground on
+which the besiegers of Rome were encamped. It does not become
+Christians to be less confident of victory. But we have to take heed
+that our confidence is grounded on the right foundation. God's
+commandment to Joshua to allot the land, even while the formidable foes
+enumerated in the context held it firmly, was based on the assurance
+(verse 6): 'Them will I drive out before the children of Israel.'
+Confidence based on self is presumption, and will end in defeat;
+confidence based on God will brace to noble effort, which is all the
+more vigorous and will surely lead to victory, because it distrusts
+self.
+
+III. The vigorous effort animated by both the preceding.
+
+How the habit of thinking the unconquered land theirs would encourage
+Israel. Efforts without hope are feeble; hope without effort is
+fallacious.
+
+Israel's history is significant. The land was never actually all
+conquered. God's promises are all conditional, and if we do not work,
+or if we work in any other spirit than in faith, we shall not win our
+allotted part in the 'inheritance of the saints in light.' It is
+possible to lose 'thy crow.' 'Work out your own salvation.' 'Trust in
+the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land.'
+
+
+
+
+CALEB--A GREEN OLD AGE
+
+'And Caleb... said unto him (Joshua), Thou knowest the thing that the
+Lord said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadesh-
+barnea.'--JOSHUA xiv. 6.
+
+
+Five and forty years had passed since the Lord had 'said this thing.'
+It was the promise to these two, now old men, of the prolongation of
+their lives, and to Caleb of his inheritance in the land. Seven years
+of fighting have been got through, and the preparations are being made
+for the division of the land by lot. But, before that is done, it is
+fitting that Caleb, whose portion had been specially secured to him by
+that old promise, should have the promise specially recognised and
+endorsed by the action of the leader, and independent of the operation
+of the lot. So he appears before Joshua, accompanied by the head men of
+his tribe, whose presence expresses their official consent to the
+exceptional treatment of their tribesman, and urges his request in a
+little speech, full of pathos and beauty and unconscious portraiture of
+the speaker. I take it as a picture of an ideal old age, showing in an
+actual instance how happy, vigorous, full of buoyant energy and
+undiminished appetite for enterprise a devout old age may be. And my
+purpose now is not merely to comment on the few words of our text, but
+upon the whole of what falls from the lips of Caleb here.
+
+I. I see then here, first, a life all built upon God's promise.
+
+Five times in the course of his short plea with Joshua does he use the
+expression 'the Lord spake.' On the first occasion of the five he
+unites Joshua with himself as a recipient of the promise, 'Thou knowest
+the thing that the Lord said concerning me and thee.' But in the other
+four he takes it all to himself; not because it concerned him only, but
+because his confidence, laying hold of the promise, forgot his brother
+in the earnestness of his personal appropriation of it. And so,
+whatsoever general words God speaks to the world, a true believer will
+make them his very own; and when Christ says, 'God so loved the world
+that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him
+should not perish,' faith translates it into 'He loved me, and gave
+Himself for me.' This is the first characteristic of a life built upon
+the promise of God, that it lays its hand upon that promise and claims
+it all for its very own.
+
+Then notice, still further, how for all these forty-five years Caleb
+had 'hid the word in his heart,' had lived upon it and thought about it
+and believed it, and recognised the partial fulfilment of it, and
+cherished the secret fire unknown to any besides. And now at last,
+after so long an interval, he comes forward and stretches out a hand,
+unweakened by the long delay, to claim the perfect fulfilment at the
+end of his days. So 'the vision may tarry,' but a life based upon God's
+promise has another estimate of swiftness and slowness than is current
+amongst men who have only the years of earthly life to reckon by; and
+that which to sense seems a long, weary delay, to faith seems but as 'a
+watch in the night'. The world, which only measures time by its own
+revolutions, has to lament over what seem to the sufferers long years
+of pains and tears, but in the calendar of faith 'weeping endures for a
+night, joy cometh in the morning.' The weary days dwindle into a point
+when they are looked at with an eye that has been accustomed to gaze on
+the solemn eternities of a promising and a faithful God. To it, as to
+Him, 'a thousand years are as one day'; and 'one day,' in the
+possibilities of divine favour and spiritual growth which it may
+enfold, 'as a thousand years.' To the men who measure time as God
+measures it, His help, howsoever long it may tarry, ever comes 'right
+early.'
+
+Further, note how this life, built upon faith in the divine promise,
+was nourished and nurtured by instalments of fulfilment all along the
+road. Two promises were given to Caleb--one, that his life should be
+prolonged, and the other, that he should possess the territory into
+which he had so bravely ventured. The daily fulfilment of the one fed
+the fire of his faith in the ultimate accomplishment of the other, and
+he gratefully recounts it now, as part of his plea with Joshua--'Now,
+behold, the Lord hath kept me alive as He spake, these forty and five
+years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses. And now, lo! I
+am this day fourscore and five years old.'
+
+Whosoever builds his life on the promise of God has in the present the
+guarantee of the better future. As we are journeying onwards to that
+great fountain-head of all sweetness and felicity, there are ever
+trickling brooks from it by the way, at which we may refresh our
+thirsty lips and invigorate our fainting strength. The present
+instalment carries with it the pledge of the full discharge of the
+obligation, and he whose heart and hope is fixed with a forward look on
+the divine inheritance, may, as he looks backward over all the years,
+see clearly in them one unbroken mass of preserving providences, and
+thankfully say, 'The Lord hath kept me alive, as He spake.'
+
+And, still further, the life that is built upon faith like this man's,
+is a life of buoyant hopefulness till the very end. The hopes of age
+are few and tremulous. When the feast is nearly over, and the appetite
+is dulled, there is little more to be done, but to push back our chairs
+and go away. But God keeps 'the good wine' until the last. And when all
+earthly hopes are beginning to wear thin and to burn dim, then the
+great hope of 'the mountain of the inheritance' will rise brighter and
+clearer upon our horizon. It is something to have a hope so far in
+front of us that we never get up to it, to find it either less than our
+expectations or more than our desires; and this is not the least of the
+blessednesses of the living 'hope that maketh not ashamed,' that it
+lies before us till the very end, and beckons and draws us across the
+gulf of darkness. 'The Lord hath kept me alive, as He said; now give me
+this mountain whereof the Lord spake.'
+
+II. Further, I see here a life that bears to be looked back at.
+
+Caleb becomes almost garrulous in telling over the old story of that
+never-to-be-forgotten day, when he and Joshua stood alone and tried to
+put some heart into the cowardly mob before them. There is no mock
+modesty about the man. He says that, amidst many temptations to be
+untrue, he gave his report with sincerity and veracity, 'speaking as it
+was in mine heart,' and then he quotes twice, with a permissible
+satisfaction, the eulogium that had come upon him from the divine lips,
+'I wholly followed the Lord my God.' The private soldier's cheek may
+well flush and his eye glitter as he repeats over again his general's
+praise. And for Caleb, half a century has not dimmed the impression
+that was made on his heart when he received that praise, through the
+lips of Moses, from God.
+
+Now, of course, such a tone of speaking about one's past savours of an
+earlier stage in revelation than that in which we live, and, if this
+were to be taken as a man's total account of his whole life, we could
+not free it from the charge of unpleasing self-complacency and self-
+righteousness. But for all that, it is not the same thing in the
+retrospect whether you and I have to look back upon years that have
+been given to self, and the world, and passion, and pride, and
+covetousness, and frivolities and trifles of all sorts, or upon years
+that in the main, and regard being had to their deepest desires and
+governing direction, have been given to God and to His service. Many a
+man looking back upon his life--I wonder if there are any such men
+listening to me now--can only see such a sight as Abraham did on that
+morning when he looked down on the plain of Sodom, and 'Lo! the smoke
+of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.' Dear friends I the only
+thing that makes life in the retrospect tolerable is that it shall have
+been given to God, and that we can say, 'I wholly followed the Lord my
+God.'
+
+III. Again, I see here a life which has discovered the secret of
+perpetual youth.
+
+'I,' says the old man--'am as strong this day as I was in the day when
+Moses sent me. As my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for
+war, both to go out and to come in.' For fighting, and for all the
+intercourse and manifold activities of life, his sinews are as braced,
+his eyes as clear, his spirit and limbs as alert as they were in those
+old days. No doubt you will say that was due to miraculous
+intervention. No doubt it was; but is it not true that, in a very real
+sense, a man may keep himself young all his life, if he will go the
+right way to work? And the secret of perpetual youthfulness lies here,
+in giving our hearts to God and in living for Him. Christianity, with
+its self-restraint and its exhortations to all, and especially to the
+young, to be chaste and temperate and to subdue the animal passions,
+has a direct tendency to conserve physical vigour; and Christianity, by
+the inspiration that it imparts, the stimulus that it gives, and the
+hopes that it permits us to cherish, has a direct tendency to keep
+alive in old age all the best of the characteristics of youth. Its
+buoyancy, its undimmed interest, its cheeriness, its freedom from
+anxiety and care--all these things are directly ministered to, and
+preserved by, a life of simple faith that casts itself upon God, and
+dwells securely, in joy and in restfulness, and not without a great
+light of hope, even when the shadows of evening are falling.
+
+One of the greatest and most blessed of the characteristics of youth is
+the consciousness that the most of life lies before us; and to a
+Christian man, in any stage of his earthly life, that consciousness is
+possible. When he stands on the verge of the last sinking sandbank of
+time, and the water is up to his ankles, he may well feel that the best
+and the most of life 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."'
+
+'They shall still bring forth fruit in old age, they shall be full of
+sap and green.' A gnarled old tree may be green in all its branches,
+and blossom and fruit may hang together there. The ideal of life is,
+that into each stage we shall carry the best of the preceding,
+harmonised with the best of the new, and that is possible to a
+Christian soul. The fountain of perpetual youth, of which the ancients
+fabled, is no fable, but a fact; and it rises, where the prophet in his
+vision saw the stream coming out, from beneath the threshold of the
+Temple door.
+
+IV. So, lastly, I see here a beautiful example of a life which to the
+last is ready for danger and enterprise.
+
+Caleb's words as to his undiminished strength were not meant for a
+boast. They express thankfulness and praise, and they are put as the
+ground of the request that he has to make. He gives a chivalrous reason
+for his petition when he says,' Now, therefore, give me this mountain,
+_for_ the Anakims (the giants) are there; and the cities great and
+fenced.'
+
+Caleb's readiness for one more fight was fed by his reliance on God's
+help in it. When he says, 'It may be the Lord will be with me,' the
+_perhaps_ is that of humility, not of doubt. The old warrior's eye
+flashes, and his voice sounds strong and full, as he ends his words
+with 'I _shall_ drive them out, as _the Lord spake_.' That has
+the true ring. What were the three Anak chiefs, with their barbarous
+names, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, and their giant stature, to
+the onset of a warrior faith like that? Of course, 'Caleb drove out
+thence the three sons of Anak,' and Hebron became his inheritance.
+Nothing can stand against us, if we seek for our portion, not where
+advantages are greatest, but where difficulties and dangers are most
+rife, and cast ourselves into the conflict, sure that God is with us,
+though humbly wondering that we should be worthy of His all-
+conquering presence, and sure, therefore, that victory marches by our
+sides.
+
+Old age is generally much more disposed to talk about its past
+victories than to fight new ones; to rest upon its arms, or upon its
+laurels, than to undertake fresh conflicts. Now and then we see a man,
+statesman or other, who, bearing the burden of threescore years and ten
+lightly, is still as alert of spirit, as eager for work, as bold for
+enterprise, as he was years before. And in nine cases out of ten such a
+man is a Christian; and his brilliant energy of service is due, not
+only, nor so much, to natural vigour of constitution as to religion,
+which has preserved his vigour because it has preserved his purity, and
+been to him a stimulus and an inspiration.
+
+Danger is an attraction to the generous mind. It is the coward and the
+selfish man who are always looking for an easy place, where somebody
+else will do the work. This man felt that this miraculously prolonged
+life of his bound him to special service, and the fact that up in
+Hebron there were a fenced city and tall giants behind the battlements,
+was an additional reason for picking out that bit of the field as the
+place where he ought to be. Thank God, that spirit is not dead yet! It
+has lived all through the Christian Church, and flamed up in times of
+martyrdom. On missionary fields to-day, if one man falls two are ready
+to step into his place. It is the true spirit of the Christian soldier.
+'A great door and effectual is opened,' says Paul, 'and there are many
+adversaries.' He knew the door was opened because the adversaries were
+many. And because there were so many of them, would he run away? Some
+of us would have said: 'I must abandon that work, it bristles with
+difficulties; I cannot stop in that post, the bullets are whistling too
+fast.' Nay! says Paul; 'I abide till Pentecost'--a good long while--
+because the post is dangerous, and promises to be fruitful.
+
+So, dear friends, if we would have lives on which we can look back,
+lives in which early freshness will last beyond the 'morning dew,'
+lives in which there shall come, day by day and moment by moment,
+abundant foretastes to stay our hunger until we sit at Christ's table
+in His kingdom, we must 'follow the Lord alway,' with no half-hearted
+surrender, nor partial devotion, but give ourselves to Him utterly, to
+be guided and sent where He will. And then, like Caleb, we shall be
+able to say, with a 'perhaps,' not of doubt, but of wonder, that it
+should be so, to us unworthy, 'It may be the Lord will be with me, arid
+I shall drive them out.' In all these things 'we are more than
+conquerors through Him that loved us.'
+
+
+
+
+THE CITIES OF REFUGE
+
+'The Lord also spake unto Joshua, saying, 2. Speak to the children of
+Israel, saying, Appoint out for you cities of refuge, whereof I spake
+unto you by the hand of Moses: 3. That the slayer that killeth any
+person unawares and unwittingly may flee thither: and they shall be
+your refuge from the avenger of blood. 4. And when he that doth flee
+unto one of those cities shall stand at the entering of the gate of the
+city, and shall declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that
+city, they shall take him into the city unto them, and give him a
+place, that he may dwell among them. 5. And if the avenger of blood
+pursue after him, then they shall not deliver the slayer up into his
+hand; because he smote his neighbour unwittingly, and hated him not
+beforetime. 6. And he shall dwell in that city, until he stand before
+the congregation for judgment, and until the death of the high priest
+that shall be in those days: then shall the slayer return, and come
+unto his own city, and unto his own house, unto the city from whence he
+fled. 7. And they appointed Kedesh in Galilee in mount Naphtali, and
+Shechem in mount Ephraim, and Kirjath-arba, which is Hebron, in the
+mountain of Judah. 8. And on the other side Jordan by Jericho eastward,
+they assigned Bezer in the wilderness upon the plain out of the tribe
+of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead out of the tribe of Gad, and Golan in
+Bashan out of the tribe of Manasseh. 9. These were the cities appointed
+for all the children of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourneth
+among them, that whosoever killeth any person at unawares might flee
+thither, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he
+stood before the congregation.'--JOSHUA xx. 1-9.
+
+
+Our Lord has taught us that parts of the Mosaic legislation were given
+because of the 'hardness' of the people's hearts. The moral and
+religious condition of the recipients of revelation determines and is
+taken into account in the form and contents of revelation. That is
+strikingly obvious in this institution of the 'cities of refuge.' They
+have no typical meaning, though they may illustrate Christian truth.
+But their true significance is that they are instances of revelation
+permitting, and, while permitting, checking, a custom for the abolition
+of which Israel was not ready.
+
+I. Cities of refuge were needed, because the 'avenger of blood' was
+recognised as performing an imperative duty. 'Blood for blood' was the
+law for the then stage of civilisation. The weaker the central
+authority, the more need for supplementing it with the wild justice of
+personal avenging. Neither Israel nor surrounding nations were fit for
+the higher commandment of the Sermon on the Mount. 'An eye for an eye,
+and a tooth for a tooth,' corresponded to their stage of progress; and
+to have hurried them forward to 'I say unto you, Resist not evil,'
+would only have led to weakening the restraint on evil, and would have
+had no response in the hearers' consciences. It is a commonplace that
+legislation which is too far ahead of public opinion is useless, except
+to make hypocrites. And the divine law was shaped in accordance with
+that truth. Therefore the _goel_, or kinsman-avenger of blood, was
+not only permitted but enjoined by Moses.
+
+But the evils inherent in his existence were great. Blood feuds were
+handed down through generations, involving an ever-increasing number of
+innocent people, and finally leading to more murders than they
+prevented. But the thing could not be abolished. Therefore it was
+checked by this institution. The lessons taught by it are the gracious
+forbearance of God with the imperfections attaching to each stage of
+His people's moral and religious progress; the uselessness of violent
+changes forced on people who are not ready for them; the presence of a
+temporary element in the Old Testament law and ethics.
+
+No doubt many things in the present institutions of so-called Christian
+nations and in the churches are destined to drop away, as the
+principles of Christianity become more clearly discerned and more
+honestly applied to social and national life. But the good shepherd
+does not overdrive his flock, but, like Jacob, 'leads on softly,
+according to the pace of the cattle that is before' him. We must be
+content to bring the world gradually to the Christian ideal. To abolish
+or to impose institutions or customs by force is useless. Revolutions
+made by violence never last. To fell the upas-tree maybe very heroic,
+but what is the use of doing it, if the soil is full of seeds of
+others, and the climate and conditions favourable to their growth?
+Change the elevation of the land, and the `flora' will change itself.
+Institutions are the outcome of the whole mental and moral state of a
+nation, and when that changes, and not till then, do they change. The
+New Testament in its treatment of slavery and war shows us the
+Christian way of destroying evils; namely, by establishing the
+principles which will make them impossible. It is better to girdle the
+tree and leave it to die than to fell it.
+
+II. Another striking lesson from the cities of refuge is the now well-
+worn truth that the same act, when done from different motives, is not
+the same. The kinsman-avenger took no heed of the motive of the
+slaying. His duty was to slay, whatever the slayer's intention had
+been. The asylum of the city of refuge was open for the unintentional
+homicide, and for him only, Deliberate murder had no escape thither. So
+the lesson was taught that motive is of supreme importance in
+determining the nature of an act. In God's sight, a deed is done when
+it is determined on, and it is not done, though done, when it was not
+meant by the doer. 'Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,' and he
+that killeth his brother unawares is none. We suppose ourselves to have
+learned that so thoroughly that it is trivial to repeat the lesson.
+
+What, then, of our thoughts and desires which never come to light in
+acts? Do we recognise our criminality in regard to these as vividly as
+we should? Do we regulate the hidden man of the heart accordingly? A
+man may break all the commandments sitting in an easy-chair and doing
+nothing. Von Moltke fought the Austro-Prussian war in his cabinet in
+Berlin, bending over maps. The soldiers on the field were but pawns in
+the dreadful game. So our battles are waged, and we are beaten or
+conquerors, on the field of our inner desires and purposes. 'Keep thy
+heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.'
+
+III. The elaborately careful specification of cases which gave the
+fugitive a right to shelter in the city is set forth at length in
+Numbers xxxv. 15-24, and Deuteronomy xix. 4-13. The broad principle is
+there laid down that the cities were open for one who slew a man
+'unwittingly.' But the plea of not intending to slay was held to be
+negatived, not only if intention could be otherwise shown but if the
+weapon used was such as would probably kill; such, for instance, as 'an
+instrument of iron,' or a stone, or a 'weapon of wood, whereby a man
+may die.' If we do what is likely to have a given result, we are
+responsible for that result, should it come about, even though we did
+not consciously seek to bring it. That is plain common sense. 'I never
+thought the house would catch fire' is no defence from the guilt of
+burning it down, if we fired a revolver into a powder barrel. Further,
+if the fatal blow was struck in 'hatred,' or if the slayer had lain in
+ambush to catch his victim, he was not allowed shelter. These careful
+definitions freed the cities from becoming nests of desperate
+criminals, as the 'sanctuaries' of the Middle Ages in Europe became.
+They were not harbours for the guilty, but asylums for the innocent.
+
+IV. The procedure by which the fugitive secured protection is described
+at length in the passages cited, with which the briefer account here
+should be compared. It is not quite free from obscurity, but probably
+the process was as follows. Suppose the poor hunted man arrived panting
+at the limits of the city, perhaps with the avenger's sword within half
+a foot of his neck; he was safe for the time. But before he could enter
+the city, a preliminary inquiry was held 'at the gate' by the city
+elders. That could only be of a rough-and-ready kind; most frequently
+there would be no evidence available but the man's own word. It,
+however, secured _interim_ protection. A fuller investigation
+followed, and, as would appear, was held in another place,--perhaps at
+the scene of the accident. 'The congregation' was the judge in this
+second examination, where the whole facts would be fully gone into,
+probably in the presence of the avenger. If the plea of non-intention
+was sustained, the fugitive was 'restored to his city of refuge,' and
+there remained safely till the death of the high-priest, when he was at
+liberty to return to his home, and to stay there without fear.
+
+Attempts have been made to find a spiritual significance in this last
+provision of the law, and to make out a lame parallel between the death
+of the high-priest, which cancelled the crime of the fugitive, and the
+death of Christ, which takes away our sins. But--to say nothing of the
+fact that the fugitive was where he was just because he had done no
+crime--the parallel breaks down at other points. It is more probable
+that the death of one high-priest and the accession of another were
+regarded simply as closing one epoch and beginning another, just as a
+king's accession is often attended with an amnesty. It was natural to
+begin a new era with a clean sheet, as it were.
+
+V. The selection of the cities brings out a difference between the
+Jewish right of asylum and the somewhat similar right in heathen and
+mediaeval times. The temples or churches were usually the sanctuaries
+in these. But not the Tabernacle or Temple, but the priestly cities,
+were chosen here. Their inhabitants represented God to Israel, and as
+such were the fit persons to cast a shield over the fugitives; while
+yet their cities were less sacred than the Temple, and in them the
+innocent man-slayer could live for long years. The sanctity of the
+Temple was preserved intact, the necessary provision for possibly
+protracted stay was made, evils attendant on the use of the place of
+worship as a refuge were avoided.
+
+Another reason--namely, accessibility swiftly from all parts of the
+land--dictated the choice of the cities, and also their number and
+locality. There were three on each side of Jordan, though the
+population was scantier on the east than on the west side, for the
+extent of country was about the same. They stood, roughly speaking,
+opposite each other,--Kedesh and Golan in the north, Shechem and Ramoth
+central, Hebron and Bezer in the south. So, wherever a fugitive was, he
+had no long distance between himself and safety.
+
+We too have a 'strong city' to which we may 'continually resort.' The
+Israelite had right to enter only if his act had been inadvertent, but
+we have the right to hide ourselves in Christ just because we have
+sinned wilfully. The hurried, eager flight of the man who heard the
+tread of the avenger behind him, and dreaded every moment to be struck
+to the heart by his sword, may well set forth what should be the
+earnestness of our flight to 'lay hold on the hope set before us in the
+gospel.' His safety, as soon as he was within the gate, and could turn
+round and look calmly at the pursuer shaking his useless spear and
+grinding his teeth in disappointment, is but a feeble shadow of the
+security of those who rest in Christ's love, and are sheltered by His
+work for sinners. 'I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never
+perish, and no one shall pluck them out of My hand.'
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE WAR
+
+'And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which He sware to give unto
+their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein. 44. And the
+Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that He sware unto
+their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before
+them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. 45. There
+failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the
+house of Israel; all came to pass.
+
+'Then Joshua called the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe
+of Manasseh, 2. And said unto them, Ye have kept all that Moses, the
+servant of the Lord commanded you, and have obeyed my voice in all that
+I commanded you: 3. Ye have not left your brethren these many days unto
+this day, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the Lord your
+God. 4. And now the Lord your God hath given rest unto your brethren,
+as He promised them: therefore now return ye, and get you unto your
+tents, and unto the land of your possession, which Moses the servant of
+the Lord gave you on the other side Jordan. 5. But take diligent heed
+to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the Lord
+charged you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all His ways,
+and to keep His commandments, and to cleave unto Him, and to serve Him
+with all your heart, and with all your soul. 6. So Joshua blessed them,
+and sent them away: and they went unto their tents. 7. Now to the one
+half of the tribe of Manasseh Moses had given possession in Bashan: but
+unto the other half thereof gave Joshua among their brethren on this
+side Jordan westward. And when Joshua sent them away also unto their
+tents, then he blessed them, 8. And he spake unto them, saying, Return
+with much riches unto your tents, and with very much cattle, with
+silver, and with gold, and with brass, and with iron, and with very
+much raiment: divide the spoil of your enemies with your brethren. 9.
+And the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe
+of Manasseh returned, and departed from the children of Israel out of
+Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan, to go unto the country of
+Gilead, to the land of their possession, whereof they were possessed,
+according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses.'--JOSHUA xxi.
+43-45; xxii. 1-9.
+
+
+'The old order changeth, giving place to new.' In this passage we have
+the breaking up of the congregation and the disbanding of the
+victorious army. The seven years of fighting had come to an end. The
+swords were to be 'beaten into plowshares,' and the comrades who had
+marched shoulder to shoulder, and shared the fierce excitement of many
+a bloody field, were to be scattered, each becoming a peaceful farmer
+or shepherd. A picturesque historian, of the modern 'special
+correspondent' sort, would have overlaid the narrative with sentiment
+and description; but how quietly the writer tells it, so that we have
+to bethink ourselves before we apprehend that we are reading the
+account of an epoch-making event! He fixes attention on two things,--
+the complete fulfilment of God's promises (xxi. 43-45) and the
+dismissal to their homes of the contingent from the trans-Jordanic
+tribes, whose departure was the signal that the war was ended (xxii. 1-
+8). We may consider the lessons from these two separately.
+
+I. The triumphant record of God's faithfulness (xxi. 43-45). These
+three verses are the trophy reared on the battlefield, like the lion of
+Marathon, which the Greeks set on its sacred soil. But the only name
+inscribed on this monument is Jehovah's. Other memorials of victories
+have borne the pompous titles of commanders who arrogated the glory to
+themselves; but the Bible knows of only one conqueror, and that is God.
+'The help that is done on earth, He doeth it all Himself.' The military
+genius and heroic constancy of Joshua, the eagerness for perilous
+honour that flamed, undimmed by age, in Caleb, the daring and strong
+arms of many a humble private in the ranks, have their due recognition
+and reward; but when the history that tells of these comes to sum up
+the whole, and to put the 'philosophy' of the conquest into a sentence,
+it has only one name to speak as cause of Israel's victory.
+
+That is the true point of view from which to look at the history of the
+world and of the church in the world. The difference between the
+'miraculous' conquest of Canaan and the 'ordinary' facts of history is
+not that God did the one and men do the other; both are equally, though
+in different methods, His acts. In the field of human affairs, as in
+the realm of nature, God is immanent, though in the former His working
+is complicated by the mysterious power of man's will to set itself in
+antagonism to His; while yet, in manner insoluble to us, His will is
+supreme. The very powers which are arrayed against Him are His gift,
+and the issues which they finally subserve are His appointment. It does
+not need that we should be able to pierce to the bottom of the
+bottomless in order to attain and hold fast by the great conviction
+that 'there is no power but of God,' and that 'from Him are all things,
+and to Him are all things.'
+
+Especially does this trophy on the battlefield teach a needful lesson
+to us in the Christian warfare. We are ever apt to think too much of
+our visible weapons and leaders, and to forget our unseen and ever-
+present Commander, from whom comes all our power. We 'burn incense to
+our own net, and sacrifice to our own drag,' and, like the heathen
+conqueror of whom Habakkuk speaks, make our swords our gods (Hab. i.
+11, 16). The Church has always been prone to hero-worship, and to the
+idolatry of its organisation, its methods, or its theology. Augustine
+did so and so; Luther smote the 'whited wall' (the Pope) a blow that
+made him reel; the Pilgrim Fathers carried a slip of the plant of
+religious liberty in a tiny pot across the Atlantic, and watered it
+with tears till it has grown a great tree; the Wesleys revived a formal
+Church,--let us sing hallelujahs to these great names! By all means;
+but do not let us forget whence they drew their power; and let us
+listen to Paul's question, 'Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but
+servants through whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?'
+
+And let us carve, deep-cut and indelible, in solitary conspicuousness,
+on the trophy that we rear on each well-fought field, the name of no
+man save 'Jesus only.' We read that on a pyramid in Egypt the name and
+sounding titles of the king in whose reign it was erected were blazoned
+on the plaster facing, but beneath that transitory inscription the name
+of the architect was hewn, imperishable, in the granite, and stood out
+when the plaster dropped away. So, when all the short-lived records
+which ascribe the events of the Church's progress to her great men have
+perished, the one name of the true builder will shine out, and 'at the
+name of Jesus every knee shall bow.' Let us not rely on our own skill,
+courage, talents, orthodoxy, or methods, nor try to 'build tabernacles'
+for the witnessing servants beside the central one for the supreme
+Lord, but ever seek to deepen our conviction that Christ, and Christ
+only, gives all their powers to all, and that to Him, and Him only, is
+all victory to be ascribed. That is an elementary and simple truth; but
+if we really lived in its power we should go into the battle with more
+confidence, and come out of it with less self-gratulation.
+
+We may note, too, in these verses, the threefold repetition of one
+thought, that of God's punctual and perfect fulfilment of His word. He
+'gave unto Israel all the land which He sware to give'; 'He gave them
+rest, ... according to all that He sware'; 'there failed not aught of
+any good thing which the Lord had spoken.' It is the joy of thankful
+hearts to compare the promise with the reality, to lay the one upon the
+other, as it were, and to declare how precisely their outlines
+correspond. The finished building is exactly according to the plans
+drawn long before. God gives us the power of checking His work, and we
+are unworthy to receive His gifts if we do not take delight in marking
+and proclaiming how completely He has fulfilled His contract. It is no
+small part of Christian duty, and a still greater part of Christian
+blessedness, to do this. Many a fulfilment passes unnoticed, and many a
+joy, which might be sacred and sweet as a token of love from His own
+hand, remains common and unhallowed, because we fail to see that it is
+a fulfilled promise. The eye that is trained to watch for God's being
+as good as His word will never have long to wait for proofs that He is
+so. 'Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even he shall
+understand the loving kindness of the Lord.' And to such a one faith
+will become easier, being sustained by experience; and a present thus
+manifestly studded with indications of God's faithfulness will merge
+into a future still fuller of these. For it does not need that we
+should wait for the end of the war to have many a token that His every
+word is true. The struggling soldier can say, 'No good thing has failed
+of all that the Lord has spoken.' We look, indeed, for completer
+fulfilment when the fighting is done; but there are 'brooks by the way'
+for the warriors in the thick of the fight, of which they drink, and,
+refreshed, 'lift up the head.' We need not postpone this glad
+acknowledgment till we can look back and down from the land of peace on
+the completed campaign, but may rear this trophy on many a field,
+whilst still we look for another conflict to-morrow.
+
+II. The disbanding of the contingent from the tribes across Jordan
+(xxii. 1-8). Forty thousand fighting men, of the tribes of Reuben, Gad,
+and the half of Manasseh, had willingly helped in the conquest, leaving
+their own newly-won homes on the eastern side of Jordan, and for seven
+long years taking their share in the hardships and dangers of their
+brethren. It was no small tax which they had thus cheerfully paid for
+the sake of brotherly unity. Their aid had not only been valuable as
+strengthening Joshua's force, but still more so as a witness of the
+unbroken oneness of the nation, and of the sympathy which the tribes
+already settled bore to the others. Politically, it was wise to
+associate the whole people in the whole conquest; for nothing welds a
+nation together like the glories of common victories and the
+remembrance of common dangers survived. The separation of the trans-
+Jordanic tribes by the rapid river, and by their pastoral life, was a
+possible source of weakness, and would, no doubt, have led to more
+complete severance, if it had not been for the uniting power of the
+campaign. If the forty thousand had been quietly feeding sheep on the
+uplands while their brethren were fighting among the stony hills of
+Canaan, a great gulf would have opened between them. Even as it was,
+the eastern tribes drifted somewhat away from the western; but the
+disintegration would have been still more complete if no memories of
+the war, when all Israel stood side by side, had lived on among them.
+Their share in the conquest was not only a piece of policy,--it was the
+natural expression of the national brotherhood. Even I Joshua had not
+ordered their presence, it would have been impossible for them to stop
+in their peacefulness and let their brethren bear the brunt of battle.
+
+The law for us is the same as for these warriors. In the family, the
+city, the nation, the Church, and the world, union with others binds us
+to help them in their conflicts, and that especially if we are blessed
+with secure possessions, while they have to struggle for theirs. We are
+tempted to selfish lives of indulgence in our quiet peace, and
+sometimes think it hard that we should be expected to buckle on our
+armour, and leave our leisurely repose, because our brethren ask the
+help of our arms. If we did as Reuben and Gad did, would there be so
+many rich men who never stir a finger to relieve poverty, so many
+Christians whose religion is much more selfish than beneficent? Would
+so many souls be left to toil without help, to struggle without allies,
+to weep without comforters, to wander in the dark without a guide? All
+God's gifts in providence and in the Gospel are given that we may have
+somewhat wherewith to bless our less happy brethren. 'The service of
+man' is not the substitute for, but the expression of, Christianity.
+Are we not kept here, on this side Jordan, away for a time from our
+inheritance, for the very same reason that these men were separated
+from theirs,--that we may strike some strokes for God and our fellows
+in the great war? Dives, who lolls on his soft cushions, and has less
+pity for Lazarus than the dogs have, is Cain come to life again; and
+every Christian is either his brother's keeper or his murderer. Would
+that the Church of to-day, with infinitely deeper and sacreder ties
+knitting it to suffering, struggling humanity, had a tithe of the
+willing relinquishment of legitimate possessions and patient
+participation in the long campaign for God which kept these rude
+soldiers faithful to their flag and forgetful of home and ease, till
+their general gave them their discharge!
+
+Note the commander's parting charge. They were about to depart for a
+life of comparative separation from the mass of the nation. Their
+remoteness and their occupations drew them away from the current of the
+national life, and gave them a kind of quasi-independence. They would
+necessarily be less directly under Joshua's control than the other
+tribes were. He sends them away with one commandment, the Imperative
+stringency of which is expressed by the accumulation of expressions in
+verse 5. They are to give diligent heed to the law of Moses. Their
+obedience is to be based on love to God, who is their God no less than
+the God of the other tribes. It is to be comprehensive--they are 'to
+walk in all His ways'; it is to be resolute--they are 'to cleave to
+Him'; it is to be wholehearted and whole-souled service, that will be
+the true bond between the separated parts of the whole. Independence so
+limited will be harmless; and, however wide apart their paths may lie,
+Israel will be one. In like manner the bond that knits all divisions of
+God's people together, however different their modes of life and
+thought, however unlike their homes and their work, is the similarity
+of relation to God. They are one in a common faith, a common love, a
+common obedience. Wider waters than Jordan part them. Graver
+differences of tasks and outlooks than separated these two sections of
+Israel part them. But all are one who love and obey the one Lord. The
+closer we cleave to Him, the nearer we shall be to all His tribes.
+
+We need only note in a word how these departing soldiers, leaving the
+battlefield with their commander's praise and benediction, laden with
+much wealth, the spoil of their enemies, and fording the stream to
+reach the peaceful homes, which had long stood ready for them, may be
+taken, by a permissible play of fancy, as symbols of the faithful
+servants and soldiers of the true Joshua, at the end of their long
+warfare passing to the 'kingdom prepared for them before the foundation
+of the world,' bearing in their hands the wealth which, by God's grace,
+they had conquered from out of things here. _They_ are not sent away
+by their Commander, but summoned by Him to the great peace of His own
+presence; and while His lips give them the praise which is praise
+indeed, they inscribe on the perpetual memorial which they rear no name
+but His, who first wrought all their works in them, and now has
+ordained eternal peace for them.
+
+
+
+
+THE NATIONAL OATH AT SHECHEM
+
+'And Joshua said unto the people. Ye cannot serve the Lord: for He is
+an holy God; He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your
+transgressions nor your sins. 20. If ye forsake the Lord, and serve
+strange gods, then He will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after
+that He hath done you good. 21. And the people said unto Joshua, Nay;
+but we will serve the Lord. 22. And Joshua said unto the people, Ye are
+witnesses against yourselves, that ye have chosen you the Lord, to
+serve Him. And they said, We are witnesses. 23. Now therefore put away,
+said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart
+unto the Lord God of Israel. 24. And the people said unto Joshua, The
+Lord our God will we serve, and His voice will we obey. 25. So Joshua
+made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an
+ordinance in Shechem. 26. And Joshua wrote these words in the book of
+the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an
+oak, that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. 27. And Joshua said unto
+all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us; for it
+hath heard all the words of the Lord which He spake unto us: it shall
+be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God. 28. So Joshua
+let the people depart, every man unto his inheritance.'-JOSHUA xxiv.
+19-28.
+
+
+We reach in this passage the close of an epoch. It narrates the last
+public act of Joshua and the last of the assembled people before they
+scatter 'every man unto his inheritance.' It was fitting that the
+transition from the nomad stage to that of settled abode in the land
+should be marked by the solemn renewal of the covenant, which is thus
+declared to be the willingly accepted law for the future national life.
+We have here the closing scene of that solemn assembly set before us.
+
+The narrative carries us to Shechem, the lovely valley in the heart of
+the land, already consecrated by many patriarchal associations, and by
+that picturesque scene (Joshua viii. 30-35), when the gathered nation,
+ranged on the slopes of Ebal and Gerizim, listened to Joshua reading
+'all that Moses commanded.' There, too, the coffin of Joseph, which had
+been reverently carried all through the desert and the war, was laid in
+the ground that Jacob had bought five hundred years ago, and which now
+had fallen to Joseph's descendants, the tribe of Ephraim. There was
+another reason for the selection of Shechem for this renewal of the
+covenant. The gathered representatives of Israel stood, at Shechem, on
+the very soil where, long ago, Abram had made his first resting-place
+as a stranger in the land, and had received the first divine pledge,
+'unto thy seed will I give this land,' and had piled beneath the oak of
+Moreh his first altar (of which the weathered stones might still be
+there) to 'the Lord, who appeared unto him.' It was fitting that this
+cradle of the nation should witness their vow, as it witnessed the
+fulfilment of God's promise. What Plymouth Rock is to one side of the
+Atlantic, or Hastings Field to the other, Shechem was to Israel. Vows
+sworn there had sanctity added by the place. Nor did these remembrances
+exhaust the appropriateness of the site. The oak, which had waved green
+above Abram's altar, had looked down on another significant incident in
+the life of Jacob, when, in preparation for his journey to Bethel, he
+had made a clean sweep of the idols of his household, and buried them
+'under the oak which was by Shechem' (Gen. xxxv. 2-4). His very words
+are quoted by Joshua in his command, in verse 23, and it is impossible
+to overlook the intention to parallel the two events. The spot which
+had seen the earlier act of purification from idolatry was for that
+very reason chosen for the later. It is possible that the same tree at
+whose roots the idols from beyond the river, which Leah and Rachel had
+brought, had been buried, was that under which Joshua set up his
+memorial stone; and it is possible that the very stone had been part of
+Abram's altar. But, in any case, the place was sacred by these past
+manifestations of God and devotions of the fathers, so that we need not
+wonder that Joshua selected it rather than Shiloh, where the ark was,
+for the scene of this national oath of obedience. Patriotism and
+devotion would both burn brighter in such an atmosphere. These
+considerations explain also the designation of the place as 'the
+sanctuary of the Lord,'--a phrase which has led some to think of the
+Tabernacle, and apparently occasioned the Septuagint reading of
+'Shiloh' instead of 'Shechem' in verses 1 and 25. The precise rendering
+of the preposition in verse 26 (which the Revised Version has put in
+the margin) shows that the Tabernacle is not meant; for how could the
+oak-tree be 'in' the Tabernacle? Clearly, the open space, hallowed by
+so many remembrances, and by the appearance to Abram, was regarded as a
+sanctuary.
+
+The earlier part of this chapter shows that the people, by their
+representatives, responded with alacrity--which to Joshua seemed too
+eager--to his charge, and enumerated with too facile tongues God's
+deliverances and benefits. His ear must have caught some tones of
+levity, if not of insincerity, in the lightly-made vow. So he meets it
+with a douche of cold water in verses 19, 20, because he wishes to
+condense vaporous resolutions into something more tangible and
+permanent. Cold, judiciously applied, solidifies. Discouragements,
+rightly put, encourage. The best way to deepen and confirm good
+resolutions which have been too swiftly and inconsiderately formed, is
+to state very plainly all the difficulty of keeping them. The hand that
+seems to repel, often most powerfully attracts. There is no better way
+of turning a somewhat careless 'we will' into a persistent 'nay, but we
+_will_' than to interpose a 'ye cannot.' Many a boy has been made
+a sailor by the stories of hardships which his parents have meant as
+dissuasives. Joshua here is doing exactly what Jesus Christ often did.
+He refused glib vows because He desired whole hearts. His very longing
+that men should follow Him made Him send them back to bethink
+themselves when they promised to do it. 'Master, I will follow Thee
+whithersoever Thou goest!' was answered by no recognition of the
+speaker's enthusiasm, and by no word of pleasure or invitation, but by
+the apparently cold repulse: 'Foxes have holes, birds of the air
+roosting-places; but the Son of Man has not where to lay His head. That
+is what you are offering to share. Do you stand to your words?' So,
+when once 'great multitudes' came to Him He turned on them, with no
+invitation in His words, and told them the hard conditions of
+discipleship as being entire self-renunciation. He will have no
+soldiers enlisted under false pretences. They shall know the full
+difficulties and trials which they must meet; and if, knowing these,
+they still are willing to take His yoke upon them, then how exuberant
+and warm the welcome which He gives!
+
+There is a real danger that this side of the evangelist's work should
+be overlooked in the earnestness with which the other side is done. We
+cannot be too emphatic in our reiteration of Christ's call to all the
+'weary and heavy-laden' to come unto Him, nor too confident in our
+assurance that whosoever comes will not be 'cast out'; but we may be,
+and, I fear, often are, defective in our repetition of Christ's demand
+for entire surrender, and of His warning to intending disciples of what
+they are taking upon them. We shall repel no true seeker by duly
+emphasising the difficulties of the Christian course. Perhaps, if there
+were more plain speaking about these at the beginning, there would be
+fewer backsliders and dead professors with 'a name to live.' Christ ran
+the risk of the rich ruler's going away sorrowful, and so should His
+messengers do. The sorrow tells of real desire, and the departure will
+sooner or later be exchanged for return with a deeper and more thorough
+purpose, if the earlier wish had any substance in it. If it had not,
+better that the consciousness of its hollowness should be forced upon
+the man, than that he should outwardly become what he is not really,--a
+Christian; for, in the one case, he may be led to reflection which may
+issue in thorough surrender; and in the other he will be a self-
+deceived deceiver, and probably an apostate.
+
+Note the special form of Joshua's warning. It turns mainly on two
+points,--the extent of the obligations which they were so lightly
+incurring, and the heavy penalties of their infraction. As to the
+former, the vow to 'serve the Lord' had been made, as he fears, with
+small consideration of what it meant. In heathenism, the 'service' of a
+god is a mere matter of outward acts of so-called worship. There is
+absolutely no connection between religion and morality in idolatrous
+systems. The notion that the service of a god implies any duties in
+common life beyond ceremonial ones is wholly foreign to paganism in all
+its forms. The establishment of the opposite idea is wholly the
+consequence of revelation. So we need not wonder if the pagan
+conception of service was here in the minds of the vowing assembly. If
+we look at their vow, as recorded in verses 16-18, we see nothing in it
+which necessarily implies a loftier idea. Jehovah is their national
+God, who has fought and conquered for them, therefore they will 'serve
+Him.' If we substitute Baal, or Chemosh, or Nebo, or Ra, for Jehovah,
+this is exactly what we read on Moabite stones and Assyrian tablets and
+Egyptian tombs. The reasons for the service, and the service itself,
+are both suspiciously external. We are not judging the people more
+harshly than Joshua did; for he clearly was not satisfied with them,
+and the tone of his answer sufficiently shows what he thought wrong in
+them. Observe that he does not call Jehovah 'your God.' He does so
+afterwards; but in this grave reply to their exuberant enthusiasm he
+speaks of Him only as 'the Lord,' as if he would put stress on the
+monotheistic conception, which, at all events, does not appear in the
+people's words, and was probably dim in their thoughts. Then observe
+that he broadly asserts the impossibility of their serving the Lord;
+that is, of course, so long as they continued in their then tone of
+feeling about Him and His service.
+
+Then observe the points in the character of God on which he dwells, as
+indicating the points which were left out of view by the people, and as
+fitted to rectify their notions of service. First, 'He is an holy God.'
+The scriptural idea of the holiness of God has a wider sweep than we
+often recognise. It fundamentally means His supreme and inaccessible
+elevation above the creature; which, of course, is manifested in His
+perfect separation from all sin, but has not regard to this only.
+Joshua here urges the infinite distance between man and God, and
+especially the infinite moral distance, in order to enforce a
+profounder conception of what goes to God's service. A holy God cannot
+have unholy worshippers. His service can be no mere ceremonial, but
+must be the bowing of the whole man before His majesty, the aspiration
+of the whole man after His loftiness, the transformation of the whole
+man into the reflection of His purity, the approach of the unholy to
+the Holy through a sacrifice which puts away sin.
+
+Further, He is 'a jealous God.' 'Jealous' is an ugly word, with
+repulsive associations, and its application to God has sometimes been
+explained in ugly fashion, and has actually repelled men. But, rightly
+looked at, what does it mean but that God desires our whole hearts for
+His own, and loves us so much, and is so desirous to pour His love into
+us, that He will have no rivals in our love? The metaphor of marriage,
+which puts His love to men in the tenderest form, underlies this word,
+so harsh on the surface, but so gracious at the core.
+
+There is still abundant need for Joshua's warning. We rejoice that it
+takes so little to be a Christian that the feeblest and simplest act of
+faith knits the soul to the all-forgiving Christ. But let us not forget
+that, on the other hand, it is hard to be a Christian indeed; for it
+means 'forsaking all that we have,' and loving God with all our powers.
+The measure of His love is the measure of His 'jealousy,' and He loves
+us no less than He did Israel. Unless our conceptions of His service
+are based upon our recognition of His holiness and demand for our all,
+we, too, 'cannot serve the Lord.'
+
+The other half of Joshua's warnings refers to the penalties of the
+broken vows. These are put with extraordinary force. The declaration
+that the sins of the servants of God would not be forgiven is not, of
+course, to be taken so as to contradict the whole teaching of
+Scripture, but as meaning that the sins of His people cannot be left
+unpunished. The closer relation between God and them made retribution
+certain. The law of Israel's existence, which its history ever since
+has exemplified, was here laid down, that their prosperity depended on
+their allegiance, and that their nearness to Him ensured His
+chastisement for their sin. 'You only have I known of all the families
+of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.'
+
+The remainder of the incident must be briefly disposed of. These
+warnings produced the desired effect; for Joshua did not seek to
+prevent, but to make more intelligent and firm, the people's
+allegiance. The resolve, repeated after fuller knowledge, is the best
+reward, as it is the earnest hope, of the faithful teacher, whose
+apparent discouragements are meant to purify and deepen, not to
+repress, the faintest wish to serve God. Having tested their sincerity,
+he calls them to witness that their resolution is perfectly voluntary;
+and, on their endorsing it as their free choice, he requires the
+putting away of their 'strange gods,' and the surrender of their inward
+selves to Him who, by this their action as well as by His benefits,
+becomes in truth 'the God of Israel.' Attempts have been made to evade
+the implication that idolatry had crept in among the people; but there
+can be no doubt of the plain, sad meaning of the words. They are a
+quotation of Jacob's, at the same spot, on a similar occasion centuries
+before. If there were no idols buried now under the old oak, it was not
+because there were none in Israel, but because they had not been
+brought by the people from their homes. Joshua's commands are the
+practical outcome of his previous words. If God be 'holy' and
+'jealous,' serving Him must demand the forsaking of all other gods, and
+the surrender of heart and self to Him. That is as true to-day as ever
+it was. The people accept the stringent requirement, and their repeated
+shout of obedience has a deeper tone than their first hasty utterance
+had. They have learned what service means,--that it includes more than
+ceremonies; and they are willing to obey His voice. Blessed those for
+whom the plain disclosure of all that they must give up to follow Him,
+only leads to the more assured and hearty response of willing
+surrender!
+
+The simple but impressive ceremony which ratified the covenant thus
+renewed consisted of two parts,--the writing of the account of the
+transaction in 'the book of the law'; and the erection of a great
+stone, whose grey strength stood beneath the green oak, a silent
+witness that Israel, by his own choice, after full knowledge of all
+that the vow meant, had reiterated his vow to be the Lord's. Thus on
+the spot made sacred by so many ancient memories, the people ended
+their wandering and homeless life, and passed into the possession of
+the inheritance, through the portal of this fresh acceptance of the
+covenant, proclaiming thereby that they held the land on condition of
+serving God, and writing their own sentence in case of unfaithfulness.
+It was the last act of the assembled people, and the crown and close of
+Joshua's career.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF JUDGES
+
+
+
+
+A SUMMARY OF ISRAEL'S FAITHLESSNESS AND GOD'S PATIENCE
+
+'And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I
+made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land
+which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my
+covenant with you. 2. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants
+of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed
+my voice: why have ye done this? 3. Wherefore I also said, I will not
+drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your
+sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. 4. And it came to
+pass, when the angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the
+children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept. 5.
+And they called the name of that place Bochim: and they sacrificed
+there unto the Lord. 6. And when Joshua had let the people go, the
+children of Israel went every man unto his inheritance to possess the
+land. 7. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all
+the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great
+works of the Lord that He did for Israel. 8. And Joshua the son of Nun,
+the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old. 9.
+And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath-heres,
+in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. 10. And
+also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there
+arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet
+the works which He had done for Israel.'--JUDGES II. 1-10.
+
+
+The Book of Judges begins a new era, the development of the nation in
+its land. Chapters i. to iii. 6 contain two summaries: first, of the
+progress of the conquest; and second, of the history about to be
+unfolded in the book. The first part of this passage (verses 1-5)
+belongs to the former, and closes it; the second (verses 6-10)
+introduces the latter, and contrasts it with the state of things
+prevailing as long as the soldiers of Joshua lived.
+
+I. 'The Angel of the Lord' had appeared to Joshua in Gilgal at the
+beginning of the war, and issued his orders as 'Captain of the Lord's
+host.' Now He reappears to ask why his orders had not been carried out,
+and to announce that victory was no longer to attend Israel's arms.
+Nothing can be plainer than that the Angel speaks as one in whom the
+divine name dwells. His reiterated 'I's' are incomprehensible on any
+other hypothesis than that He is that mysterious person, distinct from
+and yet one with Jehovah, whom we know as the 'Word made flesh.' His
+words here are stern. He enumerates the favours which He had showed to
+Israel, and which should have inspired them to glad obedience. He
+recalls the conditions on which they had received the land; namely,
+that they were to enter into no entangling alliances with the remnant
+of the inhabitants, and especially to have no tolerance for their
+idolatry. Here we may observe that, according to Joshua's last charge,
+the extermination of the native peoples was not contemplated, but that
+there should be no such alliances as would peril Israel's observance of
+the covenant (Joshua xxiii. 7, 12). He charges them with disobedience,
+and asks the same question as had been asked of Eve, 'What is this ye
+have done?' And He declares the punishment about to follow, in the
+paralysing of Israel's conquering arm by the withdrawal of His
+conquering might, and in the seductions from the native inhabitants to
+which they would fall victims.
+
+Note, then, how God's benefits aggravate our disobedience, and how He
+bases His right to command on them. Further, note how His promises are
+contingent on our fulfilment of their conditions, and how a covenant
+which He has sworn that He will never break He does count as non-
+existent when men break it. Again, observe the sharp arraignment of the
+faithless, and the forcing of them to bethink themselves of the true
+character of their deeds, or, if we adopt the Revised Version's
+rendering, of the unreasonableness of departing from God. No man dare
+answer when God asks, 'What hast thou done?' No man can answer
+reasonably when He asks, 'Why hast thou done it?' Once more, note that
+His servants sin when they allow themselves to be so mixed up with the
+world that they are in peril of learning its ways and getting a snare
+to their souls. We have all unconquered 'Canaanites' in our hearts, and
+amity with them is supreme folly and crying wickedness. 'Thorough' must
+be our motto. Many times have the conquered overcome their conquerors,
+as in Rome's conquest of Greece, the Goths' conquest of Rome, the
+Normans' conquest of England. Israel was in some respects conquered by
+Canaanites and other conquered tribes. Let us take care that we are not
+overcome by our inward foes, whom we fancy we have subdued and can
+afford to treat leniently.
+
+Again, God punishes our making truce with our spiritual foes by letting
+the effects of the truce work themselves out. He said to Israel, in
+effect: 'If you make alliances with the people of the land, you shall
+no longer have power to cast them out. The swift rush of the stream of
+victory shall be stayed. You have chosen to make them your friends, and
+their friendship shall produce its natural effects, of tempting you to
+imitation.' The increased power of our unsubdued evils is the
+punishment, as it is the result, of tolerance of them. We wanted to
+keep them, and dreamed that we could control them. Keep them we shall,
+control them we cannot. They will master us if we do not expel them. No
+wonder that the place was named Bochim ('Weepers'), when such stern
+words were thundered forth. Tears flow easily; and many a sin is wept
+for once, and afterwards repeated often. So it was with Israel, as the
+narrative goes on to tell. Let us take the warning, and give heed to
+make repentance deep and lasting.
+
+II. Verses 6-10 go back to an earlier period than the appearance of the
+Angel. We do not know how long the survivors of the conquering army
+lived in sufficient numbers to leaven opinion and practice. We may,
+however, roughly calculate that the youngest of these would be about
+twenty when the war began, and that about fifty years would see the end
+of the host that had crossed Jordan and stormed Jericho. If Joshua was
+of about the same age as Caleb, he would be about eighty at the
+beginning of the conquest, and lived thirty years afterwards, so that
+about twenty years after his death would be the limit of 'the elders
+that outlived Joshua.'
+
+Verses 6-9 substantially repeat Joshua xxiv. 28-31, and are here
+inserted to mark not only the connection with the former book, but to
+indicate the beginning of a new epoch. The facts narrated in this
+paragraph are but too sadly in accord with the uniform tendencies of
+our poor weak nature. As long as some strong personality leads a nation
+or a church, it keeps true to its early fervour. The first generation
+which has lived through some great epoch, when God's arm has been made
+bare, retains the impression of His power. But when the leader falls,
+it is like withdrawing a magnet, and the heap of iron filings tumbles
+back to the ground inert. Think of the post-Apostolic age of the
+Church, of Germany in the generation after Luther, not to come nearer
+home, and we must see that Israel's experience was an all but universal
+one. It is hard to keep a community even of professing Christians on
+the high level. No great cause is ever launched which does not lose
+'way' as it continues. 'Having begun in the Spirit,' all such are too
+apt to continue 'in the flesh.' The original impulses wane, friction
+begins to tell. Custom clogs the wheels. The fiery lava-stream cools
+and slackens. So it always has been. Therefore God has to change His
+instruments, and churches need to be shaken up, and sometimes broken
+up, 'lest one good,' when it has degenerated into 'custom,' should
+'corrupt the world.'
+
+But we shall miss the lesson here taught if we do not apply it to
+tendencies in ourselves, and humbly recognise that we are in danger of
+being 'hindered,' however 'well' we may have begun to 'run,' and that
+our only remedy is to renew continually our first-hand vision of 'the
+great works of the Lord,' and our consecration to His service. It is a
+poor affair if, like Israel, our devotion to God depends on Joshua's
+life, or, like King Joash, we do that which is 'right in the eyes of
+the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.'
+
+
+
+
+ISRAEL'S OBSTINACY AND GOD'S PATIENCE
+
+'And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and
+served Baalim; 12. And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers,
+which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods,
+of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed
+themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. 13. And they
+forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. 14. And the anger of
+the Lord was hot against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands
+of spoilers that spoiled them, and He sold them into the hands of their
+enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before
+their enemies. 15. Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the Lord
+was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had
+sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed. 16. Nevertheless the
+Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those
+that spoiled them. 17. And yet they would not hearken unto their
+judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves
+unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers
+walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so.
+18. And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the
+judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days
+of the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groanings, by
+reason of them that oppressed them, and vexed them. 19. And it came to
+pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted
+themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve
+them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings,
+nor from their stubborn way. 20. And the anger of the Lord was hot
+against Israel; and He said, Because that this people hath transgressed
+My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened
+unto My voice; 21. I also will not henceforth drive out any from before
+them of the nations which Joshua left when he died: 22. That through
+them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the Lord, to
+walk therein, as their fathers did keep it, or not. 23. Therefore the
+Lord left those nations, without driving them out hastily; neither
+delivered He them into the hand of Joshua.'--JUDGES ii. 11-23.
+
+
+This passage sums up the Book of Judges, and also the history of Israel
+for over four hundred years. Like the overture of an oratorio, it
+sounds the main themes of the story which follows. That story has four
+chapters, repeated with dreary monotony over and over again. They are:
+Relapse into idolatry, retribution, respite and deliverance, and brief
+return to God. The last of these phases soon passes into fresh relapse,
+and then the old round is gone all over again, as regularly as the
+white and red lights and the darkness reappear in a revolving
+lighthouse lantern, or the figures recur in a circulating decimal
+fraction. That sad phrase which begins this lesson, 'The children of
+Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord,' is repeated at the beginning
+of each new record of apostacy, on which duly follow, as outlined here,
+the oppression by the enemy, the raising up of a deliverer, the gleam
+of brightness which dies with him, and then, _da capo_, 'the
+children of Israel did evil,' and all the rest as before. The names
+change, but the incidents are the same. There is something extremely
+impressive in this uniformity of the plan of the book, which thus sets
+in so strong light the persistence through generations of the same bad
+strain in the nation's blood, and the unwearying patience of God. The
+story of these successive recurrences of the same sequence of events
+occupies the book to the end of chapter xvi., and the remainder of it
+is taken up with two wild stories deeply stained with the lawlessness
+and moral laxity of these anarchic times. We may best bring out the
+force of this summary by considering in their order the four stages
+signalised.
+
+I. The first is the continual tendency to relapse into idolatry. The
+fact itself, and the frank prominence given to it in the Old Testament,
+are both remarkable. As to the latter, certainly, if the Old Testament
+histories have the same origin as the chronicles of other nations, they
+present most anomalous features. Where do we find any other people
+whose annals contain nothing that can minister to national vanity, and
+have for one of their chief themes the sins of the nation? The history
+of Israel, as told in Scripture, is one long indictment of Israel. The
+peculiarity is explicable, if we believe that, whoever or how numerous
+soever its authors, God was its true Author, as He is its true theme,
+and that the object of its histories is not to tell the deeds of
+Israel, but those of God for Israel.
+
+As to the fact of the continual relapses into idolatry, nothing could
+be more natural than that the recently received and but imperfectly
+assimilated revelation of the one God, with its stringent requirements
+of purity, and its severe prohibition of idols, should easily slip off
+from these rude and merely outward worshippers. Joshua's death without
+a successor, the dispersion of the tribes, the difficulty of
+communication when much of the country was still in the hands of its
+former possessors, would all weaken the sense of unity, which was too
+recent to be firm, and would expose the isolated Israelites to the full
+force of the temptation to idolatry. It is difficult for us fairly to
+judge the immense strain required for resistance to it. The conception
+of one sole God was too high to be easily retained. A shrine without a
+deity seemed bare and empty. The Law stringently bridled passions which
+the hideous worship of the Canaanites stimulated. No wonder that, when
+the first generation of the conquerors had passed away, their
+successors lapsed into the universal polytheism, with its attendant
+idolatry and immorality. Instead of thinking of the Israelites as
+monsters of ingratitude and backsliding, we come nearer the truth, and
+make a better use of the history, when we see in it a mirror which
+shows us our own image. The strong earthward pull is ever acting on us,
+and, unless God hold us up, we too shall slide downwards. 'Hath a
+nation changed their gods, which yet are no gods? but My people hath
+changed their glory for that which doth not profit.' Idolatry and
+worldliness are persistent; for they are natural. Firm adherence to God
+is less common, because it goes against the strong forces, within and
+without, which bind us to earth.
+
+Apparently the relapses into idolatry did not imply the entire
+abandonment of the worship of Jehovah, but the worship of Baalim and
+Ashtaroth along with it. Such illegitimate mixing up of deities was
+accordant with the very essence of polytheism, and repugnant to that of
+the true worship of God. The one may be tolerant, the other cannot be.
+To unite Baal with Jehovah was to forsake Jehovah.
+
+These continual relapses have an important bearing on the question of
+the origin of the 'Jewish conception of God.' They are intelligible
+only if we take the old-fashioned explanation, that its origin was a
+divine revelation, given to a rude people. They are unintelligible if
+we take the new-fashioned explanation that the monotheism of Israel was
+the product of natural evolution, or was anything but a treasure put by
+God into their hands, which they did not appreciate, and would
+willingly have thrown away. The foul Canaanitish worship was the kind
+of thing in which, if left to themselves, they would have wallowed. How
+came such people by such thoughts as these? The history of Israel's
+idolatry is not the least conclusive proof of the supernatural
+revelation which made Israel's religion.
+
+II. Note the swift-following retribution. We have two sections in the
+context dealing with this, each introduced by that terrible phrase,
+which recurs so often in the subsequent parts of the book, 'The anger
+of the Lord was kindled against Israel.' That phrase is no sign of a
+lower conception of God than that which the gospel brings. Wrath is an
+integral part of love, when the lover is perfectly righteous and the
+loved are sinful. The most terrible anger is the anger of perfect
+gentleness, as expressed in that solemn paradox of the Apostle of love,
+when he speaks of 'the wrath of the Lamb.' God was angry with Israel
+because He loved them, and desired their love for their own good. The
+fact of His choice of the nation for His own and the intensity of His
+love were shown no less by the swift certainty with which suffering
+dogged sin, than by the blessings which crowned obedience. The first
+section, referring to the punishment, is in verses 14 and 15, which
+seems to describe mainly the defeats and plunderings which outside
+surrounding nations inflicted. The brief description is extraordinarily
+energetic. It ascribes all their miseries to God's direct act. He
+'delivered' them over, or, as the next clause says still more strongly,
+'sold' them, to plunderers, who stripped them bare. Their defeats were
+the result of His having thus ceased to regard them as His. But though
+He had 'sold' them, He had not done with them; for it was not only the
+foeman's hand that struck them, but God's 'hand was against them,' and
+its grip crushed them. His judgments were not occasional, but
+continuous, and went with them 'whithersoever they went out.'
+Everything went wrong with them; there were no gleams breaking the
+black thunder-cloud. God's anger darkened the whole sky, and blasted
+the whole earth. And the misery was the more miserable and awful
+because it had all been foretold, and in it God was but doing 'as He
+had said' and sworn. It is a dreadful picture of the all-withering
+effect of God's anger,--a picture which is repeated in inmost verity in
+many an outwardly prosperous life to-day.
+
+The second section is in verses 20-23, and describes the consequence of
+Israel's relapse in reference to the surviving Canaanite and other
+tribes in the land itself. Note that 'nation' in verse 20 is the term
+usually applied, not to Israel, but to the Gentile peoples; and that
+its use here seems equivalent to cancelling the choice of Israel as
+God's special possession, and reducing them to the level of the other
+nations in Canaan, to whom the same term is applied in verse 21. The
+stern words which are here put into the mouth of God may possibly refer
+to the actual message recorded in the first verses of the chapter; but,
+more probably, 'the Lord said' does not here mean any divine
+communication, but only the divine resolve, conceived as spoken to
+himself. It embodies the divine _lex talionis_. The punishment is
+analogous to the crime. Israel had broken the covenant; God would not
+keep His promise. That involves a great principle as to all God's
+promises,--that they are all conditional, and voidable by men's failure
+to fulfil their conditions. Observe, too, that the punishment is the
+retention of the occasions of the sin. Is not that, too, a law of the
+divine procedure to-day? Whips to scourge us are made of our pleasant
+vices. Sin is the punishment of sin. If we yield to some temptation,
+part of the avenging retribution is that the temptation abides by us,
+and has power over us. The 'Canaanites' whom we have allowed to lead us
+astray will stay beside us when their power to seduce us is done, and
+will pull off their masks and show themselves for what they are, our
+spoilers and foes.
+
+The rate of Israel's conquest was determined by Israel's faithful
+adherence to God. That is a standing law. Victory for us in all the
+good fight of life depends on our cleaving to Him, and forsaking all
+other.
+
+The divine motive, if we may so say, in leaving the unsubdued nations
+in the land, was to provide the means of proving Israel. Would it not
+have been better, since Israel was so weak, to secure for it an
+untempted period? Surely, it is a strange way of helping a man who has
+stumbled, to make provision that future occasions of stumbling shall
+lie in his path. But so the perfect wisdom which is perfect love ever
+ordains. There shall be no unnatural greenhouse shelter provided for
+weak plants. The liability to fall imposes the necessity of trial, but
+the trial does not impose the necessity of falling! The Devil tempts,
+because he hopes that we shall fall. God tries, in order that we may
+stand, and that our feet may be strengthened by the trial. 'I cannot
+praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed,
+that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the
+race, where that immortal garland is to be run for,--not without dust
+and heat.'
+
+III. Respite and deliverance are described in verses 16 and 18. The
+Revised Version has wisely substituted a simple 'and' for
+'nevertheless' at the beginning of verse 16. The latter word implies
+that the raising up of the judges was a reversal of what had gone
+before; 'and' implies that it was a continuation. And its use here is
+not merely an instance of inartificial Hebrew style, but carries the
+lesson that God's judgment and deliverance come from the same source,
+and are harmonious parts of one educational process. Nor is this
+thought negatived by the statement in verse 18 that 'it repented the
+Lord.' That strong metaphorical ascription to Him of human emotion
+simply implies that His action, which of necessity is the expression of
+His will, was changed. The will of the moment before had been to
+punish; the will of the next moment was to deliver, because their
+'groaning' showed that the punishment had done its work. But the two
+wills were one in ultimate purpose, and the two sets of acts were
+equally and harmoniously parts of one design. The surgeon is carrying
+out one plan when he cuts deep into the quivering flesh, and when he
+sews up the wounds which he himself has made. God's deliverances are
+linked to His chastisements by 'and,' not by 'nevertheless.' We need
+not discuss that remarkable series of judges, who were champions rather
+than the peaceful functionaries whom we understand by the name. The
+vivid and stirring stories associated with their names make the bulk of
+this book, and move the most peace-loving among us like the sound of a
+trumpet. These wild warriors, with many a roughness and flaw in their
+characters, of whom no saintly traits are recorded, are yet treated in
+this section as directly inspired, and as continually upheld by God.
+The writer of the _Epistle to the Hebrews_ claims some of them as
+heroes of 'faith.' And one chief lesson for us to learn, as we look on
+the strange garb in which in them faith has arrayed itself, and the
+strange work which it does in nerving hands to strike with sharp
+swords, is the oneness of the principle amid the most diverse
+manifestations, and the nobleness and strength which the sense of
+belonging to God and reliance on His help breathe into the rudest life
+and shed over the wildest scenes.
+
+These judges were raised up indiscriminately from different tribes.
+They belonged to different ranks, and were of different occupations.
+One of them was a woman. The when and the where and the how of their
+appearance were incalculable. They authenticated their commission by no
+miracles except victory. For a time they started to the front, and then
+passed, leaving no successors, and founding no dynasty. They were an
+entirely unique order, plainly raised up by God, and drawing all their
+power from Him. Let us be thankful for the weaknesses, and even sins,
+recorded of some of them, and for the boldness with which the book
+traces the physical strength of a Samson, in spite of his wild
+animalism, and the bravery of a Jephthah, notwithstanding his savage
+vow and subsequent lapse into idolatry, to God's inspiration. Their
+faith was limited, and acted but imperfectly on their moral nature; but
+it was true faith, in the judgment of the _Epistle to the
+Hebrews_. Their work was rough and bloody, and they were rough
+tools, as such work needed; but it was God's work, and He had made them
+for His instruments, in the judgment of the Book of _Judges_. If
+we try to understand the reasons for such judgments, we may learn some
+useful lessons.
+
+IV. A word only can be given to the last stage in the dreary round. It
+comes back to the first. The religion of the delivered people lasted as
+long as the judge's life. When he died, it died. There is intense
+bitterness in the remark to that effect in verse 19. Did God then die
+with the judge? Was it Samson, or Jehovah, that had delivered? Why
+should the death of the instrument affect gratitude to the hand that
+gave it its edge? What a lurid light is thrown back on the unreality of
+the people's return to God by their swift relapse! If it needed a human
+hand to keep them from departing, had they ever come near? We may press
+the questions on ourselves; for none of us knows how much of our
+religion is owing to the influence of men upon us, or how much of it
+would drop away if we were left to ourselves.
+
+This miserable repetition of the same weary round of sin, punishment,
+respite, and renewed sin, sets in a strong light the two great wonders
+of man's obstinate persistency in unfaithfulness and sin, and of God's
+unwearied persistency in discipline and patient forgiveness. His
+charity 'suffers long and is kind, is not easily provoked.' We can
+weary out all forbearance but His, which is endless. We weary Him
+indeed, but we do not weary Him out, with our iniquities. Man's sin
+stretches far; but God's patient love overlaps it. It lasts long; but
+God's love is eternal. It resists miracles of chastisement and love;
+but He does not cease His use of the rod and the staff. We can tire out
+all other forbearance, but not His. And however old and obstinate our
+rebellion, He waits to pardon, and smites but to heal.
+
+
+
+
+RECREANT REUBEN
+
+
+'Why satest then among the sheepfolds, to hear the pipings for the
+flocks? At the watercourses of Reuben there were great searchings of
+heart.'--JUDGES v. 16 (R.V.).
+
+
+I. The fight.
+
+The warfare is ever repeated, though in new forms. In the highest form
+it is Christ _versus_ the World, And that conflict must be fought
+out in our own souls first. Our religion should lead not only to accept
+and rely on what Christ does for us, but to do and dare for Christ. He
+has given Himself for us, and has thereby won the right to recruit us
+as His soldiers. We have to fight against ourselves to establish His
+reign over ourselves.
+
+And then we have to give our personal service in the great battle for
+right and truth, for establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth. There
+come national crises when every man must take up arms, but in Christ's
+kingdom that is a permanent obligation. There the nation is the army.
+Each subject is not only His servant but His soldier. The metaphor is
+well worn, but it carries everlasting truth, and to take it seriously
+to heart would revolutionise our lives.
+
+II. The reason for standing aloof. Reuben 'abode in the sheepfolds to
+hear the pipings to the flocks.' For Dan his ships, for Asher his
+havens held them apart. Reuben and the other trans-Jordanic tribes held
+loosely by the national unity. They had fallen in love with an easy
+life of pastoral wealth, they did not care to venture anything for the
+national good. It is still too true that like reasons are largely
+operative in producing like results. It is seldom from the wealthy and
+leisurely classes that the bold fighters for great social reformations
+are recruited. Times of commercial prosperity are usually times of
+stagnation in regard to these. Reuben lies lazily listening to the
+'drowsy tinklings' that 'lull' not only 'the distant folds' but himself
+to inglorious slumber, while Zebulon and Naphtali are 'venturing their
+lives on the high places of the field.' The love of ease enervates many
+a one who should be doing valiantly for the 'Captain of his salvation.'
+The men of Reuben cared more for their sheep than for their nation.
+They were not minded to hazard these by listening to Deborah's call.
+And what their flocks were to that pastoral tribe, their business is to
+shoals of professing Christians. The love of the world depletes the
+ranks of Christ's army, and they are comparatively few who stick by the
+colours and are 'ready, aye ready' for service, as the brave motto of
+one English regiment has it. The lives of multitudes of so-called
+Christians are divided between strained energy in their business or
+trade or profession and self-regarding repose. No doubt competition is
+fierce, and, no doubt, a Christian man is bound, 'whatsoever his hand
+finds to do, to do it with his might,' and, no doubt, rest is as much a
+duty as work. But must not loyalty to Jesus have become tepid, if a
+servant of His has so little interest in the purposes for which He gave
+His life that he can hear no call to take active part in promoting
+them, nor find rest in the work by which he becomes a fellow-worker
+with his Lord?
+
+III. The recreant's brave resolves which came to nothing. The indignant
+question of our text is, as it were, framed between two clauses which
+contrast Reuben's indolent holding aloof with his valorous resolves.
+'By the watercourses of Reuben there were great resolves of heart.' ...
+'At the watercourses of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.'
+Resolves came first, but they were not immediately acted on, and as the
+Reubenites sate among the sheepfolds and felt the charm of their
+peaceful lives, the 'native hue of resolution was sicklied o'er,' and
+doubts of the wisdom of their gallant determination crept in, and their
+valour oozed out. And so for all their fine resolves, they had no share
+in the fight nor in the triumph.
+
+So let us lay the warning of that example to heart, and if we are
+stirred by noble impulses to take our place in the ranks of the
+fighters for God, let us act on these at once. Emotions evaporate very
+soon if they are not used to drive the wheels of conduct. The Psalmist
+was wise who 'delayed not, but made haste and delayed not to keep God's
+commandments.' Many a man has over and over again resolved to serve God
+in some specific fashion, and to enlist in the 'effective force' of
+Christ's army, and has died without ever having done it.
+
+IV. The question in the hour of victory. 'Why?'
+
+Deborah asks it with vehement contempt.
+
+That victory is certain. Are _you_ to have part in it?
+
+The question will be asked on the judgment day by Christ, and by our
+own consciences. 'And he was speechless.'
+
+To be neutral is to be on the side of the enemy, against whom the
+'stars fight,' and whom Kishon sweeps away.
+
+'Who is on the Lord's side?'--Who?
+
+
+
+
+'ALL THINGS ARE YOURS'
+
+'They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against
+Sisera.'--JUDGES v. 20.
+
+
+'For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field: and the
+beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.'--Job v. 23.
+
+These two poetical fragments present the same truth on opposite sides.
+The first of them comes from Deborah's triumphant chant. The singer
+identifies God with the cause of Israel, and declares that heaven
+itself fought against those who fought against God's people. There may
+be an allusion to the tempest which Jewish tradition tells us burst
+over the ranks of the enemy, or there may be some trace of ancient
+astrological notions, or the words may simply be an elevated way of
+saying that Heaven fought for Israel. The silent stars, as they swept
+on their paths through the sky, advanced like an avenging host
+embattled against the foes of Israel and of God. All things fight
+against the man who fights against God.
+
+The other text gives the other side of the same truth. One of Job's
+friends is rubbing salt into his wounds by insisting on the
+commonplace, which needs a great many explanations and limitations
+before it can be accepted as true, that sin is the cause of sorrow, and
+that righteousness brings happiness; and in the course of trying to
+establish this heartless thesis to a heavy heart he breaks into a
+strain of the loftiest poetry in describing the blessedness of the
+righteous. All things, animate and inanimate, are upon his side. The
+ground, which Genesis tells us is 'cursed for his sake,' becomes his
+ally, and the very creatures whom man's sin set at enmity against him
+are at peace with him. All things are the friends and servants of him
+who is the friend and servant of God.
+
+I. So, putting these two texts together, we have first the great
+conviction to which religion clings, that God being on our side all
+things are for us, and not against us.
+
+Now, that is the standing faith of the Old Testament, which no doubt
+was more easily held in those days, because, if we accept its teaching,
+we shall recognise that Israel lived under a system in so far
+supernatural as that moral goodness and material prosperity were a
+great deal more closely and indissolubly connected than they are to-
+day. So, many a psalmist and many a prophet breaks out into
+apostrophes, warranted by the whole history of Israel, and declaring
+how blessed are the men who, apart from all other defences and sources
+of prosperity, have God for their help and Him for their hope.
+
+But we are not to dismiss this conviction as belonging only to a system
+where the supernatural comes in, as it does in the Old Testament
+history, and as antiquated under a dispensation such as that in which
+we live. For the New Testament is not a whit behind the Old in
+insisting upon this truth. 'All things work together for good to them
+that love God.' 'All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ
+is God's.' 'Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that
+which is good?' The New Testament is committed to the same conviction
+as that to which the faith of Old Testament saints clung as the sheet
+anchor of their lives.
+
+That conviction cannot be struck out of the creed of any man, who
+believes in the God to whom the Old and the New Testament alike bear
+witness. For it rests upon this plain principle, that all this great
+universe is not a chaos, but a cosmos, that all these forces and
+creatures are not a rabble, but an ordered host.
+
+What is the meaning of that great Name by which, from of old, God in
+His relations to the whole universe has been described--the 'Lord of
+Hosts'? Who are the 'hosts' of which He is 'the Lord,' and to whom, as
+the centurion said, He says to this one, 'Go!' and he goeth; and to
+another, 'Come!' and he cometh; and to another, 'Do this!' and he doeth
+it? Who are 'the hosts'? Not only these beings who are dimly revealed
+to us as rational and intelligent, who 'excel in strength,' because
+they 'hearken to the voice of His word', but in the ranks of that great
+army are also embattled all the forces of the universe, and all things
+living or dead. 'All are Thy servants; they continue this day'--angels,
+stars, creatures of earth--' according to Thine ordinances.'
+
+And if it be true that the All is an ordered whole, which is obedient
+to the touch and to the will of that divine Commander, then all His
+servants must be on the same side, and cannot turn their arms against
+each other. As an old hymn says with another reference--
+
+               'All the servants of our King
+                In heaven and earth are one,'
+
+and none of them can injure, wound, or slay a fellow-servant. If all
+are travelling in the same direction there can be no collision. If all
+are enlisted under the same standard they can never turn their weapons
+against each other. If God sways all things, then all things which God
+sways must be on the side of the men that are on the side of God. 'Thou
+shalt make a league with the stones of the field: and the beasts of the
+field shall be at peace with thee.'
+
+II, Note the difficulties arising from experience, in the way of
+holding fast by this conviction of faith.
+
+The grim facts of the world, seen from their lowest level, seem to
+shatter it to atoms. Talk about 'the stars in their courses fighting'
+for or against anybody! In one aspect it is superstition, in another
+aspect it is a dream and an illusion. The prose truth is that they
+shine down silent, pitiless, cold, indifferent, on battlefields or on
+peaceful homes; and the moonlight is as pure when it falls upon broken
+hearts as when it falls upon glad ones. Nature is utterly indifferent
+to the moral or the religious character of its victims. It goes on its
+way unswerving and pitiless; and whether the man who stands in its path
+is good or bad matters not. If he gets into a typhoon he will be
+wrecked; if he tumbles over Niagara he will be drowned. And what
+becomes of all the talk about an embattled universe on the side of
+goodness, in the face of the plain facts of life--of nature's
+indifference, nature's cruelty which has led some men to believe in two
+sovereign powers, one beneficent and one malicious, and has led others
+to say, 'God is a superfluous hypothesis, and to believe in Him brings
+more enigmas than it solves,' and has led still others to say, 'Why, if
+there _is_ a God, does it look as if either He was not all-
+powerful, or was not all-merciful?' Nature has but ambiguous evidence
+to give in support of this conviction.
+
+Then, if we turn to what we call Providence and its mysteries, the very
+book of Job, from which my second text is taken, is one of the earliest
+attempts to grapple with the difficulty and to untie the knot; and I
+suppose everybody will admit that, whatever may be the solution which
+is suggested by that enigmatical book, the solution is by no means a
+complete one, though it is as complete as the state of religious
+knowledge at the time at which the book was written made possible to be
+attained. The seventy-third psalm shows that even in that old time
+when, as I have said, supernatural sanctions were introduced into the
+ordinary dealings of life, the difficulties that cropped up were great
+enough to bring a devout heart to a stand, and to make the Psalmist
+say, 'My feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped.'
+Providence, with all its depths and mysteries, often to our aching
+hearts seems in our own lives to contradict the conviction, and when we
+look out over the sadness of humanity, still more does it seem
+impossible for us to hold fast by the faith 'that all which we behold
+is full of blessings.'
+
+I doubt not that there are many of ourselves whose lives, shadowed,
+darkened, hemmed in, perplexed, or made solitary for ever, seem to them
+to be hard to reconcile with this cheerful faith upon which I am trying
+to insist. Brethren, cling to it even in the darkness. Be sure of this,
+that amongst all our mercies there are none more truly merciful than
+those which come to us shrouded in dark garments, and in questionable
+shapes. Let nothing rob us of the confidence that 'all things work
+together for good.'
+
+III. I come, lastly, to consider the higher form in which this
+conviction is true for ever.
+
+I have said that the facts of life seem often to us, and are felt often
+by some of us, to shatter it to atoms; to riddle it through and through
+with shot. But, if we bring the Pattern-life to bear upon the
+illumination of all life, and if we learn the lessons of the Cradle and
+the Cross, and rise to the view of human life which emerges from the
+example of Jesus Christ, then we get back the old conviction,
+transfigured indeed, but firmer than ever. We have to alter the point
+of view. Everything always depends on the point of view. We have to
+alter one or two definitions. Definitions come first in geometry and in
+everything else. Get _them_ right, and you will get your theorems
+and problems right.
+
+So, looking at life in the light of Christ, we have to give new
+contents to the two words 'good' and 'evil,' and a new meaning to the
+two words 'for' and 'against.' And when we do that, then the
+difficulties straighten themselves out, and there are not any more
+knots, but all is plain; and the old faith of the Old Testament, which
+reposed very largely upon abnormal and extraordinary conditions of
+life, comes back in a still nobler form, as possible to be held by us
+amidst the commonplace of our daily existence.
+
+For everything is my friend, is for me and not against me, that helps
+me nearer to God. To live for Him, to live with Him, to be conscious
+ever of communion with Himself, to feel the touch of His hand on my
+hand, and the pressure of His breast against mine, at all moments of my
+life, is my true and the highest good. And if it is true that the
+'river of the water of life' which 'flows from the Throne of God' is
+the only draught that can ever satisfy the immortal thirst of a soul,
+then whatever drives me away from the cisterns and to the fountain, is
+on my side. Better to dwell in a 'dry and thirsty land, where no water
+is,' if it makes me long for the water that rises at the gate of the
+true Bethlehem--the house of bread--than to dwell in a land flowing
+with milk and honey, and well watered in every part! If the cup that I
+would fain lift to my lips has poison in it, or if its sweetness is
+making me lose my relish for the pure and tasteless river that flows
+from the Throne of God, there can be no truer friend than that
+calamity, as men call it, which strikes the cup from my hands, and
+shivers the glass before I have raised it to my lips. Everything is my
+friend that helps me towards God.
+
+Everything is my friend that leads me to submission and obedience. The
+joy of life, and the perfection of human nature, is an absolutely
+submitted will, identified with the divine, both in regard to doing and
+to enduring. And whatever tends to make my will flexible, so that it
+corresponds to all the sinuosities, so to speak, of the divine will,
+and fits into all its bends and turns, is a blessing to me. Raw hides,
+stiff with dirt and blood, are put into a bath of bitter infusion of
+oak-bark. What for? For the same end as, when they are taken out, they
+are scraped with sharp steels,--that they may become flexible. When
+that is done the useless hide is worth something.
+
+            'Our wills are ours, we know not how;
+             Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.'
+
+And whatever helps me to that is my friend.
+
+Everything is a friend to the man that loves God, in a far sweeter and
+deeper sense than it can ever be to any other. Like a sudden burst of
+sunshine upon a gloomy landscape, the light of union with God and
+friendship with Him flooding my daily life flashes it all up into
+brightness. The dark ribbon of the river that went creeping through the
+black copses, when the sun glints upon it, gleams up into links of
+silver, and the trees by its bank blaze out into green and gold.
+Brethren! 'Who follows pleasure follows pain'; who follows God finds
+pleasure following him. There can be no surer way to set the world
+against me than to try to make it for me, and to make it my all They
+tell us that if you want to count those stars that 'like a swarm of
+fire-flies tangled in a silver braid' make up the Pleiades, the surest
+way to see the greatest number of them is to look a little on one side
+of them. Look away from the joys and friendships of creatural things
+right up to God, and you will see these sparkling and dancing in the
+skies, as you never see them when you gaze at them only. Make them
+second and they are good and on your side. Make them first, and they
+will turn to be your enemies and fight against you.
+
+This conviction will be established still more irrefragably and
+wonderfully in that future. Nothing lasts but goodness. 'He that doeth
+the will of God abideth for ever.' To oppose it is like stretching a
+piece of pack-thread across the rails before the express comes; or
+putting up some thin wooden partition on the beach on one of the
+Western Hebrides, exposed to the whole roll of the Atlantic, which will
+be battered into ruin by the first winter's storm. Such is the end of
+all those who set themselves against God.
+
+But there comes a future in which, as dim hints tell us, these texts of
+ours shall receive a fulfilment beyond that realised in the present
+condition of things. 'Then comes the statelier Eden back to man,' and
+in a renewed and redeemed earth 'they shall not hurt nor destroy in all
+My holy mountain'; and the ancient story will be repeated in higher
+form. The servants shall be like the Lord who, when He had conquered
+temptation, 'was with the wild beasts' that forgot their enmity, and
+'angels ministered unto Him.' That scene in the desert may serve as a
+prophecy of the future when, under conditions of which we know nothing,
+all God's servants shall, even more markedly and manifestly than here,
+help each other; and every man that loves God will find a friend in
+every creature.
+
+If we take Him for our Commander, and enlist ourselves in that
+embattled host, then all weathers will be good; 'stormy winds,
+fulfilling His word,' will blow us to our port; 'the wilderness will
+rejoice and blossom as the rose'; and the whole universe will be
+radiant with the light of His presence, and ringing with the music of
+His voice. But if we elect to join the other army--for there is another
+army, and men have wills that enable them to lift themselves up against
+God, the Ruler of all things--then the old story, from which my first
+text is taken, will fulfil itself again in regard to us--'the stars in
+their courses will fight against' us; and Sisera, lying stiff and
+stark, with Jael's tent-peg through his temples, and the swollen
+corpses being swirled down to the stormy sea by 'that ancient river,
+the river Kishon,' will be a grim parable of the end of the men that
+set themselves against God, and so have the universe against them.
+'Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.'
+
+
+
+
+LOVE MAKES SUNS
+'Let them that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.'
+JUDGES V. 51.
+
+
+These are the closing words of Deborah, the great warrior-prophetess of
+Israel. They are in singular contrast with the tone of fierce
+enthusiasm for battle which throbs through the rest of the chant, and
+with its stern approval of the deed of Jael when she slew Sisera. Here,
+in its last notes, we have an anticipation of the highest and best
+truths of the Gospel. 'Let them that love Him be as the sun when he
+goeth forth in His might.' If we think of the singer, of the age and
+the occasion of the song, such purely spiritual, lofty words must seem
+very remarkable.
+
+I. Note, then, first of all, how here we have a penetrating insight
+into the essence of religion.
+
+This woman had been nourished upon a more or less perfect edition of
+what we know as the 'Mosaic Law.' Her faith had been fed by forms. She
+moved amidst a world full of the cruelties and dark conceptions of a
+mysterious divine power which torture heathenism apart from
+Christianity. She had forced her way through all that, and laid hold of
+the vital centre. And there, a way out amidst cruelty and murder,
+amidst the unutterable abominations and terrors of heathenism, in the
+centre of a rigid system of ceremonial and retaliation, the woman's
+heart spoke out, and taught her what was the great commandment.
+Prophetess she was, fighter she was, she could burst into triumphant
+approval of Jael's bloody deed; and yet with the same lips could speak
+this profound word. She had learned that 'Thou shalt _love_ the
+Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
+thy strength, and with all thy mind,' summed up all duty, and was the
+beginning of all good in man. That precept found an echo in her heart.
+Whatever part in her religious development may have been played by the
+externalisms of ceremonial, she had pierced to the core of religion.
+Advanced modern critics admit the antiquity of Deborah's song, and this
+closing stanza witnesses to the existence, at that early period, of a
+highly spiritual conception of the bond between God and man. Deborah
+had got as far, in a moment of exaltation and insight, as the teaching
+of the Apostle John, although her thought was strangely blended with
+the fierceness of the times in which she lived. Her approval of Jael's
+deed by no means warrants our approving it, but we may thankfully see
+that though she felt the fierce throbbing of desire for vengeance, she
+also felt this--'Them that _love_ Him; that is the Alpha and the
+Omega of all.'
+
+Our love must depend on our knowledge. Deborah's knowledge was a mere
+skeleton outline as compared with ours. Contrast the fervour of
+emotional affection that manifestly throbbed in her heart with the
+poor, cold pulsations which we dignify by the name of love, and the
+contrast may put us to shame. There is a religion of fear which
+dominates hundreds of professing Christians in this land of ours. There
+is a religion of duty, in which there is no delight, which has many
+adherents amongst us. There is a religion of form, which contents
+itself with the externals of Christianity, and that is the religion of
+many men and women in all our churches. And I may further say, there is
+a religion of faith, in its narrower and imperfect sense, which lays
+hold of and believes a body of Christian truth, and has never passed
+through faith into love. Not he who 'believes that God is,' and comes
+to Him with formal service and an alienated or negligent heart; not he
+who recognises the duty of worship, and discharges it because his
+conscience pricks him, but has no buoyancy within bearing him upwards
+towards the object of his love; not he who cowers before the dark
+shadow which some call God; but he who, knowing, trusts, and who,
+knowing and trusting 'the love which God hath to us,' pulses back the
+throbs of a recipient heart, and loves Him in return--he, and he only,
+is a worshipper. Let us learn the lesson that Deborah learnt below the
+palm-trees of Lapidoth, and if we want to understand what a religious
+man is, recognise that he is a man who loves God.
+
+II. Further, note the grand conception of the character which such a
+love produces.
+
+'Let them be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.' Think of the
+fierce Eastern sun, with 'sunbeams like swords,' that springs up from
+the East, and rushes to the zenith, and 'nothing is hid from the heat
+thereof'--a sun the like of which we, in our cloudy skies, never see
+nor feel, but which, to the Oriental, is the very emblem of splendour
+and of continuous, victorious power. There are two things here,
+radiance and energy, light and might.
+
+'As the sun when he goeth forth in his strength.' Deborah was a
+'prophetess,' and people say, 'What did she prophesy?' Well, she
+prophesied the heart of religion--as I have tried to show--in reference
+to its essence, and, as one sees by this phrase, in reference to its
+effects. What is her word but a partial anticipation of Christ's
+saying, 'Ye are the light of the world'; and of His disciple's
+utterance, 'Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the
+Lord: walk as children of light'?
+
+It is too plain to need any talking about, that the direct tendency of
+what we venture to call love to God, meaning thereby the turning of the
+whole nature to Him, in aspiration, admiration, longing for likeness,
+and practical imitation, is to elevate, ennoble, and illuminate the
+whole character. It was said about one woman that 'to love her was an
+education.' That was exaggeration; but it is below the truth about God.
+The true way to refine and elevate and educate is to cultivate love to
+God. And when we get near to Him, and hold by Him, and are continually
+occupied with Him; when our being is one continual aspiration after
+union with Him, and we experience the glow and rapture included in the
+simple word 'love,' then it cannot but be that we shall be like Him.
+
+That is what Paul meant when he said, 'Now are ye light in the Lord.'
+Union with Him illuminates. The true radiance of saintly character will
+come in the measure in which we are in fellowship with Jesus Christ.
+Deborah's astronomy was not her strong point. The sun shines by its own
+light. We are planets, and are darkness in ourselves, and it is only
+the reflection of the central sun that ever makes us look silvery white
+and radiant before men. But though it be derived, it is none the less
+our light, if it has passed into us, as it surely will, and if it
+streams out from us, as it no less surely will, in the measure in which
+love to God dominates our whole lives.
+
+If that is so, dear brethren, is not the shortest and the surest way to
+have our faces shining like that of Moses when he came down from the
+mountain, or like Stephen's when he 'saw the heavens opened,' to keep
+near Jesus Christ? It is slow work to hammer bits of ore out of the
+rock with a chisel and a mallet. Throw the whole mass into the furnace,
+and the metal will come out separated from the dross. Get up the heat,
+and the light, which is the consequence of the heat, will take care of
+itself. 'In the Lord' ye shall be 'light.'
+
+Is Deborah's aspiration fulfilled about me? Let each of us ask that.
+'As the sun when he goeth forth in his strength'--would anybody say
+that about my Christian character? Why not? Only because the springs
+have run low within is the stream low through the meadows. Only because
+the love is cold is the light feeble.
+
+There is another thought here. There is power in sunlight as well as
+radiance. On that truth the prophetess especially lays a finger; 'as
+the sun when he goeth forth in his _strength_.' She did not know
+what we know, that solar energy is the source of all energy on this
+earth, and that, just as in the deepest spiritual analysis 'there is no
+power but of God,' so in the material region we may say that the only
+force is the force of the sun, which not only stimulates vegetation and
+brings light and warmth--as the pre-scientific prophetess knew--but in
+a hundred other ways, unknown to her and known to modern science, is
+the author of all change, the parent of all life, and the reservoir of
+all energy.
+
+So we come to this thought: The true love of God is no weak,
+sentimental thing, such as narrow and sectional piety has often
+represented it to be, but it is a power which will invigorate the whole
+of a man, and make him strong and manly as well as gentle and gracious;
+being, indeed, the parent of all the so-called heroic and of all the
+so-called saintly virtues.
+
+The sun 'goeth forth in his strength,' rushing through the heavens to
+the zenith. As one of the other editions of this metaphor in the Old
+Testament has it, 'The path of the just is as the shining light, that
+shineth more and more until the noontide of the day.' That light,
+indeed, declines, but that fact does not come into view in the metaphor
+of the progressive growth towards perfection of the man in whom is the
+all-conquering might of the true love of Jesus Christ.
+
+Note the context of these words of our text, which, I said, presents so
+singular a contrast to them. It is a strange thing that so fierce a
+battle-chant should at the end settle down into such a sweet swan-song
+as this. It is a strange thing that in the same soul there should throb
+the delight in battle and almost the delight in murder, and these lofty
+thoughts. But let us learn the lesson that true love to God means
+hearty hatred of God's enemy, and that it will always have to be
+militant and sometimes stern and what people call fierce. Amidst the
+amenities and sentimentalities of modern life there is much necessity
+for remembering that the Apostle of love was a 'son of thunder,' and
+that it was the lips which summoned Israel to the fight, and chanted
+hymns of triumph over the corpses borne down by the rushing Kishon,
+which also said: 'Let them that love Him be as the sun when he shineth
+forth in his strength.' If you love God, you will surely be a strong
+man as well as an emotional and affectionate Christian.
+
+That energy is to be continuous and progressive. The sun that Deborah
+saw day by day spring from his station in the east, and climb to his
+height in the heavens, and ray down his beams, has been doing that for
+millions of years, and it will probably keep doing it for uncounted
+periods still. And so the Christian man, with continuity unbroken and
+progressive brilliance and power, should shine 'more and more till the
+unsetting noontide of the day.'
+
+III. That brings me to the last thought, which passes beyond the limits
+of the prophetess' vision. Here is a prophecy of which the utterer was
+unaware.
+
+There is a contrast drawn in the words of our text and in those
+immediately preceding. "So," says Deborah, after the fierce description
+of the slaughter of Sisera--'So let all Thine enemies perish, O Lord!
+but let them that love Thee be as the sun when he shineth in his
+strength.' She contrasts the transiency of the lives that pit
+themselves against God with the perpetuity that belongs to those which
+are in harmony with Him. The truth goes further than she probably knew;
+certainly further than she was thinking when she chanted these words.
+Let us widen them by other words which use the same metaphor, and say,
+'they that be wise'--that is a shallower word than 'them that love
+Thee'--'they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
+firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for
+ever and ever.' Let us widen and deepen them by sacreder words still;
+for Jesus Christ laid hold of this old metaphor, and said, describing
+the time when all the enemies shall have perished, and the weeds have
+been flung out of the vineyard, 'Then shall the righteous shine forth
+like the sun, in the Kingdom of their Father,' with a brilliancy that
+will fill heaven with new splendours, bright beyond all that we see
+here amidst the thick atmosphere and mists and clouds of the present
+life!
+
+Nor need we stop even there, for Jesus Christ not only laid hold of
+this metaphor in order to describe the eternal glory of the children of
+the Kingdom, but at the last time that human eyes on earth saw Him, the
+glorified Man Christ Jesus is thus described: 'His countenance was as
+the sun shineth in his strength.' Love always tends to likeness; and
+love to Christ will bring conformity with Him. The perfect love of
+heaven will issue in perfect and perpetual assimilation to Him. Science
+tells us that the light of the sun probably comes from its contraction;
+and that that process of contraction will go on until, at some point
+within the bounds of time, though far beyond the measure of our
+calculations, the sun himself shall die, the ineffectual beams will be
+paled, and there will be a black orb, with neither life nor light nor
+power. And then, then, and after that for ever, 'they that love Him'
+shall continue to be as that dead sun once was, when he went forth in
+his hot might.
+
+
+
+
+GIDEON'S ALTAR
+
+'Then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord, and called it Jehovah-
+shalom [God is peace].'--JUDGES vi. 24.
+
+
+I need not tell over again, less vividly, the picturesque story in this
+chapter, of the simple husbandman up in the hills, engaged furtively in
+threshing out a little wheat in some hollow in the rock where he might
+hide it from the keen eyes of the oppressors; and of how the angel of
+the Lord, unrecognised at first, appeared to him; and gradually there
+dawned upon his mind the suspicion of who He was who spoke. Then follow
+the offering, the discovery by fire, the shrinking of the man from
+contact with the divine, the wonderfully tranquillizing and
+condescending assurance, cast into the form of the ordinary salutation
+of domestic life: 'And the Lord said unto him Peace be unto thee!'--as
+any man might have said to any other--'fear not! thou shalt not die.'
+Then Gideon piles up the unhewn stones on the hillside into a rude
+altar, apparently not for the purpose of offering sacrifice, but for a
+monument, to which is given this strange name, strange upon such
+warrior lips, and strange in contemplation of the fierce conflict into
+which he was immediately to plunge, 'the Lord is peace.'
+
+How I think that this name, imposed for such a reason and under such
+circumstances, may teach us a good many things.
+
+I. The first thing that it seems to me to suggest is the great
+discovery which this man had made, and in the rapture of which he named
+his altar,--that the sight of God is _not_ death, but life and
+peace.
+
+Gideon was a plain, rude man, with no very deep religious experience.
+Apparently up to the moment of this vision he had been contentedly
+tolerating the idolatrous practices which had spread over all the
+country. He had heard of 'Jehovah.' It was a name, a tradition, which
+his fathers had told him. That was all that he knew of the God of
+Israel. Into this hearsay religion, as in a flash, while Gideon is busy
+about his threshing floor, thinking of his wheat or of the misery of
+his nation, there comes, all at once, this crushing conviction,--'the
+_hearsay_ God is beside you, speaking to you! You have personal
+relations to Him, He is nearer you than any human being is, He is no
+mere Name, here He stands!'
+
+And whenever the lightning edge of a conviction like that cuts its way
+through the formalisms and traditionalisms and hearsay repetitions of
+conventional religion, then there comes what came to Gideon, the swift
+thought, 'And if this be true, if I really do touch, and am touched by,
+that living Person whose name is Jehovah, what is to become of me?
+Shall I not shrivel up when His fiery finger is laid upon me? I have
+seen Him face to face, and I must die.'
+
+I believe that, in the case of the vast majority of men, the first
+living, real apprehension of a real, living God is accompanied with a
+shock, and has mingled with it something of awe, and even of terror.
+Were there no sin there would be no fear, and pure hearts would open in
+silent blessedness and yield their sweetest fragrance of love and
+adoration, when shone on by Him, as flowers do to the kiss of the
+sunbeams. But, taking into account the sad and universal fact of sin,
+it is inevitable that men should shrink from the Light which reveals
+their evil, and that the consciousness of God's presence should strike
+a chill. It is sad that it should be so. But it is sadder still when it
+is not so, but when, as is sometimes the case, the sight of God
+produces no sense of sin, and no consciousness of discord, or
+foreboding of judgment. For, only through that valley of the shadow of
+death lies the path to the happy confidence of peace with God, and
+unless there has been trembling at the beginning, there will be no firm
+and reasonable trust afterwards.
+
+For Gideon's terror opened the way for the gracious proclamation, which
+would have been needless but for it--'Peace be unto thee; fear not,
+thou shalt not die.'
+
+The sight of God passes from being a fear to a joy, from being a
+fountain of death to a spring of life, Terror is turned to tranquil
+trust. The narrow and rough path of conscious unworthiness leads to the
+large place of happy peace. The divine word fits Gideon's condition,
+and corresponds to his then deepest necessity; and so he drinks it in
+as the thirsty ground drinks in the water; and in the rapture of the
+discovery that the Name, that had come down from his fathers to him,
+was the Name of a real Person, with whom he stood in real
+relationships, and those of simple friendship and pure amity, he piles
+up the rough stones of the place, and makes the name of his altar the
+echo of the divine voice. It is as if he had said with rapture of
+surprise, 'Then Jehovah _is_ peace; which I never dreamed of
+before.'
+
+Dear friends, do you know anything of such an experience? Can you build
+your altar, and give it this same name? Can you write upon the memorial
+of your experiences, 'The Lord is my peace'? Have you passed from
+hearsay into personal contact? Can you say, 'I have heard of Thee by
+the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee'? Do you know the
+further experience expressed in the subsequent words of the same
+quotation: 'Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes'?
+And have you passed out of that stormy ocean of terror and self-
+condemnation into the quiet haven of trust in Him in whom we have peace
+with God, where your little boat lies quiet, moored for ever to the
+Rock of Ages, to 'Jehovah, who is Peace'?
+
+In connection with this rapturous discovery, and to Gideon strange new
+thought, we may gather the lesson that peace with God will give peace
+in all the soul. The 'peace with God' will pass into a wider thing, the
+'peace of God.' There is tranquillity in trust. There is rest in
+submission. There is repose in satisfied desires. When we live near
+Him, and have ceased from our own works, and let Him take control of us
+and direct us in all our ways, then the storms abate. The things that
+disturb us are by no means so much external as inward; and there is a
+charm and a fascination in the thought, 'the Lord is peace,' which
+stills the inward tempest, and makes us quiet, waiting upon His will
+and drawing in His grace. The secret of rest is to cease from self,
+from self as guide, from self as aim, from self as safety. And when
+self-will is cast out, and self-dependence is overcome, and self-
+reliance is sublimed into hanging upon God's hand, and when He, not
+mine own inclination, is my Director, and the Arbiter of my fate, then
+all the fever of unrest is swept wholly out of my heart, and there is
+nothing left in it on which the gnawing tooth of anxiety or of care can
+prey. God being my peace, and I yielding myself to Him, 'in quietness
+and confidence' is my 'strength.' 'Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace
+whose mind is stayed upon Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.'
+
+II. We may look upon this inscription from another point of view, as
+suggesting the thought that God's peace is the best preparation for,
+and may be experienced in the midst of, the intensest conflict.
+
+Remember what the purpose of this vision was,--to raise up a man to
+fight an almost desperate fight, no metaphorical war, but one with real
+sharp swords, against real strong enemies. The first blow in the
+campaign was to be struck that night. Gideon was being summoned by the
+vision, to long years of hardship and bitter warfare, and his
+preparation for the conflict consisted largely in the revelation to his
+inmost spirit that 'Jehovah is peace.' We might rather have looked for
+a manifestation of the divine nature as ready to go forth to battle
+with the raw levies of timid peasants. We should have expected the
+thought which inspired their captain to have been 'The Lord is a man of
+war,' rather than 'The Lord is peace.' But it is not so--and therein
+lies the deep truth that the peace of God is the best preparation for
+strife. It gives courage, it leaves the heart at leisure to fling all
+its power into the conflict, it inspires with the consciousness of a
+divine ally. As Paul puts it, in his picture of the fully-armed
+Christian soldier, the feet are 'shod with the preparedness of alacrity
+which is produced by the gospel of peace.' That will make us 'ready,
+aye ready' for the roughest march, and enable us to stand firm against
+the most violent charges of the enemy. There is no such preparation for
+the conflict of life, whether it be waged against our own inward evil,
+or against opposing forces without, as to have deep within the soul the
+settled and substantial peace of God. If we are to come out of the
+battle with victory sitting on our helmets, we must go into it with the
+Dove of God brooding in our hearts. As the Lord said to Gideon, 'Go in
+_this_ thy might, and thou shalt save Israel, ... have not I sent
+thee?'
+
+But, besides this thought that the knowledge of Jehovah as peace fits
+us for strife, that hastily-reared altar with its seemingly
+inappropriate name, may remind us that it is possible, in the midst of
+the deadliest hand-to-hand grip with evil, and whilst fighting the
+'good fight of faith' with the most entire self-surrender to the divine
+will, to bear within us, deeper than all the surface strife, that
+inward tranquillity which knows no disturbance, though the outward life
+is agitated by fierce storms. Deep in the centre of the ocean the
+waters lie quiet, though the wildest tempests are raging above, and the
+fiercest currents running. Over the tortured and plunging waters of the
+cataract there lies unmoving, though its particles are in perpetual
+flux, the bow of promise and of peace. So over all the rush and thunder
+of life there may stretch, radiant and many-coloured, and dyed with
+beauty by the very sun himself, the abiding bow of beauty, the emblem
+and the reality of the divine tranquillity. The Christian life is
+continual warfare, but in it all, 'the peace of God which passeth
+understanding' may 'garrison our hearts and minds.' In the inmost keep
+of the castle, though the storm of war may be breaking against the
+walls, there will be a quiet chamber where no noise of the archers can
+penetrate, and the shouts of the fight are never heard. Let us seek to
+live in the 'secret place of the Most High'; and in still communion
+with Him, keep our inmost souls in quiet, while we bravely front
+difficulties and enemies. You are to be God's warriors; see to it that
+on every battlefield there stands the altar 'Jehovah Shalom.'
+
+III. Lastly, we may draw yet another lesson, and say that that altar,
+with its significant inscription, expressed the aim of the conflict and
+the hope which sustains in the fight.
+
+Gideon was fighting for peace, and what he desired was that victory
+should bring tranquillity. The hope which beckoned him on, when he
+flung himself into his else desperate enterprise, was that God would so
+prosper his work that the swords might be beaten into ploughshares, and
+the spears into pruning hooks. Which things may stand as an allegory,
+and suggest to us that the Christian warfare, whilst it rests upon, and
+is prompted by, the revelation of God who is peace, aims in all its
+blows, at the conquering of that sure and settled peace which shall be
+broken by no rebellious outbursts of self-will, nor by any risings of
+passions and desires. The aim of our warfare should ever be that the
+peace of God may be throned in our hearts, and sit there a gentle
+queen. The true tranquillity of the blessed life is the prize of
+conflict. David, 'the man of war from his youth,' prepares the throne
+for Solomon, in whose reign no alarms of war are heard. If you would
+enter into peace, you must fight your way to it, and every step of the
+road must be a battle. The land of peace is won by the good fight of
+faith.
+
+But Gideon's altar not only expressed his purpose in his taking up
+arms, but his confidence of accomplishing it, based upon the assurance
+that the Lord would give peace. It was a trophy erected before the
+fight, and built, not by arrogant presumption or frivolous
+underestimate of the enemy's strength, but by humble reliance on the
+power of that Lord who had promised His presence, and had assured
+triumph. So the hope that named this altar was the hope that war meant
+victory, and that victory would bring peace. That hope should animate
+every Christian soldier. Across the dust of the conflict, the fair
+vision of unbroken and eternal peace should gleam before each of us,
+and we should renew fainting strength and revive drooping courage by
+many a wistful gaze.
+
+We may realise that hope in large measure here. But its fulfilment is
+reserved for the land of peace which we enter by the last conflict with
+the last enemy.
+
+Every Christian man's gravestone is an altar on which is written 'Our
+God is peace'; in token that the warrior has passed into the land where
+'violence shall no more be heard, wasting, nor destruction within its
+borders,' but all shall be deep repose, and the unarmed, because
+unattacked, peace of tranquil communion with, and likeness to, 'Jehovah
+our Peace.'
+
+So, dear brethren, let us pass from tradition and hearsay into personal
+intercourse with God, and from shrinking and doubt into the sunshine of
+the conviction that He is our peace. And then, with His tranquillity in
+our hearts let us go out, the elect apostles of the peace of God, and
+fight for Him, after the pattern of the Captain of our salvation, who
+had to conquer peace through conflict; and was 'first of all King of
+Righteousness, and _after that_ also King of Peace.'
+
+
+
+
+GIDEON'S FLEECE
+
+'Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on
+the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I
+know that Thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as Thou hast said.'--
+JUDGES vi. 37.
+
+
+The decisive moment had come when Gideon, with his hastily gathered raw
+levies, was about to plunge down to the plain to face immensely
+superior forces trained to warfare. No wonder that the equally
+untrained leader's heart heat faster. Many a soldier, who will be
+steadfastly brave in the actual shock of battle, has tremors and
+throbbings on its eve. Gideon's hand shook a little as he drew his
+sword.
+
+I. Gideon's request.
+
+His petition for a sign was not the voice of unbelief or of doubt or of
+presumption, but in it spoke real, though struggling faith, seeking to
+be confirmed. Therefore it was not regarded by God as a sin. When a
+'wicked and adulterous generation asked for a sign,' no sign was given
+it, but when faith asks for one to help it to grasp God's hand, and to
+go on His warfare in His strength and as His instrument, it does not
+ask in vain.
+
+Gideon's prayer was wrapped, as it were, in an enfolding promise, for
+it is preceded and followed by the quotation of words of the Angel of
+the Lord who had 'looked on him,' and said, 'Go in this thy might and
+save Israel from the hand of Midian: have not I sent thee?' Prayers
+that begin and end with 'as Thou hast spoken' are not likely to be
+repulsed.
+
+II. God's answer.
+
+God wonderfully allows Gideon to dictate the nature of the sign. He
+stoops to work it both ways, backwards and forwards, as it were. First
+the fleece is to be wet and the ground to be dry, then the fleece is to
+be dry and the ground wet. Miracle was a necessary accompaniment of
+revelation in those early days, as picture-books are of childhood. But,
+though we are far enough from being 'men' in Christ, yet we have not
+the same need for 'childish things' as Gideon and his contemporaries
+had. We have Christ and the Spirit, and so have a 'word made more sure'
+than to require signs. But still it is true that the same gracious
+willingness to help a tremulous faith, which carries its tremulousness
+to God in prayer, moves the Father's heart to-day, and that to such
+petitions the answer is given even before they are offered: 'Ask what
+ye will, and it shall be done unto you.' No sign that eyes can see is
+given, but inward whispers speak assurance and communicate the
+assurance which they speak.
+
+III. The meaning of the sign.
+
+Many explanations have been offered. The main point is that the fleece
+is to be made different from the soil around it. It is to be a proof of
+God's power to endow with characteristics not derived from, and
+resulting in qualities unlike, the surroundings.
+
+Gideon had no thought of any significance beyond that. But we may
+allowably let the Scripture usage of the symbol of dew influence our
+reading into the symbol a deeper meaning than it bore to him.
+
+God makes the fleece wet with dew, while all the threshing-floor is
+dry. Dew is the symbol of divine grace, of the silently formed moisture
+which, coming from no apparent source, freshens by night the wilted
+plants, and hangs in myriad drops, that twinkle into green and gold as
+the early sunshine strikes them, on the humblest twig. That grace is
+plainly not a natural product nor to be accounted for by environment.
+The dew of the Spirit, which God and God only, can give, can freshen
+our worn and drooping souls, can give joy in sorrow, can keep us from
+being touched by surrounding evils, and from being parched by
+surrounding drought, can silently 'distil' its supplies of strength
+according to our need into our else dry hearts.
+
+The wet fleece on the dry ground was not only a revelation of God's
+power, but may be taken as a pattern of what God's soldiers must ever
+be. A prophet long after Gideon said: 'The remnant of Jacob shall be in
+the midst of many peoples as dew from the Lord,' bringing to others the
+grace which they have received that they may diffuse it, and turning
+the dry and thirsty land where no water is into fertility, and the
+'parched ground' into a 'pool.'
+
+We have said that the main point of Gideon's petition was that the
+fleece should be made unlike the threshing-floor, and that that
+unlikeness, which could obviously not be naturally brought about, was
+to be to him the sure token that God was at work to produce it. The
+strongest demonstration that the Church can give the world of its
+really being God's Church is its unlikeness to the world. If it is wet
+with divine dew when all the threshing-floor is dry, and if, when all
+the floor is drenched with poisonous miasma, it is dry from the
+diffused and clinging malaria, the world will take knowledge of it, and
+some souls be set to ask how this unlikeness comes. When Haman has to
+say: 'There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among
+the peoples ... and their laws are diverse from those of every people,'
+he may meditate murder, but 'many from among the people of the land'
+will join their ranks. Gideon may or may not have thought of the fleece
+as a symbol of his little host, but we may learn from it the old
+lesson, 'Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the
+renewing of your minds.'
+
+
+
+
+'FIT, THOUGH FEW'
+
+'Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him,
+rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host
+of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh,
+in the valley. 2. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are
+with thee are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands,
+lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, saying, Mine own hand hath
+saved me. 3. Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people,
+saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart
+early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and
+two thousand; and there remained ten thousand. 4. And the Lord said
+unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the
+water, and I will try them for thee there: and it shall be, that of
+whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with
+thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee. This shall not go with thee,
+the same shall not go. 5. So he brought down the people unto the water:
+and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with
+his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise
+every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. 6. And the number
+of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three
+hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees
+to drink water. 7. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred
+men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine
+hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place. 8. So
+the people took victuals in their hand, and their trumpets: and he sent
+all the rest of Israel every man unto his tent, and retained those
+three hundred men. And the host of Midian was beneath him in the
+valley.'--JUDGES vii 1-8.
+
+
+Gideon is the noblest of the judges. Courage, constancy, and caution
+are strongly marked in his character. The youngest son of an obscure
+family in a small tribe, he humbly shrinks from the task imposed on
+him,--not from cowardice or indolence, but from conscious weakness. Men
+who are worthy to do such work as his are never forward to begin it,
+nor backward in it when they are sure that it is God's will. He began
+his war against Midian by warring against Baal, whose worship had
+brought the oppressor. If any thorough deliverance from the misery
+which departure from God has wrought is to be effected, we must destroy
+the idols before we attack the spoilers. Cast out sin, and you cast out
+sorrow. So he first earns his new name of Jerubbaal ('Let Baal plead'),
+and is known as Baal's antagonist, before he blows the trumpet of
+revolt. The name is an omen of victory. The hand that had smitten the
+idol, and had not been withered, would smite Midian. Therefore that new
+name is used in this chapter, which tells of the preparations for the
+fight and its triumphant issue. From his home among the hills, he had
+sent the fiery cross to the three northern tribes, who had been the
+mainstay of Deborah's victory, and who now rallied around Gideon to the
+number of thirty-two thousand. The narrative shows us the two armies
+confronting each other on the opposite slopes of the valley of Jezreel,
+where it begins to dip steeply towards the Jordan. Gideon and his men
+are on the south side of the valley, above the fountain of Harod, or
+'Trembling,' apparently so called from the confessed terror which
+thinned his army. The word 'is afraid,' in verse 3, comes from the same
+root. On the other side of the glen, not far from the site of the
+Philistine camp on the day of Saul's last defeat, lay the far-
+stretching camp of the invaders, outnumbering Israel by four to one.
+For seven years these Midianite marauders had paralysed Israel, and
+year by year had swarmed up this valley from the eastern desert, and
+thence by the great plain had penetrated into every corner of the land,
+as far south as Gaza, devouring like locusts. It is the same easy route
+by which, to this day, the Bedouin find their way into Palestine,
+whenever the weak Turkish Government is a little weaker or more corrupt
+than usual. Apparently, the Midianites were on their homeward march,
+laden with spoil, and very contemptuous of the small force across the
+valley, who, on their part, had not shaken off their terror of the
+fierce nomads who had used them as they pleased for seven years.
+
+I. Note, as the first lesson taught here, the divinely appointed
+disproportion between means and end, and its purpose. Many an Israelite
+would look across to the long lines of black tents, and think, 'We are
+too few for our task'; but to God's eye they were too many, and the
+first necessity was to weed them out. The numbers must be so reduced
+that the victory shall be unmistakably God's, not theirs. The same sort
+of procedure, and for the same reason, runs through all God's dealings.
+It is illustrated in a hundred Scripture instances, and is stated most
+plainly by Paul in his triumphant eloquence. He revels in telling how
+foolish, weak, base things, that are _no_ things in the world's
+estimate, have been chosen to cover with shame wise, strong, honoured
+things, which seem to be somewhat; and he gives the same reason as our
+lesson does, 'that no flesh should glory in His presence.' Eleven poor
+men on one side, and all the world on the other, made fearful odds. The
+more unevenly matched are the respective forces, the more plainly does
+the victory of the weaker demand for its explanation the intervention
+of God. The old sneer, that 'Providence is always on the side of the
+strongest battalions,' is an audacious misreading of history, and is
+the very opposite of the truth. It is the weak battalions which win in
+the long run, for the history of every good cause is the same. First,
+it kindles a fire in the hearts of two or three nobodies, who are
+burned in earlier times, and laughed at as fools, fanatics,
+impracticable dreamers, in later ages, but whose convictions grow till,
+one day, the world wakes up to find that everybody believes them, and
+then it 'builds the tombs of the prophets.'
+
+Why should God desire that there shall be no mistake as to who wins the
+battle? The answer may very easily be so given as to make what is
+really a token of His love become an unlovely and repellent trait in
+His character. It is not eagerness for praise that moves Him, but
+longing that men may have the blessedness of recognising His hand
+fighting for them. It is for Israel's sake that He is so solicitous to
+deliver them from the delusion of their having won the victory. It is
+because He loves us and would fain have us made restful, confident,
+and strong, in the assurance of His fighting for us, that He takes
+pains so to order the history of His Church in the world, that it is
+one long attestation of the omnipotence of weakness when His power
+flows through it. To say 'Mine own hand hath saved me,' is to lose
+unspeakable peace and blessing; to say 'Not I, but the grace of God in
+me,' is to be serene and of good cheer in the face of outnumbering
+foes, and sure of victory in all conflicts. Therefore God is careful to
+save us from self-gratulation and self-confidence.
+
+One lesson we may learn from this thinning of the ranks; namely, that
+we need not be anxious to count heads, when we are sure that we are
+doing His work, nor even be afraid of being in a minority. Minorities
+are generally right when they are the apostles of new thoughts, though
+the minorities which cleave to some old fossil are ordinarily wrong.
+The prophet and his man were alone and ringed around with enemies, when
+he said, 'They that be with us are more than they that be with them';
+and yet he was right, for the mountain was full of horses and chariots
+of fire. Let us be sure that we are on God's side, and then let us not
+mind how few are in the ranks with us, nor be afraid, though the far-
+extended front of the enemy threatens to curl around our flanks and
+enclose us. The three hundred heroes had God with them, and that was
+enough.
+
+II. Note the self-applied test of courage which swept away so much
+chaff. According to Deuteronomy xx. 8, the standing enactment was that
+such a proclamation as that in verse 3 should precede every battle.
+Much difficulty has been raised about the mention of Mount Gilead here,
+as the only Mount Gilead otherwise mentioned in Scripture lay to the
+east of Jordan. But perhaps the simplest solution is the true one,-
+that there was another hilly region so named on the western side. The
+map of the Palestine Exploration Fund attaches the name to the northern
+slopes of the western end of Gilboa, where Gideon was now encamped, and
+that is probably right. Be that as it may, the effect of the
+proclamation was startling. Two-thirds of the army melted away. No
+doubt, many who had flocked to Gideon's standard felt their valour
+oozing out at their finger ends, when they came close to the enemy, and
+saw their long array across the valley. It must have required some
+courage to confess being afraid, but the cowards were numerous enough
+to keep each other in countenance. Two out of three were panic-struck.
+I wonder if the proportion would be less in Christ's army to-day, if
+professing Christians were as frank as Gideon's men?
+
+Why were the 'fearful' dismissed? Because fear is contagious; and, in
+undisciplined armies like Gideon's, panic, once started, spreads
+swiftly, and becomes frenzied confusion. The same thing is true in the
+work of the Church to-day. Who that has had much to do with guiding its
+operations has not groaned over the dead weight of the timid and
+sluggish souls, who always see difficulties and never the way to get
+over them? And who that has had to lead a company of Christian men has
+not often been ready to wish that he could sound out Gideon's
+proclamation, and bid the 'fearful and afraid' take away the chilling
+encumbrance of their presence, and leave him with thinned ranks of
+trusty men? Cowardice, dressed up as cautious prudence, weakens the
+efficiency of every regiment in Christ's army.
+
+Another reason for getting rid of the fearful is that fear is the
+opposite of faith, and that therefore, where it is uppermost, the door
+by which God's power can enter to strengthen is closed. Not that faith
+must be free of all admixture of fear, but that it must subdue fear, if
+a man is to be God's warrior, fighting in His strength. Many a tremor
+would rock the hearts of the ten thousand who remained, but they so
+controlled their terror that it did not overcome their faith. We do not
+need, for our efficiency in Christ's service, complete exemption from
+fear, but we do need to make the psalmist's resolve ours: 'I will
+trust, and not be afraid.' Terror shuts the door against the entrance
+of the grace which makes us conquerors, and so fulfils its own
+forebodings; faith opens the door, and so fulfils its own confidences.
+
+III. Note the final test. God required but few men, but He required
+that these should be fit. The first test had sifted out the brave and
+willing. The liquor was none the less, though so much froth had been
+blown off. As Thomas Fuller says, there were 'fewer persons, but not
+fewer men,' after the poltroons had disappeared. The second test, 'a
+purgatory of water,' as the same wise and witty author calls it, was
+still more stringent. The dwindled ranks were led down from their camp
+on the slopes to the fountain and brook which lay in the valley near
+the Midianites' camp. Gideon alone seems to have known that a test was
+to be applied there; but he did not know what it was to be till they
+reached the spring, and the soldiers did not know that they were
+determining their fate when they drank. The two ways of drinking
+clearly indicated a difference in the men. Those who glued their lips
+to the stream and swilled till they were full, were plainly more self-
+indulgent, less engrossed with their work, less patient of fatigue and
+thirst, than those who caught up enough in their curved palms to
+moisten their lips without stopping in their stride or breaking rank.
+The former test was self-applied, and consciously so. This is no less
+self-applied, though unconsciously. God shuts out no man from His army,
+but men shut themselves out; sometimes knowingly, by avowed
+disinclination for the warfare, sometimes unknowingly, by self-
+indulgent habits, which proclaim their unfitness.
+
+The great lesson taught here is that self-restraint in the use of the
+world's goods is essential to all true Christian warfare. There are two
+ways of looking at and partaking of these. We may either 'drink for
+strength' or 'for drunkenness' .Life is to some men first a place for
+strenuous endeavour, and only secondly a place of refreshment. Such
+think of duty first and of water afterwards. To them, all the innocent
+joys and pleasures of the natural life are as brooks by the way, of
+which Christ's soldier should drink, mainly that he may be re-
+invigorated for conflict. There are others whose conception of life is
+a scene of enjoyment, for which work is unfortunately a necessary but
+disagreeable preliminary. One does not often see such a character in
+its pure perfection of sensualism; but plenty of approximations to it
+are visible, and ugly sights they are. The roots of it are in us all;
+and it cannot be too strongly insisted on that, unless it be subdued,
+we cannot enlist in Christ's army, and shall never be counted worthy to
+be His instruments. Such self-restraint is especially needful to be
+earnestly inculcated on young men and women, to whom life is opening as
+if it were a garden of delight, whose passions are strong, whose sense
+is keen, whose experience is slender, and to whom all earth's joys
+appeal more strongly than they do to those who have drunk of the cup,
+and know how bitter is its sediment. It is especially needful to be
+pealed into the ears of a generation like ours, in which senseless
+luxury, the result of wealth which has increased faster than the power
+of rightly using it, has attained such enormous proportions, and is
+threatening, in commercial communities especially, to drown all noble
+aspirations, and Spartan simplicity, and Christian self-devotion, in
+its muddy flood. Surely never was Gideon's test more wanted for the
+army of the Lord of hosts than it is to-day.
+
+Such self-restraint gives double sweetness to enjoyments, which, when
+partaken of more freely, pall on the jaded palate. 'The full soul
+loatheth a honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is
+sweet.' The senses are kept fine-edged, and the rare holidays are
+sweeter because they are rare. The most refined prudence of the mere
+sensualist would prescribe the same regimen as the Christian moralist
+does. But from how different a motive! Christ calls for self-restraint
+that we may be fit organs for His power, and bids us endure hardness
+that we may be good soldiers of His. If we know anything of the true
+sweetness of His fellowship and service, it will not be hard to drink
+sparingly of earthly fountains, when we have the river of His pleasures
+to drink from; nor will it be painful sacrifice to cast away imitation
+jewels, in order to clasp in our hands the true riches of His love and
+imparted life.
+
+
+
+
+A BATTLE WITHOUT A SWORD
+
+'And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream
+unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake
+of barley-bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent,
+and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along.
+14. And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the
+sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand
+hath God delivered Midian, and all the host. 15, And it was so, when
+Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation thereof,
+that he worshipped, and returned into the host of Israel, and said,
+Arise; for the Lord hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian.
+16. And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he
+put a trumpet in every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps
+within the pitchers. 17. And be said unto them, Look on me, and do
+likewise: and, behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall
+be, that as I do, so shall ye do. 18. When I blow with a trumpet, I and
+all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every side of
+all the camp, and say, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. 19. So
+Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside
+of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but
+newly set the watch: and they blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers
+that were in their hands. 20. And the three companies blew the
+trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left
+hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they
+cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. 21. And they stood every
+man in his place round about the camp: and all the host ran, and cried,
+and fled. 22. And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the Lord set
+every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and
+the host fled to Beth-shittah in Zererath, and to the border of Abel-
+meholah, unto Tabbath. 23. And the men of Israel gathered themselves
+together out of Naphtali, and out of Asher, and out of all Manasseh,
+and pursued after the Midianites.'--JUDGES vii. 13-23.
+
+
+To reduce thirty-two thousand to three hundred was a strange way of
+preparing for a fight; and, no doubt, the handful left felt some
+sinking of their courage when they looked on their own small number and
+then on the widespread Midianite host. Gideon, too, would need
+heartening. So the first thing to be noted is the encouragement given
+him. God strengthens faith when it needs strengthening, and He has many
+ways of doing so. Note that Gideon's visit to the Midianite camp was on
+'the same night' on which his little band was left alone after the
+ordeal by water. How punctually to meet our need, when it begins to be
+felt, does God's help come! It was by God's command that he undertook
+the daring adventure of stealing down to the camp. We can fancy how
+silently he and Phurah crept down the hillside, and, with hushed breath
+and wary steps, lest they should stumble on and wake some sleeper, or
+even rouse some tethered camel, picked their way among the tents. But
+they had God's command and promise, and these make men brave, and turn
+what would else be foolhardy into prudence. Ho put his ear to the black
+camel's-hair wall of one tent, and heard what his faith could not but
+recognise as God's message to him.
+
+The soldier's dream was just such as such a man would dream in such
+circumstances. A round loaf of barley (the commonest kind of bread) was
+dreamed of as rolling down from a height and upsetting '_the_
+tent.' The use of the definite article seems to point to some
+particular tent, perhaps simply the one in which the dreamer lay, or
+perhaps the general's; but the noun may be used as a collective, and
+what is meant may be that the loaf went through the camp, overturning
+all the tents in its way. The interpretation needed no Daniel, but the
+immediate explanation given, shows not only the transparency of the
+symbol, but the dread in the Midianite ranks of Gideon's prowess. A
+nameless awe, which goes far to produce the defeat it dreads, was
+beginning to creep over them. It finds utterance both in the dream and
+in its translation. The tiny loaf worked effects disproportioned to its
+size. A rock thundering down the hillside might have mass and momentum
+enough to level a line of tents, but one poor loaf to do it! Some
+mightier than human hand must have set it going on its career. So the
+soldier interprets that God had delivered the army into Gideon's hand.
+
+This dream suggests two or three considerations. In several instances
+we find God speaking to those outside Israel by dreams; for example, to
+Pharaoh and his two officers, Nebuchadnezzar, Pilate's wife. It is the
+lowest form of divine communication, and, like other lower forms, is
+not to be looked for when the higher teaching of the Spirit of Christ
+is open to us all.
+
+Again, while both dream and interpretation might be accounted for on
+simply natural grounds, a deeper insight into the so-called 'natural'
+brings us to see it as all penetrated by the operations of the ever-
+present God. And the coincidences which brought Gideon to just that
+tent among the thousands along the valley at just the moment when the
+two startled sleepers were talking, might well strike Gideon, as they
+did, as being God's own fulfilment of the promise that 'what they say'
+would strengthen his hands for the attack (v. 11).
+
+Further, Gideon had already had the sign of the fleece and the dew; but
+God does not disdain to let him have an additional encouragement, and
+to let him draw confirmation of his own token from the talk of two
+Midianites. Faith may be buttressed by men's words, albeit its only
+foundation is God's.
+
+Gideon has a place in the muster-roll of heroes of faith in Hebrews
+xi., and his whole conduct in this incident proves his right to stand
+there. 'He worshipped,' for his soul went out in trust to God, whose
+voice he heard through the two Midianites, and bowed in thankfulness
+and submissive obedience. There could be no outward worship there, with
+an army of sleepers close by, but the silent uplifting of confidence
+and desire reaches God and strengthens the man. So he went back with
+new assurance of victory, and roused his sleeping band.
+
+Mark his words as another token of his faith. The Midianite interpreter
+had said, '_God_ has delivered'; Gideon says, 'The _Lord_ has
+delivered.' The former name is the more general, and is natural on the
+lips of a heathen; the latter is the covenant name, and to use it
+implies reliance on the Jehovah revealed by His acts to Israel. The
+Midianite had said that the host was delivered into Gideon's hand; he
+says that it is delivered into the hands of the three hundred,
+suppressing himself and honouring them. God's soldiers must be willing
+to 'esteem others better than themselves,' and to fight for God's
+glory, not their own. The Midianite had said, 'This is ... the sword of
+Gideon'; he bid his men cry 'the sword of _the Lord, and_ of
+Gideon.' It was God's cause for which they were contending, not his;
+and yet it was his, inasmuch as he was God's instrument. 'Excellent
+mixture,' says Thomas Fuller, 'both joined together; admirable method,
+God put in the first place. Where divine blessing leads up the van, and
+man's valour brings up the battle, must not victory needs follow in the
+rear?'
+
+Gideon does not seem to have been divinely directed to the stratagem by
+which the Midianites were thrown into panic. He had been promised
+victory, but that does not lead him to idle waiting for fulfilment of
+the promise. 'To wait for God's performance in doing nothing is to
+abuse that divine providence, which will so work that it will not allow
+us to idle' (_Bishop Hall_). True faith will wisely adopt means to
+reach promised ends, and, having used brain and hand as if all depended
+on ourselves, will look to Him, as if nothing depended on us, but all
+on Him.
+
+There was strong faith as well as daring and skilful generalship in
+leading down the three hundred, with no weapons but trumpets and
+pitchers, to close quarters with an armed enemy so superior in numbers.
+And did it not need some faith, too, not only in Gideon but in God, on
+the part of his band, to plunge down the hill on such an errand, each
+man with both his hands full, and so unable to strike a blow? The other
+three hundred at Thermopylae have been wept over and sung; were not
+these three hundred as true heroes? Let us not count heads when we are
+called on to take God's side. His soldiers are always in the minority,
+but, if He is reckoned in, the minority becomes the majority. 'They
+that be with us are more than they that be with them.'
+
+One can fancy the sleepers starting up dazed by the sudden bray of the
+trumpets and the wild shout of that war-cry yelled from every side. As
+they stumbled out of their tents, without leaders, without knowledge of
+the numbers of their foe, and saw all around the flaring torches, and
+heard the trumpet-blasts, which seemed to speak of an immense attacking
+force, no wonder that panic shook them, and they fled. Huge mobs of
+undisciplined men, as Eastern armies are, and these eminently were, are
+especially liable to such infectious alarms; and the larger the force,
+the faster does panic spread, the more unmanageable does the army
+become, and the more fatal are the results. Each man reflects, and so
+increases, his neighbour's fear. 'Great armies, once struck with
+amazement, are like wounded whales. Give them but line enough, and the
+fishes will be the fishermen to catch themselves.'
+
+So the host broke up in wild disorder, and hurried in fragments towards
+the Jordan fords, trampling each other down as they raced through the
+darkness, and each man, as he ran, dreading to feel the enemy's sword
+in his back next moment. `The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the
+righteous is bold as a lion.' Thus without stroke of weapon was the
+victory won. The battle was the Lord's.
+
+And the story is not antiquated in substance, however the form of the
+contests which God's soldiers have to-day to fight has changed. Still
+it is true that we shall only wage war aright when we feel that it is
+His cause for which we contend, and His sword which wins the victory.
+If Gideon had put himself first in his warcry, or had put his own name
+only in it, the issue would have been different.
+
+May we not also venture to apply the peculiar accoutrements of the
+victorious three hundred to ourselves? Christ's men have no weapons to
+wield but the sounding out from them, as from a trumpet, of the word of
+the Lord, and the light of a Christian life shining through earthen
+vessels. If we boldly lift up our voices in the ancient war-cry, and
+let that word peal forth from us, and flash the light of holy lives on
+a dark world, we may break the sleeper's slumbers to a glad waking, and
+win the noblest of victories by leading them to enlist in the army of
+our Captain, and to become partakers of His conquests by letting Him
+conquer, and thereby save them.
+
+
+
+
+STRENGTH PROFANED AND LOST
+
+'But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him
+down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in
+the prison-house. 22, Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again
+after he was shaven. 23. Then the lords of the Philistines gathered
+them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and
+to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into
+our hand. 24. And when the people saw him, they praised their god: for
+they said, Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the
+destroyer of our country, which slew many of us. 25. And it came to
+pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson,
+that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the
+prison-house; and he made them sport; and they set him between the
+pillars. 20. And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand.
+Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth,
+that I may lean upon them. 27. Now the house was full of men and women;
+and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon
+the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson
+made sport. 28. And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God,
+remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this
+once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Phillistines.  And he
+bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords,
+and upon all the people that were therein.  So the dead which he slew
+at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.  31. Then
+his brethren and all the house of his father came down, and took him,
+and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Ishtaol in the
+burying place of Munnah his father.  And he judged Israel twenty
+years.'--Judges xvi. 21-31.
+
+
+Nobody could be less like the ordinary idea of an Old Testament 'saint'
+than Samson. His gift from 'the spirit of the Lord' was simply physical
+strength, and it was associated with the defects of his qualities. His
+passions were strong, and apparently uncontrolled. He had no moral
+elevation or religious fervour. He led no army against the Philistines,
+nor seems to have had any fixed design of resisting them. He seeks a
+wife among them, and is ready to feast and play at riddles with them.
+When he does attack them, it is because he is stung by personal
+injuries; and it is only with his own arm that he strikes. His exploits
+have a mixture of grim humour and fierce hatred quite unlike anything
+else in Scripture, and more resembling the horse-play of Homeric or
+Norse heroes than the stern purpose and righteous wrath of a soldier
+who felt that he was God's instrument. We seem to hear his loud
+laughter as he ties the firebrands to the struggling jackals, or swings
+the jaw-bone. A strange champion for Jehovah! But we must not leave out
+of sight, in estimating his character, the Nazarite vow, which his
+parents had made before his birth, and he had endorsed all his life.
+
+
+That supplies the substratum which is lacking, The unshorn hair and the
+abstinence from wine were the signs of consecration to God, which might
+often fail of reaching the deepest recesses of the will and spirit, but
+still was real, and gave the point of contact for the divine gift of
+strength. Samson's strength depended on his keeping the vow, of which
+the outward sign was the long, matted locks; and therefore, when he let
+these be shorn, he voluntarily cast away his dependence on and
+consecration to God, and his strength ebbed from him. He had broken the
+conditions on which he received it, and it disappeared. So the story
+which connects the loss of his long hair with the loss of his
+superhuman power has a worthy meaning, and puts in a picturesque form
+an eternal truth.
+
+We see here, first, Samson the prisoner. Milton has caught the spirit
+of the sad picture in verses 21 and 22, in that wonderful line,
+
+           'Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves,'
+
+in which the clauses drop heavily like slow tears, each adding a new
+touch of woe. The savage manners of the times used the literal forcing
+out of the eyes from their sockets as the easiest way of reducing
+dangerous enemies to harmlessness. Pitiable as the loss was, Samson was
+better blind than seeing. The lust of the eye had led him astray, and
+the loss of his sight showed him his sin. Fetters of brass betrayed his
+jailers' dread of his possibly returning strength; and the menial task
+to which he was set was meant as a humiliation, in giving him woman's
+work to do, as if this were all for which the eclipsed hero was now
+fit. Generous enemies are merciful; the baser sort reveal their former
+terror by the indignities they offer to their prisoner.
+
+In Samson we see an impersonation of Israel. Like him, the nation was
+strong so long as it kept the covenant of its God. Like him, it was
+ever prone to follow after strange loves. Its Delilahs were the gods of
+the heathen, in whose laps it laid its anointed head, and at whose
+hands it suffered the loss of its God-given strength; for, like Samson,
+Israel was weak when it forgot its consecration, and its punishment
+came from the objects of its infatuated desires. Like him, it was
+blinded, bound, and reduced to slavery, for all its power was held, as
+was his, on condition of loyalty to God. His life is as a mirror, in
+which the nation might see their own history reflected; and the lesson
+taught by the story of the captive hero, once so strong, and now so
+weak, is the lesson which Moses taught the nation: 'Because thou
+servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of
+heart, by reason of the abundance of all things: therefore shalt thou
+serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger,
+and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things, and He
+shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck' (Deut. xxviii. 47, 48). The
+blind Samson, chained, at the mill, has a warning for us, too. That is
+what God's heroes come to, if once they prostitute the God-given
+strength to the base loves of self and the flattering world. We are
+strong only as we keep our hearts clear of lower loves, and lean on God
+alone. Delilah is most dangerous when honeyed words drop from her lips.
+The world's praise is more harmful than its censure. Its favours are
+only meant to draw the secret of our strength from us, that we may be
+made weak; and nothing gives the Philistines so much pleasure as the
+sight of God's warriors caught in their toils and robbed of power.
+
+But Samson's misery was Samson's blessedness. The 'howbeit' of verse 22
+is more than a compensation for all the wretchedness. The growth of his
+hair is not there mentioned as a mere natural fact, nor with the
+superstitious notion that his hair made him strong. God made him strong
+on condition of his keeping his vow of consecration. The long matted
+locks were the visible sign that he kept it. Their loss was the
+consequence of his own voluntary breach of it. So their growth was the
+visible token that the fault was being repaired. Chastisement wrought
+sorrow; and in the bondage of the prison he found freedom from the
+worse chains of sin, and in its darkness felt the dawning of a better
+light. As Bishop Hall puts it: 'His hair grew together with his
+repentance, and his strength with his hair.' The cruelties of the
+Philistines were better for him than their kindness. The world outwits
+itself when it presses hard on God's deserters, and thus drives them to
+repent. God mercifully takes care that His wandering children shall not
+have an easy time of it; and his chastisements, at their sharpest, are
+calls to us to come back to Him. Well for those, even if in chains, who
+know their meaning, and yield to it.
+
+II. We have here Samson,--the occasion of godless triumph. The worst
+consequence of the fall of a servant of God is that it gives occasion
+for God's enemies to blaspheme, and reflects discredit on Him, as if He
+were vanquished. Samson's capture is Dagon's glory. The strife between
+Philistia and Israel was, in the eyes of both combatants, a struggle
+between their gods; and so the men of Gaza lit their sacrificial fires
+and sent up their hymns to their monstrous deity as victor. What would
+Samson's bitter thoughts be, as the sound of the wild rejoicings
+reached him in his prison? And is not all this true to-day? If ever
+some conspicuous Christian champion falls into sin or inconsistency,
+how the sky is rent with shouts of malicious pleasure! What paragons of
+virtue worldly men become all at once! How swiftly the conclusion is
+drawn that all Christians are alike, and none of them any better than
+the non-Christian world! How much more harm the one flaw does than all
+the good which a life of service has done! The faults of Christians are
+the bulwarks of unbelief. `The name of God is blasphemed among the
+Gentiles through you.' The honour of Christ is a sacred trust, and it
+is in the keeping of us His followers. Our sins do not only darken our
+own reputation, but they cloud His. Dagon's worshippers have a right to
+rejoice when they have Samson safe in their prison, with his eyes out.
+
+III. We have Samson made a buffoon for drunkards. The feasts of
+heathenism were wild orgies, very unlike the pure joy of the
+sacrificial meals in Jehovah's worship. Dagon's temple was filled with
+a drunken crowd, whose mirth would be made more boisterous by a spice
+of cruelty. So, a roar of many voices calls for Samson, and this
+deepest degradation is not spared him. The words employed for 'make
+sport' seem to require that we should understand that he was not
+brought out to be the passive object of their gibes and drunken
+mockery, but was set to play the fool for their delectation. They imply
+that he had to dance and laugh, while three thousand gaping
+Philistines, any one of whom would have run for his life if he had been
+free, fed their hatred by the sight. Perhaps his former reputation for
+mirth and riddles suggested this new cruelty. Surely there is no more
+pathetic picture than that of the blind hero, with such thoughts as we
+know were seething in him, dragged out to make a Philistine holiday,
+and set to play the clown, while the bitterness of death was in his
+soul. And this is what God's soldiers come down to, when they forget
+Him: 'they that wasted us required of us mirth.'
+
+Wearied with his humiliating exertions, the blind captive begs the boy
+who guided him to let him lean, till he can breathe again, on the
+pillars that held up the light roof. We need not discuss the probable
+architecture of Dagon's temple, of which we know nothing. Only we may
+notice that it is not said that there were only _two_ pillars, but
+rather necessarily implied that there were more than two, for those
+against which he leaned were 'the two middle' ones. It is quite easy to
+understand how, if there were a row of them, knocking out the two
+strongest central ones would bring the whole thing down, especially
+when there was such a load on the flat roof. Apparently the principal
+people were in the best places on the ground floor, sheltered from the
+sun by the roof, on which the commonalty were clustered, all waiting
+for what their newly discovered mountebank would do next, after he had
+breathed himself. The pause was short, and they little dreamed of what
+was to follow.
+
+IV. We have the last cry and heroic death of Samson. It is not to be
+supposed that his prayer was audible to the crowd, even if it were
+spoken aloud. It is not an elevated prayer, but is, like all the rest
+of his actions at their best, deeply marked with purely personal
+motives. The loss of his two eyes is uppermost in his mind, and he
+wants to be revenged for them. Instead of trying to make a lofty hero
+out of him, it is far better to recognise frankly the limitations of
+his character and the imperfections of his religion. The distance
+between him and the New Testament type of God's soldier measures the
+progress which the revelation of God's will has made, and the debt we
+owe to the Captain of the host for the perfect example which He has
+set. The defects and impurity of Samson's zeal, which yet was accepted
+of God, preach the precious lesson that God does not require virtues
+beyond the standard of the epoch of revelation at which His servants
+stand, and that imperfection does not make service unacceptable. If the
+merely human passion of vengeance throbbed fiercely in Samson's prayer,
+he had never heard 'Love your enemies'; and, for his epoch, the
+destruction of the enemies of God and Israel was duty. He was not the
+only soldier of God who has let personal antagonism blend with his zeal
+for God; and we have less excuse, if we do it, than he had.
+
+But there is the true core of religion in the prayer. It is penitence
+which pleads, 'Remember me, O Lord God!' He knows that his sin has
+broken the flow of loving divine thought to him, but he asks that the
+broken current may be renewed. Many a silent tear had fallen from
+Samson's blind eyes, before that prayer could have come to his lips, as
+he leaned on the great pillars. Clear recognition of the Source of his
+strength is in the prayer; if ever he had forgotten, in Delilah's lap,
+where it came from, he had recovered his conscious dependence amid the
+misery of the prison. There is humility in the prayer 'Only this once.'
+He feels that, after such a fall, no more of the brilliant exploits of
+former days are possible. They who have brought such despite on Jehovah
+and such honour to Dagon may be forgiven, and even restored to much of
+their old vigour, but they must not be judges in Israel any more. The
+best thing left for the penitent Samson is death.
+
+He had been unconscious of the departure of his strength, but he seems
+to have felt it rushing back into his muscles; so he grasps the two
+pillars with his mighty hands; the crowd sees that the pause for breath
+is over, and prepares to watch the new feats. Perhaps we may suppose
+that his last words were shouted aloud, 'Let me die with the
+Philistines!' and before they have been rightly taken in by the mob, he
+sways himself backwards for a moment, and then, with one desperate
+forward push, brings down the two supports, and the whole thing rushes
+down to hideous ruin amid shrieks and curses and groans. But Samson
+lies quiet below the ruins, satisfied to die in such a cause.
+
+He 'counted not his life dear' unto himself, that he might be God's
+instrument for God's terrible work. The last of the judges teaches us
+that we too, in a nobler cause, and for men's life, not their
+destruction, must be ready to hazard and give our lives for the great
+Captain, who in His death has slain more of our foes than He did in His
+life, and has laid it down as the law for all His army, 'He that loseth
+his life for My sake shall find it.'
+
+How beautifully the quiet close of the story follows the stormy scene
+of the riotous assembly and the sudden destruction. The Philistines,
+crushed by this last blow, let the dead hero's kindred search for his
+body amid the chaos, and bear it reverently up from the plain to the
+quiet grave among the hills of Dan, where Manoah his father slept.
+There they lay that mighty frame to rest. It will be troubled no more
+by fierce passions or degrading chains. Nothing in his life became him
+like the leaving of it. The penitent heroism of its end makes us
+lenient to the flaws in its course; and we leave the last of the judges
+to sleep in his grave, recognising in him, with all his faults and
+grossness, a true soldier of God, though in strange garb.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF RUTH
+
+
+
+
+A GENTLE HEROINE, A GENTILE CONVERT
+
+'And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
+following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou
+lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
+God: 17. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the
+Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
+18. When she saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, then
+she left speaking unto her. 19. So they two went until they came to
+Beth-lehem. And it came to pass, when they were come to Beth-lehem,
+that all the city was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi?
+20. And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the
+Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. 21. I went out full, And the
+Lord hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi,
+seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath
+afflicted me? 22. So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her
+daughter in law, with her, which returned out of the country of Moab:
+and they came to Beth-lehem in the beginning of barley harvest.'--RUTH
+1 16-22.
+
+
+The lovely idyl of _Ruth_ is in sharp contrast with the bloody and
+turbulent annals of _Judges_. It completes, but does not contradict,
+these, and happily reminds us of what we are apt to forget in reading
+such pages, that no times are so wild but that in them are quiet
+corners, green oases, all the greener for their surroundings,
+where life glides on in peaceful isolation from the tumult. Men and
+women love and work and weep and laugh, the gossips of Bethlehem talk
+over Naomi's return ('they said,' in verse 19, is feminine), Boaz
+stands among his corn, and no sounds of war disturb them. Thank God!
+the blackest times were not so dismal in reality as they look in
+history. There are clefts in the grim rock, and flowers blooming,
+sheltered in the clefts. The peaceful pictures of this little book,
+multiplied many thousand times, have to be set as a background to the
+lurid pictures of the _Book of Judges_.
+
+The text begins in the middle of Naomi's remonstrance with her two
+daughters-in-law. We need not deal with the former part of the
+conversation, nor follow Orpah as she goes back to her home and her
+gods. She is the first in the sad series of those, 'not far from the
+kingdom of God,' who needed but a little more resolution at the
+critical moment, and, for want of it, shut themselves out from the
+covenant, and sank back to a world which they had half renounced.
+
+So these two lonely widows are left, each seeking to sacrifice herself
+for the other. Who shall decide which was the more noble and truly
+womanly in her self-forgetfulness,--the elder, sadder heart, which
+strove to secure for the other some joy and fellowship at the price of
+its own deepened solitude; or the younger, which steeled itself against
+entreaties, and cast away friends and country for love's sweet sake? We
+rightly praise Ruth's vow, but we should not forget Naomi's unselfish
+pleading to be left to tread her weary path alone.
+
+Ruth's passionate burst of tenderness is immortal. It has put into
+fitting words for all generations the deepest thoughts of loving
+hearts, and comes to us over all the centuries between, as warm and
+living as when it welled up from that gentle, heroic soul. The two
+strongest emotions of our nature are blended in it, and each gives a
+portion of its fervour--love and religion. So closely are they
+interwoven that it is difficult to allot to each its share in the
+united stream; but, without trying to determine to which of them the
+greater part of its volume and force is due, and while conscious of the
+danger of spoiling such words by comments weaker than themselves, we
+may seek to put into distinct form the impressions which they make.
+
+We see in them the heroism of gentleness. Put the sweet figure of the
+Moabitess beside the heroes of the _Book of Judges_, and we feel
+the contrast. But is there anything in its pages more truly heroic than
+her deed, as she turned her back on the blue hills of Moab, and chose
+the joyless lot of the widowed companion of a widow aged and poor, in a
+land of strangers, the enemies of her country and its gods? It is
+easier far to rush on the spears of the foe, amid the whirl and
+excitement of battle, than to choose with open eyes so dreary a
+lifelong path. The gentleness of a true woman covers a courage of the
+patient, silent sort, which, in its meek steadfastness, is nobler than
+the contempt of personal danger, which is vulgarly called bravery. It
+is harder to endure than to strike. The supreme type of heroic, as of
+all, virtue is Jesus Christ, whose gentleness was the velvet glove on
+the iron hand of an inflexible will. Of that best kind of heroes there
+are few brighter examples, even in the annals of the Church which
+numbers its virgin martyrs by the score, than this sweet figure of
+Ruth, as the eager vow comes from her young lips, which had already
+tasted sorrow, and were ready to drink its bitterest cup at the call of
+duty. She may well teach us to rectify our judgments, and to recognise
+the quiet heroism of many a modest life of uncomplaining suffering. Her
+example has a special message to women, and exhorts them to see to it
+that, in the cultivation of the so-called womanly excellence of
+gentleness, they do not let it run into weakness, nor, on the other
+hand, aim at strength, to the loss of meekness. The yielding birch-
+tree, the 'lady of the woods,' bends in all its elastic branches and
+tossing ringlets of foliage to the wind; but it stands upright after
+storms that level oaks and pines. God's strength is gentle strength,
+and ours is likest His when it is meek and lowly, like that of the
+'strong Son of God.'
+
+Ruth's great words may suggest, too, the surrender which is the natural
+language of true love. Her story comes in among all these records of
+bloodshed and hate, like a bit of calm blue sky among piles of ragged
+thunder-clouds, or a breath of fresh air in the oppressive atmosphere
+of a slaughter-house. Even in these wild times there was still a quiet
+corner where love could spread his wings. The question has often been
+asked, what the purpose of the _Book of Ruth_ is, and various
+answers have been given. The genealogical table at the end, showing
+David's descent from her, the example which it supplies of the
+reception of a Gentile into Israel, and other reasons for its presence
+in Scripture, have been alleged, and, no doubt, correctly. But the
+Bible is a very human book, just because it is a divine one; and surely
+it would be no unworthy object to enshrine in its pages a picture of
+the noble working of that human love which makes so much of human life.
+The hallowing of the family is a distinct purpose of the Old Testament,
+and the beautiful example which this narrative gives of the elevating
+influence of domestic affection entitles it to a place in the canon.
+How many hearts, since Ruth spoke her vow, have found in it the words
+that fitted their love best! How often they have been repeated by
+quivering lips, and heard as music by loving ears! How solemn, and even
+awful, is that perennial freshness of words which came hot and broken
+by tears, from lips that have long ago mouldered into dust! What has
+made them thus 'enduring for ever,' is that they express most purely
+the self-sacrifice which is essential to all noble love. The very
+inmost longing of love is to give itself away to the object beloved. It
+is not so much a desire to acquire as to bestow, or, rather, the
+antithesis of giving and receiving melts into one action which has a
+twofold motion,--one outwards, to give; one inwards, to receive. To
+love is to give one's self away, therefore all lesser givings are its
+food and delight; and, when Ruth threw herself on Naomi's withered
+breast, and sobbed out her passionate resolve, she was speaking the
+eternal language of love, and claiming Naomi for her own, in the very
+act of giving herself to Naomi, Human love should be the parent of all
+self-sacrificing as of all heroic virtues; and in our homes we do not
+live in love, as we ought, unless it leads us to the daily exercise of
+self-suppression and surrender, which is not felt to be loss but the
+natural expression of our love, which it would be a crime against it,
+and a pain to ourselves, to withhold. If Ruth's temper lived in our
+families, they would be true 'houses of God' and 'gates of heaven.'
+
+We hear in Ruth's words also that forsaking of all things which is an
+essential of all true religion. We have said that it was difficult to
+separate, in the words, the effects of love to Naomi from those of
+adoption of Naomi's faith. Apparently Ruth's adhesion to the worship of
+Jehovah was originally due to her love for her mother-in-law. It is in
+order to be one with her in all things that she says, 'Thy God shall be
+my God.' And it was because Jehovah was Naomi's God that Ruth chose Him
+for hers. But whatever the origin of her faith, it was genuine and
+robust enough to bear the strain of casting Chemosh and the gods of
+Moab behind her, and setting herself with full purpose of heart to seek
+the Lord. Abandoning them was digging an impassable gulf between
+herself and all her past, with its friendships, loves, and habits. She
+is one of the first, and not the least noble, of the long series of
+those who 'suffer the loss of all things, and count them but dung, that
+they may win' God for their dearest treasure. We have seen how, in her,
+human love wrought self-sacrifice. But it was not human love alone that
+did it. The cord that drew her was twisted of two strands, and her love
+to Naomi melted into her love of Naomi's God. Blessed they who are
+drawn to the knowledge and love of the fountain of all love in heaven
+by the sweetness of the characters of His representatives in their
+homes, and who feel that they have learned to know God by seeing Him in
+dear ones, whose tenderness has revealed His, and whose gracious words
+have spoken of His grace! If Ruth teaches us that we must give up all,
+in order truly to follow the Lord, the way by which she came to her
+religion may teach us how great are the possibilities, and consequently
+the duties, of Christians to the members of their own families. If we
+had more elder women like Naomi, we should have more younger women like
+Ruth.
+
+The self-sacrifice which is possible and blessed, even to inferior
+natures, at the bidding of love, is too precious to be squandered on
+earthly objects. Men's capacities for it, at the call of dear ones
+here, should be the rebuke of their grudging surrender to God. He gave
+the capacity that it might find its true field of operation in our
+relation to Him. But how much more ready we all are to give up
+everything for the sake of our Naomis than for His sake: and how we may
+be our own accusers, if the measure of our devotion to them be
+contrasted with the measure of our devotion to God!
+
+Finally, we may see, in Ruth's entrance into the religion of Israel, a
+picture of what was intended to be the effect of Israel's relation with
+the Gentile world.
+
+The household of Elimelech emigrated to Moab in a famine, and, whether
+that were right or wrong, they were there among heathens as Jehovah
+worshippers. They were meant to be missionaries, and, in Ruth's case,
+the purpose was fulfilled. She became the 'first-fruits of the
+Gentiles'; and one aim of the book, no doubt, is to show how the
+believing Gentile was to be incorporated into Israel. Boaz rejoices
+over her, and especially over her conversion, and prays, 'A full reward
+be given thee of Jehovah, the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art
+come to trust.' She is married to him, and becomes the ancestress of
+David, and, through him, of the Messiah. All this is a beautiful
+completion to the other side of the picture which the fierce fighting
+in Judges makes prominent, and teaches that Israel's relation to the
+nations around was not to be one of mere antagonism, but that they had
+another mission than destruction, and were set in their land, as the
+candlestick in the Tabernacle, that light might stream out into the
+darkness of the desert. The story of the Moabitess, whose blood flowed
+in David's veins, was a standing protest against the later narrow
+exclusiveness which called Gentiles 'dogs,' and prided itself on
+outward connection with the nation, in the exact degree in which it
+lost real union with the nation's God, and real understanding of the
+nation's mission.
+
+We have left ourselves no space to speak of the remainder of this
+passage, which is of less importance. It gives us a lively picture of
+the stir in the little town of Bethlehem, as the two way-worn women
+came into it, in their strange attire, and attracting notice by
+travelling alone. As we have observed, 'they said,' in verse 19, is
+feminine. The women of the village buzzed round the strangers, as they
+sat in silence, perhaps by that well at the gate, of which, long after,
+David longed to drink. Wonder, curiosity, and possibly a spice of
+malice, mingle in the question, 'Is _this_ Naomi?' It is heartless,
+at any rate; it had been better to have found them food and shelter
+than to have let them sit, the mark for sharp tongues. Naomi's bitter
+words seem to be moved partly by a sense of the coldness of the
+reception. She realises that she has indeed come back to a changed
+world, where there will be little sympathy except such as Ruth can
+give. It is with almost passion that she abjures her name 'Pleasant,'
+as a satire on her woful lot, and bids them call her 'Bitter,' as truer
+to fact now. The burst of sorrow is natural, as she finds herself again
+where she had been a wife and mother, and 'remembers happier things.'
+Her faith wavers, and her words almost reproach God. The exaggerations
+in which memory is apt to indulge colour them. 'I went out full.' She
+has forgotten that they 'went out' to seek for bread. She only
+remembers that four went away, and three sleep in Moab. Possibly she
+thinks of their emigration as a sin, and traces her dear ones' deaths
+to God's displeasure on its account. His 'testifying' against her
+probably means that His providence in bereaving her witnessed to His
+disapprobation. But, whether that be so or not, her wild words are not
+those of a patient sufferer, who bows to His will. But true faith may
+sometimes break down, and Ruth's 'trusting under the wings of Jehovah'
+is proof enough that, in the long years of lonely sorrow, Naomi's
+example had shown how peaceful and safe was the shelter there.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD PROPHET
+
+'And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli. And the word
+of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision. 2.
+And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
+and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; 8. And ere the
+lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God
+was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep; 4. That the Lord called Samuel:
+and he answered, Here am I. 5. And he ran onto Eli, and said, Here am
+I; for thou calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And
+he went and lay down. 6. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And
+Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call
+me. And he answered, I called not, my son; lie down again. 7. Now
+Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet
+revealed unto him. 8. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time.
+And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call
+me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child. 9. Therefore
+Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if He call thee,
+that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth. So Samuel
+went and lay down in his place. 10. And the Lord came, and stood, and
+called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak;
+for Thy servant heareth. 11. And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I
+will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that
+heareth it shall tingle. 12. In that day I will perform against Eli all
+things which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin, I will
+also make an end. 13. For I have told him that I will judge his house
+for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made
+themselves vile, and he restrained them not. 14. And therefore I have
+sworn unto the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not
+be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever.'--1 SAMUEL ill. 1-14.
+
+
+The opening words of this passage are substantially repeated from 1
+Samuel ii. 11,18. They come as a kind of refrain, contrasting the
+quiet, continuous growth and holy service of the child Samuel with the
+black narrative of Eli's riotous sons. While the hereditary priests
+were plunging into debauchery, and making men turn away from the
+Tabernacle services, Hannah's son was ministering unto the Lord, and,
+though no priest, was 'girt with an ephod.' This white flower blossomed
+on a dunghill. The continuous growth of a character, from a child
+serving God, and to old age walking in the same path, is the great
+lesson which the story of Samuel teaches us. 'The child is father of
+the man,' and all his long days are 'bound each to each' by true
+religion. There are two types of experience among God's greatest
+servants. Paul, made an Apostle from a persecutor, heads the one class.
+Timothy in the New Testament and Samuel in the Old, represent the
+other. An Augustine or a Bunyan is made the more earnest, humble, and
+whole-hearted by the remembrance of a wasted youth and of God's
+arresting mercy. But there are a serenity and continuity about a life
+which has grown up in the fear of God that have their own charm and
+blessing. It is well to have 'much transgression' forgiven, but it may
+be better to have always been 'innocent' and ignorant of it. Pardon
+cleanses sin, and even turns the memory of it into an ally of holiness;
+but traces are left on character, and, at the best, years have been
+squandered which do not return. Samuel is the pattern of child religion
+and service, to which teachers should aim that their children may be
+conformed. How beautifully his double obedience is expressed in the
+simple words! His service was 'unto the Lord,' and it was 'before Eli';
+that is to say, he learned his work from the old man, and in obeying
+him he served God. The child's religion is largely obedience to human
+guides, and he serves God best by doing what he is bid,--a lesson
+needed in our days by both parents and children.
+
+Samuel's peaceful service is contrasted, in the second half of the
+first verse, with the sad cessation of divine revelations in that
+dreary time of national laxity. A demoralised priesthood, an alienated
+people, a silent God,--these are the outstanding features of the period
+when this fair life of continuous worship unfolded itself. This flower
+grew in a desert. The voice of God had become a tradition of the past,
+not an experience of the present. 'Rare' conveys the idea better than
+'precious.' The intention is not to tell the estimate in which the word
+was held, but the infrequency of its utterance, as appears from the
+following parallel clause. The fact is mentioned in order to complete
+the picture of Samuel's 'environment' to fling into relief against that
+background his service, and to prepare the way for the narrative of the
+beginning of an epoch of divine speech. When priests are faithless and
+people careless, God's voice will often sound from lowly childlike
+lips. The man who is to be His instrument in carrying on His work will
+often come from the very centre of the old order, into which he is to
+breathe new life, and on which he is to impress a new stamp.
+
+The artless description of the night in the Tabernacle is broken by the
+more general notice of Eli's dim sight, which the Revised Version
+rightly throws into a parenthesis. It is somewhat marred, too, by the
+transposition which the Authorised Version, following some more ancient
+ones, has made, in order to avoid saying, as the Hebrew plainly does,
+that Samuel slept in the 'Temple of the Lord, where the ark was.' The
+picture is much more vivid and tender, if we conceive of the dim-eyed
+old man, lying somewhat apart; of the glimmering light, nearly extinct
+but still faintly burning; and of the child laid to sleep in the
+Tabernacle. Surely the picturesque contrast between the sanctity of the
+ark and the innocent sleep of childhood is meant to strike us, and to
+serve as connecting the place with the subsequent revelation. Childlike
+hearts, which thus quietly rest in the 'secret place of the Most High,'
+and day and night are near His ark, will not fail of hearing His voice.
+He sleeps secure who sleeps 'beneath the shadow of the Almighty.' May
+not these particulars, too, be meant to have some symbolic
+significance? Night hung over the nation. The spiritual eye of the
+priest was dim, and the order seemed growing old and decrepit, but the
+lamp of God had not altogether gone out; and if Eli was growing blind,
+Samuel was full of fresh young life. The darkest hour is that before
+the dawn; and that silent sanctuary, with the slumbering old half-blind
+priest and the expiring lamp, may stand for an emblem of the state of
+Israel.
+
+The thrice-repeated and misunderstood call may yield lessons of value.
+We note the familiar form of the call. There is no vision, no symbol of
+the divine glory, such as other prophets had, but an articulate voice,
+so human-like that it is thought to be Eli's. Such a kind of call
+fitted the child's stature best. We note the swift, cheery obedience to
+what he supposes to be Eli's voice. He sprang up at once, and 'ran to
+Eli,'--a pretty picture of cheerful service, grudging not his broken
+sleep, which, no doubt, had often been similarly broken by similar
+calls. Perhaps it was in order to wait on Eli, quite as much as to tend
+the lamp or open the gates, that the singular arrangement was made of
+his sleeping in the Temple; and the reason for the previous parenthesis
+about Eli's blindness may have been to explain why Samuel slept near
+him. Where were Eli's sons? They should have been their father's
+attendants, and the watchers 'by night ... in the house of the Lord';
+but they were away rioting, and the care of both Temple and priest was
+left to a child.
+
+The old man's heart evidently went out to the boy. How tenderly he bids
+him lie down again! How affectionately he calls him 'my son,' as if he
+was already beginning to feel that this was his true successor, and not
+the blackguards that were breaking his heart! The two were a pair of
+friends: on the one side were sedulous care and swift obedience by
+night and by day; on the other were affection and a discernment of
+coming greatness, made the clearer by the bitter contrast with his own
+children's lives. The old and the young are good companions for one
+another, and often understand each other better and help each other
+more than either does his contemporaries.
+
+Samuel mistook God's voice for Eli's, as we all often do. And not less
+often we make the converse blunder, and mistake Eli's voice for God's.
+It needs a very attentive ear, and a heart purged from selfishness and
+self-will, and ready for obedience, to know when God speaks, though men
+may be His mouthpieces, and when men speak, though they may call
+themselves His messengers. The child's mistake was venial. It is less
+pardonable and more dangerous when repeated by us. If we would be
+guarded against it, we must be continually where Samuel was, and we
+must not _sleep_ in the Temple, but 'watch and be sober.'
+
+Eli's perception that it was God who spoke must have had a pang in it.
+It is not easy for the old to recognise that the young hear God's voice
+more clearly than they, nor for the superior to be glad when he is
+passed over and new truth dawns on the inferior. But, if there were any
+such feeling, it is silenced with beautiful self-abnegation, and he
+tells the wondering child the meaning of the voice and the answer he
+must make. What higher service can any man do to his fellows, old or
+young, than to help them to discern God's call and to obey it? What
+nobler conception of a teacher's work is there than that? Eli heard no
+voice, from which we may probably conclude that, however real the
+voice, it was not audible to sense; but he taught Samuel to interpret
+and answer the voice which he heard, and thus won some share of a
+prophet's reward.
+
+With what expectation in his young heart Samuel lay down again in his
+place! This time there is an advance in the form of the call, for only
+now do we read that the Lord 'came, and stood, and called' as before. A
+manifestation, addressed to the inward eye, accompanied that to the
+ear. There is no attempt at describing, nor at softening down, the
+frank 'anthropomorphism' of the representation, which is the less
+likely to mislead the more complete it is. Samuel had heard Him before;
+he sees Him now, and mistake is impossible. But there is no terror nor
+recoil from the presence. The child's simplicity saves from that, and
+the child's purity; for his little life had been a growing in service
+and 'in favour with God and man.'
+
+The answer that came from the child's lips meant far more than the
+child knew. It is the answer which we are all bound to make. Let us see
+how deep and wide its scope is. It expresses the entire surrender of
+the will to the will of God. That is the secret of all peace and
+nobleness. There is nothing happy or great for man in this world but to
+love and do God's will. All else is nought. This is solid. 'The world
+passeth away, ... but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.'
+Everything besides is show and delusion, and a life directed to it is
+fleeting as the cloud-wrack that sweeps across the sky, and, whether it
+is shone on or is black, is equally melting away. Happy the child who
+begins with such surrender of self to be God's instrument, and who,
+like Samuel, can stand up at the end and challenge men's judgment on
+his course!
+
+The answer vows prompt obedience to yet undisclosed duty. God ever
+calls His servants to tasks which only by degrees are made known. So
+Paul in his conversion was bid to go into Damascus, and there learn
+what more he was to do. We must first put ourselves in God's hands, and
+then He will lead us round the turn in the road, and show us our work.
+We get it set for us bit by bit, but the surrender must be entire. The
+details of His will are revealed as we need them for the moment's
+guidance. Let us accept them in bulk, and stand to the acceptance in
+each single case! That is no obedience at all which says, 'Tell me
+first what you are going to bid me do, and then I will see whether I
+will do it.' The true spirit of filial submission says, 'I delight to
+do Thy will; now show me what it is.' It was a strange, long road on
+which Samuel put his foot when he answered this call, and he little
+knew where it was to lead him. But the blessing of submission is that
+we do not need to know. It is enough to see where to put our lifted
+foot. What comes next we can let God settle.
+
+The answer supplicated further light because of present obedience.
+'Speak! for Thy servant heareth,' is a plea never urged in vain. The
+servant's open ear is a reason for the Lord's open lips. We may be
+quite sure that, if we are willing to hear, He is more than willing to
+speak; and anything is possible rather than that His children shall be
+left, like ill-commanded soldiers on a battlefield, waiting for orders
+which never come. 'If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know.'
+
+The sad prophecy which is committed to such apparently incongruous lips
+reiterates a former message by 'a man of God.' Eli was a kindly, and,
+in his way, good man, but wanting in firmness, and acquiescent in evil,
+partly, perhaps, from lack of moral courage and partly from lack of
+fervent religion. He is not charged with faults in his own
+administration of his office, but with not curbing his disreputable
+sons. The threatenings are directed, not against himself, but against
+his 'house,' who are to be removed from the high priestly office.
+Nothing less than a revolution is foretold. The deposition of Eli's
+family would shake the whole framework of society. It is to be utterly
+destroyed, and no sacrifice nor offering can purge it. The ulcer must
+have eaten deep which required such stern measures for its excision.
+The sin was mainly the sons'; but the guilt was largely the father's.
+We may learn how cruel paternal laxity is, and how fatal mischief may
+be done, by neglect of the plain duty of restraining children. He who
+tolerates evil which it is his province to suppress, is an accomplice,
+and the blood of the doers is red on his hands.
+
+It was a terrible message to give to a child; but Samuel's calling was
+to be the guide of Israel in a period of transition, and he had to be
+broken early into the work, which needed severity as well as
+tenderness. Perhaps, too, the stern message was somewhat softened, for
+the poor old man, by the lips through which it came to him. All that
+reverent love could do, we may be sure, the young prophet would do, to
+lighten the heavy tidings. Secrecy would be secured, too; for Samuel,
+who was so unwilling to tell even Eli what the Lord had said, would
+tell none besides.
+
+God calls each child in our homes as truly as He did Samuel. From each
+the same obedience is asked. Each may, like the boy in the Tabernacle,
+grow up 'in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,' and so escape the
+many scars and sorrows of a life wrongly begun. Let parents see to it
+that they think rightly of their work, and do not content themselves
+with conveying information, but aim at nothing short of helping all
+their children to hear and lovingly to yield to the gentle call of the
+incarnate God!
+
+
+
+
+FAITHLESSNESS AND DEFEAT
+
+'And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against
+the Philistines to battle, and pitched beside Eben-ezer: and the
+Philistines pitched in Aphek. 2. And the Philistines put themselves in
+array against Israel: and when they joined battle, Israel was smitten
+before the Philistines: and they slew of the army in the field about
+four thousand men. 3. And when the people were come into the camp, the
+elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us today before
+the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out
+of Shiloh unto us, that, when it cometh among us, it may save us out of
+the hand of our enemies. 4. So the people sent to Shiloh, that they
+might bring from thence the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts,
+which dwelleth between the cherubims: and the two sons of Eli, Hophni
+and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God. 5. And
+when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel
+shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again. 6. And when
+the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, What meaneth
+the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews? And they
+understood that the ark of the Lord was come into the camp. 7. And the
+Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. And
+they said, Woe unto us! for there hath not been such a thing
+heretofore. 8. Woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of
+these mighty gods? these are the gods that smote the Egyptians with all
+the plagues in the wilderness. 9. Be strong, and quit yourselves like
+men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as
+they have been to you: quit yourselves like men, and fight. 10. And the
+Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man
+into his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of
+Israel thirty thousand footmen. 11. And the ark of God was taken; and
+the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain. 12. And there ran
+a man of Benjamin out of the army, and came to Shiloh the same day with
+his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head. 13. And when he came,
+lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside watching: for his heart trembled
+for the ark of God. And when the man came into the city, and told it,
+all the city cried out. 14. And when Eli heard the noise of the crying,
+he said, What meaneth the noise of this tumult? And the man came in
+hastily, and told Eli. 15. Now Eli was ninety and eight years old; and
+his eyes were dim, that he could not see. 16. And the man said unto
+Eli, I am he that came out of the army, and I fled to-day out of the
+army. And he said, What is there done, my son? 17. And the messenger
+answered and said, Israel is fled before the Philistines, and there
+hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons
+also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God Is taken. 18.
+And it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of God, that he
+fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck
+brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy. And he had judged
+Israel forty years.'--1 SAMUEL iv. 1-18.
+
+
+The first words of verse 1 are closely connected with the end of
+chapter iii., and complete the account of Samuel's inauguration. 'The
+word of the Lord' came to Samuel, and 'the word of Samuel came to all
+Israel.' The one clause tells of the prophet's inspiration, the other
+of his message and its reception by the nation. This bond of union
+between the clauses has been broken by the chapter division, apparently
+for the sake of representing the revolt against the Philistines as due
+to Samuel's instigation. But its being so is very doubtful. If God had
+sent the army into the field, He would have prepared it, by penitent
+return to Him, for victory, as no defeat follows on war which He
+commands. Probably Samuel's mission made an unwholesome ferment in
+minds which were quite untouched by its highest significance, and so
+led to a precipitate rebellion, preceded by no religious reformation,
+and therefore sure to fail. It was twenty years too soon (1 Sam. vii.
+3). Samuel took no part in the struggle, and his name is never
+mentioned till, at the end of that period, he emphatically condemns all
+that had been done, and points the true path of deliverance, in 'return
+to the Lord with all your heart.' So the great lesson of this story is
+that when Israel fights Philistines, unbidden and unrepentant, it is
+sure to be beaten,--a truth with manifold wide applications.
+
+The first disastrous defeat took place on a field, which was afterwards
+made memorable by a great victory, and by a name which lives still as a
+watchword for hope and gratitude. Happy they who at last conquer where
+they once failed, and in the retrospect can say, 'Hitherto the Lord
+helped,' both by defeat and by the victory for which defeat prepared a
+way! That opening struggle, bloody and grave as it was, was not
+decisive; for the Israelites regained their fortified camp unmolested,
+and held together, and kept their communications open, as appears from
+what followed.
+
+Verses 3 to 5 give us a glimpse into the camp of Israel, and verses 6
+to 9 into that of the Philistines. These two companion pictures are
+worth looking at. The two armies are very much alike, and we may say
+that the purpose of the picture is to show how Israel was practically
+heathen, taking just the same views of its relation to God which the
+Philistines did. Note, too, the absence of central authority. 'The
+elders' hold a kind of council. Where were Eli the judge and Samuel the
+prophet? Neither had part in this war. The question of the elders was
+right, inasmuch as it recognised that the Lord had smitten them, but
+wrong inasmuch as it betrayed that they had not the faintest notion
+that the reason was their own moral and religious apostasy. They had
+not learned the A B C of their history, and of the conditions of
+national prosperity. They stand precisely on the Pagan level, believing
+in a national God, who ought to help his votaries, but from some
+inexplicable caprice does not; or who, perhaps, is angry at the
+omission of some ritual observance. What an answer they would have got
+if Samuel had been there! There ought to have been no need for the
+question, or, rather, there was need for it, and the answer ought to
+have been clear to them; their sin was the all-sufficient reason for
+their defeat. There are plenty of Christians, like these elders, who,
+when they find themselves beaten by the world and the devil, puzzle
+their brains to invent all sorts of reasons for God's smiting, except
+the true one,--their own departure from Him.
+
+The remedy suggested by the united wisdom of the leaders was as heathen
+as the consultation which resulted in it. 'Let us send for the ark'
+'Those who regarded not the God of the ark,' says Bishop Hall, 'think
+themselves safe and happy in the ark of God.' They thought, with that
+confusion between symbol and reality which runs through all heathen
+worship, and makes the danger of 'images,' whether in heathenism or in
+sensuous Christianity, that if they brought the ark, they brought God
+with it. It was a kind of charm, which would help them, they hardly
+knew how. Its very name might have taught them better. They call it
+'the ark of the covenant of the Lord'; and a covenant has two parties
+to it, and promises favour on conditions. If they had kept the
+conditions, these four thousand corpses would not have been lying stiff
+and stark outside the rude encampment. As they did not keep them,
+bringing the chest which contained the transcript of them into their
+midst was bringing a witness of their apostasy, not a helper of their
+feebleness. Repentance would have brought God. Dragging the ark thither
+only removed Him farther away. We need not be too hard upon these
+people; for the natural disposition of us all is to trust to the
+externals of worship, and to put a punctilious attention to these in
+the place of a true cleaving of heart to the God who dwells near us,
+and is in us and on our side, if we cling to Him with penitent love.
+Even God-appointed symbols become snares. Baptism and the Lord's Supper
+are treated by multitudes as these elders did the ark. The fewer and
+simpler the outward observances of worship are, the less danger is
+there of the poor sense-bound soul tarrying in them, instead of passing
+by means of them into the higher, purer air beyond.
+
+What right had these presumptuous elders to bring the ark from Shiloh?
+Eli was its guardian; and he, as appears probable from his anxiety
+about its fate, did not approve of its removal. But 'the people' took
+the law into their own hands. There seems some hint that their action
+was presumptuous profanation, in the solemn, full title given in verse
+4: 'The ark of the covenant of the Lord of Hosts which dwelleth between
+the cherubim,'--as if contrasting His awful majesty, His universal
+dominion over the armies of heaven and the embattled powers of the
+universe, and the dazzling light of that 'glory,' which shone in the
+innermost chamber of the Tabernacle, with the unanointed hands that
+presumed to press in thither and drag so sacred a thing into the light
+of common day and the tumult of the camp. Nor is the profanation
+lessened, but rather increased, by the priestly attendants, Eli's two
+sons, themselves amongst the worst men in Israel. When Hophni and
+Phinehas are its priests, the ark can bring no help. Heathenism
+separates religion from morality altogether. In it there is no
+connection between worship and purity, and the Old Testament religion
+for the first time welded these two inseparably together. That
+tumultuous procession from Shiloh, with these two profligates for the
+priests of God, and the bearers thinking that they were sure of their
+God's favour now, whatever their sin, shows how completely Israel had
+forgotten its own law, and, whilst professedly worshipping Jehovah, had
+really become a heathen people. The reception of the ark with that
+fierce shout, which echoed among the hills and was heard in the
+Philistines' encampment, shows the same thing. Not so should the ark
+have been received, but with tears and confessions and silent awe. No
+man in all that host had ever looked upon it before. No man ought to
+have seen it _then_. Once a year, and not without blood sprinkled
+on its cover, the high priest might look on it through the cloud of
+incense which kept him from death, while all the people waited hushed
+till he came forth, but now it is dragged into the camp, and welcomed
+with a yell of mad delight, as a pledge of victory. What could display
+more strikingly the practical heathenism of the people?
+
+Verses 6 to 9 take us into the other camp, and show us the undisguised
+heathens. The Philistines think just as the other side did, only, in
+their polytheistic way, they do not use the name 'Jehovah,' but speak
+first of 'God' and then of 'gods' as having arrived in the camp. The
+nations dreaded each other's gods, though they worshipped their own;
+and the Philistines believed quite as much that 'Jehovah' was the
+Hebrew's God, as that 'Dagon' was theirs. There was to be a duel then
+between the two superhuman powers. The vague reports which they had
+heard of the Exodus, nearly five hundred years ago, filled the
+Philistines with panic. They had but a confused notion of the facts of
+that old story, and thought that Egypt had met the ten plagues 'in the
+wilderness.' The blunder is very characteristic, and helps to show the
+accuracy of our narrative. It would not have occurred to a legend-
+maker. It sounds strange to us that the Philistines' belief that the
+Hebrews' God had come to their help should issue in exhortations to
+'fight like men.' But polytheism makes that quite a natural conclusion;
+and there is something almost fine in the truculent boldness with which
+they set their teeth for a fierce struggle. They reiterate to one
+another the charge to 'quit themselves like men'; and while they do not
+hide from themselves that the question whether they are to be still
+masters is hanging on the coming struggle, a dash of contempt for the
+'Hebrews' who had been their 'slaves' is perceptible.
+
+According to verse 10, the Philistines appear to have begun the attack,
+perhaps taking the enemy by surprise. The rout this time was complete.
+The grim catalogue of disaster in verses 10 and 11 is strangely tragic
+in its dreadful, monotonous plainness, each clause adding something to
+the terrible story, and each linked to the preceding by a simple 'and.'
+The Israelites seem to have been scattered. 'They fled, every man to
+his tent.' The army, with little cohesion and no strong leaders, melted
+away. The ark was captured, and its two unworthy attendants slain.
+Bringing it had not brought God, then. It was but a chest of
+shittimwood, with two slabs of lettered stone in it,--and what help was
+in that? But its capture was the sign that the covenant with Israel was
+for the time annulled. The whole framework of the nation was
+disorganised. The keystone was struck out of their worship, and they
+had fallen, by their own sin, to the level of the nations, and even
+below these; for they had their gods, but Israel had turned away from
+their God, and He had departed from them. Superstition fancied that the
+presence of the ark secured to impenitent men the favour of God; but it
+was no superstition which saw in its absence from Shiloh His averted
+face.
+
+Is there in poetry or drama a more vivid and pathetic passage than the
+closing verses of this narrative, which tell of the panting messenger
+and the old blind Eli?
+
+'Eben-ezer' cannot have been very far from Shiloh, for the fugitive had
+seen the end of the fight, and reached the city before night. He came
+with the signs of mourning, and, as it would appear from verse 13,
+passed the old man at the gate without pausing, and burst into the city
+with his heavy tidings. One can almost hear the shrill shrieks of wrath
+and despair which first told Eli that something was wrong. Blind and
+unwieldy and heavy-hearted, he sat by the gate to which the news would
+first come; but yet he is the last to hear,--perhaps because all shrank
+from telling him, perhaps because in the confusion no one remembered
+him. Only after he had asked the meaning of the tumult, of which his
+foreboding heart and conscience told him the meaning before it was
+spoken, is the messenger brought to the man to whom he should have gone
+first. How touchingly the story pauses, even at this crisis, to paint
+the poor old man! A stronger word is used to describe his blindness
+than in 1 Samuel iii. 2, as the Revised Version shows. His fixed
+eyeballs were sightless now; and there he sat, dreading and longing to
+hear. The fugitive's account of himself is shameless in its avowal of
+his cowardice, and prepares Eli for the worst. But note how he speaks
+gently and with a certain dignity, crushing down his anxiety,--'How
+went the matter, my son?' Then, with no merciful circumlocution or
+veiling, out comes the whole dismal story once again.
+
+Eli spoke no more. His sons' death had been the sign given him years
+before that the threatenings against his house should be fulfilled; but
+even that blow he can bear. But the capture of the ark is more than a
+personal sorrow, and his start of horror overbalances him, and he falls
+from his seat (which probably had no back to it), and dies, silent, of
+a broken neck and a broken heart. His forty years of judgeship ended
+thus. He was in many respects good and lovable, gentle, courteous,
+devout. His kindly treatment of Hannah, his fatherly training of
+Samuel, his submission to the divine message through the child, his
+'trembling for the ark,' his death at the news of its being taken, all
+indicate a character of real sweetness and true godliness. But all was
+marred by a fatal lack of strong, stern resolve to tolerate no evil
+which he ought to suppress. Good, weak men, especially when they let
+foolish tenderness hinder righteous severity, bring terrible evils on
+themselves, their families, and their nation. It was Eli who, at
+bottom, was the cause of the defeat and the disasters which slew his
+sons and broke his own heart. Nothing is more cruel than the weak
+indulgence which, when men are bringing a curse on themselves by their
+sin, 'restrains them not.'
+
+
+
+
+REPENTANCE AND VICTORY
+
+'And the men of Kirjath-jearim came, and fetched up the ark of the
+Lord, and brought it into the house of Abinadab in the hill, and
+sanctified Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the Lord. 2. And it came
+to pans, while the ark abode in Kirjath-jearim, that the time was long;
+for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel lamented after the
+Lord. 3. And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye
+do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange
+gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the
+Lord, and serve Him only: and He will deliver you out of the hand of
+the Philistines. 4. Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and
+Ashtaroth, and served the Lord only. 5. And Samuel said, Gather all
+Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the Lord. 6. And they
+gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before
+the Lord, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned
+against the Lord. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh.
+7. And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were
+gathered together to Mizpeh, the lords of the Philistines went up
+against Israel. And when the children of Israel heard it, they were
+afraid of the Philistines. 8. And the children of Israel said to
+Samuel, Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us, that He will
+save us out of the hand of the Philistines. 9. And Samuel took a
+sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt-offering wholly unto the Lord:
+and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; and the Lord heard him. 10.
+And as Samuel was offering up the burnt-offering, the Philistines drew
+near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great
+thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them: and
+they were smitten before Israel. 11. And the men of Israel went out of
+Mizpeh, and pursued the Philistines, and smote them, until they came
+under Beth-car. 12. Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh
+and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath
+the Lord helped us.'-1 SAMUEL vii 1-12.
+
+
+The ark had spread disaster in Philistia and Beth-shemesh, and the
+willingness of the men of Kirjath-jearim to receive it was a token of
+their devotion. They must have been in some measure free from idolatry
+and penetrated with reverence. The name of the city (_City of the
+Woods_, like our _Woodville_) suggests the situation of the
+little town, 'bosomed high in tufted trees,' where the ark lay for so
+long, apparently without sacrifices, and simply watched over by
+Eleazar, who was probably of the house of Aaron. Eli's family was
+exterminated; Shiloh seems to have been destroyed, or, at all events,
+forsaken; and for twenty years internal disorganisation and foreign
+oppression, relieved only by Samuel's growing influence, prevailed. But
+during these dark days a better mind was slowly appearing among the
+people. 'All ... Israel lamented after the Lord.' Lost blessings are
+precious. God was more prized when withdrawn. Happy they to whom
+darkness brightens that Light which brightens all darkness! Our text
+gives us three main points,--the preparation for victory in repentance
+and return (verses 3-9); the victory (verses 10, 11); the thankful
+commemoration of victory (verse 12).
+
+I. We have first the preparation for victory in repentance and return.
+At the time of the first fight at Eben-ezer, Israel was full of
+idolatry and immorality. Then their preparation for battle was the mere
+bringing the ark into the camp, as if it were a fetish or magic charm.
+That was pure heathenism, and they were idolaters in such worship of
+Jehovah, just as much as if they had been bowing to Baal. Many of us
+rely on our baptism or on churchgoing precisely in the same spirit, and
+are as truly pagans. Not the name of the Deity, but the spirit of the
+worshipper, makes the 'idolater.'
+
+How different this second preparation! Samuel, who had never been named
+in the narrative of defeat, now reappears as the acknowledged prophet
+and, in a sense, dictator. The first requirement is to come back to the
+Lord 'with the whole heart,' and that return is to be practically
+exhibited in the complete forsaking of Baal and the Ashtoreths. 'Ye
+cannot serve God and mammon.' It must be 'Him only,' if it is Him at
+all. Real religion is exclusive, as real love is. In its very nature it
+is indivisible, and if given to two is accepted by neither. So there
+was some kind of general and perhaps public giving up of the idols, and
+some, though probably not the fully appointed, public service of
+Jehovah. If we are to have His strength infused for victory, we must
+cast away our idols, and come back to Him with all our hearts. The
+hands that would clasp Him, and be upheld by the clasp, must be emptied
+of trifles. To yield ourselves wholly to God is the secret of strength.
+
+The next step was a solemn national assembly at Samuel's town of
+Mizpeh, situated on a conspicuous hill, north-west of Jerusalem, which
+still is called 'the prophet Samuel.' Sacrifices were offered, which
+are no part of the Mosaic ritual. A significant part of these consisted
+in the pouring out of water 'before the Lord,' probably as emblematic
+of the pouring out of soul in penitence; for it was accompanied by
+fasting and confession of sin. The surest way to the true victory,
+which is the conquest of our sins, is confessing them to God. When once
+we have seen any sin in its true character clearly enough to speak to
+Him about it, we have gone far to emancipate ourselves from it, and
+have quickened our consciences towards more complete intolerance of its
+hideousness. Confession breaks the entail of sin, and substitutes for
+the dreary expectation of its continuance the glad conviction of
+forgiveness and cleansing. It does not make a stiff fight unnecessary;
+for assured freedom from sin is not the easy prize of confession, but
+the hard-won issue of sturdy effort in God's strength. But it is like
+blowing the trumpet of revolt,--it gives the signal for, and itself
+begins, the conflict. The night before the battle should be spent, not
+in feasting, but in prayer and lowly shriving of our souls before the
+great Confessor.
+
+The watchful Philistines seem to have had their attention attracted by
+the unusual stir among their turbulent subjects, and especially by this
+suspicious gathering at Mizpeh, and they come suddenly up the passes
+from their low-lying territory to disperse it. A whiff of the old
+terror blows across the spirits of the people, not unwholesomely; for
+it sets them, not to desire the outward presence of the ark, not to run
+from their post, but to beseech Samuel's intercession. They are afraid,
+but they mean to fight all the same, and, because they are afraid, they
+long for God's help. That is the right temper, which, if a man cherish,
+he will not be defeated, however many Philistines rush at him. Twenty
+years of slavery had naturally bred fear in them, but it is a wise fear
+which breeds reliance on God. Our enemy is strong, and no fault is more
+fatal than an underestimate of his power. If we go into battle singing,
+we shall probably come out of it weeping, or never come out at all. If
+we begin bragging, we shall end bleeding. It is only he who looks on
+the advancing foe, and feels 'They are too strong for me,' who will
+have to say, as he watches them retreating, 'He delivered me from my
+strong enemy.' We should think much of our foes and little of
+ourselves. Such a temper will lead to caution, watchfulness, wise
+suspicion, vigorous strain of all our little power, and, above all, it
+will send us to our knees to plead with our great Captain and Advocate.
+
+Samuel acts as priest and intercessor, offering a burnt-offering,
+which, like the pouring out of water, is no part of the Mosaic
+sacrifices. The fact is plain, but it is neither unaccountable nor
+large enough to warrant the sweeping inferences which have been drawn
+from it and its like, as to the non-existence at this period of the
+developed ceremonial in Leviticus. We need only remember Samuel's
+special office, and the seclusion in which the ark lay, to have a
+sufficient explanation of the cessation of the appointed worship and
+the substitution of such 'irregular' sacrifices. We are on surer ground
+when we see here the incident to which Psalm xcix. 6 refers ('Samuel
+among them that call upon His name. They called upon the Lord, and He
+answered them'), and when we learn the lesson that there is a power in
+intercession which we can use for one another, and which reaches its
+perfection in the prevailing prayer of our great High-priest, who, like
+Samuel and Moses, is on the mountain praying, while we fight in the
+plain.
+
+II. We have next the victory on the field of the former defeat. The
+battle is joined on the old ground. Strategic considerations probably
+determined the choice as they did in the case of the many battles on
+the plain of Esdraelon, for instance, or on the fields of the
+Netherlands. Probably the armies met on some piece of level ground in
+one of the wadies, up which the Philistines marched to the attack. At
+all events, there they were, face to face once more on the old spot. On
+both sides might be men who had been in the former engagement.
+Depressing remembrances or burning eagerness to wipe out the shame
+would stir in those on the one side; contemptuous remembrance of the
+ease with which the last victory had been won would animate the other.
+God Himself helped them by the thunderstorm, the solemn roll of which
+was 'the voice of the Lord' answering Samuel's prayer. The ark had
+brought only defeat to the impure host; the sacrifice brings victory to
+the penitent army. Observe that the defeat is accomplished before 'the
+men of Israel went out of Mizpeh.' God scattered the enemy, and Israel
+had only to pursue flying foes, as they hurried in wild confusion down
+the pass, with the lightning flashing behind them. The same pregnant
+expression is used for the rout of the Philistines as for the previous
+one of Israel. 'They were smitten _before_,' not _by_, the victors.
+The true victor was God.
+
+The story gives boundless hope of victory, even on the fields of our
+former defeats. We can master rooted faults of character, and overcome
+temptations which have often conquered us. Let no man say: 'Ah! I have
+been beaten so often that I may as well give up the fight altogether.
+Years and years I have been a slave, and everywhere I tread on old
+battlefields, where I have come off second-best. It will never be
+different. I may as well cease struggling.' However obstinate the
+fault, however often it has re-established its dominion and dragged us
+back to slavery, when we thought that we had made good our escape,--
+that is no reason to 'bate one jot of heart or hope.' We have every
+reason to hope bravely and boundlessly in the possibility of victory.
+True, we should rightly despair if we had only our own powers to depend
+on. But the grounds of our confidence lie in the inexhaustible fulness
+of God's Spirit, and the certain purpose of His will that we should be
+purified from all iniquity, as well as in the proved tendency of the
+principles and motives of the gospel to produce characters of perfect
+goodness, and, above all, in the sacrifice and intercession of our
+Captain on high. Since we have Christ to dwell in us, and be the seed
+of a new life, which will unfold into the likeness of that life from
+which it has sprung; since we have a perfect Example in Him who became
+like us in lowliness of flesh, that we might become like Him in purity
+of spirit; since we have a gospel which enjoins and supplies the
+mightiest motives for complete obedience; and since the most rooted and
+inveterate evils are no part of ourselves, but 'vipers' which may be
+'shaken from the hand' into which they have struck their fangs, we
+commit faithless treason against God, His message, and ourselves, when
+we doubt that we shall overcome all our sins. We should not, then, go
+into the fight downhearted, with our banners drooping, as if defeat sat
+on them. The belief that we shall conquer has much to do with victory.
+That is true in all sorts of conflicts. So, though the whole field may
+be strewed with relics, eloquent of former disgrace, we may renew the
+struggle with confidence that the future will not always copy the past.
+We 'are saved by hope'; by hope we are made strong. It is the very
+helmet on our heads. The warfare with our own evils should be waged in
+the assurance that every field of our defeat shall one day see set up
+on it the trophy of, not our victory, but God's in us.
+
+III. We have here the grateful commemoration of victory. Where that
+gray stone stands no man knows to-day, but its name lives for ever.
+This trophy bore no vaunts of leader's skill or soldier's bravery. One
+name only is associated with it. It is 'the stone of help,' and its
+message to succeeding generations is: 'Hitherto hath the Lord helped
+us.' That Hitherto' is the word of a mighty faith. It includes as
+parts of one whole the disaster no less than the victory. The Lord was
+helping Israel no less by sorrow and oppression than by joy and
+deliverance. The defeat which guided them back to Him was tender
+kindness and precious help. He helps us by griefs and losses, by
+disappointments and defeats; for whatever brings us closer to Him, and
+makes us feel that all our bliss and wellbeing lie in knowing and
+loving Him, is helpful beyond all other aid, and strength-giving above
+all other gifts.
+
+Such remembrance has in it a half-uttered prayer and hope for the
+future. 'Hitherto' means more than it says. It looks forward as well as
+backward, and sees the future in the past. Memory passes into hope, and
+the radiance in the sky behind throws light on to our forward path.
+God's 'hitherto' carries 'henceforward' wrapped up in it. His past
+reveals the eternal principles which will mould His future acts. He has
+helped, therefore he will help, is no good argument concerning men; but
+it is valid concerning God.
+
+The devout man's 'gratitude' is, and ought to be, 'a lively sense of
+favours to come.' We should never doubt but that, as good John Newton
+puts it, in words which bid fair to last longer than Samuel's gray
+stone:--
+
+       'Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review
+        Confirms His good pleasure to help me quite through.'
+
+We may write that on every field of our life's conflicts, and have it
+engraved at last on our gravestones, where we rest in hope.
+
+The best use of memory is to mark more plainly than it could be seen at
+the moment the divine help which has filled our lives. Like some track
+on a mountain side, it is less discernible to us, when treading it,
+than when we look at it from the other side of the glen. Many parts of
+our lives, that seemed unmarked by any consciousness of God's help
+while they were present, flash up into clearness when seen through the
+revealing light of memory, and gleam purple in it, while they looked
+but bare rocks as long as we were stumbling among them. It is blessed
+to remember, and to see everywhere God's help. We do not remember
+aright unless we do. The stone that commemorates our lives should bear
+no name but one, and this should be all that is read upon it: 'Now unto
+Him that kept us from falling, unto Him be glory!'
+
+
+
+
+'MAKE US A KING'
+
+'Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came
+to Samuel, onto Ramah, 5. And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and
+thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all
+the nations. 6. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give
+us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. 7. And the Lord
+said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they
+say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected
+Me, that I should not reign over them. 8. According to all the works
+which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt
+even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken Me, and served other
+gods, so do they also unto thee. 9. Now therefore hearken unto their
+voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner
+of the king that shall reign over them. 10. And Samuel told all the
+words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king. 11. And he
+said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He
+will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots,
+and to be his horsemen: and some shall run before his chariots, 12. And
+he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties;
+and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to
+make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. 13. And
+he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and
+to be bakers. 14. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and
+your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
+15. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and
+give to his officers, and to his servants. 16. And he will take your
+men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and
+your asses, and put them to his work. 17. He will take the tenth of
+your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. 18. And ye shall cry out in
+that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the
+Lord will not hear you in that day. 19. Nevertheless the people refused
+to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a
+king over us; 20. That we also may be like all the nations; and that
+our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.'--I
+SAMUEL viii. 4-20.
+
+
+The office of judge was as little capable of transmission from father
+to son as that of prophet, so that Samuel's appointment of his sons as
+judges must be regarded as contrary to its true idea. It was God who
+made the judges, and the introduction, in however slight a degree, of
+the hereditary principle, was not only politically a blunder, but
+religiously wrong. Our narrative, like Scripture generally, pronounces
+no opinion on the facts it records, but its unfavourable judgment may
+be safely inferred from its explanation that Samuel was 'old' when he
+made the appointment, and that his sons were corrupt and unjust. Our
+text deals with the unexpectedly wide consequences of that act, in the
+clamour for a king.
+
+I. Note the ill-omened request. A formal delegation of the
+representatives of the nation comes to Ramah, unsummoned by Samuel,
+with the demand for a king. There must have been much talk through
+Israel before the general mind could have been ascertained, and this
+step taken. Not a whisper of what was passing seems to have reached
+Samuel, and the request is flung at him in harsh language. It is not
+pleasant for any one, least of all for a ruler, to be told that
+everybody sees that he is getting old, and should provide for what is
+to come next. Fathers do not like to be told that their sons are
+disreputable, but Samuel had to hear the bitter truth. The old man was
+pained by it, and felt that the people were tired of him, as is plain
+enough from the divine words which followed, and bade him look beyond
+the ingratitude displayed towards himself, to that shown to God. But
+from the 'practical' point of view, there was a great deal to be said
+for the reasonableness and political wisdom of the elders' suggestion.
+Samuel had shown that he felt the danger of leaving the nation without
+a leader, by his nomination of his sons, and the proposal of a king is
+but carrying his policy a little farther. The hereditary principle once
+admitted, a full-blown king was evidently the best. There were many
+inconveniences in the rule by judges. They had no power but that of
+force of personal character and the authority of an unseen Lord. They
+left no successors; and long intervals had elapsed, and might again
+elapse, between the death of one and the rise of another, during which
+the nation appeared to have no head to guide nor arm to defend it.
+Examples of strong monarchies surrounded them, and they wanted to have
+a centre of unity and a defender in the person of a king.
+
+Samuel's displeasure seems to have been mainly on the ground of the
+insult to himself in the proposal, and its bearing on the rule of
+Jehovah over the people does not seem to have occurred to him till it
+was pointed out by the divine voice. But, like a good and wise man, he
+took his perplexity and trouble to God; and there he got light. The
+divine judgment of the request cuts down to its hidden, and probably
+unconscious, motive, and shows Samuel that weariness of him was only
+its surface, while the true bottom of it was rejection of God. The
+parallel drawn with idolatry is very instructive. The two things were
+but diverse forms of the same sense-ridden disposition: the one being
+an inability to grasp the thought of the unseen God; the other, a
+precisely similar inability to keep on the high level of trust in an
+unseen defender, and obedience to an unseen monarch. They wished for a
+king 'to go out before them' and 'fight their battles' (v. 20). Had
+they forgotten Eben-ezer, and many another field, where they and their
+fathers had but to stand still and see the Lord fight for them?
+
+The very same difficulty in living in quiet reliance on a power which
+is perceptible by no sense, besets us. We too are ever being tempted to
+prefer the solid security, as our foolish senses call it, of visible
+supports and delights, to the shadowy help of an unseen Arm. How many
+of us would feel safer with a good balance at our banker's than with
+God's promises! How many of us live as if we thought that men or women
+were better recipients of our love and of our trust than God! How few,
+even of professing Christians, really and habitually 'walk by faith,
+not by sight'! Do we not see ourselves in the mirror of this story? If
+we do not, we should. Note that the elders had, apparently, no idea
+that they were rejecting God in wanting a king. Samuel says nothing of
+the sort to them, and they could scarcely have made the request so
+boldly and briefly if they had been conscious that it was upsetting the
+very basis of their national life. Men are slow to appreciate the full
+force of their craving for visible good. The petitioners could plead
+many strong reasons, and, no doubt, fancied themselves simply taking
+proper precautions for the future. A great deal of unavowed and
+unconscious unbelief wears the mask of wise foresight. We rather pride
+ourselves on our prudence, when we should be ashamed of our distrust.
+
+Note, too, that we cannot combine reliance on the seen and the unseen.
+Life must be moulded by one or the other. The craving for a king was
+the rejection of Jehovah. We must elect by which we shall live, and
+from which we shall draw our supreme good.
+
+The desire to be like their neighbours was another motive with the
+elders. It is hard to be singular, and to foster reliance on the
+invisible, when all around us are dazzling examples of the success
+attending the other course. One of the first lessons which we have to
+learn, and one of the last which we have to practise, is a wholesome
+disregard of other people's ways. If we are to do anything worth doing,
+we must be content to be in a minority of one, if needful.
+
+II. Note God's concession of the foolish wish. The divine word to
+Samuel throws light on the nature of prophetic inspiration. He is
+bidden to 'hearken to the people's voice'--a procedure directly
+opposite to his own ideas. This is not a case of subsequent reflection
+modifying first impressions, but of an authoritative voice discerned by
+the hearer to be not his own, contradicting his own thoughts, and
+leaving no room for further consideration.
+
+Further, the granting to Israel of the king whom they desired, is but
+one instance of the law which is exemplified in God's dealing with
+nations and individuals, according to which He lets them have their own
+way, that they may 'be filled with their own devices.' Such experience
+is the best teacher, though her school fees are high. The surest way to
+disgust men with their own folly, is to let it work out its results,--
+just as boys in sweetmeat shops are allowed to eat as much as they like
+at first, and so get a distaste for the dainties. 'Try it, then, and
+see how you like it,' is not an unkind thing to say, and God often says
+it to us. When argument and appeals to duty and the like fail, there is
+nothing more to be done but to let us have our request, and find out
+the poison that lurked under the fair outside. The prodigal son gets
+his coveted portion, and is allowed to go into the far country, that he
+may prove how good and happy it is to starve among the swine, not
+because his father is angry with him, but because such experience is
+the only way to re-awaken his dormant love, and to make him long for
+the despised place in his father's house. There are some fevers of the
+desires which must run their course before the patient can be well
+again. Let us keep a careful watch over ourselves, that we entertain no
+wishes but such as run parallel with God's manifest will, lest He may
+have in His anger, which is still love, to give us our request, that we
+may find out our error by the bitter fruits of a granted desire.
+
+III. Note the obstinacy that, with eyes open to the consequences,
+persists in its demands. Samuel is bidden to 'show them the manner of
+the king that shall reign over them.' He sketches, in sombre outline,
+the picture of an Eastern despot, the only kind of king which the world
+then knew. The darker features of these monarchies are not included.
+There is no harem, nor cruelty, nor monstrous vice, in the picture; but
+the diversion of labour to minister to royal pomp, the establishment of
+a standing army, the alienation of land to officials, heavy taxation
+and forced labour make up the items. To these is added (v. 18) that the
+royalty, now so eagerly desired, would sooner or later become a burden,
+and that then they or their sons would find it was easier to put on
+than to put off the yoke; for 'the Lord will not hear you in that day,'
+in reference, that is, to the removal of the king. They were exchanging
+an unseen King who gave all things for one who would take, and not
+give. A wise exchange! The consequences of our wishes are not always
+drawn out so clearly before us as in this instance; but we are not left
+in darkness as to the broad issues, and we all know enough to make our
+persistence in evil, after such warnings, the deepest mystery and most
+flagrant sin. The drunkard is not deterred by his knowledge that there
+is such a thing as _delirium tremens_; nor the thief, by the
+certainty that the officer's hand will be laid on his shoulder one day
+or other; nor the young profligate, by the danger that his bones shall
+be 'full of the sin of his youth'; nor are any of us kept from our
+sins, by the clear sight of their end. 'I have loved strangers, and
+after them will I go,' notwithstanding all knowledge of the fatal
+issue. Surely there is nothing sadder than that power of neglecting the
+most certain known result of our acts. Wilfully blind, and hurried on
+by lust, passion, or other impulse, like bulls which shut their eyes
+when they charge, we rush at our mark, and often dash ourselves to
+pieces on it. If a man saw the consequences of his sin at the moment of
+temptation, he would not do it; but this is the wonder, that he does
+not see them, though he knows them well enough, and that the knowledge
+has no power to restrain him.
+
+IV. Note the divine purpose which uses man's sin as its instrument in
+advancing its designs. God had promised Israel a king (Deut. xvii. 14,
+etc.), and the elders may have thought that they were only asking for
+what was in accordance with His plan. So they were; but their motive
+was wrong, and so their prayer, though for what God meant to give, was
+wrong. In this case, as always, God uses men's sins as occasions for
+the furtherance of His own eternal purpose, as that profound saying has
+it, 'Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee.' The kingly office was
+a step in advance, and gave occasion to the development of Messianic
+expectations of the true King of Israel and of men, which would have
+been impossible without it, In many ways it was for the good of the
+nation, and the holders of the office were 'the Lord's anointed.'
+Modern criticism has found traces of two opposite views in this story,
+as compared with the passage in Deuteronomy above referred to; but
+surely it is a more sober, though less novel, view, to regard the whole
+incident as illustrating the two truths, that men may wish for right
+things in a wrong way, and that God uses sin as well as obedience as
+His instrument. No barriers can stop the march of His great purpose
+through the ages, any more than a bit of glass can stay a sunbeam.
+However the currents run and the storms howl, they carry the ship to
+the haven; for He holds the helm, and all winds help. The people
+rejected Him, and in seeking a king followed but their own earthly
+minds; but they prepared the way for David and David's Son. Their
+children long after, moved by the same spirit, shouted, 'We have no
+king but Caesar!' but they prepared the throne for the true King, for
+whom they destined a Cross. Man's greatest sin, the rejection of the
+visible King of the world, brought about the firm establishment of His
+dominion on earth and in heaven. The cross is the great instance of the
+same law as is embodied in this history,--the overruling providence
+which bends the antagonism of men into a tool for effecting the purpose
+of God.
+
+Alas for those who only thus carry on God's designs! They perish, and
+their work is none the less their sin, because God has used it. How
+much better to enter with a willing heart and a clear intelligence into
+sympathy with His designs, and, delighting to do His will, to share in
+the eternal duration of His triumphant purpose! 'The world passeth
+away, and the fashion thereof: but he that doeth the will of God
+abideth for ever.'
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD JUDGE AND THE YOUNG KING
+
+'Now the Lord had told Samuel In his ear a day before Saul came,
+saying, 16, To-morrow, about this time I will send thee a man out of
+the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over My
+people Israel, that he may save My people out of the hand of the
+Philistines: for I have looked upon My people, because their cry is
+come unto Me. 17. And when Samuel saw Saul, the Lord said unto him,
+Behold the man whom I spake to thee of! this same shall reign over My
+people. 18. Then Saul drew near to Samuel in the gate, and said, Tell
+me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is. 19. And Samuel answered
+Saul, and said, I am the seer: go up before me unto the high place; for
+ye shall eat with me to-day, and to-morrow I will let thee go, and will
+tell thee all that is in thine heart. 20. And as for thine asses that
+were lost three days ago, set not thy mind on them; for they are found.
+And on whom is all the desire of Israel? Is it not on thee, and on all
+thy father's house? 21. And Saul answered and said, Am not I a
+Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the
+least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then
+speakest thou so to me? 22. And Samuel took Saul and his servant, and
+brought them into the parlour, and made them sit in the chiefest place
+among them that were bidden, which were about thirty persons. 23. And
+Samuel said unto the cook, Bring the portion which I gave thee, of
+which I said unto thee, Set it by thee. 24. And the cook took up the
+shoulder, and that which was upon it, and set it before Saul. And
+Samuel said, Behold that which is left I set it before thee, and eat:
+for unto this time hath it been kept for thee since I said, I have
+invited the people. So Saul did eat with Samuel that day. 25. And when
+they were come down from the high place into the city, Samuel communed
+with Saul upon the top of the house. 26. And they arose early: and it
+came to pass about the spring of the day, that Samuel called Saul to
+the top of the house, saying, Up, that I may send thee away. And Saul
+arose, and they went out both of them, he and Samuel, abroad. 27. And
+as they were going down to the end of the city, Samuel said to Saul,
+Bid the servant pass on before us, (and he passed on,) but stand thou
+still a while, that I may shew thee the word of God.'--1 SAMUEL ix. 15-
+27.
+
+
+Both the time and the place of the incidents here told are unknown. No
+note is given of the interval that had elapsed since the elders'
+deputation. All that we know is that on the previous day Samuel had had
+the divine communication mentioned in verse 15, and that some days are
+implied as spent by Saul in his quest for his fathers asses, Equally
+uncertain is the name of the city. It was not Samuel's ordinary
+residence; it was in the 'land of Zuph,' an unknown district; it was
+perched, like most of the cities, on a hill; it had fountains lower
+down the slope, and a 'high place' farther up, where there was a
+building large enough for a feast. How strangely vivid the picture of
+this anonymous city is, and how we can yet see the maidens coming down
+to the fountains, the wearied travellers toiling up, and the voluble
+abundance of the directions given them!
+
+I. The first thing we have to note is the premonitory word of the Lord.
+Observe the picturesque and forcible expression, 'had uncovered the ear
+of Samuel.' It is more than picturesque. It gives in the strongest form
+the fact of a revelation, both as to its origin and its secrecy. It is
+vain to represent the transition from judgeship to monarchy as a mere
+political revolution, inaugurated by Samuel as a fore-seeing statesman.
+It is misleading to speak of him, as Dean Stanley does, as one of the
+men who mediate between the old and the new. His opinions and views go
+for just nothing in the transaction, and he is simply God's instrument.
+The people's desire for the king, and God's answer to it, were equally
+independent of him. His own ideas were dead against the change, and at
+each step in bringing it about the divine causality is everything, and
+he is nothing but its obedient servant. It is hopeless to sift out a
+naturalistic explanation from the narrative, which is either
+supernatural or nothing. Note the three points of this communication,--
+God's sending Saul, the command to anoint, and the motive ascribed to
+God. As to the first, how striking that full-toned authoritative 'I
+will send' is! Think of the chain of ordinary events which brought Saul
+to the little city,--the wandering of a drove of asses, the failure to
+get on their tracks, the accident of being in the land of Zuph when he
+got tired of the search, the suggestion of the servant; and behind all
+these, and working through them, the will and hand of God, thrusting
+this man, all unconscious, along a path which he knew not. Our own
+purposes we may know, but God's we do not know. There is something
+awful in the thought of the issues that may spring from the smallest
+affairs, and we shall be bewildered and paralysed if once we get a
+glimpse of the complicated web which is ever being woven in the loom of
+time, unless we, too, can, by faith, see the Weaver, and then we shall
+be at rest. Call nothing trivial, and seek to be conscious of His
+guiding hand.
+
+The command to Samuel to anoint Saul is no product of Samuel's own
+reflection, but comes to him, in this imperative form, before he has
+seen Saul, like a commission in blank, in regard to which he has no
+option, and in the origin of which he had no share. It was a piece of
+painful work to devolve his authority, like Aaron's having to strip off
+his robes before he died, and to put them on his son. But there is no
+trace of wounded feeling in Samuel. He is true to his childhood's word,
+'Speak, for Thy servant heareth,' and, no doubt, he had the reward
+which obedience ever has to sweeten the bitterest draught, the reward
+of a quiet heart.
+
+The reason as given in the last clause of the verse ought to have made
+Samuel's self-abnegation easier. God sets him the example. Israel had
+rejected Him, but He still calls them 'My people,' and looks upon them
+in tender care, and hears their cry. There is no contradiction here
+with the aspect of the concession to the people's wish, which appeared
+in the former section. Hasty criticism tries to make out discrepancies
+in the accounts, because it does not recognise one of the plainest
+characteristics of Scripture; namely, its habit of stating strongly and
+exclusively that side of a complicated matter which is relevant to the
+purpose in hand, and leaving the other sides to be presented in due
+time. The three accounts of the election give three different reasons
+for it. In chapter viii., the people put it on the ground of Samuel's
+age and his son's unfitness, and God treats it as national rejection of
+Him. Here it appears as due, on the part of the people, to their fear
+of the Philistines, and on the part of God to His loving yielding to
+their cry. In 1 Samuel xii. 12, Samuel traces it to the fear of
+Ammonite invasion. Are these contradictory or supplementary accounts?
+Certainly the latter. Though Israel had in heart rejected God, and He
+gave them a king that they might learn how much better they would have
+been without one, it is as true that He lovingly listened to the cry of
+their fear, and answered them, in pity and tender care, by giving them
+the king whom they desired, and who would deliver them from their
+enemies. Let us learn how patient of our faithless follies, and how
+full of long-suffering love, even in 'anger,' He is. The same gift of
+His providence, regarded in one light, is loving chastisement, and in
+another is loving compliance with our cry and swift help to our need in
+the shape that we desire, but in both aspects is good and perfect.
+Note, too, that God's look is active, and is the bringing of the needed
+aid, and that He waits for our cry before He comes with His help.
+
+II. The meeting of Samuel and Saul. They encounter each other in the
+gate,--the prophet on his way to the sacrifice, the future king with
+his head full of his humble quest. Samuel knows Saul by divine
+intimation as soon as he sees him, but Saul does not know Samuel. His
+question indicates the noble simplicity, without attendants or
+trappings, of the judge's life; but it also suggests the strange
+isolation of these early days, and the probable indifference of Saul to
+religion. If he had cared much about God's rule in Israel, he could
+scarcely have been so ignorant as his servant's words about 'the seer,'
+and his failure to know him when he saw him, show Saul to have been. He
+had not cared to see Samuel in any of the latter's circuits, and now he
+only wants to get some information from a diviner about these
+unfortunate asses. What a contrast between the thoughts of the two, as
+they looked at each other! Saul begins by consulting Samuel as a
+magician; he ends by seeking counsel from the witch at Endor. Samuel's
+words are beautiful in their smothering of all personal feeling, and
+dignified in their authority. He at once takes command of Saul, and
+prepares him by half-hints for something great to come. The direction
+to 'go up before me' is a sign of honour. The invitation to the
+sacrificial feast is another. The promise to disclose his own secret
+thoughts to Saul may, perhaps, point to some hidden ambitions, the
+knowledge of which would prove Samuel's prophetic character. The
+assurance as to the asses answers the small immediate occasion of
+Saul's resort to him, and the dim hint in the last words of verse 20,
+rightly translated, tells him that 'all that is desirable in Israel' is
+for him, and for all his father's house. He went out to look for his
+father's asses, and he found a kingdom. The words were enigmatical; but
+if Saul knew of the impending revolution, they could scarcely fail to
+dazzle him and take away his breath. His answer is more than mere
+Oriental self-depreciation. Its bashful modesty contrasts sadly with
+the almost insane masterfulness and arrogant self-will of his later
+years. Fair beginnings may end ill, and those who are set in positions
+of influence have hard work to keep steady heads, and to sail with low
+sails.
+
+III. The feast. Up at the high place was some chamber used for the
+feasts which followed the sacrifices. A company of thirty--or,
+according to another reading, of seventy--persons had been invited, and
+the stately young stranger from Benjamin, with his servant (a trait of
+the simple manners of these days), is set in the place of honour, where
+wondering eyes fasten on him. Attention is still more emphatically
+centred on him when Samuel bids 'the cook' bring a part of the
+sacrifice which he had been ordered to set aside. It proves to be the
+'shoulder' or 'thigh,' the priest's perquisite, and therefore probably
+Samuel's. To give this to another was equivalent to putting him in
+Samuel's place; and Samuel's words in handing it to Saul make its
+meaning plain. It is 'that which hath been reserved.' It has been 'kept
+for thee' till 'the appointed time,' and that with a view to the
+assembled guests. All this is in true prophetic fashion, which
+delighted in symbols, and these of the homeliest sort. The whole
+transaction expressed the transference of power to Saul, the divine
+reserving of the monarchy for him, and the public investiture with it,
+by the prophet himself. The veil was intentional, and intentionally
+thin. Cannot we see the flush of surprise and modesty on Saul's cheek,
+as he tore the pieces from the significant 'shoulder,' and hear the
+whispers that ran through the guest-chamber?
+
+IV. The private colloquy. When the simple feast was over, the strangely
+assorted pair went down to Samuel's house, and there, on the quiet
+house-top, where were no curious ears, held long and earnest talk. No
+doubt Samuel told Saul all that was in his heart, as he had said that
+he would, and convinced him thereby that it was God who was speaking to
+him through the prophet. Nor would exhortations and warnings be
+wanting, which the old man's experience would be anxious to give, and
+the young one's modesty not unwilling to receive. Saul is a listener,
+not a speaker, in this unreported interview; and Samuel is in it, as
+throughout, the superior. The characteristic which marked the beginning
+of the Jewish monarchy was stamped on it till the end. The king was
+inferior to the prophet, and was meant to take his instructions from
+him when he appeared. Saul was docile on that first day, when he was
+half dazed with his new prospects, and wholly grateful to Samuel; but
+the history will show us how soon the fair promise of concord was
+darkened, and how fiercely he chafed at Samuel's attempted control.
+
+One can fancy his thoughts as he lay in the starlight, on the house-
+top, that night, and gazed into the astounding future that had opened
+before him. Had there been any true religion in him, it would have been
+a wakeful night of prayer. But, more likely, as the event proves, the
+ambition and arrogance which were deep in his nature, though hitherto
+undeveloped, were his counsellors, and drove Samuel's wisdom out of his
+head.
+
+As soon as the morning-red began to rise in the East, Samuel sent him
+away, to secure, as would appear, privacy in his departure. With simple
+courtesy the prophet accompanied his guest, and as soon as they had got
+down the hill beyond the last house of the city, he bids Saul send on
+his servant, that he may speak a last word to him alone. Our text stops
+before the solemn anointing, and leaves these two standing there, in
+the fresh morning, type of the new career opening for one of them. What
+a contrast in the men! The one has all his long life been true to his
+first vow, 'Speak, for Thy servant heareth,' and now has come, in
+fulness of years, and reverenced by all men, near the end of his
+patient, faithful service. His work is all but done, and his heart is
+quiet in the peace which is the best reward of loving and doing God's
+law. Ripened wisdom, calm trust, unhesitating submission cast a glory
+round the old man, who is now performing the supreme act of self-
+abnegation of his lifetime, and, not without a sense of relief, is
+laying the burden, so long and uncomplainingly borne, on the great
+shoulders of this young giant. The other has a humble past of a few
+years rapidly sinking out of his dazzled sight, and is in a whirl of
+emotion at the startling suddenness of his new dignity. When one thinks
+of Gilboa, and the desperate suicide there, how pathetic is that
+strong, jubilant young figure, in the morning light, below the city, as
+he bows his head to receive the anointing which, little as he knew it,
+was to prove his ruin! A life begun by obedient listening to God's
+voice, and continued in the same, comes at last to a blessed end, and
+is crowned with many goods. A life which but partially accepts God's
+will as its law, and rather takes counsel of its own passions and
+arrogant self-sufficiency, may have much that is bright and lovable at
+its beginning, but will steadily darken as it goes on, and will set at
+last in eclipse and gloom.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING AFTER MAN'S HEART
+
+'And Samuel called the people together unto the Lord to Mizpeh; 18. And
+said unto the children of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I
+brought up Israel out of Egypt, and delivered you out of the hand of
+the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all kingdoms, and of them that
+oppressed you; 19. And ye have this day rejected your God, who Himself
+saved you out of all your adversities and your tribulations; and ye
+have said unto Him, Nay, but set a king over us. Now therefore present
+yourselves before the Lord by your tribes, and by your thousands. 20.
+And when Samuel had caused all the tribes of Israel to come near, the
+tribe of Benjamin was taken. 21. When he had caused the tribe of
+Benjamin to come near by their families, the family of Matri was taken,
+and Saul the son of Kish was taken: and when they sought him, he could
+not be found. 22. Therefore they enquired of the Lord further, if the
+man should yet come thither. And the Lord answered, Behold, he hath hid
+himself among the stuff. 23. And they ran and fetched him thence: and
+when he stood among the people, he was higher than any of the people
+from his shoulders and upward. 24. And Samuel said to all the people,
+See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among
+all the people? And all the people shouted, and said, God save the
+king. 25. Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and
+wrote it in a book, and laid it up before the Lord. And Samuel sent all
+the people away, every man to his house. 26. And Saul also went home to
+Gibeah; and there went with him a band of men, whose hearts God had
+touched. 27. But the children of Belial said, How shall this man save
+us? And they despised him, and brought him no presents. But he held his
+peace.'--1 SAMUEL x. 17-27.
+
+
+These verses fit on to chapter viii., chapters ix. to x. 16, being
+probably from another source, inserted here because the anointing of
+Saul, told in them, did occur between Samuel's dismissal of the people
+and his summoning of the national assembly which is here related. That
+private anointing of Saul was the divine call to him individually; the
+text tells of his public designation to the nation. The two are
+perfectly consistent, and, indeed, the private anointing is presupposed
+in the incident recorded in this passage, of Saul's hiding himself, for
+he could not have known the result that he would be 'taken,' unless he
+had had that previous intimation. The assembly at Mizpah was not
+convened in order to choose a king, but to accept God's choice, which
+was then to be declared.
+
+But before the choice was announced, a last appeal was made to the
+people, if, perchance, they might still be persuaded to forgo their
+rebellious desire. It is not, indeed, said that this final, all but
+hopeless attempt was made by Samuel at the divine command, and we are
+not told that he had any further revelation than that in chapter viii.
+7-9. But, no doubt, he was speaking as Jehovah's mouthpiece, and so we
+have here one more instance of that long-suffering divine patience and
+love which 'hopeth all things,' and lingers pleadingly round the
+alienated heart, seeking to woo it back to itself, and never ceasing to
+labour to avert the evil deed, till it is actually and irrevocably
+done. It may be said that God knew that the appeal was sure to fail,
+and therefore could not have made it. But is not that mysterious
+continuance of effort, foreknown to be futile, the very paradox of
+God's love? Did not Jesus give the traitor the sop, as a last token of
+friendship, a last appeal to his heart? And does not God still in like
+manner deal with us all?
+
+Observe how He seeks to win Israel back. It is not by threatenings, but
+by reminders of His great benefits. He will not drive men back to His
+service, like a slave-driver with brandished whip, but He wishes to
+draw them back by 'the cords of love.' It is service from hearts melted
+by thankfulness, and therefore overflowing in joyful, willing obedience
+and grateful acts, that He desires. 'The mercies of God' should lead to
+men offering themselves as 'living sacrifices.'
+
+The last appeal failed, and Samuel at once went on to give the people
+the desired bitter which they thought so sweet. Of course, it was by
+their representatives that the tribes presented themselves before God.
+The manner of making God's choice known is not told, and speculations
+as to it are idle. Probably a simple yes or no, as each tribe, family
+or individual was 'presented' was the mode, but how it was conveyed is
+quite unknown. That is a small matter; more important is it to note
+that Saul was chosen simply because he was the very type of the
+national ideal of a hero-king. Both here and in chapter ix. 2 his
+stature and bravery are the only qualities mentioned. What Israel
+wanted was a rough fighter, with physical strength, plenty of bone and
+muscle. About moral, intellectual or spiritual qualities they did not
+care, and they got the kind of king that they wanted,--the only kind
+that they could appreciate. The only way to teach them that one who was
+a head and shoulders taller than any of them was not thereby certified
+to be the ideal king, was to give them such a man, and let them see
+what good he would do them.
+
+There is no surer index nor sharper test of national or individual
+character than the sort of 'heroes' they worship. _Vox populi_ has
+not been very much refined since Saul's day. Athletes and soldiers
+still captivate the crowd, and a mere prophet like Samuel has no chance
+beside the man of broad shoulders and well-developed biceps. And very
+often communities, especially democratic ones, get the 'king' they
+desire, the leader, statesman or the like, who comes near their ideal.
+The man whom they choose is the man whom, generally, they deserve.
+Israel had an excuse for its burst of ardour for a soldier, for it was
+in deadly danger from the Philistines. Is there as good an excuse for
+us in Britain, in our recent adoration of successful generals? Israel
+found out that its idol lacked higher gifts than thews and sinews, and
+experience taught them the falseness of their ideal.
+
+Saul's hiding among the piles of miscellaneous baggage, which the
+multitude of representatives had brought with them, is usually set down
+to his credit, as indicating an engaging modesty; but there is another
+and more probable explanation of it, less creditable to him. Was it not
+rather occasioned by his shrinking from the heavy task that God was
+laying on him? He was not being summoned to a secure throne, but to 'go
+out before us, and fight our battles.' He might well shrink, but if he
+had been God-fearing and God-obeying and God-trusting, he would have
+cried, 'Here am I! send me,' instead of skulking among the stuff. There
+was another Saul, who could say, 'I was not disobedient unto the
+heavenly vision.' It had been better for the son of Kish if he had been
+like the young Pharisee from Tarsus. We too have divine calls in
+_our_ lives, and alas! we too not seldom hide ourselves among the
+stuff, and try to avoid taking up some heavy duty, by absorbing our
+minds in material good. Few things have greater power of obscuring 'the
+heavenly vision,' and of rendering us unwilling to obey it, than the
+clinging to the things of this world, which are in their place as the
+traveller's luggage needful on the road, but very much out of their
+place when they become a hiding-place for a man whom God is calling to
+service.
+
+The 'manner of the kingdom,' which Samuel wrote and laid up before the
+Lord, was probably not the same as 'the manner of the king' (chapter
+viii. 9-18), but a kind of constitution, or solemn statement of the
+principles which were to govern the monarchy. The reading in verse 26
+should probably be 'the men of valour,' instead of 'a band of men.'
+They were brave men, 'whose hearts God had touched.' Now that Saul was
+chosen by God, loyalty to God was shown by loyalty to Saul. The sin of
+the people's desire, and the drop from the high ideal of the theocracy,
+and the lack of lofty qualities in Saul, may all be admitted. But God
+has made him king, and that is enough. Henceforward, God's servants
+will be Saul's partisans. The malcontents were apparently but a small
+faction. They, perhaps, had had a candidate of their own, but, at all
+events, they criticised God's appointed deliverer, and saw nothing in
+him to warrant the expectation that he would be able to do much for
+Israel. Disparaging criticism of God's chosen instruments comes from
+distrust of God who chose them. To doubt _the_ divinely sent
+Deliverer's power to 'save' is to accuse God of not knowing our needs
+and of miscalculating the power of His supply of them. But not a few of
+us put that same question in various tones of incredulity, scorn or
+indifference. Sense makes many mistakes when it takes to trying to
+weigh Christ in its vulgar balances, and to settling whether He looks
+like a Saviour and a King.
+
+SAMUEL'S CHALLENGE AND CHARGE
+
+'And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I have hearkened unto your
+voice in all that ye said unto me, and have made a king over you. 2.
+And now, behold, the king walketh before you: and I am old and
+grayheaded; and, behold, my sons are with you: and I have walked before
+you from my childhood unto this day. 3. Behold, here I am: witness
+against me before the Lord, and before His anointed: whose ox have I
+taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I
+oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine
+eyes therewith? and I will restore it you. 4. And they said, Thou hast
+not defrauded us, nor oppressed us, neither hast thou taken ought of
+any man's hand. 5. And he said unto them, The Lord is witness against
+you, and His anointed is witness this day, that ye have not found ought
+in my hand. And they answered, He is witness. 6. And Samuel said unto
+the people, It is the Lord that advanced Moses and Aaron, and that
+brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. 7. Now therefore
+stand still, that I may reason with you before the Lord of all the
+righteous acts of the Lord, which he did to you and to your fathers. 8.
+When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the Lord,
+then the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, which brought forth your fathers
+out of Egypt, and them dwell in this place. 9. And when they forgat the
+Lord their God, He sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the
+host of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand
+of the king of Moab, and they fought against them. 10. And they cried
+unto the Lord, and said, We have sinned, because we have forsaken the
+Lord, and have served Baalim and Ashtaroth: but now deliver us out of
+the hand of our enemies, and we will serve Thee. 11. And the Lord sent
+Jerubbaal, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out
+of the hand of your enemies on every side, and ye dwelled safe. 12. And
+when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came against
+you, ye said unto me, Nay; but a king shall reign over us: when the
+Lord your God was your king. 13. Now therefore behold the king whom ye
+have chosen, and whom ye have desired! and, behold, the Lord hath set a
+king over you. 14. If ye will fear the Lord, and serve Him, and obey
+His voice, and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then
+shall both ye and also the king that reigneth over you continue
+following the Lord your God: 15. But if ye will not obey the voice of
+the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then shall the
+hand of the Lord be against you, as it was against your fathers.'--1
+SAMUEL xii. 1-15.
+
+The portion of Samuel's address included in this passage has three main
+sections: his noble and dignified assertion of his official purity, his
+summary of the past history, and his solemn declaration of the
+conditions of future wellbeing for the nation with its new king.
+
+I. Probably the war with the Ammonite king Nahash, which had postponed
+the formal inauguration of the king, had been carried on in the
+neighbourhood of the Jordan valley; and thus Gilgal would be a
+convenient rendezvous. But it was chosen for other reasons also, and,
+as appears from 1 Samuel x. 8, had been fixed on by Samuel at his first
+interview with Saul. There the Covenant had been renewed, after the
+wanderers had crossed the river, with Joshua at their head, and it was
+fitting that the beginnings of the new form of the national life should
+be consecrated by worship on the same site as had witnessed the
+beginnings of the national life on the soil of the promised land.
+Perhaps the silent stones, which Joshua reared, stood there yet. At all
+events, sacred memories could scarcely fail, as the rejoicing crowd,
+standing where their fathers had renewed the Covenant, saw the
+blackened ruins of Jericho, and the foaming river, now, as then,
+filling all its banks in the time of harvest, which their fathers had
+crossed with the ark, that was now hidden at Kirjath-jearim, for their
+guide. The very place spoke the same lessons from the past which Samuel
+was about to teach them.
+
+There is just a faint trace of Samuel's disapproval of the new order in
+his first words. He takes care to throw the whole responsibility on the
+people; but, at the same time, he assumes the authoritative tone which
+becomes him, and quietly takes the position of superiority to the king
+whom he has made. I Samuel xi. 15 seems to imply that he took no part
+in the rejoicings. It was 'Saul and all the men of Israel' who were so
+glad. He was still hesitant as to the issue, and obeyed the divine
+command with clearer insight into its purpose than the shouting crowd
+and the proud young king had. There is something very pathetic in the
+contrast he draws between Saul and himself. 'The king walketh before
+you,' in all the vigour of his young activity, and delighting all your
+eyes, and 'I am old and gray-headed,' feeble, and fit for little more
+work, and therefore, as happens to such worn-out public servants, cast
+aside for a new man. Samuel was not a monster of perfection without
+human feelings. His sense of Israel's ingratitude to himself and
+practical revolt from God lay together in his mind, and colour this
+whole speech, which has a certain tone of severity, and an absence of
+all congratulation. Probably that accounts for the mention of his sons.
+The elders' frank statement of their low opinion of them had been a
+sore point with Samuel, and he cannot help alluding to it. It was not
+for want of possible successors in his own house that they had cried
+out for a king. If this be not the bearing of the allusion to his sons,
+it is difficult to explain; and this obvious explanation would never
+have been overlooked if Samuel had not been idealised into a faultless
+saint. The dash of human infirmity and fatherly blindness gives reality
+to the picture. 'I have walked before you from my youth unto this day.'
+Note the recurrence of the same expression as is applied to Saul in the
+former part of the verse. It is as if he had said, 'Once I was as he is
+now,--young and active in your sight, and for your service. Remember
+these past years. May your new fancy's record be as stainless as mine
+is, when he is old and grayheaded!' The words bring into view the
+characteristic of Samuel's life which is often insisted on in the
+earlier chapters,--its calm, unbroken continuity and uniformity of
+direction, from the long-past days when he wore 'the little coat' his
+mother made him, with so many tears dropped on it, till this closing
+hour. While everything was rushing down to destruction in Eli's time,
+and his sons were rioting at the Tabernacle door, the child was growing
+up in the stillness; and from then till now, amid all changes, his
+course had been steady, and pointed to one aim. Blessed they whose age
+is but the fruitage of the promise of their youth! Blessed they who
+begin as 'little children,' with the forgiveness of sin and the
+knowledge of the Father, and who go on, as 'young men,' to overcome the
+Evil One, and end, as 'fathers,' with the deeper knowledge of Him who
+is 'from the beginning,' which is the reward of childhood's trust and
+manhood's struggles!
+
+Samuel is still a prophet, but he is ceasing to be the sole authority,
+and, in his conscious integrity, calls for a public, full discharge, in
+the presence of the king. Note that verse 3 gives the first instance of
+the use of the name 'Messiah,' and think of the contrast between Saul
+and Jesus. Observe, too, the simple manners of these times, when 'ox
+and ass' were the wealth. They would be poor plunder nowadays. Note
+also the various forms of injustice of which he challenges any one to
+convict him. Forcible seizure of live stock, fraud, harsh oppression,
+and letting suitors put gold on his eyes that he might not see, are the
+vices of the Eastern ruler to-day, and rampant in that unhappy land, as
+they have been ever since Samuel's time. I think I have heard of
+politicians in some other countries further west than Gilgal, who have
+axes to grind and logs to roll, and of the wonderful effects, in many
+places of business, of certain circular gold discs applied to the eyes.
+This man went away a poor man. He does not seem to have had salary, or
+retiring pension; but he carried away a pair of clean hands, as the
+voice of a nation witnessed.
+
+II. Having cleared himself, Samuel recounts the outlines of the past,
+in order to emphasise the law that cleaving to God had ever brought
+deliverance; departure, disaster; and penitence, restoration. It is
+history with a purpose, and less careful about chronology than
+principles. Facts are good, if illuminated by the clear recognition of
+the law which they obey; but, without that, they are lumber. The
+'philosophy of history' is not reached without the plain recognition of
+the working of the divine will. No doubt the principles which Samuel
+discerned written as with a sunbeam on the past of Israel were
+illustrated there with a certainty and directness which belonged to it
+alone; but we shall make a bad use of the history of Israel, if we say,
+'It is all miraculous, and therefore inapplicable to modern national
+life.' It would be much nearer the mark to say, 'It is all miraculous,
+and therefore meant as an exhibition for blind eyes of the eternal
+principles which govern the history of all nations.' It is as true in
+Britain to-day as ever it was in Judea, that righteousness and the fear
+of God are the sure foundations of real national as of individual
+prosperity. The kingdoms of this world are not the devil's, though
+diplomatists and soldiers seem to think so. If any nation were to live
+universally by the laws of God, it might not have what the world calls
+national success; it would have no story of wholesale robbery, called
+military glory, but it would have peace within its borders, and life
+would go nobly and sweetly there. 'Happy is the people, that is in such
+a case: yea, happy is the people, whose God is the Lord.'
+
+The details of Samuel's _resume_ need not occupy much time. Note
+the word in verse 7, 'reason,' or, as the Revised Version renders,
+'plead.' He takes the position of God's advocate in the suit, and what
+he will prove for his client is the 'righteousness' of his dealings in
+the past. The story, says he, can be brought down to very simple
+elements,--a cry to God, an answer of deliverance, a relapse,
+punishment, a renewed cry to God, and all the rest of the series as
+before. It is like a repeating decimal, over and over again, each
+figure drawing the next after it. The list of oppressors in verse 9,
+and that of deliverers in verse 11, do not follow the same order, but
+that matters nothing. Clearly the facts are assumed as well known, and
+needing only summary reference. The new-fashioned way of treating
+Biblical history, of course, takes that as an irrefutable proof of the
+late date and spuriousness of this manufactured speech put into
+Samuel's mouth. Less omniscient students will be content with accepting
+the witness to the history. Nobody knows anything of a judge named
+Bedan, and the conjectural emendation 'Barak' is probable, especially
+remembering the roll-call in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where Gideon,
+Barak, and Jephthah appear in the same order, with the addition of
+Samson. The supposition that 'Samuel,' in this verse, is an error for
+'Samson,' is unnecessary; for the prophet's mention of himself thus is
+not unnatural, in the circumstances, and is less obtrusive than to have
+said 'me.'
+
+The retrospect here given points the lesson of the sin and folly of the
+demand for a king. The old way had been to cry to God in their
+distresses, and the old experience had been that the answer came swift
+and sufficient; but this generation had tried a new method, and fear of
+'Nahash the Ammonite' had driven them to look for a man to help them.
+The experience of God's responses to prayer does not always wean even
+those who receive them from casting about for visible helpers. Still
+less does the experience of our predecessors keep us from it. Strange
+that after a hundred plain instances of His aid, the hundred and first
+distress should find us almost as slow to turn to Him, and as eager to
+secure earthly stays, as if there were no past of our own, or of many
+generations, all crowded and bright with tokens of His care! We are
+always disposed to doubt whether the power that delivered from Sisera,
+Philistines, and Moab, will be able to deliver us from Nahash. The new
+danger looks the very worst of all, and this time we must have a king.
+All the while Israel had God for its king. Our dim eyes cannot see the
+realities of the invisible world, and so we cleave to the illusions of
+the visible, which, at their best, are but shadows of the real, and are
+often made, by our weak hearts, its rival and substitute. What does the
+soldier, who has an impenetrable armour to wear, want with pasteboard
+imitations, like those worn in a play? It is doubtful wisdom to fling
+away the substance in grasping at the shadow. Saul was brave, and a
+head and shoulders above the people, and he had beaten Nahash for them;
+but Saul for God is a poor exchange. Do we do better, when we hanker
+after something more tangible than an unseen Guide, Helper, Stay, Joy,
+and Peace-bringer for our hearts, and declare plainly, by our eager
+race after created good, that we do not reckon God by Himself enough
+for us?
+
+III. The part of Samuel's address with which we are concerned here
+closes with the application of the history to the present time. The
+great point of the last three verses is that the new order of things
+has not changed the old law, which bound up well-being inseparably with
+obedience. They have got their king, and there he stands; but if they
+think that that is to secure their prosperity, they are much mistaken.
+There is a touch of rebuke, and possibly of sarcasm, in pointing to
+Saul, and making so emphatic, as in verse 13, the vehemence of their
+anxiety to get him. It is almost as if Samuel had said, 'Look at him,
+and say whether he is worth all that eagerness. Do you like him as
+well, now that you have him, as you did before?' There are not many of
+this world's goods which stand that test. The shell that looked silvery
+and iridescent when in the sea is but a poor, pale reminder of its
+former self, when we hold it dry in our hands. One object of desire,
+and only one, brings no disappointment in possessing it. He, and only
+he, who sets his hope on God, will never have to feel that he is not so
+satisfied with the fulfilment as with the dream.
+
+Israel had rejected God in demanding a king; but the giver of their
+demand had been God, and their rejection had not abolished the divine
+government, nor altered one jot of the old law. They and their king
+were equally its subjects. There is great emphasis in the special
+mention of 'your king' as bound to obedience as much as they; and, if
+we follow the Septuagint reading of verse 15, the mention is repeated
+there in the threatening of punishment. No abundance of earthly
+supports or objects of our love or trust in the least alters the
+unalterable conditions of well-being. Whether surrounded with these or
+stripped of all, to fear and serve the Lord and to hearken to His voice
+is equally the requisite for all true blessedness, and is so equally to
+the helper and the helped, the lover and the loved. We are ever tempted
+to think that, when our wishes are granted, and some dear or strong
+hand is stretched out for aid, all will be well; and we are terribly
+apt to forget that we need God as much as before, and that the way of
+being blessed has not changed. Those whose hearts and homes are bright
+with loved faces, and whose lives are guarded by strong and wise hands,
+have need to remember that they and their dear ones are under the same
+conditions of well-being as are the loneliest and saddest; and they who
+'have none other that fighteth for' them have no less need to remember
+that, if God be their companion, they cannot be utterly solitary, nor
+altogether helpless if He be their aid.
+
+
+
+
+OLD TRUTH FOR A NEW EPOCH
+
+'Now therefore behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have
+desired! and, behold, the Lord hath set a king over yon. 14. If ye will
+fear the Lord, and serve Him, and obey His voice, and not rebel against
+the commandment of the Lord; then shall both ye, and also the king that
+reigneth over you, continue following the Lord your God: 15. But if ye
+will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment
+of the Lord; then shall the hand of the Lord be against you, as it was
+against your fathers. 16. Now therefore stand and see this great thing,
+which the Lord will do before your eyes. 17. Is it not wheat-harvest
+to-day! I will call unto the Lord, and He shall send thunder and rain;
+that ye may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which ye
+have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking you a king. 18. So Samuel
+called unto the Lord; and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day: and
+all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. 19. And all the
+people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God,
+that we die not: for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask
+us a king. 20. And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: ye have done
+all this wickedness: yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but
+serve the Lord with all your heart; 21. And turn ye not aside: for then
+should ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver, for
+they are vain. 22. For the Lord will not forsake His people for His
+great name's sake: because it hath pleased the Lord to make you His
+people. 23. Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against
+the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will teach you the good and
+the right way: 24. Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all
+your heart: for consider how great things He hath done for you. 25. But
+if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your
+king.'--1 SAMUEL xii. 13-25.
+
+
+Samuel's office as judge necessarily ended when Saul was made king, but
+his office of prophet continued. This chapter deals with both the
+cessation and the continuance, giving at first his dignified, and
+somewhat pained, vindication of his integrity, and then passing on to
+show him exercising his prophetic function in exhortation, miracle, and
+authoritative declaration of Jehovah's will.
+
+I. The first point is the sign which Samuel gave. Usually there is no
+rain in Palestine from about the end of April till October. Samuel was
+speaking during the wheat harvest, which falls about the beginning of
+June. We note that he volunteered the sign, and, what is still more
+remarkable, that he is sure that God will send it in answer to his
+prayer. Why was he thus certain? Because he recognised that the impulse
+to proffer the sign came from God. We know little of the mental
+processes by which a prophet could discriminate between his own
+thinkings and God's speech, but such discrimination was possible, or
+there could have been no ring of confidence in the prophet's 'Thus
+saith the Lord.' Not even a 'Samuel among them that call upon His name'
+had a right to assume that every asking would certainly have an answer.
+It is when we ask 'anything according to His will' that we know that
+'He heareth us,' and are entitled to predict to others the sure answer.
+
+It seems a long leap logically from hearing the thunder and seeing the
+rain rushing down on the harvest field, to recognising the sin of
+asking for a king. But the connecting steps are plain. Samuel announced
+the storm, he asked God to send it, it came at his word; therefore he
+was approved of God and was His messenger; therefore his words about
+the desire for a king were God's words. Again, God sent the tempest;
+therefore God ruled the elemental powers, and wielded them so as to
+affect Israel, and therefore it had been folly and sin to wish for
+another defender. So the result of the thunder-burst was twofold--they
+'feared Jehovah and Samuel,' and they confessed their sin in desiring a
+king. They were but rude and sense-bound men, like children in many
+respects; their religion was little more than outward worship and a
+vague awe; they needed 'signs' as children need picture-books. The very
+slightness and superficiality of their religion made their confession
+easy and swift, and neither the one nor the other went deep enough to
+be lasting. The faith that is built on 'signs and wonders' is easily
+battered down; the repentance that is due to a thunderstorm is over as
+soon as the sun comes out again. The shallowness of the contrition in
+this case is shown by two things,--the request to Samuel to pray for
+them, and the boon which they begged him to ask, 'that we die not.'
+They had better have prayed for themselves, and they had better have
+asked for strength to cleave to Jehovah. They were like Simon Magus
+cowering before Peter, and beseeching him, 'Pray ye for me to the Lord,
+that none of the things which ye have spoken may come upon me.' That is
+not the voice of true repentance, the 'godly sorrow' which works
+healing and life, but that of the 'sorrow of the world which worketh
+death.' The real penitent will press the closer to the forgiving
+Father, and his cry will be for purity even more than for pardon.
+
+II. Samuel's closing words are tender, wise, and full of great truths.
+He begins with encouragement blended with reiteration of the people's
+sin. It is not safe for a forgiven man to forget his sin quickly. The
+more sure he is that God has forgotten, the more careful he should be
+to remember it, for gratitude, humility and watchfulness. But it should
+never loom so large before him as to shut out the sunshine of God's
+love, for no fruits of goodness will ripen in character without that
+light. It is a great piece of practical wisdom always to keep one's
+forgiven sin in mind, and yet not to let it paralyse hopefulness and
+effort. 'Ye have indeed done all this evil, ... yet turn not aside from
+following Jehovah.' That is a truly evangelical exhortation. The memory
+of past failures is never to set the tune for future service. Again,
+Samuel based the exhortation to whole-hearted service of Jehovah on
+Jehovah's faithfulness and great benefits (vs. 22-24), It is suicidal
+folly to turn away from Him who never turns away from us; it is black
+ingratitude, as well as suicidal folly, to refuse to serve Him whose
+mercies encompass us. That divine good pleasure, which has no source
+but in Himself, flows out like an artesian well, unceasing. His 'nature
+and property' is to love. His past is the prophecy of His future. He
+will always be what He has been, and always do what He has done.
+Therefore we need not fear, though we change and are faithless. 'He
+cannot deny Himself.' His revealed character would be dimmed if He
+abandoned a soul that clung to Him. So our faith should, in some
+measure, match His faithfulness, and we should build firmly on the firm
+foundation.
+
+III. Samuel answers the people's request for his prayers with a wise
+word, full of affection, and also full of dignity and warning, all the
+more impressive because veiled. He promises his continued intercession,
+but he puts it as a duty which he owes to God rather than to them only,
+and he thus sufficiently asserts his God-appointed office. He promises
+to do more than pray for them; namely, to continue as their ethical and
+religious guide, which they had not asked him to be. That at once makes
+his future position in the monarchy clear. He is still the prophet,
+though no longer the judge, and, as the future was to show, he has to
+direct monarch as well as people. But it also hints to the people that
+his prayers for them will be of little avail unless they listen to his
+teaching. Whether a Samuel prays for us or not, if we do not listen to
+the voices that bid us serve God, we 'shall be consumed.'
+
+
+
+
+SAUL REJECTED
+
+'Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel, saying, 11. It repenteth
+Me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from
+following Me, and hath not performed My commandments. And it grieved
+Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night. 12. And when Samuel rose
+early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul
+came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about,
+and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal. 13. And Samuel came to Saul:
+and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed
+the commandment of the Lord. 14. And Samuel said, What meaneth then
+this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen
+which I hear? 15. And Saul said, They have brought them from the
+Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the
+oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lore thy God; and the rest we have utterly
+destroyed. 16. Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee
+what the Lord hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on.
+17. And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast
+thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed
+thee king over Israel? 18. And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and
+said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight
+against them until they be consumed. 19. Wherefore then didst thou not
+obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst
+evil in the sight of the Lord? 20. And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I
+have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord
+sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly
+destroyed the Amalekites. 21. But the people took of the spoil, sheep
+and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly
+destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal. 22. And Samuel
+said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
+as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than
+sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. 23. For rebellion is as
+the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
+Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected
+thee from being king.'--1 SAMUEL xv. 10-23.
+
+
+Again the narrative takes us to Gilgal,--a fateful place for Saul,
+There they 'made Saul king before the Lord'; there he had taken the
+first step on his dark way of gloomy, proud self-will, down which he
+was destined to plunge so far and fatally. There he had, in
+consequence, received the message of the transference of the kingdom
+from his house, though not from himself. Now, flushed with his victory
+over Amalek, he has come there with his troops, laden with spoil. They
+had made a swift march from the south where Amalek dwelt, passing by
+Nabal's Carmel, where they had put up some sort of monument of their
+exploit in a temper of vain-glory, very unlike the spirit which reared
+the stone of help at Eben-ezer; and apparently they purpose sacrifices
+and a feast. But Samuel comes into camp with no look of congratulation.
+Probably the vigorous old man had walked that day from his home, some
+fifteen miles off, and on the way seems to have picked up tidings of
+Saul's victory and position, which ought to have reached him from the
+king himself, and would have done so if Saul's conscience had been
+clear. The omission to tell him was studied neglect, which revealed
+much.
+
+Samuel had 'cried unto the Lord all night,' if perchance the terrible
+sentence might be reversed; and his cries had not been in vain, for
+they had brought him into complete submission, and had nerved him to do
+his work calmly, without a quiver or a pang of personal feeling, as
+becomes God's prophet.
+
+
+I. We must go back a step beyond this passage to understand it. Note,
+first, the command which was disobeyed. The campaign against Amalek was
+undertaken by express divine direction through Samuel's lips. It was
+the delayed fulfilment of a sentence passed in the times of the
+Conquest, but not executed then. The terrible old usages of that period
+are brought into play again, and the whole nation with its possessions
+is 'devoted'. The word explains the dreadful usage. There are two kinds
+of devotion to God: that of willing, and that of unwilling, men; the
+one brings life, the other, death. The massacre of the foul nations of
+Canaan was thereby made a direct divine judgment, and removed wholly
+from the region of ferocious warfare. No doubt, the whole plane of
+morals in the earlier revelation is lower than that of the New
+Testament. If Jesus has not taught a higher law than was given to 'them
+of old time,' one large part of His gift to men disappears. The
+wholesale destruction of 'babe and suckling' with the guilty makes us
+shudder; and we are meant to feel the difference between the atmosphere
+of that time and ours. But we are not meant to question the reality of
+the divine command, nor His right to give it. He slays, and makes
+alive. His judgments strike the innocent with the guilty. In many a
+case, and often, the sin is one generation's, and the bitter fruit
+another's. The destruction of Canaanites and Amalekites does not change
+its nature because God used men to do it; and the question is not
+whether the Israelites were fiercely barbarous in their warfare, but
+whether God has the right of life and death. We grant all the
+dreadfulness, and joyfully admit the distance between such acts and
+Jesus Christ; but we recognise them as not incongruous with the whole
+revealed character of the God who is justice as well as love, as
+parallel in substance, though different in instrument, with many of His
+dealings with men,--as the execution of righteous sentence on rank
+corruption, and as sweetening the world by its removal. Most of the
+difficulty and repugnance has been caused by forgetting that Israel was
+but the sword, while the hand was God's.
+
+II. Note the disobedience. Partial obedience is complete disobedience.
+Saul and his men obeyed as far as suited them; that is to say, they did
+not obey God at all, but their own inclinations, both in sparing the
+good and in destroying the worthless. What was not worth carrying off
+they destroyed,--not because of the command, but to save trouble. This
+one fault seems but a small thing to entail the loss of a kingdom. But
+is it so? It was obviously not an isolated act on Saul's part, but
+indicated his growing impatience of the divine control, exercised on
+him through Samuel. He was in a difficult position. He owed his kingdom
+to the prophet; and the very condition on which he held it was that of
+submission to Samuel's authority. No wonder that his elevation
+quickened the growth of his masterfulness and gloomy, impetuous self-
+will,--traits in his character which showed themselves very early in
+his reign! No wonder either that such a king, held in leading-strings
+by a prophet, should chafe! The more insignificant the act in itself,
+the more significant it may be as a flag of revolt. Disobedience which
+will not do a little thing is great disobedience. Nor was this the
+first time that Saul had 'kicked,' like another Saul, 'against the
+pricks,' Gilgal had seen a previous instance of his impetuous self-
+assertion, masked by apparent deference; and the inference is fair that
+the interval between the two pieces of rebellion had been of a piece
+with them. Trivial acts, especially when repeated, show deep-seated
+evil. There may be only a coil of the snake visible, but that betrays
+the presence of the slimy folds, though they are covered from sight
+among the leaves. The tiny shoot of a plant, peeping above the ground,
+does not augur that the roots are short; they may run for yards. Nor
+can any act be called small, of which the motive is disregard of God's
+plain command: 'He that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.'
+Saul had never much religion. He had never heard of Samuel till that
+day when he came to consult him about the asses. It was a wonder to his
+acquaintances to find him 'among the prophets'; and all his acts of
+worship have about them a smack of self, and an exclusive regard to the
+mere externals of sacrifice, which imply a shallow notion of religion
+and a spirit unsubdued by its deeper influences.
+
+Such a man habitually acts in disregard of God's will; and that is
+great sin, though it be manifested in small acts. It is to be
+remembered, too, that the excepting of the best of the spoil from the
+general destruction, changed the whole character of the transaction,
+and brought it down from the level of a solemn act of divine justice,
+of which Saul and his army were the executors by divine mandate, to
+that of a mere cattle-lifting foray, in which they were but thieves for
+their own gain. The mingling of personal advantage with any sort of
+service of God, ruins the whole, and turns it into mere selfishness.
+Samuel, in verse 19, puts the two sides of this 'evil in the sight of
+the Lord' as being disobedience and swooping down on the booty, like
+some bird of prey,
+
+III. Note Saul's excuses. Throughout the whole interview he plays a
+sorry part, and is evidently cowed by the hated authority and
+personality of the old man; while Samuel, on his side, is curt, stern,
+and takes the upper hand, as becomes God's messenger. The relative
+positions of the two men are the normal ones of their offices, and
+explain both Saul's revolt and the chronic impatience of kings at the
+interference of prophets. Here we have Saul coming to meet Samuel with
+affected heartiness and welcome, and with the bold lie, 'I have
+performed the commandment of the Lord.' That is more than true
+obedience is quick to say. If Saul had done it, he would have been
+slower to boast of it. 'Those vessels yield the most sound that have
+the least liquor.' He 'doth protest too much'; and the protestation
+comes from an uneasy conscience. Or did he, like a great many other men
+who have no deep sense of the sanctity of every jot and tittle of a
+divine law, please himself with the notion that it was enough to keep
+it approximately, in the 'spirit' of the precept, without slavish
+obedience to the 'letter'? In a later part of the interview (v. 20) he
+insists that he has obeyed, and tries to prove it by dwelling on the
+points in which he did so, and gliding lightly over the others.
+
+'Samuel had reason to believe the sheep and oxen above Saul'; and there
+is a tone of almost contempt for the shuffling liar in his quiet
+question: 'What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears,
+and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?' There was no answering that;
+so Saul shifts his ground without a blush or a moment's hesitation.
+'The people spared.' It is a new character for him to appear in,--that
+of a weak ruler who cannot keep his unruly men in order! Had he tried
+to restrain them? If he had, and had failed, he was not fit to be a
+king. If he had not, he was a coward to shift the blame on to them. How
+ready men are to vilify themselves in some other direction, in order to
+escape the consciousness of sin, which God is seeking to force home on
+them! No doubt the people were very willing to have a finger in the
+affair; but so was he. And if the cattle was their share, Agag, who
+could be held to ransom, was his; and the arrangement suited all round.
+As to the purpose of sacrificing at Gilgal, perhaps that was true; but
+if it were, no doubt the same process of selection, which had destroyed
+the worthless and kept the best, would have been repeated; and the net
+result would have been a sacrifice of the least valuable, and 'the
+survival of the fittest' in many a pasture and stall.
+
+But note Saul's attitude towards Jehovah, betrayed by him in that one
+word: 'the Lord _thy_ God,' No wonder that he had been content
+with a partial and perfunctory obedience, if he had no closer sense of
+connection with God than that! There is almost a sneer in it, too, as
+if he had said, 'What needs all this fuss about saving the cattle? You
+should be pleased; for this Jehovah, with whom you profess to have
+special communication, will be honoured with sacrifice, and you will
+share in the feast.' If the words do not mean abjuring Jehovah, they go
+very near it, and, at all events, betray the shallowness of Saul's
+religion. Samuel, in his answer, reminds him of his early modesty and
+self-distrust, and of the source of his elevation. He then sweeps away
+the flimsy cobwebs of excuses, by the curt repetition of the plain,
+dreadful terms of Saul's commission, and then flashes out the piercing
+question, like a sword, 'Wherefore then didst thou not?' The reminder
+of past benefits, and the reiteration of the plain injunctions which
+have been broken, are the way to cut through the poor palliations which
+men wrap around their sins.
+
+It speaks of a very obstinate and gloomy determination that, in answer,
+Saul should reiterate his protestation of having done as he was bid. He
+doggedly says over again all that he had said before, unmoved by the
+prophet's solemn words. He is steeling his heart against reproof; and
+there is only one end to that. Sin unacknowledged, after God has
+disclosed it, is doubly sin. The heart that answers the touch of God's
+rebukes by sullenly closing more tightly on its evil, is preparing
+itself for the blow of the hammer which will crush it. 'He that being
+often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and
+that without remedy.' Let us beware of meeting God's prophet with
+shuffling lies about our obedience, and of opposing to the words which
+are loving though they pierce, the armour of impenetrable self-
+righteousness and conceit.
+
+IV. Note the punishment. To the vain talk about honouring God by
+sacrifice, Samuel opposes the great principle which was the special
+message committed to every prophet in Israel, and which was repeated
+all through its history, side by side with the divinely appointed
+sacrificial system. In the intensity of his spiritual emotion, Samuel
+speaks in lyric strains, in the measured parallelism which was the
+Hebrew dress of poetry, and gives forth in words 'which will live for
+ever' the great truth that God delights in obedience more than in
+sacrifice. Whilst, on the one hand, he lifts the surrender of the will,
+and the consequent submission of the life, high above all mere ritual,
+on the other hand, by the same process, he sinks the rebellion of the
+will and the stubbornness of the nature, unsubdued either by kindness
+or threats, as Saul was showing his to be, to the level of actual
+idolatry.
+
+             'Rebellion is divination,
+              And stubbornness is idols and teraphim.'
+
+Then comes the stern sentence of rejection. Why was Saul thus
+irrevocably set aside? Was it not a harsh punishment for such a crime?
+As we have already remarked, Saul's act is not to be judged as an
+isolated deed, but as the outcome of a deep tendency in him, which
+meant revolt from God. It was not because of the single act, but
+because of that which it showed him to be, that he was set aside. The
+sentence is pronounced, not because 'thou didst spare Amalek,' but
+because 'thou didst reject the word of the Lord.' Further, it is to be
+remembered that the punishment was but the carrying out of his act. His
+own hand had cut the bond between him and God, and had disqualified
+himself for the office which he filled. Saul had said, 'I will reign by
+myself.' God said, 'Be it so! By thyself thou shalt reign.' For the
+consequence of his deposition was not outward change in his royalty.
+David indeed was anointed but in secret, so Samuel consented to honour
+Saul before the people. All the external difference was that Samuel
+never saw him again, and he was relieved from the incubus of the
+prophet's 'interference'; that is to say, he ceased to be God's king,
+and became a phantom, ruling only by his own will and power, as he had
+wished to do. How profound may be the difference while all externals
+remain unchanged! When we set up ourselves as our own lords, and shake
+off God's rule, we cast away His sanction and help in all the deeds of
+our self-will, however unaltered their outward appearance may remain.
+But God left him to 'walk in his own ways, and be filled with the fruit
+of his own devices,' by no irrevocable abandonment, however the decree
+of rejection from the kingship was irrevocable. The gates of repentance
+stood open for him; and the very sentence that came stern and laconic
+from Samuel's lips, rightly accepted, might have drawn him in true
+penitence to a forgiving God. His subsequent confession was rejected
+because it expressed no real contrition; and the worship which he
+proceeded to offer, without the sanction of the prophet's presence, was
+as unreal as his protestation of obedience, and showed how little he
+had learned the lesson of the great words, 'To obey is better than
+sacrifice.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SHEPHERD-KING
+
+'And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt them mourn for Saul,
+seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel! fill thine horn
+with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Beth-lehemite: for I
+have provided Me a king among his sons. 2. And Samuel said, How can I
+go? If Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the Lord said, Take an heifer
+with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord. 3. And call
+Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show thee what thou shalt do: and
+thou shalt anoint unto Me him whom I name unto thee. 4. And Samuel did
+that which the Lord spake, and came to Beth-lehem. And the elders of
+the town trembled at his coming, and said, Comest thou peaceably? 5.
+And he said, Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord: sanctify
+yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice. And he sanctified Jesse
+and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice. 6. And it came to pass,
+when they were come, that he looked on Eliab, and said, Surely the
+Lord's anointed is before him. 7. But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look
+not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have
+refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on
+the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. 8. Then
+Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. And he said,
+Neither hath the Lord chosen this. 9. Then Jesse made Shammah to pass
+by. And he said, Neither hath the Lord chosen this. 10. Again, Jesse
+made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. And Samuel said unto
+Jesse, The Lord hath not chosen these. 11. And Samuel said unto Jesse,
+Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the
+youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said unto
+Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come
+hither. 12. And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and
+withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the Lord
+said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he. 13. Then Samuel took the horn
+of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit
+of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up,
+and went to Ramah.'--1 SAMUEL xvi 1-13.
+
+
+The chief purpose in these verses is to bring out that the choice of
+David was purely God's. The most consummate art could have taken no
+better way of heightening the effect of his first appearance than that
+adopted in this perfectly unartificial story, which leads us up a long
+avenue to where the shepherd-boy stands. First, we have Samuel, with
+his regrets and objections; then Jesse with his seven stalwart sons;
+and at last, when expectation has been heightened by delay and by the
+minute previous details, the future king is disclosed,--a stripling
+with his ruddy locks glistening with the anointing oil, and his lovely
+eyes. We shall best catch the spirit by simply following the letter of
+the story.
+
+I. We have Samuel and his errand to Bethlehem. After that sad day at
+Gilgal, he and Saul met no more, though their homes were but a few
+miles apart, and it must have been difficult to avoid each other.
+Samuel yearned over the man whom he had learned to love, and it must
+have been pain to him to see the shattering of the vessel which he had
+formed. However natural his mourning, and however indicative of his
+sweet nature, it was wrong, because it showed that he had not yet
+reconciled himself to God's purpose, though his conduct obeyed. The
+mourning which submits while it weeps, and which interferes with no
+duty, is never rebuked by God. He never says,' How long dost thou
+mourn?' unless sorrow has deepened into accusation of His providence,
+or tears have blinded us to the duty that ensues. But the true cure for
+overmuch sorrow is work, and, for vain regrets after vanished good, the
+welcome to the new good which God ever sends to fill the empty place.
+His resources are not exhausted because one man has failed. 'There are
+as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.' Saul has been
+rejected, but a king shall be found; and Samuel is to dry his tears and
+anoint him. He evidently had no thought of a successor to Saul till
+this command came; and when it comes, how little it tells him! He gets
+light enough for the next step, but no more. That is always God's way.
+Duty opens by degrees, and the way to see farther ahead is to go as far
+as we see.
+
+Samuel's sorrow and the incomplete command show plainly that he was but
+an instrument. At every step the view is confuted which makes him a
+far-seeing statesman who inaugurated and carried through a peaceful
+revolution. The history, which is our only source, tells another story,
+and makes God the actor, and the prophet only a tool in His hands. If
+we cut the supernatural out of the story, the fragments do not hang
+together, and no reason is forthcoming why they should be any more true
+than are the rejected pieces. Samuel does not show to advantage in
+either of the two things mentioned about him here. In neither was he
+true to his early vow, 'Speak, for Thy servant heareth.' But there was
+much reason for his fear, if once God was left out of the account; for
+Saul's ever-wakeful suspicion had become a disease, and it was not
+wonderful that he should be on the watch for any act which looked like
+putting the sentence of deposition into effect. If ever a man lived
+with a sword hanging by a hair over him, it was this unhappy king, who
+knew that he was dethroned, and did not know when or by whom the divine
+rejection would be made visible to all men. But Samuel had faced worse
+dangers without a murmur; and no doubt his alarm now, which makes him
+venture all but flatly to refuse to obey, indicates that, to some
+extent, he had lost his hold of God by his indulgence in his sorrow. If
+he had been true to his high calling, he would have 'filled his horn,'
+and gone on God's errand, careless of a hundred Sauls or a hundred
+deaths. But it is easy for us, who have never perilled anything for
+obedience, to sit in judgment on him. 'Wherein thou judgest another,
+thou condemnest thyself.' God judges him mercifully, and provides a
+shelter for his weakness, which he should not have needed. To hide his
+true errand behind the cloak of the sacrifice was second-best, and only
+permitted in consideration of his fear which had a touch of sin in it.
+He was not, at the moment, up to treading the heroic plain path; and
+God opened an easier one for him. It is sometimes allowable to use an
+avowed purpose to conceal the real one, but it is a permission which
+should be very sparingly used.
+
+II. We have Samuel at Bethlehem, with Jesse and his sons. An old man is
+suddenly seen coming up the hill to the gate of the little city on
+foot, driving or leading a heifer, and carrying a horn in his hand. In
+such humble fashion did the prophet travel; but reverential awe met
+him, and his long years of noble service surrounded him as with a halo.
+Apparently, Bethlehem had not been included in his usual circuits, and
+the village elders were somewhat scared by his sudden appearance. Their
+question may give a glimpse into the severity which Samuel sometimes
+had to show, and is a strange testimony to the reality of his power:
+'Comest thou peaceably?' One old man was no very formidable assailant
+of a village, even if he did not come with friendly intent; but, if he
+is recognised as God's messenger, his words are sharper than any two-
+edged sword, and his unarmed hand bears weapons mighty to 'pull down
+strongholds.' Why should the elders have thought that he came 'with a
+rod'? Because they knew that they and their fellow-villagers deserved
+it. If men were not dimly conscious of sin, they would not be afraid of
+God's messenger or of God.
+
+The narrative does not tell whether or not the sacrifice preceded the
+review of Jesse's sons. Probably it did, and the interval between it
+and the feast was occupied in the interview. It is evident that Samuel
+kept the reason of his wish to see Jesse's sons to himself; for
+disclosure would have brought about the danger which he was so anxious
+to avoid. It appears, too, from verse 13, that only the family of Jesse
+were present. So we have to fancy the wondering little cluster of burly
+husbandmen with their father surrounding the prophet, and: one by one,
+bracing themselves to meet his searching gaze. Again the choice is
+emphatically represented as God's, by the mention of Samuel's hasty
+conclusion, from the look of the eldest, that he was the man. Had not
+Samuel had enough of kings of towering stature? Strange that he should
+have been in such a hurry to fix on a second edition of Saul! The most
+obedient waiters on God sometimes outrun His intimations, and they
+always go wrong when they do. Samuel has to learn two lessons, as he is
+bidden to repress the too quick thought: one, that he is not choosing,
+but only registering God's choice; and one, that the qualifications for
+God's king are inward, not bodily. In these old days, the world's
+monarchs had to be men of thews and sinews, for power rested on mere
+brute force: but God's chosen had to rule, not by the strength of his
+own arm, but by leaning on God's. The genius of the kingdom determined
+the principle of selection of its king. Samuel does not again attempt
+to forecast the choice; but he lets the other six pass, and, hearing no
+inward voice from God, tells Jesse, as it would seem, that the Lord has
+not chosen them for whatsoever mysterious purpose was in His mind.
+
+III. We have 'the Lord's chosen.' Samuel was staggered by the apparent
+failure of his errand. God had told him that he had provided a king
+from this family, and now they had passed in review before him, and
+none was chosen. Again he is made to feel his own impotence, and his
+question, 'Are here all thy children?' has a touch of bewilderment in
+it. God seldom shows us His choice at first; and both in thought and
+practice we get at the precious and the true by a process of exclusion,
+having often to reject 'seven' before we find in some all-but-forgotten
+'eighth' that which we seek. David's insignificance in Jesse's eyes was
+such that his father would never have remembered his existence but for
+the question, and his answer is a kind of assurance to the prophet that
+he need not take the trouble to see the boy, for he will never do for
+whatever he may have in view. His youth and occupation put him out of
+the question. We know, from the other parts of his story, that his
+brothers had no love for him; nor does his father seem to have had
+much. Probably the lad had the usual lot of genius,--to grow up among
+uncongenial, commonplace people, understanding him little, and liking
+him less. It is a hard school; but where it does not sour, it makes
+strong men. His solitary shepherd life taught him many precious
+lessons, and, at any rate, gave him the priceless gift of solitude,
+which is the nurse of poetry, heroism, and religion. The glorious
+night-piece in Psalm viii., and its companion day-piece in Psalm xix.,
+may bear the impress of the shepherd life; which is idealised and
+sanctified for ever in the immortal sweetness of Psalm xxiii. There
+were many worse schools for the future king than a solitary shepherd's
+life on the bare hills round Bethlehem.
+
+The delay of the feast and the pause of idle waiting heighten the
+expectation with which we look for David's coming. When he does come,
+what a bright young figure is lovingly painted for us! He is 'ruddy,
+and withal fair of eyes, and goodly to look upon,'--of fair complexion,
+with golden hair (rare among these swarthy Orientals), and with
+lustrous poet's eyes. What a contrast to Saul's grim face and figure,--
+like a sunbeam streaming athwart a thunder-cloud seamed with its own
+lightning! Silently the divine voice spoke, and silently, as it would
+seem, Samuel poured the oil on the boy's bowed curls. No word of the
+purpose escaped his lips, and the awestruck youth was left to wonder
+for what high destiny he was chosen. One can fancy the looks of his
+brothers as they bitterly watched the anointing with hearts full of
+envy, contempt, and rage. I Samuel xvii. 28 shows what they felt to
+David.
+
+What was the use of this enigmatical anointing for an undisclosed
+purpose? It is Samuel's last act, and his last appearance, except for
+the mention of David's flight to him from the court of Saul, and that
+weird scene of Saul prophesying and lying naked before Samuel and David
+for a day and a night. It was therefore the solemn final act of the
+prophet,--transferring the monarchy; but it was for David the
+beginning of his training for the throne, in two ways, 'The Spirit of
+the Lord came upon David from that day forward.' There was an actual
+communication of divine gifts fitting him for his unknown office, and
+he was conscious of a new spirit stirring in him. Beside this, the
+consciousness of a call to unknown tasks would mature him fast, and
+bring graver thoughts, humbler sense of weakness, and clinging trust in
+God who had laid the burden on him; and the necessity for repressing
+his dreams of the future, in order to do his obscure present duties,
+would add patience and self-control to his youthful ardour. What a
+whirl of thoughts he carried back to his flock, and how welcome would
+the solitude be!
+
+The great lesson here is the one so continually reiterated in
+Scripture, from Isaac downwards, that God 'chooses the weak things of
+the world to confound the things that are mighty,' and thereby
+magnifies both the sovereign freedom of His choice and the power of His
+Spirit, which takes the stripling from the sheepcotes and qualifies him
+to be the antagonist of the grim Saul, and the king of Israel. There
+are subsidiary lessons, especially for young and ardent souls confined
+for the present to lowly tasks, and feeling some call to something
+higher in a dim future. Patience, the faithful doing of to-day's
+trivial tasks, the habit of self-repression, the quiet trust in God who
+opens the way in due time,--these, and such like, were the signs that
+David was called to a throne, and that God's Spirit was preparing him
+for it. They are the virtues which will best prepare us for whatever
+the future may have in store for us, and will be in themselves abundant
+reward, whether they draw after them a high position, which is a heavy
+burden, or, more happily, leave us in our sheltered obscurity.
+
+
+
+
+THE VICTORY OF UNARMED FAITH
+
+'And David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him; thy
+servant will go and fight with this Philistine. 33. And Saul said to
+David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with
+him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth. 34.
+And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and
+there came a lion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock; 35. And
+I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth:
+and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him,
+and slew him. 36. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this
+uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied
+the armies of the living God. 37. David said moreover, The Lord that
+delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the
+bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul
+said unto David, Go, and the Lord be with thee. 38. And Saul armed
+David with his armour, and he put an helmet of brass upon his head;
+also he armed him with a coat of mail. 39. And David girded his sword
+upon his armour, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved it. And
+David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these; for I have not proved
+them. And David put them off him. 40. And he took his staff in his
+hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them
+in a shepherd's bag which he had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in
+his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine. 41. And the Philistine
+came on and drew near unto David; and the man that bare the shield went
+before him. 42. And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he
+disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair
+countenance. 43. And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that
+thou comest to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his
+gods. 44. And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give
+thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.
+45. Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword,
+and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of
+the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast
+defied. 46. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I
+will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the
+carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the
+air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know
+that there is a God in Israel. 47. And all this assembly shall know
+that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the
+Lord's, and He will give you into our hands. 48. And it came to pass,
+when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that
+David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. 49. And
+David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it,
+and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his
+forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. 50. So David
+prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote
+the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of
+David. 51. Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took
+his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut
+off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was
+dead, they fled.'--1 SAMUEL xvii. 32-51.
+
+
+The scene of David's victory has been identified in the present Wady
+Es-Sunt, which still possesses one of the terebinth-trees which gave it
+its name of 'Elah.' At that point it is about a quarter of a mile wide,
+and runs nearly east and west. In the centre is 'a deep trench or
+gulley, the sides and bed of which are strewn with rounded and water-
+worn pebbles.' This is the 'valley,' or rather 'ravine' of verse 3 of
+this chapter, which is described by a different word from that for
+'vale' in verse 2--the one meaning a much broader opening than the
+other--and from it came the 'five smooth stones.' Notice the minute
+topographical accuracy, which indicates history, not legend. The
+pebble-bed may supply a missile to hit the modern 'giant' of sceptical
+criticism, who boasts much after Goliath's fashion.
+
+The two armies lay looking at each other across the valley, with
+occasional skirmishes; and for forty days (probably a round number)
+Goliath paraded on his own, the south, side of the gulley, shouting out
+his taunts and challenge with a voice like a bull. Many a similar scene
+in classical and mediaeval warfare confirms the truth of the picture,
+so unlike modern battles. The story is, for all time, the example of
+the victory of unarmed faith over the world's utmost might. It is in
+little the history of the Church and the type of all battles for God.
+It is a pattern for the young especially. The youthful athlete leaps
+into the arena, and overcomes, not because of his own strength, but
+because he trusts in God.
+
+I. Note the glowing youthful enthusiasm which dares the conflict. When
+the Spirit of the Lord left Saul, his courage seems to have gone too,
+and he is cowed, like the rest, by Goliath. His interview with David
+shows him as timid and unlike his former self, when he dashed at Nahash
+and any odds. Now he is hardly to be roused, even by David's contagious
+boldness, and is full of objections and precautions. The temper of the
+two, as they front each other in Saul's tent, shows that the one has
+lost, and the other received, the Spirit which strengthens. David has
+become the encourager, and his cheery words bring some hopefulness to
+the gloomy, faint-hearted king. The Septuagint has a variant reading in
+verse 32, which brings this out and suits the context, 'Let not my
+lord's heart fail.' But, whether this be adopted or no, David appears
+as quite unaffected by the terror which had unmanned the army, and as
+bringing a buoyant disregard of the enemy, like a reviving breeze. It
+was not merely youthful daring, nor foolish under-estimation of the
+danger, which prompted his stimulating words. The ring of true faith is
+in them, and they show us how we may surround ourselves with an
+atmosphere which will keep prevailing faint-heartedness off us, and
+make us, like Gideon's fleece, impervious to the chill mists of
+faithless fear which saturate all around. He who trusts in God should
+be as a pillar of fire, burning bright in the darkness of terror, and
+making a rallying point for weaker hearts. When panic has seized
+others, the Christian soul has the more reason for courage. David
+conquered the temptation to share in the general cowardice, before he
+conquered Goliath, and perhaps the former fight was the worse of the
+two.
+
+While David is the embodiment of the courage of faith, Saul embodies
+worldly wisdom and calculating prudence. A touch of tenderness blends
+with his attempt to dissuade the lad from the unequal conflict. He
+speaks of probabilities, and, like all such calculation, his results
+are quite right, only that he has not taken all the forces into
+account, and the omission vitiates the conclusion. It is quite true
+that David is but a youth, and Goliath a giant and a veteran; but is
+that all that is to be said? If it be, then the lad cannot fight the
+Philistine bully; but if Saul has made the small omission of leaving
+out God, that makes a difference. The same mistake is constantly made
+still, and so the victories of faith are a constant surprise to the
+world and to a worldly Church. David's eager story of his fights with
+wild beasts is meant both to answer Saul's objection on his own ground,
+by showing him that, youth as the speaker was, he had proved his power,
+and still more to supply the lacking element in the calculation. So he
+tells, first, how 'I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew
+him,' and then at the end brings in the true ground of his confidence:
+'The Lord that delivered me ... He will deliver.' As Thomas Fuller
+says, 'He made an experimental syllogism, and from most practical
+premises (major a lion, minor a bear), inferred the direct conclusion
+that God would give him victory over Goliath. Faith has the right thus
+to argue from the past to the future, because it draws from God whose
+resources and patience are equally inexhaustible. An echo of the words
+comes from Paul's 'Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth
+deliver: in whom we trust that He will yet deliver.' There is infinite
+pathos in Saul's parting blessing. 'The Lord be with thee!' is spoken
+as if from the consciousness that the Lord had left _him_, and
+that _his_ day for going into battle with the assurance of His
+help was gone for ever. If that softened mood had lasted, how different
+his future might have been! If we modestly and boldly show the power of
+faith in our lives, we may kindle yearnings in some gloomy hearts, that
+would lead them to peace, if followed out.
+
+II. The equipment of faith. Saul meant to honour as well as to secure
+David by dressing him in his own royal attire, and by encumbering him
+by the help of sword and helmet. And David was willing to be so fitted
+out, for it is no part of the courage of faith to disdain any outward
+helps. But he soon found that he could not move freely in the
+unaccustomed armour, and flung it off, like a wise man. His motive was
+partly common sense, which told him not to choose weapons that his
+antagonist could handle better than he; and partly reliance on God,
+which told him that he was safer with no armour but his shepherd's
+dress and with only his sling in his hand. So there he stands, drawn
+for us with wonderful vividness, in one hand his staff, in the other
+his sling, both familiar and often used, and by his side the simple
+wallet which had held his frugal meal, and now received the smooth
+pebbles that he picked up as he passed the gulley to the Philistine
+side of the valley.
+
+How graphically the contrast is drawn between him and Goliath, as the
+latter conies forth swelling with his own magnificence, and preceded by
+his shield-bearer! He was 'brass' all over; note the kind of amused
+emphasis with which the word is repeated in the half-satirical and
+marvellously lifelike portrait of him in verses 5-8; 'brass' here,
+'brass' there, 'brass' everywhere; and, not content with one shield
+dangling at his back, he has a man to carry another in front of him as
+he struts. David seems to have crossed the ravine, and to have come
+close up to Goliath before he was observed; and then, with almost a
+snort of contempt, the giant resents the insult of sending such a foe
+to fight _him_ with such weapons. Perhaps he was nearer the truth
+than he thought, when he asked if he was a dog; and any stick will do,
+as the proverb says, to beat that animal, especially if God guards the
+hand that holds it.
+
+The five smooth stones have become the symbol of the insignificant
+means, in the world's estimate, which God uses in faithful hands to
+slay the giants of evil. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but
+they are mighty. Faith unarmed is armed with more than triple steel,
+and a sling in its hand is more fatal than a sword. Sometimes in
+kindness and sometimes in malice, the world tempts us to fight evil
+with its own weapons, and to put on its unfamiliar armour. The Church
+as a whole, and individual Christians, have often been hampered, and
+all but smothered, in Saul's harness. The more simply we keep ourselves
+to the simple methods which the word of God enjoins, and to the simple
+weapons which ought to be the easiest for a Christian, the more likely
+shall we be to conquer. Goliath is not to be encountered with sword and
+armour which is, after all, but a shabby copy of the tons of brass
+which he wears, but he does not know what to make of the sling, and
+does not see the stone till it crashes his skull in.
+
+III. Note faith's anticipation of victory. The dialogue before the
+battle has many parallels in classical times and among savage peoples.
+Goliath's bluster is full of contempt of David and truculent self-
+confidence. Its coarseness is characteristic,--he will make his boyish
+antagonist food for vultures and jackals. It is exactly what a bully
+would say. David's answer throbs with buoyant confidence, and stands as
+a stimulating example of the temper in which God's soldiers should go
+out to every fight, no matter against what odds. It fully recognises
+the formidable armoury of the enemy,--sword for close quarters, spear
+to thrust with, and javelin to fling from a distance, every weapon that
+ingenuity could fashion and trained skill could wield. Goliath was a
+walking arsenal, and little David took count of his weapons as they
+clanked and flashed. It is no part of faith's triumph to ignore the
+number and sharpness of the enemy's arms. But faith sees them all, and
+keeps unterrified and unashamed of the poor leathern sling and smooth
+stones. The unarmed hand which grasps God's hand should never tremble;
+and he who can say 'I come ... in the name of the Lord of hosts,' has
+no need to be afraid of an army of Goliaths, though each bristled with
+swords and spears like a porcupine.
+
+The great name on which David's faith rested, 'the Lord of hosts,'
+appears to have sprung into use in this epoch, and to have been one
+precious fruit of its frequent wars. Conflict is blessed if it teaches
+the knowledge of the unseen Commander who marshals not only men, but
+all the forces of the universe and the armies of heaven, for the
+defence of His servants and the victory of His own cause. The fulness
+of the divine name is learned by degrees, as our needs impress the
+various aspects of His character; and the revelation contained in this
+appellation is the gift of that fierce and stormy time, a possession
+for ever. He who defies the armies of Israel has to reckon with the
+Lord of these armies, whose name proclaims at once His eternal, self-
+originated, and self-sustained being, His covenant, His presence with
+His earthly host, and the infinite ranks of obedient creatures who are
+His soldiers and their allies. That is 'the Name' in the strength of
+which we may 'set up our banners' and be sure of victory. Note how
+David flings back Goliath's taunts in his teeth. He is sure that God
+will conquer through him, and, though he has no sword, that he will
+somehow hack the big head off; and that it is the host of the
+Philistines on whom the vultures and jackals are to feed to-day.
+
+His faith sees the victory before the battle is begun, and trusts, not
+in his own weak power, but only 'in the name of the Lord.' Note, too,
+the result which he expects--no glory for himself, though that came
+unsought, when the shrill songs from the women of Israel met the
+victors, but to all the world the proof that Israel had a God, and to
+Israel ('this assembly') the renewed lesson of their true weapons and
+of their Almighty Helper. Such utter suppression of self is inseparable
+from trust in God, and without it no soldier of His has a right to
+expect victory. To fight 'in the name of the Lord' requires hiding our
+own name. If we are really going to war for Him, and in His strength,
+we ought to expect to conquer. Believe that you will be beaten, and you
+will be. Trust to Him to make you 'more than conquerors,' and the trust
+will bring about its own fulfilment.
+
+IV. Observe the contrast in verse 48 between the slow movements of the
+heavy-armed Philistine and the quick run of the shepherd, whose 'feet
+were as hind's feet' (Psalm xviii. 33). Agility and confident alacrity
+were both expressed. His feet were shod with 'the preparedness of
+faith.' Observe, too, the impetuous brevity of the account in verse 49,
+of the actual fall of Goliath. The short clauses, coupled by a series
+of 'ands,' reproduce the swift succession of events, which ended the
+fight before it had begun; and one can almost hear the whiz of the
+stone as it crashes into the thick head, so strangely left unprotected
+by all the profusion of brass that clattered about him. The vulnerable
+heel of Achilles and the unarmed forehead of Goliath illustrate the
+truth, ever forgotten and needing to be repeated, that, after all
+precautions, some spot is bare, and that 'there is no armour against
+fate.'
+
+The picture of the huge 'man-mountain' fallen upon his face to the
+earth, a huddled heap of useless mail, recalls the words of a psalm,
+'When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up
+my flesh, they stumbled and fell' (Psalm xxvii. 2). Is it fanciful to
+hear in that triumphant chant an echo of Goliath's boast about giving
+his flesh to the fowls and the beasts, and a vision of the braggart as
+he tottered and lay prostrate? Observe, too, the contemptuous
+reiteration of 'the Philistine,' which occurs six times in the four
+verses (48-51). National feeling speaks in that. There is triumph in
+the sarcastic repetition of the dreaded name in such a connection. This
+was what one of the brood had got, and his fate was an omen of what
+would befall the rest. The champion of Israel, the soldier of God,
+standing over the dead Philistine, all whose brazen armour had been
+useless and his brazen insolence abased, and sawing off his head with
+his own sword, was a prophecy for the Israel of that day, and will be a
+symbol till the end of time of the true equipment, the true temper, and
+the certain victory, of all who, in the name of the Lord of hosts, go
+forth in their weakness against the giants of ignorance, vice, and sin.
+'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.'
+
+
+
+
+A SOUL'S TRAGEDY
+
+'And David went out whithersoever Saul sent him, and behaved himself
+wisely: and Saul set him over the men of war; and he was accepted in
+the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul's servants.
+6. And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the
+slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities of
+Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tabrets, with joy,
+and with instruments of musick. 7. And the women answered one another
+as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his
+ten thousands. 8. And Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased
+him; and he said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to
+me they have ascribed but thousands: and what can he have more but the
+kingdom? 9. And Saul eyed David from that day and forward. 10. And it
+came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon
+Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house: and David played
+with his hand, as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul's
+hand. 11. And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David
+even to the wall with it. And David avoided out of his presence twice.
+12. And Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, and
+was departed from Saul. 13. Therefore Saul removed him from him, and
+made him his captain over a thousand; and he went out and came in
+before the people. 14. And David behaved himself wisely in all his
+ways; and the Lord was with him. 15. Wherefore, when Saul saw that he
+behaved himself very wisely, he was afraid of him. 16. But all Israel
+and Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them.'--1
+SAMUEL xviii. 5-16.
+
+
+Verse 5 anticipates verses 13-16. It is the last verse of a section
+which interrupts the even flow of the story, and which is absent from
+the Septuagint. Verse 6 follows immediately on xvii. 54 in that
+version. Taking that verse as our starting-point, we have three stages
+in Saul's growing hatred and awe of the young champion, and of David's
+growing influence and reputation. It is deeply tragic to watch the
+gradual darkening of the once bright light, side by side with the
+irresistible increase in brilliance of the new star. 'He must increase,
+but I must decrease,' became Saul's bitter conviction; but instead of
+meekly accepting the necessity, his gloomy spirit struggled against it,
+like stormy waves against a breakwater, and, like them, was shivered
+into foam in the vain effort.
+
+I. The first stage was Saul's jealousy of David's fame as a warrior.
+The returning victorious army was met, in Oriental fashion, by a
+triumphal chorus of women, with their shrill songs, accompanied by the
+dissonant noises which do duty for music to Eastern ears. The words of
+their chant were startlingly and ominously plain-spoken, and became
+more emphatic and insulting in Saul's ears, because they were sung by
+two answering bands, one of which rang out, 'Saul hath slain his
+thousands,' while the other overtopped them by pealing out still more
+loudly and exultantly, 'And David his ten thousands.' To be brought
+into comparison with this unknown stripling was bitter enough, but to
+be used as a foil to set off his superiority was too much to be borne.
+There are few men, holding high places in any walk of life, who could
+have stood such a comparison without wincing. Suppose a great soldier
+in our day, coming home from a successful campaign, and having his
+prowess dimmed in every newspaper by the praises lavished on a young
+lieutenant who had done some brave feat that caught the public fancy--
+would he be likely to be in a very amiable mood towards either the
+singers or the object of their triumphal songs? Do great authors
+rejoice in the rising of young reputations that dim theirs? or do great
+orators smile when some 'boy' takes the public ear more than they do?
+Poor Saul had to drink the bitter cup, which all who love the sweet
+draught of popular applause have sooner or later to taste; and we need
+not think him a monster of badness because he found it bitter.
+
+It will be more to the purpose that we take care lest we do the very
+same thing in our little lives and humble spheres; for envy and
+jealousy of those who threaten to out-shine, or in any way to out-do,
+us is not confined to people in high places or with great reputations.
+The roots of them are in us all, and the only way to keep them from
+growing up rank is to think less of our reputation and more of our
+duty, to count it a very small matter what men think of us, and the
+all-important matter what God thinks.
+
+Saul was moved, too, by the consciousness that he had been really
+deposed by Jehovah, and was only a phantom king, and, as his angry
+soliloquy shows, what troubled him most in the women's song was that it
+pointed to David as likely to come in and rob him, not only of glory,
+but of the kingdom. Ever since Samuel had pronounced his rejection, his
+uneasy eyes had been furtively scanning men for his possible
+supplanter, and no wonder that his gloomy suspicions focussed
+themselves on the gallant youth, who conquered men's hearts and made
+women's tongues eloquent in his praise. Stormy and dark as Saul's
+nature had become, and grave as had been his failure to be worthy of
+the monarchy, one cannot but feel the infinite pathos and pity of his
+life.
+
+II. The second stage was the attempt on David's life. Verses 10 and 11,
+which record it, are not in the Septuagint, and the narrative does run
+more smoothly without them. But if they are retained, they show how the
+moody suspicion with which Saul 'eyed David' came to a swift, murderous
+climax. He stands as a terrible example of how suspicion and jealousy,
+working in a nature utterly without self-control, transport it into the
+wildest excesses. In the strange phraseology of verse 9, 'an evil
+spirit from God' laid hold of him, dominating his personality. The
+writer of this book felt that God was the ultimate cause of all things,
+and that all beings were under His control; and his devout recognition
+of that fact led him to the apparent paradox of tracing an 'evil
+spirit' to God. But we must not be so startled as to overlook the truth
+that Saul had prepared the fit abode for that evil spirit by his own
+indulgence in a whirl of sinful passions and acts, and that these were
+punished by their 'natural' consequence. Any man who lets his own baser
+nature have full fling invites the devil. Saul had what would now be
+called a paroxysm of insanity. But perhaps the modern medical phrase is
+not to be preferred to the old scriptural one. The former is innocent
+of any explanation of the fact which it designates, and it may possibly
+be that insanity is sometimes, even now, 'possession.' At all events,
+since science gives no explanation of it, and a great dim region of
+consciousness is now being recognised,--'subliminal,' to speak in the
+new phraseology,--he is a bold man who ventures to deny that
+possibility.
+
+But be that as it may, what a striking picture is given of Saul, worn
+with passion and swept away by ungovernable impulses, 'prophesying' or
+'raving' with wild gestures and uttering wilder sounds; and of David,
+young, calm, giving forth melodies on his harp and songs from his lips,
+that sought to soothe the paroxysms of fury. Browning has drawn the
+picture in immortal words, which all who can should read. It has been
+suggested that Saul did not 'cast' his spear, but only brandished it in
+his fierce threat to pin David to the wall. But the youthful harper
+would scarcely have 'avoided out of his presence' for a mere threat and
+the flourish of a lance; and a man, raging mad and madly hostile, would
+not be likely to waste breath in mere threats. The attempt was more
+probably a serious one, and the spear, flung by an arm made stronger
+than ever by insane hatred, quivered in the wall very near the lithe
+athlete who had agilely escaped it. Envy, allowed to have its way,
+becomes murderous. Let us suppress its beginning. A tiger pup can be
+held in and its claws cut, but a full-grown tiger cannot.
+
+III. The third stage is Saul's getting rid of David. The growing awe of
+him is marked in verses 12 and 15, and the word in the latter verse is
+stronger than that in the former. It is a pathetic picture of the
+gradual creeping over a strong man of a nameless terror. Ever-
+thickening folds of cold dread, like a wet mist, wrap a soul once
+bright and energetic. And the reason is twofold: first, that God had
+left that tempestuous, rebellious soul because it had left Him; and
+second, that, in its desolate solitude, in which there was no trace of
+softening or penitence, that lightning-riven soul knew that the
+sunshine, which it had repelled, was now pouring on David. Saul's
+suspicions were hardened into certainties. He was sure now that what
+his jealousy had whispered, when the women chanted their chorus, was
+grim fact. And he could but helplessly watch his supplanter's steady
+advance in favour with men and God. The two processes of growing
+darkness and growing light go on side by side in the two men, and each
+makes the other more striking by contrast. Twice is it repeated that
+Saul was in awe of David. Twice is it repeated that Jehovah was with
+David, and that he 'behaved himself wisely,' which last statement
+includes in the Hebrew word both the idea of prudence and that of
+success. So, on the one hand, there is a steady growth in all good,
+godly, and happy qualities and experiences; and on the other, a
+tragical increase of darkness and gloom, godlessness and despair. And
+yet Saul had begun so well! And Saul might have been what David was,--
+companioned by God, prosperous, and the idol of his people. Two souls
+stand side by side for a moment on the same platform, with the same
+divine goodness and love encircling them, and the one steadily rises,
+while the other steadily sinks. How awful are the endless possibilities
+of progress in either direction that lie open for every soul of man!
+
+
+
+
+JONATHAN, THE PATTERN OF FRIENDSHIP
+
+'And David fled from Naioth in Ramah, and came and said before
+Jonathan, What have I done? what is mine iniquity? and what is my sin
+before thy father, that he seeketh my life? 2. And he said unto him,
+God forbid; thou shalt not die: behold, my father will do nothing
+either great or small, but that he will shew it me: and why should my
+father hide this thing from me? it is not so. 3. And David sware
+moreover, and said, Thy father certainly knoweth that I have found
+grace in thine eyes; and he saith, Let not Jonathan know this, lest he
+be grieved: but truly, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth,
+there is but a step between me and death. 4. Then said Jonathan unto
+David, Whatsoever thy soul desireth, I will even do it for thee. 5. And
+David said unto Jonathan, Behold, to-morrow is the new moon, and I
+should not fail to sit with the king at meat: but let me go, that I may
+hide myself in the field unto the third day at even. 6. If thy father
+at all miss me, then say, David earnestly asked leave of me that he
+might run to Beth-lehem his city: for there is a yearly sacrifice there
+for all the family. 7. If he say thus, it is well; thy servant shall
+have peace: but if he be very wroth, then be sure that evil is
+determined by him. 8. Therefore thou shalt deal kindly with thy
+servant; for thou hast brought thy servant into a covenant of the Lord
+with thee: notwithstanding, if there be in me iniquity, slay me
+thyself; for why shouldest thou bring me to thy father? 9. And Jonathan
+said, Far be it from thee: for if I knew certainly that evil were
+determined by my father to come upon thee, then would not I tell it
+thee? 10. Then said David to Jonathan, Who shall tell me? or what if
+thy father answer thee roughly? 11. And Jonathan said unto David, Come,
+and let us go out into the field. And they went out both of them into
+the field. 12. And Jonathan said unto David, O Lord God of Israel when
+I have sounded my father about to-morrow any time, or the third day,
+and, behold, if there be good toward David, and I then send not unto
+thee, and shew it thee; 13. The Lord do so and much more to Jonathan:
+but if it please my father to do thee evil, then I will shew it thee,
+and send thee away, that thou mayest go in peace: and the Lord be with
+thee, as He hath been with my father.'--1 SAMUEL xx. 1-13.
+
+
+The friendship of Jonathan for David comes like a breath of pure air in
+the midst of the heavy-laden atmosphere of hate and mad fury, or like
+some clear fountain sparkling up among the sulphurous slag and barren
+scoriae of a volcano. There is no more beautiful page in history or
+poetry than the story of the passionate love of the heir to the throne
+for the young champion, whom he had so much cause to regard as a rival.
+What a proof of the victory of love over self is his saying, 'Thou
+shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee'! (1 Samuel
+xxiii. 17). Truly did David sing in his elegy, 'Thy love to me was
+wonderful, passing the love of women'; for in that old world, in which
+the relations between the sexes had not yet received the hallowing and
+refinement of Christian times, much of what is now chiefly found in
+these was manifested in friendship, such as that of these two young
+men. Jonathan is the foremost figure in it, and the nobility and self-
+oblivion of his love are beautifully brought out, while David's part is
+rather that of the loved than of the lover. The scene is laid in
+Gibeah, where Saul kept his court, and to which all the persons of the
+story seem to have come back from Samuel's house at Kamah. Saul's
+strange subjugation to the hallowing influences of the prophet's
+presence had been but momentary and superficial; and it had been
+followed by a renewed outburst of the old hate, obvious to David's
+sharpened sight, though not to Jonathan. In the interview between them,
+David is pardonably but obviously absorbed in self, while Jonathan
+bends all his soul to cheer and reassure his friend.
+
+There are four turns in the conversation, in each of which David speaks
+and Jonathan answers. David's first question presupposes that his
+friend knows that his death is determined, and is privy to Saul's
+thoughts. If he had been less harassed, he would have done Jonathan
+more justice than to suppose him capable of knowing everything without
+telling him anything; but fear is suspicious. He should have remembered
+that, when Saul first harboured murderous purposes, Jonathan had not
+waited to be asked, but had disclosed the plot to him, and perilled his
+own life by his remonstrances with his father. He should have trusted
+his friend. His question breathes consciousness of innocence of any
+hostility to Saul, but unconsciously betrays some defect in his
+confidence in Jonathan. The answer is magnanimous in its silence as to
+that aspect of the question, though the subsequent story seems to imply
+that Jonathan felt it. He tries to hearten David by strong assurances
+that his life is safe. He does not directly contradict David's
+implication that he knew more than he had told, but, without asserting
+his ignorance, takes it for granted, and quietly argues from it the
+incorrectness of David's suspicions. Incidentally he gives us, in the
+picture of the perfect confidence between Saul and himself, an inkling
+of how much he had to sacrifice to his friendship. Wild as was Saul's
+fury when aroused, and narrow as had been his escape from it at an
+earlier time (1 Samuel xiv. 44), there was yet love between them, and
+the king made a confidant of his gallant eldest son. They 'were lovely
+and pleasant in their lives.' However gloomy and savage in his
+paroxysms Saul was, the relations between them were sweet. The most
+self-introverted and solitary soul needs some heart to pour itself out
+to, and this poor king found one in Jonathan. All the harder, then, was
+the trial of friendship when the trusted son had to take the part of
+the friend whom his father deemed an enemy, and had the pain of
+breaking such close ties. How his heart must have been torn asunder! On
+the one side was the lonely father who clung to him: on the other, the
+hunted friend to whom he clung. It is a sore wrench when kindred are on
+one side, and congeniality and the voice of the heart on the other. But
+there are ties more sacred than those of flesh and blood; and the
+putting of them second, which is sometimes needful in obedience to
+earthly love or duty, is always needful if we would rightly entertain
+our heavenly Friend.
+
+Jonathan's soothing assurances did not satisfy David, and he 'sware' in
+the earnestness of his conviction. David gives a very good reason for
+his friend's ignorance, which he has at once believed, in the
+suggestion that Saul had not taken him into his confidence, out of
+tenderness to his feelings. Their friendship, then, was notorious, and,
+indeed, was an element in Saul's dread of David, who seemed to have
+some charm to steal hearts, and had bewitched both Saul's son and his
+daughter, thus making a painful rift in the family unity. It does not
+appear how David came to be so sure of Saul's designs. The incident at
+Ramah might have seemed to augur some improvement in his mood; and
+certainly there could have been no overt acts, or Jonathan could not
+have disputed the suspicions. Possibly some whispers may have reached
+David through his wife Michal, Saul's daughter, or in the course of his
+attendance on the king, which he had now resumed, his quick eye may
+have noticed ominous signs. At all events, he is so sure, that he makes
+solemn attestation to his friend, and convinces him that, in the
+picturesque phrase which has become so familiar, 'There is but a step
+between me and death.' Such temper was scarcely in accordance with 'the
+prophecies which went before on' him. If he had been walking by faith,
+he would have called Samuel's anointing to mind, and have drawn
+arguments from the victory over Goliath, for trust in victory over
+Saul, as he had done for the former from that over the lion and the
+bear. But faith does not always keep high-water mark, and we can only
+too easily sympathise with this momentary ebb of its waters.
+
+None the less is it true that David's terror was unworthy, and showed
+that the strain of his anxious position was telling on his spirit, and
+making him not only suspect his earthly friend, but half forget his
+heavenly One. There was but a step between him and death; but, if he
+had been living in the serenity of trust, he would have known that the
+narrow space was as good as a thousand miles, and that Saul could not
+force him across it, for all his hatred and power.
+
+Jonathan does not attempt to alter his conviction and probably is
+obliged to admit the justice of the explanation of his own ignorance
+and the truth of the impression of Saul's purposes. But he does what is
+more to the purpose; he pledges himself to do whatever David desires.
+It is an unconditional desertion of his father and alliance with David;
+it is the true voice of friendship or love, which ever has its delight
+in knowing and doing the will of the beloved. It answers David's
+thoughts rather than his words. He will not discuss any more whether he
+or David is right; but, in any event, he is his friend's.
+
+The touchstone of friendship is practical help and readiness to do what
+the friend wishes. It is so in our friendships here, which are best
+cemented so. It is so in the highest degree in our friendship with the
+true Friend and Lover of us all, the sweetness and power of our
+friendship with whom we do not know until we say, 'Whatsoever thou
+desirest, I will do it,' and so lose the burden of self-will, and find
+that He does for us what we desire when we make His desires our law of
+conduct.
+
+Secure of Jonathan's help, David proposed the stratagem for finding out
+Saul's disposition, which had probably been in his mind all along. It
+says more for his subtlety than for his truthfulness. With all his
+nobility, he had a streak of true Oriental craft and stood on the moral
+level of his times and country, in his readiness to eke out the lion's
+skin with the fox's tail. It was a shrewd idea to make Saul betray
+himself by the way in which he took David's absence; but a lie is a
+lie, and cannot be justified, though it may be palliated, by the
+straits of the liar. At the same time it is fair to remember the
+extremity of David's danger and the morality of his age, in estimating,
+not the nature of his action, but the extent of his guilt in doing it.
+The same relaxation of the vigour of his faith which left him a prey to
+fear, led him to walk in crooked paths, and the impartial narrative
+tells of them without a word of comment. We have to form our own
+estimate of the fitness of a lie to form the armour of a saint. The
+proposal informs us of two facts,--the custom of having a feast for
+three days at the new moon, and that of having an annual family feast
+and sacrifice, neither of which is prescribed in the law. I do not here
+deal with the grave question as to the date of the ceremonial law, as
+affected by these and similar phenomena; but I may be allowed the
+passing remark that the irregularities do not prove the non-existence
+of the law, but may be accounted for by supposing that, in such
+unsettled times, it had been loosely observed, and that many accretions
+and omissions, some of them inevitable in the absence of a recognised
+centre of worship, had crept in. That is a much less brilliant and much
+more old-fashioned explanation than the new one, but perhaps it is none
+the worse for that. This generation is fond of making 'originality' and
+'brilliancy' the tests of truth.
+
+David's words in verse 8 have a touch of suspicion in them, in their
+very appeal for kind treatment, in their reminder of the 'covenant' of
+friendship, as if Jonathan needed either, and still more in the bitter
+request to slay him himself instead of delivering him to Saul. He
+almost thinks that Jonathan is in the plot, and means to carry him off
+a prisoner. Note, too, that he does not say, 'We made a covenant,' but
+'Thou hast brought me into' it, as if it had been the other's wish
+rather than his. All this was beneath true friendship, and it hurt
+Jonathan, who next speaks with unusual emotion, beseeching David to
+clear all this fog out of his heart, and to believe in the genuineness
+and depth of his love, and in the frankness of his speech. True love
+'is not easily provoked,' is not soon angry, and his was true in spite
+of many obstacles which might have made him as jealous as his father,
+and in the face of misconstruction and suspicion. May we not think of a
+yet higher love, which bears with our suspicions and faithless doubts,
+and ever answers our incredulity by its gentle 'If it were not so, I
+would have told you'?
+
+David is not yet at the end of his difficulties, and next suggests, how
+is he to know Saul's mind? Jonathan takes him out into the privacy of
+the open country (they had apparently been in Gibeah), and there
+solemnly calls God to witness that he will disclose his father's
+purposes, whatever they are. The language is obscure and broken,
+whether owing to corruption in the text, or to the emotion of the
+speaker. In half-shaped sentences, which betray how much he felt his
+friend's doubts, and how sincere he was, he invokes evil on himself if
+he fails to tell all. He then unfolds his ingenious scheme for
+conveying the information, on which we do not touch. But note the final
+words of Jonathan,--that prayer, so pathetic, so unselfish in its
+recognition of David as the inheritor of the kingdom that had dropped
+from his own grasp, so sad in its clear-eyed assurance of his father's
+abandonment, so deeply imbued with faith in the divine word, and so
+resigned to its behests. Both in the purity of his friendship and in
+the strength of his faith and submission, Jonathan stands here above
+David, and is far surer than the latter himself is of his high destiny
+and final triumph. It was hard for him to believe in the victory which
+was to displace his own house, harder still to rejoice in it, without
+one trace of bitterness mingling in the sweetness of his love, hardest
+of all actively to help it and to take sides against his father; but
+all these difficulties his unselfish heart overcame, and he stands for
+all time as the noblest example of human friendship, and as not
+unworthy to remind us, as from afar off and dimly, of the perfect love
+of the Firstborn Son of the true King, who has loved us all with a yet
+deeper, more patient, more self-sacrificing love. If men can love one
+another as Jonathan loved David, how should they love the Christ who
+has loved them so much! And what sacrilege it is to pour such treasures
+of affection at the feet of dear ones here, and to give so grudgingly
+such miserable doles of heart's love to Him!
+
+
+
+
+LOVE FOR HATE, THE TRUE QUID PRO QUO
+
+'And the men of David said unto him, Behold the day of which the Lord
+said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand,
+that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee. Then David
+arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily. 5. And it came to
+pass afterward, that David's heart smote him, because he had out off
+Saul's skirt. 6. And he said unto his men, The Lord forbid that I
+should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch
+forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord. 7.
+So David stayed his servants with these words, and suffered them not to
+rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his
+way. 8. David also arose afterward, and went out of the cave, and cried
+after Saul, saying, My Lord the king. And when Saul looked behind him,
+David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed himself, 9. And
+David said to Saul, Wherefore hearest thou men's words, saying, Behold,
+David seeketh thy hurt? 10. Behold, this day thine eyes have seen how
+that the Lord had delivered thee to-day into mine hand in the cave: and
+some bade me kill thee: but mine eye spared thee; and I said, I will
+not put forth mine hand against my lord; for he is the Lord's anointed.
+11. Moreover, my father, see, yea, see the skirt of thy robe in my
+hand: for in that I cut off the skirt of thy robe, and killed thee not,
+know thou and see that there is neither evil nor transgression in mine
+hand, and I have not sinned against thee; yet thou huntest my soul to
+take it. 12. The Lord judge between me and thee, and the Lord avenge me
+Of thee; but mine hand shall not be upon thee. 13. As saith the proverb
+of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked: but mine hand
+shall not be upon thee. 14. After whom is the king of Israel come out?
+after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea. 15. The
+Lord therefore be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and
+plead my cause, and deliver me out of thine hand. 16. And it came to
+pass, when David had made an end of speaking these words unto Saul,
+that Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his
+voice, and wept. 17. And he said to David, Thou art more righteous than
+I; for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil.'
+--1 SAMUEL xxiv. 4-17.
+
+
+A sudden Philistine invasion had saved David, when hard pressed by
+Saul, and had given him the opportunity of flight to the wild country
+on the west of the Dead Sea, near the place where En-Gedi ('the
+Fountain of the Wild Goat') sparkles into light on the hill above the
+weird lake. In these savage gorges Saul's three thousand men would be
+of little use against the light-footed outlaw and his troop. The whole
+district is seamed with ravines, and these are honeycombed with great
+caverns, where dangerous outcasts still lurk and defy capture.
+Travellers go into raptures over the beauty of some of these 'fairy
+grottoes' draped with maiden-hair fern, cool and moist, and blessedly
+dark after the fierce light outside. In some one of these the beautiful
+story which makes our lesson occurred.
+
+I. We have the scene in the cave. The interior would be black as night
+to one looking inward with eyes fresh from the blinding glare of such
+sunlight upon limestone, but it would hold a glimmering twilight for
+one looking outward, with eyes accustomed to the gloom. David and his
+men, keeping close to the walls and hiding behind angles, might well be
+unobserved by Saul at the mouth, and probably never looking in at all.
+How vividly the whispered eagerness of the outcasts round David is
+reproduced! They think it would be 'tempting Providence' to let such a
+chance slip. They put a religious varnish on their advice. It would be
+almost impious not to kill Saul, for here was the hand of God evidently
+fulfilling a prophecy! There may have been some unrecorded prediction
+of the sort which they seem to quote; but more probably they are only
+referring to David's designation to the crown, which they had come to
+know. It never struck them as possible that it could 'seem good' to a
+wise man not to cut his enemy's throat when he could do it without
+danger to himself. So they would watch David stealing down quietly to
+the place where the unconscious king was crouching, and getting close
+behind him, knife in hand. How disgusted they must have been when the
+blade, that flashed for a moment in the light at the cave's mouth, was
+not buried in Saul's great back, but only hacked off the end of his
+robe spread out behind him! No personal animosity was in David. However
+he had been driven to consort with outlaws, and to live a kind of
+freebooter's life, his natural sweetness was unspoiled, and was
+reinforced by solemn veneration for the sanctity of the Lord's
+anointing, which he reverenced all the more because himself had
+received it. He clambered back to his disappointed men, and, as soon as
+he was up in the dark again, his chivalry and his religion made him
+ashamed of his coarse practical jest. The humour of the thing had
+tempted him to do it; but it was a rude insult, which lowered him more
+than it did Saul, and, like a true man, he blushes there in the gloom
+at what he has done. Then he has to defend himself to his men for not
+coming up to their expectations, and he does it by insisting on the
+sacredness which still surrounded Saul as 'the Lord's anointed.' David
+knew that the unhappy king had been rejected and forsaken by 'the
+Spirit of the Lord,' and that he himself was the true bearer of the
+regal unction; but he will not take the law into his own hands, and
+still regards Saul as his 'lord.' He sets the example, much needed by
+us all, of leaving God to carry out His purposes at His own time, and
+patiently waiting till that time comes. He had hard work to keep his
+men from rushing down on the king; but, having commanded himself, is
+able to restrain them. How many virtues may be in exercise in one
+action! Here we have generosity, clemency, sensitiveness of conscience,
+reverence, self-abnegation, patience, loyalty, firmness, sway over
+lower natures for high ends,--a whole constellation shining star-like
+in the dark cavern.
+
+II. We have, next, David's pathetic remonstrance. Saul was alone, and
+David could easily escape among the cliffs, if the king summoned his
+men; but he risks capture, in the gush of ancient friendship. His words
+are full of nobleness, and his silence is no less so. He has no
+reproaches, no anger nor hate. He will not even suppose that Saul has
+followed his own impulses in his persecution, but assumes that he has
+been led astray by calumnies. He points to the fragment of Saul's robe
+in his hand as the disproof of the lie that he had designs against him,
+and passionately asserts his innocence now and in all the past. He
+compares himself to some timid wild thing, like one of the goats among
+the cliffs, and Saul to a hunter. He solemnly calls God to judge
+between them, and appeals from the slanders and misjudgings of men to
+the perfect tribunal of God, to whom he commits his cause. He abjures
+all intention of striking at Saul in his own defence. He quotes, in
+true Eastern manner, a scrap of proverbial wisdom, which contains the
+homely truth that character determines action; for it needs a wicked
+man to do a wicked thing, and he implies that he is not wicked, and
+that Saul knows that well enough,--by what has just happened, if by
+nothing else. Then he puts his own insignificance and the disproportion
+between him and his ragged band and the imposing force of Saul in vivid
+light by his half-humorous and wholly humble description of himself as
+a 'dead dog,' and a 'flea'; as harmless as the one, as hard to catch as
+the other, as little important as either. Finally, he reiterates his
+devout reference of the whole cause to God, and his fixed resolution to
+take no steps to right himself, but to leave all to Him.
+
+So ought we to deal with slanders and enmity. The eternal law for us in
+all opposition and hostility is enshrined in David's noble words and
+deeds. To repay evil with benefits, to abstain from retaliation when it
+is in our power, to keep our tongues from bitter and wounding words, to
+appeal to the adversary's better self, even at the cost of our own
+'dignity,'--all that is not easy nor usual among professing Christians.
+But it ought to be. David's Lord, 'when He suffered, threatened not;
+but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.' We are poor
+followers of Him, if David surpasses us in patience and magnanimity. It
+has taken nineteen hundred years to teach us that passive endurance is
+more heroic than fighting for our own hand, and that repaying scorn and
+hate with their like is less noble than meeting them with endless
+forgiveness.
+
+Psalm vii. is all but universally regarded as David's, and as belonging
+to this period. In it we find a clause, 'I have delivered him that
+without cause was mine enemy,' which may fairly he supposed to refer to
+the scene in the cave, and we read the same vehement protestations of
+innocence, the same figure of himself as a hunted wild animal, the same
+appeal to God's judgment, as in his remonstrance with Saul. The psalm
+is the poetic echo of our lesson.
+
+III. We have the momentary melting of Saul's heart. He breaks into
+passionate weeping. With that sudden flashing out into vehement
+emotion, so characteristic of him throughout, and, in these latter days
+of his life, so significant of enfeebled self-control, he recognises
+David's generous forbearance in its contrast to his own hate, which,
+for the moment, he feels to be causeless. There is a piteous
+remembrance of the days when David soothed him by song, in his mention
+of the sweet 'voice,' and some rekindling of ancient love in his
+calling him 'My son.' Then follow the sad words which confess the
+hopelessness of his struggle against the divine purpose, and his appeal
+for mercy to his house. The picture may well move solemn thoughts and
+pity for that scathed and solitary soul, seeing for a moment, as by a
+lightning flash, the madness of his course, and yet held so fast in the
+grip of his dark passions that he cannot shake off their tyranny.
+
+Two great lessons are taught by that tragic figure of the weeping and
+yet unchanged king. One is of the power of forbearing gentleness to
+exorcise hate. The true way to 'overcome evil' is to melt it by fiery
+coals of gentleness. That is God's way. An iceberg may be crushed to
+powder, but every fragment is still ice. Only sunshine that melts it
+will turn it into sweet water. Love is conqueror, and the only
+conqueror, and its conquest is to transform hate into love. The other
+lesson is the worthlessness of mere feeling, which by its very nature
+passes away, and, like unstored rain, leaves the rock in its obstinate
+hardness more exposed. Saul only increased his guilt by reason of the
+fleeting glimpse of his folly which he did not follow up; and our
+gleams of insight into some sin and madness of ours but add to our
+responsibility. Emotion which does not lead to action hardens the
+heart, and adds to our guilt and condemnation.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE AND REMORSE
+
+'And David arose, and came to the place where Saul had pitched: and
+David beheld the place where Saul lay, and Abner the son of Xer, the
+captain of his host: and Saul lay in the trench, and the people pitched
+round about him. 6. Then answered David and said to Ahimelech the
+Hittite, and to Abishai the son of Zeruiah, brother to Joab, saying,
+Who will go down with me to Saul to the camp? And Abishai said, I will
+go down with thee. 7. So David and Abishai came to the people by night:
+and, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck
+in the ground at his bolster: but Abner and the people lay round about
+him. 8. Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into
+thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with
+the spear even to the earth at once, and I will not smite him the
+second time. 9. And David said to Abishai, Destroy him not: for who can
+stretch forth his hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless?
+10. David said furthermore, As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite
+him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and
+perish. 11. The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand
+against the Lord's anointed: but, I pray thee, take thou now the spear
+that is at his bolster, and the cruse of water, and let us go. 12. So
+David took the spear and the cruse of water from Saul's bolster; and
+they gat them away, and no man saw it, nor knew it, neither awaked: for
+they were all asleep; because a deep sleep from the Lord was fallen
+upon them .... 21. Then said Saul, I have sinned: return, my son David:
+for I will no more do thee harm, because my soul was precious in thine
+eyes this day: behold, I have played the fool, and have erred
+exceedingly. 22. And David answered and said, Behold the king's spear!
+and let one of the young men come over and fetch it. 23. The Lord
+render to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness; for the
+Lord delivered thee into my hand today, but I would not stretch forth
+mine hand against the Lord's anointed. 24. And, behold, as thy life was
+much set by this day in mine eyes, so let my life be much set by in the
+eyes of the Lord, and let Him deliver me out of all tribulation. 25.
+Then Saul said to David, Blessed be thou, my son David: thou shalt both
+do great things, and also shalt still prevail. So David went on his
+way, and Saul returned to his place.'--1 SAMUEL xxvi 5-12; 21-25.
+
+
+It is fashionable at present to regard this incident and the other
+instance of David's sparing Saul, when in his power, as two versions of
+one event. But it if not improbable that the hunted outlaw should twice
+have taken refuge in the same place, or that his hiding-place should
+have been twice betrayed. He had but a small choice of safe retreats,
+and the Ziphites had motive for a second betrayal in the fact of the
+first, and of its failure to secure David's capture. The whole cast of
+the two incidents is so different that it is impossible to see how the
+one could have been evolved from the other, and either they are both
+true, or they are both unhistorical, or, at best, are both the product
+of fancy working on, and arbitrarily filling up, a very meagre skeleton
+of fact. Many of the advocates of the identity of the incident at the
+bottom of the two accounts would accept the latter explanation; we take
+the former.
+
+Saul had three thousand men with him; David had left his little troop
+'in the wilderness,' and seems to have come with only his two
+companions, Ahimelech and his own nephew, Abishai, to reconnoitre. He
+sees, from some height, the camp, with the transport wagons making a
+kind of barricade in the centre--just as camps are still arranged in
+South Africa and elsewhere,--and Saul established therein as in a rude
+fortification. A bold thought flashes into his mind as he looks.
+Perhaps he remembered Gideon's daring visit to the camp of Midian. He
+will go down, and not only into the camp, but 'to Saul,' through the
+ranks and over the barrier. What to do he does not say, but the two
+fierce fighters beside him think of only one thing as sufficient motive
+for such an adventure. Abishai volunteers to go with him; no doubt
+Ahimelech would have been ready also, but two were enough, and three
+would only have increased risk. So they lay close hid till night fell,
+and then stole down through the sleeping ranks with silent movements,
+like a couple of Indians on the war-trail, climbed the barricade, and
+stood at last where Saul lay, with his spear, as the emblem of
+kingship, stuck upright at his head, and a cruse of water for slaking
+thirst, if he awoke, beside him. Those who should have been his guards
+lay sleeping round him, for a 'deep sleep from Jehovah was fallen upon
+them.' What a vivid, strange picture it is, and how characteristic of
+the careless discipline of unscientific Eastern warfare!
+
+The tigerish lust for blood awoke in Abishai. Whatever sad, pitying,
+half-tender thoughts stirred in David as he looked at the mighty form
+of Saul, with limbs relaxed in slumber, and perhaps some of the gloom
+and evil passions charmed out of his face, his nephew's only thought
+was,' What a fair mark! what an easy blow!' He was brutally eager to
+strike once, and truculently sure that his arm would make sure that
+once would be enough. He was religious too, after a strange fierce
+fashion. God-significantly he does not say 'Jehovah'; his religion was
+only the vague belief in a deity-had delivered Saul into David's hands,
+and it would be a kind of sin not to kill him. How many bloody
+tragedies that same unnatural alliance of religion and murderous hate
+has varnished over! Very beautifully does David's spirit contrast with
+this. Abishai represents the natural impulse of us all--to strike at
+our enemies when we can, to meet hate with hate, and do to another the
+evil that he would do to us.
+
+David here, though he could be fierce and cruel enough sometimes, and
+had plenty of the devil in him, listens to his nobler self, which
+listens to God, and, at a time when everything tempted him to avenge
+himself, resists and overcomes. He is here a saint after the New
+Testament pattern. Abishai had, in effect, said, 'Thou shalt love thy
+neighbour, and hate thine enemy.' David's finely-tuned ear heard, long
+before they were spoken on earth, the great Christian words, 11 say
+unto you, Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you.' He knew
+that Saul had been 'rejected,' but he was 'Jehovah's anointed,' and the
+unction which had rested on that sleeping head lingered still. It was
+not for David to be the executor of God's retribution. He left himself
+and his cause in Jehovah's hands, and no doubt it was with sorrow and
+pitying love, not altogether quenched by Saul's mad hate, that he
+foresaw that the life which he spared now was certain one day to be
+smitten. We may well learn the lesson of this story, and apply it to
+the small antagonisms and comparatively harmless enmities which may
+beset our more quiet lives. David in Saul's 'laager,' Stephen outside
+the wall, alike lead up our thoughts to Jesus' prayer,' Father, forgive
+them; for they know not what they do.'
+
+The carrying off of the spear and the cruse was a couch of almost
+humour, and it, with the ironical taunt flung across the valley to
+Abner, gives relief to the strain of emotion in the story. Saul's burst
+of passionate remorse is morbid, paroxysmal, like his fits of fury, and
+is sure to foam itself away. The man had no self-control. He had let
+wild, ungoverned moods master him, and was truly 'possessed.' One
+passion indulged had pushed him over the precipice into insanity, or
+something like it. Let us take care not to let any passion, emotion, or
+mood get the upper hand. 'That way madness lies.' 'He that hath no rule
+over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, without walls.'
+
+And let us not confound remorse with repentance 'The sorrow of the
+world worketh death.' Saul grovelled in agony that day, but tomorrow he
+was raging again with more than the old frenzy of hate. Many a man
+says, 'I have played the fool,' and yet goes on playing it again when
+the paroxysm of remorse has stormed itself out. David's answer was by
+no means effusive, for he had learned how little Saul's regrets were to
+be trusted. He takes no notice of the honeyed words of invitation to
+return, and will not this time venture to take back the spear and
+cruse, as he had done, on the previous occasion, the skirt of Saul's
+robe. He solemnly appeals to Jehovah's righteous judgment to determine
+his and Saul's respective 'righteousness and faithfulness.' He is
+silent as to what that judgment may have in reserve for Saul, but for
+himself he is calmly conscious that, in the matter of sparing Saul's
+life, he has done right, and expects that God will deliver him 'out of
+all tribulation.' That is not self-righteous boasting, although it does
+not exactly smack of the Christian spirit; but it is faith clinging to
+the confidence that God is 'not unrighteous to forget' his servant's
+obedience, and that the innocent will not always be the oppressor's
+victim.
+
+What a strange, bewildered, self-contradictory chaos of belief and
+intention is revealed in poor, miserable Saul's parting words! He
+blesses the man whom he is hunting to slay. He knows that all his wild
+efforts to destroy him are foredoomed to failure, and that David 'shall
+surely prevail'; and yet he cannot give up fighting against the
+inevitable,--that is, against God. How many of us are doing the very
+same thing--rushing on in a course of life which we know, when we are
+sane, to be dead against God's will, and therefore doomed to utter
+collapse some day!
+
+'And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war
+against me, and God is departed from me.'-1 Samuel xxviii. 15.
+
+Among all the persons of Scripture who are represented as having fallen
+away from God and wrecked their lives, perhaps there is none so
+impressive as the giant form of the first king of Israel. Huge and
+black, seamed and scarred with lightning marks of passions, moody and
+suspicious, devil-ridden and lonely, doubting his truest friends, and
+even his son, striking blindly in his fury at the gracious, sunny poet-
+warrior who shows so bright, so full of resource, so nimble, so
+generous, by contrast with the heavy strength of the moody giant, and
+ever escapes the javelin that quivers harmlessly in the wall, with an
+inevitable destiny hanging over his head, and at last creeping to
+'wizards that peep and mutter,' and dying a suicide, with his army in
+full flight and his son dead at his feet--what a course and what an end
+for the chosen of the Lord, on whom the Spirit of the Lord came with
+the anointing oil, and gave him a new heart for his kingly office.
+
+I know not anywhere a sadder story: and I know not where human lips
+ever poured out a more awful wail--like a Titan in his rage of pain--
+than these words of our text. Bright hopes and fair promise, and much
+that was good and true in performance--all came to this. A few hours
+more and the 'battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him,
+and he was greatly distressed by reason of the archers.' Madness,
+despair, defeat, death, all were the sequel of, 'Because thou hast
+rejected the commandment of the Lord, the Lord hath also rejected thee
+from being king.' A true soul's tragedy! Let us look together at its
+course, and gather the lessons that lie on the surface. We have neither
+space nor wish here to enter upon the many points of minute interest
+and curiosity which are in the story. We have to be contented with
+large outlines.
+
+Look then
+
+I. At the bright dawn.
+
+The early story gives us many traits of beauty in Saul's character. Not
+only physical strength but a winning personality are apparent. His
+modesty and humility when Samuel salutes him are made plain. And we are
+distinctly told that as he turned away from Samuel, 'God gave him
+another heart,' by which we are to understand not 'regeneration' but an
+inspiration, that equipped him for his office.
+
+How many a man finds that sudden elevation ruins him! But often it
+evokes what is good, brings an entire change of disposition, as with
+'Harry of Mon-mouth.' But it was not only his new responsibility which
+brought into action powers that had previously been dormant. New
+circumstances, no doubt, did something, but Saul's 'new' heart was
+God's gift.
+
+The story of the beginning of his reign reveals a very noble and
+lovable character. We can but mention his modesty in hiding among the
+stuff, his disregard of the murmurs of those who would not do homage
+('made as though he had been deaf'), his return, as it would seem, to
+his home-life and farm-work, his chivalrous boldness and warlike
+energy, which sprung at once to activity on the call of a great
+exigency in Jabesh-Gilead, his humane and sweet repression of the
+people's desire, in their first flush of pride in their soldier king,
+to slay his enemies, and his devout acknowledgment that not he but God
+has wrought this salvation.
+
+So for the first year of his reign all went well.
+
+How much of divine influence a man may have and yet fling it all away!
+How unreliable a thing mere natural goodness is! How much apparent
+goodness may coexist with deep-seated evil! How bright a beginning may
+darken into a tempestuous day! How seeds of evil may lurk in the
+fairest character! How little one can be judged by part of his life!
+How it is not the possession, but the retention, of goodness and devout
+impressions that makes a man good.
+
+II. The gathering clouds.
+
+
+The acts recorded as darkening the fair dawn of Saul's reign may seem
+too trivial to deserve the stern retribution that followed them, but
+small acts may be great sins. The first of them was his offering
+sacrifices without authority, an act which Samuel stigmatised as
+wanton, deliberate disobedience to 'the commandment of the Lord thy
+God.' Next came his rash and absurd laying of a curse on any soldier
+who should eat food before evening, and his consequent mad
+determination to kill Jonathan, for 'taking a little honey' on the end
+of his rod. Next came his flagrant disobedience to the divine command
+transmitted to him through Samuel, to 'smite Amalek, and utterly
+destroy all that they have, and spare them not,' We shudder at such
+ferocious extermination, but we are to remember that Saul was moved by
+no pity, but by mere lust for loot, and tried to deceive God, in the
+person of His representative Samuel, by the lie that the people had
+coerced him, and that the motive for preserving the best of the cattle
+was to sacrifice them to the Lord. Samuel's blaze of indignation gave
+the world the great word: 'Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.'
+
+Putting all these acts together, we have the sad picture of a character
+steadily deteriorating. He is growing daily more self-willed and
+impatient of the restraint of God's commanding will. He is chafing at
+his position as a viceroy, not an absolute sovereign. He is becoming
+tyrannical, careless of his subjects' lives, intolerant of opposition,
+remonstrance, or advice. The tragedy of his decadence is summed up in
+Samuel's stern word: 'Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord,
+He hath also rejected thee from being king.'
+
+Trivial acts may show great and deep-seated evil. A small swelling
+under the arm-pit is the sign of the plague and the precursor of swift
+death.
+
+The master-sin is disobedience, self-willed departure from God. That
+disobedience may be as virulently active in a trifle as in a deed that
+men call great. Self-will is the tap root of all sin, however
+labyrinthine the outgrowth from it.
+
+Disobedience honeycombs a soul. The attractive early traits in Saul's
+character slowly perhaps but steadily, disappeared. The fair morning
+sky was heavy with thunder-clouds by midday, and they all began with a
+light fleecy film that none noticed at first.
+
+III. The long eclipse.
+
+'An evil spirit from the Lord troubled him, and the Spirit of God
+departed from him.'
+
+Modern psychologists would call Saul's case an instance of insanity
+brought about by indulgence in passion and self-will. Is there any
+reason why the deeper, more religious explanation should not be united
+with the scientific one? Does not God work in the working of 'natural'
+phenomena?
+
+What we nowadays call insanity is not very far off from a man who
+habitually indulges in passionate self will, and spurns God from any
+authority over his life. What were Saul's characteristics now? The
+story tells of bursts of ungovernable fury, of unslumbering and
+universal suspicions, of utter misery, seeing enemies everywhere and
+complaining, 'None of you hath pity upon me,' of ferocious cruelty and
+gloomy despair, of paroxysms of agonising but transient remorse.
+
+It is an awful picture, and it grimly teaches lessons that we shall be
+wise to write deeply on our hearts.
+
+What a ruin a man makes of himself!
+
+How hideous a godless soul is!
+
+What unhappiness is certain if we dismiss God from ruling our lives!
+
+How useless remorse is unless it leads to repentance!
+
+IV. The stormy sunset.
+
+The scene at Endor makes one's flesh creep. No more tragic picture of
+failure and despair was ever painted. The greatest dramatists, whose
+creations move the terror and pity of the world, have imagined no more
+heart-touching figure.
+
+It matters very little--nothing at all in fact--either for the dramatic
+force or for the religious impressiveness of the scene, whether the
+woman 'brought up' Samuel, or whether she was as much awed as Saul was,
+by the coming up of 'an old man' covered with the well-known 'mantle.'
+The boding prophecy of to-morrow's defeat and death filled yet fuller
+the cup that had seemed to be already full of all misery. And that
+collapse of strength in the huddled figure, prostrate in the witch's
+den, may well stand for a prophecy of what will be the upshot at the
+last of a self-will that boasts of its own power, and tries to shake
+off dependence on God.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT DOEST THOU HERE?
+
+'Then said the princes of the Philistines, What do these Hebrews
+here!'--1 SAMUEL xxix. 3.
+
+'The word of the Lord came to him, and He said unto him, What doest
+thou here, Elijah?'--1 KINGS xix. 9.
+
+
+I have put these two verses together, not only because of their
+identity in form, though that is striking, but because they bear upon
+one and the same subject, as will appear, if, in a word or two, I set
+each of them in its setting. David was almost at the lowest point of
+his fortunes when he fled into foreign territory, and for awhile took
+service under one of the kings of the Philistines. He served him
+faithfully, and so, when the last great fight, in which Saul lost his
+life, was about to be waged between Philistia and Israel, David and his
+men came as a contingent to the army of the former. The Philistine
+commanders, very naturally, were suspicious of these allies, just as
+Englishmen would have been if, on the night before Waterloo, a brigade
+of Frenchmen had deserted and offered their help to fight Napoleon. So
+the question 'What do these Hebrews here?'--amongst our ranks--was an
+extremely natural one, and it was answered in the only possible way, by
+the subsequent departure of David and his men from the unnatural and
+ill-omened alliance.
+
+Now, that suggests to us that Christian people are out of their places,
+even in the eyes of worldly people, when they are fighting shoulder to
+shoulder with them in certain causes; and it suggests the propriety of
+keeping apart. 'Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith
+the Lord' 'What do these Hebrews here?' is a question that Philistia
+often asks. But now turn to the other question. Elijah had fallen into
+the mood of depression which so often follows great nervous tension. He
+had just offered the sacrifice on Carmel, and brought all Israel back
+to the Lord, and Jezebel had flamed out and threatened his life. The
+usually undaunted prophet, in the reaction after his great effort, was
+fearful for his life and deserted his work, flung himself into solitude
+and shook the dust off his feet against Israel. Was that not just doing
+what I have been saying that Christian people ought to do--separating
+himself from the world? In a sense, yes, but the voice came, 'What dost
+thou here, Elijah?' 'Go back to your work; to Ahab, to Jezebel. Go back
+to death if need be. Do not shirk your duty on the pretence of
+separating yourself from the world.'
+
+So we put the two questions together. They limit one another, and they
+suggest the _via media,_ the course between, and lead me to say
+one or two plain things about that duty of Christian separation from an
+evil world.
+
+I. The first thing that I would suggest to you is the inevitable
+intermingling, which is the law of God, and therefore can never be
+broken with impunity.
+
+Christ's parable about the Kingdom of Heaven in the world being like a
+man that sowed good seed in his field, which sprung up intermingled
+with tares, contains the lesson, not so much of the purity or nonpurity
+of the Church as of the inseparable intertwining in the world of
+Christian people with others. The roots are matted together, and you
+cannot pull up a tare without danger of pulling up a wheat-stalk that
+has got interlaced with it. That is but to say that Society at present,
+and the earthly form of the Kingdom of God, are not organised on the
+basis of religious affinity, but upon a great many other things, such
+as family, kindred, business, a thousand ties of all sorts which mat
+men together, and make it undesirable, impossible, contrary to God's
+intention, that the good people should club themselves together, and
+leave the bad ones to rot and stink. The two are meant to be in close
+contact. 'Let both grow together till the harvest.' If any Christian
+man were to do as the monks of old did, fly into solitude to look after
+his own soul, then the question which came to Elijah would be suitable
+to him, 'What doest thou here?' Is there not work enough for you out
+there, in that wicked world? Is that not the place for you? Where is
+the place for the 'salt'? Where the meat is in danger of putrefaction.
+Rub it in! That is what it was meant for. 'Ye are the light of the
+world.' That suggests the picture of a lamp upon a pedestal that it may
+send out its rays, but itself remains apart. But the companion metaphor
+suggests the closest possible contact, and such contact is duty for us
+Christian people. Elijah ran away from his work. There are types of
+Christian life to-day unwholesomely self-engrossed, and too much
+occupied with their own spiritual condition, to realise and discharge
+the duty of witnessing in the world. Wherever you find a Christian man
+--whether he is a monk with bare foot, and a rope round his brown robe,
+and shaven head, or whether he is in the garb of modern Protestantism--
+that tries more to keep himself apart, in the enjoyment and cultivation
+of his own religious life, than to fling himself into the midst of the
+world's worst evil, in order to fight and to cure it, you get a man who
+is sharing in Elijah's transgression, and needs Elijah's rebuke. The
+intermingling is inevitable in the present state of things; and family,
+kindred, business, social and political movements, all require that
+Christian people should work side by side with men who are not
+possessors of 'like precious faith.' If ever there have been
+individuals or communities that have tried to traverse that law, they
+have developed narrowness and bitterness and stunted growth, and a
+hundred evils that we all know.
+
+II. And now let me say a word about the second thing, and that is--the
+imperative separation.
+
+'What do these Israelites here?' is the question. Much of all our lives
+lies outside these necessary connections with the world, of which I
+have been speaking. And the question for each of us is, What do we do
+when we are left to do as we like? Where do we go? When the iron weight
+fastened by the bit of string is taken off the sapling, it starts back
+to its original uprightness. Is that what your Christianity does for
+you? When you are left to yourself, when you have done all the work
+that is required, and you are free, where do you turn naturally? It is
+of no use to lay down special regulations. There has been far too much
+regulation and red-tape in our Christianity all along. Do not let us
+put so much stress upon individual acts. Let us look at the spirit.
+Whither do I turn? What do I like to do? Who are my chosen companions?
+What are my recreations? Is my life of such a sort as that the world
+will point to me, and say, 'What! you here I a professing Christian;
+what are you doing here?'
+
+I remember that in the autobiography of Mr. Spurgeon, there is a story
+told about what he did when a child, and living with his grandfather,
+the pastor of a little country church. There was a very prominent
+member of that church who was in the habit of going into the public-
+house occasionally; and the small boy stepped into the sanded parlour
+where this inconsistent man was sitting, walked up to him, and said,
+'What doest thou here, Elijah?' It was the turning-point of the man's
+life. That is the question that I desire us all to ask ourselves--where
+do we go, and what sort of lives do we live in the moments when our own
+voluntary choice determines our action?
+
+'A man is known by the company he keeps,' says an old Latin proverb,
+and I am bound to say that I do not think that it is a good sign of the
+depth of a Christian professor's religion if he feels himself more at
+home in the company of people who do not share his religion than in the
+company of those that do. I do not wish to be strait-laced and narrow,
+but I do not wish, either, to be so broad as to obliterate altogether
+the distinction between Christian people and others. The fact of the
+case is this, dear friends; if we are Christ's servants we have more in
+common with the most uncongenial Christians than we have with the most
+congenial man who is not a Christian. And if we were nearer our Master
+we should feel that it was so. 'Being let go they went to their own
+company.' Where do you go when you can make your choice?
+
+I am not going to speak in detail about occupations or recreations. I
+can quite believe that the theatre might be made an instrument of
+morality. I can quite believe that a race-course might be a perfectly
+innocent place. I can quite believe that there may be no harm in a
+dance. All that I say is that there are two questions which every
+Christian professor ought to ask himself about such subjects. One is,
+Can I ask God to bless this thing, and my doing it? And the other is,
+Does this help or hinder my religion? If we will take these two
+questions with us as tests of conduct and companionship, I do not think
+that we shall go far wrong, either in the choice of our companions, or
+in the choice of our surroundings of any kind, or in the choice of our
+recreations and our occupations. But if we do not, then I am quite sure
+that we shall go wrong in them all. 'What communion hath light with
+darkness?' 'What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? Come ye
+out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.'
+
+The main question is, do I grasp the aim of life with clearness and
+decision as being to make myself by God's help such a character as God
+has pleasure in? If I do I shall regulate all these things thereby.
+
+III. Now there is one last suggestion that I wish to make, and that is
+the double questioning that we shall have to stand.
+
+The lords of the Philistines said, 'What do these Hebrews here?' They
+saw the inconsistency, if David and his men did not. They were sharp to
+detect it, and David and his band did not rise in their opinion, but
+decidedly went down, when they saw them marching there, in such an
+unnatural place as 'behind Achish,' and ready to flesh their swords in
+the blood of their brethren. So let me tell you, you will neither
+recommend your religion nor yourselves to men of the world, by
+inconsistently trying to identify yourselves with them. There are a
+great many professing Christians nowadays whose mouths are full of the
+word 'liberality,' and who seem to try to show how absolutely identical
+with a godless man's a God-fearing one's life may be made. Do you think
+that the world respects that type of Christian, or regards his religion
+as the kind of thing to be admired? No; the question that they fling at
+such people is the question which David was humiliated by having
+pitched at his head--'What do these Hebrews here?' 'Let them go back to
+their mountains. This is no place for _them_.' The world respects
+an out-and-out Christian; but neither God nor the world respects an
+inconsistent one.
+
+But there is another question, and another Questioner--'What doest thou
+here, Elijah?' God did not ask Elijah the question because he did not
+know the answer; but because he wished to make Elijah put his mood into
+words, since then Elijah would understand it a little better, and, when
+he found the tremendous difficulty of making a decent excuse, would
+begin to suspect that the conduct that wanted so much glozing was not
+exactly the conduct fit for a prophet. And so let us think that God is
+looking down upon us, in all our occupation of our free time, and that
+He is wishing us to put into words what we are about, and why we are
+where we are.
+
+What do you think you would say if, in some of these moments of
+unnecessary intermingling with questionable things and doubtful people,
+you were brought suddenly to this, that you had to formulate into some
+kind of plausibility your reason for being there? I am afraid it would
+be a very lame and ragged set of reasons that many of us would have to
+give. Well! better that we should now have to answer the question 'What
+doest thou here?' than that we should have to fail in answering the
+future question, after we have done with the world: 'What didst thou
+there?'
+
+Dear brethren, let us cleave to Christ, and that will separate us from
+the world. If we cleave to the world, that will separate us from
+Christ. I do not insist on details of conduct, but I do beseech you,
+professing Christians, to recognise that you are set in the world in
+order to grow like your Master, and that their tendency to help you to
+that likeness is the one test of all occupations, recreations, and
+companionships, by which we may know whether we are in or out of the
+place that pleases Him. And if we are in it, that blessed hope which is
+held forth in the parable to which I have already referred, will come
+full of sweetness and of strength to us, that, yonder, men will be
+grouped according to their moral and religious character; that the
+tares will be taken away from the wheat, and, that as Christ says,
+'Then shall the righteous flame as the sun in their heavenly Father's
+Kingdom.'
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET OF COURAGE
+
+'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'--1 Samuel xxx. 6.
+
+
+David was at perhaps the very lowest ebb of his fortunes. He had long
+been a wandering outlaw, and had finally been driven, by Saul's
+persistent hostility, to take refuge in the Philistines' country. He
+had gathered around himself a band of desperate men, and was living
+very much like a freebooter. He had found refuge in a little city of
+the Philistines, far down in the South, from which he and his men had
+marched as a contingent in the Philistine army, which was preparing an
+attack upon Saul. But, naturally, the Philistine soldiers doubted their
+ally, and he was obliged to take himself and his troops back again to
+their temporary home.
+
+When he came there it was a heap of smoking ruins. Everything was gone;
+property, cattle, wives, children--and all was desolation. His
+turbulent followers rose against him, a mutiny broke out--a dangerous
+thing amongst such a crew--and they were ready to stone him. And at
+that moment what did he do? Nothing. Was he cast down? No. Was he
+agitated? No. 'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'
+
+Now the first thing I notice is
+
+I. The grand assurance which this man gripped fast at such a time.
+
+It is not by accident, nor is it a mere piece of tautology, that we
+read 'the Lord _his_ God.' For, if you will remember, the very
+keynote of the psalms which are ascribed to David is just that
+expression, 'My God,' 'My God.' So far as the very fragmentary records
+of Jewish literature go, it would appear as if David was the very first
+of all the ancient singers to grapple that thought that he stood in a
+personal, individual relation to God, and God to him. And so it was
+_his_ God that he laid hold of at that dark hour.
+
+Now I am not putting too much into a little word when I insist upon it
+that the very essence and nerve of what strengthened David, at that
+supreme moment of desolation, was the conviction that welled up in his
+heart that, in spite of it all, he had a grip of God's hand as his very
+own, and God had hold of him. Just think of the difference between the
+attitude of mind and heart expressed in the names that were more
+familiar to the Israelitish people, and this name for Jehovah. 'The God
+of Israel'--that is wide, general; and a man might use it and yet fail
+to feel that it implied that each individual of the community stood by
+himself in a personal relation to God. But David penetrated through the
+broad, general thought, and got into the heart of the matter. It was
+not enough for him, in his time of need, to stay himself upon a vague
+universal goodness, but he had to clasp to his burdened heart the
+individualising thought, 'the God of Israel is _my_ God.'
+
+Think, too, of the contrast of the thoughts and emotions suggested by
+'My God,' and by 'the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.'
+Great as that name is, it carries the mind away back into the past, and
+speaks of a historical relation in former days, which may or may not
+continue in all its tenderness and sweetness and power into the prosaic
+present. But when a man feels, not only 'the God of Jacob is our
+Refuge,' but, 'the God of Jacob is my God,' then the whole thing
+flashes up into new power. 'My sun'--will one man claim property in
+that great luminary that pours its light down on the whole world? Yes.
+
+          'The sun whose beams most glorious are,
+           Disdaineth no beholder,'
+
+as the old song has it. Each man's eye receives the straight impact of
+its universal beams. It is my sun, though it be the light that lightens
+all men that come into the world. 'My atmosphere'--will one man claim
+the free, unappropriated winds of heaven as his? Yes, for they will
+pour into his lungs; and yet his brother will be none the poorer.
+
+I would not go the length of saying that the living realisation, in
+heart and mind, of this personal possession of God is the difference
+between a traditional and vague profession of religion and a vital
+possession of religion, but if it is not the difference, it goes a long
+way towards explaining the difference. The man who contents himself
+with the generality of a Gospel for the world, and who can say no more
+than that Jesus Christ died for all, has yet to learn the most intimate
+sweetness, and the most quickening and transforming power, of that
+Gospel, and he only learns it when he says, 'Who loved _me_, and
+gave Himself for _me_.'
+
+So do not let us be content with saying, 'the God of Israel,' and its
+many thousands, or 'the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob,'
+who filled the past with His lustre, but let us bring the general good
+into our own houses, as men might draw the waters of Niagara into their
+homes through pipes, and let us cry: 'My Lord and my God!' 'David
+encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'
+
+II. Now note, secondly, the sufficiency of this one conviction and
+assurance.
+
+Here is one of the many eloquent 'buts' of the Bible. On the one hand
+is piled up a black heap of calamities, loss, treachery and peril; and
+opposed to them is only that one clause: 'But David encouraged himself
+in the Lord his God.' There was only one possession in all the world,
+except his body and the clothes that he stood in, that he could call
+his own at that moment. Everything else was gone; his property was
+carried off by raiders, his home was smouldering embers. But the
+Amalekites had not stolen God from him. Though he could no longer say,
+'My house, my city, my possessions,' he could say, 'My God.' Whatever
+else we lose, as long as we have Him we are rich; and whatever else we
+possess, we are poor as long as we have not Him. God is enough;
+whatever else may go. The Lord his God was the sufficient portion for
+this man when he stood a homeless pauper. He had lost everything that
+his heart clung to; wives, children; Abigail and Abinoam were captives
+in the arms of some Amalekites; his house was left to him desolate; his
+heart was bleeding. 'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God'
+and the bleeding heart was stanched, and the yearning for some one to
+love and be loved by was satisfied, when he turned himself from the
+desolation of earth to the riches in the heavens. He was standing on
+the edge of possible death, for his followers were ready to stone him.
+He had come through many perils in the past, but he had never been
+nearer a fatal end than he was at that moment. But the thought of the
+undying Friend lifted him buoyantly above the dread of death, and he
+could look with an unwinking eye right into the fleshless eye-sockets
+of the skeleton, and say, 'I fear no evil, for Thou art with me.'
+
+So for poverty, loss, the blasting of earthly hopes, the crushing of
+earthly affections, the extremity of danger, and the utmost threatening
+of death, here is the sufficient remedy--that one mighty assurance:
+'The Lord is my God.' For if He is 'the strength of my heart,' He will
+be  my portion for ever.' He is not poor who has God for his, nor does
+he wander with a hungry heart who can rest his heart on God's; nor need
+he fear death who possesses God, and in Him eternal life.
+
+So, brethren, in all our changing circumstances, there is more than
+enough for us in that sweet, simple, strong thought. The end of sorrow
+(that is to say, the purpose thereof) is to breed in us the conviction
+that God is ours, to drive us to Him by lack of all beside; and the end
+of sorrow (that is to say, the termination thereof) is the kindling in
+our hearts of the light of that blessed assurance, for with Him we
+shall fear no evil.  You never know the good of the breakwater until
+the storm is rolling the waves against its outer side. Light a little
+candle in a room, and you will not see the lightning when it flashes
+outside, however stormy the sky, and seamed with the fiery darts. If we
+have God in our hearts, we have enough for courage and for strength.
+
+I need not remind you, I suppose, how this darkest moment of David's
+fortunes was the moment at which the darkness broke. Three days after
+this _emeute_ of his turbulent followers, there came a fugitive
+into the camp with news that Saul was dead and David was king. So it
+was not in vain that he had 'strengthened himself in the Lord his God.'
+Our 'light affliction which is but for a moment' leads on to a
+manifestation of the true power of God our Friend, and to the breaking
+of the day.
+
+III. And now the last thing to be noted is the effort by which this
+assurance is attained and sustained.
+
+The words of the original convey even more forcibly than those of our
+translation the thought of David's own action in securing him the hold
+of God as his. He 'strengthened _himself_ in the Lord his God.'
+The Hebrew conveys the notion of effort, persistent and continuous; and
+it tells us this, that when things are as black as they were round
+David at that hour--it is not a matter of course, even for a good man,
+that there shall well up in his heart this tranquillising and
+victorious conviction; but he has to set himself to reach and to keep
+it. God will give it, but He will not give it unless the man strains
+after it. David 'strengthened himself in the Lord,' and if he had not
+doggedly set about resisting the pressure of circumstances, and
+flinging himself as it were, by an effort, into the arms of God,
+circumstances would have been too strong for him, and despair would
+have shrouded his soul. In the darkest moment it is possible for a man
+to surround himself with God's light, but even in the brightest it is
+not possible to do so unless he makes a serious effort.
+
+That effort must consist mainly in two things. One is that we shall
+honestly try to occupy our minds, as well as our hearts, with the truth
+which certifies to us that God is, in very deed, ours. If we never
+think, or think languidly and rarely, about what God has revealed to
+us, by the word and life and death and intercession of Jesus Christ,
+concerning Himself, His heart of love towards us, and His relations to
+us, then we shall not have, either in the time of disaster or of joy,
+the blessed sense that He is indeed ours. If a man will not think about
+Christian truth he will not have the blessedness of Christian
+possession of God. There is no mystery about the road to the sweetness
+and holiness and power that may belong to a Christian. The only way to
+win them is to be occupied, far more than most of us are, with the
+plain truths of God's revelation in Jesus Christ. If you never think
+about them they cannot affect you, and they will not make you sure that
+God is yours.
+
+But we cannot occupy ourselves with these truths unless we have a
+distinct and resolute purpose running through our lives, of averting
+our eyes from the things that might make us lose sight of them and of
+Him. David had his choice. He could either, as a great many of us do,
+stand there and look, and look, and look, and see nothing but his
+disasters, or he could look past them; and see beyond them God. Peter
+had his choice whether he would look at the water, or whether he would
+look at Jesus Christ. He chose to look at the water; 'and when he saw
+the wind boisterous he began to sink'--of course, and when he looked at
+Christ and cried: 'Lord, save me!' he was held up--equally of course.
+Make the effort not to let the sorrowful things, or the difficult
+things, or the fearful things, or the joyous things, in your life,
+absorb you, but turn away, and, as the writer of the Epistle to the
+Hebrews says, in another connection, 'look off unto Jesus, the Author
+and Finisher of faith.' David had to put constraint upon himself, to
+admit any other thoughts into his mind than those that were pressed
+into it by the facts before his eyes; but he put on the constraint, and
+so he was encouraged because he encouraged himself.
+
+There is another thing which we have to make an effort to do, if we
+would have the blessedness of this conviction filling and flooding our
+hearts. For the possession is reciprocal; we say, 'My God,' and He
+says, 'My people.' Unless we yield ourselves to Him and say, 'I am
+Thine,' we shall never be able to say, 'Thou art mine.' We must
+recognise His possession of us; we must yield ourselves; we must obey;
+we must elect Him as our chief good, we must feel that we are not our
+own, but bought with a price. And then when we look up into the heavens
+thus submissive, thus obedient, thus owning His authority and His
+rights, as well as claiming His love and His tenderness, and cry: 'My
+Father,' He will bend down and whisper into our hearts: 'Thou art My
+beloved son.' Then we shall be 'strong, and of a good courage,' however
+weak and timid, and we shall be rich, though, like David, we have lost
+all things.
+
+
+
+
+AT THE FRONT OR THE BASE
+
+'As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be
+that tarrieth by the stuff.'--1 Samuel xxx. 24.
+
+
+David's city of Ziklag had been captured by the Amalekites, while he
+and all his men who could carry arms were absent, serving in the army
+of Achish, the Philistine king of Gath. On their return they found
+ruin, their homes harried, their wives, children, and property carried
+off. Wearied already with their long march, they set off at once in
+pursuit of the spoilers, who had had a long start of them. When they
+reached the brook Besor, two hundred of them were too weary and
+footsore to ford it, and so had to be left behind. But these were not
+useless, for the heavy baggage was left in their charge, and the other
+four hundred were thus enabled to march more lightly, and therefore
+more swiftly. They picked up a sick slave, whom his Amalekite master
+had heartlessly abandoned to die on the 'veldt.' He was almost dead, so
+they fed him, and when he was able to answer, questioned him. He
+undertook to guide David and his band, and thus, as twilight was
+beginning to fall and the Amalekites were 'spread abroad over all the
+ground, eating and drinking and feasting because of all the great spoil
+that they had taken.' the four hundred burst on them, routed them
+utterly, and won back all their goods and much more.
+
+Then came a quarrel. The four hundred who had gone to the fight
+insisted that the booty was theirs, and that the two hundred who had
+had no hand in winning it should have no share in the distribution. But
+David over-ruled this and laid down a principle of distribution which
+was adopted as the standing law of Israel--that the soldiers who were
+actually in the fight and those who stayed behind guarding the baggage,
+looking after 'the base of operations,' should share alike. It was fair
+that they should do so, for the two hundred would willingly have been
+in the thick of battle, and, further, though they did not fight, they
+helped the fighters, and by guarding the heavy baggage contributed to
+the victory as really as if they had been in the fray and come out of
+it with swords dripping with Amalekite blood.
+
+I. God's battle requires two forms of service.
+
+In David's raid, as in every campaign, some of the available strength
+has to be taken to guard the camp, the place where the supplies are,
+the base of operations, and pickets and detachments have to be left
+behind all the way, to keep open the communication. The sword is not
+more needful than the long train of baggage carts, and the forwarding
+of supplies to the front is as indispensable to the conduct of the war
+as the headlong charge.
+
+In every great work there is the same distinction of parts and
+functions, all co-operating to produce the effect which seems to be
+entirely due to that cause which happens to come last in the series.
+Organisation of labour associates many hands in the different stages of
+the one result. There are very few things in this world which are the
+product of one simple cause alone. You cannot grow a grain of corn
+without the seed with its vital germ, the soil with its mysterious
+influences, the sunshine and the rain, the sower's hand and basket, the
+plougher's plough, and all these, except the blessed sunshine, are the
+results of a series of other causes which lie forgotten, but are really
+represented in the issue. If one of them were struck out, all the rest
+would be ineffectual. In a great machine all its parts are equally
+necessary, and a defect in a cog on a wheel would be as fatal as a flaw
+in the cylinder or a crack in the mighty shaft. What would become of a
+ship if the pintle that the rudder works on were away? The effect of a
+whole orchestra may depend on the coming in of the flute at the right
+place.
+
+So in the work which God has given to the Church to do, there are the
+two forms of service, the direct and the indirect. There are the
+fighters and the guards of the baggage. And these two are equally
+necessary. That without which a great work could not have been done is
+great. When Luther came out from the Diet of Worms, and a knight
+clapped him on the shoulder, and said, 'Well done! little monk,' he had
+a share in the memorable deed of that day. The man who gave Luther a
+flagon of beer when his lips were dry with speaking there before
+emperor and cardinals, was included in the promise to the giver 'of a
+cup of cold water in the name of a disciple.'
+
+We have brethren in Christ who have gone to the front, hazarding their
+lives on the high places of the field. Their hands will droop if they
+do not feel that a chain of sympathy stretches between them and us, for
+they in their solitude need all the strength which the confidence of a
+multitude at home feeling with them can give. They are powerfully
+influenced by the tone of feeling among us. When devotion languishes
+and faith droops here, these will generally pass through the same
+phases among them. When we are strong and bold, their hearts will be
+quickened by the pulsations of ours, and their courage heightened by
+thoughts of those from whom they come. Our disorders, our heresies, our
+struggles are all reproduced on the mission field. An epidemic here
+travels thither before long, and the spiritual condition of the Church
+at home is one of the most powerful means of determining that of the
+churches abroad. A blight among our vines soon shows itself in the
+little gardens just reclaimed from the waste.
+
+The fighters need material helps and appliances for their work. The
+days in which the law for apostles and missionaries was, 'Go forth
+without purse or scrip,' ended before Jesus said, 'Go ye into all the
+world.' That condition was solemnly revoked by our Lord Himself, when
+He said, 'When I sent you forth without purse and scrip and shoes,
+lacked ye anything? But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and
+likewise his scrip.' The fighters' material wants are now to be met by
+Christ's administration of natural means, even as before they had been
+met by Christ's administration of supernatural ones. His messengers
+cannot live, do their work, or extend the kingdom, but by the help of
+material appliances. Those who 'abide by the stuff' are to organise the
+commissariat department, and to see that those who are far ahead, among
+the ranks of the foe, do not want for either food or weapons, and are
+not left isolated, hemmed in by the enemy, and languishing because they
+feel that they are forgotten by those who 'live at home at ease.'
+
+There has always been that division of labour. Our Lord Himself 'had
+need of' many humble instruments as helpers. There were the woman who
+ministered to His wants, the faithful few whose presence and sympathy
+were joyful to Him even on the Mount of Transfiguration, and longed for
+even in the awful solitude of the agony in Gethsemane, the sisters of
+Bethany whose humble home was His last shelter before the Cross, the
+owner of the Upper Room, the sad women who prepared sweet spices, the
+ruler who consecrated his new sepulchre in a garden by His body. Even
+He, treading the wine-press alone, needed helpers in the background,
+and, while conquering for us in the awful duel with our enemy, had
+humble friends who 'tarried by the stuff.' Similarly Paul had his
+helpers, on whose names he lovingly lingers and has made immortal, a
+'Gaius, mine host, and of the whole church,' an 'Epaphroditus, my
+fellow soldier, who ministered to my wants,' and therefore was a
+soldier, though he did not fight, an 'Onesiphorus, who oft refreshed
+me, and was not ashamed of my chain.'
+
+But let us remember that these two forms of service which are equally
+necessary are equally binding on us all, in the measure of our
+opportunity and capacity. Our performing the indirect is no excuse for
+our neglecting the direct. The conversion of the world is _our_
+business and not to be handed over to any society or missionary. No
+Christian can be only and always a non-combatant, without sin and loss.
+He is bound to take some share in the actual conflict in one or other
+of its many parts.
+
+II. Service may be different in kind and one in essence.
+
+The determining element in our actions is their motive. Not what we
+work in, but what we work for, gives the principle of classification.
+Not the spots on the skin or the colour of the feathers, but the bony
+skeleton, is the basis of zoological classification. It is not the size
+or binding of a book, be it quarto or folio or octavo, be it in leather
+or cloth or paper covers, but its subject, that settles its place in a
+catalogue. The Christian motives of love to Christ, self-sacrifice,
+devotion, love to men, make all deeds the same which have these in them
+in like strength. It matters not whether the copy of a great picture be
+in oils or an engraving or a photograph, so long as it _is_ a
+copy. The smallest piece of indirect Christian service may be thus
+elevated to the same plane as the greatest.
+
+'Mere money-giving' may have in it all these qualities, as truly and in
+as great a degree, as the deeds of Apostles and martyrs. Remember how
+Peter puts in one category these two forms of service, as equally
+flowing from 'the manifold grace of God,' and equally to be exercised
+as 'good stewards' thereof--'If any man speaketh, speaking as it were
+the oracles of God; if any man ministereth, ministering as of the
+strength which God supplieth.' Remember how Paul classes all varieties
+of service as equally 'gifts according to the grace given to us,' and
+to be exercised in the same spirit whatever are the difference in their
+forms: 'or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that
+teacheth, to his teaching: he that giveth, let him do it with
+liberality ... he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.'
+
+Let us learn, then, how we ought to help Christian fighters for Christ
+--as associating ourselves with them and their work by sympathy and
+sharing in their spirit and motives.
+
+Let us learn how loftily we ought to think of the possible sacredness
+of the most secular forms of help, and to try thus to consecrate our
+indirect service.
+
+III. All work done from the same motive will receive the same reward.
+
+
+None need be startled by the thought that Christian work is rewarded.
+Essentially, it is not deeds but character that is rewarded. The
+'reward' is the possession of God of which such a character is capable,
+and the consequent blessedness which fills such a soul, and cannot but
+fill it, and which can be enjoyed by no other. The faithful servant
+enters into the joy of the Lord; the faithful administrator of his
+Lord's talents enters on the rule over cities in number the same as the
+talents. Capacity for service is the result of stewardship rightly
+administered here, and new opportunities yonder are sure to be provided
+for new capacities.
+
+God's judgment takes little note of that which men's judgment all but
+exclusively notes. The conspicuousness or success of a man's deeds is
+nothing to Him. Differences of power are of no account. It is
+_faithfulness_ that is required in a steward, and it is all the
+same whether the stewardship is of millions or of farthings. The saints
+nearest the glory in heaven will not always be the men whose words or
+deeds fill the pages of Church history and resound through the ages.
+There will be astounding new principles of nearness and comparative
+remoteness then.
+
+Christ was repeating what David made a law in Israel, when He said: 'He
+that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a
+prophet's reward.' Therein He recognises the identity in spiritual
+stature and motive for service, of the prophet and of his dumb helper,
+and assures us that those who, in widely different ways but under the
+guidance of the same spirit and motives, have contributed their
+respective shares to the one triumphant result shall be associated and
+equalised in the immortal reward.
+
+So remember that what is necessary in our indirect work, if it is to be
+thus honoured, is that it should have our devotion, and our love to
+Jesus and to men, throbbing in it, and that it should be accompanied by
+direct work, in so far as we have opportunities for that. Moneygiving
+may be made sacred, and by it, exercised in the right spirit, we may
+'lay up in store for ourselves a good foundation' and may 'lay hold
+upon eternal life.'
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF SELF-WILL
+
+'Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled
+from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa. 2.
+And the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the
+Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Melchi-shua, Saul's sons.
+3. And the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him; and
+he was sore wounded of the archers. 4. Then said Saul unto his
+armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest
+these uncircumsised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his
+armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a
+sword, and fell upon it 5. And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was
+dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him. 6. So Saul
+died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that
+same day together. 7. And when the men of Israel that were on the other
+side of the valley, and they that were on the other side Jordan, saw
+that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they
+forsook the cities, and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in
+them. 8. And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came
+to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in
+mount Gilboa. 9. And they out off his head, and stripped off his
+armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to
+publish it in the house of their idols, and among the people. 10. And
+they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his
+body to the wall of Beth-shan. 11. And when the inhabitants of Jabesh-
+gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul; 12. All
+the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of Saul
+and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and came to
+Jabesh, and burnt them there. 19. And they took their bones, and buried
+them under a tree at Jabesh. and fasted seven days.'-1 Samuel xxxi. 1-
+13.
+
+
+The story of Saul's tragic last days is broken in two by the account,
+in chapters xxix. and xxx., of David's fortunate dismissal from the
+invading army, and his exploits against Amalek. The contrast between
+the two lives, so closely intertwined and powerful for good and evil on
+each other, reaches its climax at the end of Saul's. While the one sets
+in dark thunderclouds, the other is bright with victory. While the fall
+of Saul lays all northern Israel bleeding at the feet of the enemy,
+David is sending the spoils of his conquest to the elders of Judah.
+Saul's headless and dishonoured body hangs rotting in the sun on the
+walk of Bethshan, while David sits a conqueror in Ziklag. The
+introduction of the brightness of the two preceding chapters is
+intended to heighten the darkness that broods over this one, and to
+deepen the stern teaching of that terrible death. Defeat, desolation,
+despair, attend to his self-dug grave the unhappy king, whose end
+teaches us all what comes of self-willed resistance to the law and the
+Spirit of God. Everything else is subordinated in the narrative to the
+account of his death. Next to nothing is said about the battle, the
+very site of which is left obscure. We cannot tell whether it was
+fought down in the plain by the fountain at Jezreel, where Israel was
+encamped, according to 1 Samuel xxix. 1, or whether both sides
+manoeuvred and changed their ground, and the decisive struggle was on
+the slope of Gilboa. In any case, the site was almost identical with
+that of Gideon's victory, but there was no Gideon in command on that
+dark day. The language of verse 1 seems to imply that the battle was
+over and the rout begun before the Israelites reached Gilboa. If so, we
+have to conceive of a short, hopeless struggle on the plain, and then a
+rush to the hills for safety, in which Saul and his sons and bodyguard
+were borne along, but held together, closely followed by the 'red
+pursuing spear' of the conquerors, fierce with ancestral hate and the
+memories of defeat. There, on the hillside, stands the towering form of
+Saul with a little ring of his children and retainers round him, the
+words he had heard last night in the sorceress' tent unnerving his arm,
+and many a past crime rising before him, and whispering in his ear,
+
+               'In the battle think on me,
+                And fall thy edgeless sword; despair and die.'
+
+There seems to have been a close encounter with some of the pursuers,
+and a hand-to-hand fight, in which Jonathan and his two brothers fell,
+and the rest of the bodyguard were slain or scattered. The prophecy of
+that mantle-swathed shape last night was in part fulfilled--'To-morrow
+shalt thou and thy sons be with me.' They lay stark at his feet, and he
+knew that he would soon join them. The last heart that loved him had
+ceased to beat in Jonathan's noble breast, and his own crimes had slain
+his sons. Who can paint the storm of contending passions in that lonely
+black soul? or were they all frozen into the numbness of despair?
+
+But whatever else was in his soul, repentance was not there. He may
+have been seared by remorse, but he was not softened by penitence, and
+was fierce and proud in despair as he had been in prosperity. The
+Revised Version substitutes 'overtook' for 'hit' in verse 3; but Saul's
+fear 'lest these uncircumcised come' is against that rendering, and the
+fact that the enemy did not know of his death till next day (v. 8) is a
+difficulty in the way of accepting it. The word is literally 'found'
+and possibly means that the archers recognised him, and were making for
+him, though, as would appear, from some cause they missed him in the
+confusion. The other change in the Revised Version, that of 'greatly
+distressed' for 'sore wounded' fits the context; and if it be adopted,
+we have the picture of the unwounded but desperate man, once brave, but
+now stricken with a panic which opens his lips for his only word. In
+grim silence he had met the loss of battle, sons, and kingdom; but the
+proud sense of personal dignity is strong to the end, and he fiercely
+issues his last command, and embraces death to escape insult. The
+haughty spirit was unchanged, crushed but the same, unsoftened, and
+therefore roused to madder defiance of God and man. What an awful last
+saying for 'the anointed of Jehovah,' and how the overweening self-will
+and vehemence and passionate pride of his whole life are gathered up in
+it!
+
+His last command is disobeyed by the trembling armour-bearer, whose
+very awe makes him disobedient, Did Saul, at that last moment, send a
+thought to an armour-bearer whom he had had in happier days, and who
+was to inherit his lost kingdom? The enemy are coming nearer. No time
+is to be lost if he would escape the savage mutilations and torments
+which ancient warfare made the portion of captive kings. Not another
+word passes his lips, but, in the same grim silence, he fixes his sword
+upright in the ground, and flings himself on its point, and dies. All
+through his reign no hand had injured him but his own; and, as he
+lived, so he died, his own undoer and his own murderer. Suicide, the
+refuge of defeated monarchs and praised by heathen moralists as heroic,
+was rare in Israel. Saul, Ahithophel, and Judas are the instances of
+it. The most rudimentary recognition of the truths taught by the Old
+Testament would prevent it. If Saul had had any faith in God, any
+submission, any repentance, he could not have finished a life of
+rebellion by a self-inflicted death, which was itself the very
+desperation of rebellion. We have not to pronounce on his fate, but his
+act was a sin of the darkest dye.
+
+Yet note how the narrative abstains from all comment. It neither
+condemns nor pities, though a profound sense of the tragic eclipse is
+audible in that summing up in verse 6: 'So Saul died, and his three
+sons, and his armour-bearer, and all his men (that is, immediate
+followers or escort), that same day together.' And there they all lay,
+bloody corpses in the fellowship of death, on the slopes of Gilboa.
+Where Scripture Is silent, it is not our part to speak; but we can
+scarcely turn from that mighty form, prone by his own rash act, without
+seeking to learn the lesson of his life and fate. Saul had many noble
+and lovable qualities, such as bravery, promptitude, in his earlier
+days modesty and generosity. All these he had by nature, but there is
+no sign that he ever sought to cultivate his moral character, or to win
+any grace that did not come naturally to him; nor is there any reason
+to suppose that religion had ever any strong hold on him. His whole
+character may be summed up in Samuel's words in announcing his
+rejection: 'Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is
+as idolatry.' Rebellion persisted in, in spite of all remonstrances and
+checks, till it becomes master of the whole man, is the keynote of his
+later years. Before that baleful influence, as before some hot poison
+wind, all the flowers of good dispositions were burned up, and the bad
+stimulated to growth. His early virtues disappeared, and passed into
+their opposites. Modesty became arrogance, and a long course of
+indulgence in self-will developed cruelty, gloomy suspicion, and
+passionate anger, and left him the victim and slave of his own
+causeless hate. He who rebels against God mars his own character. The
+miserable later years of Saul, haunted and hunted as by a demon by his
+own indulged and swollen rebellion and unsleeping suspicion, are an
+example of the sorrows that ever dog sin; and, as he lies there on
+Gilboa, the terrible saying recurs to our memory: 'He that being often
+reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that
+without remedy.'
+
+The remainder of the chapter is occupied with three points, bearing on
+the solemn tragedy just recorded. First, we have the disastrous effects
+of it in the complete loss of the northern territories. 'The men ...
+that were on the other side of the valley' are the tribes to the north
+of the great plain; and 'they that were on the other side Jordan' are
+probably those on the east bank. So thorough was the defeat, especially
+as Saul and the royal house were slain, that they abandoned their
+homes, and the Philistines took possession. 'One sinner destroyeth much
+good.' When Israel's king was madly rebellious, Israel was smitten, and
+its inheritance diminished.
+
+Next we have the insults to the headless corpses. The Philistines did
+not know till the following day how complete was their victory. The
+account in 1 Chronicles x. adds that Saul's head was sent to the temple
+of Dagon, probably as a kind of effacing of the shame wrought there by
+the presence of the ark. The false gods had triumphed, as their
+worshippers thought, and Saul's death was Jehovah's defeat. That
+apparent victory of the idols and the mocking exultation over the
+bloody trophy and dinted armour are, to the historian, not the least
+bitter consequences of the battle.
+
+The last point is the brave midnight march of the men of Jabesh from
+their home on the eastern uplands beyond Jordan, across the river and
+up to Bethshan, perched on its lofty cliff, and overlooking the valley
+of the Jordan. It was a requital of Saul's deed in his early bright
+days, when, with his hastily raised levies, he scattered the Ammonites.
+It is one gleam of light amid the stormy sunset. There were men ready
+to hazard their lives even then, because of the noblest of Saul's acts,
+which no tyrannical arbitrariness or fierceness of later days had
+blotted out. So the little band of grateful heroes carried back their
+ghastly load to Jabesh, and burned the mutilated bodies there,
+employing an unfamiliar mode, as we may suppose, by reason of their
+mutilation and decomposition, and then reverently gathering the white
+bones from the pyre, and laying them below the well-known tamarisk.
+Saul's one good deed as king sowed seeds of gratitude which flourished
+again, when the opportunity came. His many evil ones sowed evil seed
+which bore fatal fruit; and both were seen in his end.
+
+
+
+
+EXPOSITIONS OF
+HOLY SCRIPTURE
+
+ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.
+
+
+SECOND SAMUEL AND THE BOOKS OF KINGS
+TO SECOND KINGS VII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+THE BRIGHT DAWN OF A REIGN (2 Samuel ii. 1-11)
+ONE FOLD AND ONE SHEPHERD (2 Samuel v. 1-12)
+DEATH AND LIFE FROM THE ARK (2 Samuel vi. 1-12)
+THE ARK IN THE HOUSE OF OBED-EDOM (2 Samuel vi. 11)
+THE PROMISED KING AND TEMPLE-BUILDER (2 Samuel vii. 4-16)
+DAVID'S GRATITUDE (2 Samuel vii. 18-29)
+DAVID AND JONATHAN'S SON (2 Samuel ix. 1-13)
+'MORE THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH HIM' (2 Samuel x. 8-19)
+THOU ART THE MAN (2 Samuel xii. 5-7)
+DAVID AND NATHAN (2 Samuel xii. 13)
+GOD'S BANISHED ONES (2 Samuel xiv. 14)
+PARDONED SIN PUNISHED (2 Samuel xv. 1-12)
+A LOYAL VOW (2 Samuel xv. 15)
+ITTAI OF GATH (2 Samuel xv. 21)
+THE WAIL OF A BROKEN HEART (2 Samuel xviii. 18-33)
+BARZILLAI (2 Samuel xix. 34-37)
+DAVID'S HYMN OF VICTORY (2 Samuel xxii. 40-51)
+THE DYING KING'S LAST VISION AND PSALM (2 Samuel xxiii. 1-7)
+THE ROYAL JUBILEE (2 Samuel xxiii. 3, 4)
+A LIBATION TO JEHOVAH (2 Samuel xxiii. 15-17)
+
+
+THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS
+
+DAVID APPOINTING SOLOMON (1 KINGS i. 28-39)
+A YOUNG MAN'S WISE CHOICE OF WISDOM (1 Kings iii. 5-l5)
+THE GREAT GAIN OF GODLINESS (1 Kings iv. 25-34)
+GREAT PREPARATIONS FOR A GREAT WORK (1 Kings v. 1-12)
+BUILDING IN SILENCE (1 Kings vi. 7)
+THE KING 'BLESSING' HIS PEOPLE (1 KINGS viii. 51-63)
+'THE MATTER OF A DAY IN ITS DAY' (1 Kings viii. 59)
+PROMISES AND THREATENINGS (1 Kings ix. 1-9)
+A ROYAL SEEKER AFTER WISDOM (1 Kings x. 1-13)
+THE FALL OF SOLOMON (1 Kings xi. 4-13)
+THE NEW GARMENT RENT (1 Kings xi. 26-43)
+HOW TO SPLIT A KINGDOM (1 Kings xii. 1-17)
+POLITICAL RELIGION (1 Kings xii. 25-33)
+THE RECORD OF TWO KINGS (1 Kings xvi. 23-33)
+A PROPHET'S STRANGE PROVIDERS (1 Kings xvii. 1-16)
+ELIJAH STANDING BEFORE THE LORD (1 Kings xvii. 1)
+OBADIAH (1 Kings xviii. 12)
+THE TRIAL BY FIRE (1 Kings xviii. 25-39)
+ELIJAH'S WEAKNESS, AND ITS CURE (1 Kings xix. 1-18)
+PUTTING ON THE ARMOUR (1 Kings xx. 11)
+ROYAL MURDERERS (1 Kings xxi. 1-16)
+AHAB AND ELIJAH (1 Kings xxi. 20)
+UNPOSSESSED POSSESSIONS (1 Kings xxii. 3)
+AHAB AND MICAIAH (1 Kings xxii. 7, 8)
+
+
+THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS
+
+THE CHARIOT OF FIRE (2 Kings ii. 1-11)
+THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST (2 Kings ii. 11;
+Luke xxiv. 51)
+ELIJAH'S TRANSLATION AND ELISHA'S DEATHBED (2 Kings ii. 12;
+Kings xiii. II)
+GENTLENESS SUCCEEDING STRENGTH (2 Kings ii. 13-22)
+WHEN THE OIL FLOWS (2 Kings iv. 6)
+A MIRACLE NEEDING EFFORT (2 Kings iv. 25-37)
+NAAMAN'S WRATH (2 Kings v. 10, 11)
+NAAMAN'S IMPERFECT FAITH (2 Kings v. 15-27)
+SIGHT AND BLINDNESS (2 Kings vi. 3-18)
+'IMPOSSIBLE,--ONLY I SAW IT' (2 Kings vii. 1-16)
+SILENT CHRISTIANS (2 Kings vii. 9)
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIGHT DAWN OF A REIGN
+
+'And it came to pass after this, that David enquired of the Lord,
+saying, Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah? And the Lord
+said unto him, Go up. And David said, Whither shall I go up? And He
+said, Unto Hebron. 2. So David went up thither, and his two wives also,
+Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail, Nabal's wife, the Carmelite. 3.
+And his men that were with him did David bring up, every man with his
+household: and they dwelt in the cities of Hebron. 4. And the men of
+Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.
+And they told David, saying, That the men of Jabesh-gilead were they
+that buried Saul. 5. And David sent messengers unto the men of Jabesh-
+gilead, and said unto them, Blessed be ye of the Lord, that ye have
+shewed this kindness unto your lord, even unto Saul, and have buried
+him. 6. And now the Lord shew kindness and truth unto you: and I also
+will requite you this kindness, because ye have done this thing. 7.
+Therefore now let your hands be strengthened, and be ye valiant: for
+your master Saul is dead, and also the house of Judah have anointed me
+king over them. 8. But Abner the son of Ner, captain of Saul's host,
+took Ishb-osheth the son of Saul, and brought him over to Mahanaim; 9.
+And he made him king over Gilead, and over the Ashurites, and over
+Jezreel, and over Ephraim,  and over Benjamin, and over all Israel. 10.
+Ish-bosheth Saul's son was forty years old when he began to reign over
+Israel, and reigned two years. But the house of Judah followed David.
+11. And the time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah
+was seven years and six months.'--2 SAMUEL ii. 1-11.
+
+
+The last stage of David's wanderings had brought him to Ziklag, a
+Philistine city. There he had been for over a year, during which he had
+won the regard of Achish, the Philistine king of Gath. He had, at
+Achish's request, accompanied him with his contingent, in the invasion
+of Israel, which crushed Saul's house at Gilboa; but jealousy on the
+part of the other Philistine leaders had obliged his patron to send him
+back to Ziklag. He found it a heap of ashes. An Amalekite raid had
+carried off all the women and children, and his soldiers were on the
+point of mutiny. His fortunes seemed desperate, but his courage and
+faith were high, and he paused not a moment for useless sorrow, but
+swept after the robbers, swooped down on them like a bolt out of the
+blue, and scattered them, recovering the captives and spoil. He went
+back to the ruins which had been Ziklag, and three days after heard of
+Saul's death.
+
+The lowest point of his fortunes suddenly turned into the highest, for
+now the path to the throne was open. But the tidings did not move him
+to joy. His first thought was not for himself, but for Saul and
+Jonathan, whose old love to him shone out again, glorified by their
+deaths. Swift vengeance from his hand struck Saul's slayer; the lovely
+elegy on the great king and his son eased his heart. Then he turned to
+front his new circumstances, and this passage shows how a God-fearing
+man will meet the summons to dignity which is duty. It sets forth
+David's conduct in three aspects-his assumption of his kingdom, his
+loving regard for Saul's memory, and his demeanour in the face of
+rebellion.
+
+I. David was now about thirty years old, and had had his character
+tested and matured by his hard experiences. He 'learned in suffering
+what he taught in song.' Exile, poverty, and danger are harsh but
+effectual teachers, if accepted by a devout spirit, and fronted with
+brave effort. The fugitive's cave was a good preparation for the king's
+palace. The throne to which he was called was no soft seat for repose.
+The Philistine invasion had torn away all the northern territory. He
+took the helm in a tempest. What was he to do? Ziklag was untenable;
+where was he to take his men? He could not stop in the Philistine
+territory, and he saw no way clear.
+
+God's servants generally find that their promotion means harder duties
+and multiplied perplexities. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.'
+David did what we shall do, if we are wise--he asked God to guide him.
+How that guidance was asked and given we are not here told; but the
+analogy of 1 Samuel xxx. 7, 8, suggests that it was by the Urim and
+Thummim, interpreted by the high-priest. The form of inquiry seems to
+have been that a course of action, suggested by the inquirer, was
+decided for him by a 'Yes' or a 'No.' So that there was the exercise of
+common-sense and judgment in formulating the proposed course, as well
+as that of God's direction in determining it.
+
+That is how we still get divine direction. Bring your own wits to bear
+on your action, and then do not obstinately stick to what seems right
+to you, but ask God to negative it if it is wrong, and to confirm you
+in it if it is right. If we humbly ask Him, 'Am I to go, or not to go?'
+we shall not be left unanswered. We note the contrast between David's
+submission to God's guidance and Saul's self-willed taking his own way,
+in spite of Samuel. He began right, and, in the main, he continued as
+he began. Self-will is sin and ruin. Submission is joy, and peace, and
+success. God's kings are viceroys. They have to rule themselves and the
+world, but they have to be ruled by His will. If they faithfully
+continue as His servants, they are masters of all besides.
+
+Hebron was a good capital for the new king, for it was a defensible
+position, in the centre of his own tribe, and sacred by association
+with the patriarchs. Established there, David was recognised as king by
+his fellow-tribesmen, and by them only. No doubt, tribal jealousy was
+partly the cause of this limited recognition, but probably the
+confusion incident to the Philistine victory contributed to it. The
+result was that, though David's designation by Samuel to the kingship
+was universally known, and his candidature had been popular, he had
+seven years of precarious sway over this mere fraction of the nation.
+We read of no impatience on his part. He let events shape themselves,
+or, rather, he let God shape events.
+
+Passiveness is not always indolence. There are two ways of compassing
+our desires. One is that which David himself tells us is the 'young
+lions' way, of struggling and fighting, and that often ends in 'lacking
+and suffering hunger'; the other is that of waiting on the Lord, and
+that always ends in 'not lacking any good.' If we are sure that God has
+promised us anything, and if He does not seem to have yet opened the
+way to obtaining it, our 'strength is to sit still.' If He has given us
+Hebron, we can be patient till He please to give us Jerusalem.
+
+II. Another side of David's character comes beautifully out in his
+treatment of the men of Jabesh-gilead. That town owed much to Saul (1
+Samuel xi.), and its gratitude lasted, and dared much for him. It was a
+brave dash that they made across Jordan to carry off Saul's corpse from
+its ignominious exposure; for it both defied the Philistines, and might
+be construed as hostile to David. But his heart was too true to ancient
+friendship to do anything but glow with admiring sympathy at that
+exhibition of affectionate remembrance. Reconciling death had swept
+away all memories of Saul's insane jealousy, and he owned a brother in
+every one who showed kindness to the unfortunate king.
+
+If the Jabesh-Gileadites are a pattern of long-memoried gratitude,
+David's commendation of them is a model of love which survives
+injuries, and of forgivingness which forgets them. It was as politic as
+it was generous. Nothing could have been better calculated to attach
+Saul's most devoted partisans to him than showing that he honoured
+their faithful attachment to Saul, and nothing could have more clearly
+defined his own position during his wanderings as being no rebel. The
+dictates of true policy and those of devout generosity always coincide.
+It is ever a blunder to be unforgiving, and mercifulness is always
+expedient.
+
+But David did not hide his claim to the allegiance of these true
+hearts. He called on them to transfer their loyalty to himself, and he
+asserted, not his anointing by Samuel, but his recognition by Judah,
+the premier tribe, as the motive. No doubt the divine appointment is
+implied, as it was generally known, but Judah's action is put forward
+as showing the beginning of the realisation of the divine designation.
+The men of Jabesh needed to 'be valiant' if they were to acknowledge
+him; for it was a far cry to Hebron, and the forces of the rival son of
+Saul were overrunning the northern districts.
+
+We have to take our sides in the age-long and worldwide warfare between
+God's King and the pretenders to His throne, and it often wants much
+courage to do so when surrounded by antagonists. It seems a long way
+off to the true monarch, and Abner's army is a very solid reality, and
+very near. But it is safest to take the side of the distant, rightful
+king.
+
+III. David's bearing in the face of opposition and rebellion comes out
+in verses 8-11. Abner, Saul's cousin, who had been in high position
+when the stripling from Bethlehem fought Goliath, was not capable of
+the self-effacement involved in acquiescing in David's accession,
+though he knew that the Lord had 'sworn to David.' So he set up a 'King
+Do-nothing' in the person of a weak lad, the only survivor of Saul's
+sons. A strange state of mind that, which struggles against a
+recognised divine appointment!
+
+But is it only Abner who knew that he was trying to thwart God's will?
+Thousands of us are doing the same, and the attempt answers as well as
+it did in his case.
+
+The puppet king is named Ishbosheth in the lesson, but I Chronicles
+viii. 33 and ix. 39 show that his real name was Esh-baal. The former
+word means 'The man of shame'; the latter, 'The man of Baal.' The
+existence of Baal as an element in names seems to indicate the
+incompleteness of the emancipation from idolatry in Saul's time, and
+the change will then indicate the keener monotheistic conscience of
+later days. Another explanation is that Baal (' Lord') was in these
+cases used as a name for Jehovah, and was 'changed at a later period
+for the purpose of avoiding what was interpreted then as a compound of
+the name of the Phoenician deity Baal' (Driver, _Notes on Hebrew Text
+of the Books of Samuel_).
+
+Abner set up his tool in Mahanaim, sacred for its associations with
+Jacob, but, no doubt, recommended to him rather by its position on the
+east side of Jordan, safe from the attacks of the victorious
+Philistines. From that fastness he made raids to recover the territory
+which the victory at Gilboa had won for them. First Gilead, on the same
+side of the river as Mahanaim; then the territory of the 'Ashurites'--
+probably a scribe's error for 'Asherites,' the most northern tribe; and
+then, coming southward, the great plain, with its cities, Ephraim and
+Benjamin,--in fact, all Israel except Judah's country was reconquered
+for Saul's house.
+
+The account of the distribution of territory between the two monarchies
+is broken by the parenthesis in verse 10, which, both by its awkward
+interposition in the middle of a sentence and by its difficult
+chronological statements, looks like a late addition.
+
+For seven and a half years David reigned in Hebron, but was rather shut
+up there than ruling thence. The most noteworthy fact is that he,
+soldier as he was, took no steps to put down Abner's rebellion. He
+defended himself when attacked, but that was all. The three figures of
+David, Ishbosheth, and Abner point lessons. Silent, still, trustful,
+and therefore patient, David shows us how faith in God can lead to
+possessing one's soul in patience till 'the vision' comes. We may have
+to wait for it, but 'it will surely come,' and what is time enough for
+God should be time enough for us. Saul's son was a poor, weak creature,
+who would never have thought of resisting David but for the stronger
+will behind him. To be weak is, in this world full of tempters, to
+drift into being wicked. We have to learn betimes to say 'No,' and to
+stick to it. Moral weakness attracts tempters as surely as a camel
+fallen by the caravan track draws vultures from every corner of the
+sky. The fierce soldier who fought for his own hand while professing to
+be moved by loyalty to the dead king, may stand as a type of the self-
+deception with which we gloss over our ugliest selfishness with fine
+names, and for an instance of the madness which leads men to set
+themselves against God's plans, and therefore to be dashed in pieces,
+as some slim barrier reared across the track of a train would be. To
+'rush against the thick bosses of the Almighty's buckler' does no harm
+to the buckler, but kills the insane assailant.
+
+
+
+
+ONE FOLD AND ONE SHEPHERD
+
+'Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron, and spake,
+saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. 2. Also in time past,
+when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and
+broughtest in Israel: and the Lord said to thee, Thou shalt feed My
+people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel. 3. So all the
+elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron; and king David made a
+league with them in Hebron before the Lord: and they anointed David
+king over Israel. 4. David was thirty years old when he began to reign;
+and he reigned forty years. 5. In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven
+years and six months; and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three
+years over all Israel and Judah, 6. And the king and his men went to
+Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land; which spake
+unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou
+shalt not come in hither: thinking, David cannot come in hither. 7.
+Nevertheless, David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city
+of David. 8. And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the
+gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are
+hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they
+said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house. 9. So David
+dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And David built
+round about from Millo and inward. 10. And David went on, and grew
+great, and the Lord God of hosts was with him. 11. And Hiram king of
+Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and
+masons: and they built David an house. 12. And David perceived that the
+Lord had established him king over Israel, and that He had exalted his
+kingdom for His people Israel's sake.'--2 SAMUEL v. 1-12.
+
+
+The dark day on Gilboa put the Philistines in possession of most of
+Saul's kingdom. Only in the south David held his ground, and Abner had
+to cross Jordan to find a place of security for the remnants of the
+royal house. The completeness of the Philistine conquest is marked, not
+only by Abner's flight to Mahanaim, but by the reckoning that David
+reigned for seven and a half years and Ishbosheth two; for these
+periods must be supposed to have ended very nearly at the same time,
+and thus there would be about five years before the invaders were so
+far got rid of that Ishbosheth exercised sovereignty over his part of
+Israel. It is singular that David should have been left unattacked by
+the Philistines, and it is probably to be explained by the friendly
+relations which had sprung up between Achish, king of Gath, and him (1
+Samuel xxix.). However that may be, his power was continually
+increasing during his reign at Hebron over Judah, and at last Abner's
+death and the assassination of the poor phantom king, Ishbosheth,
+brought about the total collapse of opposition.
+
+I. This passage deals first with the submission of the tribes and the
+reunion of the divided kingdom. A comparison of verse I with verse 3
+shows that a formal delegation of elders from all the tribes which had
+held by Ishbosheth, came to Hebron with their submission. The account
+in I Chronicles is a _verbatim_ copy of this one, with the
+addition of a glowing picture of the accompanying feasting and joy. It
+also places much emphasis on the sincerity of David's new subjects,
+which needed some endorsement; for loyalty which has been disloyal as
+long as it durst, may be suspected. The elders have their mouths full
+of excellent reasons for recognising David's kingship,--he is their
+brother; he was their true leader in war, even in Saul's time; he has
+been appointed by God to be king and commander. Unfortunately, it had
+taken the elders seven and a half years to feel the force of these
+reasons, and probably their perceptions would still have remained dull
+if Abner and Ishbosheth had lived. But David is both magnanimous and
+politic, and neither bloodshed nor reproaches mar the close of the
+strife. Seldom has so formidable a civil war been ended with so
+complete an amnesty. Observe the expression that David 'made a league
+with them... before the Lord.' The Israelitish monarch was no despot,
+but, in modern language, a constitutional king, between whom and his
+subjects there was a compact, which he as well as they had to observe.
+In what sense was it made 'before the Lord'? The ark was not at Hebron,
+though the priests were; and the phrase is at once a testimony to the
+religious character of the 'league' and to the consciousness of God's
+presence, apart from the symbol of His presence. It points to a higher
+conception than that which brought the ark to Ebenezer, and dreamed
+that the ark had brought God to the army. Modern theories of the
+religious development of the Old Testament ask us to recognise these
+two conceptions as successive. The fact is that they were
+contemporaneous, and that the difference between them is not one of
+time, but of spiritual susceptibility. Who anointed David for this
+third time? Apparently the elders, for priests are not mentioned.
+Samuel had anointed him, as token of the divine choice and symbol of
+the divine gifts for his office. The men of Judah had anointed him, and
+finally the elders did so, in token of the popular confirmation of
+God's choice.
+
+So David has reached the throne at last. Schooled by suffering, and in
+the full maturity of his powers, enriched by the singularly varied
+experiences of his changeful life, tempered by the swift alternations
+of heat and cold, polished by friction, consolidated by heavy blows, he
+has been welded into a fitting instrument for God's purposes. Thus does
+He ever prepare for larger service. Thus does He ever reward patient
+trust. Through trials to a throne is the law for all noble lives in
+regard to their earthly progress, as well as in regard to the relation
+between earth and heaven. But David is not only a pattern instance of
+how God trains His servants, but he is a prophetic person; and in his
+progress to his kingdom we have dimly, but really, shadowed the path by
+which his Son and Lord attains to His,--a path thickly strewn with
+thorns, and plunging into 'valleys of the shadow of death' compared
+with which David's darkest hour was sunny. The psalms of the persecuted
+exile have sounding through them a deeper sorrow; for they 'testified
+beforehand the sufferings of Christ.' 'No cross, no crown,' is the
+lesson of David's earlier life.
+
+II. We have, next, the first victory of the reunited nation. Hebron was
+too far south for the capital of the whole kingdom. Jerusalem was more
+central, and, from its position, surrounded on three sides with steep
+ravines, was a strong military post. David's soldier's eye saw its
+advantages; and he, no doubt, desired to weld the monarchy together by
+participation in danger and triumph. The new glow of national unity
+would seek some great exploit, and would resent as an insult the
+presence of the Jebusites in their stronghold. The attack on it
+immediately follows the recognition of David's kingship. It is not
+necessary here to discuss the difficulties in verses 6-8; but we note
+that they give, first, the insolent boast of the besieged, then the
+twofold answer to it in fact and in word, and last, the memorial of the
+victory in a proverb. Apparently the Jebusites' taunt is best
+understood as in the margin of the Revised Version,' Thou shalt not
+come in hither, but the blind and the lame shall turn thee away,' They
+were so sure that their ravines made them safe, that they either
+actually manned their walls with blind men and cripples, or jeeringly
+shouted to the enemy across the valley that these would do for a
+garrison. The other possible meaning of the words as they stand in the
+Authorised Version would make 'the blind and lame' refer to David's
+men, and the taunt would mean, 'You will have to weed out your men. It
+will take sharper eyes and more agile limbs than theirs to clamber up
+here'; but the former explanation is the more probable. Such braggart
+speeches were quite in the manner of ancient warfare.
+
+Verse 7 tells what the answer to this mocking shout from the ramparts
+was, David did the impossible, and took the city. Courage built on
+faith has a way of making the world's predictions of what it cannot do
+look rather ridiculous. David wastes no words in answering the taunt;
+but it stirs him to fierce anger, and nerves him and his men for their
+desperate charge. The obscure words in verse 8, which he speaks to his
+soldiers, do not need the supplement given in the Authorised Version.
+The king's quick eye had seen a practical path for scaling the cliffs
+up some watercourse, where there might be projections or vegetation to
+pull oneself up by, or shelter which would hide the assailants from the
+defenders; and he bids any one who would smite the Jebusites take that
+road up, and, when he is up, 'smite.' He heartens his men for the
+assault by his description of the enemy. They had talked about 'blind
+and lame'; that is what they really are, or as unable to stand against
+the Israelites' fierce and sudden burst as if they were: and
+furthermore, they are' hated of David's soul.' It is a flash of the
+rage of battle which shows us David in a new light. He was a born
+captain as well as king; and here he exhibits the general's power to
+see, as by instinct, the weak point and to hurl his men on it. His
+swift decision and fiery eloquence stir his men's blood like the sound
+of a trumpet. The proverb that rose from the capture is best read as in
+the Revised Version: 'There are the blind and the lame; he cannot come
+into the house.' The point of it seems to be that, notwithstanding the
+bragging Jebusites, he did 'come into the house'; and so its use would
+be to ridicule boasting confidence that was falsified by events, as the
+Jebusites' had been. It was worth while to record the boast and its
+end; for they teach the always seasonable lesson of the folly of over-
+confidence in apparently impregnable defences. It is a lesson of
+worldly prudence, but still more of religion. There is always some
+'watercourse' overlooked by us, up which the enemy may make his way.
+Overestimate of our own strength and its companion folly, flippant
+underestimate of the enemy's power, are, in all worldly affairs, the
+sure precursors of disaster; and in the Christian life the only safe
+temper is that of the man who 'feareth always,' as knowing his own
+weakness and the strength of his foe, and thereby is driven to that
+trust which casts out fear.
+
+On the other hand, David's exploit reads us anew the lesson that to the
+Christian soldier there is nothing impossible, with Jesus Christ for
+our Captain. There are many unconquered fortresses of evil still to be
+carried by assault, and they look steep and inaccessible enough; but
+there is some way up, and He will show it us. For our own personal
+struggle with sin, and for the Church's conflict with social evils,
+this story is an encouragement and a prophecy.
+
+Jerusalem was captured by a reunited nation with its king at its head.
+As long as our miserable divisions weaken and disgrace us, the Church
+fights at a disadvantage; and the hoary fortresses of the foe will not
+be won till Judah ceases to vex Ephraim, and Ephraim no more envies
+Judah, but all Christ's servants in one host, with the King known by
+each to be with them, make the assault.
+
+III. We have, lastly, the growth of the kingdom. I pass over
+topographical questions, which need not concern us here. The points
+recorded are David's establishment in the stronghold, his additions to
+the city, his increasing greatness and its reason in the presence and
+favour of 'the God of hosts,' the special instance of this in the
+friendly intercourse with Hiram of Tyre and the employment of Tyrian
+workmen, and the recognition of the source and the purpose of his
+prosperity by the devout king. We see here the conditions of true
+success,--'The Lord, the God of hosts, was with him.' We see also the
+right use of it,--'David perceived that the Lord had established him
+king.' He was not puffed up into self-importance by his elevation, but
+devoutly and clearly saw who had set him in his lofty place. And, as he
+traced his royalty to God, so he recognised that he had received it,
+not for himself, but as a trust to be used, not in self-indulgence, but
+for the national good,--'and that He had exalted his kingdom for His
+people Israel's sake.' Whosoever holds firmly by these two thoughts,
+and lives them, will adorn his position, whatever it may be, and will
+be one of God's crowned kings, however obscure his lot and small his
+duties. He who lacks them will misuse his gifts and mar his life, and
+the more splendid his endowments and the higher his position, the more
+conspicuous will be his ruin and the heavier his guilt.
+
+
+
+
+DEATH AND LIFE FROM THE ARK
+
+'Again, David gathered together all the chosen men of Israel, thirty
+thousand. 2. And David arose, and went with all the people that were
+with him from Baale of Judah, to bring up from thence the ark of God,
+whose name is called by the name of the Lord of hosts that dwelleth
+between the cherubims. 3. And they set the ark of God upon a new cart,
+and brought it out of the house of Abinadab that was in Gibeah: and
+Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drave the new cart. 4. And they
+brought it out of the house of Abinadab which was at Gibeah,
+accompanying the ark of God: and Ahio went before the ark. 5. And David
+and all the house of Israel played before the Lord on all manner of
+instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on
+timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals. 6. And when they came to
+Nachon's thrashing-floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God,
+and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. 7. And the anger of the
+Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error;
+and there he died by the ark of God. 8. And David was displeased,
+because the Lord had made a breach upon Uzzah: and he called the name
+of the place Perez-uzzah to this day. 9. And David was afraid of the
+Lord that day, and said, How shall the ark of the Lord come to me? 10.
+So David would not remove the ark of the Lord unto him into the city of
+David: but David carried it aside into the house of Obed-edom the
+Gittite. 11. And the ark of the Lord continued in the house of Obed-
+edom the Gittite three months: and the Lord blessed Obed-edom, and all
+his household. 12. And it was told king David, saying, The Lord hath
+blessed the house of Obed-edom and all that pertaineth unto him,
+because of the ark of God. So David went and brought up the ark of God
+from the house of Obed-edom into the city of David with gladness.'-2
+SAMUEL vi. 1-12.
+
+
+I. The first section (verses 1-5) describes the joyful reception and
+procession. The parallel account in 1 Chronicles states that Baalah, or
+Baale, was Kirjath-jearim. Probably the former was the more ancient
+Canaanitish name, and indicates that it had been a Baal sanctuary. If
+so, the presence of the ark there was at once a symbol and an omen,
+showing Jehovah's conquest over the obscene and bloody gods of the
+land, and forecasting His triumph over all the gods of the nations.
+Every Baale shall one day be a resting-place of the ark of God. The
+solemn designation of the ark, as 'called by the Name, the name of the
+Lord of Hosts, that dwelleth between the cherubim,' is significant on
+this, its reappearance after so long eclipse, and, by emphasising its
+awful sanctity, prepares for the incidents which are to follow. The
+manner of the ark's transport was irregular; for the law strictly
+enjoined its being carried by the Levites by means of bearing-poles
+resting on their shoulders; and the copying of the Philistines' cart,
+though a new one was made for the purpose, indicates the desuetude into
+which the decencies of worship had fallen in seventy years. In 1
+Chronicles, the singular words in verse 5, which describe David as
+playing before the Lord on the very unlikely things for such a
+purpose,' all manner of instruments of fir wood,' become 'with all
+their might: even with songs' which seems much more reasonable. A
+slight alteration in three letters and the transposition of two would
+bring our text into conformity with I Chronicles, and the conjectural
+emendation is tempting. Who ever heard of fir-wood musical instruments?
+The specified ones which follow were certainly not made of it, and
+songs could scarcely fail to be mentioned.
+
+At all events, we see the glad procession streaming out of the little
+city buried among its woods; the cart drawn by meek oxen, and loaded
+with the unadorned wooden chest, in the midst; the two sons or
+descendants of its faithful custodian honoured to be the teamsters; the
+king with the harp which had cheered him in many a sad hour of exile;
+and the crowd 'making a joyful noise before the Lord,' which might
+sound discord in our ears, as some lifted up shrill songs, some touched
+stringed instruments, some beat on timbrels, some rattled metal rods
+with movable rings, and some clashed cymbals together. It was a wild
+scene, in which there was a dangerous resemblance to the frantic
+jubilations of idolatrous worship. No doubt there were true hearts in
+that crowd, and none truer than David's. No doubt we have to beware of
+applying our Christian standards to these early times, and must let a
+good deal that is sensuous and turbid pass, as, no doubt, God let it
+pass. But confession of sin in leaving the ark so long forgotten would
+have been better than this tumultuous joy; and if there had been more
+trembling in it, it would not have passed so soon into wild terror.
+Still, on the other hand, that rejoicing crowd does represent, though
+in crude form, the effect which the consciousness of God's presence
+should ever have. His felt nearness should be, as the Psalmist says,
+'the gladness of my joy.' Much of our modern religion is far too
+gloomy, and it is thought to be a sign of devotion and spiritual-
+mindedness to be sad and of a mortified countenance. Unquestionably,
+Christianity brings men into the continual presence of very solemn
+truths about themselves and the world which may well sober them, and
+make what the world calls mirth incongruous.
+
+             'There is no music in the life
+              That rings with idiot laughter solely.'
+
+But the Man of Sorrows said that His purpose for us was that 'His joy
+might remain in us, and that our joy might be full'; and we but
+imperfectly apprehend the gospel if we do not feel that its joys 'much
+more abound' than its sorrows, and that they even burn brightest, like
+the lights on safety-buoys, when drenched by stormy seas.
+
+II. The second section contains the dread vindication of the sanctity
+of the ark, which changed joy into terror, and silenced the songs. At
+some bad place in the rocky and steep track, the oxen stumbled or were
+restive. The spot is called in Samuel 'the threshing-floor of Nachon,'
+but in Chronicles the owner is named 'Chidon.' As the former word means
+'a stroke' and the latter 'destruction,' they are probably not to be
+taken as proper names, but as applied to the place after this event.
+The name given by David, however--Perez-uzzah--proved the more
+permanent 'to this day.' Uzzah, who was driving while his brother went
+in front to pilot the way, naturally stretched out his hand to steady
+his freight, just as if it had been a sack of corn; and, as if he had
+touched an electric wire, fell dead, as the story graphically says, 'by
+the ark of God.' What confusion and panic would agitate the joyous
+singers, and how their songs would die on their lips!
+
+What harm was there in Uzzah's action? It was most natural, and, in one
+point of view, commendable. Any careful waggoner would have done the
+same with any valuable article he had in charge. Yes; that was just the
+point of his error and sin, that he saw no difference between the ark
+and any other valuable article. His intention to help was right enough;
+but there was profound insensibility to the awful sacredness of the
+ark, on which even its Levitical bearers were forbidden to lay hands.
+All his life Uzzah had been accustomed to its presence. It had been one
+of the familiar pieces of furniture in Abinadab's house, and, no doubt,
+familiarity had had its usual effect. Do none of us ministers,
+teachers, and others, to whom the gospel and the worship and ordinances
+of the Church have been familiar from infancy, treat them in the same
+fashion? Many a hand is laid on the ark, sometimes to keep it from
+falling, with more criminal carelessness of its sacredness than Uzzah
+showed. Note, too, how swiftly an irreverent habit of treating holy
+things grows. The first error was in breaking the commanded order for
+removal of the ark by the Levites. Once in the cart, the rest follows.
+The smallest breach in the feeling of awe and reverence will soon lead
+to more complete profanation. There is nothing more delicate than the
+sense of awe. Trifled with ever so little, it speedily disappears.
+There is far too little of it in our modern religion. Perfect love
+casts out fear and deepens awe which hath not torment.
+
+Was not the punishment in excess of the sin? We must remember the
+times, the long neglect of the ark, the decay of religion in Saul's
+reign, the critical character of the moment as the beginning of a new
+era, when it was all-important to print deep the impression of
+sanctity, and the rude material which had to be dealt with; and we must
+not forget that God, in His punishments, does not adopt men's ideas of
+death as such a very dreadful thing. Many since have followed in
+David's wake, and been 'displeased, because the Lord broke forth upon
+Uzzah'; but he and they have been wrong. He ought to have known better,
+and to have understood the lesson of the solemn corpse that lay there
+by the ark; instead of which he gives way to mere terror, and was
+'afraid of the Lord.' David afraid of the Lord! What had become of the
+rapturous love and strong trust which ring clear through his psalms? Is
+this the man who called God his rock and fortress and deliverer, his
+buckler and the horn of his salvation and his high tower, and poured
+out his soul in burning words, which glow yet through all the centuries
+and the darkness of earth? It was ill for David to fall thus below
+himself, but well for us that the eclipse of his faith and love should
+be recorded, to hearten us, when the like emotions fall asleep in our
+souls. His consciousness of impurity was wholesome and sound, but his
+cowering before the ark, as if it were the seat of arbitrary anger,
+which might flame out destruction for no discernible reason, was a
+woful darkening of his loving insight into the heart of God.
+
+III. The last section (verses 10-12) gives us the blessings on the
+house of Obed-edom and the glad removal of the ark to Jerusalem. Obed-
+edom is called a 'Gittite,' or man of Gath; but he does not appear to
+have been a Philistine immigrant, but a native of another Gath, a
+Levitical city, and himself a Levite. There is an Obededom in the lists
+of David's Levites in Chronicles who is probably the same man. He did
+not fear to receive the ark, and, worthily received, the presence which
+had been a source of disaster and death to idolaters, to profanely
+curious pryers into its secret, and to presumptuous irreverence, became
+a fountain of unbroken blessing. This twofold effect of the same
+presence is but a symbol of a solemn law which runs through all life,
+and is especially manifest in the effects of Christ's work upon men.
+Everything has two handles, and it depends on ourselves by which of
+them we lay hold of it, and whether we shall receive a shock that
+kills, or blessings. The same circumstances of poverty, or wealth, or
+sorrow, or temptation, make one man better and another worse. The same
+presence of God will be to one man a joy; to another, a terror. 'What
+maketh heaven, that maketh hell.' The same gospel received is the
+fountain of life, purity, peace; and, rejected or neglected, is the
+source of harm and death. Jesus Christ is 'set for the fall and rising
+again of many.' Either He is the savour of life unto life, the rock on
+which we build, or He is the savour of death unto death, the stone on
+which we stumble and break our limbs.
+
+
+
+
+THE ARK OF THE HOUSE OF OBED-EDOM
+
+'The ark of the Lord continued in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite
+three months; and the Lord blessed Obed-edom, and all his household.'-2
+SAMUEL vi.11.
+
+
+Nearly seventy years had elapsed since the capture of the ark by the
+Philistines on the fatal field of Aphek. They had carried it and set
+it in insolent triumph in the Temple of Dagon, as if to proclaim that
+the Jehovah of Israel was the conquered prisoner of the Philistine
+god. But the morning showed Dagon's stump prone on the threshold. And
+so the terrified priests got rid of their dangerous trophy as swiftly
+as they could. From one Philistine city to another it passed, and
+everywhere its presence was marked by disease and calamity. So at last
+they huddled it into some rude cart, leaving the draught-oxen to drag
+it whither they would. They made straight for the Judaean hills, and
+in the first little village were welcomed by the inhabitants at their
+harvest, as they saw them coming across the plain. But again death
+attended the Presence, and curiosity, which was profanity, was
+punished. So the villagers were as eager to get rid of the ark as they
+had been to welcome it, and they passed it on to the little city of
+_Kirjath-jearim_,'the city of the woods,' as the name means, or, as we
+might say, 'Woodville.' And there it lay, neglected and all but
+forgotten, for nearly seventy years. But as soon as David was
+established in his newly-won capital he set himself to reorganise the
+national worship, which had fallen into neglect and almost into
+disuse. The first step was to bring the ark. And so he passed with a
+joyful company to _Kirjath._ But again swift death overtakes Uzzah
+with his irreverent hand. And David shrinks, in the consciousness of
+his impurity, and bestows the symbol of the awful Presence in the
+house of Obed-edom. As we have already noted, he was probably not a
+Philistine, as the name 'Gittite' at first sight suggests. There is an
+Obed-edom in the lists of David's Levites, who was an inhabitant of
+another Gath, and himself of the tribe of Levi.
+
+He was not afraid to receive the ark. There were no idols, no
+irreverent curiosity, no rash presumption in his house. He feared and
+served the God of the ark, and so the Presence, which had been a source
+of disaster to the unworthy, was a source of unbroken blessing to him
+and to his household.
+
+I have been the more particular in this enumeration of the wanderings
+of the ark and the opposite effects which its presence produced
+according to the manner of its reception, because these effects are
+symbols of a great truth which runs all through human life, and is most
+especially manifested in the message and the mission of Jesus Christ.
+
+Let us, then, just trace out two or three of the spheres in which we
+may see the application of this great principle, which makes life so
+solemn and so awful, which may make it so sad or so glad, so base or so
+noble.
+
+I. First, then, note the twofold operation of all God's outward
+dealings.
+
+Everything that befalls us, every object with which we come in contact,
+all the variety of condition, all the variations of our experience,
+have one distinct and specific purpose. They are all meant to tell upon
+character, to make us better in sundry ways, to bring us closer to God,
+and to fill us more full of Him. And that one effect may be produced by
+the most opposite incidents, just as in some great machine you may have
+two wheels turning in opposite ways, and yet contributing to one
+resulting motion; or, just as the summer and the winter, with all their
+antitheses, have a single result in the abundant harvest. One force
+attracts the planet to the sun, one force tends to drive it out into
+the fields of space; but the two, working together, make it circle in
+its orbit around its centre. And so, by sorrow and by joy, by light and
+by dark, by giving and withholding, by granting and refusing, by all
+the varieties of our circumstances, and by everything that lies around
+us, God works to prepare us for Himself and to polish His instruments,
+sometimes plunging the iron into 'baths of hissing tears,' and
+sometimes heating it 'hot with hopes and fears,' and sometimes
+'battering' it 'with the shocks of doom,' but all for the one purpose
+--that it may be a polished shaft in His quiver.
+
+And whilst, thus, the most opposite things may produce the same effect,
+the same thing will produce opposite effects according to the way in
+which we take it. There is nothing that can be relied upon to do a man
+only good; there is nothing about which we need fear that its mission
+is only to do evil. For all depends on the recipient, who can make
+everything to fulfil the purpose for which God has sent him everything.
+
+Here are two men tried by the same poverty. It beats the one down,
+makes him squalid, querulous, faithless, irreligious, drives him to
+drink, crushes him; and the other man it steadies and quiets and
+hardens, and teaches him to look beyond the things seen and temporal to
+the exceeding riches at God's right hand.
+
+Here are two men tried by wealth; the gold gets into the one man's
+veins and makes him yellow as with jaundice, and kills him, destroying
+all that is noble, generous, impulsive, quenching his early dreams and
+enthusiasms, closing his heart to sweet charity, puffing him up with a
+false sense of Importance, and laying upon him the dreadful
+responsibility of misused and selfishly employed possessions. And the
+other man, tried in the same fashion, out of his wealth makes for
+himself friends that welcome him into everlasting habitations, and lays
+up for himself treasures in heaven. The one man is damned and the other
+man is saved by their use of the same thing.
+
+Here are two men subjected to the same sorrows; the one is absorbed by
+his selfish regard to his own misery, blinded to all the blessings that
+still remain, made negligent of tasks and oblivious of the plainest
+duty. And he goes about saying, 'Oh, if thou hadst been here!' or if,
+if something else had happened, then this would not have happened. And
+the other man, passing through the same circumstances, finds that, when
+his props are taken away, he flings himself on God's breast, and, when
+the world becomes dark and all the paths dim about him, he looks up to
+a heaven that fills fuller of meek and swiftly gathering stars as the
+night falls, and he says, 'It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him
+good.'
+
+Here are two men tried by the same temptation; it leads the one man
+away captive 'with a dart through his liver'; the other man by God's
+grace overcomes it, and is the stronger and the sweeter and the gentler
+and the humbler because of the dreadful fight. And so you might go the
+whole round of diverse circumstances, and about each of them find the
+same double result. Nothing is sure to do a man good; nothing
+necessarily does him hurt. All depends upon the man himself, and the
+use he makes of what God in His mercy sends. Two plants may grow in the
+same soil, be fed by the same dews and benediction from the heavens, be
+shone upon by the same sunshine, and the one of them will elaborate
+from all, sweet juices and fragrance, and the other will elaborate a
+deadly poison. So, my brother, life is what you and I will to make it,
+and the events which befall us are for our rising or our falling
+according as we determine they shall be, and according as we use them.
+
+Think, then, how solemn, how awful, how great a thing it is to stand
+here a free agent, able to determine my character and my condition,
+surrounded by all these circumstances and the subject of all these wise
+and manifold divine dealings, in each of which there lie dormant, to be
+evoked by me, tremendous possibilities of elevation even to the very
+presence of God, or of sinking into the depths of separation from Him.
+The ark of God, that overthrew Dagon and smote Uzzah, was nothing but a
+fountain of blessing in the household of Obed-edom.
+
+II. Secondly, note the twofold operation of God's character and
+presence.
+
+The ark was the symbol of a present God, and His presence is meant to
+be the life and joy of all creatures, and the revelation of Him is
+meant to be only for our good, giving strength, righteousness, and
+peace. But the same double possibility which I have been pointing out
+as inherent in all externals belongs here too, and a man can determine
+to which aspect of the many-sided infinitude of the divine nature he
+shall stand in relation. The glass in stained windows is so coloured as
+that parts of it cut off, and prevent from passing through, different
+rays of the pure white light. And men's moral natures, the inclination
+of their hearts, and the set of their wills and energies, cut off, if I
+may say so, parts of the infinite, white light of the many-sided divine
+character, and put them into relations only with some part and aspect
+of that great whole which we call God. The man that loves the world,
+the man that is living for self, still more the man that is embruted in
+the pig-sty of sensuality and vice, cannot see the God whom the pure
+heart, which loves Him and is purified by its faith, discerns at the
+centre of all things. But the lower man sees either some very far-off
+Awfulness, in which he hopes vaguely that there is a kind of good
+nature that will let him off; or, if he has been shaken out of that
+superficial creed, which is only a creed for men whose consciences have
+not been touched, then he can see only a God whose love darkens into
+retribution, and who is the Judge and the Avenger. And no man can say
+that such a conception is not part of the truth; but, alas! he on whom
+the form of such a God glares has incapacitated himself, by his misuse
+of his powers and of God's world, from seeing the beauty of the love of
+the Father of us all, the righteous Father who in Christ loves every
+man.
+
+And thus the thought of God, the consciousness of His Presence, may be
+like the ark which was its symbol, either dreadful and to be put away,
+or to be welcomed and blessing to be drawn from it. To many of us I am
+sure--though I do not know anything about many of you--that thought,'
+Thou God seest me,' breeds feelings like the uneasy discomfort of a
+prisoner when he knows that somewhere in the wall there is a spy-hole
+at which at any moment a warder's eye may be. And to some of us,
+blessed be His name, that same thought, 'Thou art near me,' seems to
+bathe the heart in a sea of sweet rest, and to bring the assurance of a
+divine Companion that cheers all the solitude. And why is the
+difference? There are two people sitting in one pew; to the one man the
+thought of God is his ghastliest doubt, to the other it is his deepest
+joy. Wherefore? And which is it to me?
+
+Then, again, this same duality of aspect attaches to the character and
+presence of God in another way. Because, according to the variety of
+men's characters, God is obliged to treat them as standing in different
+relations. He must manifest His judgment, His justice, His punitive
+justice. There is a solemn verse in one of the Psalms which I may quote
+in lieu of all words of my own of this matter. 'With the merciful Thou
+wilt show Thyself merciful, with the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure,
+with the froward Thou wilt show Thyself froward.' The present God has
+to modify His dealings according to the characters of men.
+
+And so, dear friends, for the present life, and, as I believe, for the
+next life in a far more emphatic and awful way, the same thing makes
+blessedness and misery, the same thing makes life and death. The
+sunshine will kill and wither the slimy plants that grow in the dark
+recesses of some dripping cave; and if you take a fish out of the
+water, the air clogs its gills and it dies. Bring a man, such as some
+of you are, into a close, constant contact with the consciousness of
+the divine righteousness and presence, and you want nothing else to
+make a hell. The ark of the Lord will flash out its lightnings and
+Uzzah will die. That great Infinite Being, before whom we stand, holds
+in His right hand blessings beyond count or price, even the gift of
+Himself, and in His left His lightnings and His arrows. On which hand
+are you standing?
+
+III. Lastly, note the twofold operation of God's gospel.
+
+His dealings, His character and presence, and, most markedly and
+eminently of all, the gospel that is treasured in Jesus Christ and
+proclaimed amongst us, have this twofold operation. God sent His Son to
+be the Saviour of the world. It was meant that His mission and message
+should only be for life, and that with ever-increasing abundance. But
+God cannot save men by magic, nor by indiscriminate bestowment of
+spiritual blessings. It is not in His power to force His salvation upon
+any one, and whether the Gospel shall turn out to be a man's salvation
+or his ruin depends on the man himself. The preaching of the gospel and
+your contact with it, if you have ever come into contact with it really
+and not by mere outward hearing, leaves no man as it found him. My poor
+words--and God knows how poor I feel them to be--leave none of you as
+they find you; and that is what makes our meeting together so solemn
+and awful, and sometimes weighs one down as with a sense of
+insufficiency for these things.
+
+That twofold operation is seen first in the permanent effects of the
+Gospel upon character. If it has been offered to me, and if I accept
+it, then blessings beyond all enumeration, and which none but they who
+have them fully know, follow in its wake. Received by simple faith in
+Jesus Christ, God's sacrifice for a world's sin, it brings to us the
+clear consciousness of pardon, the calm sense of communion, the joyful
+spirit of adoption, righteousness rooted in our hearts and to be
+manifested day by day in our lives; it brings all elevation and
+strengthening and ennobling for the whole nature, and is the one power
+that makes us really men as God would have us all to be.
+
+Rejected or neglected or passed by apparently without our having done
+anything in regard to it, what are the issues? What does it do? Well,
+it does this for one thing, it turns unconscious worldliness into
+conscious worldliness. If the offer has been clearly before your minds,
+'Christ or the world?' and you have said 'I take the world!' you know
+that you have made the choice, and the act will tell on your character.
+
+Rejection strengthens all the evil motives for rejection, and adds to
+the insensibility of the man who has rejected. The ice on our pavements
+in the winter time, that melts on the surface in the day and freezes
+again at night, becomes dense and slippery beyond all other. And a
+heart, like that which beats in some of our bosoms, that has been
+melted and then has frozen again, is harder than ever it was before.
+Hammering that does not break solidifies and makes tougher the thing
+that is struck. There are no men so hard to get at as men and women,
+like multitudes of you, that have been hammered at by preaching ever
+since they were children, and have not yielded their hearts to God. The
+ark has done you hurt if it has not done you good.
+
+I do not dwell upon the other solemn thought, of the harmful results of
+contact with a gospel which we do not accept, as exemplified in the
+increase of responsibility and the consequent increase of condemnation.
+I only quote Christ's words, 'The servant that knew his Lord's will,
+and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.'
+
+My brother, Christ's gospel is never inert, one thing or other it does
+for every soul that it reaches. Either it softens or it hardens. Either
+it saves or it condemns. 'This Child is set for the rise or for the
+fall of many.' Jesus Christ may be for me and for you the Rock on which
+we build. If He is not, He is the Stone against which we stumble and
+break our limbs. Jesus Christ may be for you and for me the Pillar that
+gives light by night to those on the one side; He either is that, or He
+is the Pillar that sheds darkness and dismay on those on the other.
+Jesus Christ and His Gospel may be to each of us 'the savour of life
+unto life'; He either is that, or He is 'the savour of death unto
+death.' Oh! dear friends, if you have neglected, turned away, delayed
+to receive Him or have forgotten impressions in the midst of the whirl
+of daily life, do not do so any longer. Take Him for yours, your
+Brother, Friend, Sacrifice, Inspirer, Lord, Aim, End, Reward, and very
+Heaven of Heaven. Take Him for your own by simple trusting; and say to
+Him, 'Arise! O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the Ark of Thy strength.'
+So He will come into your hearts and smile His gladness as He whispers:
+'Here will I dwell for ever; this is My rest, for I have desired it.'
+
+
+
+
+THE PROMISED KING AND TEMPLE-BUILDER
+
+'And it came to pass that night, that the word of the Lord came unto
+Nathan, saying, 5. Go and tell My servant David, Thus saith the Lord,
+Shalt thou build Me an house for Me to dwell in! 6. Whereas I have not
+dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of
+Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in
+a tabernacle. 7. In all the places wherein I have walked with all the
+children of Israel spake I a word with any of the tribes of Israel,
+whom I commanded to feed My people Israel, saying, Why build ye not Me
+an house of cedar! 8. Now therefore so shalt thou say unto My servant
+David, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote,
+from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people, over Israel: 9.
+And I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all
+thine enemies out of thy sight, and have made thee a great name, like
+unto the name of the great men that are in the earth. 10. Moreover I
+will appoint a place for My people Israel, and will plant them, that
+they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more; neither shall
+the children of wickedness afflict them any more, as beforetime, 11.
+And as since the time that I commanded judges to be over My people
+Israel, and have caused thee to rest from all thine enemies. Also the
+Lord telleth thee that He will make thee an house. 12. And when thy
+days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up
+thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will
+establish His kingdom. 13. He shall build an house for My name; and I
+will establish the throne of His kingdom for ever. 14. I will be his
+father, and He shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten
+Him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men:
+16. But My mercy shall not depart away from Him, as I took it from
+Saul, whom I put away before thee. 16. And thine home and thy kingdom
+shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be
+established for ever.'-2 SAMUEL vii.4-16.
+
+
+The removal of the ark to Jerusalem was but the first step in a process
+which was intended to end in the erection of a permanent Temple. The
+time for the next step appeared to David to have come when he had no
+longer to fight for his throne. Rest from enemies should lead to larger
+work for God, else repose will be our worst enemy, and peace will
+degenerate into self-indulgent sloth. A devout heart will not be
+content with personal comfort and dwelling in a house of cedar, while
+the ark has but a tent for its abode. There should be a proportion
+between expenditure on self and on religious objects. How many
+professing Christians might go to school to David! Luxury at home and
+niggardliness in God's work make an ugly pair, but, alas! a common one.
+
+Nathan approved, as was natural. But he knew the difference between his
+own thoughts and 'the word of the Lord' that came to him, and, like a
+true man, he went in the morning and contradicted, by God's authority,
+his own precipitate sanction of the king's proposal. Clearly, divine
+communications were unmistakably distinguishable from the recipient's
+own thoughts.
+
+The divine message first negatives the intention to build a house. In 1
+Chronicles a positive prohibition takes the place of the question in
+verse 5, but that is only a difference of form, for the question
+implies a negative answer. From David's last words (1 Chron. xxviii. 3)
+we learn that a reason for the prohibition was 'because thou art a man
+of war, and hast shed blood.' His wars were necessary, and tended to
+establish the kingdom, but their existence showed that the time for
+building the Temple had not come, and there was a certain incongruity
+in a warrior king rearing a house for the God whose kingdom was in its
+essence peace.
+
+The prohibition rests on a deep insight into the nature of Jehovah's
+reign, and draws a broad distinction between His worship and the
+surrounding paganism. But the reason given in the text is very
+remarkable. God did not desire a permanent Temple. If we may so say, He
+preferred the less solid Tabernacle, as corresponding better to the
+simplicity and spirituality of His worship. A gorgeous stone Temple
+might easily become the sepulchre, rather than the shrine, of true
+devotion. The movable tent answered to the temporary character of the
+'dispensation.' The more fixed and elaborate the externals of worship,
+the more danger of the spirit being stifled by them. The Old Testament
+worship was necessarily ceremonial, but here is a caveat against the
+stiffening of ceremonial into stereotyped formalism.
+
+The prohibition was accompanied by gracious and far-reaching promises,
+designed to assure David of God's approbation of his motive, and to
+open up to him the vision of the future and the wonders that should be.
+We need say little about the retrospective part of the message (verses
+8, 9 a). God had been the agent in all David's past, had lifted him
+from the quiet following of his sheep, had given him rule, which was
+but a delegated authority. Israel was 'My people,' and therefore he was
+but an instrument in God's hand, and was not to govern by his own
+fancies or for his own advantage.
+
+Every devout man's life is the realisation of a plan of God's, and we
+sin against ourselves as well as Him if we do not often let thankful
+thoughts retrace all the way by which the Lord our God has led us.
+
+With verse 9 _b_ the prophecy turns to the future. David personally
+is promised the continuance of God's help; then a permanent, peaceful
+possession of the land is promised to the nation, and finally the
+perpetuity of the kingdom in the Davidic line is promised. The prophecy
+as to the nation, like all such prophecies, is contingent on national
+obedience. The future of the kingdom will stand in blessed contrast
+with the wild times of the Judges, if--and only if--Israel behaves as
+'My people' should.
+
+But the main point of the prophecy is the promise to David's 'seed.' In
+form it attaches itself very significantly to David's intention to
+build a house for Jehovah. That would invert the true order, for
+Jehovah was about to build a house, that is, a permanent posterity, for
+David. God must first give before man can requite. All our relations to
+Him begin with His free mercy to us. And our building for Him should
+ever be the result of His building for us, and will, in some humble
+way, resemble the divine beneficence by which it has been quickened
+into action. The very foundation principles of Christian service are
+expressed here, in guise fitted to the then epoch of revelation.
+
+But the relation of the two things, God's building and Solomon's, is
+not exhausted by such considerations. The consolidation of the monarchy
+in David's family was an essential preliminary to the rearing of the
+Temple. That work needed tranquil times, abundant resources, leisure,
+and assured dominion. So the prophet goes on to promise that David
+shall be succeeded by his 'seed,' who shall build the Temple.
+
+Further, three great promises are given in reference to David's seed,--
+a perpetual kingdom, a personal relation of sonship to Jehovah, and
+paternal chastisement, if necessary, but no such departure of Jehovah's
+mercy as had darkened the close of Saul's sad reign. Then, finally, the
+assurance is reiterated of the perpetuity of David's house and throne.
+The remarkable expression in verse 16, 'established before thee' (that
+is, David), if it is the true reading, suggests a hint of the life
+after death, and conceives of the long-dead king as in some manner
+cognisant of the fortunes of his descendants. But the Septuagint reads
+'before Me,' and that reading is confirmed by verses 26 and 29, and by
+Psalm lxxxix.36 _b_.
+
+Now it is clear that these promises were in part directed to, and
+fulfilled in, Solomon. But it is as clear that the great promise of an
+eternal dominion, which is emphatically repeated thrice, goes far
+beyond him. We are obliged to recognise a second meaning in the
+prophecy, in accordance with Old Testament usage, which often means by
+'seed' a line of successive generations of descendants. But no
+succession of mortal men can reach to eternal duration.
+
+Apart from the fact that the kingdom, in the form in which David's
+descendants ruled over it, has long since crumbled away, the large
+words of the promise must be regarded as inflated and exaggerated, if
+by 'for ever' is only meant 'for long generations.' A 'seed,' or line
+of perishable men, can only last for ever if it closes in a Person who
+is not subject to the law of mortality. Unless we can with our hearts
+rejoicingly confess, 'Thou art the King of glory, O Christ! Thy kingdom
+is an everlasting kingdom,' we do not pierce to the full understanding
+of Nathan's prophecy.
+
+All the glorious prerogatives shadowed in it were but partially
+fulfilled in Israel's monarchs. Their failures and their successes,
+their sins and their virtues, equally declared them to be but shadowy
+forerunners of Him in whom all that they at the best imperfectly aimed
+at and possessed is completely and for ever fulfilled. They were
+prophetic persons by their office, and pointed on to Him.
+
+He has built the true Temple, in that His body is the seat of sacrifice
+and of revelation, and the meeting-place of God and man, and inasmuch
+as through Him we are built up into a spiritual house for an habitation
+of God. In Him is fulfilled the great prophecy of 'My Servant the
+Branch,' who 'shall build the Temple of the Lord' and 'be a Priest upon
+His throne.' In Him, too, is fulfilled in highest truth the filial
+relationship. The Israelitish kings were by office sons of God. He is
+_the_ Son in ineffable derivation and eternal unity of life with
+the Father, and their communion is in closest oneness of will and
+mutual interchange of love. In that filial relation lies the assurance
+of Christ's everlasting kingdom, for 'the Father loveth the Son, and
+hath given all things into His hand.'
+
+The prophecy is echoed in many places of Scripture, and is ever taken
+to refer to a single person. The angel of the annunciation moulded his
+salutation to the meek Virgin on it, when he declared that her Son
+'shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give
+unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign over the
+house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.'
+
+
+
+
+DAVID'S GRATITUDE
+
+'Then went king David in, and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am
+I, O Lord God? and what is my house, that Thou hast brought me
+hitherto? 19. And this was yet a small thing in Thy sight, O Lord God;
+but Thou hast spoken also of Thy servant's house for a great while to
+come. And is this the manner of man, O Lord God? 20. And what can David
+say more unto Thee? for Thou, Lord God, knowest Thy servant. 21. For
+Thy word's sake, and according to Thine own heart, hast Thou done all
+these great things, to make Thy servant know them. 22. Wherefore Thou
+art great, O Lord God: for there is none like Thee, neither is there
+any God besides Thee, according to all that we have heard with our
+ears. 23. And what one nation in the earth is like Thy people, even
+like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to Himself, and to
+make Him a name, and to do for you great things and terrible, for Thy
+land, before Thy people, which Thou redeemedst to Thee from Egypt, from
+the nations and their gods? 24. For Thou hast confirmed to Thyself Thy
+people Israel to be a people unto Thee for ever: and Thou, Lord, art
+become their God. 25. And now, O Lord God, the word that Thou hast
+spoken concerning Thy servant, and concerning his house, establish it
+for ever, and do as Thou hast said. 26. And let Thy name be magnified
+for ever, saying, The Lord of hosts is the God over Israel; and let the
+house of Thy servant David be established before Thee. 27. For Thou, O
+Lord of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to Thy servant, saying, I
+will build thee an house: therefore hath Thy servant found in his heart
+to pray this prayer unto Thee. 28. And now, O Lord God, Thou art that
+God, and Thy words be true, and Thou hast promised this goodness unto
+Thy servant: 29. Therefore now let it please Thee to bless the house of
+Thy servant, that it may continue for ever before Thee: for Thou, O
+Lord God, hast spoken it: and with Thy blessing let the house of Thy
+servant be blessed for ever.'--2 SAMUEL vii. 18-29.
+
+
+God's promise by Nathan of the perpetuity of the kingdom in David's
+house made an era in the progress of revelation. A new element was
+thereby added to devout hope, and a new object presented to faith. The
+prophecy of the Messiah entered upon a new stage, bearing a relation,
+as its successive stages always did, to the history which supplies a
+framework for it. Now, for the first time, He can be set forth as the
+king of Israel; now the width of the promise, which at first embraced
+the seed of the woman, and then was limited to the seed of Abraham, and
+thereafter to the tribe of Judah, is still further limited to the house
+of David. The beam is narrowed as it is focussed into greater
+brilliance, and the personal Messiah begins to be faintly discerned in
+words which are to have a partial, preparatory fulfilment, in itself
+prophetic, in the collective Davidic monarchs whose office is itself a
+prophecy. This passage is the wonderful burst of praise which sprang
+from David's heart in answer to Nathan's words. In many of the Psalms
+later than this prophecy we find clear traces of that expectation of
+the personal Messiah, which gradually shaped itself, under divine
+inspiration, in David, as contained in Nathan's message But this
+thanksgiving prayer, which was the immediate reflection of the
+astounding new message, has not yet penetrated its depth nor discovered
+its rich contents, but sees in it only the promise of the continuance
+of kingship in his descendants. We do not learn the fulness of God's
+gracious promises on first hearing them. Life and experience and the
+teaching of His Spirit are needed to enable us to count our treasure,
+and we are richer than we know.
+
+This prayer is a prose psalm outside the Psalter. It consists of two
+parts,--a burst of astonished thanksgiving and a stream of earnest
+petition, grasping the divine promise and turning it into a prayer.
+
+I. Note the burst of thanksgiving (vs. 18-24). The ark dwelt 'in
+curtains,' and into the temporary sanctuary went the king with his full
+heart. The somewhat peculiar attitude of sitting, while he poured it
+out to God, has offended some punctilious commentators, who will have
+it that we should translate 'remained,' and not 'sat'; but there is no
+need for the change. The decencies of public worship may require a
+posture which expresses devotion; but individual communion is free from
+such externals, and absorbed contemplation naturally disposes of the
+body so as least to hinder the spirit. The tone of almost bewildered
+surprise at the greatness of the gift is strong all through the prayer.
+The man's breath is almost taken away, and his words are sometimes
+broken, and throughout palpitating with emotion. Yet there is a plain
+progress of feeling and thought in them, and they may serve as a
+pattern of thanksgiving. Note the abrupt beginning, as if pent-up
+feeling forced its way, regardless of forms of devotion. The first
+emotion excited by God's great goodness is the sense of unworthiness.
+'I do not deserve it,' is the instinctive answer of the heart to any
+lavish human kindness, and how much more to God's! 'I am not worthy of
+the least of all the mercies,' springs to the devout lips most swiftly,
+when gazing on His miracles of bestowing love. He must know little of
+himself, and less of God, who is not most surely melted down to
+contrition, which has no bitterness or pain in it, by the coals of
+loving fire heaped by God on his head.
+
+The consciousness of unworthiness passes, in verse 19, to adoring
+contemplation of God's astounding mercy, and especially of the new
+element in Nathan's prophecy,--the perpetuity of the Davidic
+sovereignty in the dim, far-off future. Thankfulness delights to praise
+the Giver for the greatness of His gift. Faith strengthens its hold of
+its blessings by telling them over, as a miser does his treasure. To
+recount them to God is the way to possess them more fully.
+
+The difficult close of the verse cannot be discussed here. 'The law for
+man' is nearer the literal meaning of the words than 'the manner of
+men' (Rev. Ver.); and, unfortunately, man's manner is not the same as
+man's law. But the usual explanations are unsatisfactory. We would
+hazard the suggestion that 'this' means that which God has spoken 'of
+thy servant's house,' and that to call it 'the law for man' is
+equivalent to an expression of absolute confidence in the authority,
+universality, and certain fulfilment of the promise. The speech of God
+is ever the law for man, and this new utterance stands on a level with
+the older law, and shall rule all mankind. The king's faith not only
+gazes on the great words of promise, but sees them triumphant on earth.
+
+Then in verse 20 comes another bend of the stream of praise. The more
+full the heart, the more is it conscious of the weakness of all words.
+The deepest praise, like the truest love, speaks best in silence. It is
+blessed when, in earthly relations, we can trust our dear ones'
+knowledge of us to interpret our poor words. It is more blessed when,
+in our speech to God, we can feel that our love and faith are deeper
+than our word, and that He does not judge them by it, but it by them.
+
+            'Silence is His least injurious praise.'
+
+Here, too, we may note the two instances, in this verse, of what runs
+through the whole prayer,--David's avoidance of using 'I.' Except in
+the lowly 'What am I?' at the beginning, it never occurs; but he calls
+himself 'David' twice and 'Thy servant' ten times,--a striking, because
+unconscious, proof of his lowly sense of unworthiness.
+
+But he can say more; and what he does further say goes yet deeper than
+his former words. The personal aspect of the promise retreats into the
+background, and the ground of all God's mercy in His 'own heart' fills
+the thoughts. Some previous promise, perhaps that through Samuel, is
+referred to; but the great truth that God is His own motive, and that
+His love is not drawn forth by our deserts, but wells up by its own
+energy, like a perennial fountain, is the main thought of the verse.
+God is self-moved to bless, and He blesses that we may know Him through
+His gifts. The one thought is the central truth, level to our
+apprehension, concerning His nature; the other is the key to the
+meaning of all His workings. All comes to pass because He loves with a
+self-originated love, and in order that we may know the motive and
+principle of His acts. We can get no farther into the secret of God
+than that. We need nothing more for peaceful acceptance of His
+providences for ourselves and our brethren. All is from love; all is
+for the manifestation of love. He who has learned these truths sits at
+the centre and lives in light.
+
+Verse 22 strikes a new note. The effect of God's dealing with David is
+to magnify His name, to teach His incomparable greatness, and to
+confirm by experience ancient words which celebrate it. The thankful
+heart rejoices in hearsay being changed into personal knowledge. 'As we
+have heard, so have we seen.' Old truths flash up into new meaning, and
+only he who tastes and sees that God is good to him to-day really
+enters into the sweetness of His recorded past goodness.
+
+Note the widening of David's horizon in verses 23 and 24 to embrace all
+Israel. His blessings are theirs. He feels his own relation to them as
+the culmination of the long series of past deliverances, and at the
+same time loses self in joy over Israel's confirmation as God's people
+by his kingship. True thankfulness regards personal blessings in their
+bearing on others, and shrinks from selfish use of them. Note, too, the
+parallel, if we may call it so, between Israel and Israel's God, in
+that 'there is none like Thee,' and by reason of its choice by this
+incomparable Jehovah, no nation on earth is like 'Thy people, even like
+Israel.'
+
+Thus steadily does this model of thanksgiving climb up from a sense of
+unworthiness, through adoration and gazing on its treasures, to God's
+unmotived love as His impulse, and men's knowledge of that love as His
+aim, and pauses at last, rapt and hushed, before the solitary loftiness
+of the incomparable God, and the mystery of the love, which has
+intertwined the personal blessings which it celebrates, with its great
+designs for the welfare of the people, whose unique position
+corresponds to the unapproachable elevation of its God.
+
+II. Verses 25 to 29 are prayer built on promise and winged by
+thankfulness. The whole of these verses are but the expansion of 'do as
+Thou hast said.' But they are not vain repetitions. Rather they are the
+outpourings of wondering thankfulness and faith, that cannot turn away
+from dwelling on the miracle of mercy revealed to it unworthy. God
+delights in the sweet monotony and persistence of such reiterated
+prayers, each of which represents a fresh throb of desire and a renewed
+bliss in thinking of His goodness. Observe the frequency and variety of
+the divine names in these verses,--in each, one, at least: Jehovah God
+(v. 25); Jehovah of hosts (v. 26); Jehovah of hosts, God of Israel (v.
+27); Lord Jehovah (vs. 28, 29). Strong love delights to speak the
+beloved name. Each fresh utterance of it is a fresh appeal to His
+revealed nature, and betokens another wave of blessedness passing over
+David's spirit as he thinks of God. Observe, also, the other repetition
+of 'Thy servant,' which occurs in every verse, and twice in two of
+them. The king is never tired of realising his absolute subjection, and
+feels that it is dignity, and a blessed bond with God, that he should
+be His servant. The true purpose of honour and office bestowed by God
+is the service of God, and the name of 'servant' is a plea with Him
+which He cannot but regard. Observe, too, how echoes of the promise
+ring all through these verses, especially the phrases 'establish the
+house' and 'for ever.' They show how profoundly David had been moved,
+and how he is labouring, as it were, to make himself familiar with the
+astonishing vista that has begun to open before his believing eyes.
+Well is it for us if we, in like manner, seek to fix our thoughts on
+the yet grander 'for ever' disclosed to us, and if it colours all our
+look ahead, and makes the refrain of all our hopes and prayers.
+
+But the main lesson of the prayer is that God's promise should ever be
+the basis and measure of prayer. The mould into which our petitions
+should run is, 'Do as Thou hast said.' Because God's promise had come
+to David, 'therefore hath Thy servant found in his heart to pray this
+prayer unto Thee.' There is no presumption in taking God at His word.
+True prayer catches up the promises that have fallen from heaven, and
+sends them back again, as feathers to the arrows of its petitions. Nor
+does the promise make the prayer needless. We know that 'if we ask
+anything according to His will, He heareth us'; and we know that we
+shall not receive the promised blessings, which are according to His
+will, unless we do ask. Let us seek to stretch our desires to the width
+of God's promises, and to confine our wishes within their bounds.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID AND JONATHAN'S SON
+
+'And David said, is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul,
+that I may shew him kindness for Jonathan's sake? 2. And there was of
+the house of Saul a servant whose name was Ziba. And when they had
+called him unto David, the king said unto him, Art thou Ziba? And he
+said, Thy servant is he. 3. And the king said, Is there not yet any of
+the house of Saul, that I may shew the kindness of God unto him? And
+Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son, which is lame on his
+feet. 4. And the king said unto him, Where is he? And Ziba said unto
+the king, Behold, he is in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, in
+Lo-debar. 5. Then king David sent, and fetched him out of the house of
+Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lo-debar., 6. Now when Mephibosheth,
+the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was come unto David, he fell on
+his face, and did reverence. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he
+answered, Behold thy servant! 7. And David said unto him. Fear not; for
+I will surely shew then kindness for Jonathan thy father's sake, and
+will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father: and thou shalt eat
+bread at my table continually. 8. And he bowed himself, and said, What
+is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?
+9. Then the king called to Ziba, Saul's servant, and said unto him, I
+hare given unto thy master's son all that pertained to Saul and to all
+his house. 10. Thou therefore, and thy sons, and thy servants, shall
+till the land for him, and thou shalt bring in the fruits, that thy
+master's son may have food to eat: but Mephibosheth thy master's son
+shall eat bread alway at my table. Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty
+servants. 11. Then said Ziba unto the king, According to all that my
+lord the king hath commanded his servant, so shall thy servant do. As
+for Mephibosheth, said the king, he shall eat at my table, as one of
+the king's sons. 12. And Mephibosheth had a young son, whose name was
+Micha: and all that dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants unto
+Mephibosheth. 13. So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem: for he did eat
+continually at the king's table; and was lame on both his feet.'--2
+SAMUEL ix.1-13.
+
+
+This charming idyl of faithful love to a dead friend and generous
+kindness comes in amid stories of battle like a green oasis in a
+wilderness of wild rocks and sand. The natural sweetness and chivalry
+of David's disposition, which fascinated all who had to do with him,
+comes beautifully out in it, and it may well stand as an object lesson
+of the great Christian duty of practical mercifulness.
+
+I. So regarded, the narrative brings out first the motives of true
+kindliness. Saul and three of his four sons had fallen on the fatal
+field of Gilboa; the fourth, the weak Ishbosheth, had been murdered
+after his abortive attempt at setting up a rival kingdom had come to
+nothing. There were only left Saul's daughters and some sons by a
+concubine. So low had the proud house sunk, while David was
+consolidating his kingdom, and gaining victory wherever he went.
+
+But neither his own prosperity, nor the absence of any trace of Saul's
+legitimate male descendants, made him forget his ancient oath to
+Jonathan. Years had not weakened his love, his sufferings at Saul's
+hands had not embittered it. His elevation had not lifted him too high
+to see the old days of lowliness, and the dear memory of the self-
+forgetting friend whose love had once been an honour to the shepherd
+lad. Jonathan's name had been written on his heart when it was
+impressionable, and the lettering was as if 'graven on the rock for
+ever.' A heart so faithful to its old love needed no prompting either
+from men or circumstances. Hence the inquiry after 'any that is left of
+the house of Saul' was occasioned by nothing external, but came welling
+up from the depth of the king's own soul.
+
+That is the highest type of kindliness which is spontaneous and self-
+motived. It is well to be easily moved to beneficence either by the
+sight of need or by the appeals of others, but it is best to kindle our
+own fire, and be our own impulse to gracious thoughts and acts. We may
+humbly say that human mercy then shows likest God's, when, in such
+imitation as is possible, it springs in us, as His does in Him, from
+the depths of our own being. He loves and is kind because He is God. He
+is His own motive and law. So, in our measure, should we aim at
+becoming.
+
+But David's remarkable language in his questions to Ziba goes still
+deeper in unfolding his motives. For he speaks of showing 'the kindness
+of God' to any remaining of Saul's house. Now that expression is no
+mere synonym for kindness exceeding great, but it unfolds what was at
+once David's deepest motive and his bright ideal. No doubt, it may
+include a reminiscence of the sacred obligation of the oath to
+Jonathan, but it hallows David's purposed 'mercy' as the echo of God's
+to him, and so anticipates the Christian teaching, 'Be ye merciful,
+even as your Father is merciful.' We must receive mercy from Him before
+our hearts are softened, so as to give it to others, just as the wire
+must be charged from the electric source before it can communicate the
+tingle and the light.
+
+The best basis for the beneficent service of man is experience of the
+mercy of God. Philanthropy has no roots unless it is planted in
+religion. That is a lesson which this age needs. And the other side of
+the thought is as true and needful; namely, that our 'religion' is not
+'pure and undefiled' unless it manifests itself in the service of man.
+How serene and lofty, then, the ideal! How impossible ever to be too
+forgiving or too beneficent! 'As your heavenly Father is,'--that is our
+pattern. We have not shown our brother all the kindness which we owe
+him unless we have shown him 'the kindness of God.'
+
+II. The progress of the story brings out next the characteristics of
+David's kindliness, and these may be patterns for us. Ziba does not
+seem to be very communicative, and appears a rather unwilling witness,
+who needs to have the truth extracted bit by bit. He evidently had
+nothing to do with Mephibosheth, and was quite content that he should
+be left obscurely stowed away across Jordan in the house of the rich
+Machir (2 Sam. xvii. 27-29). Lo-debar was near Mahanaim, on the eastern
+side of the river, where Ishbosheth's short-lived kingdom had been
+planted, and probably the population there still clung to Saul's
+solitary representative. There he lived so privately that none of
+David's people knew whether he was alive or dead. Perhaps the savage
+practice of Eastern monarchs, who are wont to get rid of rivals by
+killing them, led the cripple son of Jonathan to 'lie low,' and Ziba's
+reticence may have been loyalty to him. It is noteworthy that Ziba is
+not said to have been sent to bring him, though that would have been
+natural.
+
+At any rate, Mephibosheth came, apparently dreading whether his summons
+to court was not his death-warrant. But he is quickly reassured. David
+again recalls the dear memory of Jonathan, which was, no doubt, stirred
+to deeper tenderness by the sight of his helpless son; but he swiftly
+passes to practical arrangements, full of common-sense and grasp of the
+case. The restoration of Saul's landed estate implies that it was in
+David's power. It had probably been 'forfeited to the crown,' as we in
+England say, or perhaps had been 'squatted on' by people who had no
+right to it. David, at any rate, will see that it reverts to its owner.
+
+But what is a lame man to do with it? and will it be wise to let a
+representative of the former dynasty loose in the territory of
+Benjamin, where Saul's memory was still cherished? Apparently, David's
+disposition of affairs was prompted partly by consideration for
+Mephibosheth, partly by affection for Jonathan, and partly by policy.
+So Ziba, who had not been present, is sent for, and installed as
+overseer of the estate, to work it for his new master's benefit, while
+the owner is to remain at Jerusalem in David's establishment. It was
+prudent to keep Mephibosheth at hand. The best way to weaken a
+pretender's claims was to make a pensioner of him, and the best way to
+hinder his doing mischief was to keep him in sight.
+
+
+But we need not suppose that this was David's only motive. He gratified
+his heart by retaining the poor young man beside himself, and, no
+doubt, sought to win his confidence and love. The recipient of his
+kindness receives it in characteristic Eastern fashion, with
+exaggerated words of self-depreciation, which sound almost too humble
+to be quite sincere. A little gratitude is better than whining
+professions of un worthiness.
+
+And how did Ziba like his task? The singular remark that he had
+'fifteen sons and twenty servants' perhaps suggests that he was a
+person of some importance; and the subsequent one that 'all in his
+house were servants to Mephibosheth' may imply that neither they nor he
+quite liked their being handed over thus cavalierly.
+
+But, however that may be, we may note that common-sense and practical
+sagacity should guide our mercifulness. Kindly impulses are good, but
+they need cool heads to direct them, or they do more harm than good. It
+is useless to set lame men to work an estate, even if they get a gift
+of it. And it is wise not to put untried ones in positions where they
+may plot against their benefactor. Mercifulness does not mean rash
+trust in its objects. They will often have to be watched very closely
+to keep them from going wrong. How many most charitable impulses have
+been so unwisely worked out that they have injured their objects and
+disappointed their subjects! We may note, too, in David's kindliness,
+that it was prompt to make sacrifice, if, as is probable, he had become
+owner of the estate. The pattern of all mercy, who is God, has not
+loved us with a love which cost Him nothing. Sacrifice is the life-
+blood of service.
+
+III. The subsequent history of Mephibosheth and Ziba is somewhat
+enigmatical. Usually the former is supposed to have been slandered by
+the latter, and to have been truly attached to David. But it is at
+least questionable whether Ziba was such a villain, and Mephibosheth
+such an injured innocent, as is supposed. This, at least, is plain,
+that Ziba demonstrated attachment to David at the time when self-love
+would have kept him silent. It took some courage to come with gifts to
+a discrowned king (2 Sam. xvi. 1-4); and his allegation about his
+master has at least this support, that the latter did not come with the
+rest of David's court to share his fortunes, and that the dream that he
+might fish to advantage in troubled waters is extremely likely to have
+occurred to him. Nor does it appear clear that, if Ziba's motive was to
+get hold of the estate, his adherence to David would have seemed, at
+that moment, the best way of effecting it.
+
+If we look at the sequel (xix. 24-30) Mephibosheth's excuse for not
+joining David seems almost as lame as himself. He says that Ziba
+'deceived him,' and did not bring him the ass for riding on, and
+therefore he could not come. Was there only one ass available in
+Jerusalem? and, when all David's _entourage_ were streaming out to
+Olivet after him, could not he easily have got there too if he had
+wished? His demonstration of mourning looks very like a blind, and his
+language to David has a disagreeable ring of untruthfulness, in its
+extreme professions of humility and loyalty. 'Me thinks the
+_cripple_ doth protest too much. David evidently did not feel sure
+about him, and stopped his voluble utterances somewhat brusquely: 'Why
+speakest thou any more of thy matters?' That is as much as to say,
+'Hold your tongue.' And the final disposition of the property, while it
+gives Mephibosheth the benefit of the doubt, yet looks as if there was
+a considerable doubt in the king's mind.
+
+We may take up the same somewhat doubting position. If he requited
+David's kindness thus unworthily, is it not the too common experience
+that one way of making enemies is to load with benefits? But no cynical
+wisdom of that sort should interfere with our showing mercy; and if we
+are to take 'the kindness of God' for our pattern, we must let our
+sunshine and rain fall, as His do, on 'the unthankful and the evil.'
+
+
+
+
+
+'MORE THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH HIM'
+
+'And the children of Ammon came out, and put the battle in array at the
+entering in of the gate: and the Syrians of Zoba, and of Rehob, and
+Ish-tob, and Maacah, were by themselves in the field. 9. When Joab saw
+that the front of the battle was against him before and behind, he
+chose of all the choice men of Israel, and put them in array against
+the Syrians: 10. And the rest of the people he delivered into the hand
+of Abishai his brother, that he might put them in array against the
+children of Ammon. 11. And he said, if the Syrians be too strong for
+me, then thou shalt help me: but if the children of Ammon be too strong
+for thee, then I will come and help thee. 12. Be of good courage, and
+let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God: and
+the Lord do that which seemeth Him good. 13. And Joab drew nigh, and
+the people that were with him, unto the battle against the Syrians: and
+they fled before him. 14. And when the children of Ammon saw that the
+Syrians were fled, then fled they also before Abishai, and entered into
+the city. So Joab returned from the children of Ammon, and came to
+Jerusalem. 15. And when the Syrians saw that they were smitten before
+Israel, they gathered themselves together. 16. And Hadarezer sent, and
+brought out the Syrians that were beyond the river: and they came to
+Helam: and Shobach the captain of the host of Hadarezer went before
+them. 17. And when it was told David, he gathered all Israel together,
+and passed over Jordan, and came to Helam. And the Syrians set
+themselves in array against David, and fought with him. 18. And the
+Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men of seven hundred
+chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and smote Shobach
+the captain of their host, who died there. 19. And when all the kings
+that were servants to Hadarezer saw that they were smitten before
+Israel, they made peace with Israel, and served them. So the Syrians
+feared to help the children of Ammon any more.'--2 SAMUEL x. 8-19.
+
+
+David's growing power would naturally be regarded by neighbouring
+states as a menace. Success provokes envy, and in this selfish world
+strength usually encroaches on weakness, and weakness dreads strength.
+So it was quite according to the way of the world that David's friendly
+embassy to the king of Ammon should be suspected of covering hostile
+intentions. Those who have no kindness in their own hearts are slow to
+believe in kindness in others. 'What does he want to get by it?' is the
+question put by cynical 'shrewd men,' when they see a good man doing a
+gracious, self-forgetting act.
+
+But the Ammonite courtiers need not have rejected David's overtures so
+insolently as by shaving half his ambassadors' beards and docking their
+robes. The insult meant war to the knife. Probably it was deliberately
+intended as a declaration of hostilities, as it was immediately
+followed by the preparation of a formidable coalition against Israel.
+Possibly, indeed, the coalition preceded and occasioned the rejection
+of David's conciliatory message. But, in any case, the Ammonite king
+summoned his Syrian allies from a number of small states of which we
+barely know the names, the chief of which was Zobah.
+
+That state had apparently started into prominence under its king Hadar-
+ezer, as he is called in this chapter, which is obviously a clerical
+error for Hadad-ezer, as in 2 Samuel viii. 3, etc. The name Hadad
+occurs again in Ben-hadad, and belonged to a Syrian god; so that the
+king of Zobah's name, meaning 'Hadad [is] help,' may be taken as the
+banner flaunted in the face of the army of Israel, and as making the
+war a struggle of the false against the true God.
+
+The war with the same enemies narrated in 2 Samuel viii. 3-13 is now
+generally supposed to be the same as that recorded in the latter part
+of this passage. It certainly seems more probable that there has been
+some dislocation of the text, than that so crushing a defeat as that
+retold in chapter viii. should have been followed by a revival of the
+same coalition within a short time. If, however, there was such a
+revival, it may remind us of the conditions of all warfare for God and
+goodness, either in our own lives or in the world. Sins and vicious
+institutions, once defeated, have a terrible power of swift recovery.
+The thorns cut down sprout fast again. Let no man say, 'I have
+extirpated that sin from my nature,' for, if he does, it will surprise
+him when he is lulled in false security. Hadad-ezer is not so easily
+got rid of. He does not know when he is beaten.
+
+David took the bull by the horns, and did not wait to be attacked. It
+was good policy to carry the war into the enemies' country, as it
+generally is. God's soldiers have to be aggressive, and there is no
+better way of losing what they have won than by being contented with
+it. We must advance if we are not to retrograde. From I Chronicles we
+learn that the Ammonites had begun the campaign by besieging Medeba, a
+trans-Jordanic Israelitish city. The answer of Joab was to lay siege to
+Rabbath, the capital of Ammon, an almost impregnable fastness, perched
+on a cliff, and surrounded on all sides but one by steep ravines.
+
+Apparently his bold strategy led to the abandonment of the attack on
+Medeba, and to the hurried march of its besiegers to relieve Rabbath.
+Probably the Syrian allies had been before Medeba, and suddenly
+appeared in Joab's rear. Their advance led the besieged to attempt a
+sortie, so that Joab was between two fires. It was a difficult
+position. Whichever foe he attacked, his retreat was cut off, and
+another enemy was ready to hurl itself on his rear. There was no time
+for manoeuvring, and nothing for it but to face both assailants. So,
+without hesitation he made his dispositions. The new-comers, the
+Syrians, were evidently the more formidable, and Joab picked the best
+men to deal with them under his own command, while his brother Abishai
+was to give account of the Ammonites, who were pouring out of Rabbath.
+There is sometimes advantage in being 'Mr. Facing-both-ways.' We are
+often surrounded by allied evils or sins; for all our vices are
+kindred, and help each other, and all public or social iniquities are
+in league against the army of righteousness. We have to be many-sided
+in our attacks on what is wrong, as well as in our development of what
+is right.
+
+Danger woke the best in Joab, Fierce and truculent as he often was, he
+had a hero's mettle in him, and in that dark hour he flamed like a
+pillar of light. His ringing words to his brother as they parted, not
+knowing if they would ever meet again, are like a clarion call. They
+extract encouragement out of the separation of forces, which might have
+depressed, and cheerily pledge the two divisions to mutual help. What
+was to happen, Joab, if the Syrians were too strong for thee, and the
+Ammonites for Abishai? That very possible contingency is not
+contemplated in his words. Rash confidence is unwise, but God's
+soldiers have a right to go into battle not anticipating utter defeat.
+Such expectation is apt to fulfil itself, and, on the other hand, to
+believe that we shall conquer goes a long way towards making us
+conquerors.
+
+Does not Joab's pledge of mutual help carry in it a lesson applicable
+to all the divisions of God's great army? In the presence of the
+coalition of evil, is not the separation of the friends of good,
+madness? When bad men unite, should not good men hold together? The
+defeat or victory of one is the defeat or victory of all. We serve
+under the same banner, and, instead of shutting up our sympathies
+within the narrow limits of our own regiment, and even having a certain
+satisfaction at the difficulties into which another has got, we should
+feel that, if 'one member suffer, all the members suffer with it,' and
+should be ready to help all our fellow-soldiers who need help. Self-
+preservation as well as comradeship, and, above all, loyalty to Him for
+whom we fight, should lead to that; for, if Abishai is crushed, Joab
+will be in sorer peril.
+
+His other word is equally pregnant. 'Be of good courage' is an
+exhortation always in season for Christ's soldiers, for, whatever are
+their foes, 'He that is with them is more than they that are with'
+their enemies. One man with Christ to back him may always be sure of
+victory. Calculations of probabilities and of resources may often yield
+occasion for despondency if we calculate only what appears to sense,
+but if we bring Christ into the calculation we shall be of good cheer.
+'The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?'
+
+We may note, too, the stimulating motive drawn from the thought of what
+Israel's army fought for,--'Our people, and the cities of our God.'
+Patriotism and devotion coalesced, and, like two contiguous flames in
+some duplex lamp, each made the other burn the brighter. So we may feel
+that we have the highest good of 'our people,' our brethren, in view,
+and that, in helping them and warring against evil, we are fighting for
+what belongs to God.
+
+High courage, the effort to do their very best, and not to spare blood
+or life in the fight, blended nobly in Joab and his brother with
+recognition of God's supreme determination of the event. Nothing can
+stand before men who live and fight in such a temper as that. The early
+conquests of Mohammedanism were secured by just such a blending of
+courage and submission. These were vulgar and poor, compared with the
+victories that would attend a Church which was animated by these
+principles in the higher form in which Christianity presents them.
+
+The account of the victory is remarkable. It is surely not by accident
+that no word is said about fighting. Note that it was as Joab 'drew
+nigh unto the battle' that the Syrians fled as if in sudden panic, and
+infected the Ammonites with their terror. We hear nothing of men slain,
+or of any actual crossing of swords. Contrast verse 18, which tells of
+a real fight. It is, perhaps, not pressing omissions too far to suggest
+that the narrative favours the supposition of a bloodless victory. The
+dangers that often appal Christ's servants have a way of often
+disappearing when they are marched boldly up to. Like ghosts, they
+vanish when accosted.
+
+So ended one campaign. But Hadad-ezer, the soul of the coalition, was
+not crushed, and the latter part of the passage tells of his renewed
+attempt. Partial defeat stirs up our foes to stronger struggles. The
+league was extended to include Syrian states farther east, and a still
+more formidable expedition was fitted out to attack this dangerous
+upstart king of Israel, who was casting his shadow so far. Such is
+always the case. We are never in more danger of fresh assailants than
+when we have won some victory over evil in ourselves or around us.
+David repeated his former tactics. Not waiting to be attacked, and to
+have the soil of Israel profaned and wasted by enemies, he crossed
+Jordan to meet the would-be invader, and, when he met him, struck hard,
+and crushed him and his host, slew the commander, and dispersed the
+thunder-cloud. The coalition broke down. Hadad-ezer's tributaries were
+glad to shake off his yoke and transfer their allegiance to David.
+
+'Nothing succeeds like success.' The alliances between worldly men
+banded against God's soldiers are held together by self-interest, and,
+when that can be best secured by deserting a man when he is down, away
+go all the allies, tumbling over each other in their haste to be the
+first to desert and bring feigned submission to the conqueror. The
+jackals leave the sick lion. The Syrians had had enough of helping
+Ammon, and Rabbath might fall without their lifting a finger. So hollow
+are the world's coalitions against God and His anointed!
+
+
+
+
+THOU ART THE MAN
+
+'And David said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done
+this thing shall surely die; because he did this thing, and because he
+had no pity. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.'--2 SAMUEL
+xii. 5-7.
+
+
+Nathan's apologue, so tenderly beautiful, takes the poet-king on the
+most susceptible side of his character. All his history shows him as a
+man of wonderfully sweet, chivalrous, generous, swiftly compassionate
+nature. And so, when he hears the story of a mean, heartless
+selfishness, all that is best in him kindles into a generous
+indignation, and flames out into instinctive condemnation. 'The man
+that did this thing shall die because he had no pity.'
+
+And then, on to that hot fervour of righteous wrath, comes this dash of
+cold water, 'And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.' Like some
+keen spear-point, sharpened almost to invisibility, this short sentence
+(two words in the original) driven by a strong hand, goes right through
+the armour to the very heart. What a collapse there would be in the
+king when the pointed forefinger of the prophet emphasised and drove
+home the application!
+
+I. This dramatic scene before us may be taken as suggesting first that
+we are all strangely blind to our own faults.
+
+If a man's own sin is held up before him a little disguised, he says,
+'How ugly it is!' And if only for a moment he can be persuaded that it
+is not his own conduct but some other sinner's that he is judging, the
+instinctive condemnation comes. We have two sets of names for vices:
+one set which rather mitigates and excuses them, and another set which
+puts them in their real hideousness. We keep the palliative set for
+home consumption, and liberally distribute the plain-spoken, ugly set
+amongst the vices and faults of our friends. The same thing which I
+call in myself prudence I call in you meanness. The same thing which
+you call in yourselves generous living, you call in your friend filthy
+sensualism. That which, to the doer of it, is only righteous
+indignation, to the onlooker is passionate anger. That which, in the
+practiser of it, is no more than a due regard for the interests of his
+own family and himself in the future, is, to the envious lookers-on,
+shabbiness and meanness in money matters. That which, to the liar, is
+only prudent diplomatic reticence, to the listener is falsehood. That
+which, in the man that judges his own conduct, is but 'a choleric
+word,' is, in his friend, when he judges him, 'flat blasphemy.'
+
+And so we go all round the circle, and condemn our own vices, when we
+see them in other people. So the king who had never thought, when he
+stole away Uriah's one ewe lamb, and did him to death by traitorous
+commands, setting him in the front of the battle, that he was wanting
+in compassion, blazes up at once, and righteously sentences the other
+'man' to death, 'because he had no pity.' He had never thought of
+himself or of his crime as cruel, as mean, as selfish, as heartless.
+But when he sees a partially disguised picture of it he knows it for
+the devil's child that it is.
+
+          'O wad some Power the giftie gie us
+           To see oursels as ithers see us!
+           It wad frae mony a blunder free us,'
+
+and so it would, to see ourselves as we see others. We judge our
+brother and ourselves by two different standards.
+
+And that is only one phase of a more general principle, one case that
+comes under a yet wider law, viz. that we are all blind, strangely
+blind, to our own faults. Why that is so I do not need to spend time in
+inquiring, except for a distinctly practical purpose. Let me just
+remind you how a strong wish for a thing that seems desirable always
+tends to confuse to a man the plain distinction between right and
+wrong; and how passions once excited, or the animal lusts and desires
+once kindled in a man, go straight to their object without the smallest
+regard to whether that object is to be reached by the breach of all
+laws, human and divine, or not. Excite any passion, and the passion is
+but a blind propensity towards certain good, and takes no question or
+consideration of whether right or wrong is involved at all.
+
+And further, habit familiarises with evil and diminishes our sense of
+it as evil. A man that has been for half a day in some ill-ventilated
+room does not notice the poisonous atmosphere; if you go into it you
+are half suffocated at first, and breathe more easily as you get used
+to it. A man can live amidst the foulest poison of evil; and, as the
+Styrian peasants get fat upon arsenic, his whole nature may seem to
+thrive by the poison that it absorbs. They tell us that the breed of
+fish that live in the lightless caverns in the bowels of some
+mountains, by long disuse have had their eyes atrophied out of them,
+and are blind because they have lived out of the light. And so men that
+live in the love of evil lose the capacity of discerning the evil, and
+'he that walketh in darkness' becomes blind, blind to his sin, and
+blind to all the realities of life.
+
+Then is it not true, too, that many of us systematically and of set
+purpose, continually avoid all questions as to the moral nature of our
+conduct? How many a man and woman who reads these words never sits down
+to think whether what they have been doing is right or wrong, because
+they have deep down in their consciences an uneasy suspicion as to what
+the answer would be. So, by reason of fostering passion, by reason of
+listening to wishes, by reason of the habit of wrongdoing, by reason of
+the systematic avoidance of all careful investigation of our character
+and of our conduct, we lose the power of fairly deciding upon the
+nature of our own acts.
+
+Then self-love comes in, and still another thing tends to blind us. We
+are all ready to acquiesce in the general indictment, and so to shirk
+the particular application of it. That is what people do about all
+great moral principles that ought to affect conduct,--they admit them
+in words, as general truths applying to mankind, and then hide
+themselves in the crowd, and think that they escape the incidence and
+particular application of the truths. No one of us would, I suppose,
+venture in plain words to stand up and say: 'I am an exception to your
+general confessions of sin,' and most of us would be ready to unite in
+the acknowledgment: 'We have all come short of the glory of God,'
+though in our consciences there has never stirred the faintest movement
+of self-condemnation even whilst our lips have been uttering the
+confession. Do not shrink away in the crowd, my brother! Come out to
+the front, and stand by yourself as God sees you, isolated. Look at
+your own actions; never mind about other men's. Do not content
+yourselves with saying,' _We_ have sinned'; say, '_I_ have sinned against
+_Thee._' God and you are as if alone in the universe. 'Against Thee, Thee
+only, have I sinned.' There are no crowds in God's eyes; He deals with
+single souls. Every one of us,--thou, and thou, and thou,--must give
+account of himself to God.
+
+II. In the next place, let me ask you to think how this story suggests
+that the true work of God's message is to tear down the veil and to
+show the ugly thing.
+
+'Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man.' It needed a prophet to do
+that, with divine authority. Nothing less would suffice to get through
+the thick bosses of the buckler of self-conceit and ignorance which he
+had to penetrate. As God's messenger, he gathered up, as I said, into
+one sharp-pointed, keen-edged, steel-bright sentence, the very spirit
+of the whole ancient Law, which seeks to individualise the sinner, and
+to drive home to the conscience the consciousness of wrong-doing.
+
+The remarks that I have been making, in the former part of this sermon,
+imperfect as they must necessarily be, may at least serve one or two
+purposes in reference to this part of my discourse.
+
+It seems to me that if what I have been saying as to a man's blindness
+to his own true moral character be at all correct, there flows from
+that thought a strong presumption in favour of a divine revelation. We
+need another than our own voice to lay down the law of conduct, and to
+accuse and condemn the breaches of it. Conscience is not a wholly
+reliable guide, and is neither an impartial nor an all-knowing judge.
+Unconsciousness of evil is not innocence. It is not the purest of women
+who 'wipes her mouth and says, I have done no harm.' My conscience says
+to me, 'It is wrong to do wrong'; but when I say to my conscience,
+'Yes, and pray what is wrong?' a large variety of answers is possible.
+A man may sophisticate his conscience, or bribe his conscience, or
+throttle his conscience, or sear his conscience. And so the man who is
+worst, who, therefore, ought to be most chastised by his conscience,
+has most immunity from it, and where, if it is to be of use, it ought
+to be most powerful, there it is weakest.
+
+What then? Why this, then--a standard that varies is not a standard; we
+are left with a leaden rule. My conscience, your conscience, is like
+the standard measures which we at present possess, which by their very
+names--foot, handbreadth, nail, and the like, tell us that they were
+originally but the length of one man's limb. And so your measure of
+right and wrong, and another man's measure, though they may
+substantially correspond, yet differ according to your differences of
+education, character, and a thousand other things. So that the
+individual man's standard needs to be rectified. You have to send all
+the weights and measures up to the Tower now and then, to get them
+stamped and certified. And, as I believe, this fluctuation of our moral
+judgments shows the need for a fixed pattern and firm unchangeable
+standard, external to our mutable selves. A light on deck which pitches
+with the pitching ship is no guide. It must flash from a white pillar
+founded on a rock and immovable amid the restless waves. Our need of
+such a standard raises a strong presumption that a good God will give
+us what we need, if He can. Such a standard He has given, as I believe,
+in the revelation of Himself which lies in this book, and culminates in
+the life and character of Jesus Christ our Lord. There, and by that, we
+can set our watches. There we can read the law of morality, and by our
+deflections from it we can measure the amount of our guilt.
+
+But beyond that, the remarks which I have already made in the former
+part of my sermon may suggest to us, along with this utterance of the
+prophet's, that one indispensable characteristic and certain criterion
+of a true message and gospel from God is that it pierces the conscience
+and kindles the sense of sin. My dear brethren, there is a great deal
+of so-called Christian teaching, both from pulpits and books in this
+day, which, to my mind, is altogether defective by reason of its
+underestimate of the cardinal fact of sin, and its consequent failure
+to represent the fundamental characteristic of the gospel as being
+deliverance and redemption. I am quite sure that the root of nine-
+tenths of all the heresies that have ever afflicted the Christian
+Church, and of the weakness of so much popular Christianity, is none
+other than this failure adequately to recognise the universality and
+the gravity of the fact of transgression. If a word comes to you, calls
+itself God's message, and does not start with man's sin, nor put in the
+forefront of its utterances the way by which the dominion of that sin
+in your own heart can be broken, and the penalties of that sin in your
+present and future life can be swept away, it is condemned, _ipso
+facto_, as not a gospel from God, or fit for man. O my brother! it
+sounds harsh; but it is the truest kindness, when Nathan stands before
+the king, and with his flashing eye and stern, calm voice says, 'Thou
+art the man.' Was not that nobler, truer, tenderer, worthier of God,
+than if he had smoothed David down with soft speeches that would not
+have roused his conscience? Is it not the truest benevolence that keeps
+the surgeon's hand steady whilst his heart is touched by the pain that
+he inflicts, as he thrusts his gleaming instrument of tender cruelty
+into the poisonous sore? And are not God's mercy and love manifest for
+us in this, that He begins all His work on us with the grave, solemn
+indictment of each soul by itself, 'Thou art the man'?
+
+               'He showed me all the mercy,
+                For He taught me all the sin.'
+
+III. Lastly, let me say that God accuses us and condemns us one by one
+that He may save us one by one.
+
+The meaning of Nathan's sharp sentence was speedily disclosed when the
+broken-down king exclaimed, 'I have sinned against the Lord,' and when,
+with laconic force as great as that which barbed the condemnation, the
+prophet stanched the wound with the brief words, 'And the Lord hath
+made to pass the iniquity of thy sin.' The intention of the accusation
+is the extension of the mercy and forgiveness. God, as the Apostle puts
+it, 'hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon
+all.'
+
+And now, mark, for the carrying out of that divine purpose in regard to
+us, and for our possession of the proffered mercy, the same
+individualising and isolating process is needful as was needful for the
+conviction of the sin. God desires to save the world, but God can only
+save men one at a time. There must be an individual access to Him for
+the reception of forgiveness, as there must be in regard to the
+conviction of sin, just as if He and I were the only two beings in the
+whole universe. There is no wholesale entrance into God's Church or
+into God's kingdom. God's mercy is not given to crowds, except as
+composed of individuals who have individually received it. There must
+be the personal act of faith; there must be my solitary coming to Him.
+As the old mystics used to define prayer, so I might define the whole
+process by which men are saved from their sins, 'the flight of the
+lonely soul to the lonely God.' My brother, it is not enough for you to
+say, 'We have sinned'; say, 'I have sinned.' It is not enough that from
+a gathered congregation there should go up the united litany, 'Lord,
+have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon
+us!' You must make the prayer your own: 'Lord, have mercy upon
+_me_!' It is not enough that you should believe, as I suppose most
+of you fancy that you believe, that Christ has died for the sins of the
+whole world. That belief will give you no share in His forgiveness. You
+must come to closer grips with Him than that; and you must be able to
+say, 'Who loved _me_, and gave Himself for _me_.' Let us have
+no running away into the crowd. Come out, and stand by yourselves, and
+for yourselves stretch out your own band, and take Christ for
+yourselves.
+
+A man may die of starvation in a granary. You may be lost in the midst
+of this abundance which Christ has provided for you. And the difference
+between really possessing salvation and not possessing it, lies very
+largely in the difference between saying 'us' and 'me.' 'Thou art the
+man' in regard to the general accusation of sin; 'Thou art the man' in
+regard to the solemn law which proclaims that 'the soul that sinneth it
+shall die'; and, blessed be God, 'Thou art the man' in regard to the
+great promise that says, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and
+drink.' Christ gives you a blank cheque in His word: 'Whoso cometh unto
+Me, I will in no wise cast out.' Write thine own name in, and by thy
+personal faith in the Lamb of God that died for thee, thy sins shall
+pass away; and all the fulness of God shall be thy very own for ever.
+'If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest,
+thou alone shall bear it.'
+
+
+
+
+DAVID AND NATHAN
+
+'And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan
+said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin.'--2 SAMUEL xii.
+13.
+
+
+We ought to be very thankful that Scripture never conceals the faults
+of its noblest men. High among the highest of them stands the poet-
+king. Whoever, for nearly three thousand years, has wished to express
+the emotions of trust in God, longing after purity, aspiration, and
+rapture of devotion, has found that his words have been before him.
+
+And this man sins; black, inexcusable, aggravated transgression. You
+know the shameful story; I need not tell it over again. The Bible gives
+it us in all its naked ugliness, and there are precious lessons to be
+got out of it; such, for instance, as that it is not innocence that
+makes men good. '_This_ is the man after God's own heart!' people
+sneer. Yes! Not because saints have a peculiar morality, and atone for
+adultery and murder by making or singing psalms, but because, having
+fallen into foul sin, he learned to abhor it, and with many tears, with
+unconquerable resolution, with deepened trust in God, set his face once
+more to press toward the mark. That is a lesson worth learning.
+
+And, again, David was not a hypocrite because he thus fell. All sin is
+inconsistent with devotion; but, thank God, we cannot say how much or
+how dark the sin must be which is incompatible with devotion, nor how
+much evil there may still lurk and linger in a heart of which the main
+set and aspiration are towards purity and God.
+
+And, again, the worst transgressions are not the passionate outbursts
+contradictory of the main direction of a life which sometimes come; but
+the habitual, though they be far smaller, evils which are honey-combing
+the moral nature. White ants will pick a carcase clean sooner than a
+lion. And many a man who calls himself a Christian, and thinks himself
+one, is in far more danger, from little pieces of chronic meanness in
+his daily life, or sharp practice in his business, than ever David was
+in his blackest evil.
+
+But the main lesson of all is that great and blessed one of the
+possibility of any evil and sin like this black one, being annihilated
+and caused to pass away through repentance and confession. It is to
+that aspect of our text that I turn, and ask you to look with me at the
+three things that come out of it: David's penitence; David's pardon
+consequent upon his penitence; and David's punishment, notwithstanding
+his penitence and pardon.
+
+I. First, then, the penitence.
+
+What a divine simplicity there is in the words of our text: 'David said
+unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.' That is all. In the
+original, two words are enough to revolutionise the man's whole life,
+and to alter all his relations to the divine justice and the divine
+Friend. 'I have sinned against the Lord.' Not an easy thing to say; and
+as the story shows us, a thing that David took a long time to mount up
+to.
+
+Remember the narrative. A year has passed since his transgression. What
+sort of a year has it been? One of the Psalms tells us, 'When I kept
+silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long; for day
+and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture was turned into the
+drought of summer.' There were long months of sullen silence, in which
+a clear apprehension and a torturing experience of divine
+disapprobation, like a serpent's fang, struck poison into his veins.
+His very physical frame seems to have suffered. His heart was as dry as
+the parched grass upon the steppes. That was what he got by his sin. A
+moment of turbid animal delight, and long days of agony; dumb suffering
+in which the sense of evil had not yet broken him down into a rain of
+sweet tears, but lay, like a burning consciousness, within his heart.
+
+And then came the prophet with his parable, so tender, so ingenious, so
+powerful. And the quick flash of generous indignation, which showed how
+noble the man was after all, with which he responded to the picture,
+unknowing that it was a picture of his own dastardly conduct, led on to
+the solemn words in which Nathan tore away the veil; and with a
+threefold lever, if I may so say, overthrew the toppling structure of
+his impenitence.
+
+First of all, and most chiefly, he seeks to win him to repentance by a
+picture of God's great love and goodness. 'I have done this and that
+and the other thing for thee. What hast thou done for Me?' Ah, that is
+the true beginning. You cannot frighten men into penitence, you may
+frighten them into remorse; and the remorse may or may not lead on to
+repentance. But bring to bear upon a man's heart the thought of the
+infinite and perfect love of God, and that is the solvent of all his
+obstinate impenitence, and melts him to cry, 'I have sinned.' And along
+with that element there is the other, the plain striking away of all
+disguises from the ugly fact of the sin. The prophet gives it its
+hideous name, and that is one element in the process which leads to
+true repentance. For so strange and subtle are the veils which we cast
+over our own evils, that it comes sometimes to us with a shock and a
+start when some word, that we know to connote wickedness of the deepest
+dye, is applied to them. David had very likely so sophisticated his
+conscience that, though he had been writhing under the sense that he
+was a wrongdoer, it came to him with a kind of ugly surprise when the
+naked words 'adultery' and 'murder' were pressed up against his
+consciousness.
+
+And the third element that brought him to his senses, and to his knees,
+was the threatening of punishment, which is salutary when it follows
+these other two, the revelation of a divine love and the unveiling of
+the essential nature of my own act; but which without these is but 'the
+hangman's whip' to which only inferior natures will respond. And these
+three, the appeal to God's love, the revelation of his own sin, the
+solemn warning of its consequences--these three brought to bear upon
+David's heart, broke him down into a passion of penitence in which he
+has only the two words to say, 'I have sinned against the Lord.' That
+is all. That is enough.
+
+And what is it? It is the recognition--which is essential to all real
+penitence--that I have not merely broken some impersonal law, or done
+something that hurts my fellows, but that I have broken the relations
+which I ought to sustain to a living, loving Person, who is God. We
+commit crimes against society, we commit faults against one another, we
+commit sins against God, and the very notion of sin involves, as its
+correlative, the thought of the divine Lawgiver.
+
+So, dear brethren, penitence goes deeper than a recognition of demerit
+and unworthiness. It is more than an acknowledgment of imperfection and
+breach of morality. It is something different altogether from the
+acknowledgment that I have committed a fault against my fellow. David
+had done Bathsheba and Uriah, and in them his whole kingdom, foul
+wrong, but, as he says in Psalm li., 'Against Thee, Thee _only,_
+have I _sinned._' His account with these is of a less grave
+character, but 'against Thee I sinned.'
+
+And in like manner, this penitence contains in it the recognition of
+transgression against a loving Friend and Father, which had been
+brought home to his mind by all the words of the rebuking prophet, who
+was a kind of incarnate conscience for him now. And it contains, still
+further, confession to God against whom he had sinned. The first
+impulse of a man when he dimly discerns how far he has departed from
+God's law, is that which the old story represents was the first impulse
+of the first sinners--to hide himself in the trees of the garden. The
+second impulse is to go to Him against whom we have sinned, and who
+only therefore can deal with the sin in the way of forgiveness, and to
+pour it all out before Him. Once an Apostle, when he caught a partial
+glimpse of his own demerit and transgression, said to the Master with a
+natural impulse, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!' But
+Peter had a deeper sense of his own sin, and a happier knowledge of
+what Christ could do for his sin, when his brother Apostle whispering
+to him in the boat, 'It is the Lord,' the traitor Apostle cast himself
+into the shallow water and floundered through it anyhow, to get as
+close as he could to the Master's feet.
+
+Do not go away from God because you feel that you have sinned against
+Him. Where should you go but to your mother's bosom, and hide your face
+there, if you have committed faults against her? Where should you go
+but to God if against Him you have transgressed? Look, my brother, at
+your own character and conduct; measure the deficiencies and
+imperfections, the transgressions and faults; ay! perhaps with some of
+you, the crimes against men and society and human laws; but see beneath
+all these a deeper thought; and stifle not the words that would come to
+your lips as a relief, like a surgeon's lancet struck into some foul
+gathering, 'I have sinned against the Lord.'
+
+II. And now, secondly, notice with me David's pardon consequent upon
+his repentance.
+
+Can there be anything more striking--I do not say dramatic, for the
+circumstances are far too serious for terms of art--can there be
+anything more in the nature of a gospel to us all than that brief
+dialogue? David said unto Nathan, 'I have sinned against the Lord.' And
+Nathan said unto David, 'The Lord also hath put away thy sin.'
+
+Immediate forgiveness, that is the first lesson that I would press upon
+you. Dear brethren, it is an experience which you may each repeat in
+your own history at this moment. It needs but the confession in order
+that the forgiveness should come. At this end of the telephone whisper
+your confession, and before it has well passed your lips there comes
+back the voice sweet as that of angels, 'The Lord hath forgiven thy
+sin.' One word, one motion of a heart aware of, and hating, and
+desiring to escape from, its evil, brings with a rush the whole fulness
+of fatherly and forgiving love into any heart. And that one confession
+may be the turning-point of a man's life, and may obliterate all the
+sinful past, and may bring him into loving, reconciled, harmonious
+relations with the Almighty Judge.
+
+Learn, too, not only the immediacy of the answer and the simplicity of
+the means, but learn how thorough and complete God's dealing with your
+sin may be. The original language of my text might be rendered, 'The
+Lord hath caused thy sin to pass away'; the thought being substantially
+that of some impediment or veil between man and Him which, with a touch
+of His hand, He dissolves as it were into vapour, and so leaves all the
+sky clear for His warmth and sunshine to pour down upon the heart. We
+do not need to enter upon theological language in talking about this
+great gift of forgiveness. It means substantially that howsoever you
+and I have piled up mountain upon mountain, Alp upon Alp, of our evils
+and transgressions, all pass away and become non-existent. Another word
+of the Old Testament expresses the same idea when it speaks about sin
+being 'covered.' Another word expresses the same idea when it speaks
+about God as 'casting' men's sins 'into the depths of the sea'--all
+meaning this one thing, that they no longer stand as barriers between
+the free flow of His love and our poor hearts. He takes away the sense
+of guilt, touches the wounded conscience, and there is healing in His
+hand. As, according to the old belief, the sovereign, by laying his
+hand upon sufferers from 'the King's evil' healed them and cleansed
+them, so the touch of His forgiving love takes away the sense of guilt
+and heals the spirit. He removes all the impediments between His love
+and us. His love can now come undisturbed. His deepest and solemnest
+judgments do not need to come; and no more does there stand frowning
+between us and Him the spectre of our past.
+
+People tell us that forgiveness is impossible, 'that whatsoever a man
+soweth, that must he also reap'; that law is law, and that the
+consequences cannot be averted. That is all quite true if there is not
+a God. It is not true if there is; and if there is no God, there is no
+sin. So if there is a God, there is forgiveness.
+
+Consequences, as I shall have to show you in a moment, may still
+remain, but pardon may be ours all the same. When you forgive your
+child, does it mean that you do not thrash it, or does it mean that you
+take it to your heart? And when God pardons, does it mean that He
+waives His laws, or does it mean that He lets us come into the whole
+warmth and sunshine of His love? Will you go there?
+
+Forgiveness was to Jews a thing difficult to apprehend. It was hard for
+them to understand the harmony of it with the rigid retribution on
+which their whole system of religion reposed. But you and I have come
+further into the light than Nathan and David had. And I have to preach
+a modification of the words of my text which is not a limitation of
+them, but the unveiling of their basis and the surest confirmation of
+them, when I say 'In Him'--Jesus Christ--'we have redemption through
+His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.'
+
+The New Testament teaches us that the Cross of Christ threw its power
+back upon former transgressions as well as forward upon future ones;
+and that in Him past ages, though they knew Him not, received
+remission. Christ is the Medium of the divine forgiveness; Christ's
+Cross is the ground of the divine pardon; Christ's sacrifice is the
+guarantee for us that the sin which He has borne He has borne away. 'By
+His stripes we are healed.' 'Wherefore, men and brethren, be it known
+unto you, that through this Man is preached unto _us_ the
+forgiveness of _our_ sins.'
+
+III. Third and lastly, look at the punishment which follows--shall I
+say _notwithstanding_ or _because of_?--the penitence and the pardon.
+
+In David's life there came the immediate retribution in kind, which was
+signalised as such by the divine message--the death of the child  'who
+was conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity.' But beyond that, look at
+David's life after his great fall. There was no more brightness in it.
+His own sin and example of lust loosed the bonds of morality in his
+household, and his son followed his example and improved upon it. And
+from that came Absalom's murder of his brother, and from that Absalom's
+exile, and from that Absalom's rebellion, and from that Absalom's
+death, which nearly killed his poor old father. And for all the rest of
+his days his home was troubled, and his last years ended with the
+turmoil of a disputed succession before his eyes were closed, all
+traceable to this one foul crime.
+
+Joab was the torment of David's later days, and Joab's power over him
+depended upon his having been the instrument of Uriah's murder; and so
+the master of the king, whose bidding he had done. Ahithophel was the
+brain of Absalom's conspiracy. His defection struck a sharp arrow into
+David's heart--'mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted.' He
+evidently hated the king with fierce hatred. He was Bathsheba's
+grandfather; and we are not going wrong, I think, in tracing his
+passionate hatred, and the peculiar form of insult which he counselled
+Absalom to adopt, to the sense of foul wrong which had been done to his
+house by David's crime.
+
+And so all through his days this poor old king had to do what you and I
+have to do--to bear the temporal results of sin. 'Be not deceived, God
+is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.'
+
+So 'of our pleasant vices the gods make whips to scourge us.' And it is
+in mercy that we have to drink as we have brewed, that we have to lie
+upon the beds that we have made; that in regard to outward
+consequences, and in regard to our own hearts and inward history, we
+are the architects of our own fortunes, and cannot escape the penalties
+of our sins and of our faults. Better to have it so than be cursed with
+impunity!
+
+Some of you young men are sowing diseases in your bones that will
+either make you invalids or will kill you before your time. All of us
+are bearing about with us, in some measure and sense, the issues, which
+are the punishments, of our evil. Let us thank Him and take up the
+praise of the old psalm, 'Thou wast a God that forgivest them, though
+Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' There is either merciful
+chastisement here, that we may be parted from our sins, or there is
+judgment hereafter.
+
+O my brother! let me beseech you, do not commit the suicide of
+impenitence, but go to Christ, in whom all our sins are taken away, and
+lay your hands on the head of that great Sacrifice, and 'the Lord shall
+cause to pass the iniquity of your sin.'
+
+
+
+
+GOD'S BANISHED ONES
+
+'God doth devise means, that His banished be not expelled from Him.' 2
+SAMUEL xiv. 14.
+
+
+David's good-for-nothing son Absalom had brought about the murder of
+one of his brothers, and had fled the country. His father weakly loved
+the brilliant blackguard, and would fain have had him back, but was
+restrained by a sense of kingly duty. Joab, the astute Commander-in-
+chief, a devoted friend of David, saw how the land lay, and formed a
+plan to give the king an excuse for doing what he wished to do. So he
+got hold of a person who is called 'a wise woman' from the country,
+dressed her as a mourner, and sent her with an ingeniously made-up
+story of how she was a widow with two sons, one of whom had killed the
+other, and of how the relatives insisted on their right of avenging
+blood, and demanded the surrender of the murderer; by which, as she
+pathetically said, 'the coal' that was left her would be 'quenched.'
+The king's sympathy was quickly roused--as was natural in so impulsive
+and poetic a nature--and he pledged his word, and finally his oath,
+that the offender should be safe.
+
+So the woman has him in a trap, having induced him to waive justice and
+to absolve the guilty by an arbitrary act. Then she turns upon him with
+an application to his own case, and bids him free himself from the
+guilt of double measures and inconsistency by doing with his banished
+son the same thing--viz. abrogating law and bringing back the offender.
+In our text she urges still higher considerations--viz. those of God's
+way of treating criminals against His law, of whom she says that He
+spares their lives, and devises means-or, as the words might perhaps be
+rendered, 'plans plannings'--by which He may bring them back. She would
+imply that human power and sovereignty are then noblest and likest
+God's when they remit penalties and restore wanderers.
+
+I do not further follow the story, which ends, as we all know, with
+Absalom's ill-omened return. But the wise woman's saying goes very
+deep, and, in its picturesque form, may help to bring out more vividly
+some truths--all-important ones--of which I wish to beg your very
+earnest consideration and acceptance.
+
+I. Note, then, who are God's banished ones.
+
+The woman's words are one of the few glimpses which we have of the
+condition of religious thought amongst the masses of Israel. Clearly
+she had laid to heart the teaching which declared the great, solemn,
+universal fact of sin and consequent separation from God. For the
+'banished ones' of whom she speaks are no particular class of glaring
+criminals, but she includes within the designation the whole human
+race, or, at all events, the whole Israel to which she and David
+belonged. There may have been in her words--though that is very
+doubtful--a reference to the old story of Cain after the murder of his
+brother. For that narrative symbolises the consequences of all evil-
+doing and evil-loving, in that he was cast out from the presence of
+God, and went away into a 'land of wandering,' there to hide from the
+face of the Father. On the one hand, it was banishment; on the other
+hand, it was flight. So had Absalom's departure been, and so is ours.
+
+Strip away the metaphor, dear brethren, and it just comes to this
+thought, which I seek to lay upon the hearts of all my hearers now--you
+cannot be blessedly and peacefully near God, unless you are far away
+from sin. If you take two polished plates of metal, and lay them
+together, they will adhere. If you put half a dozen tiny grains of sand
+or dust between them, they will fall apart. So our sins have come
+between us and our God. They have not separated God from us, blessed be
+His name! for His love, and His care, and His desire to bless, His
+thought, and His knowledge, and His tenderness, all come to every soul
+of man. But they have rent us apart from Him, in so far as they make us
+unwilling to be near Him, incapable of receiving the truest nearness
+and blessedness of His presence, and sometimes desirous to hustle Him
+out of our thoughts, and, if we could, out of our world, rather than to
+expatiate in the calm sunlight of His presence.
+
+That banishment is self-inflicted. God spurns away no man, but men
+spurn Him, and flee from Him. Many of us know what it is to pass whole
+days, and weeks, and years, as practical Atheists. God is not in all
+our thoughts.
+
+And more than that, the miserable disgrace and solitude of a soul that
+is godless in the world is what many of us like. The Prodigal Son
+scraped all his goods together, and thought himself freed from a very
+unwelcome bondage, and a fine independent youth, when he went away into
+'the far country.' It was not quite so pleasant when provisions and
+clothing fell short, and the swine's trough was the only table that was
+spread before him. But yet there are many of us, I fear, who are
+perfectly comfortable away from God, in so far as we can get away from
+Him, and who never are aware of the degradation that lies in a soul's
+having lowered itself to this, that it had rather not have God
+inconveniently near.
+
+Away down in the luxurious islands of the Southern Sea you will find
+degraded Englishmen who have chosen rather to cast in their lot with
+savages than to have to strain and work and grow. These poor beach-
+combers of the Pacific, not happy in their degradation, but wallowing
+in it, are no exaggerated pictures of the condition, in reality, of
+thousands of us who dwell far from God, and far therefore from
+righteousness and peace.
+
+II. Notice God's yearning over His banished ones.
+
+The woman in our story hints at, or suggests, a parallel which, though
+inadequate, is deeply true. David was Absalom's father and Absalom's
+king; and the two relationships fought against each other in his heart.
+The king had to think of law and justice; the father cried out for his
+son. The young man's offence had neither altered his relationship nor
+affected the father's heart.
+
+All that is true, far more deeply, blessedly true, in regard to our
+relation, the wandering exiles' relation, to God. For, whilst I believe
+that the highest form of sonship is only realised in the hearts of men
+who have been made partakers of a new life through Jesus Christ, I
+believe, just as firmly and earnestly, that every man and woman on the
+face of the earth, by virtue of physical life derived from God, by
+virtue of a spiritual being, which, in a very real and deep sense,
+still bears the image of God, and by reason of His continued love and
+care over them, is a child of His. The banished son is still a son, and
+is '_His_ banished one.' If there is love--wonderful as the
+thought is, and heart-melting as it ought to be--there must be loss
+when the child goes away. Human love would not have the same name as
+God's unless there were some analogy between the two. And though we
+walk in dark places, and had better acknowledge that the less we speak
+upon such profound subjects the less likely we are to err, yet it seems
+to me that the whole preciousness of the revelation of God in Scripture
+is imperilled unless we frankly recognise this--that His love is like
+ours, delights in being returned like ours, and is like ours in that it
+rejoices in presence and knows a sense of loss in absence. If you think
+that that is too bold a thing to say, remember who it was that taught
+us that the father fell on the neck of the returning prodigal, and
+kissed him; and that the rapture of his joy was the token and measure
+of the reality of his regret, and that it was the father to whom the
+prodigal son was 'lost.' Deep as is the mystery, let nothing, dear
+brethren, rob us of the plain fact that God's love moves all around the
+worst, the unworthiest, the most rebellious in the far-off land, and
+'desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from
+his iniquity and live.'
+
+And it is you, _you_, whom He wants back; you whom He would fain
+rescue from your aversion to good and your carelessness of Him. It is
+you whom He seeks, according to the great saying of the Master, 'the
+Father seeketh' for worshippers in spirit and in truth.
+
+III. Note the formidable obstacles to the restoration of the banished.
+
+The words 'banished' and 'expelled' in our text are in the original the
+same; and the force of the whole would be better expressed if the same
+English word was employed as the equivalent of both. We should then see
+more clearly than the variation of rendering in our text enables us to
+see, that the being 'expelled' is no further stage which God devises
+means to prevent, but that what is meant is that He provides methods by
+which the banished should not be banished--that is, should be restored
+to Himself.
+
+Now, note that the language of this 'wise woman,' unconsciously to
+herself, confesses that the parallel that she was trying to draw did
+not go on all fours; for what she was asking the king to do was simply,
+by an arbitrary act, to sweep aside law and to remit penalty. She
+instinctively feels that that is not what can be done by God, and so
+she says that He 'devises means' by which He can restore His banished.
+
+That is to say, forgiveness and the obliteration of the consequences of
+a man's sin, and his restoration to the blessed nearness to God, which
+is life, are by no means such easy and simple matters as people
+sometimes suppose them to be. The whole drift of popular thinking to-
+day goes in the direction of a very superficial and easy gospel, which
+merely says, 'Oh, of course, of course God forgives! Is not God Love?
+Is not God our Father? What more do you want than that?' Ah! you want a
+great deal more than that, my friends. Let me press upon you two or
+three plain considerations. There are formidable obstacles in the way
+of divine forgiveness.
+
+If there are to be any pardon and restoration at all, they must be such
+as will leave untouched the sovereign majesty of God's law, and,
+untampered with, the eternal gulf between good and evil. That easygoing
+gospel which says, 'God will pardon, of course!' sounds very charitable
+and very catholic, but at bottom it is very cruel. For it shakes the
+very foundations on which the government of God must repose. God's law
+is the manifestation of God's character; and that is no flexible thing
+which can be bent about at the bidding of a weak good-nature. I believe
+that men are right in holding that certainly God must pardon, but I
+believe that they are fatally wrong in not recognising this--that the
+only kind of forgiveness which is possible for Him to bestow is one in
+which there shall be no tampering with the tremendous sanctions of His
+awful law; and no tendency to teach that it matters little whether a
+man is good or bad. The pardon, which many of us seem to think is quite
+sufficient, is a pardon that is nothing more noble than good-natured
+winking at transgression. And oh! if this be all that men have to lean
+on, they are leaning on a broken reed. The motto on the blue cover of
+the _Edinburgh Review_, for over a hundred years now, is true:
+'The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted.' David struck a
+fatal blow at the prestige of his own rule, when he weakly let his son
+off from penalty. And, if it were possible to imagine such a thing, God
+Himself would strike as fatal a blow at the justice and judgment which
+are the foundations of His throne, if His forgiveness was such as to be
+capable of being confounded with love which was too weakly indulgent to
+be righteous.
+
+Further, if there are to be forgiveness and restoration at all, they
+must be such as will turn away the heart of the pardoned man from his
+evil. The very story before us shows that it is not every kind of
+pardon which makes a man better. The scapegrace Absalom came back
+unsoftened, without one touch of gratitude to his father in his base
+heart, without the least gleam of a better nature dawning upon him, and
+went flaunting about the court until his viciousness culminated in his
+unnatural rebellion. That is to say, there is a forgiveness which
+nourishes the seeds of the crimes that it pardons. We have only to look
+into our own hearts, and we have only to look at the sort of people
+round us, to be very sure that, unless the forgiveness that is granted
+us from the heavens has in it an element which will avert our wills and
+desires from evil, the pardon will be very soon needed again, for the
+evil will very soon be done again.
+
+If there are to be forgiveness and restoration at all, they must come
+in such a fashion as that there shall be no doubt whatsoever of their
+reality and power. The vague kind of trust in a doubtful mercy, about
+which I have been speaking, may do all very well for people that have
+never probed the depths of their own hearts. Superficial notions of our
+sin, which so many of us have, are contented with superficial remedies
+for it. But let a man get a glimpse of his own real self, and I think
+that he will wish for something a great deal more solid to grip hold
+of, than nebulous talk of the kind that I have been describing. If once
+we feel ourselves to be struggling in the black flood of that awful
+river, we shall want a firmer hold upon the bank than is given to us by
+some rootless tree or other. We must clutch something that will stand a
+pull, if we are to be drawn from the muddy waters.
+
+People say to us, 'Oh, God will forgive, of course!' Does this world
+look like a place where forgiveness is such an easy thing? Is there
+anything more certain than that consequences are inevitable when deeds
+have been done, and 'that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also
+reap' and whatsoever he brews that shall he also drink? And is it into
+a grim, stern world of retribution like this that people will come,
+with their smiling, sunny gospel of a matter-of-course forgiveness,
+upon very easy terms of a slight penitence?
+
+Brethren, God has to 'devise means,' which is a strong way of saying,
+in analogy to the limitations of humanity, that He cannot, by an
+arbitrary act of His will, pardon a sinful man. His eternal nature
+forbids it. His established law forbids it. The fabric of His universe
+forbids it. The good of men forbids it. The problem is insoluble by
+human thought. The love of God is like some great river that pours its
+waters down its channel, and is stayed by a black dam across its
+course, along which it feels for any cranny through which it may pour
+itself. We could never save ourselves, but
+
+          'He that might the vengeance best have took,
+           Found out the remedy.'
+
+IV. And so the last word that I have to say is to note the triumphant,
+divine solution of these difficulties.
+
+The work of Jesus Christ, and the work of Jesus Christ alone, meets all
+the requirements. It vindicates the majesty of law, it deepens the gulf
+between righteousness and sin. Where is there such a demonstration of
+the awful truth that 'the wages of sin is death' as on that Cross on
+which the Son of God died for us and for all 'His banished ones'? Where
+is there such a demonstration of the fixedness of the divine law as in
+that death to which the Son of God submitted Himself for us all? Where
+do we learn the hideousness of sin, the endless antagonism between God
+and it, and the fatal consequences of it, as we learn them in the
+sacrifice of our Lord and Saviour? Where do we find the misery and
+desolation of banishment from God so tragically uttered as in that cry
+which rent the darkness of eclipse,' My God! My God! why hast Thou
+forsaken Me?'
+
+That work of Christ's is the only way by which it is made absolutely
+certain that sins forgiven shall be sins abhorred; and that a man once
+restored shall cleave to his Restorer as to his Life. That work is the
+only way by which a man can be absolutely certain that there is
+forgiveness, in spite of all the accusations of his own conscience; in
+spite of all the inexorable working out of penalties in the system of
+the world which seems to contradict the fond belief; in spite of all
+that a foreboding gaze tells, or ought to tell, of a judgment that is
+to follow.
+
+Brethren, God has devised a means. None else could have done so. I
+beseech you, realise these facts that I have been trying to bring
+before you, and the considerations that I have based upon them, so far
+as they commend themselves to your hearts and consciences; and do not
+be content with acquiescing in them, but act upon them. We are all
+exiles from God, unless we have been 'brought nigh by the blood of
+Christ.' In Him, and in Him alone, can God restore His banished ones.
+In Him, and in Him alone, can we find a pardon which cleanses the
+heart, and ensures the removal of the sin which it forgives. In Him,
+and in Him alone, can we find, not a peradventure, not a subjective
+certainty, but an external fact which proclaims that verily there is
+forgiveness for us all. I pray you, dear friends, do not be content
+with that half-truth, which is ever the most dangerous lie, of divine
+pardon apart from Jesus Christ. Lay your sins upon His head, and your
+hand in the hand of the Elder Brother, who has come to the far-off land
+to seek us, and He will lead you back to the Father's house and the
+Father's heart, and you will be 'no more strangers and foreigners, but
+fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God.'
+
+
+
+
+PARDONED SIN PUNISHED
+
+'And It came to pass after this, that Absalom prepared him chariots and
+horses, and fifty men to run before him. 2. And Absalom rose up early,
+and stood beside the way of the gate: and it was so, that when any man
+that had a controversy came to the king for judgment, then Absalom
+called unto him, and said, Of what city art thou? And he said, Thy
+servant is of one of the tribes of Israel. 3. And Absalom said unto
+him. See, thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed
+of the king to hear thee. 4. Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made
+judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might
+come unto me, and I would do him justice! 5. And it was so, that when
+any man came nigh to him to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand,
+and took him, and kissed him. 6. And on this manner did Absalom to all
+Israel that came to the king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts
+of the men of Israel. 7. And it came to pass after forty years, that
+Absalom said unto the king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow,
+which I have vowed unto the Lord, in Hebron. 8. For thy servant vowed a
+vow while I abode at Geshur in Syria, saying, If the Lord shall bring
+me again indeed to Jerusalem, then I will serve the Lord. 9. And the
+king said unto him, Go in peace. So he arose, and went to Hebron. 10.
+But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, As
+soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall say, Absalom
+reigneth in Hebron. 11. And with Absalom went two hundred men out of
+Jerusalem, that were called; and they went in their simplicity, and
+they knew not any thing. 12. And Absalom sent for Ahithophel the
+Gilonite, David's counsellor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he
+offered sacrifices. And the conspiracy was strong; for the people
+increased continually with Absalom.'--2 SAMUEL xv. 1-12.
+
+
+There was little brightness in David's life after his great sin. Nathan
+had told him, even while announcing his forgiveness, that the sword
+should never depart from his house; and this revolt of Absalom's may be
+directly traced to his father's disgraceful crime. The solemn lesson
+that pardoned sin works out its consequences, so that 'whatsoever a man
+soweth, that shall he also reap,' is taught by it. The portion of the
+story with which we are concerned has two stages,--the slow hatching of
+the plot, and its final outburst.
+
+I. Verses 1 to 6 give us the preparation of the mine. It takes four
+years, during which Absalom plays all the tricks usual to aspirants for
+the most sweet voices of the multitude. He seems to have been but a
+poor creature; but it does not take much brain to do a great deal of
+mischief. He was vain, headstrong, with a dash of craft and a large
+amount of ambition. He had no love for his father, and no ballast of
+high principle, to say nothing of religion. He was a spoiled child
+grown to be a man, with a child's petulance and unreason, but a man's
+passions. He loved his unfortunate sister, but it was as much wounded
+honour as love which led him to the murder of his elder brother Amnon.
+That crime cleared his way to the throne; and David's half-and-half
+treatment of him after it, neither sternly punishing nor freely
+pardoning, set the son against the father, and left a sense of injury.
+So he became a rebel.
+
+The story tells very vividly how he adopted the familiar tactics of
+pretenders. How old, and yet how modern, it reads! We who live in a
+country where everybody is an 'elector' of some sort, and candidates
+are plentiful, see the same things going on, in a little different
+dress, before our eyes. Absalom begins operations by dazzling people
+with ostentatious splendour. In better days Samuel had trudged on foot,
+driving a heifer before him, to anoint his father; and royalty had
+retained a noble simplicity in the hands of Saul and David. But 'plain
+living and high thinking' did not suit Absalom; and he had gauged the
+popular taste accurately enough in setting up his chariot with its
+fifty runners. That was a show something like a king, and, no doubt,
+much more approved than David's simplicity. But it was an evil omen to
+any one who looked below the surface. When luxury grows, devotion
+languishes. The senseless ostentation which creeps into the families of
+good men, and is sustained by their weak compliance with their spoiled
+children's wishes, does a world of harm. We in Lancashire have a
+proverb, 'Clogs, carriage, clogs,' which puts into three words the
+history of three generations, and is verified over and over again.
+
+How well Absalom has learned the arts of the office-seeker! Along with
+his handsome equipage he shows admirable devotion to the interests of
+his 'constituents.' He is early at the gate, so great is his appetite
+for work; he is accessible to everybody; he flatters each with the
+assurance that his case is clear; he gently drops hints of sad
+negligence in high quarters, which he could so soon set right, if only
+he were in power; and he will not have the respectful salutation of
+inferiors, but grasps every hard hand, and kisses each tanned cheek,
+with an affectation of equality very soothing to the dupes.
+'Electioneering' is much the same all the world over; and Absalom has a
+good many imitators nearer home.
+
+There was, no doubt, truth in the charge he made against David of
+negligence in his judicial and other duties. Ever since his great sin,
+the king seems to have been stunned into inaction. The heavy sense of
+demerit had taken the buoyancy out of him, and, though forgiven, he
+could never regain the elastic energy of purer days. The psalms which
+possibly belong to this period show a singular passivity. If we suppose
+that he was much in the seclusion of his palace, a heavily-burdened and
+spirit-broken man, we can understand how his condition tempted his
+heartless, dashing son to grasp at the reins which seemed to be
+dropping from his slack hands, and how his passivity gave opportunity
+for Absalom's carrying on his schemes undisturbed, and a colour of
+reasonableness to his charges. For four years this went on unchecked,
+and apparently unsuspected by the king, who must have been much
+withdrawn from public life not to have taken alarm. Nothing takes the
+spring out of a man like the humiliating sense of sin. The whole tone
+of David's conduct throughout the revolt is, 'I deserve it all. Let
+them smite, for God hath bidden them.' To this resourceless,
+unresisting submission to his enemies, sin had brought the daring
+soldier. It is not old age that has broken his courage and spirit, but
+the consciousness of his foul guilt, which weighs on him all the more
+heavily because he knows that it is pardoned.
+
+II. The second part of our subject tells of the explosion of the long-
+prepared mine. It was necessary to hoist the flag of revolt elsewhere
+than in Jerusalem, and some skill is shown in choosing Hebron, which
+had been the capital before the capture of the Jebusite city, and in
+which there would be natural jealousy of the new metropolis. The
+pretext of the sacrifice at Hebron, in pursuance of a vow made by
+Absalom in his exile, was meant to touch David's heart in two ways,--by
+appealing to his devotional feelings, and by presenting a pathetic
+picture of his suffering and devout son vowing in the land where his
+father's wrath had driven him. It is not the first time that religion
+has been made the stalking-horse for criminal ambition, nor is it the
+last. Politicians are but too apt to use it as a cloak for their
+personal ends. Absalom talking about his vow is a spectacle that might
+have made the most unsuspecting sure that there was something in the
+wind. Such a use of religious observances shows more than anything else
+could do, the utter irreligion of the man who can make it. A son
+rebelling against his father is an ugly sight, but rebellion disguised
+as religion adds to the ugliness. David suspects nothing; or, if he
+does, is too broken to resist, and, perhaps glad at any sign of grace
+in his son, or pleased to gratify any of his wishes, sends him away
+with a benediction. What a parting,--the last, though neither knew it!
+
+The plot had spread widely in four years, and messengers had been sent
+through all Israel to summon its adherents to Hebron. If David had been
+as popular as in his early days, it would have been impossible for such
+a widely spread conspiracy to have come so near a head without some
+faithful soul having been found to tell him of it. But obviously there
+was much smouldering discontent, arising, no doubt, from such causes as
+the pressure of taxation, the gloom that hung over the king, the
+partial paralysis of justice, the transference of the capital, the
+weight of wars, and, at lowest, the craving for something new. Few
+reigns or lives set in unclouded brightness. The western horizon is
+often filled with a bank of blackness. Strangely enough, Absalom
+invited two hundred men to accompany him, who were ignorant of the
+plot. That looks as if its strength was outside Jerusalem, as was
+natural. These innocents were sufficiently associated with Absalom to
+be asked to accompany him, and, no doubt, he expected to secure their
+complicity when he got them away. Unsuspecting people are the best
+tools of knaves. It is better not to be on friendly terms with Absalom,
+if we would be true to David. The last piece of preparation recorded is
+the summoning of Abithophel to come and be the brain of the plot. He
+had been David's wisest counsellor, and is probably the 'familiar
+friend, in whom I trusted,' whose defection the Psalmist mourns so
+bitterly, and whose treachery was a marvellous foreshadowing of the
+traitor who dipped in the dish with David's Lord. Note that he had
+already withdrawn from Jerusalem to his own city, from which he came at
+once to Hebron. Absalom could flatter and play the well-worn tricks of
+a pretender, but a subtler, cooler head was wanted now, and the
+treacherous son was backed up by the traitor friend. 'And the
+conspiracy was strong; for the people increased continually with
+Absalom.' What a tragical issue to the joyous loyalty of early days!
+What a strange madness must have laid hold on the nation to have led
+them to prefer such a piece of petulance and vanity to their hero-poet-
+king! What did it mean?
+
+The answer is not far to seek, and it is the great lesson of this
+story. David's sin was truly repented and freely forgiven, but not left
+unpunished. God is too loving to shield men from the natural
+consequences, in the physical and social world, of their sins. The
+penitent drunkard's hand shakes, and his constitution is not renewed,
+though his spirit is. Only, punishment is changed into discipline, when
+the heart rests in the assurance of pardon, and is accepted as a token
+of a Father's love. In every way God made of the vice the whip to
+scourge the sinner, and David, like us all, had to drink as he had
+brewed, though he was forgiven the sin.
+
+
+
+
+A LOYAL VOW
+
+'And the king's servants said unto the king, Behold, thy servants are
+ready to do whatsoever my lord the king shall appoint.'--2 SAMUEL xv.
+15.
+
+
+We stand here at the darkest hour of King David's life. Bowed down by
+the consciousness of his past sin, and recognising in the rebellion of
+his favourite son the divine chastisement, his early courage and
+buoyant daring seem to have ebbed from him wholly. He is forsaken by
+the mass of his subjects, he is preparing to abandon Jerusalem, and to
+flee as an exile, as he says himself so pathetically, 'whither I may.'
+And at that moment of deepest depression there comes one little gleam
+of consolation and one piece of chivalrous devotion which brightens the
+whole story. His special retainers, apparently a bodyguard mostly of
+foreigners, rally round him. Mostly foreigners, I say, for these hard
+words 'Cherethites and Pelethites' most probably mean inhabitants of
+the island of Crete, and Philistines. And as to six hundred of them, at
+all events, there can be no doubt, for they are expressly said to be
+'men of Gath who followed after him.' At all events, there was a little
+nucleus of men, not his own subjects, who determined to share his fate,
+whatever it was. And the words of my text are their words, 'Behold, thy
+servants are ready to do whatsoever the king shall appoint.' Or, as the
+word stands in the original, in an abrupt, half-finished sentence, even
+more pathetic, 'According to all that my lord the king shall appoint,
+behold thy servants.' These men were foreigners, not bound to render
+obedience to the king, but giving it because their hearts were touched.
+They were loyal amongst rebels, so many Abdiels, 'among the faithless,
+faithful only' these, and they avowed their determination to cleave to
+the sovereign of their choice at a time when his back was at the wall,
+and their determination to follow him meant only peril and privation.
+They were filled with a passionate personal attachment to the king, and
+that personal attachment was ready to manifest itself as a willing
+sacrifice, as such love always is ready.
+
+Now surely in all this there is a lesson for us. The heroism of men
+towards a man, the uncalculating devotion and magnificent self-
+sacrifice of which the poorest human soul is capable when touched to
+fine issues by some heart-love, are surely not all meant to be lavished
+on fellow-creatures, who, alas! generally receive the most of them. But
+these rude Philistines and Gittites, Goliath's fellow-townsmen, may
+preach to us Christians a lesson. Why should not we say as they said,
+'According to all that my Lord the King shall appoint, behold Thy
+servants'?
+
+I. So then, first, our King's will ought to be our will.
+
+The obedience that is promised in these words is not the obedience of
+action only, but it is the bowing down of the heart. And for us
+Christian men there is neither peace nor nobleness in our lives, except
+in the measure in which the will of Jesus Christ and our wills are
+accurately conterminous and identical. Wheresoever the two coincide,
+there is strength for us; wheresoever they diverge, there are weakness
+and certain ruin. These two wills ought to be like two of Euclid's
+triangles, or other geometric figures, the one laid upon the other, and
+each line and curve and angle accurately corresponding and coinciding,
+so that the two cover precisely the same ground.
+
+Christ's will my will; that is religion. And you and I are Christians
+just in the measure in which that coincidence of wills is true about
+us, and not one hair's-breadth further, for all our professions.
+Wheresoever my will diverges from Christ, in that particular I am not
+His man; and 'Christian' simply means 'Christ's man.' I belong to Him
+when I think as He does, love as He does, will as He does, accept His
+commandment as the law of my life, His pattern as my example, His
+providence as sufficient and as good. Where we thus yield ourselves to
+Him, there we are strong, and so far, and only so far, have we a right
+to say that we are the King's servants at all.
+
+This absolute submission we do render to one another when our hearts
+are touched; and the fact that men can and do give it--husbands to
+wives, wives to husbands, children to parents, friends to one another--
+the fact that there is the capacity for that giving of one's self away,
+lodged deep in our nature, tells us what we are meant to do with it.
+'Whose image and superscription hath it?' Was it meant that we should
+thus live in slavish submission even to the dearest loved ones? Surely
+not; for that is the destruction of individuality. No, but it was meant
+that we should lay our wills down at Christ's feet and say, 'Not my
+will, but Thine,' and Thine mine because I have made it mine by love.
+Then there is rest, and then we have solved the secret of the world,
+and are what our Lord would have us to be. Oh! do not our relations to
+our dear ones, with all that infinite power of self-sacrifice that our
+love brings with it, rebuke the partial extent of our surrender to our
+Master? and may we not be ashamed when we contrast the joy that we feel
+in giving up to those that we love, and the reluctance with which, too
+often, we obey the Master's commandments, and the long years of
+repining and murmuring before we 'submit,' as we call it, which too
+often means accept His providences as inevitable, though not as
+welcome? To be 'ready to do whatsoever my Lord the King shall choose,'
+believing that His choice is wisdom and kindness for us, and His
+commandments a blessing and a gift, is the attitude and temper for us
+all. Is there any other attitude to Jesus Christ which corresponds to
+our relation to Him, to what He has done for us, to what we say that He
+is to us? He has the right to us, because He has given us Himself. He
+asks nothing from us but that of which He has already set us the
+example. 'He gave Himself for us, as the Apostle says with emphasis
+that is often unnoticed. 'He _gave Himself_ for us' that He might
+'_purchase us_ for _Himself_.' He who would possess another
+must impart Himself, and love, that yields a whole man to the loved
+one, only springs when the loved one mutually yields her whole heart.
+The King does not command from above, but He comes down amongst us,
+and He says, 'I gave Myself for thee; what givest thou to Me?' O brethren,
+let us answer with that brave, chivalrous old Gittite:--'As the Lord
+liveth, and as my Lord the King liveth, surely in what place my Lord
+the King shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will Thy
+servant be.'
+
+II. Then notice again, still sticking to our story, that this yielding
+up of will, if it is worth anything, will become the more intense and
+fervent when surrounded by rebels.
+
+All Israel, with that poor feather-headed, vain Absalom, were on the
+one side, and David and these foreigners were on the other. Years of
+quiet uneventful life would never have brought out such magnificent
+heroism of devotion and self-surrender, as was crowded into that one
+moment of loyalty asserted in the face of triumphant rebels and
+traitors.
+
+In like manner, the more Christ's reign is set at nought by the people
+about us, and the less they recognise the blessedness and the duty of
+submission to Him, the more strong and unmistakable should be the
+utterance of our loyalty. We should grasp His hand tighter by reason of
+the storms that may rage round about us. And if we dwell amongst those
+who, in any measure, deny or neglect His merciful dominion, let us see
+to it that we all the more hoist our colours at our doors, and stand by
+them when they are hoisted, that nobody may mistake under which King we
+serve.
+
+You in your places of business, you young men in your warehouses, and
+all of us in our several spheres, have to come across many people who
+have no share in our loyalty and offer no allegiance to our King. That
+is the reason for intenser loyalty on our part. Never you mind what
+others say or do; do not take your orders from them. Better be with the
+handful that rally round David than with the crowds that run after
+Absalom! Better be amongst the few that are faithful than amongst the
+multitudes that depart! Dare to be singular, if it comes to that; and
+at all events remember that your relationship to your Master is a thing
+that concerns Him and you chiefly, and that you are not to take the
+pattern of your loyalty, nor the orders for your lives, from any lips
+but His own.
+
+Hush all other voices that would command, and hush them that you may
+listen to Him. It is always difficult enough for Christian men to
+ascertain, in perplexed circumstances, the clear path of duty; but it
+is impossible if, along with His voice, we let the buzz of the crowd be
+audible in our ears. There is only one way by which we can hear what
+our 'Lord the King appoints,' and that is by making a great stillness
+in our souls, and neither letting our own yelping inclinations give
+tongue, nor the babble of men round us, and their notions of life and
+of what is right, have influence upon us, but waiting to hear what God
+the Lord, speaking in Christ the King, has to say to us. And, remember,
+the more rebels there are, the more need for us to be conspicuously
+loyal to our King.
+
+III. Again, this complete yielding of ourselves in practical obedience
+and heart submission to command merits and providences is to be
+maintained, whatsoever it may lead to in the way of privation and
+difficulty.
+
+It was no holiday vow, made upon some parade day, that these brave
+foreigners were bringing to their king now, but it meant 'we are ready
+to suffer, starve, fight, lose everything, die if need be, to be true
+to thee.' And the very thought of the impending danger elevated the
+men's consciousness, and made heroes out of very common people. And
+perhaps that is the best effect of our difficulties and sorrows, that
+they strike fire sometimes (if they are rightly accepted and used) out
+of what seems to be only dead, lumpish matter, and many a Christian
+shoots up into a stature of greatness and nobleness in his sorrow, who
+was but a very commonplace creature when all things went well with him.
+That is the kind of obedience that Christ delights to accept, obedience
+that is ready for anything, and does not wait to make sure that there
+is no danger of forfeiting a whole skin and a quiet life, before it
+vows itself to service. Are we only to be 'fair-weather Christians,' or
+are we to be prepared for all the trials and sufferings that may befall
+us? A Christianity that does not bring any worldly penalties along with
+it is not worth much. Christians of Christ's pattern have generally to
+give up something for their Christianity. They give up nothing that it
+is not gain to lose, nothing that they are not better without, but they
+have to surrender much in which other people find great enjoyment, and
+which their weaker selves would delight in too. Are you ready, my
+brother, for that? 'Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving
+against sin.' The old days of heroism and martyrdom are done with, as
+far as we are concerned, whatever may lie in the future. But do we make
+willingly and gladly the surrenders and the self-abnegations that are
+demanded by our loyalty to our Master? Have we ever learned to say
+about any line of action that our poor, lower nature grasps at, and our
+higher, enlightened by communion with Jesus Christ, forbids: 'So did
+not I because of the fear of the Lord'? We can talk about following
+Christ's footsteps; do you think that if we had stood where these rude
+soldiers stood, or had anything as dark in prospect, as the price of
+our faithfulness to our King, as they had as the price of faithfulness
+to theirs, there would have rung from our lips the utterly sincere vow
+that sprang joyously from theirs: 'Behold Thy servants, ready to do
+whatever our Lord the King shall appoint'?
+
+IV. A final thought, which travels beyond my text, is that such
+thorough-going obedience, irrespective of consequences, is the secret
+of all blessedness.
+
+'Great peace have they which love Thy law': the peace of conscience;
+the peace of ceasing from that which is our worst enemy, self-will; the
+peace of self-surrender; the peace of feeling ''Tis His to command;
+'tis mine to obey'; the peace of casting the whole settling of the
+campaign on the King's shoulders, and of finding our duty restricted to
+tramping along with cheery heart on the path that He has appointed.
+That is worth having. Oh! if we could cease from self and lay our wills
+down before Him, then we should be quiet. The tranquil heart is the
+heart which has the law of Christ within it, and the true delight of
+life belongs to those who truly say, 'I delight to do Thy will.' So
+yielding, so obeying, so submitting, so surrendering one's self, life
+becomes quiet, and strong, and sweet. And, if I might so turn the story
+that we have been considering, the faithful soldiers who have been true
+to the King when His throne was contested, will march with laurelled
+heads in His triumphant train when He comes back after His final and
+complete victory, and reign with Him in the true City of Peace, where
+His will shall be perfectly done by loving hearts, and all His servants
+shall be kings.
+
+
+
+
+ITTAI OF GATH
+
+'And Ittai answered the king, and said, As the Lord liveth, and as my
+lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be,
+whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be.'--2
+SAMUEL xv. 21.
+
+
+It was the darkest hour in David's life. No more pathetic page is found
+in the Old Testament than that which tells the story of his flight
+before Absalom. He is crushed by the consciousness that his punishment
+is deserved--the bitter fruit of the sin that filled all his later life
+with darkness. His courage and his buoyancy have left him. He has no
+spirit to make a stand or strike a blow. If Shimei runs along the
+hillside abreast of him, shrieking curses as he goes, all he says is:
+'Let him curse; for the Lord hath bidden him.'
+
+
+So, heartbroken and spiritless, he leaves Jerusalem. And as soon as he
+has got clear of the city he calls a halt, in order that he may muster
+his followers and see on whom he may depend. Foremost among the little
+band come six hundred men from Gath--Philistines--from Goliath's city.
+These men, singularly enough, the king had chosen as his bodyguard;
+perhaps he was not altogether sure of the loyalty of his own subjects,
+and possibly felt safer with foreign mercenaries, who could have no
+secret leanings to the deposed house of Saul. Be that as it may, the
+narrative tells us that these men had 'come after him from Gath.' He
+had been there twice in the old days, in his flight from Saul, and the
+second visit had extended over something more than a year. Probably
+during that period his personal attraction, and his reputation as a
+brilliant leader, had led these rough soldiers to attach themselves to
+his service, and to be ready to forsake home and kindred in order to
+fight beside him.
+
+At all events here they are, 'faithful among the faithless,' as foreign
+soldiers surrounding a king often are--notably, for instance, the
+Swiss guard in the French Revolution. Their strong arms might have been
+of great use to David, but his generosity cannot think of involving
+them in his fall, and so he says to them: 'I am not going to fight; I
+have no plan. I am going where I can. You go back and "worship the
+rising sun." Absalom will take you and be glad of your help. And as for
+me, I thank you for your past loyalty. Mercy and peace be with you!'
+
+It is a beautiful nature that in the depth of sorrow shrinks from
+dragging other people down with itself. Generosity breeds generosity,
+and this Philistine captain breaks out into a burst of passionate
+devotion, garnished, in soldier fashion, with an unnecessary oath or
+two, but ringing very sincere and meaning a great deal. As for himself
+and his men, they have chosen their side. Whoever goes, they stay.
+Whatever befalls, they stick by David; and if the worst come to the
+worst they can all die together, and their corpses lie in firm ranks
+round about their dead king. David's heart is touched and warmed by
+their outspoken loyalty; he yields and accepts their service. Ittai and
+his noble six hundred tramp on, out of our sight, and all their
+households behind them. Now what is there in all that, to make a sermon
+out of?
+
+I. First, look at the picture of that Philistine soldier, as teaching
+us what grand passionate self-sacrifice may be evolved out of the
+roughest natures.
+
+Analyse his words, and do you not hear, ringing in them, three things,
+which are the seed of all nobility and splendour in human character?
+First, a passionate personal attachment; then, that love issuing, as
+such love always does, in willing sacrifice that recks not for a moment
+of personal consequences; that is ready to accept anything for itself
+if it can serve the object of its devotion, and will count life well
+expended if it is flung away in such a service. And we see, lastly, in
+these words a supreme restful delight in the presence of him whom the
+heart loves. For Ittai and his men, the one thing needful was to be
+beside him in whose eye they had lived, from whose presence they had
+caught inspiration; their trusted leader, before whom their souls bowed
+down. So then this vehement speech is the pure language of love.
+
+Now these three things,--a passionate personal attachment, issuing in
+spontaneous heroism of self-abandonment, and in supreme satisfaction in
+the beloved presence,--may spring up in the rudest, roughest nature. A
+Philistine soldier was not a very likely man in whom to find refined
+and lofty emotion. He was hard by nature, hardened by his rough trade;
+and unconscious that he was doing anything at all heroic or great.
+Something had smitten this rock, and out of it there came the pure
+refreshing stream. And so I say to you, the weakest and the lowest, the
+roughest and the hardest, the most selfishly absorbed man and woman
+among us, has lying in him and her dormant capacities for flaming up
+into such a splendour of devotion and magnificence of heroic self-
+sacrifice as is represented in these words of my text. A mother will do
+it for her child, and never think that she has done anything
+extraordinary; husbands will do such things for wives; wives for
+husbands; friends and lovers for one another. All who know the
+sweetness and power of the bond of affection know that there is nothing
+more gladsome than to fling oneself away for the sake of those whom we
+love. And the capacity for such love and sacrifice lies in all of us.
+Prosaic, commonplace people as we are, with no great field on which to
+work out our heroisms; yet we have it in us to love and give ourselves
+away thus, if once the heart be stirred.
+
+And lastly, this capacity which lies dormant in all of us, if once it
+is roused to action, will make a man blessed and dignified as nothing
+else will. The joy of unselfish love is the purest joy that man can
+taste; the joy of perfect self-sacrifice is the highest joy that
+humanity can possess, and they lie open for us all.
+
+And wherever, in some humble measure, these emotions of which I have
+been speaking are realised, there you see weakness springing up into
+strength, and the ignoble into loftiness. Astronomers tell us that
+sometimes a star that has shone inconspicuous, and stood low down in
+their catalogues as of fifth or sixth magnitude, will all at once flame
+out, having kindled and caught fire somehow, and will blaze in the
+heavens, outshining Jupiter and Venus. And so some poor, vulgar, narrow
+nature, touched by this Promethean fire of pure love that leads to
+perfect sacrifice, will 'flame in the forehead of the morning sky' an
+undying splendour, and a light for evermore.
+
+Brethren, my appeal to you is a very plain and simple one, founded on
+these facts:--You all have that capacity in you, and you all are
+responsible for the use of it. What have you done with it? Is there any
+person or thing in this world that has ever been able to lift you up
+out of your miserable selves? Is there any magnet that has proved
+strong enough to raise you from the low levels along which your life
+creeps? Have you ever known the thrill of resolving to become the
+bondservant and the slave of some great cause not your own? Or are you,
+as so many of you are, like spiders living in the midst of your web,
+mainly intent upon what you can catch by it? You have these capacities
+slumbering in you. Have you ever set a light to that inert mass of
+enthusiasm that lies within you? Have you ever woke up the sleeper?
+Look at this rough soldier of my text, and learn from him the lesson
+that there is nothing that so ennobles and dignifies a commonplace
+nature as enthusiasm for a great cause, or self-sacrificing love for a
+worthy heart.
+
+II. The second remark which I make is this:--These possibilities of
+love and sacrifice point plainly to God in Christ as their true object.
+
+'Whose image and superscription hath it?' said Christ, looking at the
+Roman _denarius_ that they brought and laid on His palm. If the
+Emperor's head is on it, why, then, he has a right to it as tribute.
+And then He went on to say, 'Render, therefore, unto Caesar the things
+which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.' So there
+are things that have God's image and superscription stamped on them,
+and such are our hearts, our whole constitution and nature. As plainly
+as the penny had the head of Tiberius on it, and therefore proclaimed
+that he was Emperor where it was current, so plainly does every soul
+carry in the image of God the witness that He is its owner and that it
+should be rendered in tribute to Him.
+
+And amongst all these marks of a divine possession and a divine
+destination printed upon human nature, it seems to me that none is
+plainer than this fact, that we can all of us thus give ourselves away
+in the abandonment of a profound and all-surrendering love. That
+capacity unmistakably proclaims that it is destined to be directed
+towards God and to find its rest in Him. As distinctly as some silver
+cup, with its owner's initials and arms engraved upon it, declares
+itself to be 'meet for the master's use,' so distinctly does your soul,
+by reason of this capacity, proclaim that it is meant to be turned to
+Him in whom alone all love can find its perfect satisfaction; for whom
+alone it is supremely blessed and great to lose life itself; and who
+only has authority over human spirits.
+
+We are made with hearts that need to rest upon an absolute love; we are
+made with understandings that need to grasp a pure, a perfect, and, as
+I believe, paradoxical though it may sound, a personal Truth. We are
+made with wills that crave for an absolute authoritative command, and
+we are made with a moral nature that needs a perfect holiness. And we
+need all that love, truth, authority, purity, to be gathered into one,
+for our misery is that, when we set out to look for treasures, we have
+to go into many lands and to many merchants, to buy many goodly pearls.
+But we need One of great price, in which all our wealth may be
+invested. We need that One to be an undying and perpetual possession.
+There is One to whom our love can ever cleave, and fear none of the
+sorrows or imperfections that make earthward-turned love a rose with
+many a thorn, One for whom it is pure gain to lose ourselves, One who
+is plainly the only worthy recipient of the whole love and self-
+surrender of the heart.
+
+That One is God, revealed and brought near to us in Jesus Christ. In
+that great Saviour we have a love at once divine and human, we have the
+great transcendent instance of love leading to sacrifice. On that love
+and sacrifice for us Christ builds His claim on us for our hearts, and
+our all. Life alone can communicate life; it is only light that can
+diffuse light. It is only love that can kindle love; it is only
+sacrifice that can inspire sacrifice. And so He comes to us, and asks
+that we should just love Him back again as He has loved us. He first
+gives Himself utterly for and to us, and then asks us to give ourselves
+wholly to Him. He first yields up His own life, and then He says: 'He
+that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.' The object, the true
+object, for all this depth of love which lies slumbering in our hearts,
+is God in Christ, the Christ that died for us.
+
+III. And now, lastly, observe that the terrible misdirection of these
+capacities is the sin and the misery of the world.
+
+I will not say that such emotions, even when expended on creatures, are
+ever wasted. For however unworthy may be the objects on which they are
+lavished, the man himself is the better and the higher for having
+cherished them. The mother, when she forgets self in her child, though
+her love and self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice may, in some
+respects, be called but an animal instinct, is elevated and ennobled by
+the exercise of them. The patriot and the thinker, the philanthropist,
+ay! even--although I take him to be the lowest in the scale--the
+soldier who, in some cause which he thinks to be a good one, and not
+merely in the tigerish madness of the battlefield, throws away his
+life--are lifted in the scale of being by their self-abnegation.
+
+And so I am not going to say that when men love each other passionately
+and deeply, and sacrifice themselves for one another, or for some cause
+or purpose affecting only temporal matters, the precious elixir of love
+is wasted. God forbid! But I do say that all these objects, sweet and
+gracious as some of them are, ennobling and elevating as some of them
+are, if they are taken apart from God, are insufficient to fill your
+hearts: and that if they are slipped in between you and God, as they
+often are, then they bring sin and sorrow.
+
+There is nothing more tragic in this world than the misdirection of
+man's capacity for love and sacrifice. It is like the old story in the
+Book of Daniel, which tells how the heathen monarch made a great feast,
+and when the wine began to inflame the guests, sent for the sacred
+vessels taken from the Temple of Jerusalem, that had been used for
+Jehovah's worship; and (as the narrative says, with a kind of shudder
+at the profanation), 'They brought the golden vessels that were taken
+out of the temple of the House of God, which was at Jerusalem, and the
+king and his princes, his wives and his concubines, drank in them. They
+drank wine and praised the gods.' So this heart of mine, which, as I
+said, has the Master's initials and His arms engraven upon it, in token
+that it is His cup, I too often fill with the poisonous and
+intoxicating draught of earthly pleasure and earthly affections; and as
+I drink it, the madness goes through my veins, and I praise gods of my
+own making instead of Him whom alone I ought to love.
+
+Ah, brethren! we should be our own rebukers in this matter, and the
+heroism of the world should put to shame the cowardice and the
+selfishness of the Church. Contrast the depth of your affection for
+your household with the tepidity of your love for your Saviour.
+Contrast the willingness with which you sacrifice yourself for some
+dear one with the grudgingness with which you yield yourselves to Him.
+Contrast the rest and the sense of satisfaction in the presence of
+those whom you love, and your desolation when they are absent, with the
+indifference whether you have Christ beside you or not. And remember
+that the measure of your power of loving is the measure of your
+obligation to love your Lord; and that if you are all frost to Him and
+all fervour to them, then in a very solemn sense 'a man's foes shall be
+they of his own household.' 'He that loveth father or mother more than
+Me is not worthy of Me.'
+
+And so let me gather all that I have been saying into the one earnest
+beseeching of you that you would bring that power of uncalculating love
+and self-sacrificing affection which is in you, and would fasten it
+where it ought to fix--on Christ who died on the cross for you. Such a
+love will bring blessedness to you. Such a love will ennoble and
+dignify your whole nature, and make you a far greater and fairer man or
+woman than you ever otherwise could be. Like some little bit of black
+carbon put into an electric current, my poor nature will flame into
+beauty and radiance when that spark touches it. So love Him and be at
+peace; give yourselves to Him and He will give you back yourselves,
+ennobled and transfigured by the surrender. Lay yourselves on His
+altar, and that altar will sanctify both the giver and the gift. If you
+can take this rough Philistine soldier's words in their spirit, and in
+a higher sense say, 'Whether I live I live unto the Lord, or whether I
+die I die unto the Lord; living or dying, I am the Lord's,' He will let
+you enlist in His army; and give you for your marching orders this
+command and this hope, 'If any man serve Me let him follow Me; and
+where I am there shall also My servant be.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WAIL OF A BROKEN HEART
+
+'Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself a
+pillar, which is in the king's dale; for he said, I have no son to keep
+my name in remembrance; and he called the pillar after his own name:
+and it is called unto this day, Absalom's Place. 19. Then said Ahimaaz
+the son of Zadok, Let me now run, and bear the king tidings, how that
+the Lord hath avenged him of his enemies. 20. And Joab said unto him.
+Thou shalt not bear tidings this day, but thou shalt bear tidings
+another day; but this day thou shalt bear no tidings, because the
+king's son is dead. 21. Then said Joab to Cushi, Go tell the king what
+thou hast seen. And Cushi bowed himself unto Joab, and ran. 22 Then
+said Ahimaaz the ton of Zadok yet again to Joab, But howsoever, let me,
+I pray thee, also run after Cushi. And Joab said, Wherefore wilt thou
+run, my son, seeing that thou hast no tidings ready? 23. But howsoever,
+said he, let me run. And he said unto him, Run. Then Ahimaaz ran by the
+way of the plain, and overran Cushi. 24. And David sat between the two
+gates: and the watchman went up to the roof over the gate unto the
+wall, and lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold a man running
+alone. 25. And the watchman cried, and told the king. And the king
+said, If he be alone, there is tidings in his mouth. And he came apace,
+and drew near. 26. And the watchman saw another man running: and the
+watchman called unto the porter, and said, Behold another man running
+alone. And the king said, He also bringeth tidings. 27. And the
+watchman said, Me thinketh the running of the foremost is like the
+running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok. And the king said, He is a good
+man, and cometh with good tidings. 28. And Ahimaaz called, and said
+unto the king, All is well. And he fell down to the earth upon his face
+before the king, and said, Blessed be the Lord thy God, which hath
+delivered up the men that lifted up their hand against my lord the
+king. 29. And the king said, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Ahimaaz
+answered, When Joab sent the king's servant, and me thy servant, I saw
+a great tumult, but I knew not what it was. 30. And the king said unto
+him, Turn aside, and stand here. And he turned aside, and stood still.
+31. And, behold, Cushi came; and Cushi said, Tidings, my lord the king:
+for the Lord hath avenged thee this day of all them that rose up
+against thee. 32. And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man
+Absalom safe I And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and
+all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is.
+33. And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the
+gate, and wept; and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! My son,
+my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my
+son!--2 SAMUEL xviii. 18-33.
+
+
+The first verse of this passage and the one preceding it give a
+striking contrast between the actual and the designed burial-place of
+Absalom. The great pit among the sombre trees, where his bloody corpse
+was hastily flung, with three darts through his heart, and the rude
+cairn piled over it, were a very different grave from the ostentatious
+tomb 'in the king's dale,' which he had built to keep his memory green.
+This was what all his restless intrigues and unbridled passions and
+dazzling hopes had come to. He wanted to be remembered, and he got his
+wish; but what a remembrance! That gloomy pit preaches anew the vanity
+of 'vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself,' and tells us once more that
+
+                   Only the actions of the just
+                   Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'
+
+I. The first picture here shows a glimpse of the battlefield, and
+brings before us three men, each in different ways exhibiting how small
+a thing Absalom's death was to all but the heartbroken father, and each
+going his own road, heedless of what lay below the heap of stones. The
+world goes on all the same, though death is busy, and some heart-
+strings be cracked. The minute details which fill the most part of the
+story, lead up to, and throw into prominence, David's burst of agony at
+the close. The three men, Ahimaaz, Joab, and the Cushite (Ethiopian),
+are types of different kinds of self-engrossment, which is little
+touched by others' sorrows. The first, Ahimaaz, the young priest who
+had already done good service to David as a spy, is full of the joyous
+excitement of victory, and eager to run with what he thinks such good
+tidings. The word in verse 19, 'bear tidings,' always implies good
+news; and the youthful warrior-priest cannot conceive that the death of
+the head of the revolt can darken to the king the joy of victory, He is
+truly loyal, but, in his youthful impetuosity and excitement, cannot
+sympathise with the desolate father, who sits expectant at Mahanaim.
+Right feeling and real affection often fail in sympathy, for want of
+putting oneself in another's place; and, with the best intentions,
+wound where they mean to cheer. A little imagination; guided by
+affection, would have taught Ahimaaz that the messenger who told David
+of Absalom's death would thrust a sharper spear into his heart than
+Joab had driven into Absalom's.
+
+Joab is a very different type of indifference. He is too much
+accustomed to battle to be much flushed with victory, and has killed
+too many men to care much about killing another. He is cool enough to
+measure the full effect of the news on David; and though he clearly
+discerns the sorrow, has not one grain of participation in it. He has
+some liking for Ahimaaz, and so does not wish him to run, but dissuades
+him on the ground (verse 22, Revised Version) that he will win no
+reward. That is the true spirit of the mercenary, who cannot conceive
+of a man taking trouble unless he gets paid for it somehow, and will
+fight and kill, all in the way of business, without the least spark of
+enthusiasm for a cause. Hard stolidity and brutal carelessness shielded
+him from any 'womanish' tenderness. Absalom was dead, and he had killed
+him. It was a good thing, for it had put out the fire of revolt. No
+doubt David would be sorry, but that mattered little. Only it was
+better for the message to go by some one whose fate was of no
+consequence. So he picks out 'the Cushite,' probably an Ethiopian
+slave; and if David in his anguish should harm him, nobody will be hurt
+but a friendless stranger.
+
+The Cushite gets his orders; and he too is, in another fashion,
+careless of their contents and effect. Without a word, he bows himself
+to Joab, and runs, as unconcerned as the paper of a letter that may
+break a heart. Ahimaaz still pleads to go, and, gaining leave, takes
+the road across the Jordan valley, which was probably easier, though
+longer; while the other messenger went by the hills, which was a
+shorter and rougher road.
+
+II. The scene shifts to Mahanaim, where David had found refuge. He can
+scarcely have failed to take an omen from the name, which commemorated
+how another anxious heart had camped there, and been comforted, when it
+saw the vision of the encamping angels above its own feeble, undefended
+tents, and Jacob 'called the name of that place Mahanaim' (that is,
+'Two Camps'). How the change of scene in the narrative helps its
+vividness, and makes us share in the strain of expectancy and the
+tension of watching the approaching messengers! The king, restless for
+news, has come out to the space between the outer and inner gates, and
+planted a lookout on the gate-house roof. The sharp eyes see a solitary
+figure making for the city, across the plain. David recognises that,
+since he is alone, he must be a messenger; and now the question is,
+What has he to tell? We see him coming nearer, and share the suspense.
+Then the second man appears; and clearly something more had happened,
+to require two. What was it? They run fast; but the moments are long
+till they arrive. The watchman recognises Ahimaaz by his style of
+running; and David wistfully tries to forecast his tidings from his
+character. It is a pathetic effort, and reveals how anxiously his heart
+was beating.
+
+As soon as Ahimaaz is within earshot, though panting with running, no
+doubt, he shouts, with what breath is left, the one word, 'Peace!' and
+then, at David's feet, tells the victory, 'Blessed be the Lord thy
+God'; the triumph was Jehovah's gift, and in it He had shown Himself
+David's God, and vindicated His servant's trust. But Ahimaaz is more
+devout and thankful than David. The king has neither praise and
+thankfulness to God nor to man. He has no pleasure in the victory; no
+interest in the details of the fight; no thankfulness for a restored
+kingdom; no word of eulogium for his soldiers; nothing but devouring
+anxiety for his unworthy son. How chilling to Ahimaaz, all flushed with
+eagerness, and proud of victory, and panting with running, and hungry
+for some word of praise, it must have been, to get for sole answer the
+question about Absalom! He shrinks from telling the whole truth, which,
+indeed, the Cushite was officially despatched to tell; but his
+enigmatic story of a great tumult as he left the field, of which he did
+not know the meaning, was meant to prepare for the bitter news. So he
+is bid to stand aside, and no words more vouchsafed to him. A cool
+reception, unworthy of David! As Ahimaaz stood there, neglected, he
+would think that the politic Joab was right after all.
+
+The Cushite must have been close behind him, for he comes up as soon as
+the brief conversation is over. A deeper anxiety must have waited his
+tidings; for he must have something more to tell than victory. His
+first words add nothing to Ahimaaz's information. What, then, had he
+come for? David forebodes evil, and, with the monotony of a man
+absorbed in one anxiety, repeats verbatim his former question. Poor
+king! He more than half knew the answer, before it was given. The
+Cushite with some tenderness veils the fate of Absalom in the wish that
+all the king's enemies may be 'as that young man is.' But the veil was
+thin, and the attempt to console by reminding of the fact that the dead
+man was an enemy as well as a son, was swept away like a straw before
+the father's torrent of grief.
+
+III. The sobs of a broken heart cannot be analysed; and this wail of
+almost inarticulate agony, with its infinitely pathetic reiteration, is
+too sacred for many words. Grief, even if passionate, is not forbidden
+by religion; and David's sensitive poet-nature felt all emotions
+keenly. We are meant to weep; else wherefore is there calamity? But
+there were elements in David's mourning which were not good. It blinded
+him to blessings and to duties. His son was dead; but his rebellion was
+dead with him, and that should have been more present to his mind. His
+soldiers had fought well, and his first task should have been to honour
+and to thank them. He had no right to sink the king in the father, and
+Joab's unfeeling remonstrance, which followed, was wise and true in
+substance, though rough almost to brutality in tone. Sorrow which sees
+none of the blue because of one cloud, however heavy and thunderous, is
+sinful. Sorrow which sits with folded hands, like the sisters of
+Lazarus, and lets duties drift, that it may indulge in the luxury of
+unrestrained tears, is sinful. There is no tone of 'It is the Lord! let
+Him do what seemeth Him good,' in this passionate plaint; and so there
+is no soothing for the grief. The one consolation lies in submission.
+Submissive tears wash the heart clean; rebellious ones blister it.
+
+David's grief was the bitter fruit of his own sin. He had weakly
+indulged Absalom, and had probably spared the rod, in the boy's youth,
+as he certainly spared the sword when Absalom had murdered his brother.
+His own immorality had loosened the bonds of family purity, and made
+him ashamed to punish his children. He had let Absalom flaunt and
+swagger and live in luxury, and put no curb on him; and here was the
+end of his foolish softness. How many fathers and mothers are the
+destroyers of their children to-day in the very same fashion! That
+grave in the wood might teach parents how their fatal fondness may end.
+Children, too, may learn from David's grief what an unworthy son can do
+to stuff his father's pillow with thorns, and to break his heart at
+last.
+
+But there is another side to this grief. It witnesses to the depth and
+self-sacrificing energy of a father's love. The dead son's faults are
+all forgotten and obliterated by death's 'effacing fingers.' The
+headstrong, thankless rebel is, in David's mind, a child again, and the
+happy old days of his innocence and love are all that remain in memory.
+The prodigal is still a son. The father's love is immortal, and cannot
+be turned away by any faults. The father is willing to die for the
+disobedient child. Such purity and depth of affection lives in human
+hearts. So self-forgetting and incapable of being provoked is an
+earthly father's love. May we not see in this disclosure of David's
+paternal love, stripping it of its faults and excesses, some dim shadow
+of the greater love of God for His prodigals,--a love which cannot be
+dammed back or turned away by any sin, and which has found a way to
+fulfil David's impossible wish, in that it has given Jesus Christ to
+die for His rebellious children, and so made them sharers of His own
+kingdom?
+
+
+
+
+BARZILLAI
+
+'And Barzillai said unto the king, How long have I to live, that I
+should go up with the king unto Jerusalem? 35. I am this day fourscore
+years old: and can I discern between good and evil! can thy servant
+taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of
+singing men and singing women? wherefore then should thy servant be yet
+a burden unto my lord the king? 36. Thy servant will go a little way
+over Jordan with the king: and why should the king recompense it me
+with such a reward? 37. 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 behold thy servant Chimham; let him go
+over with my lord the king; and do to him what shall seem good unto
+thee.'-2 SAMUEL xix. 34-37.
+
+
+_To the Young._
+
+People often fancy that religion is only good to die by, and many
+exhortations are addressed to the young, founded on the possibility
+that an early death may be their lot. That, no doubt, is a very solemn
+consideration, but it is by no means the sole ground on which such an
+appeal may or should be rested. To some of you an early death is
+destined. To the larger number of you will be granted a life protracted
+to middle age, and to some of you silver hair will come, and you may
+see your children's children. I wish to win you seriously to look
+forward to the life on earth that is before you, and to the end to
+which it is likely to come, if you be spared in the world long enough.
+
+The little picture in these verses is a very beautiful one. David had
+been fleeing from his rebellious Absalom, and his adversity had
+winnowed his friends. He had crossed the Jordan to the hill-country
+beyond, and there, while he was lurking with his crown in peril, and a
+price on his head, and old friends dropping from him in their eagerness
+to worship the rising sun, this Barzillai with others brought him
+seasonable help (xvii. 23), When David returned victorious, Barzillai
+met him again. David offered to take him to Jerusalem and to set him in
+honour there, The old man answered in the words of our text.
+
+Now I take them for the sake of the picture of old age which they give
+us. Look at them: the intellectual powers are dimmed, all taste for the
+pleasures and delights of sense is gone, ambition is dead, capacity for
+change is departed. What is left? This old man lives in the past and in
+the future; the early child-love of the father and mother who, eighty
+years ago, rejoiced over his cradle, remains fresh; he cannot 'any more
+hear the voice of the singing men and women,' but he can hear the
+tones, clear over all these years, of the dear ones whom he first
+learned to love. The furthest past is fresh and vivid, and his heart
+and memory are true to it. Also he looks forward familiarly and calmly
+to the very near end, and lives with the thought of death. He keeps
+house with it now. It is nearer to him than the world of living men. In
+memory is half of his being, and in hope is the other half. All his
+hopes are now simplified and reduced to _one,_ a hope to die and
+be united again with the dear ones whom he had so long remembered. And
+so he goes back to his city, and passes out of the record--an example
+of a green and good old age.
+
+Now, young people, is not that picture one to touch your hearts? You
+think in your youthful flush of power and interest, that life will go
+on for ever as it has begun, and it is all but impossible to get you to
+look forward to what life must come to. I want you to learn from that
+picture of a calm, bright old age, a lesson or two of what life will
+certainly do to you, that I may found on these certainties the old, old
+appeal, 'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth'.
+
+I. Life will gradually rob you of your interest in all earthly things.
+
+Your time of life is full of ebullient feeling, and sees freshness,
+glory, and beauty everywhere. Even the least enthusiastic men are
+enthusiastic in their early days. You have physical strength, the
+keenness of unpalled senses, the delights of new powers, the
+blessedness of mere living. All this springs partly from physical
+causes, partly from the novelty of your position. Thank God! all young
+creatures are happy, and you among the rest.
+
+Now, I do not ask you to restrain and mortify these things. But I do
+ask you to remember the end. It is as certain that joys will pall, it
+is as certain that subjects of interest will be exhausted, it is as
+certain that powers will decay, as that they now are what they are. All
+these grave, middle-aged, careful people round you were like you once.
+You, if you live, will be like them. The spring tints are natural, but
+they are transient; the blossoms are not always on the fruit-trees.
+
+Think, then, of the End: to make you thankful; to stimulate you; but
+also to lead you to take for your object what will never pall. All
+created things go. Only the gospel provides you with a theme which
+never becomes stale, with objects which are inexhaustible.
+
+Here is a lesson for--
+
+(a) Thinkers: 'Knowledge, it shall vanish away.'
+
+(b) Sensualists: 'Man delights me not, nor woman either.' How old was
+he who said that?
+
+(c) Ambitious, self-advancing men.
+
+Is it worth your while to devote yourself to transient aims?
+
+Is it congruous with your dignity as immortal souls?
+
+Is it innocent or guilty?
+
+Is the gospel not a thing to live by as well as to die by?
+
+II. Life will certainly rob you of the power to change.
+
+Barzillai knew that David's court was no place for him; he had been
+bred on the mountains of Gilead, and his habits suited only a simple
+country life. The court might be better, but he could not fit into it.
+But there was his boy Chimham; take him, he was young enough to bend
+and mould.
+
+Now this is true in a far loftier way. I need not dwell on the
+universality of this law, how it applies to all manner of men, but I
+use it now in reference only to the gospel and your relation to it. You
+will never again be so likely to become a Christian, if you let these
+early days pass.
+
+You say, 'I will have my fling, sow my wild oats, will wait a little
+longer, and then'--and then what? You will find that it is infinitely
+harder to close with Christ than it would have been before.
+
+While you delay, you are stiffening into the habit of rejection. Custom
+is one of our mightiest friends or foes.
+
+While you delay, you are doing violence to conscience, and so weakening
+that to which the gospel appeals.
+
+While you delay, you are becoming more familiar with the unreceived
+message and so weakening the power of the gospel.
+
+While you delay, you are adding to the long list of your sins.
+
+While you delay, youth is slipping from you.
+
+Make a mark with a straw on the clay and it abides; hammer on the brick
+with iron and it only breaks. Youth is a brief season. It is the season
+for forming habit, for receiving impression, for building up character.
+'The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore shall he
+beg in harvest and have nothing.' Your present time is seed time. God
+forbid that I should say that it is impossible, but I do say that it is
+hard, for 'a man to be born again when he is old.'
+
+If you do become Christ's servant later in life, your whole condition
+will be different from what it would have been if you had begun when
+young to trust and love Him. Think of the difficulty of rooting out
+habits and memories. Think of the horrid familiarity with evil. Think
+of the painful contrition for wasted years, which must be theirs who
+are hired at the eleventh hour, after standing all the day idle.
+
+Contrast the experience of him who can say, 'I Thy servant fear God
+from my youth,' who has been led by God's mercy from childhood in the
+narrow way, who by early faith in Christ has been kept in the slippery
+ways of youth.
+
+Of the one we can but say, 'Is not this a brand plucked from the
+burning?' The other is 'innocent of much transgression.'
+
+I have small hope of changing middle-aged and old men. To you I turn,
+you young men and women, you children, and to each of you I say, 'Wilt
+thou not from this time say, My Father, Thou art the guide of my
+youth?'
+
+III. Life will certainly deepen your early impressions.
+
+The old Barzillai dying looks back to his early days.
+
+So I point the lesson: 'Keep thy heart with all diligence,' and let
+your early thoughts be bright and pure ones.
+
+Remember that you will never find any love like a father's and
+mother's. Don't do what will load your memories in after days with
+sharp reproaches.
+
+IV. Life will bring you nearer and nearer to the grave.
+
+Hope after hope dies out, and there is nothing left but the hope to
+die. How beautiful the facing of it so as to become calmly familiar
+with it, making it an object of hope, with bright visions of reunion!
+
+How can such an old age so bright and beautiful be secured? Surely the
+one answer is,--by faith in Jesus Christ.
+
+Think of an old Christian resting, full of years, full of memories,
+full of hopes, to whom the stir of the present is nothing, who has come
+so near the place where the river falls into the great sea that the
+sounds on the banks are unheard. It is calm above the cataract, and
+though there be a shock when the stream plunges over the precipice, yet
+a rainbow spans the fall, and the river peacefully mingles with the
+shoreless, boundless ocean.
+
+Dear young friends, 'what shall the end be'? It is for yourselves to
+settle. Oh, take Christ for your Lord! Then, though so far as regards
+the bodily life the 'youths shall faint and be weary,' as regards the
+true self the life may be one of growing maturity, and at last you may
+'come to the grave as a shock of corn that is fully ripe.'
+
+Trust, love, and serve Jesus, that thus calm, thus beautiful, may be
+your days here below, that if you die young you may die ripe enough for
+heaven, and that if God spares you to 'reverence and the silver hairs,'
+you may crown a holy life by a peaceful departure, and, sitting in the
+antechamber of death, may not grieve for the departure of youth and
+strength and buoyancy and activity, knowing that 'they also serve who
+only stand and wait,' and then may shake off the clog and hindrance of
+old age when you pass into the presence of God, and there, as being the
+latest-born of heaven, may more than renew your youth, and may enter on
+a life which weariness and decay never afflict, but with which immortal
+youth, with its prerogatives of endless hope, of keenest delight, of
+unwearying novelty, of boundless joy, abides for evermore.
+
+
+
+
+DAVID'S HYMN OF VICTORY
+
+'For Thou hast girded me with strength to battle: them that, rose up
+against me hast Thou subdued under me. 41. Thou hast also given me the
+necks of mine enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me. 42. They
+looked, but there was none to save; even unto the Lord, but He answered
+them not. 43. Then did I beat them as small as the dust of the earth, I
+did stamp them as the mire of the street, and did spread them abroad.
+44. Thou also hast delivered me from the strivings of my people, Thou
+hast kept me to be head of the heathen: a people which I knew not shall
+serve me. 45. Strangers shall submit themselves unto me: as soon as
+they hear, they shall be obedient unto me. 46. Strangers shall fade
+away, and they shall be afraid out of their close places. 47. The Lord
+liveth; and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the God of the rock of
+my salvation. 48. It is God that avengeth me, and that bringeth down
+the people under me, 49. And that bringeth me forth from mine enemies:
+Thou also hast lifted me up on high above them that rose up against me:
+Thou hast delivered me from the violent man. 50. Therefore I will give
+thanks unto Thee, O Lord, among the heathen, and I will sing praises
+unto Thy name. 51. He is the tower of salvation for His king; and
+sheweth mercy to His anointed, unto David, and to his seed for
+evermore.'--2 SAMUEL xxii. 40-51.
+
+
+The Davidic authorship of this great hymn has been admitted even by
+critics who are in general too slow to recognise it. One of these says
+that 'there is no Israelite king to whom the expressions in the psalm
+apply so closely as to David.' The favourite alternative theory that
+the speaker is the personified nation is hard to accept. The voice of
+individual trust and of personal experience sounds clear in the glowing
+words. Two editions of the hymn are preserved for us,--in Psalm xviii.
+and 2 Samuel. Slight variations exist in the two copies, which may
+probably be merely accidental. Nothing important depends on them. The
+text begins with the closing words of a description of God's arming the
+singer for his victories, and goes on to paint the tumult of battle and
+the rout of the foe (verses 40-43); then follows triumphant expectation
+of future wider victories (verses 44-46); and that leads up to the
+closing burst of grateful praise (verses 47-51).
+
+I. We are not to forget that what is described in verses 40-43 is a
+literal fight, with real swords against very real enemies. We may draw
+lessons of encouragement from it for our conflict with spiritual
+wickednesses, but we must not lose sight of the bloody combat with
+flesh and blood which the singer had waged. He felt that God had braced
+his armour on him, had given him the impenetrable 'shield' which he
+wore on his arm, and had strengthened his arms to bend the 'bow of
+steel.' We see him in swift pursuit, pressing hard on the flying foe,
+crushing them with his fierce charge, trampling them under foot. 'I did
+beat them small as the dust of the earth.' His blows fell like those of
+a great pestle, pulverising some substance in a mortar. 'I did stamp
+them as the mire of the streets,'--a vivid picture of trampling down
+the prostrate wretches, for which Psalm xviii. gives the less
+picturesque variant, 'did cast them out.' In their despair the
+fugitives shriek aloud for God's help, and the Psalmist has a stern joy
+in knowing their cries to be unheard.
+
+Now, such delight in an enemy's despair and destruction, such
+gratification at the vanity of his prayers, are far away from being
+Christian sentiments, and the gulf is not wholly bridged by the
+consideration that David felt himself to be God's Anointed, and enmity
+to him to be, consequently, treason against God. His feelings were most
+natural and entirely consistent with the stage of revelation in which
+he lived. They were capable of being purified into that triumph in the
+victory of good and the ruin of evil without which there is no vigorous
+sympathy with Christ's conflict. They kindle, by their splendid energy
+and condensed rapidity, an answering glow even in readers so far away
+from the scene as we are. But still they do belong to a lower level of
+feeling, and result from a less full revelation than belongs to
+Christianity. The light of battle which blazes in them is not the fire
+which Jesus longed to kindle on earth.
+
+But we may well take a pattern from the stern soldier's recognition
+that all his victory was due to God alone. The strength that he put
+forth was God's gift. It was God who subdued the insurgents, not David.
+The panic which made the foe take to flight was infused into them by
+God. No name but Jehovah's was to be carved on the trophy reared on the
+battlefield. The human victor was but the instrument of the divine
+Conqueror. Such lowly reference of all our power and success to Him
+will save us from overweening self-adulation, and is the surest way to
+retain the power which He gives, and which is lost most surely when we
+take the credit of it to ourselves.
+
+II. The enemies thus far have been from among his own subjects, but in
+verses 44-46 a transition is made to victory over 'strangers'; that is,
+foreign nations. The triumph over 'the strivings of my people' heartens
+the singer to expect that he will be' head of the nations.' The other
+version of the hymn (Psalm xviii.) reads simply '_the_ people.'
+
+The picture of hasty surrender 'as soon as they hear of me' is graphic.
+His very name conquers. 'The strangers shall submit themselves unto me'
+is literally 'shall lie,' or yield feigned obedience. They 'fade away'
+as if withered by the hot wind of the desert. 'They shall come limping'
+(as the word here used signifies), as if wounded in the fight, for
+which Psalm xviii. reads 'trembling.'
+
+Now this vision of extended conquests, based as it is on past smaller
+victories, carries valuable lessons. David here lays hold of the great
+promises to his house of a wide dominion, and expects the beginnings of
+their fulfilment to himself. And he _did_ extend his conquests
+beyond the territory of Israel. But we may take the hope as an instance
+in a particular direction of what should be the issue of all experience
+of God's mercies. 'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more
+abundant.' Smaller victories will be followed by greater. Our reception
+of God's favouring help should widen our anticipations. Our gratitude
+to Him should be 'a lively sense of favours to come.' Progressive
+victory should be the experience of every believer.
+
+We may see, too, dimly apparent through the large hope of the Psalmist-
+King, the prophecy of the worldwide victories of his Son, in whom the
+great promises of a dominion 'from sea to sea, and from the river unto
+the ends of the earth,' are fulfilled.
+
+III. Verses 46-51 make a noble close to a noble hymn, in which the
+singer's strong wing never flags, nor the rush of thought and feeling
+ever slackens. In it, even more absolutely than in the rest of the
+psalm, his victory is all ascribed to Jehovah. He alone acts, David
+simply receives. To have learned by experience that' He lives,' and is
+'my Rock,' and to gather all the feelings excited by the retrospect of
+a long life into 'Blessed be my Rock,' is to have reaped and garnered
+the richest harvest which earth can yield. So at last sings the man
+whose early years had been full of struggles and privations. A morning
+of tempest has cleared into sunny evening calm, as it will with us all
+if the tempest blows us into our true shelter.
+
+This psalm begins with a rapturous heaping together of the precious
+names of God, as the singer has had them revealed to him by experience.
+Foremost among these stands that one, 'my Rock,' which is caught up
+again in this closing burst of thanksgiving. That great Rock towers
+unchangeable above fleeting things. The river runs past its base, the
+woods nestling at its feet bud, and shed their pride of foliage, but it
+stands the same. David had many a time hid in 'the clefts of the rocks'
+in his years of wandering, and the figure is eloquent on his lips.
+
+These closing strains gather together once more the main points of the
+previous verses, his deliverance from domestic foes, and his conquests
+over external enemies. These are wholly God's work. True thankfulness
+delights to repeat its acknowledgments. God does not weary of giving,
+we should not weary of praising the Giver and His gifts. We renew our
+enjoyment of our long-past mercies by reiterating our thankfulness for
+them. They do not die as long as gratitude keeps their remembrance
+green.
+
+But the Psalmist's experience impels him to a vow (verse 50). He will
+give thanks to God among the nations. God's mercies bind, and, if
+rightly felt, will joyfully impel, the receiver to spread His name as
+far as his voice can reach. Love is sometimes silent, but gratitude
+must speak. The most unmusical voice is tuned to melody by God's great
+blessings received and appreciated, and they need never want a theme
+who can tell what the Lord has done for their souls. 'Then shall... the
+tongue of the dumb sing.' A dumb Christian is a monstrosity. We are
+'the secretaries of His praise,' and have been saved ourselves that we
+may declare His goodness.
+
+Verse 51 has been supposed by some to be a liturgical addition, on the
+ground that, if David were the author, he would not be likely to name
+himself thus. But there does not seem to be anything unnatural in his
+mentioning himself by name in such a connection, and the reference to
+his dynasty, based as it is on Nathan's promise, is most fitting. The
+last thought about his mercies which the humble gratitude of the
+Psalmist utters is that they were not given to him for any good in
+himself, nor to be selfishly enjoyed, but that they were bestowed on
+him because of the place that he filled in the divine purposes, and
+belonged to 'his seed' as truly as to himself. So lowly had his
+prosperity made him. So truly had he sunk himself in his office, and in
+the great things that God meant to do through him and his house. We
+know better than David did what these were, and how the promise on
+which he rested his hopes of the duration of his house is fulfilled in
+his Son, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and who bears God's
+name to all the nations.
+
+
+
+
+THE DYING KING'S LAST VISION AND PSALM
+
+'Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and
+the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob,
+and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, 2. The Spirit of the Lord spake
+by me, and His word was in my tongue. 3. The God of Israel said, the
+Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just,
+ruling in the fear of God. 4. And he shall be as the light of the
+morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the
+tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. 5.
+Although my house be not so with God; yet He hath made with me an
+everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all
+my salvation, and all my desire, although He make it not to grow. 6.
+But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away,
+because they cannot be taken with hands: 7. But the man that shall
+touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear; and they
+shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place.'--2 SAMUEL xxiii,
+1-7.
+
+
+It was fitting that 'the last words of David' should be a prophecy of
+the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no less than his
+consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. His dying eyes
+see on the horizon of the far-off future the form of Him who is to be a
+just and perfect Ruler, before the brightness of whose presence and the
+refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothe the
+world. As the shades gather round the dying monarch, the radiant glory
+to come brightens. He departs in peace, having seen the salvation from
+afar, and stretched out longing hands of greeting toward it. Then his
+harp is silent, as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings
+had snapped them.
+
+1. We have first a prelude extending to the middle of verse 3. In it
+there is first a fourfold designation of the personality of the
+Psalmist-prophet, and then a fourfold designation of the divine oracle
+spoken through him. The word rendered in verse 1 'saith' is really a
+noun, and usually employed with 'the Lord' following, as in the
+familiar phrase 'saith the Lord.' It is used, as here, with the
+genitive of the human recipient, in Balaam's prophecy, on which this is
+evidently modelled. It distinctly claims a divine source for the oracle
+following, and declares, at the outset, that these last words of David
+were really the faithful sayings of Jehovah. The human and divine
+elements are smelted together. Note the description of the human
+personality. First, the natural 'David the son of Jesse,' like 'Balaam
+the son of Beor' in the earlier oracle. The aged king looks back with
+adoring thankfulness to his early days and humble birth, as if he were
+saying, 'Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this
+grace given, that I should proclaim the coming King.' Then follow three
+clauses descriptive of what 'the son of Jesse' had been made by the
+grace of God, in that he had been raised on high from his low condition
+of a shepherd boy, and anointed as ruler, not only by Samuel and the
+people, but by the God of their great ancestor, whose career had
+presented so many points of resemblance to his own, the God who still
+wrought among the nation which bore the patriarch's name, as He had
+wrought of old; and that, besides his royalty, he had been taught to
+sing the sweet songs which already were the heritage of the nation.
+This last designation shows what David counted God's chief gift to
+him,--not his crown, but his harp. It further shows that he regarded
+his psalms as divinely inspired, and it proves that already they had
+become the property of the nation. This first verse heightens the
+importance of the subsequent oracle by dwelling on the claims of the
+recipient of the revelation to be heard and heeded.
+
+Similarly, the fourfold designation of the divine source has the same
+purpose, and corresponds with the four clauses of verse 1, 'The Spirit
+of the Lord spake in [or "into"] me.' That gives the Psalmist's
+consciousness that in his prophecy he was but the recipient of a
+message. It wonderfully describes the penetrating power of that inward
+voice which clearly came to him from without, and as clearly spoke to
+him within. Words could not more plainly declare the prophetic
+consciousness of the distinction between himself and the Voice which he
+heard in the depths of his spirit. It spoke in him before he spoke his
+lyric prophecy. 'His word was upon my tongue.' There we have the
+utterance succeeding the inward voice, and the guarantee that the
+Psalmist's word was a true transcript of the inward voice. 'The God of
+Israel said,' and therefore Israel is concerned in the divine word,
+which is not of private reference, but meant for all. 'The Rock of
+Israel spake,' and therefore Israel may trust the Word, which rests on
+His immutable faithfulness and eternal being.
+
+II. The divine oracle thus solemnly introduced and guaranteed must be
+worthy of such a prelude. Abruptly, and in clauses without verbs, the
+picture of the righteous Ruler is divinely flashed before the seer's
+inward eye. The broken construction may perhaps indicate that he is
+describing what he beholds in vision. There is no need for any
+supplement such as 'There shall be,' which, however true in meaning,
+mars the vividness of the presentation of the Ruler to the prophet's
+sight. David sees him painted on the else blank wall of the future.
+When and where the realisation may be he knows not. What are the
+majestic outlines? A universal sovereign over collective humanity,
+righteous and God-fearing. In the same manner as he described the
+vision of the King, David goes on, as a man on some height telling what
+he saw to the people below, and paints the blessed issues of the King's
+coming.
+
+It had been night before He came,--the night of ignorance, sorrow, and
+sin,--but His coming is like one of these glorious Eastern sunrises
+without a cloud, when everything laughs in the early beams, and, with
+tropical swiftness, the tender herbage bursts from the ground, as born
+from the dazzling brightness and the fertilising rain. So all things
+shall rejoice in the reign of the King, and humanity be productive,
+under His glad and quickening influences, of growths of beauty and
+fruitfulness impossible to it without these.
+
+The abrupt form of the prophecy has led some interpreters to construe
+it as, 'When a king over men is righteous... then it is as a morning,'
+etc. But surely such a platitude is not worthy of being David's last
+word, nor did it need divine inspiration to disclose to him that a just
+king is a great blessing. The only worthy meaning is that which sees
+here, in words so solemnly marked as a special revelation closing the
+life of David, 'the vision of the future and all the wonder that should
+be,' when a real Person should thus reign over men. The explanation
+that we have here simply the ideal of the collective Davidic monarchy
+is a lame attempt to escape from the recognition of prophecy properly
+so called. It is the work of poetry to paint ideals, of prophecy to
+foretell, with God's authority, their realisation. The picture here is
+too radiant to be realised in any mere human king, and, as a matter of
+fact, never was so in any of David's successors, or in the whole of
+them put together. It either swings _in vacuo,_ a dream unrealised,
+or it is a distinct prophecy from God of the reign of the coming
+Messiah, of whom David and all his sons, as anointed kings, were
+living prophecies. 'The Messianic idea entered on a new stage of
+development with the monarchy, and that not as if the history
+stimulated men's imaginations, but that God used the history as a means
+of further revelation by His prophetic Spirit.
+
+III. The difficult verse 5, whether its first and last clauses be taken
+interrogatively or negatively, in its central part bases the assurance
+of the coming of the king on God's covenant (2 Samuel vii.), which is
+glorified as being everlasting, provided with all requisites for its
+realisation, and therefore 'sure,' or perhaps 'preserved,' as if
+guarded by God's inviolable sanctity and faithfulness. The fulfilment
+of the dying saint's hopes depends on God's truth. Whatever sense might
+say, or doubt whisper, he silences them by gazing on that great Word.
+So we all have to do. If we found our hopes and forecasts on it, we can
+go down to the grave calmly, though they be not fulfilled, sure that
+'no good thing can fail us of all that He hath spoken.' Living or
+dying, faith and hope must stay themselves on God's word. Happy they
+whose closing eyes see the form of the King, and whose last thoughts
+are of God's faithful promise! Happy they whose forecasts of the
+future, nearer or more remote, are shaped by His word! Happy they who,
+in the triumphant energy of such a faith, can with dying lips proclaim
+that His promises overlap, and contain, all their salvation and all
+their desire!
+
+If we read the first and last clauses negatively, with Revised Version
+and others, they, as it were, surround the kernel of clear-eyed faith,
+in the middle of the verse, with a husk, not of doubt, but of
+consciousness how far the present is from fulfilling the great promise.
+The poor dying king looks back on the scandals of his later reign, on
+his own sin, on his children's lust, rebellion, and tragic deaths, and
+feels how far from the ideal he and they have been. He sees little
+token of growth toward realisation of that promise; but yet in spite of
+a stained past and a wintry present, he holds fast his confidence. That
+is the true temper of faith, which calls things that are not as though
+they were, and is hindered by no sense of unworthiness nor by any
+discouragements born of sense, from grasping with full assurance the
+promise of God. But the consensus of the most careful expositors
+inclines to take both clauses as questions, and then the meaning would
+be, 'Does not my house stand in such a relation to God that the
+righteous king will spring from it? It is, in this view, a triumphant
+question, expressing the strongest assurance, and the next clause would
+then lay bare the foundation of that relation of David's house as not
+its goodness, but God's covenant ('_for_ He hath made'). Similarly
+the last clause would be a triumphant question of certainty, asserting
+in the strongest manner that God would cause that future salvation for
+the world, which was wrapped up in the coming of the king, and in which
+the dying man was sure that he should somehow have a share, dead though
+he were, to blossom and grow, though he had to die as in the winter,
+before the buds began to swell. The assurance of immortality, and of a
+share in all the blessings to come, bursts from the lips that are so
+soon to be silent.
+
+IV. But the oracle cannot end with painting only blessings as flowing
+from the king's reign. If he is to rule in righteousness and the fear
+of the Lord, then he must fight against evil. If his coming causes the
+tender grass to spring, it will quicken ugly growths too. The former
+representation is only half the truth; and the threatening of
+destruction for the evil is as much a part of the divine oracle as the
+other. Strictly, it is 'wickedness'--the abstract quality rather than
+the concrete persons who embody it--which is spoken of. May we recall
+the old distinction that God loves the sinner while He hates the sin?
+The picture is vivid. The wicked--and all the enemies of this King are
+wicked, in the prophet's view--are like some of these thorn-brakes,
+that cannot be laid hold of, even to root them out, but need to be
+attacked with sharp pruning-hooks on long shafts, or burned where they
+grow. There is a destructive side to the coming of the King, shadowed
+in every prophecy of him, and brought emphatically to prominence in his
+own descriptions of his reign and its final issues. It is a poor
+kindness to suppress that side of the truth. Thorns as well as tender
+grass spring up in the quickening beams; and the best commentary on the
+solemn words which close David's closing song is the saying of the King
+himself: 'In the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather
+up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them.'
+
+
+
+
+THE ROYAL JUBILEE
+[Footnote: Preached on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond
+Jubilee.]
+
+'... He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
+4. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth,
+even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the
+earth, by clear shining after rain.'--2 SAMUEL xxiii. 3, 4.
+
+
+One of the Psalms ascribed to David sounds like the resolves of a new
+monarch on his accession. In it the Psalmist draws the ideal of a king,
+and says such things as, 'I will behave myself wisely, in a perfect
+way. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. I hate the work of
+them that turn aside. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land,
+that they may dwell with me.' That psalm we may regard as the first
+words of the king when, after long, weary years, the promise of
+Samuel's anointing was fulfilled, and he sat on the throne.
+
+My text comes from what purports to be the last words of the same king.
+
+He looks back, and again the ideal of a monarch rises before him. The
+psalm, for it is a psalm, though it is not in the Psalter, is
+compressed to the verge of obscurity; and there may be many questions
+raised about its translation and its bearing. These do not need to
+occupy us now, but the words which I have selected for my text may,
+perhaps, best be represented to an English reader in some such sentence
+as this--'If (or when) one rules over men justly, ruling in the fear of
+God, then it shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth,
+even a morning without clouds.'  With such a monarch all the interests
+of his people will prosper. His reign will be like the radiant dawn of
+a cloudless day, and his land like the spring pastures when the fresh,
+green grass is wooed out of the baked earth by the combined influence
+of rain and sunshine. David's little kingdom was surrounded by giant
+empires, in which brute force, wielded by despotic will, ground men
+down, or squandered their lives recklessly. But the King of Israel had
+learned, partly by the experience of his own reign, and partly by
+divine inspiration, that such rulers are not true types of a monarch
+after God's own heart. This ideal king is neither a warrior nor a
+despot. Two qualities mark him, Justice and Godliness. Pharaoh and his
+like, oppressors, were as the lightning which blasts and scorches. The
+true king was to be as the sunshine that vitalises and gladdens. 'He
+shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that
+water the earth.'
+
+We do not need to ask the question here, though it might be very
+relevant on another occasion, whether this portraiture is a mere ideal,
+floating _in vacuo,_ or whether it is a direct prophecy of that
+expected Messianic king who was to realise the divine ideal of
+sovereignty. At all events we know that, in its highest and deepest
+significance, the picture of my text has lived and breathed human
+breath, in Jesus Christ, who both in His character and in His influence
+on the world, fulfilled the ideal that floated before the eyes of the
+aged king.
+
+I do not need to follow the course of thought in this psalm any
+farther. You will have anticipated my motive for selecting this text
+now. It seems to me to gather up, in vivid and picturesque form, the
+thoughts and feelings which to-day are thrilling through an Empire, to
+which the most extended dominion of these warrior kings of old was but
+a speck. On such an occasion as this I need not make any apology, I am
+sure, for diverging from the ordinary topics of pulpit address, and
+associating ourselves with the many millions who to-day are giving
+thanks for Queen Victoria.
+
+My text suggests two lines along which the course of our thoughts may
+run. The one is the personal character of this ideal monarch; the other
+is its effects on his subjects.
+
+I. Now, with regard to the former, the pulpit is, in my judgment, not
+the place either for the discussion of current events or the
+pronouncing of personal eulogiums. But I shall not be wandering beyond
+my legitimate province, if I venture to try to gather into a few words
+the reasons, in the character and public life of our Queen, for the
+thankfulness of this day. Our text brings out, as I have said, two
+great qualities as those on which a throne is to be established,
+Justice and Godliness. Now, the ancient type of monarch was the
+fountain of justice, in a very direct sense; inasmuch as it was his
+office, not only to pronounce sentence on criminals, but to give
+decisions on disputed questions of right. These functions have long
+ceased to be exercised by our monarchs, but there is still room for
+both of those qualities--the Justice which holds an even balance
+between parties and strifes, the Righteousness which has supreme regard
+to the primary duties that press alike upon prince and pauper, and the
+Godliness which, as I believe, is the root from which all
+righteousness, as between man and man, and as between prince and
+subject, must ever flow. Morality is the garb of religion; religion is
+the root of morality. He, and only he, will hold an even balance and
+discharge his obligations to man, whose life is rooted in, and his acts
+under the continual influence of, the fear of God which has in it no
+torment, but is the parent of all things good.
+
+We shall not be flatterers if we thankfully recognise in our Sovereign
+Lady the presence of both these qualities. I have spoken of the first
+inaugural words of the King of Israel, and the resolutions that he
+made. It is recorded that when, to the child of eleven years of age,
+the announcement was made that she stood near in the line of succession
+to the throne, the tremulous young lips answered, 'It is a great
+responsibility; but I will be good.' And all round the world to-day her
+subjects attest that the aged monarch has kept the little maiden's vow.
+Contrast that life with the lives of the other women who have sat on
+the throne of England. Think of the brilliant Queen, whose glories our
+greatest poets were not ashamed to sing, with the Tudor masterfulness
+in her, and not a little of the Tudor grossness and passion, and
+remember the blots that stained her glories. Think of her sister, the
+morbidly melancholy tool of priests, who goes down the ages branded
+with an epithet only too sadly earned. Think of another woman that
+ruled over England in name, the weak instrument of base intrigues. And
+then turn to this life which we are looking upon to-day. Think of the
+nameless scandals, the hideous immorality of the reigns that preceded
+hers, and you will not wonder that every decent man and every modest
+woman was thankful that, with the young girl, there came a breath of
+purer air into the foul atmosphere. I am old enough to remember
+hearing, as a boy, the talk of my elders as to the probabilities of
+insurrection if, instead of our Queen, there had come to the throne the
+brother of her two predecessors. The hopes of those early days have
+been more than fulfilled.
+
+
+It is not for us to determine the religious character of others, and
+that is too sacred a region for us to enter; but this we may say, that
+in all these sixty years of diversified trial, there has been no act
+known to us outsiders inconsistent with the highest motive, the fear of
+the Lord; and some of us who have worshipped in the humble Highland
+church where she has bowed have felt that on the throne of Britain sat
+a Christian.
+
+Nor need we forget how, from that root of fear of God, there has come
+that wondrous patience and faithfulness to duty, the form of 'Justice'
+which is possible for a constitutional monarch. We have little notion
+of how pressing and numerous and continual the royal duties must
+necessarily be. They have been discharged, even when the blow that
+struck all sunshine out of life left an irrepressible shrinking from
+pageantry and pomp. Joys come; joys go. Duties abide, and they have
+been done.
+
+Nor can we forget, either, how the very difficult position of a
+constitutional monarch, with the semblance of power and the reality of
+narrow restrictions, has been filled. Our Sovereign has never set
+herself against the will of the people, expressed by its legitimate
+representatives, even when that will may have imposed upon her the
+sanction of changes which she did not approve. And that is much to say.
+We have seen young despots whose self-will has threatened to wreck a
+nation's prosperity.
+
+Nor can we forget how all the immense influence of position and
+personality has been thrown on the side of purity and righteousness.
+Even we outsiders know how, more than once or twice, she has
+steadfastly set her face against the admission to her presence of men
+and women of evil repute, and has in effect repeated David's
+proclamation against vice and immorality at his accession: 'He that
+worketh wickedness shall not dwell within my house.'
+
+Nor must we forget, either, the simplicity, the beauty, the tenderness
+of her wedded and family life, her love of rural quiet, and of
+wholesome communion with Nature, and her eagerness to take her people
+into her confidence, as set forth in the book which, whatever its
+literary merits, speaks of her earnest appreciation of Nature and her
+wish for the sympathy of her subjects.
+
+Then came the bolt from the blue, that sudden crash that wrecked the
+happiness of a life. Many of us, I have no doubt, remember that dreary
+December Sunday morning when, while the nation was standing in
+expectation of another calamity from across the Atlantic, there flashed
+through the land the news of the Prince's death; thrilling all hearts,
+and bringing all nearer to her, the lonely widow, than they had ever
+been in her days of radiant happiness. How pathetically, silently,
+nobly, devoutly, that sorrow has been borne, it is not for us to speak.
+She has become one of the great company of sad and lonely hearts, and
+in her sadness has shown an eager desire to send messages of sympathy
+to all whom she could reach, who were in like darkness and sorrow.
+
+Brethren, I have ventured to diverge so far from the ordinary run of
+pulpit ministrations because I feel that to-day all of us, whatever may
+be our political or ecclesiastical relationships and proclivities, are
+one in thanking God for the monarch whose life has been without a
+stain, and her reign without a blot.
+
+II. Now let me say a word as to the other line of thought which my text
+suggests, the effect of such a reign on the condition of the subject.
+
+Now, of course, in the narrowly limited domain of that strange
+creation, a constitutional monarchy, there is far less opportunity for
+the Sovereign's direct influence on the Subject than there was in the
+ancient kingdoms of which David was thinking in his psalm. The
+marvellous progress of Britain during these sixty years is due, not to
+our Sovereign, but to a multitude of strenuous workers and earnest
+thinkers in a hundred different departments, as well as to the
+evolution of the gifts that come down to us from our ancient
+inheritance of freedom. But we shall much mistake if, for that reason,
+we set aside the monarch's character and influence as of no account in
+the progress,
+
+A supposition, which is a violent one, may be made which will set this
+matter in clearer light. Suppose that during these sixty years we had
+had a king on the throne of England like some of the kings we have had.
+The sentiment of loyalty is not now of such a character as that it will
+survive a vicious sovereign. If we had had such a monarch as I have
+hinted at, the loyalty of the good would for all these years have been
+suffering a severe strain, and the forces that make for evil would have
+been disastrously strengthened. Dangers escaped are unnoticed, but one
+twelvemonth of the reign of a profligate would shake the foundations of
+the monarchy, and would open the floodgates of vice; and we should then
+know how much the nation owed to the Queen whose life was pure, and who
+cast all her influence on the side of 'things that are lovely and of
+good report.'
+
+Take another supposition. Suppose that during these years of wonderful
+transition, when the whole aspect of English politics and society has
+been transformed, we had had a king like George III., who set his
+opinion against the nation's will constitutionally expressed. Then no
+man knows with what storm and tumult, with what strife and injury, the
+inevitable transition would have been effected. Be sure of this, that
+the wise self-effacement of our Sovereign during these critical years
+of change is largely the reason why they have been years of peace, in
+which the new has mingled itself with the old without revolution or
+disturbance. It is due to her in a very large degree that
+                 'Freedom broadens slowly down
+                  From precedent to precedent.'
+
+I need not dilate on the changed Britain that she looks out upon and
+rules to-day. I need not speak--there will be many voices to do that,
+in not altogether agreeable notes, for there will be a dash of too much
+self-complacency in them--about progress in material wealth, colonial
+expansion, the increase of education, the gentler manners, the new life
+that has been breathed over art and literature, the achievements in
+science and philosophy, the drawing together of classes, the bridging
+over of the great gulf between rich and poor by some incipient and
+tentative attempts at sympathy and brotherhood.
+
+Nor need I dwell upon the ecclesiastical signs of the times, in which,
+mingled as they are, there is at least this one great good, that never
+since the early days have so large a proportion of Christian men been
+'seeking after the things that make for peace,' and realising the
+oneness of all believers who hold the Headship of Christ.
+
+All this review falls more properly into other hands than mine. Only I
+would put in a caution--do not let us mingle self-conceit with our
+congratulations; and, above all, do not let us 'rest and be thankful.'
+There is much to be done yet. Listening ears can catch on every side
+vague sounds that tell of unrest and of the stirrings into wakefulness
+of
+                'The spirit of the years to come,
+                 Yearning to mix itself with life.'
+
+I seem to hear all around me the rushing in the dark of a mighty
+current that is bearing down upon us. Great social questions are
+rapidly coming to the front--the questions of distribution of wealth,
+abolition of privilege, the relations of labour and capital, and many
+others are clamant to be dealt with at least, if not solved. There Is
+much to be done before Jesus Christ is throned as King of England. War
+has to be frowned down; the brotherhood of man has to be realised,
+temperance has to be much more largely practised than it is.
+
+I need not go over the catalogue of _desiderata,_ of
+_agenda_--things that have to be done--in the near future. Only
+this I would say--Christian men and women are the last people who
+should be ready to 'rest and be thankful,' for the principles of the
+Gospel that we profess, which have never been applied to the life of
+nations as they ought to be, will solve the questions which make the
+despair of so many in this generation. We shall best express our
+thankfulness for these past sixty years by each of us taking our part
+in the great movement which, in the inevitable drift of things to
+democracy, is going to 'cast the kingdom old into another mould,' and
+which will, I pray, make our people more of what John Milton long ago
+called them, 'God's Englishmen.' We have taught the nations many
+things. Our Parliament is called the Mother of Parliaments. Ours is
+           'The land where, girt with friends or foes,
+            A man may say the thing he will.'
+
+It has taught the nations a tempered freedom, and that a monarchy may
+be a true republic. May we rise to the height of our privileges and
+responsibilities, and teach our subject peoples, not only mechanics,
+science, law, free trade, but a loftier morality, and the name of Him
+by whom kings reign and princes decree justice!
+
+We, members of the free Churches of England, come seldom under the
+notice of royalty, and have little acquaintance with courts, but we
+yield to none in our recognition of the virtues and in our sympathy
+with the sorrows of the Sovereign Lady, the good woman, who rules these
+lands, and we all heartily thank God for her to-day, and pray that for
+long years still to come the familiar letters V.R. may stand, as they
+have stood to two generations, as the symbol of womanly purity and of
+the faithful discharge of queenly duty.
+
+
+
+
+A LIBATION TO JEHOVAH
+
+'And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the
+water of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate! 16. And the
+three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew
+water out of the well of Beth-lehem, that was by the gate, and took it
+and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but
+poured it out unto the Lord. 17. And he said, Be it far from me, O
+Lord, that I should do this; is not this the blood of the men that went
+in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it. These
+things did these three mighty men.'--2 SAMUEL xxiii. 15-17.
+
+
+David's fortunes were at a low ebb. He was in hiding in his cave of
+Adullam, and a Philistine garrison held Bethlehem, his native place. He
+was little different from an outlaw at the head of a band of 'broken
+men,' but there were depths of chivalry and poetry in his heart.
+Sweltering in his cave in the fierce heat of harvest, he thought of his
+native Bethlehem; he remembered the old days when he had watered his
+flock at the well by its gate, or mingled with the people of the little
+town, in their evening assemblies round it. The memories of boyhood
+rose up radiant before him, and as he was immersed in the past, the
+grim present, the perils that threatened his life, the savage, gaunt
+rocks without a trace of greenness that girded him, the privations to
+which he was exposed, were all forgotten, and he longed for one more
+draught of the water that tasted so cool and sweet to memory. Three of
+his 'mighty men,' bound to him by loyal devotion and unselfish love,
+were ready to die to win for their chief a momentary gratification. So
+they slipped away from Adullam, 'brake through the host of the
+Philistines,' and brought back the longed-for draught. David's
+reception of the dearly-bought, sparkling gift was due to a noble
+impulse. The water seemed to him to be dyed with blood, and to be not
+water so much as 'lives of men.' It had become too precious to be used
+to satisfy his longing. It would be base self-indulgence to drink what
+had been won by such self-forgetting devotion. God only had the right
+to receive what men had risked their lives to obtain, and therefore he
+'poured it out unto the Lord.'
+
+The story gleams out of the fierce narratives in which it is embedded,
+like a flower blooming on some grim cliff. May we not learn lessons
+from it?
+
+I. David's longing.
+
+David, a fugitive in the cave, haunted by the 'nostalgia' that made
+Bethlehem seem so fair and dear, may stand for us as an example of the
+longings and thirsts that sometimes force themselves into consciousness
+in every soul. Below the bustle and strife of daily life, occupied as
+it must be with material and often ignoble things, below the hardness
+into which the world has compressed men's surface nature, there lies a
+yearning for the cool water that rises hard by the gate of our native
+home. True, it is with many of us overlaid for the most part by coarser
+desires, and may be as unlike our usual dominant longings and aims, as
+David's tender outbreak of sentiment was to the prevailing tenor of his
+life, in those days when he was an outlaw and a freebooter. But the
+longing, though often stifled, is not wholly quenched. It is
+misinterpreted by the man who is conscious of it, and far too often he
+tries to slake the thirst by fiery and drugged liquors which but make
+it more intense. Happy are they who know what it is that their parched
+palates crave, and have learned, while yet the knowledge avails, to
+say, 'My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God'! 'Blessed are they
+who thirst after' the water of the well of Bethlehem, 'for they shall
+be filled!'
+
+II. The three heroes' devotion.
+
+These three rough soldiers, lawless and fierce as they were, had been
+so mastered by their chief that they were ready to dare anything to
+pleasure him. Who would have looked for such delicacy of feeling and
+such enthusiastic self-surrender in such men?
+
+They stand as grand instances of the height of devotion of which the
+rudest nature is capable, when once its love and loyalty to the Beloved
+are evoked.
+
+How such deeds ennoble the lowest types of character, and make us think
+better of men, and more sadly of the contrast between their habitual
+characteristics and the possibilities that lie slumbering in their
+ignoble lives! There are sparks in the hard cold flint, if only they
+could be struck out. There is water in the rock, if only the right
+hand, armed with the wonder-working rod, smites it.
+
+
+Let us not judge men too harshly by what they do and are, but let us
+try to bring their sleeping possibilities into conscious exercise.
+
+Let us remember that love and self-sacrifice, which is the very outcome
+and natural voice of love, ennoble the most degraded.
+
+But these heroic three may suggest to us a sadder thought. They were
+ready to die for David; would they have been as ready to die for God?
+These noble emotions of love, leading to glad flinging away of life to
+pleasure the beloved, are freely given to men, but too often withheld
+from God, We lavish on our beloveds or on our chosen leaders, a
+devotion that ought to shame us, when contrasted with the scantiness of
+our grudging devotion and self-surrender to Him. If we loved God a
+tenth part as ardently as we love our wives or husbands or parents or
+children, and were willing to do and bear as much for Him as we are
+willing to bear for them, how different our lives would be! We can love
+utterly, enthusiastically, self-forget-tingly, absorbed in the beloved,
+and counting all surrender of self to, and the sacrifice of life itself
+for, him or her a delight. Many of us do love men so. Do we love God
+so?
+
+But these heroic three may suggest another thought. Their self-
+sacrificing love was illustrious; but there is a nobler, more
+wonderful, more soul-subduing instance of such love. They broke through
+the ranks of the Philistines to bring David a draught from the well of
+Bethlehem. Jesus has broken through the ranks of our enemies to bring
+us the water of which 'if a man drink, he shall live for ever.' If we
+would see the highest example of self-sacrificing love, we must turn to
+look, not on the instances of it that shine through the ages on the
+page of history, and make men thrill as they gaze, and think better of
+the human nature that can do such things, but on the Christ hanging on
+the Cross because He loved those who did not love Him, and giving His
+life a ransom for sinners.
+
+
+III. David's reception of the water.
+
+The chivalrous devotion of the three touched an answering chord in
+their chivalrous chief. His heart filled at the thought of what they
+had risked, and revolted from employing what had been thus won for no
+higher use than to gratify a piece of sentiment in himself. The
+sparkling water was too sacred to be taken for any baser use than as a
+libation to Jehovah. And who can doubt that the three were more fully
+repaid for their devotion, as David poured it out unto the Lord, than
+if he had drunk it eagerly up? His feeling and his act indicate
+beautiful delicacy of instinct, and swiftness of perception of how to
+requite the devotion of the three.
+
+We may separate into its two parts the generous impulse which sprang as
+one whole in David's breast. There was the shrinking from using the
+water to slake his thirst merely, and there was the resolve to pour it
+out as a libation to God. Both parts of that whole may yield us
+profitable thoughts.
+
+To risk their lives for the water was noble in the three; to have
+quaffed it as if it had been drawn like any other water from a well,
+would have been ignoble in David. There are things that it may be noble
+to give and ignoble to accept. There are sacrifices which we are not
+entitled to allow others to make for our sakes. Gratifications which
+can only be procured at the hazard of men's lives are too dearly
+bought.
+
+Would not a civilisation, that draws much of its comforts and
+appliances from 'sweated industries,' and is languidly amused by seeing
+men and women performers peril their lives nightly, and lose them too,
+for its gratification, be the better for copying David's recoil from
+drinking 'the blood of men that went in jeopardy of their lives'? Is
+there not 'blood' on many a woman's ball-dress, on many an article of
+luxury, on many an amusement?
+
+There are sacrifices which we have no right to accept from others. The
+three had no right to risk life for such a purpose, and David would
+have been selfish if he had drunk the water. Do not such thoughts lead
+us by contrast to Him who has done what none other can do? 'None of
+them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give his life a ransom
+for him'; but Jesus can and Jesus does, and what it would be
+impossible, and wrong if it were possible, for one man to do for
+another, He has done for us all, and what it would be base for a man to
+accept from another if that other could give it, it is blessed and the
+beginning of all nobleness of character for us to accept from Him.
+David would not drink because the cup seemed to him to be red with
+blood. Jesus offers to us a cup, not of cold water only but of 'water
+and blood,' and bids us drink of it and remember Him.
+
+The generous devotion of the three kindled answering emotions in
+David's breast. It would be a churlish soul that was not warmed into
+some faint replica of such self-sacrifice, and most of us would be
+ashamed of ourselves if we were unmoved by such love. But does the
+supreme example of it affect us as much as the lesser examples of it
+do? How many of us stand before it like the peaks of the Alps that
+front full south, and lift an unmelted breastplate of snow to the
+midday sun! How many of us have lived all our lives in presence of
+Jesus' infinite love and self-surrender for us each, and never have
+felt one transient touch of answering love!
+
+The other part of David's impulse was to offer to God what was too
+precious for his own use. That is the fitting destination of our most
+precious and prized possessions. And whatever is thus offered becomes
+more precious by being offered. The altar sanctifies and enhances the
+worth of the gift. What we give to God is more our own than if we had
+kept it to ourselves, and develops richer capacities of ministering to
+our delight. It is so with our greatest surrender, the surrender of
+ourselves. When we give ourselves to Jesus, He renders us back to
+ourselves, far better worth having than before. We are never so much
+our own as when we are wholly Christ's. And the same thing is true as
+to all our riches of mind, heart, or worldly wealth. If we wish to
+taste their most delicate and refined sweetness, let us give them to
+Jesus, and the touch of His hand, as He accepts them and gives them
+back to us, will leave a lingering fragrance that nothing else can
+impart. Was not the water from the well of Bethlehem sweeter to David
+as he poured it out unto the Lord than if he had greedily gulped it
+down?
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS
+
+
+
+
+DAVID APPOINTING SOLOMON
+
+'Then king David answered and said, Call me Bath-sheba. And she came
+into the king's presence, and stood before the king. 29. And the king
+sware, and said, As the Lord liveth, that hath redeemed my soul out of
+all distress, 30. Even as I sware unto thee by the Lord God of Israel,
+saying, Assuredly Solomon thy son shall reign after me, and he shall
+sit upon my throne in my stead; even so will I certainly do this day.
+31. Then Bath-sheba bowed with her face to the earth, and did reverence
+to the king, and said, Let my lord king David live for ever. 32. And
+king David said, Call me Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and
+Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. And they came before the king. 33. The
+king also said unto them, Take with you the servants of your lord, and
+cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring him down to
+Gihon: 34. And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him
+there king over Israel: and blow ye with the trumpet, and say, God save
+king Solomon. 35. Then ye shall come up after him, that he may come and
+sit upon my throne; for he shall be king in my stead: and I have
+appointed him to be ruler over Israel and over Judah. 36. And Benaiah
+the son of Jehoiada answered the king, and said, Amen; the Lord God of
+my lord the king say so too. 37. As the Lord hath been with my lord the
+king, even so be he with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the
+throne of my lord king David. 38. So Zadok the priest, and Nathan the
+prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the
+Pelethites, went down, and caused Solomon to ride upon king David's
+mule, and brought him to Gihon. 39. And Zadok the priest took an horn
+of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the
+trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon.'--1 KINGS i.
+28-39.
+
+
+The earlier part of this chapter must be taken into account in order to
+get the right view of this incident. David's eldest surviving son,
+Adonijah, had claimed the succession, and gathered his partisans to a
+feast. Nathan, alarmed at the prospect of such a successor, had
+arranged with Bathsheba that she should go to David and ask his public
+confirmation of his promise to her that Solomon should succeed him, and
+that then Nathan should seek an audience while she was with the king,
+and, as independently, should prefer the same request.
+
+The plan was carried out, and here we see its results. The old king was
+roused to a flash of his ancient vigour, confirmed his oath to
+Bathsheba, and promptly cut the ground from under Adonijah's feet by
+sending for the three who had remained true to him--Nathan, Benaiah,
+and Zadok--and despatching them without a moment's delay to proclaim
+Solomon king, and then to bring him up to the palace and enthrone him.
+The swift execution of these decisive orders, and the burst of popular
+acclamation which welcomed Solomon's accession, shattered the nascent
+conspiracy, and its supporters scattered in haste, to preserve their
+lives. The story may be best dealt with, for our purpose, by taking
+this brief summary and trying to draw lessons from it.
+
+I. It points anew the truth that 'whatsoever a man soweth, that shall
+he also reap.' As Absalom, so Adonijah, had been spoiled by David's
+over-indulgence (verse 6), and having never had his wishes checked, was
+now letting his unbridled wishes hurry him into rebellion. Nor was that
+fault of David's the only one which brought about the miserable
+squabbles round his deathbed, as to who should wear the crown which had
+not yet fallen from his head. Eastern monarchies are familiar with
+struggles for the crown between the sons of different mothers when
+their father dies. David had indulged in a multitude of wives, and his
+last days were darkened by the resulting intrigues of his sons. No
+doubt, too, Solomon was disliked by his brethren as the child of
+Bathsheba, and the shame of David's crime was an obstacle in his
+younger son's way. Thus, as ever, his evil deeds came home to roost,
+and the poisonous seed which he had sown grew up and waved, a bitter
+harvest, which he had to reap. Repentance and forgiveness did not
+neutralise the natural consequences of his sin. Nor will they do so for
+us. God often leaves them to be experienced, that the experience may
+make us hate the sins the more.
+
+II. The sad defection to Adonijah of such tried friends as Joab and
+Abiathar has its lesson. The reason for Joab's treachery is plain. He
+had been steadily drifting away from David for years. His fierce temper
+could not brook the king's displeasure on account of his murders of
+Abner and Amasa, and his slaying of Absalom had made the breach
+irreparable. No doubt, David had made him feel that he loved and
+trusted him no longer; and his old comrade in many a fight, Benaiah,
+had stepped into the place which he had once filled. Professional
+rivalry had darkened into bitter bate. Joab commanded the native-born
+Israelites; Benaiah, the 'Cherethites and Pelethites,' who are now
+generally regarded as foreign mercenaries. They were David's bodyguard,
+and were probably as heartily hated by Joab and the other Israelite
+soldiers as they were trusted by David. So there were reasons enough
+for Joab's abetting an insurrection which would again make him the
+foremost soldier. He wanted to be indispensable, and would prop the
+throne as long as its occupant looked only to him as its defender.
+Besides, he probably felt that he would have little chance of winning
+distinction in a kingdom which was to be a peaceful one.
+
+Abiathar's motives are unexplained, but if we notice that he had been
+obliged to acquiesce in the irregular arrangement of putting the high-
+priest's office into commission, we can understand that he bore no
+goodwill to Zadok, his colleague, or to David for making the latter so.
+Self was at the bottom of these two renegades' action. The fair
+fellowship, which had been made the closer because of dangers and
+privations faced together, crumbled away before the disintegrating
+influences of petty personal jealousies. When once self-regard gets in,
+it is like the trickle of water in the cracks of a rock, which freezes
+in winter and splits the hardest stone. No common action for a great
+cause is possible without the suppression of sidelong looks towards
+private advantage. Joab and Abiathar tarnished a life's devotion and
+broke sacred bonds, because they thought of themselves rather than of
+God's will. Surely they must have had some pangs as they sat at
+Adonijah's feast, when they thought of the decrepit old king lying in
+his chamber up on Zion, and remembered what he and they had come
+through together.
+
+III. We may note the pathetic picture of decaying old age which is seen
+in David. He was not very old in years, being about seventy, but he was
+a worn-out man. His early hardships had told on him, and now he lay in
+the inner chamber, the shadow of himself. His love for Bathsheba had
+died down, as would appear both from her demeanour before him, and from
+her ignorance of his intentions as to his successor. She was little or
+nothing to him now. He seems to have been torpidly unaware of what was
+going on. The noise of Adonijah's revels had not disturbed his quiet.
+He had not even taken the trouble to designate his successor, though
+'the eyes of all Israel were upon him that he should tell who was to
+sit on his throne after him' (v. 20). Such neglect was criminal in the
+circumstances, and brings out forcibly the weary indifference which had
+crept over him. Contrast that picture with the early days of swift
+energy and eager interest in all things. Is this half-comatose old man
+the David who flashed like a meteor and struck swift as a thunderbolt
+but a few years before? Yes, and a like collapse of power befalls us
+all, if life is prolonged. Those who most need the lesson will be least
+touched by it; but let not the young glory in their strength, for it
+soon fades away; and let them give the vigour of their early days to
+God, that, when the years come in which they shall say, 'I have no
+pleasure in them,' they may be able, like David, to look back over a
+long life and say, with him, that the Lord 'hath redeemed my soul out
+of all adversity.'
+
+IV. We note the flash of fire which blazed up in the dying embers of
+David's life. The old lion could be roused yet, and could strike when
+roused. It took much to shake him out of his torpor. Nathan's plan of
+bringing the double influence of Bathsheba and himself to bear was
+successful beyond what he had hoped. All that they desired was a formal
+declaration of Solomon as successor. They knew that the king's name was
+still dear enough to all Israel to ensure that his wish would settle
+the succession; and they would have been content to have left the
+actual entrance of Solomon on office till after David's death, so sure
+were they that his word was still a spell. But the old king, shaking
+off his languor, as a lion does the drops from his mane, goes beyond
+their wishes, and strikes one decisive blow as with a great paw, and no
+second is needed. Without a moment's delay, he sends for the trusty
+three, and bids them act on the instant. So down to Gihon goes the
+procession, with the youthful prince seated on his father's mule, in
+token of his accession, the trusty bodyguard round him with Benaiah at
+their head, and the great prophet Nathan, side by side with the high-
+priest Zadok, representing the divine sanction of the solemn act.
+
+It would take stronger men than the spoiled Adonijah and his revellers
+to upset anything which that determined company resolved to do. The lad
+is anointed with the holy oil which Zadok as high-priest had the right
+to bring forth from the temporary sanctuary. That signified and
+effected the communication from above of qualifications for the kingly
+office, and indicated divine appointment. Then out blared the trumpets,
+and the glad people shouted 'God save the king!' What thoughts filled
+the young heart of Solomon as he stood silent there his vision in
+Gibeon may partly tell. But the distant roar of acclaim reached
+Adonijah and his gang as they sat at their too hasty banquet.
+
+They had begun at the wrong end. The feast should have closed, not
+inaugurated, the dash for the crown. They who feast when they should
+fight are likely to end their mirth with sorrow. David's one stroke was
+enough. They were as sure as Nathan and Bathsheba had been that the
+declaration of his wish would carry all Israel with it, and so they saw
+that the game was up, and there was a rush for dear life. The empty
+banqueting-hall proclaimed the collapse of a rebellion which had no
+brains to guide it, and no reason to justify it. Let us learn that,
+though 'the race is not always to the swift,' promptitude of action,
+when we are sure of God's will, is usually a condition of success. Life
+is too short, and the work to be done too pressing and great, to allow
+of dawdling. 'I made haste, and delayed not, but made haste to keep Thy
+commandments.' Let us learn, too, from Adonijah's fiasco, to see the
+end of a thing before we commit ourselves to it, and to have the work
+done first before we think of the feast.
+
+Nathan and Bathsheba and David all believed that God had willed
+Solomon's succeeding to the throne. No doubt, the reason for their
+belief was the divine word to David through Nathan (2 Samuel vii. 12),
+which designated a son not yet born as his successor, and therefore
+excluded Adonijah as well as Absalom. But, while they believed this,
+they did not therefore let Adonijah work his will, and leave God to
+carry out His purposes. Their belief animated their action. They knew
+what God willed, and therefore they worked strenuously to effect that
+will. We may bewilder our brains with speculations about the relation
+between God's sovereignty and man's freedom, but, when it comes to
+practical work, we have to put out the best and most that is in us to
+prevent God's will from being thwarted by rebellious men, and to ensure
+its being carried into effect through our efforts, 'for we are God's
+fellow-workers.'
+
+
+
+
+A YOUNG MAN'S WISE CHOICE OP WISDOM
+
+'In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God
+said, Ask what I shall give thee. 6. And Solomon said, Thou hast shewed
+unto Thy servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked
+before Thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart
+with Thee; and Thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that Thou
+hast given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. 7. And
+now, O Lord my God, Thou hast made Thy servant king instead of David my
+father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come
+in. 8. And Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people which Thou hast
+chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for
+multitude. 9. Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart to
+judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is
+able to judge this Thy so great a people? 10. And the speech pleased
+the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. 11. And God said unto him,
+Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long
+life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of
+thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern
+judgment; 12. Behold, I have done according to thy words: lo, I have
+given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none
+like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto
+thee. 13. And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked,
+both riches and honour: so that there shall not be any among the kings
+like unto thee all thy days. 14. And if thou wilt walk in My ways, to
+keep My statutes and My commandments, as thy father David did walk,
+then I will lengthen thy days. 15. And Solomon awoke; and, behold, It
+was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the
+covenant of the Lord, and offered up burnt offerings, and offered peace
+offerings, and made a feast to all his servants.'--1 KINGS iii. 5-15.
+
+
+The new king was apparently some nineteen or twenty years old on his
+accession. He stepped at once out of seclusion and idleness to bear the
+whole weight of the kingdom. The glories of David's reign, his brother
+Adonijah's pretensions to the crown, the smouldering hostility of
+Saul's old partisans, made his position difficult and his throne
+unsteady. No doubt, 'the weight of too much dignity' pressed on the
+youth, and this dream found a point of origin in his waking thoughts.
+God does not thus reveal Himself to men who seek Him not; and the offer
+in the vision is but the repetition of what Solomon felt in many a
+waking moment of meditation that God was saying to him, and the choice
+he makes in it is the choice that he had already made. He who seeks
+wisdom first is already wise.
+
+I. Note the wide possibilities opened by the divine offer. Our
+narrative brings that gracious offer into connection with Solomon's
+lavish sacrifice before the Tabernacle at Gibeon. 'God loveth a
+cheerful giver' and because these thousand burnt offerings meant
+devotion and thankfulness, therefore He who lets no man be the poorer
+for what he gives to Him, and is honoured most, not by our givings to,
+but by our takings from Him, comes in the quiet night, and puts the key
+of all His treasures into the young king's hands. In a very real sense
+this divine voice is but the putting into words of the fact as to every
+young life. The all but boundless possibilities before every young man
+and woman give solemnity to their position, which they too often do not
+recognise till youth is past. The future lies blank before them, ready
+to receive what they choose to write on its page. Once written, it is
+indelible. They are still free from the limitations of habit and
+associations. They have still the capacity and the opportunity of
+choice. There are limits, of course, but still it is scarcely
+exaggeration to say that a man may become almost anything he likes, if
+he strongly wills it when young, and sticks to his resolve. When the
+liquid iron flows from the blast furnace, it may be run into any mould;
+but it soon cools and hardens, and obstinately keeps its shape, in
+spite of hammers.
+
+If young men and women could but see the possibilities of their youth,
+and the issues that hang on early choice, as clearly as they will see
+them some day, there would be fewer wasted mornings of life and fewer
+gloomy sunsets. But the misery is that so many do not choose at all,
+but just let things slide, and allow themselves to be moulded by
+whatever influence happens to be strongest. For one man who goes wrong
+by deliberate choice, with open eyes, there are twenty who simply
+drift. Unfortunately, there is more evil than good in the world; and if
+a lad takes his colour from his surroundings, the chances are terribly
+against his coming to anything high, noble, or pure. This world is no
+place for a man who cannot say 'No.' If we are like the weeds in a
+stream, and let it decide which way we shall point, we shall be sure to
+point downwards. It would do much to secure the choice of the Good, if
+there were a clear recognition by all young persons of the fact that
+they have the choice to make, and are really making it unconsciously.
+If they could be brought, like Solomon, to put their ruling wish into
+plain words, many who are not ashamed to yield to unworthy desires
+would be ashamed to speak them out baldly. Let each ask himself,
+'Suppose that I had to say out what I want most, dare I avow before my
+own conscience, to say nothing of God, what it is?
+
+Looked at from a somewhat different point of view, God's offer to
+Solomon presupposes God's knowledge and approval of his wishes. He does
+not give blank cheques to those whom He cannot trust to fill them up
+rightly. When James and John tried to commit Jesus to a blind promise
+'that Thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall ask of Thee,' their
+answer was a question as to what they wished. 'Delight thyself also in
+the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' God loves
+us too well to let us have _carte blanche_ unless our wills run
+parallel with His. He is a foolish and cruel father who promises
+compliance with all his child's unknown wishes. Not such is our
+Father's loving discipline. It is to those who 'abide in Christ,' and
+have Him abiding in them, moulding their longings and prayers, that the
+great promise is sealed: 'Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be
+done unto you.'
+
+II. Note next the wise choice of wisdom. 'Had not Solomon been wise
+before, he had not known the worth of wisdom. The dunghill cocks of
+this world cannot know the price of this pearl; those that have it know
+that all other excellencies are but trash and rubbish unto it.'
+Solomon's prayer shows the temper with which he entered on his reign.
+There is no exultation; his serious and clear-eyed spirit sees in rule
+a heavy task. He contrasts his inexperienced rawness with the 'truth
+and righteousness' and veteran maturity of his great predecessor, and
+trembles to think that he, a mere lad, sits on David's throne. But he
+pleads with God that He has made him king, and implies that therefore
+God is bound to fit him for his office. That is the boldness permitted
+to faith,--to remind God of His own past acts, which pledge Him to give
+what He has put us into circumstances to need. With beautiful humility,
+Solomon dwells on his youth and inexperience, and on the vastness of
+the charge laid on him. All these considerations are the motives for
+his choice of a gift, and also pleas with God to grant his request.
+
+He asks for the practical wisdom needed for ruling in these old days,
+when the king was judge as well as ruler and captain. Was this the
+highest gift that he could have asked or received? Surely the deep
+longings of his father for communion with God were yet better. No doubt
+the 'wisdom' of the Book of Proverbs is religion and morality as well
+as true thinking, but the 'understanding heart to judge Thy people'
+which Solomon asked and received is narrower and more secular in its
+meaning. There is no sign in his biography that he ever had the deep
+inward devotion of his father. After the poet-psalmist came the prosaic
+and keen-sighted shrewd man of affairs. The one breathed his ardent
+soul into psalms, which feed devotion to-day; the other crystallised
+his discernment in 'three thousand proverbs,' and, though his 'songs
+were one thousand and five' they touched a lower range, both of poetry
+and religious feeling, than his father's, as may be expressed by
+calling them 'songs,' not 'psalms.'
+
+But though the request is not the highest, it may well be taken as a
+pattern by the young. Note the view of his position from which it
+rises. To Solomon dignity meant duty; and his crown was not a toy, but
+a task. The responsibilities, not the enjoyments, of his station were
+uppermost in his mind. That is the only right view to take. Youth is
+meant to be enthusiastic, and to feed its aspirations on noble ideals,
+and if, instead of that, it does as too many do, especially in
+countries where wealth abounds, namely, regards life as a garden of
+delights, or sometimes as a sty where young men may wallow in
+'pleasures,' then farewell to all hopes of high achievements or of an
+honourable career. Youthful ideals will fade fast enough; but alas for
+the life which had none to begin with! Note the sense of insufficiency
+for his task. Youth is prone to be over-confident, and to think that it
+can do better than its fathers, who were as confident in their time.
+There is a false humility which flattens the spirit and keeps from
+plain duty; and there is a true lowliness which feels that the task
+must be attempted, though the heart may shrink, and which impels to
+prayer for fitness not its own. He who tells God his consciousness of
+impotence, and asks Him to supply His strength to its weakness and His
+wisdom to its inexperience, will never shirk work because it is too
+great, nor ever fail to find power according to his need.
+
+III. Note God's answer. Solomon gets his wish, and much which he had
+not asked besides. The divine answer is in two parts. First, the
+reasons for the large gift; and second, the details of the gift. His
+not wishing material good was the very reason why he obtained it. That
+is not always so; for often enough a man whose whole nature is
+sharpened to one point, in the intensity of his desire to make money,
+will succeed. But what then? He will be none the better, but the
+poorer, for his wealth. But this is always true,--that the people who
+do not make worldly good their first object are the people who can be
+most safely trusted with it, and who get most enjoyment out of it.
+Whether in the precise form of the gift to Solomon or not, outward good
+does attend a life which sets duty before pleasure, and desires most to
+be able to do it. All earthly good is exalted by being put second, and
+degraded as well as corrupted by being put first. The water lapped up
+in the palm, as the soldier marches, is sweeter than the abundant
+draughts swilled down by self-indulgence. 'Seek ye first the kingdom of
+God, ... and all these things shall be added unto you.'
+
+Note the largeness of the gift. When God is pleased with a man's
+prayers, He gives more than was asked, and so teaches us to be ashamed
+of the smallness of our expectations, and widens our desires by His
+overlapping bestowments. First, He gives the wisdom asked. Dependence
+on God, rising from the sense of our own ignorance, has a wonderful
+power of bringing illumination, even as to small matters of practical
+duty. Solomon asked it, to guide him in his judicial decisions; and the
+first case to which it was applied, when received, was a miserable
+quarrel between two disreputable women. A devout heart, purged from
+self-conceit, is often gifted with a piercing wisdom before which the
+crafty shrewdness of the world is abashed. We cannot be 'wise as
+serpents' unless we are 'harmless as doves.' The world may think such
+'wisdom' folly, but she will be 'justified of her children.' Is the
+saying of James's Epistle a reminiscence of Solomon's dream, 'If any of
+you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, ... and it shall be given him'?
+
+Then follows the grant of the unasked goods,--riches, honour, and
+length of days. Surely we hear an echo of these promises in that
+magnificent description of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs: 'Length of
+days is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honour'
+These and similar gifts may or may not follow our choice of divine
+wisdom as our truest good If we have really chosen it, we shall regard
+them as make-weights, to be thankfully received and rightly used, but
+not as indispensable. If we pursue wisdom for the sake of getting
+these, we shall lose both it and them. If we have set our desires most
+earnestly on the most worthy things, which are God's love and a
+character hallowed by His grace, we shall be rich indeed, whether what
+the world calls wealth be ours or no; and our days will be long enough
+if in them we have been prepared for the fuller wisdom and undying life
+of heaven.
+
+Solomon realised his youthful aspirations. The only way to be sure of
+getting what we wish, is to wish what God desires to give,--even
+Himself,--and to ask it of Him. Solomon, like many a young man, outgrew
+his early 'dream.' Was he happier or wiser when he was a worn-out
+voluptuary, smiling with cynical scorn at his young self, or when, with
+generous enthusiasm, he felt the solemnity of life and the awfulness of
+duty, and asked God to help his insufficiency? Was not the dream truer
+and more real than the waking hours of profligacy and unreal
+'enjoyment'?
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT GAIN OF GODLINESS
+
+'And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under
+his fig tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days of Solomon. 26.
+And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and
+twelve thousand horsemen. 27. And those officers provided victual for
+king Solomon, and for all that came unto king Solomon's table, every
+man in his month: they lacked nothing. 28. Barley also and straw for
+the horses and dromedaries brought they unto the place where the
+officers were, every man according to his charge. 29. And God gave
+Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of
+heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore. 30. And Solomon's
+wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and
+all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan
+the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and
+his fame was in all nations round about. 32. And he spake three
+thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. 33. And he
+spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the
+hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of
+fowl and of creeping things, and of fishes. 34. And there came of all
+people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth,
+which had heard of his wisdom.'--1 KINGS iv. 25-34
+
+
+The glories of Solomon's reign kindle the writer of this Book of Kings
+to patriotic enthusiasm, all the more touching if, as is probable, he
+wrote during Israel's exile. The fair vision of the past would make the
+sad present still sadder. But it is not patriotism only which guides
+his pen; he recognises that Solomon's glory was the result of Solomon's
+religion, and by portraying it he would teach the eternal truth that
+godliness hath 'promise of the life that now is' as well as 'of that
+which is to come.' The passage brings out three characteristics of
+Solomon's reign and character: the peace enjoyed by Israel during his
+time, his wealth, and his wisdom.
+
+I. That beautiful phrase for a time of secure enjoyment of modest,
+material good in a simple state of agricultural society, 'dwelt safely,
+every man under his vine and under his fig tree' occurs frequently in
+the Old Testament, and breathes the very essence of a calm life of
+rural felicity and restful enjoyment of wholesome joys. How different
+from the feverish ideal predominant in our great cities to-day! Which
+is the nobler and the more likely to yield abiding content and to be
+the ally of high and serious thought--this antique picture of
+leisurely, unambitious lives, or the scramble for wealth which destroys
+repose, and is so busy getting that it has no time either rightly to
+enjoy, or nobly to expend, its wealth? Those who have their country's
+truest prosperity at heart may well sigh for the return of the vanished
+ideal of Solomon's days; and those who would make the most of
+themselves must in some measure seek to conform their own lives to it.
+
+But another view may be taken of this picture of national prosperity.
+Remember the time at which it was painted,--a time when the prosperity
+of a nation was thought to consist in conquest, and when the arts of
+peace were despised. How far beyond his era was the king who set his
+highest glory in securing for his people tranquil lives on their
+fertile homesteads, and condemned the vulgar glory of the conqueror!
+How far beyond his era was the writer who felt that the fairest page in
+his book was not that which told of battles and triumphs, but that
+which portrayed a peaceful reign, when swords were turned into
+ploughshares! The world has not yet learned that the highest function
+of government is to promote individual prosperity. The vulgar, wicked
+notion of 'glory' bewitches the nations still. A Europe, armed to the
+teeth and staggering under the weight of its weapons, has need to go to
+school to this old Hebrew ideal. 'They didn't know everything down in
+Judee,' but they knew that peace has nobler victories than war has. The
+people who see nothing in the world's history but natural evolution
+have a hard nut to crack in accounting for the singular fact that the
+Jew somehow or other had got hold of a truth to which the most advanced
+nations to-day have scarcely grown up.
+
+II. The wealth of Solomon is illustrated by his large equipment of
+chariots and horsemen. The older habits of the nation had not favoured
+the use of either, and their employment by Solomon was a sign of
+growing luxury, which had the seeds of evil in it. But the novelty was
+characteristic of the change coming over Israel in his day, and of its
+closer intercourse with other nations. The number of forty thousand for
+the stalls of the horses is an evident clerical error, which is
+corrected in the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles ix. 25 to the more
+probable number of four thousand. A well-organised staff looked after
+provisioning the cavalry and chariot horses wherever they were
+quartered. This one instance of Solomon's resources should be connected
+with the other details of these. The intention of all is, not only to
+magnify his wealth, but to bring out the fulfilment of the promise made
+to him as part of the reward of his prayer for wisdom, that he should
+have the inferior good which he had not asked, 'both riches and
+honour.'
+
+The principle which the writer of this book would confirm and exemplify
+is, that to the man who seeks first the kingdom of God and His
+righteousness all these things shall be added. Now the whole order of
+supernatural providences in the Old Testament was directed to making
+material prosperity depend on obedience to God. And we cannot assert
+that the New Testament order has the same purpose in view. 'Prosperity
+was the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the
+New.' But even in Old Testament times outward prosperity did not always
+follow godliness, and the problem which has tortured all generations
+had already been raised, as the Book of Job and Psalm lxxiii show.
+
+Undoubtedly, religion does contribute to prosperity. The natural
+tendency of the course of life which Christianity enjoins is to lead to
+moderate, modest success in a worldly point of view. Not many
+millionaires owe their millions to the practice of Christian virtues,
+but many a man owes his elevation from poverty to modest competence to
+the character and habits which his religion has stamped on him. People
+who get converted in the slums soon get out of the slums.
+
+But, whether Christianity helps a man to worldly success or not, it
+helps him to get all the good out of the world that the world can give.
+It may, or may not, give dainties, but it will make brown bread sweet.
+It may, or may not, give wealth, but it will make the 'little that a
+righteous man hath better than the riches of many wicked.' They who
+know no higher good than earth can yield know not the highest good of
+earth; they who put worldly prosperity and treasure second find them
+far more precious and sweet than when they ranked them as first.
+
+III. But the crown of Solomon's gifts was his wisdom. And his elevation
+of intellectual and moral endowments above material good is as
+remarkable as his similar elevation of peace above warlike fame, and
+suggests the same questions as to the source of ideas so far ahead of
+what was then the world's point of view. Observe that Solomon's
+'wisdom' in all its departments is traced to God its giver. Observe,
+too, that expression 'largeness of heart,' by which is meant, not width
+of quick sympathy or generosity, but what we should call comprehensive
+intellect. The 'heart' is the centre of the personal being, from which
+thoughts as well as affections flow, and the phrase here points to
+thoughts rather than to affections.
+
+Solomon, then, was a many-sided student, and his 'genius' showed itself
+in very various forms. He lived before the days of specialists. The
+region of knowledge was so limited that a man could be master in many
+departments. Nowadays the mass has become so unmanageable that, to know
+one subject thoroughly, we have to be ignorant of many, like the
+scholar who had given his life to the study of the Greek noun, and,
+dying, lamented that he had not confined himself to the dative case!
+Practical wisdom, which had its field In doing justice between his
+subjects; shrewd observation of life, with wit to discern resemblances
+and to put wisdom into homely, short sayings; poetic sensibility and
+the gift of melodious speech; and, added to these manifold endowments,
+interest in, and rudimentary knowledge of, natural history and botany,
+make the points specified as Solomon's wisdom.
+
+'A man so various that he seemed to be
+Not one, but all mankind's epitome,'--
+
+the first and greatest of the few students or philosophers who have sat
+on thrones.
+
+But the main thing to notice is that in Solomon we see exemplified the
+normal relation between religion and intellectual power and learning.
+Judge, artist, scientist, and all other thinkers and students, draw
+their power from God, and should use it for Him. And, on the other
+hand, Solomon's example is a rebuke to those narrow-minded Christians
+who look askance at men of learning, letters, or science, as well as to
+those still more narrow-minded men of intellectual ability who think
+that science and religion must be sworn foes. If our religion is what
+it should be, it will widen our understanding all round.
+
+'Let knowledge grow from more to more,
+But more of reverence in us dwell.'
+
+
+
+
+GREAT PREPARATIONS FOR A GREAT WORK
+
+'And Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had
+heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for
+Hiram was ever a lover of David. 2. And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying,
+3. Thou knowest how that David my father could not build an house unto
+the name of the Lord his God for the wars which were about him on every
+side, until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet. 4. But now
+the Lord my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is
+neither adversary nor evil occurrent. 6. And, behold, I purpose to
+build an house unto the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord spake unto
+David my father, saying, Thy son, whom I will set upon thy throne in
+thy room, he shall build an house unto My name. 6. Now therefore
+command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my
+servants shall be with thy servants: and unto thee will I give hire for
+thy servants according to all that thou shalt appoint: for thou knowest
+that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto
+the Sidonians. 7. And. it came to pass, when Hiram heard the words of
+Solomon, that he rejoiced greatly, and said, Blessed be the Lord this
+day, which hath given unto David a wise son over this great people. 8.
+And Hiram sent to Solomon, saying, I have considered the things which
+thou sentest to me for: and I will do all thy desire concerning timber
+of cedar, and concerning timber of fir. 9. My servants shall bring them
+down from Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats
+unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be
+discharged there, and thou shalt receive them: and thou shalt
+accomplish my desire, in giving food for my household. 10. So Hiram
+gave Solomon cedar trees, and fir trees, according to all his desire.
+11. And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat, for food
+to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to
+Hiram year by year. 12. And the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as He
+promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they
+two made a league together.--1 KINGS v. 1-12.
+
+
+The building of the Temple was begun in the fourth year of Solomon's
+reign (1 Kings vi. 1). The preparations for so great a work must have
+taken much time, so that the arrangement with Hiram recorded in this
+passage was probably made very early in the reign. That probability is
+strengthened if we suppose, as we must do, that the embassy from Hiram
+mentioned in verse I was sent to congratulate Solomon on his accession.
+If so, the latter's proposal to get timber and stones from the Lebanon
+would be made at the very commencement of the reign. Three years would
+not be more than enough to get the material ready and transported.
+Great designs need long preparation. Raw haste wastes time;
+deliberation is as needful before beginning as rapid action is when we
+have begun.
+
+I. Verses 3-5 set forth very forcibly the motives which impelled the
+young king to the work, and may suggest to us the motives which should
+urge us to diligence in building a better temple than he reared. He
+begins by reference to his father's foiled wish, and to the reason why
+David could not build the house. Not only was it inappropriate that a
+warlike king should build it, but it was impossible that, whilst his
+thoughts were occupied and his resources taxed by war, he should devote
+himself to such a work. In Assyria and Egypt the great warrior kings
+are the great temple-builders, but a divine decorum forbade it to be so
+in Israel.
+
+Solomon next thankfully describes his own happier circumstances.
+Observe his designation of Jehovah in verse 4 as 'my God,' and compare
+with verse 3, where He is called David's God. The son had inherited the
+divine protection and the father's sense of personal relation to
+Jehovah. That is a better legacy than a throne. Well had it been for
+Solomon if he had held by the faith of his first days of royalty! Such
+a sense of a personal bond of love protecting on the one hand, and love
+trusting and obeying on the other, is the spring of all true service of
+God, whether it is busied in temple-building or in anything else.
+
+We note also the grateful recognition of benefits received, and the
+tracing of peace and outward prosperity to God's care. There was not a
+cloud in the sky. The horizon was clear all round, and it was 'the Lord
+my God,' who had made this ease for Solomon. We are often more ready to
+recognise God's hand in sorrows than in joys. When He smites, we try to
+say 'It is the Lord!' Do we try to say it when all things are smooth
+and bright?
+
+The effect of blessings should be thankfulness, and the proof of
+thankfulness is service. So Solomon did not take prosperity as an
+inducement to selfish luxurious repose, but heard in it God's call to a
+great task. If all the rich men and all the leisurely women who call
+themselves Christians would do likewise, there would be plenty of
+workers and of resources for Christ's service, which now sorely lacks
+both. How many of such 'lay up treasure for themselves, and are not
+rich toward God'! How many fritter away their leisure in vanities,
+having time for any amusement or folly, but none for Christian service!
+
+The man whom Jesus called 'Thou fool!' not the wise king, is the
+pattern for a sad number of professing Christians. 'Thou hast much
+goods laid up for many years.' What then? 'I purpose to build an house
+for the name of the Lord'? By no means. 'I will build greater barns,
+and that will give me something to do, and then I will take mine ease.'
+
+We note, too, that Solomon was impelled to his great work by the
+knowledge that God had appointed him to do it. The divine word
+concerning himself, spoken to his father, sounded in his ears, and gave
+him no rest till he had set about obeying it (v. 5). The motives of the
+great temple-builders of old, as they themselves expound them in
+hieroglyphics and cuneiform, were largely ostentation and the wish to
+outdo predecessors; but Solomon was moved by thankfulness and by
+obedience to his father's will, and still more, to God's destination of
+him. If we would look at our positions and blessings as he looked at
+his in the fair dawning of his reign, we should find abundant
+indications of God's will regarding our work.
+
+Solomon uses a remarkable expression as to the purpose of the Temple.
+It is to be 'an house for the _name_ of the Lord.' That is not the
+same as 'for the Lord.' Pagan temples might be intended by their
+builders for the actual residence of the god, but Solomon knew that the
+heaven of heavens could not contain Him, much less this house which he
+was about to build. We are fairly entitled, then, to lay stress on that
+phrase, 'the Name.' It means the whole self-revelation of God, or,
+rather, the character of God as made known by that self-revelation.
+
+The Temple was, then, to be the place in which the God who fills earth
+and heaven was to manifest Himself, and where His servants were to
+behold and reverence Him as manifested. The Shechinah was the symbol,
+and in one aspect was a part, of that self-revelation. However, in
+common speech the Temple was spoken of as the house of Jehovah. The
+same thought which is expressed in Solomon's fuller phrase underlay the
+expression,--_He_ dwelt 'not in temples made with hands' but His
+_name_ was set there, and the structure was reared, not so much
+for Him as that worshippers might there meet Him.
+
+II. The rest of the passage deals with Solomon's request to Hiram, and
+the preparation of the material for the Temple. Solomon's first care
+was to secure timber and stone. His own dominions can never have been
+well wooded, and there are many indications that the great central knot
+of mountainous land, which included the greater part of his kingdom,
+was comparatively treeless. He therefore proposed to Hiram to supply
+timber from the great woods on Lebanon, which have now nearly died out,
+and offered liberal payment.
+
+The parallel account in 2 Chronicles makes Solomon offer specified
+quantities of provisions for Hiram's workmen, and makes Hiram accept
+the terms. Verse 11 of this chapter says that the provisions named
+there were for the Tyrian king's 'household.' This may possibly mean
+the workmen, who would be regarded as Hiram's slaves, but, more
+probably, 'household' means 'court,' and Solomon had not only to feed
+the army of workmen, but to supply as much again for the great
+establishment which Hiram kept up. The little slip of seacoast, with
+the mountain rising sharply behind, which made Hiram's kingdom, could
+not grow enough for his people's wants. His country was 'nourished' by
+Palestine, long centuries after this time (Acts xii. 20), and the same
+was the case in Solomon's period. In verse 11, the quantity of oil is
+impossibly small as compared with that of wheat. 2 Chronicles reads
+'twenty thousand' instead of 'twenty,' and the Septuagint inserts
+'thousand' in verse 11, which is probably correct.
+
+With all his Oriental politeness and probably real wish to oblige a
+powerful neighbour, Hiram was too true a Phoenician not to drive a good
+bargain. He was king of 'a nation of shopkeepers,' and was quite worthy
+of the position. 'Nothing for nothing' seems to have been his motto,
+even with friends. He would love Solomon, and send him flowery
+congratulations, and talk as if all he had was his ally's, but when it
+came to settling terms he knew what his cedars were worth, and meant to
+have their value.
+
+There are a good many people who get mixed up with religious work, and
+talk as if it were very near their hearts, who have as sharp an eye to
+their own advantage as he had. The man who serves God because he gets
+paid for it, does not serve Him. The Temple may be built of the timber
+and stones that he has supplied, but he sold them, and did not give
+them, therefore he has no part in the building.
+
+How different the uncalculating lavishness of Solomon! He knows no
+better use for treasures than to expend them on God's service, and 'all
+for love, and nothing for reward.' That Is the true temper for
+Christian work. He to whom Christ has given Himself should give himself
+to Christ; and he who has given himself should and will keep back
+nothing, nor seek for cheap ways of serving the Lord, He who gives all,
+be it two mites, or a fishing-boat and some torn nets, or great wealth
+like that which Solomon found in his father's treasuries and devoted to
+building the Temple, gives much; and he who gives less than he can
+gives little.
+
+Solomon's work was, after all, outward work, and fitter for that early
+age than the imitation of it would be now. The days for building
+temples and cathedrals are past. The universal religion hallows not
+Gerizim nor Jerusalem, but every place where souls seek God The
+spiritual religion asks for no shrines reared by men's hands; for Jesus
+Christ is the true Temple, where God's name is set, and where men may
+behold the manifested Jehovah, and meet with Him. But we have work to
+do for Christ, and a temple to build in our own souls, and a stone or
+two to lay in the great Temple which is being built up through the
+ages. Well for us if we use our resources and our leisure, for such
+ends with the same promptitude, thankful surrender, and sense of
+fulfilling God's purpose, as animated the young king of Israel!
+
+
+
+
+BUILDING IN SILENCE
+
+'. . . There was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of Iron heard In
+the house, while it was in building.'--1 KINGS vi 7.
+
+
+The Temple was built in silence. It 'rose like an exhalation.'
+
+'No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung,
+Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.'
+
+Perhaps it was merely for convenience of transport and to save time
+that the stones were dressed in the quarries, but more probably the
+silence was due to an instinct of reverence. We may fairly use it as
+suggesting two thoughts.
+
+I. How God's house is mostly built in silence. 'The Kingdom of God
+cometh not with observation.'
+
+(1) In reference to its advance in the world. Destructive work is
+noisy, constructive work is silent. God was in 'the still small voice,'
+not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. Christ's own career, how
+silent it was! Drums are loud and empty. The spread of the kingdom was
+unnoticed by the world's great ones--Caesars, philosophers, patricians,
+and it silently grew underground. Hence may flow--
+
+(a) An encouragement to those whose work is inconspicuous.
+
+(b) A lesson not to mistake noise and notoriety for spiritual progress.
+
+(c) Guidance as to our expectations of the advance of Christ's kingdom.
+It will transform society by slow, often unnoticed, degrees, by radical
+change of individuals' habits. The elevation of humanity will be slow,
+like the imperceptible rise of the Norwegian coast. Sudden changes are
+short-lived changes. 'Lightly come, lightly go.' What matures slowly
+will last long.
+
+(2) In reference to its growth in our souls.
+
+Silence is needed for that. There must be much still communion and
+quiet reflection. The advance in the Christian life is variously
+likened to a battle, since there are antagonists and struggle is needed
+to overcome; and to vegetable or corporeal growth, which the mysterious
+indwelling life works without effort and almost without consciousness,
+but it is also likened to the erection of a building, in which there is
+continuity, and each successive course of masonry is the foundation for
+that above it. That work of building is work that must be done in
+silence. If we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, we must
+silently drink in the sunshine and dew, and so prosperously pass from
+blade to ear, and thence to full corn in the ear.
+
+Surely nothing is more needed in these days of noisy advertisement, and
+measurement of the importance of things by the noise that they can
+make, than this lesson of the place of silence in Christian progress,
+both for individuals and for the Christian Church as a whole.
+
+II. How God's house is built of prepared stones.
+
+That is true, in one view of the matter, in regard to the Church on
+earth, for there must be the individual act of repentance and faith
+before a soul is fit to be built into the fabric of the Church.
+
+There is providential training of men for their tasks before these are
+given to them.
+
+But the highest application of the symbol which we venture to find in
+our text is to the relation between the earthly and the heavenly life.
+
+This world is the quarry where the stones are dressed for the Temple in
+the heavens.
+
+(_a_) Life is the chipping and hewing. The unnecessary pieces are
+struck off with heavy mallet and sharp chisel. Pain and sorrow are thus
+explained, if not wholly, yet sufficiently to bring about submission
+and trust.
+
+(_b_) The Builder has His plan clearly before Him, and works
+accurately to realise it. He perfectly knows what He means to build,
+and every stroke of the dressing-tool is accurately directed. There are
+no mistakes made in His quarrying.
+
+ (_c_) We may be sure that the prepared stones will be brought to
+the Temple site and built into it. There lie gigantic half-hewn pillars
+in abandoned quarries in Syria and Egypt. But no one will ever say of
+the divine Temple-Builder: He began to build and was not able to
+finish. It remains a problem how the old builders managed to transport
+these huge stones from the quarries to the site, but we may be sure
+that the Architect of the 'house not made with hands, eternal in the
+heavens,' knows how to bring every stone that has been prepared here,
+to the place prepared for it, and for which it has been prepared. We
+may repose on the Apostle's assurance that 'He that has begun a good
+work in you will perform it,' or rather on the more sure word of Jesus
+Himself, 'He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of
+My God.'
+
+
+
+
+THE KING 'BLESSING' HIS PEOPLE
+
+And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this
+prayer and supplication unto the Lord, he arose from before the altar
+of the Lord, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up to
+heaven. 55. And he stood, and blessed all the congregation of Israel
+with a loud voice, saying, 56. Blessed be the Lord, that hath given
+rest unto His people Israel, according to all that He promised: there
+hath not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised by
+the hand of Moses His servant. 57. The Lord our God be with us, as He
+was with our fathers: let Him not leave us, nor forsake us: 58. That He
+may incline our hearts unto Him, to walk in all His ways, and to keep
+His commandments, and His statutes, and His judgments, which He
+commanded our fathers. 59. And let these my words, wherewith I have
+made supplication before the Lord, be nigh unto the Lord our God day
+and night, that He maintain the cause of His servant, and the cause of
+His people Israel at all times, as the matter shall require: 60. That
+all the people of the earth may know that the Lord is God, and that
+there is none else. 61. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the
+Lord our God, to walk in His statutes, and to keep His commandments, as
+at this day. 62. And the king, and all Israel with him, offered
+sacrifice before the Lord. 63. And Solomon offered a sacrifice of
+peace-offerings, which he offered unto the Lord, two and twenty
+thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king
+and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord.'--1
+KINGS viii. 54-63.
+
+
+The great ceremonial of dedicating the Temple was threefold. The first
+stage was setting the ark in its place, which was the essence of the
+whole thing. God's presence was the true dedication, and that was
+manifested by the bright cloud that filled the sanctuary as soon as the
+ark was placed there. The second stage was the lofty and spiritual
+prayer, saturated with the language and tone of Deuteronomy, and
+breathing the purest conceptions of the character and nature of God,
+and all aglow with trust in Him. Then followed, thirdly, this 'Blessing
+of the Congregation.' The prayer had been uttered by the kneeling king.
+Now he stands up, and, with ringing tones that reach to the outskirts
+of the crowd, he gathers the spirit of his prayer into two petitions,
+preceded by praise for national blessings, and followed by exhortation
+to national obedience. A huge sacrifice of unexampled magnitude closes
+the whole.
+
+I. Note the thankful retrospect of the nation's past (verse 56).
+
+Solomon 'blessed the congregation' when, in their name, he lifted up
+his voice to bless the Lord, prayed that God would incline their hearts
+to keep His law, and would maintain their cause, and exhorted them to
+keep their hearts perfect with Him. We bless each other when we ask God
+to bless, and when we draw each other nearer Him. Standing there in the
+new Temple, with a united nation gathered before him, the cloud filling
+the house, and peace resting on all his land to its farthest border,
+the king looks back on the long road from Sinai and the desert, and
+sums up the whole history in one sentence. The end has vindicated the
+methods. There had been many a dark time when enemies had oppressed,
+and many a hard-fought field had been stained with Israel's blood; but
+all had tended to this calm hour, when Israel's multitudes were
+gathered in worship, and their unguarded homes were safe. There had
+been many heroes in the long line.
+
+'Time would fail' him 'to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of
+David and Samuel ... who ... turned to flight armies of aliens.' One
+name alone is worthy to be named,--the name of the true Deliverer and
+Monarch. It is the Lord who 'hath given rest unto His people.' We look
+on the past most wisely when we see in it all the working of one mighty
+Hand, and pass beyond the great names of history or the dear names
+which have made the light of our homes, to the ever-living God, who
+works through changing instruments; and 'the help that is done on
+earth, He doeth it Himself.' We read the past most truly when we see in
+all its vicissitudes God's unchanging faithfulness, and recognise that
+the foes and sorrows which often pressed sore upon us were no breach of
+His faithful promises, but either His loving chastisement for our
+faithlessness, or His loving discipline meant to perfect our
+characters. We read the past best from the vantage-ground of the
+Temple. From its height we understand the lie of the land. Communion
+with God explains much which is else inexplicable. Solomon's judgment
+of Israel's checkered history will be our judgment of our own when we
+stand in the higher courts of the heavenly home, and look from that
+height upon all the way by which the Lord our God hath led us. In the
+meantime, it is often a trial for faith to repeat these words; but the
+blessing that comes from believing them true is worth the effort to
+stifle our tears in order to say them.
+
+II. Note the prayer for obedient hearts (verses 57, 58). The proper
+subject-matter of this petition is 'that He may incline our hearts to
+walk in His ways,' and God's presence is invoked as a means thereto.
+The deepest desire of a truly religious soul is for the felt nearness
+of God. That goes before all other blessings, and contains them all.
+Nothing is so needful or so sweet as that The presence of God is the
+absence of evil, the evil both of pain and of sin, as surely as the
+rising sun is the routing of night's black hosts. 'The best of all is,
+God is with us.' The prayer again looks back to the past, and asks that
+the ancient experiences may be renewed. The generations of those who
+trust in God are knit together, and the wonders of old time are capable
+of repetition to-day. Faith can say with deeper meaning than the
+Preacher, 'That which hath been is that which shall be.' However
+varying may be the forms, the fact of a divine presence and help
+according to need is invariable, and they that have gone before have
+not exhausted the fountain, which will fill the vessel of the latest
+comer as it did that of the first. How beautifully the abiding God and
+the fleeting series of 'our fathers' is contrasted! A moment of
+triumph, when some work, like that of building the Temple, which has
+for ages been looked forward to, and into which the sacrifices and
+aspirations of a long line of dead toilers are built, brings strongly
+before all thoughtful men the continuity of a nation or a Church, and
+the transiency of its individual members. It should suggest the abiding
+God yet more strongly than it does the passing fathers. The mercy
+remains the same, while the receivers change. The sunshine and the tree
+are the same, though the leaves which glisten and grow in the light
+have but one summer to live.
+
+But Solomon desires that God may be with him and his people for one
+specific purpose. Is it to bring outward prosperity, or to extend their
+territory, or to give them victory? As in his choice in his dream, so
+now, he asks, not for these things, but for an inward influence on
+heart and will. What he wants most for himself and them is moral
+conformity to God's will. All must be right if that be right. The
+prayer implies that, without God's help, the heart will wander from the
+paths of duty. The weakness of human nature, and the consequent
+necessity for God's grace in order to obedience, were as deeply felt by
+the devout men of the Old Testament as by Apostles. They are felt by
+every man who has honestly tried to measure the sweep and inwardness of
+God's law, and to realise it in life. We need go but a very short way
+on the road to discover that temptations to diverge lie so thick on
+either side, and that our feet grow weary so soon, that we shall make
+but little progress without help from above.
+
+The synonyms for the law are worthy of notice. Why are there so many of
+these in the Old Testament? For the same reason that there are so many
+for 'money' in English,--because those who made the language thought so
+much about the thing, and delighted in it so much. As 'commandments,'
+it was solemnly imposed by rightful authority, and obedience was
+obligatory. The word rendered 'statutes' means something engraved, or
+written, and recalls the tables inscribed by God's finger. 'Judgments'
+are the divine decisions or sentences as to what is right, and
+therefore the infallible clue to the else bewildering labyrinth. To
+obey these commandments, to read that solemn writing, and to accept
+these decisions as our guides, is man's perfection and blessedness; and
+for that God's felt presence is indispensable.
+
+III. Note the prayer for God's defence (verses 59, 60). The proper
+subject-matter of this petition is that God would maintain the cause of
+king and nation; and it is preceded by a petition that, to that end,
+the preceding prayer may be answered, and is followed by the desire
+that thereby the knowledge of God may fill the earth. The prayer for
+outward blessings comes after the prayer for inward heart-obedience. Is
+not that the right order? Our prayers need to be prayed for, and a true
+desire is not contented with one utterance. To ask that what we have
+asked may be given is no vain repetition, nor a sign of weak faith, or
+undue anxiety. How bold the figure in asking that the prayer may lie
+before God day and night, like some suppliant at the foot of His
+throne!
+
+Note the grand aim of God's help of Israel,--the universal diffusion of
+His name among all the peoples of the earth. Solomon understood the
+divine vocation of Israel, and had risen above desiring blessings only
+for his own or his subjects' sake. Later ages fell from that elevation
+of feeling, and hugged their special privileges without a thought of
+the obligations which they involved. God's choice of Israel was not
+meant for the exclusion of the Gentiles, but as the means of
+transmitting the knowledge of God to them. The one nation was chosen
+that God's grace might fructify through it to all. The fire was
+gathered into a hearth, that the whole house might be warmed. But
+selfishness marred the divine plan, and Israel became a nonconductor,
+and the privileges selfishly kept became corrupt; as the miser's corn
+stored in his barns in famine breeds weevils. Christians need no more
+solemn lesson of what comes from selfishly hoarding spiritual blessings
+than the fate of Israel. God hath shined into our hearts, that we may
+give to others who sit in the dark the light which we possess; and if
+we fail to do so, the light will darken within us.
+
+IV. The blessing ends with one brief, all-comprehensive charge to the
+people, which seems based, by its 'therefore,' on the preceding thought
+of Jehovah as the only God. The only attitude corresponding to His sole
+and supreme Majesty is the entire devotion of heart, which leads to
+thoroughgoing obedience to His commandments. The word rendered
+'perfect' literally means 'entire' or 'sound,' and here expresses the
+complete devotion of the whole nature. Solomon meant that it should be
+complete, in contradistinction to any sidelong glances to idolatry. The
+principle underlying that 'therefore' is that, God being what He is,
+our only God and refuge, the only adequate hope and object of our
+nature, we should give our whole selves to Him. We, too, are tempted to
+bring Him divided hearts, and to carry some of our love and trust as
+offerings at other shrines. But if there be 'one God, and none other
+but He,' then to serve Him with all our heart and strength and mind is
+the dictate of common sense, and the only service which He can accept,
+or which can bring to our else distracted natures peace and
+satisfaction. His voice to us is, 'My son, give Me thy whole heart.'
+Our answer to Him should ever be that prayer, 'Lord, ... unite my heart
+to fear Thy name.' A divided heart is misery. Partial trust is
+distrust. 'Love me all in all, or not at all,' is the requirement of
+all deep, human love; and shall God ask less than men and women ask
+from and give to one another?
+
+
+
+
+'THE MATTER OF A DAY IN ITS DAY'
+
+'At all times, as the matter shall require.'--1 KINGS viii. 59.
+
+
+I have ventured to diverge from my usual custom, and take this fragment
+of a text because, in the forcible language of the original, it carries
+some very important lessons. The margin of our Bible gives the literal
+reading of the Hebrew; the sense, but not the vigorous idiom, of which
+is conveyed in the paraphrase in our version. 'At all times, as the
+matter shall require,' is, literally, 'the thing of a day in its day';
+and that is the only limitation which this prayer of Solomon places
+upon the petition that God would maintain the cause of His servants and
+of His people Israel. The kingly suppliant got a glimpse of very great,
+though very familiar, truths, and at that hour of spiritual
+illumination, the very high-water mark of his relations to God--for I
+suppose he was never half as good a man afterwards--he gave utterance
+to the great thought that God's mercies come to us day by day, according
+to the exigencies of the moment.
+
+Now, I think that in the words 'the matter of a day in its day' we may
+see both a principle in reference to God's gifts and a precept in
+reference to our actions. Let us look at these two things.
+
+I. A principle in reference to God's gifts.
+
+Of course, obviously--and I need not say more than a word about that--
+we find it so in regard to the outward blessings that are poured into
+our lives. We are taught, if the translation of the New Testament is
+correct, to ask, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' and to let to-
+morrow alone. Life comes to us pulsation by pulsation, breath by
+breath, by reason of the continual operation, in the material world, of
+the present God's present giving. He does not start us, at the
+beginning of our days, with a fund of physical vitality upon which we
+thereafter draw, but moment by moment He opens His hand, and lets life
+and breath and all things flow out to us moment by moment, for no
+creature would live for an instant except for the present working of a
+present God. If we only realised how the slow pulsation of the minutes
+is due to the touch of His finger on the pendulum, and how everything
+that we have, and the existence of us who have it, are results of the
+continuous welling out from the fountain of life, of ripple after
+ripple of the waters, everything would be more sacred, and more solemn,
+and fuller of God than, alas! it is.
+
+But the true region in which we may best find illustrations of this
+principle in reference to God's gifts is the region of the spiritual
+and moral bestowments which He in His love pours upon us. He does not
+flood us with them: He filters them drop by drop, for great and good
+reasons. I only mention three various forms of this one great thought.
+
+God gives us gifts adapted to the moment. 'The matter of a day,' the
+thing fitted for the instant, comes. In deepest reality, all is one
+gift, for in truth what God gives to us is Himself; or, if you like to
+put it so, His grace. That little word 'grace' is like a small window
+that opens out on to a great landscape, for it gathers up into one
+encyclopaediacal expression the whole infinite variety of beneficences
+and bestowments which come showering down upon us. That one gift is,
+as the Apostle puts it in one of his eloquent epithets, 'the
+_manifold_ grace of God,' which word in the original is even more rich
+and picturesque, because it means the 'many-variegated' grace--like
+some rich piece of embroidery glowing with all manner of dyes and
+gold. So the one gift comes to us manifold, rich in its adaptation to,
+and its exquisite fitness for, the needs of the moment. The Rabbis had
+a tradition that the manna in the wilderness tasted to every man just
+what each man needed or wished most. It Is as though in some imperial
+city on a day of rejoicing, one found a fountain in the market-place
+pouring out, according to the wish of the people, various costly wines
+and refreshing drinks, God's gift comes to us with like variety--the
+'matter of a day in its day.'
+
+God never gives us the wrong medicine. In whatever variety of
+circumstances we stand, that one infinitely simple and yet infinitely
+complex gift contains what we specially want at the moment. Am I
+struggling? He extends a hand to steady me. Am I fighting? He is my
+'sword and shield, my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my
+high tower.' Am I anxious? He comes into my heart, and brings with Him
+a great peace, and all waves cease to toss and smooth themselves into a
+level plain. Am I glad? He comes to heighten the gladness by some touch
+of holier joy. Am I perplexed in mind? If I look to Him, 'His coming
+shall be as the morning,' and illumination will be granted. Am I
+treading a lonely path? There is One by my side who will neither
+change, nor fail, nor die. Whatever any man needs, at the moment that
+he needs it, that one great Gift will supply 'the matter of a day in
+its day.'
+
+God gives punctually. Many of us may have sometimes sent Christmas
+presents to India or Australia some weeks before. Some will arrive in
+time and some will be too late. God's gifts never reach us before the
+day, and they never come after the day. 'The Lord shall help her, and
+that right early,' said the grand psalm. What the Psalmist was thinking
+about was, I suppose, that miraculous intervention when the army of
+Sennacherib was smitten in a night. Timid and faithless souls in
+Jerusalem, as they looked over the walls and saw the encircling lines
+of the fierce foes drawing closer and closer round the doomed city,
+must have said, 'Our Lord delayeth His coming,' and could not stand the
+test of their faith and patience, involved in God's apparent
+indifference to the need of His people. To-morrow the assault is to be
+delivered. To-night
+
+        'The Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
+         And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed';
+
+and the would-be assailants, when that to-morrow dawned, were lying
+stiff and stark in their tents. God's help comes, not too soon, lest we
+should not know the blessedness of trusting in the dark; and not too
+late, lest we should know the misery of trusting in vain.
+
+Peter is lying in prison. Herod intends, after the Passover, to bring
+him out to the people. The scaffolding is ready. The first watch of the
+night passes, and the second. If once it is fairly light, escape is
+impossible. But in the grey dawn the angel touches the sleeper. He
+wakes while his guards sleep. There is no need for hurry. He who has
+God for his Deliverer has no occasion to 'go out with haste.' So, with
+strange and majestic leisureliness, the escaping prisoner is bid to put
+on his shoes and gird himself. No doubt, he cast many a scrutinising
+glance at the four sleeping legionaries whom a heedless movement might
+have wakened. When all is ready, he is led forth through all the wards,
+each being a separate peril, and all made safe to him. The first gate
+opens, and the second gate opens, and the iron gate that leads into the
+city opens, and quietly he and the angel go down the street. It is
+light enough for him to see his way to the house where the brethren are
+assembled. He gets safe behind Mary's door before it is light enough
+for the gaolers to discover his absence, and for the pursuers to be
+started in their search. The Lord did help him, and that right early--'
+the matter of a day in its day,'
+
+We shall find, if we leave our times in His hand, that the old simple
+faith has still a talismanic power to quiet us. His time is best, so be
+patient, and be trustful in your patience.
+
+Again, God gives gifts enough, and not more than enough. He serves out
+our rations for spirit as for body, as they do on shipboard, where the
+sailors have to take their pots and plates to the galley every day and
+for each meal, and get enough to help them over the moment's hunger.
+The manna fell morning by morning. 'He that gathered much had nothing
+over, he that gathered little had no lack.' So all the variety of our
+changeful conditions, besides its purpose of disciplining ourselves and
+of making character, has also the purpose of affording a theatre for
+the display, if I may use such cold language--or rather let me say
+affording an opportunity for the bestowment--of the infinitely varied,
+exquisitely adapted, punctual, and sufficient grace of God.
+
+II. But now, secondly, a word about the text as containing a precept
+for our action.
+
+Let me put what I have to say in three plain sentences.
+
+First, take short views of the future. Of course, we have to look
+ahead, and in reference to many things to take prudent forecasts, but
+how many of us there are who weaken ourselves and spoil to-day by being
+'over-exquisite to cast the fashion of uncertain evils'! It is a great
+piece of practical philosophy, and I am sure that it has much to do
+with our getting the best out of the present moment, that we should
+either take very short or very long views of the future. Either
+
+                'Let the unknown to-morrow
+                 Bring with it what it may,'
+
+or look beyond the last of the days into the unseen light of an
+unsetting sun. If I must anticipate, let me anticipate the ultimate,
+the changeless, the certain; and let me not condemn my faculty of
+picturing that which is to come, to look along the low ranges of
+earthly life, and torture myself by imagining all the possibilities of
+evil of which my condition admits, as being turned into certainties to-
+morrow. Take 'the matter of a day _in_ its day.' 'Sufficient unto
+the day is the evil thereof.' Let us make the minute what it ought to
+be, then God will make the whole what it ought to be.
+
+Again I say, let us fill each day with discharged duties. If you and I
+do not do the matter of the day in its day, the chances are that no to-
+morrow will afford an opportunity of doing it. So there will come upon
+us all, if we are unfaithful to this portioning out of tasks to times,
+that burden of an irrevocable past, and of the omitted duties that will
+stand reproving and condemning before us, whensoever we turn our eyes
+to them. 'It might have been, and it is not'; does a sadder speech than
+that fall from human lips? Brethren, the day, though it is short, is
+elastic; and no one knows how much of discharged service and
+accomplished work and fulfilled responsibilities can be crammed into
+its hours, until he has earnestly tried to fill each moment with the
+task which belongs to the moment. 'The sluggard will not plough by
+reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest and have
+nothing.' If our day is not filled full of work, some to-morrow will be
+filled full, in retrospect, of thorns and stings. Life is short; 'the
+night cometh when no man can work.' 'I must work the works of Him that
+sent me while it is day.'
+
+Lastly, I would say, keep open a continual communion with God, that day
+by day you may get what day by day you need. There are hosts of people
+who call themselves, and, in some kind of surface way, are, Christian
+people, who seem to think that they get all that they need of the grace
+of God in a lump, at the beginning of their Christian career, and who
+are living upon past communications and the memory of these, and are
+forgetting that they can no more live and be nourished upon past gifts
+of God's grace than upon the dinner that they ate this day last year.
+We must hang continually upon Him, if we are continually to receive
+from His hand. No past blessing will avail for present use.
+
+Dear friends, the purpose of this principle, which I have been trying
+to illustrate in God's way of dealing with us, is that we shall be
+content to be continually dependent, and consciously as well as
+continually dependent, upon Him. In the measure in which we keep our
+hearts open for the perpetual influx of His grace, in that measure
+shall we be ready for each day as it comes; for its trials and its
+joys, for its possibilities and its duties.
+
+This, too, must be remembered--that the days bolted together make
+months; and the months, years; and the years, life; and that life as a
+whole is 'a day'; and that there is a 'matter' of that day which can
+only be done in its day. Oh that none of us may be the subjects of that
+sad wail from a Saviour's heart and a Saviour's lips, which lamented,
+'If thou hadst known, at least, in this thy day, the things that belong
+to thy peace; but now'--the night has come, and the darkness of the
+night, and--'they are hid from thine eyes!'
+
+
+
+
+PROMISES AND THREATENINGS
+
+'And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the
+house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all Solomon's desire which
+he was pleased to do. 2. That the Lord appeared to Solomon the second
+time, as He had appeared unto him at Gibeon. 3. And the Lord said unto
+him, I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou hast made
+before Me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put My
+name there for ever; and Mine eyes and Mine heart shall be there
+perpetually, 4. And if thou wilt walk before Me, as David thy father
+walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness, to do according to
+all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep My statutes and My
+judgments: 5. Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon
+Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall
+not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel. 6. But if ye shall at
+all turn from following Me, ye or your children, and will not keep My
+commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and
+serve other gods, and worship them: 7. Then will I cut off Israel out
+of the land which I have given them; and this house which I have
+hallowed for My name, will I cast out of My sight; and Israel shall be
+a proverb and a byword among all people: 8. And at this house, which is
+high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss;
+and they shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and to
+this house? 9. And they shall answer, Because they forsook the Lord
+their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt,
+and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and
+served them: therefore hath the Lord brought upon them all this evil.'-
+1 KINGS ix. 1-9.
+
+
+The successful end of a great work is often the beginning of a great
+reaction. When the tension is slackened, the whole nature of the worker
+is relaxed, and the temptation to slothful self-indulgence is strong.
+God knows our frame, and mercifully times His manifestations to the
+moments of special need. So, when Solomon had finished his great task,
+'the Lord appeared the second time, as He had appeared at Gibeon.'
+There had been no manifest token of approval during all the years of
+building the Temple, for none was needed; but now there was danger that
+the finished work might be followed by languor and indifference, and
+therefore once more God spoke words of stimulus, both promises and
+warnings.
+
+A solemn alternative is set before the king, both parts of which are
+fitted to rouse his energy and inspire him to faithful obedience. The
+same alternatives are presented to each of us. In verses 3-5 God
+promises blessed results from clinging to Him and keeping His statutes;
+in verses 6-9 He mercifully threatens the tragic issues of departure.
+In applying these to ourselves we must remember that outward prosperity
+was attached to a devout life more closely in Israel than it is now.
+But, though the form of the blessings dependent on doing God's will
+alters, the reality remains unaltered.
+
+I. The promises to Solomon are preceded by the assurance that his
+prayer had been heard. The answer corresponds very beautifully to the
+petitions. God has 'put His name' in the Temple, as the descent of the
+Glory to rest between the cherubim visibly showed, and thus has
+fulfilled Solomon's petition; but the answer surpasses the prayer in
+that the presence of 'the Name' is promised 'for ever.' Similarly, in
+Psalm cxxxii., the answer to the petition 'Arise into Thy rest'
+transcends the petition which it answers, and adds the same promise of
+perpetuity, 'This is My rest for _ever_.' Again, Solomon had
+prayed, 'that Thine eyes may be open towards this house,' and God
+answers with the expanded promise that not His eyes only, but His heart
+shall be there perpetually. He is 'able to do exceeding abundantly
+above all that we ask or think,' and He delights to surprise us with
+over-answers to our prayers. We cannot widen our desires so far but
+that His gifts will stretch beyond them on every side.
+
+But the promise of perpetual dwelling in the Temple is conditional, as
+appears in the latter part of God's answer, though no condition is
+stated at first. The promises to Solomon individually are all
+contingent. The all-important 'if' at the beginning of verse 4 governs
+the whole. The divine eulogium on David, which introduces these
+promises, suggests how mercifully God regards the imperfect lives of
+His servants. That merciful interpretation of conduct is removed by a
+whole universe from palliation of sin. It affords no ground for our
+thinking little of our inconsistencies. David's crime was sternly
+rebuked and sorely punished, but still his life, in its main drift and
+outline, could be presented as a pattern, as being marked by integrity
+of heart and uprightness. The moon shines like a disc of silver, though
+its surface is pitted with extinct volcanoes.
+
+We may note, too, the pregnant description in outline of the elements
+of a devout life, as here enjoined on Solomon. The first requisite is
+to walk before God; that is, to nourish a continual consciousness of
+His presence, and to regulate all actions and thoughts under the
+thrilling and purifying sense of being 'ever in the great Taskmaster's
+eye.' Only we are not to think of Him as only a Taskmaster, but as a
+loving Friend and Helper. A child is happy in its little work or play
+when it knows that its father is looking on with sympathy. The sense of
+God's eye being on us should 'make a sunshine in a shady place,' should
+lighten labour and sweeten care. It is at the root of practical
+obedience, as its place in this sequence shows; for there follow it, in
+verse 4, 'integrity of heart and uprightness,' on which again follow
+obedience to all God's commandments.
+
+First must come the clear recognition of God's relation to us. That
+recognition will influence our relation to Him, bending hearts to love
+and wills to submit, and the whole inward being to cleave to Him.
+Thence, and only thence, will issue in the life the streams of
+practical obedience. It is vain to seek to produce righteous deeds
+unless our hearts are right, and it is as vain to labour at making our
+hearts right unless thoughts of what God is to us have purified them.
+Morality is rooted in religion. On the other hand, no knowledge of the
+truth about God is worth anything unless it touches the hidden man of
+the heart, and then passes outward to mould conduct. 'Faith without
+works is dead.' Correct theology and glowing emotions lack their
+consummation if they do not impel to holy and God-pleasing living.
+
+The reward promised in verse 5 is for Solomon alone. His throne is to
+be 'established for ever.' The duration intended by that expression is
+therefore not absolutely unlimited, but equivalent to 'during thy
+lifetime.' Solomon could only affect himself by his obedience. The
+continuance of the kingdom after him depended on his successors. His
+possession of the throne during his life was the beginning of the
+fulfilment of the promise to David referred to in verse 5, but it was
+only the beginning, and, like all God's promises, it was contingent on
+obedience. We receive no outward kingdom if we are servants of God;
+but, in deepest truth, the righteous man is a king, 'lord of himself,
+though not of lands.' All creatures serve the soul that serves God, and
+all Christ's brethren share in His royalty.
+
+II. The second part of this divine utterance is addressed to the whole
+nation, as is marked by the 'ye' there compared with the 'thou' in
+verse 4, and it lays down for succeeding generations the conditions on
+which the new Temple, that stood glittering in the bright Eastern
+sunshine, should retain its pristine beauty. While the address to
+Solomon incited to obedience by painting its blessed consequences, that
+to the nation reaches the same end by the opposite path of darkly
+portraying the ruin that would be caused by departure from God. God
+draws by holding out a hand full of good things, and He no less
+lovingly drives by stretching out a hand armed with lightnings.
+
+A plain declaration of the evils that dog disobedience is as loving as
+a bright vision of the good that attends on submission. The sternest
+threatenings of Scripture are spoken that they may never need to be
+executed. There is no more foolish misconception of Christianity than
+that which calls it harsh because it reveals that 'the wages of sin is
+death.' Note that the threatenings come second, not first. God's heart
+is averse to smite. To lavish blessing is His delight, and judgment is
+'His work, His strange work,' forced on Him by sin.
+
+The special sin against which Israel was warned was that to which it
+was specially prone and tempted by its circumstances. When all the
+nations 'worshipped stocks and stones,' it was hard to 'keep thy faith
+so pure' as to have no share in the universal bewitchment. So the whole
+history of the people is one of lapses into idolatry and of
+chastisements leading to temporary amendment, until the long, sharp
+lesson of the Captivity eradicated the disposition to be as the nations
+around. No doubt, idolatry in its crudest forms is outgrown now in
+Western lands, but sense still craves material embodiment of the
+unseen, and still feels the pressure of the material and palpable.
+Hence the earthward direction of so many lives. Asthmatical patients
+often breathe more easily in the slums of a city than in pure mountain
+air, and sense-bound men find difficulty in respiration on the heights
+of a religion which minimises the appeal to sense.
+
+The penalty attached to departure from God was the loss of the land.
+Israel kept it on a tenure like that of some of our English nobility,
+who hold their estates on condition of doing some service to the
+sovereign. Of course, that connection between serving God and national
+prosperity involved continual supernatural intervention, and cannot be
+applied entirely to national prosperity now; but it still remains true
+that moral and religious corruption saps the foundations of a people's
+well-being, and, when carried far enough, destroys a people's
+existence. The solemn threat of becoming 'a proverb and a byword' among
+all peoples is quoted, apparently from Deuteronomy xxviii. 37, and has
+been only too terribly fulfilled for weary centuries.
+
+The promise in verse 3, that God's eyes and heart should be perpetually
+on the Temple, has now the condition attached that Israel should cleave
+to the Lord. Otherwise it will be cast out of His sight, and be a mark
+for scorn and wonder. The vivid representation of a dialogue between
+passers-by is quoted from Deuteronomy xxix. 24-26, where it is spoken
+in reference to the nation. It carries the solemn thought that God's
+name is made known among the heathen by the punishment of His
+unfaithful people, not less really, and sometimes more strikingly, than
+by the blessings bestowed on the obedient. If we will not magnify Him
+by joyous service, by rewarding which, with good He can magnify
+Himself, He will magnify Himself on us by retribution, the more severe
+as our blessings have been the greater. The lightning-scathed tree,
+standing white in the forest, witnesses to the power of the flash, as
+its leafy sisters in their green beauty proclaim the energy of the
+sunshine. Israel has, perhaps, been a more convincing witness for God,
+in its homeless centuries, than ever it was when at rest in the good
+land. 'If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also
+spare not thee.'
+
+
+
+
+A ROYAL SEEKER AFTER WISDOM
+
+'And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning
+the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. 2. And
+she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare
+spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come
+to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart. 3. And
+Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from
+the king, which he told her not. 4. And when the queen of Sheba had
+seen all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he had built, 5. And the
+meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance
+of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent
+by which he went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more
+spirit in her. 6. And she said to the king, It was a true report that I
+heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. 7. Howbeit I
+believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and,
+behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth
+the fame which I heard. 8. Happy are thy men, happy are these thy
+servants, which stand continually before thee, and that hear thy
+wisdom. 9. Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighteth in thee, to
+set thee on the throne of Israel: because the Lord loved Israel for
+ever, therefore made He thee king, to do judgment and justice. 10. And
+she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices
+very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such
+abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king
+Solomon. 11. And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir,
+brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones.
+12. And the king made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the
+Lord, and for the king's house, harps also and psalteries for singers:
+there came no such almug trees, nor were seen unto this day. 13. And
+king Solomon gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever
+she asked, besides that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty. So
+she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants.'--1 KINGS
+x. 1-13.
+
+
+We feel the breath of a new era in the accounts of Solomon's reign. One
+most striking peculiarity is the friendly intercourse with the nations
+around. The horizon has widened, and, instead of wars with Philistines
+and Ammon, we have alliances with Egypt, Tyre, and, in the present
+passage, with Sheba, a district of Southern Arabia. The expansion was
+fruitful of both good and evil. It brought new ideas and much wealth;
+but it brought, too, luxury and idolatry. Still Israel was meant to be
+'a light to lighten the Gentiles,' and in this picturesque story of the
+wisdom-seeking queen, we have the true relation of Israel to the
+nations in its purest form. The details of the narrative. Interesting
+as they are, need not occupy us long.
+
+The queen had heard the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the
+Lord, by which seems to be meant his reputation of being gifted with
+deep knowledge of the divine character as revealed to him. The
+questions which occupy earnest souls in all lands and ages were
+stirring in the heart of this woman-chief. The only way, in these old
+days, to learn the wisdom of the wise, was to go to them. So the
+streets of Jerusalem saw the strange sight of the long train which had
+come toiling up from Arabia, laden with its characteristic produce,
+gold and spices and precious stones, in the enumeration of which is
+reflected the wonder of the beholders at the unaccustomed procession.
+But better than all her wealth was the eager woman's thirst for truth.
+Surely it is a very unworthy and unlikely explanation of her 'hard
+questions' and purpose to suppose that she came only for a duel of
+wit,--to pose Solomon with half-playful riddles. The journey was too
+toilsome, the gifts too large, the accent of conviction in her
+subsequent words too grave, for that. She was a seeker after truth, and
+probably after God, and had known the torture of the eternal questions
+which rise in the mind, and, once having risen, leave no rest till they
+are answered.
+
+So she came, though half incredulous, hoping to find some solution to
+what 'was in her heart,' and as thirsty for the answer as her country's
+sands for water. Only they who have known the pain of carrying such
+questions, like a fire in their bones, can know the joy which she felt
+when she found one to whom she could speak them. It is something of a
+drop to pass from Solomon's wisdom to the list of the splendours of his
+household, and the effect which these produced on the queen; but the
+whole account of Solomon's reign is marked by the same naive blending
+of wisdom and material wealth. In those days, outward prosperity was
+the sign of divine favour. But even in those days they knew that wisdom
+was 'better than rubies.' The two elements were both at their height in
+Solomon's reign, and the lower of them finally got uppermost, and
+wrecked him. Plain living and high thinking are better than 'wisdom,'
+which lets itself down to make much of 'the meat of the table,' and a
+retinue of servants in fine clothes. How many of us would listen much
+more respectfully to wisdom, if it lived in a palace, than in 'dens and
+caves of the earth'? The queen's words in verses 6 to 9 are graceful
+with a woman's tact, and full of feeling. She confesses that she had
+come half-doubting, even though she risked the journey, and fervently
+avows how far fame had been unlike itself in this instance, and had
+diminished, and not magnified. Then she envies the servants who wait on
+him, because they are so near the fountain, and finally breaks into
+praise of Solomon's God, whose love to Israel was shown in giving it
+such a king. One does not know whether praise of God or compliments to
+Solomon were most in her mind. The words scarcely sound as if she had
+become a worshipper of God. He is to her but 'thy God.' But we may
+believe that she carried away some seed which grew up. Then, with
+munificent interchange of gifts, she and her train glide out of the
+story, and we lose them in the dark. The account of the wealth brought
+by Hiram's ships comes singularly in, breaking the narrative of the
+queen. Its insertion seems to indicate some connection between the
+fleet and her, and to suggest that Sheba and Ophir were near each other
+(which would put Ethiopia, where some have located it, out of court),
+and that she heard of Solomon through it.
+
+The whole incident may be regarded as an illustration of the spirit
+that should mark all seekers after truth, whether earthly or heavenly.
+This queen had to win a victory over national prejudices, over the
+disabilities of her sex, over the temptations of her station, to travel
+far, and face dangers, and to incur great cost. It was surely no mere
+playful errand on which she was bent. She was smitten with the sacred
+impulse to 'follow knowledge like a sinking star.' Seldom, indeed, have
+rulers made progresses from their dominions for such an end, and seldom
+have two of them met to confer on such subjects. We shall not rightly
+measure the relative importance of things unless we resolutely set
+ourselves to look at them with eyes purged from the illusions of sense,
+and cleared to see how much better than wealth and all outward good is
+the possession of truth. All sacrifices made to win it are richly
+repaid, and wise investments. Even in regard to lower kinds of truth,
+to win them is worth the effort of a life; and, in regard to the
+highest kind, which is the personal Truth, he is the wise man who
+counts all earthly good but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of
+it. This queen points the path by which all pilgrims of the truth must
+travel. It is not to be won without effort, without conquest of
+prejudices, repression of weakness, sacrifices of delights, and long
+effort. There must be humility, which will gladly learn, if there is
+ever to be its possession.
+
+           'Nor can the man that moulds in idle cell
+            Unto her happy mansion attain.'
+
+But in our days, the easier the attainment, the less the appreciation.
+The queen of Sheba had no books, and she travelled far to get wisdom.
+We are flooded with all appliances, and many of us would not cross the
+road to get Solomon's wisdom, but would do much to be invited to feast
+at his table, or to secure some of the queen's camels' load.
+
+This story brings out the true ideal of Israel's relation to the
+nations. Solomon is the embodiment of his people. His reign is marked
+by largely increased and amicable relations with his neighbours. These
+were not all wholesome, and ultimately led to much mischief. But, while
+the purely commercial connection with Tyre was defective, in that there
+was no attempt to bring Hiram and the men who worked for the Temple to
+any knowledge of the God of the Temple, and the relation with Egypt was
+more unsatisfactory still, in that it meant only the importation of
+corrupting luxuries and the marriage with an Egyptian princess, an
+idolatress, this relation with the queen of Sheba was the true one.
+Solomon did in it what Israel was meant to do for the world. He
+attracted a seeker from afar, and imparted to her the wisdom that God
+had given him. He answered the torturing questions and won the
+confidence of this woman who was groping in the dark, till he led her
+by the hand to the light. A bond of friendship knit them together, and
+mutual gifts cemented their amity.
+
+All this is but the putting into concrete form of God's purpose in
+choosing Israel for His own. It was not meant to retain or to enclose,
+but to diffuse, the light. The world can only get blessing by one man
+or people getting it first. As well charge the builder of the
+lighthouse with partiality because he puts the bright lamps in that
+narrow room, as find fault with the divine method of making the earth
+know His name. The lighthouse is reared that the beams may stream out
+over the tossing, nightly sea. So God appointed to His people of old
+their task. So He has appointed the same task to His Church to-day. We
+ought to attract seekers from afar, to win their frank speech when they
+come, to be able to answer their anxious questions, and to bind them to
+ourselves in grateful bonds. In these days there are multitudes
+harassed by the modern forms of the same old, ever-pressing riddles
+which burdened this ancient queen's heart; and that Church but ill
+discharges its office which repels rather than draws the seekers, or
+has no word of illumination for them if they come.
+
+But the highest use to be made of the story is that which Christ made
+of it. It stands as a perpetual witness against those who are too blind
+to see the beauty, or too careless to be drawn to listen to the wisdom,
+of a present Christ. The sacrifices which men can make for lower
+objects are the most powerful rebukes of their unwillingness to make
+sacrifices for the highest, just as their capacity of love and trust is
+of their not loving and trusting Him. The same energy and effort which
+this queen put forth to reach Solomon, and which men eagerly put forth
+for some temporal good, would suffice to bring them to the feet of the
+great Teacher. Her longing for wisdom, her discernment of the person
+who could give it, and her toilsome journey, rebuke men's indifference
+to Christ's gifts, their failure to recognise His sweetness and power
+to make blessed, and their laziness and self-indulgence, which will not
+take a hundredth part of the pains to secure heaven which they
+cheerfully expend, and that often in vain, to secure earth. Will the
+'Queen of the south' stand alone as witness in that day, or will there
+not be many out of other lands, who, like her, stretched out their
+hands to the dimly descried but yearned-for light, and came nearer to
+it, though they seemed far off, than many who lived in its full blaze
+and never cared for it? Will it be only Christ's contemporaries who
+will be condemned by heathen seekers after God, or will there be many
+of ourselves, convicted of stolid indifference to the Christ who has
+been beside us all our lives, and has prayed us 'with much entreaty'
+and in vain, to 'receive the gift'?
+
+They who find their way to Him, and tell Him all that is in their
+hearts, will have all their questions solved. We have not far to go;
+for 'a greater than Solomon is here.' If we betake ourselves to Him,
+and learn of Him, we too shall find that 'the half was not told us';
+for Christ possessed is sweeter than all expectation, however high-
+pitched it may be, and to win Him is the only gain in which there is no
+disappointment, either at first or at last. We may all have the
+blessedness of His servants, 'which stand continually before' Him, and
+not only 'hear' but receive into their spirits His 'wisdom.'
+
+
+
+
+THE FALL OF SOLOMON
+
+'For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away
+his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord
+his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5. For Solomon went
+after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the
+abomination of the Ammonites. 6. And Solomon did evil in the sight of
+the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as did David his father.
+7. Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of
+Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the
+abomination of the children of Ammon. 8. And likewise did he for all
+his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.
+9. And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned
+from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice, 10. And
+had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after
+other gods: but he kept not that which the Lord commanded. 11.
+Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of
+thee, and thou hast not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have
+commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give
+it to thy servant. 12. Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for
+David thy father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.
+13. Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one
+tribe to thy son for David My servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake
+which I have chosen.'--1 KINGS xi. 4-13.
+
+
+Scripture never blinks the defects of its heroes. Its portraits do not
+smooth out wrinkles, but, with absolute fidelity, give all faults. That
+pitiless truthfulness is no small proof of its inspiration. If these
+historical books were simply fragments of national records, owning no
+higher source than patriotism, they would never have blurted out the
+errors and sins of David and Solomon as they do. Where else are there
+national histories of which the very central idea is the laying bare of
+national sins and chastisements? or where else are there legends of the
+people's heroes which tell their sins without apology or reticence? The
+difference in tone augurs a different origin. The Old Testament
+histories are not written to tell Israel's glories, or even, we may
+say, to recount its history, but to tell God's dealings with Israel,--a
+very different theme, and one which finds its material equally in the
+glories and in the miseries, which respectively follow its obedience
+and disobedience. So Solomon's fall is told in the same frank way as
+his wisdom and wealth; for what is of importance is not Solomon so much
+as God's dealings with Solomon, when his heart was turned away. We are
+told that the narrative of Solomon's reign is an ideal picture. Strange
+idealising which leaves the ideal king wallowing in a sty of sensuality
+and an apostate from Jehovah!
+
+Here we are simply told of the two things,--his sin, and the divine
+judgment which it drew after it.
+
+I. Verses 4-8 tell the black story of Solomon's apostasy. What was its
+extent? Did he himself take part in idolatrous worship, or simply, with
+the foolish fondness of an old sensualist, let these foreign women have
+their shrines? The darker supposition seems correct. The expression
+that he 'went after other gods' is commonly used to mean actual
+idolatry; and his wives could scarcely have been said to have 'turned
+away his heart,' if all that he did was to wink at, or even to
+facilitate, their worship. But, on the other hand, he does not seem to
+have abandoned Jehovah's worship. The charge against him is that 'his
+heart was not perfect,' or wholly devoted to the Lord, or, as verse 6
+puts it, that he 'went not fully' after the Lord. His was a case of
+halting between two opinions, or rather, of trying to hold both at
+once. He wanted to be a worshipper of Jehovah and of these idols also.
+
+Was his apostasy final? Yes, so far as we can gather from the
+narrative. Not only is there no statement of his repentance, but the
+silence with which he receives the divine announcement of retribution
+is suspicious; and the prophecy of Ahijah to Jeroboam, which obviously
+comes later in time than the threatenings of the text, treats the
+idolatry as still existing (verse 33). Further, we learn from 2 Kings
+xxiii.13 that the shrines which he built stood till Josiah's time. If
+Solomon had ever abandoned his idolatry, he would not have left them
+standing. So we seem to have in him a case of a fall which knew no
+recovery, an eclipse which did not pass. The Book of Ecclesiastes, if
+of his composition, would somewhat lighten the darkness of such an end;
+but his authorship of it is now all but universally given up.
+
+So there, on Olivet's southern ridge, right opposite the Temple, stood
+the three altars, and there the king worshipped; and, if he did, he
+would have a crowd of imitators. The lessons of such a fall are many.
+First, it teaches the destructive effect of yielding to sensual
+indulgence. Solomon's unbridled and monstrous polygamy sapped his
+manhood and his principle, darkened his clear spirit, blinded his keen
+eye, and turned a youth of noble aspiration and a manhood of noble
+accomplishment into an old age without dignity, reverence, or calm. All
+his wisdom was worth little if it could not keep him master of himself.
+A young man who lets his passions run away with him is less to be
+condemned than an old sensualist. God means that reason should govern
+impulses and desires, and that conscience should govern all and be
+governed by His will. The vessel is sure to be wrecked when the
+officers are sent below and the mutineers get hold of the helm.
+
+Second, it warns us that till the very end of life a fall is possible.
+This ship went down when the voyage was nearly over. In sight of port
+it struck, and that not for want of beacons. What pathetic warning lies
+in that phrase, 'when Solomon was old'! After so many years of high
+aims, so many temptations overcome, with such habits of wisdom and
+kingly nobility, after such prayers and visions, he fell; and, if
+_he_ fell, who can be sure of standing? No length of life spent in
+holy thoughts and service secures us against the possibility of
+disastrous fall. Only one thing does,--'Hold Thou me up, and I shall be
+safe!' John Bunyan saw a door opening down to hell hard by the gates of
+the Celestial City. When a man that has been had in reputation for
+wisdom and honour shames the record of his life by a great splash of
+mud on the white page, near its end, he seldom returns. An old apostate
+is usually finally an apostate.
+
+Third, may we not venture to see a warning here against marriages in
+which there is not unity in the deepest things, and a common faith?
+'When you run in double harness, take a good look at the other horse.'
+If a young Christian man or woman enters on such a union with one who
+is not a Christian, it is a great deal more probable that, in the end,
+there will be two unbelievers than that there will be two Christians.
+
+We have nothing to do with pronouncing on Solomon's final condition,
+But he stands on the page of this history, a sad, enigmatical figure, a
+warning to all young people to take heed that the attrition of the
+world does not rub off the bloom of early religion, or make them
+cynically ashamed of the unselfishness of their early desires. There is
+no sadder sight than an old man whose youthful enthusiasm for goodness
+and belief in the super-excellency of wisdom have withered, leaving him
+a hard worldling or a gross sensualist. Better the early days, when he
+was obscure and poor, and believed in wisdom and in the God of wisdom,
+than the late ones, when worldly success has spoiled him!
+
+II. Verses 9-13 give the divine retribution announced. The immediate
+connection of sin and punishment is the teaching intended by this close
+juxtaposition of these two halves of our narrative. However long the
+chastisement may be in bursting, the divine resolve to send it is
+instantaneously consequent on the crime. The chain that binds departure
+from God with loss of blessing may be of many or few links, but it is
+riveted on when the evil is done. How gravely, as with the voice of an
+indictment drawn in heaven, the aggravations of Solomon's crime are set
+out, in that he had sinned against 'the Lord' who had appeared to him
+twice (once in his youthful vision, and once after the completion of
+the Temple), 'and had commanded him concerning' the very sin that he
+had done. Sin is made more heinous by the abundance of God's favours
+and the plainness of His commands. If we would remember God's
+appearances to us and for us, and meditate on His revealed will, we
+should be more impregnable to the assaults of temptation.
+
+We do not learn _how_ the Lord said this to Solomon. Possibly it
+was by the same prophet who afterwards announced to Jeroboam his
+destiny; but, however announced, it seems to have been received in
+sullen silence, and to have wrought no softening nor change. Like all
+God's threatenings, it was spoken that it might not be inflicted.
+Solomon was threatened before the prophet spoke to Jeroboam; and if
+Solomon had repented, Jeroboam would never have been spoken to. But he
+is too far gone to be stopped, though he has God's own word for it that
+he is ruining his kingdom by his sin. We have as clear declarations of
+worse results from ours; but they do not stop some of us. How strange
+it is that men will put out their hands to grasp their sins, even
+though they have to stretch across the smoke of the pit for them!
+
+Note how forbearance delays and diminishes retribution. The separation
+of the kingdom is deferred, and one tribe is left to the Davidic house;
+probably Judah is meant, and Benjamin is omitted as being small.
+Observe, too, how we have a double instance of the law of God's
+providence which visits the father's deeds on the children. The
+consequences of David's goodness fall on Solomon, and the consequences
+of Solomon's evil fall on Rehoboam. Stated in the language of the
+secular historian, that is to say that the consequences of great
+national virtues or crimes are seldom reaped by the generation that
+sowed the seed and did the deed, but take time to mature and work
+themselves out. Stated in the language of Scripture, it is, 'The
+fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on
+edge.' The separation of the kingdom was not brought about by miracle,
+but came in the natural course of things. A people ground down by heavy
+taxation and forced labour, to keep up the luxury of a court containing
+all that disgusting crowd of wives and concubines, was ripe for revolt,
+and when the sceptre fell into the hands of a headstrong fool, and
+there was a capable leader on the other side, discontent soon became
+rebellion, and rebellion soon became triumphant. It all flowed as
+naturally as possible from the same fountain as the idolatry of which
+it was the punishment; and so it teaches once more the great truth that
+'the world's history is the world's judgment,' and that the so-called
+'natural consequences' of our deeds are, even here and now, God's
+retribution for our deeds.
+
+What a lesson as to God's great patience is here! What a solemn glimpse
+into man's power to counterwork God's purpose! So soon after its
+establishment did the house of David prove unworthy, and the experiment
+fail. Yet that long-suffering purpose is not turned aside, but
+persistently and patiently goes on its way, altering its methods, but
+keeping its end unaltered, bending even sin to minister to its design,
+pitying and warning the sinner ere it strikes the blow that the sinner
+has made needful.
+
+Behind the figure of Solomon we see another. The wisest of men fell
+shamefully, captured by coarse lust, and apparently steeled against all
+remonstrances from Heaven. 'A greater than Solomon is here.' The faults
+of the human kings of Israel prophesy of the true King, who is to be
+the substance of which they were but faint shadows, and whose manhood
+was stained by no flaw, nor His kingdom ever rent from His pure hands.
+Solomon was wise, but Christ is 'Wisdom.' Solomon built a Temple, but
+also altars to false gods overtopping it across the valley; and his
+Temple was burned with fire. But Christ is the true Temple as well as
+Priest and Sacrifice. Solomon was by name 'the peaceful,' and his land
+had outward rest, darkened at the last by war and rebellion. But Christ
+is the Prince of Peace, and of His dominion there shall be no end.
+Solomon is the great example of the sad truth that the loftiest and
+wisest share in the universal sinfulness. Christ is the one flawless
+Man, who makes those who take Him for their King wise and peaceful,
+prosperous, and in due time sinless, like Himself.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW GARMENT BENT
+
+'And Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephrathite of Zereda, Solomon's
+servant, whose mother's name was Zeruah, a widow woman, even he lifted
+up his hand against the king. 27. And this was the cause that he lifted
+up his hand against the king: Solomon built Millo, and repaired the
+breaches of the city of David his father. 28. And the man Jeroboam was
+a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was
+industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of
+Joseph. 29. And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of
+Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way;
+and he had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in
+the field: 30. And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and
+rent it in twelve pieces: 31. And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten
+pieces: for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend
+the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to
+thee: 32. (But he shall have one tribe for My servant David's sake, and
+for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the
+tribes of Israel:) 33. Because that they have forsaken Me, and have
+worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh the god of
+the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon, and have not
+walked in My ways, to do that which is right in Mine eyes, and to keep
+My statutes and My judgments, as did David his father. 34. Howbeit I
+will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand: but I will make him
+prince all the days of his life for David My servant's sake, whom I
+chose because he kept My commandments and My statutes: 35. But I will
+take the kingdom out of his ion's hand, and will give it unto thee,
+even ten tribes. 36. And unto his son will I give one tribe, that David
+My servant may have a light alway before Me in Jerusalem, the city
+which I have chosen Me to put My name there. 37. And I will take thee,
+and thou shalt reign according to all that thy soul desireth, and shalt
+be king over Israel. 38. And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all
+that I command thee, and wilt walk in My ways, and do that is right in
+My sight, to keep My statutes and My commandments, as David My servant
+did; that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built
+for David, and will give Israel unto thee. 39. And I will for this
+afflict the seed of David, but not for ever. 40. Solomon sought
+therefore to kill Jeroboam. And Jeroboam arose, and fled into Egypt,
+unto Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of
+Solomon. 41. And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did,
+and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of
+Solomon? 42. And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all
+Israel was forty years. 43. And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was
+buried in the city of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in
+his stead.'--1 KINGS xi. 26-43.
+
+Solomon falls into the background in the last part of the story of his
+reign, and his enemies are more prominent than himself. So long as he
+walked with God, he was of importance for the historian; but as soon as
+he forsook God, and was consequently forsaken of His wisdom, he becomes
+as insignificant as an empty vessel which has once held sweet perfume,
+or a piece of carbon through which the electric current has ceased to
+flow. The sunbeam has left that peak, and shines on other summits.
+Never was there a sadder eclipse.
+
+We are here told first how the instrument for shattering Solomon's
+kingdom was shaped by himself. It is the old story of a young man of
+mark, attracting the eyes of the king, being promoted to offices of
+trust, which at once stir ambition, and give prominence and influence
+which seem to afford a possibility of gratifying it. The passion for
+building, so common in Eastern kings, and the cause of so much misery
+to their subjects, had grown on Solomon; and as his later days were
+harassed by war, and he had lost the safe defence of God's arm,
+Jerusalem had to be enclosed by a wall. His father had been able to
+leave a 'breach' because the Lord was a wall round him and his city;
+and if Solomon had kept in his paths, he would have had no need to add
+to the fortifications. The preservation of ancestral piety is for
+nations and individuals a surer protection than the improvement of
+ancestral outward defences. Jeroboam made himself conspicuous by his
+energy (for that rather than 'valour' must be the meaning of the word),
+and so got promotion. It was natural, but at the same time dangerous,
+to put him in command of the forced labour of his own tribe, as the
+narrative shows us was done; for 'the house of Joseph' is the tribe of
+Ephraim, to which, according to the correct translation of verse 26, he
+belonged. In such an office he would be thrown among his kinsmen, and
+would at once gain influence and learn to sympathise with their
+discontent, or, at any rate, to know where the sore places were, if he
+ever wanted to inflame them. One can easily fancy the grumblings of the
+Ephraimites dragged up to Jerusalem to the hated labour, which Samuel
+had predicted (1 Samuel viii. 16), and how facile it would be for the
+officer in charge to fan discontent or to win friends by judicious
+indulgence. How long this went on we do not know, but the fire had
+smouldered for some time under the unconscious king's very eyes, when
+it was fanned into a flame by Ahijah's breath.
+
+That is the second stage in the story,--the spark on the tinder. We
+have heard nothing of prophets during Solomon's reign; but now this man
+from Shiloh, the ancient seat of the Tabernacle, meets the ambitious
+young officer in some solitary spot, with the message which answered to
+his secret thoughts and made his heart beat fast. The symbolic action
+preceding the spoken word, as usual, supplied the text, of which the
+word was the explanation and expansion. How pathetic is the newness of
+the garment! Unworn, strong, and fresh, it yet is rent in pieces. So
+the kingdom is so recent, with such possibilities of duration, and yet
+it must be shattered! Thus quickly has the experiment broken down! It
+is little more than a century since Saul's anointing, little more than
+seventy years since the choice of David, and already the fabric, which
+had such fair promise of perpetuity, is ready to vanish away. If we may
+say so, that 'new garment' represents the divine disappointment and
+sorrow over the swift corruption of the kingdom. It was probably merely
+some loose square of cloth which Ahijah tore, with violence
+proportioned to its newness, into twelve pieces, ten of which he thrust
+into the astonished Jeroboam's hands. The commentary followed.
+
+Ahijah's prophecy is substantially the same as the previous
+threatenings to Solomon, which had done no good. Their incipient
+fulfilment in the wars with Edom and Syria had been equally futile; and
+therefore God, who never strikes without warning, and never warns
+without striking if men do not heed, now drops the message into ears
+that were only too ready to hear. The seed fell on prepared soil, and
+Jeroboam's half-formed plans would be consolidated and fixed. The scene
+is like that in which the witches foretell to Macbeth his dignity.
+Slumbering ambitions are stirred, and a half-inclined will is finally
+determined by the glimpse into the future. How easily men are persuaded
+that God speaks, and how willing they are to obey, when their
+inclinations jump with Heaven's commandments! The prophet's message
+makes the separation of the kingdoms a direct divine act, and yet it
+was the breaking up of a divine institution. God's dealings have to be
+shaped according to facts, and He changes His methods, and lets the
+feebleness of His creatures and their sins mould His august procedure.
+The divine Potter, like mere human artisans, has His spoiled pieces of
+work, and, with infinite resource and patience as infinite, re-shapes
+the clay into other forms. The separation of the kingdoms was a divine
+act, and yet it is treated often in the later books as a crime and
+rebellion. God works out His purposes through men's deeds, and their
+motives determine whether their acts are sins or obedience. A man may
+be a rebel while he is doing the will of God, if what he does be done
+at the bidding of his own selfishness. The separation of the kingdoms
+was God's doing, but it was brought about by the free action of men
+obeying most secular impulses of political discontent, and led by a
+cunning, self-seeking schemer.
+
+Note that the prophecy is in three parts. First, verses 31-33 announce
+the punishment, with the reservation of a dwindled dominion to the
+Davidic house, for the sake of their great ancestor and of God's choice
+of Jerusalem, and solemnly charge on the people the idolatry which the
+king had introduced. The second part (verses 34-36) postpones the
+execution of the sentence till after Solomon's death, and assigns the
+same two reasons for this further forbearance. The third part (verses
+37-39) promises Jeroboam the kingdom, and lays down the conditions on
+which the favours promised to David and his house may be his. The whole
+closes with the assurance that the affliction of the seed of David is
+not to be for ever.
+
+The punishment was heavy; for the disruption of the kingdom meant the
+wreck of all the prosperity of Solomon's earlier days, the hopeless
+weakness of the divided tribes as against the formidable powers that
+pressed in on them from north and south, frequent intestine wars,
+bitter hatred instead of amity. Yet there was another side to it; for
+the very failure of the human kings made the Messianic hope the more
+bright, like a light glowing in the deepening darkness, and tumult and
+oppression might teach those whom prosperity and peace had only
+corrupted. The great lesson for us is the ruin which follows on
+departure from God. We do not see national sins followed with equal
+plainness or swiftness by national judgments; but the history of Israel
+is meant to show on a large scale what is always true, in the long run,
+both for nations and for individuals, that 'it is an evil thing and a
+bitter' to depart from the living God.
+
+Mark, too, that the judgment is wrought out by perfectly natural
+causes. The separation follows old lines of cleavage. The strength of
+David's kingdom lay in the south; and Ephraim was too powerful a tribe
+and too proud of its ancient glories, to acquiesce cheerfully in the
+pre-eminence of Judah. The oppression of forced labour and heavy
+taxation was put forward as the reason for the revolt, and, no doubt,
+was the reason for the readiness with which the ten tribes rallied to
+Jeroboam's flag. There are two ways of writing history. You can either
+leave God out, or trace all to Him. The former way calls itself
+'scientific' and 'positive.' The latter is the Bible way. Perhaps, if
+modern history were written on the same principles as the Books of
+Kings, the divine hand would be as plainly visible,--only it requires
+an inspired historian to do it. The way of bringing about the judgment
+for departing from God has changed, but the judgment remains the same
+to-day as when Ahijah rent his garment.
+
+Between verses 39 and 40 we must suppose an attempt at armed rebellion
+by Jeroboam. That is implied by the expression that he 'lifted his hand
+against the king' (verses 26, 27). That attempt must have been put down
+by Solomon. And that it should have been made shows how little Jeroboam
+was influenced by religious motives. The prophet's words had set him
+all afire with ambitious hopes, and he paid no heed to the distinct
+assurance that Solomon was to be 'prince all the days of his life.' He
+stretched out a rash, self-willed hand to snatch the promised crown,
+and broke God's commandment even while he pretended to be keeping it.
+How different David's conduct in like circumstances! He took no steps
+to bring about the fulfilment of Samuel's promise at his anointing, but
+patiently waited for God to do as He had said, in His own time, and
+meantime continued his lowly work. God's time is the best time; and he
+who greedily grasps at a premature fulfilment of promised good will
+have to pay for it by defeat and exile from the modest good that he
+had.
+
+Jeroboam's flight to Egypt brings that ill-omened name on the page for
+the first time since the Exodus. It has given occasion to an
+extraordinary addition to the Septuagint, professing to tell his
+adventures there,--how he was high in Shishak's favour, and married a
+princess. That is apparently pure legend; but his residence there was
+important, as the beginning of Egypt's interference in Israel's
+affairs. It is an old trick of aggressive nations to side with a
+pretender to the throne of a country which they covet, and benevolently
+to strengthen him that he may weaken it. No doubt it was as Jeroboam's
+ally that Shishak invaded Judah in the fifth year of Rehoboam, and
+plundered the Temple and the palace. It was a bad beginning for a king
+of Israel to be a pensioner of Egypt.
+
+The narrative closes with the sad, reticent formula which ends each
+reign, and in Solomon's case hides so much that is tragic and dark.
+This was all that could be said about the end of a career that had
+begun so nobly. If more had been said, the record would have been
+sadder; and so the pitying narrative casts the veil of the stereotyped
+summary over the miserable story. There are many instances in history
+of lives of genius and enthusiasm, of high promise and partial
+accomplishment, marred and flung away, but none which present the great
+tragedy of wasted gifts, and blossoms never fruited, in a sharper, more
+striking form than the life of the wise king of Israel, who 'in his
+latter days' was 'a fool.' The goodliest vessel may be shipwrecked in
+sight of port. Solomon was not an old man, as we count age, when he
+died; for he reigned forty years, and was somewhere about twenty when
+he became king. But it was 'when he was old' that he fell, and that
+through passion which should have been well under control long before.
+The sun went down in a thick bank of clouds, which rose from undrained
+marshes in his soul, and stretched high up in the western horizon. His
+career, in its glory and its shame, preaches the great lesson which the
+Book of Ecclesiastes puts into his mouth as 'the conclusion of the
+whole matter': 'Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the
+whole duty of man.'
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO SPLIT A KINGDOM
+
+And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for all Israel were come to Shechem to
+make him king. 2. And it came to pass, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
+who was yet in Egypt, heard of it (for he was fled from the presence of
+king Solomon, and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt); 3. That they sent and
+called him. And Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came, and
+spake unto Rehoboam, saying, 4. Thy father made our yoke grievous: now
+therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy
+yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee. 6. And he
+said unto them, Depart yet for three days, then come again to me. And
+the people departed. 6. And king Rehoboam consulted with the old men,
+that stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, How
+do ye advise that I may answer this people? 7. And they spake unto him,
+saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt
+serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they
+will be thy servants for ever. 8. But he forsook the counsel of the old
+men, which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that
+were grown up with him, and which stood before him: 9. And he said unto
+them, What counsel give ye that we may answer this people, who have
+spoken to me, saying, Make the yoke which thy father did put upon us
+lighter? 10. And the young men that were grown up with him spake unto
+him, saying, Thus shalt thou speak unto this people that spake unto
+thee, saying, Thy father made our yoke heavy, but make thou it lighter
+unto us; thus shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be
+thicker than my father's loins. 11. And now whereas my father did lade
+you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father hath
+chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. 12.
+So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the
+king had appointed, saying, 'Come to me again the third day. 13. And
+the king answered the people roughly, and forsook the old men's counsel
+that they gave him; 14. And spake to them after the counsel of the
+young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to
+your yoke: my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise
+you with scorpions. 15. Wherefore the king hearkened not unto the
+people; for the cause was from the Lord, that He might perform His
+saying, which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Jeroboam the
+son of Nebat. 16. So when all Israel saw that the king hearkened not
+unto them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we
+in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your
+tents, O Israel: now see to thine own house, David. So Israel departed
+unto their tents. 17. But as for the children of Israel which dwelt in
+the cities of Judah, Rehoboam reigned over them.'--1 KINGS xii. 1-17.
+
+
+
+The separation of the kingdom of Solomon into two weak and hostile
+states is, in one aspect, a wretched story of folly and selfishness
+wrecking a nation, and, in another, a solemn instance of divine
+retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this
+account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable
+motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one
+sentence (verse 15) draws back the curtain for a moment, and shows us
+the true cause. There is something very striking in that one flash,
+which reveals the enthroned God, working through the ignoble strife
+which makes up the rest of the story. This double aspect of the
+disruption of the kingdom is the main truth about it which the
+narrative impresses on us.
+
+As to the mere details of the incident, as a political revolution, they
+are in four stages. First come the terms of allegiance offered to the
+new king. Rehoboam goes to Shechem, because 'Israel was gone' there.
+The choice of the place is suspicious; for it was in the tribe of
+Ephraim, and had been for a time the centre of national life; and its
+selection at once indicated discontent with the preponderance of
+Jerusalem, and a wish to assert the importance of the central tribes.
+No doubt, the choice of the latter city for the capital had caused
+heart-burning, even during David's time.
+
+Adopting the reading of the Revised Version, we see another suspicious
+sign in the recall of Jeroboam, and his selection as spokesman; for he
+had been in rebellion against Solomon (1 Kings xi. 26), and therefore
+an exile. Probably he had now been the instigator of the discontent of
+which he became the mouthpiece; and, in any case, his appearance as the
+leader was all but a declaration of war. His former occupation as
+superintendent of the forced labour exacted from his own tribe taught
+him where the shoe pinched, and the weight of the yoke would not be
+lessened in his representations.
+
+No doubt, the luxury and splendour of Solomon's brilliant reign had an
+under side of oppression, even though forced labour was not exacted
+from Israelites (1 Kings ix. 22); but probably the severity was
+exaggerated in these complaints, which were plainly the pretext for a
+revolt of which tribal jealousy was the main cause, and Jeroboam's
+ambition the spark that set light to the train. Certainly there was
+ignoring of the benefits of the peaceful reign, which had brought
+security and commerce. But there was enough truth in the complaint to
+make it plausible and effective for catching the people. Had they a
+right to suspend their allegiance on compliance with their terms?
+
+Israel was neither a despotism, nor simply a constitutional monarchy.
+God appointed the kings, and had ordained the Davidic house to the
+throne; and therefore this making terms was, in effect, asserting
+independence of God's will. Jeroboam was scheming for a crown. The
+people were shaking off their submission to God. It is very doubtful if
+concession would have conciliated them. There is nothing elevated, not
+to say religious, in their motives or acts.
+
+Then comes Rehoboam on the scene. The one sensible thing that he did
+was to take three days to think. Whether or no his little finger was
+thicker than his father's loins, his head was not half so wise.
+Ecclesiastes, speaking in Solomon's name, reckons it a great evil that
+he must leave his labour to his successor; 'and who knoweth whether he
+shall be a wise man or a fool?' Certainly Rehoboam had little 'wisdom'
+either of the higher or lower kind. It was the lower kind which the old
+counsellors of his father gave him,--that wisdom which is mere cunning
+directed to selfish ends, and careless of honour or truth. 'Flatter
+them to-day, speak them fair, promise what you do not mean to keep, and
+then, when you are firm in the saddle, let them feel bit and spur.'
+That was all these grey-headed men had learned. If that was what passed
+for 'wisdom' in Solomon's later days, we need not wonder at revolt.
+
+To act on such motives is bad enough, but to put them into plain words,
+and offer them as the rule of a king's conduct, is a depth of cynical
+contempt for truth and kingly honour that indicates only too clearly
+how rotten the state of Israel was. Have we never seen candidates for
+Parliament and the like on one side of the water, and for Congress,
+Senate, or Presidency on the other, who have gone to school to the old
+men at Shechem? The prizes of politicians are often still won by this
+stale device. The young counsellors differ only in the means of gaining
+the object. Neither set has the least glimmer of the responsibility of
+the office, nor ever thinks that God has any say in choosing the king.
+Naked, undisguised selfishness animates both; only, as becomes their
+several ages, the one set recommends crawling and the other bluster.
+Think of Saul hiding among the staff, David going back to his sheep
+after he was anointed, Solomon praying for wisdom to guide this people,
+and measure the depth of descent to this ignoble scramble for the
+sweets of royalty!
+
+According to I Kings xiv. 21, Rehoboam was forty-one at this time, so
+his contemporaries could not have been very young. But possibly the
+number in the present text is an error for twenty-one, which would
+agree better with the tone of the reference to age here, and with the
+rash counsel. Note the recurrence, both in Rehoboam's question in verse
+9 and in the young advisers' answer in verse 10, of the obnoxious
+speech of the people. That may be accidental, but it sounds as if both
+he and they were keeping their anger warm by repeating the offensive
+complaint.
+
+The Revised Version reads, 'My little finger is thicker,' etc., and so
+makes the sentence not a threat, but the foundation of the following
+threat in an arrogant and empty assertion of greater power. The fool
+always thinks himself wiser than the wise dead; the 'living dog'
+fancies that his yelp is louder than the roar of 'the dead lion.' What
+can be done with a Rehoboam who brags that he is better than Solomon?
+
+The threat which follows is inconceivably foolish; and all the more so
+because it probably did not represent any definite intention, and
+certainly was backed by no force adequate to carry it out. Passion and
+offended dignity are the worst guides for conduct. Threats are always
+mistakes. A sieve of oats, not a whip, attracts a horse to the halter.
+If Rehoboam had wished to split the kingdom, he could have found no
+better wedge than this blustering promise of tyranny.
+
+Next in this miserable story of imbecility and arrogance comes the
+answer to the assembly. Shechem had seen many an eventful hour, but
+never one heavier with important issues than that on which the united
+Israel met for the last time, and there, in the rich valley with Ebal
+and Gerizim towering above them, heard the fateful answer of this
+braggart. A dozen rash words brought about four hundred years of
+strife, weakness, and final destruction. And neither the foolish
+speaker nor any man in that crowd dreamed of the unnumbered evils to
+flow from that hour. Since issues are so far beyond our sight, how
+careful it becomes us to be of motives! Angry counsels are always
+blunders. No nation can prosper when moderate complaints are met by
+threats, and 'spirited conduct,' asserting dignity, is a sign of
+weakness, not of strength. For nations and individuals that is true.
+
+Here the historian draws back the curtain. On earth stand the insolent
+king and the now mutinous people, each driving at their ends, and
+neither free of sin in their selfishness. A stormy scene of passion,
+without thought of God, rages below, and above sits the Lord, working
+His great purpose by men's sin. That divine control does not in the
+least affect the freedom or the guilt of the actors. Rehoboam's
+disregard of the people's terms was 'a thing brought about of the
+Lord,' but it was Rehoboam's sin none the less. That which, looked at
+from the mere human side, is the sinful result of the free play of
+wrong motives, is, when regarded from the divine side, the determinate
+counsel of God. The greatest crime in the world's history was at the
+same time the accomplishment of God's most merciful purpose. Calvary is
+the highest example of the truth, which embraces all lesser instances
+of the wrath of man, which He makes to praise Him and effect His deep
+designs.
+
+Again, the rending of the kingdom was the punishment of sin, especially
+Solomon's sin of idolatry, which was closely connected with the
+extravagant expenditure that occasioned the separation. So the so-
+called natural consequences of transgression constitute its temporal
+punishment in part, and behind all these our eyes should be clear-
+sighted enough to behold the operative will of God. This one piercing
+beam of light, cast on that scene of insolence and rebellion, lights up
+all history, and gives the principle on which it must be interpreted,
+if it is not to be misread.
+
+Again, the punishment of sin, whether that of a community or of a
+single person, is sin. The separation was sin, on both sides; it led to
+much more. It was the consequence of previous departure. So ever the
+worst result of any sin is that it opens the door, like a thief who has
+crept in through a window, to a band of brethren.
+
+Lastly, we have the fierce rejoinder to the empty boast of Rehoboam,
+and the definitive disruption of the nation. Jeroboam must have fanned
+the flame skilfully, or it would not have burst out so quickly. There
+is no hesitation, nor any regret. The ominous cry, which had been heard
+before, in Sheba's abortive revolt, answers Rehoboam with instantaneous
+and full-throated defiance. Rancorous tribal hatred is audible in it.
+Long pent up jealousy and dislike of the dynasty of David has got
+breath at last: 'To your tents, O Israel! now see to thine own house,
+David!'
+
+That roar from a thousand voices meant a good deal more than the cowed
+king's vain threats did. The angry men who raised it, and were the
+tools of a crafty conspirator, the frightened courtiers and king who
+heard it, were alike in their entire oblivion of their true Lord and
+Monarch. 'God was not in all their thoughts.' An enterprise begun in
+disregard of Him is fated to failure. The only sure foundations of a
+nation are the fear of the Lord and obedience to His will. If politics
+have not a religious basis, the Lord will blow upon them, and they will
+be as stubble.
+
+
+
+
+POLITICAL RELIGION
+
+'Then Jeroboam built Shechera in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and
+went out from thence, and built Penuel. 26. And Jeroboam said in his
+heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David: 27. If this
+people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem,
+then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even
+unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to
+Rehoboam king of Judah. 28. Whereupon the king took counsel, and made
+two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up
+to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of
+the land of Egypt. 29. And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put
+he in Dan. 30. And this thing became a sin: for the people went to
+worship before the one, even unto Dan. 31. And he made an house of high
+places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of
+the sons of Levi. 32. And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth
+month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is
+in Judah; and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Beth-el,
+sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed In Beth-el
+the priests of the high places which he had made. 33. So he offered
+upon the altar which he had made in Beth-el the fifteenth day of the
+eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart;
+and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon
+the altar, and burnt incense.--1 KINGS xii. 25-33
+
+
+The details of this section need no long elucidation; for the one fact
+which it records, namely, the establishment of the calf worship in
+Israel, is the main point to consider. As for details, we need touch
+them lightly. The 'building' of Shechem and Penuel is probably to be
+understood as 'fortifying'; for, in regard to the former town, we know
+from the preceding section that it _was_ a town before the
+disruption, and the same is probably true of the latter. Two
+fortresses, one in the heart of his kingdom, one on the eastern border,
+where attack might be expected, were Jeroboam's first care.
+
+In estimating his conduct, the fact must be remembered that Ahijah had
+promised him God's protection and the establishment of his kingdom in
+his family, on the sole condition of obedience. If he had believed the
+prophet, something else than building strongholds would have been his
+prime aim. But he evidently thought that promises were all very well,
+but thick walls were better. The two things recorded of him are quite
+of a piece; and the writer seems, by putting them thus side by side, to
+wish us to note their identity of motive and similarity in character.
+
+The establishment of the calf worship was entirely due, according to
+this historian, to dread that religious unity would heal the schism of
+political duality, and that Jeroboam's kingdom and life would be
+sacrificed to the magnetism which would draw the revolted northern
+tribes back to render allegiance, where they went up to worship. The
+calculation was reasonable: but why, in estimating chances, did
+Jeroboam leave out God's promise? That should have kept him at ease.
+The calves and the castles were signs of fear and of slight regard to
+the prophet's word. No doubt, when it suited him, he could vindicate
+rebellion on the plea of obeying God. The plea would have sounded more
+genuine if he had shown that he trusted God.
+
+The calves were probably suggested by his Egyptian experiences, where
+he had seen sacred bulls worshipped living, and mummied dead. But the
+remembrance of Aaron and the golden calf was evidently present to him,
+as the almost verbal quotation of Aaron's words shows. If so, the whole
+transaction is still more accentuated as a revolt against the ritual of
+the central sanctuary. 'The much-calumniated Aaron is our example. He
+was mastered by his brother, but he was right, and we go back to the
+old original worship of our fathers.'
+
+Jeroboam was among the first to employ the expedient, so often resorted
+to since, of white-washing old-world criminals, in order to provide an
+ancestry for modern heresies. The calves seem to have been doubled
+simply as a matter of convenience. When once the principle of saving
+trouble comes in, in religion, it generally plays a great part. If it
+were too much to go to Jerusalem, it would soon be too much to go to
+Bethel, and so Dan must be provided for the north. The calves were
+symbols of Jehovah, not of other gods, as must be carefully noted. The
+making of them implied all that followed; for a god must have shrine
+and priesthood and sacrifice and festivals. The Levites refusing to
+serve, and probably losing their inheritance, fled to Judah, and a new
+priesthood was made 'from among all the people' (Rev. Ver.), The Feast
+of Tabernacles was retained but its date shifted forward a month,
+perhaps because the harvest, which it closed, was later in the north,
+but evidently with the design of, as it were, underscoring the
+religious separation.
+
+The latter part of this passage should perhaps be attached more closely
+to the next chapter, and understood as describing the one instance of
+Jeroboam's sacrificing which was so grimly interrupted by the
+denunciation by the anonymous prophet from Judah. Such are the outlines
+of the facts. What are the lessons taught by them?
+
+I. There is that one already mentioned,--the folly and sin of seeking
+to help God to fulfil His promises by our poor efforts at making their
+fulfilment sure to sense. No doubt many of His promises are contingent
+on our activity in material things; and no man has a right to expect
+that' his bread shall be given him,' for instance, unless he
+contributes the 'sweat of his brow' towards it. But Jeroboam had had
+the conditions of safety and stability clearly laid down. They were,
+obedience after the pattern of David (1 Kings xi. 38). So there was no
+need for building Shechem and Penuel, nor for casting calves and
+serving them. The heavens will stand without our rearing brickwork
+pillars to hold them up. But it takes much faith to trust God's bare
+word, and we are all apt to feel safer if we have something for sense
+to grasp. On the open plain, God guards those who trust Him more
+securely than if they lay in cities 'fenced up to heaven. 'Jerusalem
+shall be inhabited as towns without walls. ... For I, saith the Lord,
+will be unto her a wall of fire round about.'
+
+II. Another lesson taught here is the sin of degrading religion to be a
+mere instrument for securing personal ends. Jeroboam has had many
+followers among politicians, The average 'statesman' looks on all
+religions as equally true or untrue, and is ready to be polite to any
+of them, if he can carry his measures thereby. The long history of the
+relations of Church and State in the Old World has been little else
+than the State's hiring and muzzling the Church for its own advantage,
+and the protests of a faithful few against the degradation of State
+patronage and consequent control.
+
+In England, Jeroboam and his calves used to be the favourite shocking
+example of the sin of schism, with which High Church orators were fond
+of pelting Nonconformists. The true lesson from him and them is
+precisely the opposite one; namely, the weakening of religion, when it
+is favoured and endowed by the civil power. The priests of Bethel, who
+were the creatures of Jeroboam, were not likely to be his or his
+successors rebukers. When Amos the prophet spoke bold words against a
+king, it was Amaziah the priest who gave the shameful counsel, 'O thou
+seer, flee into the land of Judah, and prophesy there; but prophesy no
+more at Bethel: for it is the king's sanctuary.' Is there no such thing
+known as a flaming profession of religion, because it is respectable,
+or opens the way to some good position? Does nobody pose in public,
+especially about election times, as a liberal supporter of Churches and
+a devout Church-member, with an eye mainly to votes? Do political
+parties think it a good thing to get the religious people to go for
+their ticket? Or, to take less base instances, is there not a whole
+school who estimate Christianity mainly as valuable as a social force,
+and, without any deep personal recognition of its loftier aspects,
+think it well that it should be generally accepted, especially by other
+people, as it makes them easier to govern, and cements the social
+fabric?
+
+Christianity is something more than social cement. Jeroboam's policy
+was a great success, as policy. It both united his kingdom and
+definitively separated it from Judah. But it was a success purchased at
+the price of degrading religion into the lackey of a court. Samson went
+to sleep on Delilah's lap, and she cut off the clustering locks in
+which his strength lay.
+
+III. The true nature of idolatry is brought out in the incident.
+Jeroboam did not draw Israel away to worship other gods. No charge of
+that sort is ever made against the calf worship. The images were meant,
+just as Aaron's, of which they were a reproduction, was meant, to be
+symbols of Jehovah. The true object of worship was worshipped in a
+false way. No matter though the image represented Him, its worship was
+idol worship. There is no ground in the narrative for the surmise of
+Stanley,--who in this, as usual, simply says ditto to Ewald,--that
+Jeroboam's motive was the desire to prevent Israel's adopting false
+gods, and that the calves were a compromise by which he hoped to stem
+the tide of apostasy to Baal worship. The single motive stated in the
+text is policy inspired by fear. Jeroboam did not care enough about the
+worship of Jehovah to mould his statecraft with the view of conserving
+it. If he had so cared, he could not have set up the calves. His doing
+so is uniformly regarded in Scripture as idolatry pure and simple; and
+though it is clearly distinguished from the worship of false gods, it
+is none the less branded as rebellion against Jehovah.
+
+A visible representation of Jehovah was as much an idol as a similar
+one of Baal would have been. It necessarily degraded the conception of
+Him. It brought sense into dangerous prominence as an aid to worship.
+The symbol might at first, and to the more devout, be a mere symbol,
+and transparent; but it would soon become opaque, and from symbol turn
+embodiment, and thence pass to being the very deity represented. It is
+a feat of abstraction impossible for the ordinary man, to worship
+before an idol, and not to worship the idol. The strange, awful
+fascination which idolatry exercised is perhaps gone now from the
+civilised world. But the lesson remains ever in season, that it is
+dangerous work to bring in sense as an ally of devotion, because
+outward things, which at first may be only symbols and helps, are
+almost certain to become something more.
+
+IV. Jeroboam may stand, finally, as a type of the men who suppose
+themselves to be worshipping God when they are only following their own
+wills. All his ceremonial had this damning characteristic, that it was
+'devised of his own heart'; and so it was himself that was enshrined in
+his new house of the high places, and himself to whom the sacrifices
+were offered. Absolute obedience to God's will, whatever perils may
+seem to attend it, is true worship. Wherever apparent devotion to Him
+is mingled with burning incense to our own net, the mixture ruins the
+devotion. 'Obedience is better than sacrifice.' Temptations to take our
+own way will often appear as the dictates of sound policy, and to
+neglect them as culpable carelessness. But such paltering with plain
+commandments is as ruinous as sinful, and is not to be atoned for by
+outward worship.
+
+What did Jeroboam win by his intrusion of self-will into the region
+which ought to be sacred to perfect obedience? A troubled reign and the
+destruction of his house after one generation. One more thing he won;
+namely, that terrible epithet, which becomes almost a part of his name,
+'Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.' What a title to
+be branded on a man's forehead for ever! It is always a mistake to
+disobey God. Every sin is a blunder as well as a crime. This only is
+the safe motto for churches and individuals, in all the details of
+worship and of life: 'Lo, I come to do Thy will, O Lord, and Thy law is
+within my heart.'
+
+
+
+
+THE RECORD OF TWO KINGS
+
+'In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah began Omri to reign
+over Israel, twelve years: six years reigned he in Tirzah. 24. And he
+bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and built
+on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, after the
+name of Shemer, owner of the hill, Samaria. 25. But Omri wrought evil
+in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all that were before him.
+26. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in
+his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke the Lord God of
+Israel to anger with their vanities. 27. Now the rest of the acts of
+Omri which he did, and his might that he shewed, are they not written
+in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? 28. So Omri slept
+with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria: and Ahab his son reigned
+in his stead. 29. And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of
+Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel: and Ahab the son
+of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years. 30. And
+Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that
+were before him. 31. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light
+thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he
+took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethibaal king of the Zidonians,
+and went and served Baal, and worshipped him. 32. And he reared up an
+altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. 33.
+And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of
+Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.'-1
+KINGS xvi. 23-33.
+
+
+Jeroboam's son and successor was killed by Baasha, Baasha's son and
+successor was killed by Zimri, who reigned for a week, and then burned
+the palace and died in the flames. A struggle for the throne followed
+between Omri, the commander-in-chief, and Tibni, 'Tibni died, and Omri
+reigned.' So, in fifty years, the kingdom that was to relieve Israel
+from oppression staggered through seas of blood, and four kings, or
+would-be kings, died by violence.
+
+Omri's dynasty lasted about as long, namely, through the reigns of four
+kings, and was then swept away like the others, in blood and fire. The
+text gives a meagre outline of the reigns of himself and his son Ahab,
+of which perhaps the meagreness is the most significant feature. The
+only fact told of the father is that he built Samaria, and his whole
+reign is summed up in the damning sentence that he 'walked in the way
+of Jeroboam.' We learn from the Moabite stone that he waged successful
+war against that country, and that it was tributary to Israel for forty
+years. In Micah vi. 16, mention is made of the statutes of Omri, as if
+he had given edicts for idolatry. The reign of Ahab is similarly
+summarised. His marriage with Jezebel, and the flood of Baal worship
+which that let loose over the land, are told with horror, in
+preparation for Elijah's appearance like a dark background that throws
+up a brilliant figure.
+
+The lessons to be drawn from these severely condensed records, cut down
+to the bone, as it were, are plain. The first of them is, that when a
+life is over, the one thing which lasts, or is worth thinking about, is
+the man's relation to God and His will. Here are twelve years' reign in
+the one case, and twenty-two in the other, all boiled down, so to
+speak, into half a dozen sentences, and estimated according to one
+standard only. What has become of all the eager strife, the joys and
+sorrows, the hopes and fears, that burned so fiercely for awhile? All
+died down into a handful of grey ashes. And what lies in them like a
+lump of solid metal that has been melted out of the huge heap of days
+and deeds that fed the fire? The man's relation to God. That abides;
+that is recorded; that determines everything else about him. Waving
+forests that once had sunshine pouring down on their green fronds are
+represented in a thin seam of coal. Our lives will all come down to
+this at last. How did he stand towards God and His will is the final
+question that will be asked about each of us, and the answer to it is
+the only thing that concerns the dead--or the living either. Men write
+voluminous biographies of each other. How little their judgments matter
+to the dead men! Praise or blame are equally indifferent to them. But
+what matters is, whether God will have to record of us what is recorded
+of these two wretched kings, or whether He will recognise that the main
+drift of our poor lives was to serve Him and do His will. He was a
+great scholar; he made a huge fortune; he rose to be a peer; she was a
+noted beauty, a leader of fashion, a queen of society--what will all
+such epitaphs be worth, if God's finger carves silently below them, 'He
+did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord'?
+
+Another lesson from these two reigns is the certain widening of the
+smallest departure from God. Jeroboam professed to retain the worship
+of Jehovah, and to introduce only a small alteration in setting up a
+symbol of Him. He would vehemently have asserted that he was no
+idolater, and would have shuddered at the very notion of bowing down
+to the gods of the nations, but in less than fifty years a temple to
+the Sidonian Baal rose in Samaria, and his worship, with its foul
+sensuality, was corrupting all Israel. However acute the angle of
+departure, the line has only to be prolonged, and the distance between
+it and that from which it diverged will be the distance between heaven
+and hell, Let no one say: 'Thus far and no farther will I go.' There
+is no stopping at will on that course, any more than a man sliding
+down a steeply sloping sheet of smooth ice can pull himself up before
+he plunges over the edge into the abyss below. That is true as to all
+departures from God and His law, but it is eminently true as to every
+tampering with the spirituality of worship. Jeroboam's symbolism led
+straight to Ahab's unblushing pagan worship of the hideous Sidonian
+Baal. The craving for symbolical and sensuous accessories of worship,
+which is strong in most Churches in this aesthetic generation, is
+perilous. Material aids to worship there must be, so long as we are in
+the flesh, but the fewer and simpler they are the better, for they are
+aids which very swiftly become hindrances.
+
+Another lesson from Ahab's reign is the need of detachment from
+entangling alliances, if we would keep ourselves right with God. It
+was Israel's calling to be separate from the nations. It was Israel's
+temptation either to mix with them, or to keep aloof from them in
+contempt and hatred. Ahab's marriage with Jezebel was, no doubt,
+thought by his father a clever stroke of policy, assuring them of an
+ally. But it flooded the nation with the cruel and lustful cult of
+Baal, and that finally ruined Ahab and his house. God's servants can
+never mingle themselves with His enemies without harm, unless they
+mingle with them for the purpose of turning them into His servants. If
+we prefer the company of those who do not love Jesus, our love to Him
+must be faint, and will soon be fainter. If Ahab takes Jezebel for his
+wife, Ahab will soon take Jezebel's foul god for his god.
+
+
+
+
+A PROPHET'S STRANGE PROVIDERS
+
+'And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said
+unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there
+shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. 2. And
+the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, 3. Get thee hence, and turn
+thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before
+Jordan. 4. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I
+have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. 5. So he went and did
+according unto the word of the Lord. for he went and dwelt by the brook
+Cherith, that is before Jordan. 6. And the ravens brought him bread and
+flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank
+of the brook. 7. And it came to pass after a while, that the brook
+dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. 8. And the word
+of the Lord came unto him, saying, 9. Arise, get thee to Zarephath,
+which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a
+widow woman there to sustain thee. 10. So he arose and went to
+Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow
+woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said,
+Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.
+11. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring
+me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand. 12. And she said, As
+the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a
+barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two
+sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may
+eat it, and die. 13. And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as
+thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it
+unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. 14. For thus saith
+the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither
+shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain
+upon the earth. 15. And she went and did according to the saying of
+Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. 16. And the
+barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according
+to the word of the Lord, which He spake by Elijah.'-1 KINGS xvii. 1-16.
+
+
+The worst times need the best men. The reign of Ahab brought a great
+outburst of Baal worship, imported by his Phoenician wife, which
+threatened to sweep away every trace of the worship of Jehovah. The
+feeble king was absolutely ruled by the strongwilled Jezebel, and
+everything seemed rushing down to ruin. One man arrests the downward
+movement, and with no weapon but his word, and no support but his own
+dauntless courage, which was the child of his faith, works a revolution
+in Israel. 'Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a
+greater than' Elijah the Tishbite. Bugged, stern, solitary, he has no
+commission to reveal new truth. He is not a 'prophet,' like later ones
+whose words were revelation.
+
+Little is preserved of his sayings. His task was to reform and restore,
+not to advance; and his endowments of 'spirit and power' corresponded
+to his work. The striking peculiarities of this heroic figure will
+appear as we go on with his history. For the present, we have to
+consider the three points of this narrative.
+
+I. The Prophet and the King.--The startling suddenness of Elijah's leap
+into the arena, where he appears without preface or explanation, helps
+the impression of extraordinary force which his whole career makes. He
+crashes into the midst of Ahab's court like a thunderbolt. What did
+Jezebel think of this wild man from the other side of Jordan, with his
+long hair and his loose mantle, who thus fronted Ahab and her? Nothing
+is told us of his descent; it is even questionable whether the reading
+which calls him 'the Tishbite' is correct. We only know that he was of
+Gilead, and therefore used to a ruder, freer, simpler life than that in
+kings' palaces.
+
+The natural conclusion from the narrative is that the prophet and the
+king had never met before; and, if so, the stern brevity of the threat
+is even more remarkable. In any case, the absence of explanation of
+reasons for the drought, or of credentials of Elijah, or of offers of
+mercy on condition of repentance, give a peculiarly grim aspect to the
+message, and make it a dangerous one to carry to such a hearer as Ahab,
+stirred up by Jezebel. When God commands us to speak, no thought of
+peril must make us dumb. If the 'word of the Lord' is to sound from our
+lips with power, it must first have absolute sway over ourselves. One
+man with God at his back, who fears nothing, can work marvels.
+
+God's servant is men's master. The vision of God's Presence paled the
+splendour, and blunted the perils, of the court of Samaria. Ahab was
+but a poor puppet in the sight of eyes that 'saw the Lord sitting on
+His throne, high and lifted up.' So the very first words of Elijah lay
+bare the secret spring of his fiery energy and courage. 'Before whom I
+stand,'--that is the thought to put nerve, daring, and disregard of
+earth into a man.
+
+James's comment on this incident assumes that the declaration to Ahab
+followed earnest prayer that it might not rain, and that the 'word'
+which should end the drought was also prayer. The truest lover of his
+country or of any men may sometimes have to wish for losses and
+sorrows. Elijah did not open and shut the heavens, but his prayer had
+power to move the Hand that 'openeth and no man shutteth.'
+
+II. The Prophet and the Ravens.--One would like to know how Elijah made
+his escape from Ahab; but the whole story is marked by sudden
+appearances and disappearances. He flashes into sight and flames for a
+moment, and then is swallowed up in the dark again. The exact position
+of the brook Cherith is doubtful. It would seem most natural to look
+for it across Jordan, as safer and more familiar ground to Elijah than
+any of the tributaries on the western side. At all events, somewhere
+among the savage rocks in some wady with a trickle of water down it,
+and rank vegetation that would help to hide him, he lurked for an
+indefinite period, alone with God.
+
+Why did he flee? Not only for safety, but that the period of the
+drought might be prolonged till it had done its work, and that the
+prophet might learn more lessons for his calling. Good Obadiah would
+have made a place for the chief of the prophets in his caves; but the
+man who is to do work like Elijah's must live in solitude. Cherith was
+part of the training for Carmel. The flight thither was as much an act
+of obedient faith as was the appearance before the king. However the
+necessity of flight was impressed on the prophet, it _was_
+impressed on him as manifestly not his own plan, but God's command; and
+though the journey was a weary one, and the appointed place of refuge
+inhospitable, the command was unhesitatingly obeyed. He was not left to
+wonder how he was to be fed when he got there, but God gave him, what
+He seldom gives--a previous assurance of miraculous provision, which
+obviously met some unspoken thought. We do not usually know how we are
+to be fed in the solitude till we get there; but if our doubting hearts
+object, 'But, Lord, there is nothing at Cherith but a brook and some
+ravens,' He sometimes gives us assurance that these will be enough.
+Whether or no, the duty is the same,--to follow God's voice, whether it
+take us face to face with Ahab and Jezebel or into the wild gorge.
+
+Note that the same words are employed about the ravens and the widow:
+'I have commanded the... to feed thee.' God has ways of reaching the
+mysterious animal instinct and the mysterious human will, and each, in
+its own way, obeys. It is needless to try to pare down the miracle by
+saying that, of course, ravens would haunt the water-courses in
+drought, and that the food which they brought might be for their young,
+and so on. The daily regularity of the supply takes it out of the
+natural category, to say nothing of the remarkable breed which the
+ravens must have been of, if they brought their young ones' food within
+reach and let the prophet take it.
+
+People take offence at the abundance of miracles in the lives of Elijah
+and Elisha, and assert that some of them, this among the rest, are for
+unworthily trivial occasions. But the grave crisis in Israel is to be
+taken into account, which involved the necessity for unusual
+manifestations of divine power, and very evident credentials for the
+prophets; and the preparation of Elijah for his tremendous struggle
+was, even to our eyes, surely an adequate end for miracle. How could he
+doubt that God had sent him and would care for him, with such memories
+as those of his winged purveyors? How could he doubt future words which
+should come to him, when he recalled how marvellously this one had been
+fulfilled? The silence of the ravine, the long days and nights of
+solitude, the punctual arrival of his food, would all tend to weld his
+faith into yet more close-knit strength. If we may so say, it was worth
+God's while to work miracles, to make Elijah. The highest end of
+creation is the production of God-fearing men. All things serve the
+soul that serves God.
+
+III. The Prophet and the Widow.--The little stream that came down the
+wady dried up 'after a while'; and Elijah, no doubt, would wonder what
+was to be done next, as he saw it daily sending a thinner thread to
+Jordan. But he was not told till the channel was dry, and the pebbles
+in its bed bleaching in the sun. God makes us sometimes wait on beside
+a diminishing rivulet, and keeps us ignorant of the next step, till it
+is dry. Patience is an element in strength. It was a far cry from
+Cherith to Zarephath, right across the kingdom of Ahab; and to run for
+refuge to a dependency of Zidon, Jezebel's country, looked like putting
+his head in the lion's mouth. But the same 'command' which the ravens
+had obeyed had smoothed his way.
+
+So he girded up his loins, and left, no doubt reluctantly, the brook
+for a city. How his heart would bow in adoring thankfulness, when the
+first person he saw outside the little 'city' was 'the widow'! He knew
+her; did she know him? The natural interpretation of verse 9 is that,
+at the time when God spoke to Elijah, he had already 'commanded' the
+woman. But the despondent tone of her answer seems against that idea;
+and perhaps we are to suppose that, just as the ravens were commanded
+and knew not by whom, so this woman received the command, when she saw
+the travel-stained and gaunt stranger, through her womanly impulses of
+compassion, not knowing who moved them nor what she did when she
+sheltered the man whose life was, at that moment, the most important in
+the world. The motions of pity and charity are of God, and He commands
+us to help when He sets before us those who need help.
+
+The whole incident was a lesson to the prophet. He might well have
+thought that God had sent him to a strange helper in this poor widow
+with her empty cupboard; and it must have taken some faith on his part
+to reassure her with his cheery 'Fear not!' The prediction of the
+undiminishing stores demanded as much faith from its speaker as from
+its hearer.
+
+It was a lesson in faith for the woman too. Her use of the phrase 'the
+Lord thy God' may imply some inclination to the worship of Jehovah, and
+so there may have been a little glimmer of faith in her; but she was
+full of sorrow and despair, and yet willing to help the stranger with
+the 'little water in a vessel,' though the 'morsel of bread in thine
+hand' was beyond her power. Elijah's apparently selfish demand that his
+wants should be looked after first was a test of her faith. Sometimes
+self-denying duty is made clearly imperative on us, before we hear the
+promise which, believed, will make it easy. They who have ears to hear
+the command, and hearts to obey, even if it seem to strip them of all,
+will soon hear the assurance that secures abundance. The barrel would
+have been empty by nightfall, if the meal in it had been used for the
+woman and her son. The continuance of supply depended on her obedience,
+which, in its turn, depended on faith in the prophet as a messenger of
+God. 'There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.' The use of earthly
+goods for God's service may not be rewarded with the increase of them;
+but, if the barrel is not kept full of meal, the heart will be kept
+full of peace, which is better. No sacrifice for God is ever thrown
+away. He remains in no man's debt.
+
+The incident has a further bearing, as an instance of a divine
+benediction resting on heathendom. The synagogue at Nazareth pointed
+that lesson for us. Elijah and the widow both learned that the God of
+Israel is the God of all the earth, and that His prophets have a
+mission to every race. The woman rebuked, by her pity and self-denying
+benevolence, the prejudices of Israel; the prophet foreshadowed, by his
+familiar abode with one won from idolatry to the worship of God, the
+universal aspect of the Jewish religion, and its destiny to overleap
+the narrow bounds of the nation. Charity and pity have no geographical
+limits. Much less can the love of God and the light of His revelation
+be bounded by any narrower circle than the circumference of the world.
+
+
+
+
+ELIJAH STANDING BEFORE THE LORD
+
+And Elijah the Tishbite ... said ... As the Lord God of Israel liveth,
+before whom I stand.--1 KINGS xvii. 1.
+
+
+This solemn and remarkable adjuration seems to have been habitual upon
+Elijah's lips in the great crises of his life. We never find it used by
+any but himself, and his scholar and successor, Elisha. Both of them
+employ it under similar circumstances, as if unveiling the very secret
+of their lives, the reason for their strength, and for their undaunted
+bearing and bold fronting of all antagonism. We find four instances in
+their two lives of the use of the phrase. Elijah bursts abruptly on the
+stage and opens his mouth for the first time to Ahab, to proclaim the
+coming of that terrible and protracted drought; and he bases his
+prophecy on that great oath, 'As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand.'
+And again, when he is sent to confront Ahab once more at the close of
+the period, the same mighty word comes, 'As the Lord of Hosts liveth,
+before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him this day.' And
+then again, Elisha, when he is brought before the three confederate
+kings, who taunt, and threaten, and flatter, to try to draw smooth
+things from his lips, and get his sanction to their mad warfare, turns
+upon the poor creature that called himself the King of Israel with a
+superb contempt that stayed itself on that same great name and tells
+him, 'As the Lord liveth before whom I stand, were it not that I had
+regard for the King of Judah, I would not look toward you or see you,'
+And lastly, when the grateful Naaman seeks to change the whole
+character of Elisha's miracle, and to turn it into the coarseness of a
+thing done for reward, once again the temptation is brushed aside with
+that solemn word, 'As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will
+receive none.'
+
+So at every crisis where these prophets were brought full front with
+hostile power; where a tremendous message was laid upon their hearts
+and lips to utter; where natural strength would fail; where they were
+likely to be daunted or dazzled by temptations, by either the sweetness
+or the terrors of material things, these two great heroes of the Old
+Covenant, out of sight the strongest men in the old Jewish history,
+steady themselves by one thought,--God lives, and I am His servant.
+
+For that phrase, 'before whom I stand,' obviously means chiefly 'whom I
+serve.' It is found, for instance, in Deuteronomy, where the priest's
+office is thus defined: 'The sons of Levi shall stand before the Lord
+to minister unto Him.' And in the same way, it is used in the Queen of
+Sheba's wondering exclamation to Solomon, 'Blessed are thy servants,
+and blessed are the men that stand before thy face continually.'
+
+So that the consciousness that they were servants of the living God was
+the very secret of the power of these men. This expression, which thus
+started to their lips in moments of strain and trial, lets us see into
+the very inmost heart of their strength. These two great lives, which
+fill so large a apace in the records of the past, and will be
+remembered for ever, were braced and ennobled thus. The same grand
+thought is available to brace and ennoble our little lives, that will
+soon be forgotten but by a loving heart or two, and yet may be as full
+of God and of God's service as those of any of the great of old. We too
+may use this secret of power, 'The Lord liveth, before whom I stand.'
+
+What thoughts then, which may tend to lift and invigorate our days, are
+included in these words? The first is surely this--Life a constant
+vision of God's presence.
+
+How distinct and abiding must the vision of God have been, which burned
+before the inward eye of the man that struck out that phrase! 'Wherever
+I am, whatever I do, I am before Him. To my purged eye, there is the
+Apocalypse of heaven, and I behold the great throne, and the solemn
+ranks of ministering spirits, my fellow-servants, hearkening to the
+voice of His word.' No excitement of work, no strain of effort, no
+distraction of circumstances, no glitter of gold, no dazzle of earthly
+brightness, dimmed that vision for these prophets. In some measure, it
+was with them as it shall be perfectly with all one day, 'His servants
+serve Him, and see His face,'--action not interrupting vision, nor
+vision weakening action. To preserve thus fresh and unimpaired, amidst
+strenuous work and many temptations, the clear consciousness of being
+'ever in the great Taskmaster's eye,' needs resolute effort and much
+self-restraint. It is hard to set the Lord always before us; but it is
+possible, and in the measure in which we do it, we shall not be moved.
+
+How nobly the steadfastness and superiority to all temptations which
+such a vision gives, are illustrated by the occasions, in these
+prophets' lives, in which this expression came to their lips! The
+servant of the Heavenly King speaks from his present intuition. As he
+speaks, he sees the throne in the heavens, and the Sovereign Ruler
+there, and the sight bears him up from quailing before the earthly
+monarchs whom he had to beard, and in connection with whom three out of
+the four instances of the use of the phrase occur. How small Ahab and
+his court must have looked to eyes that were full of the undazzling
+brightness of the true King of Israel, and the ordered ranks of
+_His_ attendants! How little the greatness! How tawdry the pomp!
+How impotent the power, and how toothless the threats! The poor show of
+the earthly king paled before that awful vision, as a dim candle will
+show black against the sun. 'I stand before the living God, and thou, O
+Ahab! art but a shadow and a noise.' Just as we may have looked upon
+some mountain scene, where all the highest summits were wrapt in mist,
+and the lower hills looked mighty and majestic, until some puff of wind
+came and rolled up the curtain that had shrined and hidden the icy
+pinnacles and peaks that were higher up. And as that solemn white
+apocalypse rose and towered to the heavens, we forgot all about the
+green hills below, because our eyes beheld the mighty summits that live
+amongst the stars, and sparkle white through eternity.
+
+My brethren, here is our defence against being led away by the gauds
+and shows of earth's vulgar attractions, or being terrified by the poor
+terrors of its enmity. Go with that talisman in your hand, 'The Lord
+liveth, before whom I stand,' and everything else dwindles down into
+nothingness, and you are a free man, master and lord of all things,
+because you are God's servants, seeing all things aright, because you
+see them all in God, and God in them all.
+
+Still further, we may say that this phrase is the utterance and
+expression of a consciousness that life was echoing with the voice of
+the divine command. Elijah stands before the Lord, not only feeling in
+his thrilling spirit that God is ever near him, but also that His word
+is ever coming forth to him, with imperative authority. That is the
+prophet's conception of life. Wherever he is, he hears a voice saying,
+'This is the way, walk ye in it.' Every place where he stands is as the
+very holy place of the oracles of the Most High, the spot in the
+innermost shrine where the voice of God is audible, All circumstances
+are the voice of God, commanding or restraining. He is evermore
+pursued, nay, rather upheld and guided, by an all-embracing law. That
+law is no mere utterance of cold impersonal duty,--a thought which may
+make men slaves, but never makes them good. But it is the voice of the
+living God, loving and beloved, whose tender care for His children
+modulates His tone, while He commands them for their good. He speaks
+because He loves; His law is life. The heart that hears Him speak is
+filled with music.
+
+Ahab and Jehoram, and all the kings of the earth, may thunder and
+lighten, may threaten and flatter, may command and forbid, as they
+list. They and their words are nought to him whose trembling ears have
+heard, and whose obedient heart has received, a higher command, and to
+whom, 'across the storm,' comes the deeper voice of the one true
+Commander, whom alone it is a glory absolutely to obey, even 'the Lord,
+before whom I stand.' People talk about the consciousness of 'a
+mission.' The important point, on the settling of which depends the
+whole character of our lives, is--Who do you suppose gave you your
+'mission'? Was it any _person_ at all? or have you any consciousness
+that any will but your own has anything to say about your life? These
+prophets had found One whom it was worth while to obey, whatever came
+of it, and whoever stood in the way. May it be so with you and me, my
+friend! Let us try always to feel that in the commonest things we may
+hear the command of God; that the trifles of each day--trifles though
+they be--vibrate and sound with the reverberation of His great voice;
+that in all the outward circumstances of our lives, as in all the deep
+recesses of our hearts, we may trace the indications and rudiments of
+His will concerning us, which He has perfectly given us in that Gospel
+which is 'the law of liberty,' and in Him who is the Gospel and the
+perfect Law. Then quietly, without bluster or mock-heroics, or making a
+fuss about our independence, we can put all other commands and
+commanders in their right place, with the old words, 'With me it is a
+very small matter to be judged of you, or of man's judgment; He that
+judgeth me,' and He that commandeth me, 'is the Lord,' In answer to all
+the noise about us we can face round like Elijah, and say, 'As the Lord
+liveth, before whom I stand.' He is my 'Imperator,' the Autocrat and
+Commander of my life; and Him, and Him only, must I serve. What
+calmness, what dignity that would put into our lives! The never-ceasing
+boom of the great ocean, as it breaks on the beach, drowns all smaller
+sounds. Those lives are noble and great in which that deep voice is
+ever dominant, sounding on through all lesser voices, and day and night
+filling the soul with command and awe.
+
+Then, still further, we may take another view of these words. They are
+the utterance of a man to whom his life was not only bright with the
+radiance of a divine presence, and musical with the voice of a divine
+command, but was also, on his part, full of conscious obedience. No man
+could say such a thing of himself who did not feel that he was
+rendering a real, earnest, though imperfect obedience to God. So,
+though in one view the words express a very lowly sense of absolute
+submission before God, in another view they make a lofty claim for the
+utterer. He professes that he stands before the Lord, girt for His
+service, watching to be guided by His eye, and ready to run when He
+bids. It is the same lofty sense of communion and consecration, issuing
+in authority over others, which Elijah's true brother in later days,
+Paul the Apostle, put forth when he made known to his companions in
+shipwreck the will of 'the God, whose I am, and whom I serve.' We may
+well shrink from making that claim for ourselves, when we think of the
+poor, perfunctory service and partial consecration which our lives
+show. But let us rejoice that even we may venture to say, 'Truly I am
+Thy servant'; if only we, like the Psalmist, rest the confession on the
+perfectness of what He has done for us, rather than on the imperfection
+of what we have done for Him; and lay, as its foundation, 'Thou hast
+loosed my bonds.' Then, though we must ever feel how poor our service,
+and how unprofitable ourselves, how little we deserve the honour, and
+how impossible that we should ever earn the least mite of wages; yet we
+may, in all lowliness, think of ourselves as set free that we may
+serve, and lift our eyes, as the eyes of a servant turn towards his
+master, to 'the living Lord, before whom we stand.
+
+Such a life is necessarily a happy life. The one misery of man is self-
+will, the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own wills.
+To yield them up to God is rest and peace. If we 'stand before God,'
+then that means that our wills are brought into harmony with His. And
+that means that the one poison drop is squeezed out of our lives, and
+that sweetness and joy are infused into them. For what disturbs us in
+this world is not 'trouble' but our opposition to trouble. The true
+source of all that frets and irritates, and wears away our lives, is
+not in external things, but in the resistance of our wills to the will
+of God expressed by external things. I suppose that we shall never here
+bring these wills of ours into perfect correspondence with His, any
+more than we shall ever, with our shaking hands and blunt pencils, draw
+a perfectly straight line. But if will and heart are brought even to a
+rude approach to parallelism with His, if we accept His voice when He
+takes away, and obey it when He commands, we shall be quiet and
+peaceful. We shall be strong and unwearied, freed from corroding cares
+and exhausting rebellions, which take far more out of a man than any
+work does. 'Thy word was found, and I did eat it.' When we thus take
+God's command into our spirits, and feed upon it with will and
+understanding, it becomes, as the Psalmist found it, the 'joy and
+rejoicing of our hearts.' Elijah-like, we shall 'go in the strength of
+that meat many days.' The secret of power and of calm is--yield your
+will to the loving Lord, and stand ever before Him with, 'Here am I,
+send me!'
+
+We may add one more remark to these various views of the significance
+of this expression, to which the last instance of its use may help us.
+Here it is: 'And Naaman said, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy
+servant. But he said, As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will
+receive none.'
+
+The thought, which made all Elisha's life bright with the light of
+God's presence, which filled his ear with the unremitting voice of a
+Divine Law, which swayed and bowed his will to joyful obedience,
+chilled and deadened his desires for all earthly rewards. 'I am not thy
+servant. I am God's servant. It is not your business to pay my wages. I
+cannot dishonour my Master by taking payment from thee for doing His
+work. I look for everything from Him, for nothing from thee.'
+
+And is there not a broad general truth involved there, namely, that
+such a life as we have been describing will find its sole reward where
+it finds its inspiration and its law? The Master's approval is the
+servant's best wages. If we truly feel that 'the Lord _liveth_,
+before whom we stand, 'we shall want nothing else for our work but His
+smile, and we shall feel that the light of His face is all that we
+need. That thought should deaden our love for outward things. How
+little we need to care about any payment that the world can give for
+anything we do! If we feel, as we ought, that we are God's servants,
+that will lift us clear above the low aims and desires which meet us.
+How little we shall care for money, for men's praise, for getting on in
+the world! How the things that we fever our souls by pursuing, and fret
+our hearts when we lose, will cease to attract! How small and vulgar
+the 'prizes' of life, as people call them, will appear! 'The Lord
+liveth, before whom I stand,' should be enough for us, and instead of
+all these motives to action drawn from the rewards of this world, we
+ought to 'labour that, whether present or absent, we may be well-
+pleasing to Him.'
+
+Not the fading leaves of the victor's wreath, laurel though they be,
+nor the corruptible things as silver and gold, whereof earth's diadems
+and rewards are fashioned, but the incorruptible crown that fadeth not
+away, which His hand will give, should fire our hope, and shine before
+our faith. Not Naaman's gifts but God's approval is Elisha's reward.
+Not the praise from lips that will perish, or the 'hollow wraith of
+dying fame,' but Christ's 'Well done! good and faithful servant,'
+should be a Christian's aim.
+
+May we, brethren, possess the 'spirit and the power of Elias';--the
+spirit, in that we know ourselves to be the servants of the living God;
+and then we shall have some measure of his dauntless power and heroic
+unworldliness!
+
+Still better, may we have the Spirit of Him who was '_the_ Servant
+of the Lord,' diviner in His gentle meekness than the fiery prophet in
+his lonely strength! Make yours the mind that was in Christ, that you
+too may say, 'Lo, I come! in the volume of the book it is written of
+me, I delight to do Thy will, yea, Thy law is within my heart.'
+
+
+
+
+OBADIAH
+
+_To the Young_
+
+'... I thy servant fear the Lord from my youth.--1 KINGS xviii.12.
+
+
+This Obadiah is one of the obscurer figures in the Old Testament. We
+never hear of him again, for there is no reason to accept the Jewish
+tradition which alleges that he was Obadiah the prophet. And yet how
+distinctly he stands out from the canvas, though he is only sketched
+with a few bold outlines! He is the 'governor over Ahab's house,' a
+kind of mayor of the palace, and probably the second man in the
+kingdom. But though thus high in that idolatrous and self-willed court,
+he has bravely kept true to the ancient faith. Neither Jezebel's
+flatteries nor her frowns have moved him. But there, amid apostasy and
+idolatry he stands, probably all alone in the court, a worshipper of
+Jehovah. His name is his character, for it means 'servant of Jehovah.'
+It was not a light thing to be a worshipper of the God of Israel in
+Ahab's court. The feminine rage of the fierce Sidonian woman, whom Ahab
+obeyed in most things, burned hot against the enemies of her father's
+gods, and hotter, perhaps, against any one who thwarted her imperious
+will. Obadiah did both, in that audacious piece of benevolence when he
+sheltered the Lord's prophets--one hundred of them--and saved them from
+her cruel search. The writer of the book very rightly marks this brave
+antagonism to the outburst of the queen's wrath as a signal proof of a
+more than ordinary devotion to the worship and fear of Jehovah. His
+firmness and his religion did not prevent his retaining his place of
+honour and dignity. That says something for Ahab, and more perhaps for
+Obadiah.
+
+Most of you believe that you ought to 'fear the Lord': but you are apt
+to put off, and so I wish to urge on you that you should give your
+hearts to Jesus Christ at once.
+
+I. The blessedness of youthful religion.
+
+(a) It guards from many temptations, and keeps a character innocent of
+much transgression.
+
+Think of the dangers that lie thick in the streets of every great city,
+and of a lad coming up from a country home of godliness, where he was
+surrounded by a mother's love and an atmosphere of purity, and launched
+into some lonely lodging, or some factory or warehouse with many
+tempters. Nothing will be such a help to resistance and victory as to
+be able to say, 'So did not I because of the fear of the Lord.'
+
+(_b_) It will save from remorse. Even if a man 'sobers down' after
+'sowing his wild oats,' which is a very problematical 'if,' what bitter
+memories of wasted days, what polluting memories of filthy ones, will
+haunt him! And if he does not sober down, what then?
+
+It is folly to begin life on a wrong tack, in regard to which the best
+that you can say is that you do not mean to continue it. If you do not,
+then the wise thing is to get at once on to the road on which you do
+mean to continue, and to save the weary work of retracing steps and the
+painful consciousness of having made a false start. Are you so sure
+that you will wish, or that it will be possible, to face right about
+and get on to a new line? Fishermen catch lobsters and the like by
+means of baskets with one opening, the withes of which are so set that
+the entrance is easy, but that a ring of sharp points oppose all
+attempts at turning back and getting out. The world lays 'pots' of that
+sort, and many a young man and woman glides smoothly in, and finds it
+impossible to get out.
+
+(_c_) It usually leads to a deeper and more peaceful and
+harmonious religion than is attained by those who have given the world
+the better part of their days, and have only the last fragment of them
+to give to God. Obadiah had feared God from his youth, and that had a
+good deal to do with his brave stand against Jezebel. It is a grand
+thing to enlist habit on the side of godliness.
+
+II. The foes of youthful religion.
+
+There are foes within .... the strong self-reliance and bounding life
+proper to youth, without which at the opening of the flower, the bloom
+would be poor and the fruit little, ... the power of appeals to the
+unjaded and physically strong senses, ... the difficulty at such a stage
+of life of looking forward and soberly regarding the end.
+
+There are foes without ....the crowds of tempters of both sexes, men
+and women who take a devilish pleasure in polluting innocent minds, ...
+the companions whose jeers are worse to face than a battery, ... the
+inconsistencies of so-called Christians, the anti-Christian literature
+which is peculiarly fascinating to the young, with its brave show of
+breaking with mouldy tradition and enthroning reason and emancipating
+from rusty fetters.
+
+III. The too probable alternative to youthful religion.
+
+It is but too likely that, if a man does not 'fear the Lord' from 'his
+youth,' he will never fear Him. Thank God, there is no time nor
+condition of life in which the wicked man cannot 'forsake his way,' or
+'the unrighteous man his thoughts,' and 'turn to the Lord' with the
+assurance that 'He will abundantly pardon.' But it is sadly too plain
+to observation, and to the experience of some of us, that obstacles
+grow with years, that habits and associations grip with increasing
+power, that in all things our natures become less flexible, the supple
+sapling becoming gnarled and tough, that a middle-aged or old man is
+more inextricably 'tied and bound by the cords of his sins,' than a
+young one is.
+
+Sin lies to us by first saying, 'It is too soon to be religious,' and
+then it lies to us by saying, 'It is too late.'
+
+The inclination diminishes.
+
+The Gospel long heard and long put aside, loses power.
+
+Contrast the beauty of a course of life, begun on the same lines as
+those on which it ends, and being like 'the shining light, that shineth
+more and more unto the meridian of the day,' with one which gave the
+greater part of its years to 'the world, the flesh, and the devil,' or
+at least to one's godless self, and the dregs of it only to God.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRIAL BY FIRE
+
+'And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose yon one bullock for
+yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name
+of your gods, but put no fire under. 26. And they took the bullock
+which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of
+Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there
+was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar
+which was made. 27. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked
+them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he Is talking, or he
+is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and
+must be awaked. 28. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after
+their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon
+them. 29. And it came to pass, when midday was passed, and they
+prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice,
+that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.
+30. And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the
+people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that
+was broken down. 31. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the
+number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the
+Lord came, saying, Israel shall be thy name: 32. And with the stones he
+built an altar in the name of the Lord: and he made a trench about the
+altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. 33. And he put
+the wood in order, and cut the bullock in nieces, and laid him on the
+wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt
+sacrifice, and on the wood. 34. And he said, Do it the second time. And
+they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And
+they did it the third time. 35. And the water ran round about the
+altar; and he filled the trench also with water. 36. And it came to
+pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah
+the prophet came near, and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of
+Israel, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel, and that
+I am Thy servant, and that I have done all these things at Thy word.
+37. Hear me, O Lord, hear me: that this people may know that Thou art
+the Lord God, and that Thou hast turned their heart back again. 38.
+Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and
+the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that
+was in the trench. 39. And when all the people saw it, they fell on
+their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is
+the God.--1 KINGS xviii. 25-39.
+
+The place, the purpose, and the actors in this scene, make it among the
+grandest in history. A nation, with its king, has come together, at the
+bidding of one man, to settle no less a question than whom they shall
+worship. There, on the slope of Carmel, with the brassy heaven gleaming
+hard and dry above them, and the yellow, burnt-up plain of Jezreel at
+their feet, the expectant people stand. The assembly was a singular
+proof of Elijah's ascendency; for Ahab's bluster had sunk, cowed in his
+presence, and he had meekly done the prophet's bidding in summoning
+'all Israel' and the eight hundred and fifty Baal and Asherah prophets,
+for an unexplained purpose. The false priests would come unwillingly;
+but they came.
+
+Then Elijah takes the command, and, though utterly alone, towers above
+the crowd in the courage of his undaunted confidence in his message.
+His words have the ring of authority as he rebukes indecision, and
+calls for a clear adhesion to Baal or Jehovah. If the people had
+answered, the trial by fire would have been needless. But their silence
+shows that they waver, and therefore he makes his proposal to them.
+
+Note that the priests are not consulted, nor is Ahab. The former would
+have had some excuse for shirking the sharp issue; but the people's
+assent forced them to accept the ordeal,--reluctantly enough, no doubt.
+
+I. The vain cries to a deaf God. It is strange that one of the parties
+to the test has power to determine its conditions, especially as
+Elijah's prophetic authority was one of the things in dispute; but it
+is a sign of the magnetic power which one bold man with absolute
+confidence in his own convictions exercises over men. The Baal prophets
+are given every advantage in priority of action. Error is best unmasked
+by being allowed free opportunity to do its best; for the more
+favourable the circumstances of trial, the more signal the defeat.
+God's servants must never be suspected of unfair tricks in their
+controversy with error. They can afford to let it try first. Notice the
+substitution of 'your god,' in the Revised Version, for 'your gods' in
+the Authorised Version. That is obviously right; for the only question
+was about one god,--namely, Baal.
+
+So, in the early morning, with all the people gazing at them, the Baal
+priests or prophets begin their attempt. It was easy to prepare the
+sacrifice, and lay it on the altar,--though, no doubt, it was done
+sullenly, with foreboding of the coming exposure. The whole account of
+the wild invocations of the priests may suggest some of the
+characteristics of idolatry, and touch our hearts with pity, as well as
+with the sense of its absurdity, which animated Elijah's mockery.
+
+Note, then, the vivid picture, in verse 27, of the long hours of vain
+crying. On the one hand, we hear the wild chorus echoing among the
+rocks; on the other, we feel the dead silence in the heavens.
+
+The monotonous and almost mechanical repetition of the invocation,
+prolonged till the syllables have no meaning to the yelling crowd, is
+characteristic of the frenzied excitement so common in idolatry. To
+call such howlings prayer, degrades the name. They are the very
+opposite of that sacred communion of a believing soul with the God whom
+it knows, trusts, and beseeches with submission. Neither knowledge nor
+trust is in these shrieks, which seek to propitiate the stern god by
+repeating his name as a kind of charm. Heathenism has no true prayer.
+Wild cries and passionate desires, flung upwards to an unloved god, are
+not prayer; and that solace and anchor of the troubled soul is wanting
+in all the dreary lands given up to idolatry.
+
+The melancholy persistence of the unanswered cries may stand as a
+symbol of the tragic obstinacy with which their devotees cling to their
+vain gods,--a rebuke to us with a more enlightened faith. The silence,
+which was the only answer, is put in strong contrast with the
+continuous roar of the four hundred and fifty,--so long and loud the
+hoarse cries here, so unmoved the stillness in the careless heaven.
+That, too, is typical of heathenism, which is sad with unavailing cries
+and ignorant of answers to any. As the day wore on, and the voices grew
+hoarse, and hope declined, more violent bodily exercise was resorted
+to, and the shouting crowd danced (or, perhaps, as the margin says,
+'limped,'--a picturesque and contemptuous word for the grotesque
+contortions around the altar), as if that might bring the answer. That
+again is a feature common to all heathenism. No wonder that Elijah's
+scorn broke forth vehemently at such a sight. Noon was the hour of the
+sun's greatest power, and, since Baal was probably a solar deity, it
+was the hour when, if ever, he would spare one of his abundant fiery
+beams to light the pyre. So Elijah's taunts came just when they were
+most biting, and none can say that they were undeserved. His fiery zeal
+and his naturally stern character broke out in the bitter irony with
+which he imagines a variety of undignified positions for Baal.
+
+Sarcasm is not the highest weapon, and the 'spirit of Elijah' is not
+the spirit of Jesus; but the exposure of the absurdity of idolatry is
+legitimate, and even ridicule may have its place in pricking wind-
+distended bladders. A man throttling a serpent may be excused using
+anything that comes handy for the purpose. But, at the same time, the
+right attitude for us as Christians in the presence of that awful fact
+of idolatry, is neither contempt nor scientific curiosity, but pity
+deep as Christ's, and earnest resolve to help our darkened brethren.
+The taunts stirred to fiercer excitement and more extravagant acts, as
+ridicule is wont to do, and therein proves itself an unreliable
+instrument of controversy. Laughing at a man generally makes him more
+obstinate. The priests answered Elijah by savagely gashing their half-
+naked bodies with knives and lances,--a ready way to make blood come,
+but not to bring fire. The frenzy became wilder as the day declined,
+and at last, covered with blood, hoarse with shouting, panting with
+their gymnastics, they 'prophesied,' having wrought themselves into
+that state of excitement in which incoherent rhapsodies burst from
+their lips. What a scene to call worship! That is what millions of men
+are ready to practise to-day. And all the while there is no voice, no
+answer, no care for them, in the pitiless sky. The very genius of
+idolatry is set before us in that tumultuous crowd on Carmel.
+
+II. The sacrifice of faith and the answer by fire. We pass from a scene
+of wild commotion into an atmosphere of sacred calm in verse 30. The
+contrast is striking. The fiery fervours of the day are past, and the
+sun is sinking behind the top of Carmel, and there is much to do before
+it sets. Elijah with his own hands, as would appear, repairs a ruined
+altar among the woods. Probably it had been erected for secret worship
+of Jehovah by some faithful amid the national apostasy, when access to
+Jerusalem was forbidden them, and had been destroyed by Ahab in his
+crusade against Jehovah worshippers. The selection of the twelve stones
+was symbolical of the unbroken unity of the nation, and was Elijah's
+protest against the very existence of the Northern kingdom, and its
+assumption of the name of 'Israel' The writer explains what was meant,
+when he reminds us that Israel was the name given to Jacob, and
+therefore, as he would have us infer, was the common property of all
+his descendants. Judah was a part of Israel, and Israel should be an
+undivided whole, uniting in all its tribes in bringing offerings to
+Jehovah.
+
+It was a daring thing to do before Ahab's face; but the weak king was,
+for the time, subjugated by the imperious will and courage of Elijah.
+The building of the altar, with its mute witness to God's purpose,
+would touch some hearts in the gazing, silent crowd. The next step was,
+of course, meant to make the miracle more conspicuous by drenching
+everything with water, probably brought, even in that drought, from the
+perennial fountain near at hand. Perhaps, too, the number of barrels
+was intended, again, as symbolical of the twelve tribes.
+
+One can fancy the wonder and eagerness of the people, and the dark
+frowns of the baffled and exhausted Baal priests, as they gradually
+came out of their frenzy, and knew that they had lost their
+opportunity. The tranquil though earnest prayer of the prophet is in
+sharpest contrast with the meaningless bellowings to Baal. Note in it
+the solemn invocation. The great Name, which all listening to him had
+deposed from rule over them, is set in the front; and the ancestral
+worship, as well as the divine gifts and dealings with the patriarchs,
+is pleaded with God as the reason for His answer now. The name of
+'Israel' instead of the more common 'Jacob,' has the same force as in
+verse 31.
+
+Note the substance of the petitions. The deepest desire of a truly
+devout soul is that God would make His name known. Zeal for God's
+honour and love for men who have gone astray from Him, conspire to make
+that the head and front of His true servant's prayers. It is God, not
+his own credit, about which Elijah thinks first. For himself, all that
+he desires is to be known as an obedient servant, and as not having
+done anything at the bidding of his own will or judgment, but in
+accordance with the all-commanding Voice.
+
+Clearly we must suppose that in all the ordering of this sublime trial
+by fire, Elijah had been acting 'at Thy word,' even though we have no
+other record of the fact. He had no right to expect an answer unless he
+had been bidden to propose the test. God will honour the drafts which
+He bids us draw on Him; but to suspend our own or other people's faith
+in Him, on the issue of some experiment whether He will answer prayers,
+is not faith, but rash presumption, unless it is in obedience to a
+distinct command. Elijah had such a command, and therefore he could ask
+God to vindicate his action, and to prove that he was God's servant.
+His last petition is beautiful, both in its consciousness of power with
+God and recognition of his place as a prophet, and in its lowly
+subordination of all personal aims to the restoration of Israel to the
+true worship. He asks, with reiteration which is earnestness and faith,
+and therefore the sharpest contrast to the mechanical repetition by
+Baal's priests, that God would hear him; but his sole object in that
+prayer is, not that his name may be exalted as a prophet, or that any
+good may come to him, but that the blinded eyes may be opened, and the
+hearts, that have been so sadly led astray, be brought back to the
+worship of their fathers' God.
+
+The whole brief prayer, in its calm confidence; its adoring recognition
+of the name and past dealings of Jehovah as the ground of trust; its
+throbbing of earnest desire for the manifestation of His character
+before men; its consciousness of personal relation to God, which
+humbles rather than puffs up; its beseeching for an answer, and its
+closing petition, which comes round again to its first, that men may
+know God, and fasten their hearts on Him,--may well stand as a pattern
+of prayer for us.
+
+The short prayer of faith does in a moment what all the long day of
+crying could not do. The language in which the answer is described
+emulates the rapidity of the swift tongues of fire which licked up
+sacrifice, altar, and water. They were the tokens of acceptance,
+reminding of the consuming of the first sacrifices in the Tabernacle,
+and, like them, inaugurating a new beginning of the worship of God. The
+burning of the altar, as well as of the sacrifice, expressed the
+acceptance of the people whom it, by its twelve stones, symbolised. And
+the people, on their part, were--for the time, at all events--swept
+away by the miracle, and by the force of the prophet's example and
+authority. Short-lived their faith may have been, as certainly it was
+superficial; but the fire had for the time melted their hearts, and set
+them flowing in the ancient channels of devotion. The faith that is
+founded on miracle may be deepened into something better; but unless it
+is, it speedily dies away. The faith that is due to the influence of
+some strong personality may lead on to an independent faith, based on
+personal experience; but, unless it does, it too will perish.
+
+We may find a modern reproduction of the test of Carmel in the
+impotence of all other schemes and methods of social and spiritual
+reformation and the power of the Gospel. In it and its effects God
+answers by fire. Let the opposers, who are so glib in demonstrating the
+failure of Christianity, do the same with their enchantments, if they
+can.
+
+
+
+
+ELIJAH'S WEAKNESS, AND ITS CUBE
+
+'And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had
+slain all the prophets with the sword. 2. Then Jezebel sent a messenger
+unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make
+not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time.
+3. And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to
+Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. 4. But
+he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat
+down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might
+die; and said, It is enough: now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am
+not better than my fathers. 5. And as he lay and slept under a juniper
+tree, behold, then, an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and
+eat. 6. And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the
+coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and
+laid him down again. 7. And the angel of the Lord came again the second
+time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is
+too great for thee. 8. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in
+the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the
+mount of God. 9. And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there,
+and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said unto him,
+What doest thou here, Elijah? 10. And he said, I have been very jealous
+for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy
+covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the
+sword; and I, even I only, am left: and they seek my life, to take it
+away. 11. And He said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the
+Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent
+the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the
+Lord was not In the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the
+Lord was not in the earthquake: 12. And after the earthquake a fire,
+but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small
+voice. 13. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his
+face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the
+cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him and said, What doest
+then here, Elijah! 14. And he said, I have been very jealous for the
+Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken Thy
+covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the
+sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it
+away. 15. And the Lord said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the
+wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king
+over Syria: 16. And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king
+over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou
+anoint to be prophet in thy room. 17. And it shall come to pass, that
+him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that
+escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. 18. Yet I have left
+me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto
+Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.'--1 KINGS xix. 1-18.
+
+
+The miracle on Carmel cowed, if it did not convince, Ahab, so that he
+did not oppose the slaughter of the Baal prophets; but Jezebel was made
+of sterner stuff, and her passionate idolatry was proof against even a
+sign from heaven. Obstinacy in error is often a rebuke to tremulous
+faith in God. She fiercely puts her back to the wall, and defies Elijah
+and his God. Her threat to the prophet has a certain audacity of
+frankness almost approaching generosity. She will give her victim fair
+play. This woman is 'magnificent in sin.' The Septuagint prefixes to
+her oath, 'As surely as thou art Elijah and I Jezebel,' which adds
+force to it. It also reads, by a very slight change in the Hebrew, in
+verse 3, 'he was afraid,' for 'he saw,'--which is possibly right, as
+giving his motive for escape more distinctly.
+
+I. We may note, first, the prophet's flight (verses 3-8). Beersheba, on
+the southern border of the kingdom of Judah, was eloquent of memories
+of the patriarchs, but though it was nearly a hundred miles from
+Jezreel, Jezebel's arm was long enough to reach the fugitive there, and
+therefore he plunged deeper into the dreary southern desert. He left
+behind him his servant, his 'young man,' as the original has it, whom
+Rabbinical tradition identified with the miraculously resuscitated son
+of the widow of Zarephath, and supposed to become afterwards the
+prophet Jonah. Thus alone but for the company of his own gloomy
+thoughts, and wearied with toilsome travel in the sun-smitten waste, he
+took shelter under the shadow of a solitary shrub (the Hebrew
+emphatically calls it '_one_ juniper,' or rather 'broom-plant'),
+and there the waves of depression went over him.
+
+His complaint is not to be wondered at, though it was wrong. The very
+overstrain of the scene on Carmel brought reaction. The height of the
+crest of one wave measures the depth of the trough of the next, and no
+mortal spirit can keep itself at the sublime elevation reached by
+Elijah when alone he fronted and converted a nation. The supposed
+necessity for flight, coming so immediately after apparent victory,
+showed him how hollow the change in the people was. What had become of
+all the fervency of their shout, 'The Lord, He is the God!' if they
+could leave Jezebel the power to carry out her threat? Solitude and the
+awful desert increased his gloom. The strong man had become weak, and
+it was ebb-tide with him. His prayer was petulant, impatient,
+presumptuous. What right had he to settle what was 'enough'? If he
+really wished to die, he could have found death at Jezreel, and had no
+need to travel a hundred miles to seek a grave. He was weary of his
+work, and profoundly disappointed by what he hastily concluded was its
+failure, and in a fit of faithless despondency he forgot reverence,
+submission, and obedience.
+
+If Elijah can become weak, and his courage die out, and his zeal become
+torpid apathy and cowardly wish to shuffle off responsibility and shirk
+work, who shall stand? The lessons of self-distrust, of the nearness to
+one another of the most opposite emotions in our weak natures, of the
+depth of gloom into which the boldest and brightest servant of God may
+fall as soon as he loses hold of God's hand, never had a more striking
+instance to point them than that mighty prophet, sitting huddled
+together in utter despondency below the solitary retem bush, praying
+his foolish prayer for death.
+
+The meal to which an angel twice waked him was God's answer to his
+prayer, telling him both that his life was still needful and that God
+cared for him. Perhaps one of Elijah's reasons for taking to the desert
+was the thought that he might starve there, and so find death. At all
+events, God for the third time miraculously provides his food. The
+ravens, the widow of Zarephath, an angel, were his caterers; and,
+instead of taking away his life, God Himself sends the bread and water
+to preserve it. The revelation of a watchful, tender Providence often
+rebukes gloomy unbelief and shames us back to faith. We are not told
+whether the journey to Horeb was commanded, or, like the flight from
+Jezreel, was Elijah's own doing; but, in any case, he must have
+wandered in the desert, to have taken forty days to reach it.
+
+II. The second stage is the vision at Horeb (verses 9-14). The history
+of Israel has never touched Horeb since Moses left it, and it is not
+without significance that we are once more on that sacred ground. The
+parallel between Moses and Elijah is very real. These two names stand
+out above all others in the history of the theocracy, the one as its
+founder, the other as its restorer; both distinguished by special
+revelations, both endowed with exceptional force of character and power
+of the Spirit; the one the lawgiver, the other the head of the
+prophetic order; both having something peculiar in their departure, and
+both standing together, in witness of their supremacy in the past, and
+of their inferiority in the future, by Jesus on the Mount of
+Transfiguration. The associations of the place are marked by the use of
+the definite article, which is missed in the Authorised Version,--'the
+cave,' that same cleft in the rock where Moses had stood. Note, too,
+that the word rendered 'lodged' is literally 'passed the night,' and
+that therefore we may suppose that the vision came to Elijah in the
+darkness.
+
+That question, 'What doest thou here?' can scarcely be freed from a
+tone of rebuke; but, like Christ's to the travellers to Emmaus, and
+many another interrogation from God, it is also put in order to allow
+of the loaded heart's relieving itself by pouring out all its griefs.
+God's questions are the assurance of His listening ear and sympathising
+heart. This one is like a little key which opens a great sluice. Out
+gushes a full stream. His forty days' solitude have done little for
+him. A true answer would have been, 'I was afraid of Jezebel.' He takes
+credit for zeal, and seems to insinuate that he had been more zealous
+for God than God had been for Himself. He forgets the national
+acknowledgment of Jehovah at Carmel, and the hundred prophets protected
+by good Obadiah. Despondency has the knack of picking its facts. It is
+colour-blind, and can only see dark tints. He accuses his countrymen,
+as if he would stir up God to take vengeance.
+
+How different this weak and sinful wail over his solitude from the
+heroic mention of it on Carmel, when it only nerved his courage I
+(verse 22). The divine manifestation which followed is evidently meant
+to recall that granted to Moses on the same spot. 'The Lord passed by'
+is all but verbally quoted from Exodus xxxiv. 6, and the truth that had
+been proclaimed in words to Moses was enforced by symbol to Elijah. If
+the vision was in the night, as verse 9 suggests, it becomes still more
+impressive. The fierce wind that roared among the savage peaks, the
+shock that made the mountains reel, and the flashing flames that
+lighted up the wild landscape, were all phenomena of one kind, and at
+once expressed God's lordship over all destructive agencies of nature,
+and symbolised the more vehement and disturbing forms of energy, used
+by Him for the furtherance of His purposes in the field of history or
+of revelation. Elijah's ministry was of such a sort, and he had now to
+learn the limitations of his work, and the superiority of another type,
+represented by the 'sound of gentle stillness.'
+
+It is the same lesson which Moses learned there, when he heard that the
+Lord is 'a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and
+plenteous in mercy and truth.' It was exemplified in the gentle Elisha,
+the successor of Elijah. It reached far beyond the time then present,
+and was indeed a Messianic prophecy, declaring the inmost character of
+Him in whom 'the Lord is,' in an altogether special sense. Elijah as a
+prophet brought no new knowledge, and uttered no far-reaching
+predictions; but he received one of the deepest and clearest prophecies
+of the gentleness of God's highest Messenger, and on Horeb saw afar off
+what he saw fulfilled on the Mountain of Transfiguration. Nor is his
+vision exhausted by its Messianic reference. It contains an eternal
+truth for all God's servants. Storm, earthquake, and fire may be God's
+precursors, and needed sometimes to prepare His way; but gentleness is
+'the habitation of His throne,' and they serve Him best, and are
+nearest Him whom they serve, who are meek in heart and gentle among
+enemies, 'as a nurse cherisheth her children.' Love is the victor, and
+the sharpest weapons of the Christian are love and lowliness.
+
+The lesson was not at first grasped by Elijah, as his repetition of his
+complaint, word for word, with almost dogged obstinacy, shows. The best
+of us are slow to learn God's lessons, and a habit of faithless gloom
+is not soon overcome. It is much easier to get down into the pit than
+to struggle out of it.
+
+III. The commission for further service, which closes the scene, is a
+further rebuke to the prophet. He is bidden to retrace his way and to
+take refuge in the desert lying to the south and east of Damascus,
+where he would be safe from Jezebel, and still not far from the scene
+of his activity. The instructions given to anoint a king of Syria and
+one of Israel were not fulfilled by Elijah, but by his successor; and
+we have to suppose that further commands were given to him on that
+subject. The third injunction, to anoint his successor, was obeyed at
+once on his journey, though Ahelmeholah, on Gilboa, was dangerously
+near Jezreel. The designation of these future instruments of God's
+purpose was at once a sign to Elijah that his own task was drawing to a
+close (having reached its climax on Carmel), and that God had great
+designs beyond him and his service. The true conception of our work is
+that we sire only links in a chain, and that we can be done without.
+'God removes the workers and carries on the work.' To anoint our
+successor is often a bitter pill; but self-importance needs to be taken
+down, and it is blessed to lose ourselves in gazing into the future of
+God's work, when we are gone from the field.
+
+Further, the commissions met Elijah's despondency in another way; for
+they assured him of the divine judgments on the house of Ahab, and of
+the use of the Syrian king as a rod to chastise Israel. He had thought
+God too slow in avenging His dishonoured name, and had been taught the
+might of gentleness; but now he also learns the certainty of
+punishment, while the enigmatical promise that Elisha should 'slay'
+those who escaped the swords of Hazael and Jehu dimly points to the
+merciful energy of that prophet's word, his only sword, which shall
+slay but to revive, and wound to heal. 'I have hewed them by the ...
+words of my mouth.'
+
+Finally, the revelation of the seven thousand--a round number, which
+expresses the sacredness as well as the numerousness of the elect,
+hidden ones--rebukes the hasty assumption of his being left alone,
+'faithful among the faithless.' God has more servants than we know of.
+Let us beware of feeding either our self-righteousness or our
+narrowness or our faint-heartedness with the fancy that we have a
+monopoly of faithfulness, or are left alone to witness for God.
+
+
+
+
+PUTTING ON THE ARMOUR
+
+And the king of Israel answered and said. Tell him. Let not him that
+girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.'--1
+KINGS xx. 11.
+
+
+_For the Young_.
+
+
+Ahab, King of Israel, was but a poor creature, and, like most weak
+characters, he turned out a wicked one, because he found that there
+were more temptations to do wrong than inducements to do right. Like
+other weak people, too, he was torn asunder by the influence of
+stronger wills. On the one side he had a termagant of a wife, stirring
+him up to idolatry and all evil, and on the other side Elijah
+thundering and lightning at him; so the poor man was often reduced to
+perplexity. Once in his lifetime he did behave like a king, with some
+flash of dignity. My text comes from that incident. His next neighbour,
+and, consequently, his continual enemy, was the king of Damascus. He
+had made a raid across the border and was dictating terms so severe as
+to invite even Ahab to courageous opposition. His back was at the wall,
+and he mustered up courage to say 'No!' That provoked a bit of
+blustering bravado from the enemy, who sent back a message, 'The gods
+do also unto me and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice
+for handfuls for all the people that follow me.' And then Ahab replied
+in the words of our text. They have a dash of contempt and sarcasm, all
+the more galling because of their unanswerable common-sense. 'The time
+to crow and clap your wings is _after_ you have fought. Samaria is
+not a heap of dust just yet. Threatened men live long.' The battle
+began, and the bully was beaten; and for once Ahab tasted the sweets of
+success.
+
+Now, I have nothing more to do with Ahab and the immediate application
+of his message, but I wish to apply it to my young friends, whom I have
+taken it upon me to ask now to listen to two or three homely words to
+them in this sermon.
+
+You are beginning the fight; some of us old people are getting very
+near the end of it. And I would fain, if I could, see successors coming
+to take the places which we shall soon have to vacate. So my message to
+you, dear friends, young men and young women, is this, 'Let not him
+that putteth on the harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.'
+
+I. Now, look for a moment at the general view of life that is implied
+in this saying thus understood.
+
+There is nothing that the bulk of people are more unwilling to do than
+steadily to think about what life as a whole, and in its deepest
+aspects, is. And that disinclination is strong, as I suppose, in the
+average young man or young woman. That comes, plainly enough, from the
+very blessings of your stage of life. Unworn health, a blessed
+inexperience of failures and limitations, the sense of undeveloped
+power within you, the natural buoyancy of early days, all tend to make
+you rather live by impulse than by reflection. And I should be the last
+man in the world to try to damp the noble, buoyant, beautiful
+enthusiasms with which Nature has provided that we should all begin our
+course. The world will do that soon enough; and there is no sadder
+sight than that of a bitter old man, who has outlived, and smiles
+sardonically at, his youthful dreams. But I do wish to press upon you
+all this question, Have you ever tried to think to yourself, 'Now what,
+after all, is this life that is budding within me and dawning before
+me--what is it, in its deepest reality, and what am I to do with it?'
+
+There are some of us to whom, so far as we have thought at all, life
+presents itself mainly as a shop, a place where we are to 'buy and
+sell, and get gain,' and use our evenings, after the day's work is
+over, for such recreation as suits us. And there are young men among my
+hearers who, with the flush of their physical manhood upon them, and
+perhaps away from the restraints of home, and living in gloomy town
+lodgings, with no one to look after them, are beginning to think that
+life after all is a kind of pigs' trough, with plenty of foul wash in
+it for whoso chooses to suck it up--a garden of not altogether pure
+delights, a place where a man may gratify the 'lusts of the flesh.'
+
+But, dear brethren, whilst there are many other noble metaphors under
+which we can set forth the essential character of this mysterious,
+tremendous life of ours, I do not know that there is one that ought to
+appeal more to the slumbering heroism which lies in every human soul,
+and to the enthusiasms which, unless you in your youth cherish, you
+will in your manhood be beggared indeed, than that which this picture
+of my text suggests. After all, life is meant to be one long conflict.
+We are like the fellahin that one sometimes sees in Eastern lands, who
+cannot go out to plough in their fields, or reap their harvests,
+without a gun slung on their backs; for the condition under which we
+work in this world is that everything worth doing has to be done at the
+cost of opposition and antagonism, and that no noble service or
+building is possible without brave, continuous conflict. Even upon the
+lower levels of life that is so. No man learns a science or a trade
+without having to fight for it. But high above these lower levels,
+there is the one on which we all are called to walk, the high level of
+duty, and no man does what his conscience tells him, or refrains from
+that which his conscience sternly forbids, without having to fight for
+it. We are in the lists and compelled to draw the sword. And if we do
+not realise this, that all nobility all greatness, all wisdom, all
+success, even of the lowest and most vulpine kind, are won by conflict,
+we shall never do anything in the world worth doing. You are a soldier,
+whether you will or no, and life is a fight, whether you recognise the
+fact or not.
+
+So, standing at the beginning, do not fancy that there is opening
+before you a scene of enjoyment, or that you are stepping into a world
+in which you can take your ease, and come out successfully at the other
+end. It is not so; and you will find that out before long. Better that
+you should settle it in your minds at first. When you were born you
+were enrolled on the roll-call of the regiment; and now you have to do
+a man's part in the battle.
+
+II. Note the boastful temper which is sure to be beaten.
+
+No doubt there is something inspiring in the spectacle of the young
+warrior standing there, chafing at the lists, eagerly pulling on his
+gauntlets, fitting on his helmet, and longing to be in the thick of the
+fight. No doubt, as I have already said, there is something in your
+early days which makes such buoyant hopes and anticipations of success
+natural, and which gives you, as a great gift, that expectation of
+victory. I do not wish to shatter any of your enthusiasms or ideals,
+but I do wish to suggest a consideration or two that may calm and sober
+them.
+
+So I ask, have you ever estimated, are you now estimating rightly, what
+it is that you have to fight for? To make yourselves pure, wise,
+strong, self-governing, Christlike men, such as God would have you to
+be. That is not a small thing for a man to set himself to do. You may
+go into the struggle for lower purposes, for bread and cheese, or
+wealth or fame, or love, or the like, with a comparatively light heart;
+but if there once has dawned upon a young soul the whole majestic sweep
+of possibilities in its opening life, then the battle assumes an aspect
+of solemnity and greatness that silences all boasting. Have you
+considered what it is that you have to fight for?
+
+Have you considered the forces that are arrayed against you? 'What act
+is all its thought had been?' Hand and brain are never paired. There is
+always a gap between the conception and its realisation. The painter
+stands before his canvas, and, while others may see beauty in it, he
+only sees what a small fragment of the radiant vision that floated
+before his eye his hand has been able to preserve. The author looks on
+his book and thinks what a poor, wretched transcript of the thoughts
+that inspired his pen it is. There is ever this same disproportion
+between the conception and accomplishment. Therefore, all we old people
+feel, more or less, that our lives have been failures. We set out as
+you do, thinking that we were going to build a tower whose top should
+reach to heaven, and we are contented if, at the last, we have
+scrambled together some little wooden shanty in which we can live. We
+thought as you do; you will come to think as we do. So you had better
+begin now, and not go into the fight boasting, or you will come out of
+it conscious of being beaten.
+
+Have you realised how different it is to dream things and to do them?
+In our dreams we are, as it were, working _in vacuo_. When we come
+to acts, the atmosphere offers resistance. It is easy to imagine
+ourselves victorious in circumstances where things are all going
+rightly and are bending according to our own desires, but when we come
+to the grim world, where there are things that resist and people are
+not plastic, it is a very different matter. You do not yet understand,
+as you will some day, the fatal limitations of power that hem us all
+round and the obstinate way that circumstances have of not falling in
+with our wishes. And you have not yet learned how completely and
+constantly failure accompanies success, like its shadow. The old
+Egyptians had no need to put a skeleton at their tables, nor the Romans
+to set a mocker behind the hero as he rode in triumph up to the
+Capitol. The world provides the skeleton at the banquet, and
+circumstances supply the mocker to add a dash of failure to all our
+triumphs.
+
+Have you ever realised how certainly, into the brightest and most
+buoyant and successful lives, there will come crushing sorrows, blows
+as from an unseen hand in the dark, that fell a man? O friend! when one
+thinks of the miseries and the misfortunes, the sorrows and the losses,
+the broken and bleeding hearts that began life buoyant, elastic,
+hopeful, perhaps boasting, like you, there ought to be a sobering tint
+cast over our brightest visions.
+
+I suppose that our colleges are full of students who are going, to far
+outstrip their professors, that every life-school has a dozen lads who
+have just begun to handle brush and easel, and are going to put
+Raffaelle in the shade. I suppose that every lawyer's office has a
+budding Lord Chancellor or two in it. And I suppose that that sharp
+criticism of us fumblers in the field, and half-expressed thought, 'How
+much better I could do it!' belong to youth by virtue of its youth. It
+is a crude form of undeveloped power, but it wants a great deal of
+sobering down, and I am trying now to let out a little of the blood,
+and to bring you to a clear conception of the very limited success
+which is likely to attend you. All we old people, whose deficiencies
+and limitations you see so clearly, had the same dreams, impossible as
+it may appear to you, fifty years ago. We were going to be the men, and
+wisdom was going to die with us, and you see what we have made of it.
+You will not do much better.
+
+Have you ever taken stock honestly of your own resources? 'What king,
+going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and
+counteth the cost, whether with his ten thousand he can meet him that
+cometh against him with twenty thousand?' Boast if you like, but
+calculate first, and boast after that, if you can.
+
+Your worst enemy is yourself. When you are counting your resources and
+saying, 'I have this, that, and the other thing,' do not forget to say,
+'I have a part of me, that takes all the rest of me all its time to
+keep it down and prevent it from becoming master.' You have traitors in
+the fortress who are in communication with the enemy outside, and may
+go over to him openly in the very crisis of the fight. You have to take
+that fact into account, and it ought to suppress boasting whilst you
+are putting on the harness.
+
+You are not old enough to remember, as some of us do, the delirious
+enthusiasm with which, in the last Franco-German war, the Emperor and
+the troops left Paris, and how, as the train steamed out of the
+station, shouts were raised, 'A. Berlin!' Ay! and they never got
+farther than Sedan, and there an Emperor and an army were captured. Go
+into the fight bragging, and you will come out of it beaten.
+
+III. Note the confidence which is not boasting.
+
+I can fancy some of you saying, 'These gloomy views of yours will lead
+to nothing but absolute despair. You have been telling us that success
+is impossible; that we are bound to fight, and are sure to be beaten.
+What are we to do? Throw up the sponge, and say, "Very well! then I may
+as well have my fling, and give up all attempts to be any better than
+my passions and my senses would lead me to be."' And if there is
+nothing more to be said about the fight than has been already said,
+that _is_ the conclusion. 'Let us eat and drink,' not only 'for
+to-morrow we die,' but 'for to-day we are sure to be beaten.' But I
+have only been speaking about this self-distrust as preliminary to what
+is the main thing that I desire to urge upon you now, and it is this:
+You do not need to be beaten. There is no room for boasting, but there
+is room for absolute confidence. You, young men and women, standing at
+the entrance of the amphitheatre where the gladiators fight, may dash
+into the arena with the most perfect confidence that you will come out
+with your shield preserved and your sword unbroken.
+
+There is one way of doing it. 'Be of good cheer! I have overcome the
+world.' That was not the boast of a man putting on the harness, but the
+calm utterance of the conquering Christ when He was putting it off. He
+has conquered that you may conquer. Remember how the Apostle, who has
+preserved for us that note of triumph at the end of Christ's life, has,
+like some musician with a favourite phrase, modulated and varied it in
+his letter written long after, when he says, 'This is the victory that
+overcometh the world, even our faith.' My dear young friends, distrust
+yourselves utterly, and trust Jesus Christ absolutely, and give
+yourselves to Him, to be His servants and soldiers till your lives'
+end. Then you will not be beaten, for it is written of those who move
+in the light, wearing the victor's palm: 'These are they who overcame
+by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of His testimony.' That blood
+secures our victory in a threefold fashion. By that great death of
+Jesus Christ all our past sins may be forgiven, and they no longer have
+power to tyrannise over us. In His sacrifice for us there are motives
+given to us for noble, grateful, Godlike living, stronger than all the
+temptations that can arise from our own hearts, or from the evils
+around us. And if we put our humble trust in Him, then that faith opens
+the door for the entrance into our hearts, in simple reality, of a
+share in His conquering life which will make us victorious over the
+world, the flesh, and the devil.
+
+'This is the victory that overcometh the world,' and the youngest,
+feeblest Christian who lays his or her hand in Christ's strong hand,
+may look out upon all the embattled antagonisms that front them, and
+say, 'He will cover my head in the day of battle, and teach my hands to
+war and my fingers to fight.'
+
+Dear young friends, people sometimes preach to you that you should be
+Christians, because life is uncertain and death is drawing near, and
+after death the judgment. I preach that too; but the gospel that I seek
+to press upon you now is not merely a thing to die by, but it is
+_the_ thing to live by; and it is the only power by which we shall
+be sure of overcoming the armies of the aliens. This confidence in
+Christ will take away from you no shred of your natural, youthful,
+buoyant elasticity, but it will save you from much transgression and
+from bitter regrets.
+
+One last word. There is possible a triumph which is not boasting, for
+him who puts _off_ the harness. The war-worn soldier has little
+heart for boasting, but he may be able to say, 'I have not been
+beaten.' The best of us, when we come to the end, will have to
+recognise in retrospect failures, deficiencies, palterings with evil,
+yieldings to temptation, sins of many sorts, that will put all boasting
+out of our thoughts. But, whilst that is so, there is sometimes granted
+to the man, who has been faithful in his adherence to Jesus Christ, a
+gleam of sunshine at eventime, which foretells Heaven's welcome and
+'Well done!', before it is uttered. He was no self-righteous braggart,
+but a very rigid judge of himself, who, close by the headsman's block
+that ended his life, said: 'I have fought a good fight; I have finished
+my course; I have kept the faith.' 'Put on the whole armour of God,'
+and when the time comes to put it off, you will have a peaceful
+assurance as far removed from despair as it is from boasting. Distrust
+yourselves; do not underestimate your enemies; understand that life is
+warfare; trust utterly to Jesus Christ, and He will see to it that you
+are not conquered, will give you the calm confidence of which we have
+been speaking here, and a share hereafter in the throne which He
+promises to him that overcometh. If you will trust yourselves to Him,
+and take service in His army, you cannot be too certain of victory. If
+you fling yourself into the battle in your own strength, with however
+high a hope, and fight without the Captain for your ally, you cannot
+escape defeat.
+
+
+
+
+ROYAL MURDERERS
+
+
+
+'And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth the Jezreelite had
+a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, hard by the palace of Ahab king of
+Samaria. 2. And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard,
+that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my
+house: and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it
+seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money. 3. And
+Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the
+inheritance of my fathers unto thee. 4. And Ahab came into his house
+heavy and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite
+had spoken to him: for he had said, I will not give thee the
+inheritance of my fathers. And he laid him down upon his bed, and
+turned away his face, and would eat no bread. 5. But Jezebel his wife
+came to him, and said unto him. Why is thy spirit so sad, that thou
+eatest no bread? 6. And he said unto her, Because I spake unto Naboth
+the Jezreelite, and said unto him, Give me thy vineyard for money: or
+else, if it please thee, I will give thee another vineyard for it: and
+he answered, I will not give thee my vineyard. 7. And Jezebel his wife
+said unto him, Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and
+eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the vineyard
+of Naboth the Jezreelite. 8. So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and
+sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to
+the nobles that were in his city, dwelling with Naboth. 9. And she
+wrote in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high
+among the people: 10. And set two men, sons of Belial, before him, to
+bear witness against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God and the
+king. And then carry him out, and stone him, that he may die. 11. And
+the men of his city, even the elders and the nobles who were the
+inhabitants in his city, did as Jezebel had sent unto them, and as it
+was written in the letters which she had sent unto them. 12. They
+proclaimed a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people. 13. And
+there came in two men, children of Belial, and sat before him: and the
+men of Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth, in the
+presence of the people, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and the king.
+Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him with
+stones, that he died. 14. Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, Naboth is
+stoned, and is dead. 15. And it came to pass, when Jezebel heard that
+Naboth was stoned, and was dead, that Jezebel said to Ahab, Arise, take
+possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused
+to give thee for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead. 16. And it
+came to pass, when Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, that Ahab rose up
+to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession
+of it.'-1 KINGS xxi. 1-16.
+
+
+There are three types of character in this story, all bad, but in
+different ways. Ahab is wicked and weak; Jezebel, wicked and strong;
+the elders of Jezreel, wicked and subservient. Amongst them they commit
+a great crime, which was the last drop in the full cup of the king's
+sins, and brought down God's judgment on him and his house.
+
+I. We have to look at the weakly wicked Ahab. His wish for Naboth's
+vineyard was a mere selfish whim. He was willing to give more for it
+than it was worth. It suited his convenience for a kitchen-garden. In
+the true spirit of an Eastern despot, he expected everything to yield
+to his caprice, and did not think that a subject had any rights. What
+business has a poor man with sentiment? Naboth is to go, and a handful
+of silver will set all right. Samuel's warning of what a king would be
+and do was fulfilled. This highhanded interference with private rights
+was what Israel's revolt had led to. The sturdy Naboth was influenced
+not only by love for the bit of land which his fathers had cultivated
+for more years than Ahab had reigned days, but by obedience to the law
+of God; and he was not afraid to show himself a Jehovah worshipper, by
+his solemn appeal to 'the Lord,' as well as by the fact of his refusal.
+The brusque, flat refusal shows that some independence was left in the
+nation.
+
+The weak rage and childish sulking of Ahab are very characteristic of a
+feeble and selfish nature, accustomed to be humoured and not thwarted.
+These fits of temper seem to have been common with him; for he was in
+one at the end of the preceding chapter, as he is now. The 'bed' on
+which he flung himself is probably the couch for reclining on at table,
+and, if so, the picture of his passion is still more vivid. Instead of
+partaking of the meal, he turns his face to the wall, and refuses food.
+'No meat will down with him for want of a salad, because wanting
+Naboth's vineyard for a garden of herbs.' As he lies there, like a
+spoiled child, all because he could not get his own way, he may serve
+for an example of the misery of unbridled selfishness and unregulated
+desires. An acre or two of land was a small matter to get into such a
+state about, and there are few things that are worth a wise or a strong
+man's being so troubled. Hezekiah might 'turn his face to the wall' in
+the extremity of sickness and earnestness of prayer; but Ahab in doing
+it is only a poor, feeble creature who has weakly set his heart on what
+is not his, and weakly whimpers because he cannot have it.
+
+To be thus at the mercy of our own ravenous desires, and so utterly
+miserable when they are thwarted, is unworthy of manhood, and is sure
+to bring many a bitter moment; for there are more disappointments than
+gratifications in store for such a one. We may learn from Ahab, too,
+the certainty that weakness will darken into wickedness. Such a mood as
+his always brings some Jezebel or other to suggest evil ways of
+succeeding. In this wicked world there are more temptations to sin than
+helps to virtue, and the weak man will soon fall into some of the
+abundant traps laid for him. Unless we have learned to say 'No' with
+much emphasis, because we are 'strong in the Lord,' we shall fall.
+'This did not I because of the fear of the Lord.' To be weak is to be
+miserable, and any sin may come from it.
+
+II. Jezebel is a type of a different sort of wickedness. She is wicked
+and strong. Notice how she takes the upper hand at once, in her abrupt
+question, not without a spice of scorn; and note how Ahab answers,
+bemoaning himself, putting in the forefront his fair proposal, and
+making Naboth's refusal ruder than it really had been, by suppressing
+its reason. Then out flashes the imperious will of this masterful
+princess, who had come from a land where royalty was all-powerful, and
+who had no restraints of conscience. She darts a half-contemptuous
+question at Ahab, to stir him to action; for nothing moves a weak man
+so much as the fear of being thought weak. 'Dost thou govern?' implies,
+'If thou dost, thou mayest trample on a subject.' It should mean, 'If
+thou dost, thou must jealously guard the subject's rights.' What a
+proud consciousness of her power speaks in that 'I will give thee the
+vineyard'! It is like Lady Macbeth's 'Give me the dagger!' No more is
+said. She can keep her own counsel, and Ahab suspects that some
+violence is to be used, which he had better not know. So, again, his
+weakness leads him astray. He does not wish to hear what he is willing
+should be done, if only he has not to do it. So feeble men hoodwink
+conscience by conniving at evils which they dare not perpetrate, and
+then enjoying their fruits, and saying, 'Thou canst not say I did it.'
+
+Jezebel had Ahab's signet, the badge of authority, which she probably
+got from him for her unspoken purpose. Her letter to the elders of
+Jezreel speaks out, with cynical disregard of decency, the whole ugly
+conspiracy. It is direct, horribly plain, and imperative. There is a
+perfect nest of sins hissing and coiled together in it. Hypocrisy
+calling religion in to attest a lie, subornation of evidence, contempt
+for the poor tools who are to perjure themselves, consciousness that
+such work will only be done by worthless men, cool lying, ferocity, and
+murder,--these are a pretty company to crowd into half a dozen lines.
+Most detestable of all is the plain speaking which shows her hardened
+audacity and conscious defiance of all right. To name sin by its true
+name, and then to do it without a quiver, is a depth of evil reached by
+few men, and perhaps fewer women.
+
+The plot gives a colour of legality, which is probably often unobserved
+by readers. Naboth was to be accused of treason: 'renouncing God and
+the king'; and that was, according to the law of Moses, a charge which,
+if proved, merited capital punishment. But it is Satan accusing sin for
+Jezebel, the Baal worshipper, who had done her best to root out the
+name of Jehovah, to accuse Naboth of departing from God. Much
+highhanded oppression must have gone before such outspoken contempt of
+justice; and, if Ahab represents the fatal connection of weakness and
+wickedness, Jezebel is an instance of the fatal audacity with which a
+strong character may come, by long indulgence in self-willed
+gratification of its own desires, to trample down all obstacles and go
+crashing through all laws, human and divine. The climax of sin is to
+see a deed to be sinful, and to do it all the same. Such a pre-eminence
+in evil is not reached at a bound, but it can be reached; and every
+indulgence in passion, and every gratifying of desire against which
+conscience protests, is a step toward it. Therefore, if we shrink from
+such a goal, let us turn away from the paths that lead to it. 'No
+mortal man is supremely foul all at once.' Therefore resist the
+beginnings of evil. Elijah was strong by natural temperament, and so
+was Jezebel. But the strength of the prophet was hallowed by obedience,
+and, like some great river, poured blessings where it flowed. Jezebel's
+strength was lawless, and foamed itself away in fury, like some
+devastating torrent that spreads ruin whithersoever it bursts out. 'Be
+strong' is good advice, but it needs the supplement, 'Let all your
+deeds be done in charity,' and the foundation,' Be strong in the Lord,
+and in the power of His might.'
+
+III. The last set of actors in this pitiful tragedy are the
+subserviently wicked elders. The narrative sets their slavish
+compliance in a strong light. It puts emphasis on the tie between them
+and Naboth, in that they 'dwelt in his city,' and so should have had
+neighbourly feeling. It lays stress on their cowardly motive and their
+complete execution of orders, both by reiterating that they acted 'as
+Jezebel had sent' and 'as it was written,' and by taking the letter
+clause by clause, in the narrative of the shameful parody of justice
+which they acted. It suggests both their eagerness to do her pleasure,
+and her impatient waiting, in her palace, by the message sent in hot
+haste as soon as the brave peasant proprietor was dead. 'It is ill
+sitting at Rome and striving with the Pope,' as the proverb has it. No
+doubt these cowards were afraid for their own necks, and were too near
+the royal tigress to venture disobedience. But their swift,
+unremonstrating, and complete obedience indicates the depth of
+degradation and corruption to which they and the nation had sunk, and
+the terror exercised by their upstart king and his Sidonian wife.
+
+Cowardice is always contemptible, and wickedness is always odious; but
+when the two come together, and a man has no other reason for his sin
+than 'I was afraid,' each makes the other blacker. Israel had cast off
+the fear of the Lord, which would have preserved it from the ignoble
+terror of men, and the consequence was that it trembled before an
+angry, unscrupulous woman. It had revolted from Rehoboam and his
+foolish bluster about whips and scorpions, and the consequence was a
+worse slavery. If we fear God, we need have no other fear. The sun puts
+out a fire. If we rebel against Him, we do not become free, but fall
+under a heavy yoke. It is never prudent to do wrong. The worst
+consequences of resistance to powerful evil are easier to bear than
+those of compliance, though it may seem the safer. Better be lying dead
+beneath a heap of stones, like the sturdy Naboth, who could say 'No' to
+a king, than be one of his stoners, who killed their innocent neighbour
+to pleasure Jezebel!
+
+Her indecent triumph at the success of the plot, and her utter
+callousness, are expressed in her words to Ahab, in which the main
+point is the taking possession of the vineyard. The death of its owner
+is told with exultation, as being nothing but the sweeping aside of an
+obstacle. Ahab asks no questions as to how this opportune clearing away
+of hindrance came about. He knew, no doubt, well enough that there had
+been foul play; but that does not matter to him, and such a trifle as
+murder does not slacken his glad haste to get his new toy. There was
+other red on the vines than their clustering grapes, as he soon found
+out, when Elijah's grim figure, like an embodied conscience, met him
+there. Whoever reaches out to grasp a fancied good by breaking God's
+law, may get his good, but he will get more than he expected along with
+it,--even an accusing voice that prophesies evil. Elijah strides among
+the leafy vines in the field bought by crime. Ahab meant to make it a
+garden of pot-herbs. 'Surely the bitter wormwood of divine revenge grew
+abundantly therein.'
+
+
+
+
+AHAB AND ELIJAH
+
+'And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy!'--1 KINGS
+xxi. 20.
+
+
+The keynote of Elijah's character is force-the force of righteousness.
+The New Testament, you remember, speaks of the 'power of Elias.' The
+outward appearance of the man corresponds to his function and his
+character. Gaunt and sinewy, dwelling in the desert, feeding on locusts
+and wild honey, with a girdle of camel's skin about his loins, he
+bursts into the history, amongst all that corrupt state of society,
+with the force of a hammer that God's hand wields. The whole of his
+career is marked by this one thing,--the strength of a righteous man.
+And then, on the other hand, this Ahab;--the keynote of _his_
+character is the weakness of wickedness, and the wickedness of
+weakness. Think of him. Weakly longing--as idle and weak minds in lofty
+places always do--after something that belongs to somebody else; with
+all his gardens, coveting the one little herb-plot of the poor Naboth;
+weak and worse than womanly, turning his face to the wall and weeping
+when he cannot get it; weakly desiring to have it, and yet not knowing
+how to set about accomplishing his wish; and then--as is always the
+case, for there are always tempters everywhere for weak people--that
+beautiful fiend by his side, like the other queen in our great drama,
+ready to screw the feeble man that she is wedded to, to the sticking-
+place, and to dare anything to grasp that on which the heart was set.
+And so the deed is done: Naboth safe stoned out of the way; and Ahab
+goes down to take possession! The lesson of that is, my friend,--Weak
+dallying with forbidden desires is sure to end in wicked clutching at
+them. Young men, take care! You stand upon the beetling edge of a great
+precipice, when you look over, from your fancied security, at a wrong
+thing; and to strain too far, and to look too fixedly, leads to a
+perilous danger of toppling over and being lost! If you know that a
+thing cannot be won without transgression, do not tamper with
+hankerings for it. Keep away from the edge, and '_shut_ your eyes
+from beholding vanity.'
+
+But my business now is rather with the consequences of this apparently
+successful sin, than with what went before it. The king gets the crime
+done, shuffles it off himself on to the shoulders of his ready tools in
+the little village, goes down to get his toy, and gets it--but he gets
+Elijah along with it, which was more than he reckoned on. When, all
+full of impatience and hot haste to solace himself with his new
+possession, he rushes down to seize the vineyard, he finds there,
+standing at the gate, waiting for him--black-browed, motionless, grim,
+an incarnate conscience--the prophet whom he had not seen for years,
+the prophet that he had last seen on Carmel, bearding alone the
+servants of Baal, and executing on them the solemn judgment of death;
+and there leaps at once to his lip, 'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?'
+
+I. I find here, in the first place, this broad principle: Pleasure won
+by sin is peace lost.
+
+It does not need that there should be a rebuking prophet standing by to
+work out that law. God commits the execution of it to the natural
+operations of our own consciences and our own spirits. Here is the fact
+in men's natures on which it partly depends: when sin is yet tempting
+us, it is loved; when sin in done, it is loathed. Action and reaction,
+as the mechanicians tell us, are equal and contrary. The more violent
+the blow with which we strike upon the forbidden pleasure, the further
+back the rebound after the stroke. When sin tempts--when there hangs
+glittering before a man the golden fruit which he knows that he ought
+not to touch--then, amidst the noise of passion or the sophistry of
+desire, conscience is silenced for a little while. No man sins without
+knowing that it is wrong, without knowing that in the long run it is a
+mistake; but at the instant, in the delirium of yielding, as in moments
+of high physical excitement, he is blind and deaf, deaf to the voice of
+reason, blind to the sight of consequences. Conscience and consequence
+are alike lost sight of. Like a mad bull, the man that is tempted
+lowers his head and shuts his eyes, and rushes right on. The moment
+that the sin is done, that moment the passion or desire which tempted
+to it is satiated, and ceases to exist for the time. It is gone as a
+motive. Like some savage beast, being fed full, it lies down to sleep.
+There is a vacuum left in the heart, the noise is stilled, and then--
+and then--conscience begins to speak. Or, to take another image, the
+passion, the desires, the impulses that lead us to do wrong things--
+they are like a crew that mutiny, and take for a moment the wheel from
+the steersman and the command from the captain, but then, having driven
+the ship on the rocks, the mutineers get intoxicated, and lie down and
+sleep. Passion fulfils itself, and expires. The desire is satisfied,
+and it turns into a loathing. The tempter draws us to him, and then
+unveils the horrid face that lies beneath the mask. When the deed is
+done and cannot be undone, then comes satiety; then comes the reaction
+of the fierce excitement, the hot blood begins to flow more slowly;
+then rises up in the heart conscience; then rises up in majesty in the
+soul reason; then flashes and flares before the eye the vivid picture
+of the consequences. His 'enemy' has found the sinner. He has got the
+vineyard--ay, but Elijah is there, and his dark and stern presence
+sucks all the brightness and the sunniness out of the landscape; and
+Naboth's blood stains the leaves of Naboth's garden! There is no sin
+which is not the purchase of pleasure at the price of peace.
+
+Now, you will say that all that is true in regard to the grosser forms
+of transgression, but that it is not true in regard to the less vulgar
+and sensual kinds of crime. Of course it is most markedly observable
+with regard to the coarsest kind of sins; but it is as true, though
+perhaps not in the same degree--not in the same prominent, manifest way
+at any rate--in regard to every sin that a man does. There is never an
+evil thing which--knowing it to be evil--we commit, which does not rise
+up to testify against us. As surely as (in the words of our great
+philosopher poet) 'lust dwells hard by hate,' and as surely as to-
+night's debauch is followed by to-morrow's headache, so surely--each
+after its kind, and each in its own region--every sin lodges in the
+human heart the seed of a quick-springing punishment, yea, is its own
+punishment. When we come to grasp the sweet thing that we have been
+tempted to seize, there is a serpent that starts up amongst all the
+flowers. When the evil act is done--opposite of the prophet's roll--it
+is sweet in the lips, but oh! it is bitter afterwards. 'At the last it
+biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder!'
+
+Then, you may say again, 'All that is very much exaggerated. That is
+not the sort of feeling which men that go on persistently doing wrong
+things, cherish. They live quietly and contentedly enough. "There are
+no bands in their death, and their strength is firm."' All that would
+be true if men's consciences kept sensitive in the midst of men's sins,
+but they do not; and so it cannot be that every transgression has thus
+its quick result in loss of peace. I grant you at once that it is quite
+possible for men to sin away the delicacy and susceptibility of their
+consciences. I dare say there are people here now who, after they have
+done a wrong thing, go on very quietly, with no knowledge of those
+agonies that I have been speaking about, with scarcely ever a prick of
+conscience for their sin. But what then? I did not say that all sin
+purchased pleasure by inflictions of agony; but I do say, that all sin
+purchases pleasure by loss of peace. The silence of a seared conscience
+is not peace. For peace you want something more than that a conscience
+shall be dumb. For peace you want something more than that you shall be
+able to live without the daily sense and sting of sin. You want not
+only the negative absence of pain, but the positive presence of a
+tranquillising guest in your heart--that conscience of yours testifying
+with you, blessing you in its witness, and shedding abroad rest and
+comfort. It is easy to kill a conscience--after a fashion at least. It
+is easy to stifle it. It is easy to come to that depth of wrongdoing
+that one gets used to it, and does it without caring. But oh! that cold
+vacuum, that dead absence in such a spirit of all healthy self-
+communing, that painful suspicion, 'If I look into myself, and be quiet
+for a little while, and take stock of my own character, and see what I
+am, the balance will be on the wrong side,'--that is _not_ peace.
+As the old historian says about the Roman armies that marched through
+a country, burning and destroying every living thing, 'They make a
+solitude, and they call it peace.' And so men do with their
+consciences. They stifle them, sear them, forcibly silence them,
+somehow or other; and then, when there is a dead stillness in the
+heart, broken by no voice of either approbation or blame, but doleful
+like the unnatural quiet of a deserted city, then they call that peace,
+and the man's uncontrolled passions and unbridled desires dwell
+solitary in the fortress of his own spirit! You _may_ almost
+attain to that. Do you think it is a goal to be set before you as an
+ideal of human nature? The loss of peace is certain--the presence of
+agony is most likely--from every act of sin.
+
+And so, it is not only a _crime_ that men commit when they do
+wrong, but it is a _blunder_. Sin is not only guilt, but it is a
+mistake. 'The game is not worth the candle,' according to the French
+proverb. The thing that you buy is not worth the price you pay for it.
+Sin is like a great forest-tree that we may sometimes see standing up
+green in its leafy beauty, and spreading a broad shadow over half a
+field; but when we get round on the other side, there is a great dark
+hollow in the very heart of it, and corruption is at work there. It is
+like the poison-tree in travellers' stories, tempting weary men to rest
+beneath its thick foliage, and insinuating death into the limbs that
+relax in the fatal coolness of its shade. It is like the apples of
+Sodom, fair to look upon, but turning to acrid ashes on the unwary
+lips. It is like the magician's rod that we read about in old books.
+There it lies; and if, tempted by its glitter, or fascinated by the
+power that it proffers you, you take it in your hand, the thing starts
+into a serpent with erected crest and sparkling eye, and plunges its
+quick barb into the hand that holds it, and sends poison through all
+the veins. Do not touch it, my brother! Every sin buys pleasure at the
+price of peace. Elijah is always waiting at the gate of the ill-gotten
+possession.
+
+II. In the second place, Sin is blind to its true friends and its real
+foes.
+
+'Hast thou found me, _O mine enemy?'_ Elijah was the best friend
+that Ahab had in his kingdom. And that Jezebel there, the wife of his
+bosom, whom he loved and thanked for this new toy, she was the worst
+foe that hell could have sent him. Ay, and so it is always. The
+faithful rebuker, the merciful inflicter of pain, is the truest friend
+of the wrongdoer. The worst enemy of the sinful heart is the voice that
+either tempts it into sin, or lulls it into self-complacency. And this
+is one of the most certain workings of evil desires in our spirits,
+that they pervert for us all the relations of things, that they make us
+blind to all the moral truths of God's universe. Sin is blind as to
+itself, blind as to its own consequences, blind as to who are its
+friends and who are its foes, blind as to earth, blind as to another
+world, blind as to God. The man who walks in the 'vain show' of
+transgression, whose heart is set upon evil,--he fancies that ashes are
+bread, and stones gold (as in the old fairy story); and, on the other
+hand, he thinks that the true sweet is the bitter, and turns away from
+God's angels and God's prophets, with, 'Hast thou found me, O mine
+enemy?' That is the reason, my friend, of not a little of the
+infidelity that haunts this world--that sin, perverted and blinded,
+stumbles about in its darkness, and mistakes the face of the friend for
+the face of the foe. God sends you in mercy a conscience to prick and
+sting you that you may be kept right; and you think that _it_ is
+your enemy. God sends in His mercy the discipline of life, pains and
+sorrows, to draw us away from the wrong, to make us believe that the
+right in this world and the next is life, and that holiness is
+happiness for evermore. And then, when, having done wrong, God's
+merciful messenger of a sharp sorrow finds us out, we say, 'Hast thou
+found me, O mine enemy?' and begin to wonder about the mysteries of
+Providence, and how it comes that there is evil in the creation of a
+good God. Why, physical evil is the best friend of the man that is
+subject to moral evil. Sorrow is the truest blessing to a sinner. The
+best thing that can befall any of us is that God shall not let us alone
+in any wrong course, without making us feel His rod, without hedging up
+our way with thorns, and sending us by His grace into a better one.
+There is no mystery in sorrow. There is a mystery in sin; but sorrow
+following on the back of sin is the true friend, and not the enemy, of
+the wrong-doing spirit.
+
+And then, again, God sends us a gospel full of dark words about evil.
+It deals with that fact of sin, as no other system ever did. There is
+no book like the Bible for these two things,--for the lofty notion that
+it has about what man may be and ought to be; and for the low notion
+that it has of what man is. It does not degrade human nature, because
+it tells us the truth about human nature as it is. Its darkest and
+bitterest sayings about transgression, they are veiled promises, my
+brother. It does not make the consequences of sin which it writes down.
+You and I make them for ourselves, and it tells us of them. Did the
+lighthouse make the rock that it stands on? Is it to be blamed for the
+shipwreck? If a man _will_ go full tilt against the thing that he
+knows will ruin him, what is the right name for him who hedges it up
+with a prickly fence of thorns, and puts a great light above it, and
+writes below, 'If thou comest here thou diest'? Is that the work of an
+enemy? And yet that is why people talk about the gloomy views of the
+gospel, about the narrow spirit of Christianity, about the harsh things
+that are here! The Bible did not make hell. The Bible did not make sin
+the parent of sorrow. The Bible did not make it certain that 'every
+transgression and disobedience' should reap its 'just recompense of
+reward.' We are the causes of their coming upon ourselves; and the
+Bible but proclaims the end to which the paths of sin must lead, and
+beseechingly calls to us all, 'Turn ye, turn ye! why will ye die?' And
+yet when it comes to you, how many of you turn away from it, and say,
+'It is mine enemy'! How many shrink from its merciful knife, that cuts
+into all the wounds of the festering spirit! How many of you feel as if
+'the truth that is in Jesus' was a hard and bitter truth; when all the
+while its very heart's blood is love, and the very secret of its
+message is the tenderest compassion, the most yearning sympathy, for
+every soul amongst us!
+
+Ay, and more than that:--sin makes us fancy that God Himself is our
+enemy; and sin makes that thought of God that ought to be most blessed
+and most sweet to us, the terror of our souls. You have the power, my
+friend, by your own wrongdoing, of perverting the whole universe, and,
+worst of all, of distorting the image of the merciful Father, of the
+loving God. God loves. God is the Father. God watches over us. God will
+not let us alone when we transgress, God in His love has appointed that
+sin shall breed sorrow. But _we_--we do wrong; and then, for God's
+Providence, and God's Gospel, and God's Son, and God Himself, there
+rises up in our hearts a hostile feeling, and we think that He is
+turned to be our enemy, and fights against us! But oh! He only fights
+against us that we may submit to, and love, Him. Will you, then, have
+it that God's highest mercy should be your greatest sorrow, that your
+truest friend should be your worst foe? You can make the choice. To you
+God and His truth are like that ark of His covenant which to Dagon and
+the Philistines was a curse, but to the house of Obededom was a
+blessing. He and His gospel are to you like that pillar that was
+darkness and trouble to the hosts of the Egyptians, but light by night
+to His children. To you, my brother, the gospel may be either 'the
+savour of life unto life, or the savour of death unto death!' If He
+comes to you with rebuke, and meets you when you are at the very door
+of your sin, and busy with your transgression,--usher Him in, and thank
+Him, and bless Him for words of threatening, for merciful severity, for
+conviction of sin;--because conviction of sin is the work of the
+Comforter; and all the threatenings and all the pains that follow and
+track, like swift hounds, the committer of evil, are sent by Him who
+loves too wisely not to punish transgression, and loves too well to
+punish without warning, and desires only when He punishes that we
+should turn from our evil way, and escape the condemnation. An enemy,
+or a friend,--which is God in His truth to you?
+
+III. Lastly, the sin which mistakes the friendly appeal for an enemy,
+lays up for itself a terrible retribution. Elijah comes to Jezreel and
+prophesies the fall of Ahab. The next peal, the next flash, fulfil the
+prediction. There, where he did the wrong, he suffered. In Jezreel,
+Ahab died. In Jezreel, Jezebel died. That plain was the battlefield for
+the subsequent discomfiture of Israel. Over and over again there
+encamped upon it the hosts of the spoilers. Over and over again its
+soil ran red with the blood of the children of Israel; and at last, in
+the destruction of the kingdom, Naboth was avenged and God's word
+fulfilled. The threatened evil was foretold that it might lead the king
+to repentance, and that thus it might never need to be more than a
+threat. But, though Ahab was partially penitent, and partially listened
+to the prophet's voice, yet for all that, he went on in his evil way.
+Therefore the merciful threatening becomes a stern prophecy, and is
+fulfilled to the very letter.
+
+So, when God's message comes to us, friends, if we listen not to it,
+and turn not to its gentle rebuke, Oh! then we gather up for ourselves
+an awful futurity of judgment, when threatening will darken into
+punishment, and the voice that rebuked will swell into the voice of
+final condemnation. When a man fancies that God's prophet is his enemy,
+and dreams that his finding him out is a calamity and a loss, that man
+may be certain that something worse will find him out some day. His
+sins will find him out, and that is worse than the prophet's coming. My
+friend, picture to yourself this--a human spirit shut up, with the
+companionship of its forgotten and dead transgressions. There is a
+resurrection of acts as well as of bodies. Think what it will be for a
+man to sit surrounded by that ghastly company, the ghosts of his own
+sins!--and as each forgotten fault and buried badness comes, silent and
+sheeted, into that awful society, and sits itself down there, think of
+him greeting each with the question, 'Thou too? What! are ye all here?
+Hast _thou_ found me, O mine enemy?' and from each bloodless
+spectral lip there tolls out the answer, the knell of his life, 'I
+_have_ found thee, because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in
+the sight of the Lord.' Ah, my friend! if that were all we had to say,
+it might well stiffen us into stony despair. Thank God--thank God! such
+an issue is not inevitable. Christ speaks to you. Christ is your
+_Friend_. He loves you, and He speaks to you now--speaks to you of
+your danger, but in order that you may never rush into it and be
+engulfed by it; speaks to you of your sin, but in order that you may
+say to Him, 'Take Thou it away, O merciful Lord'; speaks to you of
+justice, but in order that you may never sink beneath the weight of His
+stroke; speaks to you of love, in order that you may know, and fully
+know, the depth of His graciousness. When He says to you, 'I love thee;
+love thou Me: I have died for thee; trust Me, live _by_ Me, and
+live _for_ Me, 'will you not say to Him, 'My Friend, my Brother,
+my Lord, and my God'?
+
+
+
+
+UNPOSSESSED POSSESSIONS
+
+'And the king of Israel said unto his servants, Know ye that Ramoth in
+Gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the
+king of Syria?'--1 KINGS xxii. 3.
+
+
+This city of Ramoth in Gilead was an important fortified place on the
+eastern side of the Jordan, and had, many years before the date of our
+text, been captured by its northern neighbours in the kingdom of Syria.
+A treaty had subsequently been concluded and broken a war followed
+thereafter, in which Ben-hadad, King of Syria, had bound himself to
+restore all his conquests. He had not observed that article of peace,
+and the people of Israel had not been strong enough to enforce it until
+the date of our text; but then, backed up by a powerful alliance with
+Jehoshaphat of Judah, they determined to make a dash to get back what
+was theirs, but whilst theirs was also not theirs.
+
+Now, I have nothing more to do with Ahab and Jehoshaphat, but I wish to
+turn the words of my test, and the thoughts that may come from them,
+into a direction profitable to ourselves. 'Know ye that Ramoth in
+Gilead is ours?' and yet it had to be got out of the hands of the King
+of Syria.
+
+I. What is ours and not ours.
+
+Every Christian man has large tracts of unannexed territory, unattained
+possibilities, unenjoyed blessings, things that are his and yet not
+his. How much more of God you and I have a right to than we have the
+possession of! The ocean is ours, but only the little pailful that we
+carry away home to our own houses is of use to us. The whole of God is
+mine if I am Christ's, and a dribble of God is all that comes into the
+lives of most of us.
+
+How much inward peace is ours? It is meant that there should never pass
+across a Christian's soul more than a ripple of agitation, which may
+indeed ruffle and curl the surface; but deep down there should be the
+tranquillity of the fathomless ocean, unbroken by any tempests, and yet
+not stagnant, because there is a vital current running through it, and
+every drop is being drawn upward to the surface and the sunlight. There
+may be a peace in our hearts deep as life; a tranquillity which may be
+superficially disturbed, but is never thoroughly, and down in its
+depths, broken. And yet, let some little petty annoyance come into our
+daily life, and what a pucker we are in! Then we forget all about the
+still depths in which we ought to be living; and fears and hopes and
+loves and ambitions disturb our souls, just as they do the spirits of
+the men that do not profess to have any holdfast in God. The peace of
+God is ours; but, ah! in how sad a sense it is true that the peace of
+God is _not_ ours!
+
+What 'heights'--for Ramoth means 'high places'--what heights of
+consecration there are which are ours according to the divine purpose
+and according to the fulness of God's gift! It is meant, and it is
+possible, and well within the reach of every Christian soul, that he or
+she should live, day by day, in the continual and utter surrender of
+himself or herself to the will of God, and should say, 'I do the little
+I can do, and leave the rest with Thee'; and should say again, 'All is
+right that seems most wrong, If it be His sweet will.' But instead of
+this absolute submission and completeness and joyfulness of surrender
+of ourselves to Him, what do we find? Reluctance to obey, regret at
+providences, Self dominant or struggling hard against the partial
+domination of the will of God in our hearts. The mind which was in
+Jesus Christ, who was able to say, 'It is written of Me, lo! I come to
+do Thy will, O Lord!' is ours by virtue of our being Christians; but,
+alas! in practical realisation how sadly it is not ours!
+
+What noble possibilities of service, what power in the world, are
+bestowed on Christ's people!' All power is given unto Me in heaven and
+in earth,' says He. 'And He breathed on them, and said, As My Father
+hath sent Me, even so send I you.' The divine gift to the Christian
+community, and to the individuals that compose it--for there are no
+gifts given to the community, but to the individuals that make it up--
+is of fulness of power for all their work. And yet look how, all
+through the ages, the Church has been beaten by the corruption of the
+world; and how to-day many of us are standing, either utterly careless
+and callous about the diseases that we have the medicine to cure, or in
+desperation looking about for other healing for the social and moral
+condition of the community than that which is granted to us in Jesus
+Christ. 'Know ye that Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and
+take it not out of the hands of the King of Syria?'
+
+There is ever so much in the world which belongs to our Master, and
+therefore belongs to us, and which the Church is bound to lay its hand
+upon and claim for its own and for its Lord's. For remember, brethren,
+that all the gifts at which I have been glancing--and I might have
+largely increased the catalogue--all these spiritual endowments of
+peace, and safety, and purity, and joy, of religious elevation, and
+consecration, and power for service, and the like--are ours by a
+threefold title and charter. God's purpose, which is nothing less for
+every one of us than that we should be 'filled with all the fulness of
+God,' and that He should 'supply all our need, according to His riches
+in glory,'--that is the first of the parchments on which our title
+depends. And the second title-deed is Christ's purchase; for the
+efficacy of His death and the power of His triumphant life have secured
+for all who trust Him the whole fulness of this divine gift. And the
+third of our claims and titles is the influence of that Holy Spirit
+whom Jesus Christ gives to every one of His children to dwell in him.
+There is in you, working in you, if you have any faith in that Lord, a
+power that is capable of making you perfectly pure, perfectly blessed,
+strong with an immortal strength, and glad with a 'joy that is
+unspeakable and full of glory.'
+
+Oh! then, let us think of the awful contrast between what is ours and
+what we have. It is ours by the divine intention, by the divine gift in
+its fulness and all-sufficiency, and yet think of the poor, partial
+realisation of it that has passed into our experience. Be sure that you
+have what you have, and that you make your own what God has made yours.
+
+II. Then, let me suggest, again, how our text hints for us, not only
+the difference between possession and realisation, but also our strange
+contentment in imperfect possession.
+
+Ahab's remonstrances with his servants, which make the starting-point
+of my remarks, seem to suggest that there were two reasons for their
+acquiescence in the domination of a foreign power on a bit of their
+soil. They had not realised that Ramoth was theirs, and they were too
+lazy and cowardly to go and take it. Ignorance of the fulness of the
+gift, and slothful timidity in daring everything in the effort to make
+it ours, explain a great deal of the present condition of Christian
+people.
+
+Is not that condition of passive acquiescence in their small present
+attainments, and of careless indifference to the great stretch of the
+unattained, the characteristic of the mass of professing Christians?
+They have got a foothold on a new continent, and their possession of it
+is like the world's drawing of the map of Africa when we were children,
+which had a settlement dotted here and there along the coast, and all
+the broad regions of the interior were blank. The settlers huddle
+together upon the fringe of barren sand by the salt water, and never
+dream of pressing forward into the heart of the land. And so, too, many
+of us are content with what we have got, a little bit of God, when we
+might have Him all; a settlement on the fringe and edge of the land,
+when we might traverse the whole length of it; and behold! it is all
+ours.
+
+That unfamiliarity with the thought of unattained possibilities in the
+Christian life is a damning curse of thousands of people who call
+themselves Christians. They do not think, they never realise--and some
+of us are guilty in this respect--they never realise that it is
+possible for them to be all unlike what they are now, and that, instead
+of the miserable partial hallowing of their nature, and the poor, weak
+--I was going to say strength, but it is not worth calling strength,
+that they possess, they might be as the angels of God: 'the weakest as
+David,' and David as a very angel of heaven itself. Why is it, why is
+it, that there is this unfamiliarity?
+
+And then, another reason for the woful disproportion between what we
+have and what we utilise is the love of ease, such as kept these
+Israelites from going up to Ramoth-Gilead. It was a long way off; there
+was a river to be forded; there were heights to be climbed; there were
+weary marches to be taken; there were hard knocks going in front of the
+walls of Ramoth before they got inside it; and on the whole it was more
+comfortable to sit at home, or look after their farms and their
+merchandise, than to embark on the quixotic attempt to win back a city
+that had not been theirs for ever so long, and that they had got on
+very well without.
+
+And so it is with hosts of Christian people; we do not realise how much
+we have that we never get any good out of. And, in the second place, we
+had rather just stay where we are, and make the best of the world as it
+is, and the desires of our hearts go in another direction than for our
+increase in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour. Ah,
+brethren! if we had a claim to some great property, or any other wealth
+that we really cared about, should we be so very indifferent as to
+asserting our rights? Should we not fight to the death, some of us, for
+the last inch of soil, for the last ounce of treasure, that belonged to
+us? When you really value a thing, you secure the greatest possible
+amount of it; and there is very little margin between what you own and
+what you use.
+
+And if there is such a tremendous difference between the breadth of the
+one and the narrowness of the other in our Christian life, there can be
+no reason for it except this, that we do not care enough about
+spiritual blessings and forces to make the effort that is needed to win
+and keep, and get the good of, all that is ours.
+
+And is not that something like despising the birthright? Is it not a
+criminal thing for Christian people thus to neglect, and to put aside,
+and never to seek to obtain, all these great gifts of God? There they
+lie at our doors, and they are ours for the taking. Suppose a carrier
+brought you a whole waggon full of precious goods, and put them down at
+your door, and you were not at the trouble to open your doors, or to
+carry the goods into your cellars. That would not look as if you cared
+much either for the goods or for the giver. And I wonder how many of us
+are chargeable with that criminal despising of God's gifts, which is
+clearly the explanation of our letting them lie rotting, as it were, at
+our gates? We are starving paupers in the midst of plenty.
+
+'My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory, by
+Christ Jesus,' says Paul. You have the right to them all. Draw cheques
+against the capital that is lodged in your name in that great bank.
+
+III. And so, lastly, my text suggests the effort that is needed to make
+our own ours.
+
+'We be still, and take it not out of the hands of the King of Syria.'
+Then these things that are ours, by God's gift, by Christ's purchase,
+by the Spirit's influence, will need our effort to secure them. And
+that is no contradiction, nor any paradox. God does exactly in the same
+way with regard to a great many of His natural gifts as He does with
+regard to His spiritual ones. He gives them to us, but we hold them on
+this tenure, that we put forth our best efforts to get and to keep
+them. His giving them does not set aside our taking. However much we
+tried we could not take them out of His hand if it were clenched. Open
+as His hand is, and stretched out to us as it is, the gifts that
+sparkle in it are not transferred to our hands unless we ourselves put
+forth an effort.
+
+So let me say that one large part of the discipline by which men make
+their own their own is by familiarising themselves with the thought of
+the larger possibilities of unattained possessions which God has given
+them. That is true in everything. To recognise our present
+imperfection, and to see stretching before us glorious and immense
+possibilities, opening out into a vista where our eyesight fails us to
+travel to its end, is the very salt of life in every region. Artist,
+student, all of us 'are saved by hope,' in a very much wider sense than
+the Apostle meant by that great saying. And whosoever has once lost, or
+felt becoming dim, the vision before him of a possible better than his
+present best, in any region, is in that region condemned to grow no
+more. If we desire to have any kind of advancement, it is only possible
+for us, when there gleams ever before us the untravelled road, and we
+see at the end of it unattained brightnesses and blessings.
+
+And we Christian people have an endless prospect of that sort
+stretching before us. Oh, if we looked at it oftener, 'having respect
+unto the recompense of the reward,' we should find it easier to dash at
+any Ramoth-Gilead, and get it out of the hands of the strongest of the
+enemies that may bar our way to it. Let us familiarise ourselves with
+the thought of our present imperfection, and of our future
+completeness, and of the possibilities which may become actualities,
+even here and now; and let us not fitfully use what power we have, but
+make the best of what graces are ours, and enjoy and expatiate in the
+spiritual blessings of peace and rest which Christ has already given to
+us. 'To him that hath shall be given,' and the surest way to lose what
+we have is to neglect to increase it.
+
+And, above all, let us keep nearer to our Master, and live more in
+fellowship with our Lord, and that will help us to deny ourselves to
+ungodliness and worldly lusts. It is the prevalence of these, and the
+absence of self-denial, that ruins most of the Christian lives that are
+ruined in this world. If a man wants to be what he is not, he must
+cease to be what he is.
+
+Self-sacrifice, and the emptying of our hearts of trash and trifles, is
+the only way to get our hearts filled with God and with His blessing.
+Let us keep near Jesus Christ. If we have Him for ours we have peace,
+we have power, we have purity. 'He of God is made unto us' all in all,
+and every gift that may adorn humanity, and make our lives joyous and
+ourselves noble, is given to us in Jesus Christ. Let us put away from
+ourselves, then, this slothful indifference to our unattained
+possessions. 'Know ye that Ramoth is ours?' 'Let us be still' no
+longer. 'All things are yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or
+things present, or things to come: all are yours if ye are Christ's.'
+
+
+
+
+AHAB AND MICAIAH
+
+'And Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides,
+that we might enquire of him? 8. And the king of Israel said unto
+Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we
+may enquire of the Lord: but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good
+concerning me, but evil.'--1 KINGS xxii. 7,8.
+
+
+An ill-omened alliance had been struck up between Ahab of Israel and
+Jehoshaphat of Judah. The latter, who would have been much better in
+Jerusalem, had come down to Samaria to join in an assault on the
+kingdom of Damascus; but, like a great many other people, Jehoshaphat
+first made up his mind without asking God, and then thought that it
+might be well to get some kind of varnish of a religious sanction for
+his decision. So he proposes to Ahab to inquire of the Lord about this
+matter. One would have thought that that should have been done before,
+and not after, the determination was made. Ahab does not at all see the
+necessity for such a thing, but, to please his scrupulous ally, he
+sends for his priests. They came, four hundred of them, and of course
+they all played the tune that Ahab called for. It is not difficult to
+get prophets to pat a king on the back, and tell him, 'Do what you
+like.'
+
+But Jehoshaphat was not satisfied yet. Perhaps he thought that Ahab's
+clergy were not exactly God's prophets, but at all events he wanted an
+independent opinion; and so he asks if there is not in all Samaria a
+man that can be trusted to speak out. He gets for answer the name of
+this 'Micaiah the son of Imlah.' Ahab had had experience of him, and
+knew his man; and the very name leads him to an explosion of passion,
+which, like other explosions, lays bare some very ugly depths. 'I hate
+him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.'
+
+That is a curious mood, is it not? that a man should know another to be
+a messenger of God, and therefore know that his words are true, and
+that if he asked his counsel he would be forbidden to do the thing that
+he is dead set on doing, and would be warned that to do it was
+destruction; and that still he should not ask the counsel, nor ever
+dream of dropping the purpose, but should burst out in a passion of
+puerile rage against the counsellor, and will have none of his
+reproofs. Very curious! But there are a great many of us that have
+something of the same mood in us, though we do not speak it out as
+plainly as Ahab did. It lurks more or less in us all, and it largely
+determines the attitude that some of us take to Christianity and to
+Christ. So I wish to say a word or two about it.
+
+I. My text suggests the inevitable opposition between a message from
+God, and man's evil.
+
+No doubt, God is love; and just because He is, it is absolutely
+necessary that what comes from Him, and is the reflex and cast, so to
+speak, of His character, should be in stern and continual antagonism to
+that evil which is the worst foe of men, and is sure to lead to their
+death. It is because God is love, that 'to the froward He shows Himself
+froward.' and opposes that which, unopposed and yielded to, will ruin
+the man that does it. So this is one of the characteristic marks of all
+true messages from God, that men who will not part with their evil call
+them 'stern,' 'rigid,' 'gloomy,' 'narrow' Yes, of course; because God
+must look upon godless lives with disapprobation, and must desire by
+all means to draw men away from that which is drawing them away
+_from_ Him and to their death.
+
+Now, I suppose I need not spend time in enumerating or describing the
+points in the attitude of Christianity towards the solemn fact of human
+sin, which correspond to Ahab's complaint that the prophet spake always
+'not good concerning him, but evil.' The 'gospel' of Jesus Christ
+proves its name to be true, and that it _is_ 'good news,' not only
+by its graciousness, its promises, its offers, and the rich blessings
+of eternal life with which its hands are full, but by its severity, as
+men call it. One characteristic of the gospel is the altogether unique
+place which the fact of sin fills in it. There is no other religion on
+the face of the earth that has so grasped and made prominent this
+thought: 'All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.' There is
+none that has painted human nature as it is in such dark colours,
+because there is none that knows itself to be able to change human
+nature into such radiance of glory and purity. The gospel has, if I
+might so say, on its palette a far greater range of pigments than any
+other system. Its blacks are blacker; its whites are whiter; its golds
+are more lustrous than those of other painters of human nature as it is
+and as it may become. It is a mark of its divine origin that it
+unfalteringly looks facts in the face, and will not say smooth things
+about men as they are.
+
+Side by side with that characteristic of the dark picture which it
+draws of us, as we are in ourselves, is its unhesitating restraint or
+condemnation of deep-seated desires and tendencies. It does not come to
+men with the smooth words on its lips, 'Do as thou wilt.' It does not
+seek for favour by relaxing bonds, but it rigidly builds up a wall on
+either side of a narrow path, and says, 'Walk within these limits and
+thou art safe. Go beyond them a hair's-breadth, and thou perishest.' It
+may suit Ahab's prophets to fling the reins on the neck of human
+nature; God's prophet says, 'Thou shalt not,' That is another of the
+tests of divine origin, that there shall be no base compliance with
+inclinations, but rigid condemnation of many of our deep desires.
+
+Side by side with these two, there is a third characteristic that the
+Word, which is the outcome and expression of the divine love, is
+distinguished by its plain and stern declarations of the bitter
+consequences of evil-doing. I need not dwell upon these, brethren. They
+seem to me to be far too solemn to be spoken of by a man to men in
+other words than Scripture's. But I beseech you to remember that this,
+too, is the characteristic of Christ's message. So a man should feel,
+when he thinks of the dark and solemn things that the Old Testament
+partially, and the New Testament more clearly, utter as to the death
+which is the outcome of sin, that these are indeed the very voice of
+infinite love pleading with us all. Brother I do not so misapprehend
+facts as to think that the restraints and threatenings and dark
+pictures which Christ and His servants have drawn are anything but the
+utterance of the purest affection.
+
+II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to look for a moment at the strange
+dislike which this attitude of Christianity kindles.
+
+I have said that Ahab's mental condition was a very odd one. Strange as
+it is, it is, as I have already remarked, in some degree a very
+frequent one. There are in us all, as we see in many regions of life,
+the beginnings of the same kind of feeling. Here, for example, is a
+course that I am quite sure, if I pursue it, will land me in evil. Does
+the drunkard take a glass the less, because he knows that if he goes on
+he will have a drunkard's liver and die a miserable death? Does the
+gambler ever take away his hand from the pack of cards or the dice-box,
+because he knows that play means, in the long run, poverty and
+disgrace? When a man sets his will upon a certain course, he is like a
+bull that has started in its rage. Down goes the head, and, with eyes
+shut, he will charge a stone wall or an iron door, though he knows it
+will smash his skull. Men are very foolish animals; and there is no
+greater mark of their folly than the conspicuous and oft-repeated fact
+that the clearest vision of the consequences of a course of conduct is
+powerless to turn a man from it, when once his passions, or his will,
+or, worse still, his weakness, or, worst of all, his habits, have bound
+him to it.
+
+Take another illustration. Do we not all know that honest friends have
+sometimes fallen out of favour, perhaps with ourselves, because they
+have persistently kept telling us what our consciences and common-sense
+knew to be true, that if we go on by that road we shall be suffocated
+in a bog? A man makes up his mind to a course of conduct. He has a
+shrewd suspicion that an honest friend will condemn him, and that the
+condemnation will be right. What does he do, therefore? He never
+consults his friend, but if by chance that friend should say what was
+expected of him, he gets angry with his adviser and doggedly goes his
+own road. I suppose we all know what it is to treat our consciences in
+the style in which Ahab treated Micaiah. We do not listen to them
+because we know what they will say before they have said it; and we
+call ourselves sensible people! Martin Luther once said, 'It is neither
+safe nor _wise_ to do anything against conscience.' But Ahab put
+Micaiah in prison; and we shut up our consciences in a dungeon, and put
+a gag in their mouths, and a muffler over the gag, that we may hear
+them say no word, because we know that what we are doing, and we are
+doggedly determined to do, is wrong.
+
+But the saddest illustration of this infatuation is to be found in the
+attitude that many men take in regard to Christianity. There is a great
+craving to-day, more perhaps than there has been in some other periods
+of the world's history, for a religion which shall adorn, but shall not
+restrain; for a religion which shall be toothless, and have no bite in
+it; for a religion that shall sanction anything that it pleases our
+sovereign mightiness to want to do. We should all like to have God's
+sanction for our actions. But there are a great many of us who will not
+take the only way to secure that--viz. to do the actions which He
+commands, and to abstain from those which He forbids. Popular
+Christianity is a very easy-fitting garment; it is like an old shoe
+that you can slip off and on without any difficulty. But a religion
+which does not put up a strong barrier between you and many of your
+inclinations in not worth anything. The mark of a message from God is
+that it restrains and coerces and forbids and commands. And some of you
+do not like it because it does.
+
+There is a great tendency in this day to cut out of the Old and New
+Testaments all the pages that say things like this, 'The soul that
+sinneth it shall die'; or things like this, 'This is the condemnation,
+that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than
+light'; or things like this, 'Then shall the wicked go away into outer
+darkness.' Brethren, men being what they are, and God being what He is,
+there can be no divine message without a side of what the world calls
+threatening, or what Ahab called' prophesying evil.' I beseech you, do
+not be carried away by the modern talk about Christianity being gloomy
+and dark, or fancy that we put a blot and an excrescence upon the pure
+religion of the Man of Nazareth, when we speak of the death that
+follows sin, and of the darkness into which unbelief carries a man.
+
+III. Once more, let me say a word about the intense folly of such an
+attitude.
+
+Ahab hated Micaiah. Why? Because Micaiah told him what would come to
+him as the fruit of his own actions. That was foolish. It is no less
+foolish for people to take up a position of dislike, and to turn away
+from the gospel of Jesus Christ because it speaks in like manner. I
+said that men are very foolish animals; there is surely nothing in all
+the annals of human stupidity more stupid than to be angry with the
+word that tells you the truth about what you are bringing down upon
+your heads. It is absurd, because Micaiah did not make the evil, but
+Ahab made it; and Micaiah's business was only to tell him what he was
+doing. It is absurd, because the only question to be asked is. Are the
+warnings true? are the threatenings representations of what really will
+come? are the prohibitions reasonable? And it is absurd, because, if
+these things are so--if it is true that the soul that sinneth dies, and
+will die; if it is true that you, who have heard of the name and the
+salvation of Jesus Christ over and over again, and have turned away
+from it, will, if you continue in that negligence and unbelief, reap
+bitter fruits here and hereafter therefrom--if these things are true,
+surely the man that tells you so, and the gospel that tells you so,
+deserve better treatment than Ahab's petulant hatred or your stolid
+indifference and neglect.
+
+Would you think it wise for a sea-captain to try to take the clapper
+out of the bell that floats and tolls above a shoal on which his ship
+will be wrecked if it strikes? Would it be wise to put out the
+lighthouse lamps, and then think that you had abolished the reef? Does
+the signalman with his red flag make the danger of which he warns, and
+is it not like a baby to hate and to neglect the message that comes to
+you and says, 'Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die'?
+
+IV. So, lastly, I notice the end of this foolish attitude.
+
+Ahab was told in plain words by Micaiah, before the interview closed,
+that he would never come back again in peace. He ordered the bold
+prophet into prison, and rode away gaily, no doubt, to his campaign.
+Weak men are very often obstinate, because they are not strong enough
+to rise to the height of changing a purpose when reason condemns it.
+This weak man was always obstinate in the wrong place, as so many of us
+are. So away he went, down from Samaria, across the plain, down to the
+fords of the Jordan. But when he had crossed to the other side, and was
+coming near his objective point, the memories of Micaiah in prison at
+Samaria began to sit heavy on his soul.
+
+So he tried to deceive divine judgment, and got up an ingenious scheme
+by which his ally was to go into the field in royal pomp, and he to
+slip into it disguised. A great many of us try to hoodwink God, and it
+does not answer. The man who 'drew the bow at a venture' had his hand
+guided by a higher Hand. Ahab was plated all over with iron and brass,
+but there is always a crevice through which God's arrow can find its
+way; and, where God's arrow finds its way, it kills. When the night
+fell, he was lying dead on his chariot floor, and the host was
+scattered, and Micaiah, the prisoner, was avenged; and his word had
+taken hold on the despiser of it.
+
+So it always will be. So it will be with us, dear brethren, if we do
+not give heed to our ways and listen to the word which may be bitter in
+the mouth, but, eaten, turns sweet as honey. Nailing the index of the
+barometer to 'set fair' will not keep off the thunderstorm, and no
+negligence or dislike of divine threatenings will arrest the slow,
+solemn march, inevitable as destiny, of the consequences of our doings.
+Things will be as they will be. Believed or unbelieved, the avalanche
+will come.
+
+Dear brethren, there is one way to get Micaiah on your side. Listen to
+him, and then he will speak good to you, and not what you foolishly
+call evil. Let God's word convince you of sin. Let it bring you to the
+Cross for pardon. Jesus Christ addresses each of us in the Apostle's
+words: 'Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?'
+The sternest threatenings in the Bible come from the lips of that
+infinite Love. If you will listen to Him, if you will yield yourselves
+to Him, if you will take Him for your Saviour and your Lord, if you
+will cast your confidence and anchor your love upon Him, if you will
+let Him restrain you, if you will consult Him about what He would have
+you do, if you will accept His prohibitions as well as His permissions,
+then His word and His act to you, here and hereafter, will be only good
+and not evil, all the days of your life.
+
+Remember Ahab lying dead on the floor of his chariot in a pool of his
+own blood, and bethink yourselves of what despising the threatenings,
+and turning away from the rebukes and prohibitions of the divine word,
+come to. These threatenings are spoken that they may never need to be
+put in effect. If you give heed to them they will never be put in
+effect in regard to you, if you neglect them and 'will none of' God's
+'reproof,' they will come down on you like a mighty rock loosed from
+the mountain, and will grind you to powder.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHARIOT OF FIRE
+
+'And it came to pass, when the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by
+a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. 2. And Elijah
+said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to
+Beth-el. And Elisha said unto him, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul
+liveth, I will not leave thee. 80 they went down to Beth-el 3, And the
+sons of the prophets that were at Beth-el came forth to Elisha and said
+unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy
+head to-day? And he said, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace. 4. And
+Elijah laid unto him, Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord
+hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy
+soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho. 5. And the
+sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha, and laid unto
+him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head
+to-day? And he answered, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace. 6. And
+Elijah said unto him, Tarry, I pray thee, here: for the Lord hath sent
+me to Jordan. And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth,
+I will not leave thee. And they two went on. 7. And fifty men of the
+eons of the prophets went, and stood to view afar off: and they two
+stood by Jordan. 8. And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it
+together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and
+thither, so that they two went over on dry ground. 9. And it came to
+pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what
+I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said,
+I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. 10. And he
+said, Thou hast asked a hard thing; nevertheless, if thou see me when I
+am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not
+be so. 11. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked,
+that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and
+parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
+heaven.'--2 KINGS ii. 1-11.
+
+
+Elijah's end is in keeping with his career. From his first abrupt
+appearance it had been fitly symbolised by the stormy wind and flaming
+fire which he heard and saw at Horeb, and now these were to be the
+vehicles which should sweep him into the heavens. He came like a
+whirlwind, he burned like a fire, and in fire and whirlwind he
+disappeared. The story is wonderful in pathos and simplicity. Surely
+never was such a miracle told so quietly. The actual ascension is
+narrated in a sentence. Its preliminaries take up the rest of this
+narrative.
+
+I. This journey from Gilgal to the eastern side of Jordan is minutely
+described in its stages. Apparently this Gilgal is not the well-known
+place so called, which was down in the Jordan valley close to Jericho,
+else the road from it to Bethel could not have been called a going down
+(v. 2). It probably lay to the north of Bethel, which would then be
+between it and Jericho, where the Jordan was to be passed. Elijah was
+not sent on an aimless round of farewell visits, but by the direct road
+to his destination. Note that he and Elisha and the 'sons of the
+prophets' all know that he is near his end. How this came about we are
+not told, and need not speculate; but though all knew, none seems to
+have known that the others knew. Elijah does not explain to Elisha why
+he wished him to stay behind, nor Elisha to Elijah why he was so
+resolved to keep by him. The knowledge and the silence would give
+peculiar solemnity and sweet bitterness to these last hours. How often
+a similar combination weighs on the hearts of a household, who all know
+that a dear one is soon to be taken away, and yet can only be silent
+about what is uppermost in their thoughts!
+
+Why did Elijah wish Elisha to stay behind? Apparently to spare him the
+pain of seeing his master depart. With loving concealment, he tried to
+make Elisha suppose that his errand to Bethel and then to Jericho was
+but a common one, to be soon despatched. It was a little touch of
+tenderness in the strong, rough man. Note, too, the gradual disclosure
+to Elijah of the places to which he was to go. He is only bid to go to
+Bethel, and not till he gets there is he further sent on to Jericho,
+and, presumably, only when there is directed to cross Jordan. God does
+not show all the road at once, even if it lead to glory, but step by
+step, and a second stage only when we have obediently traversed the
+first. We get light as we go. Elisha's clinging to his master till the
+very last is but too intelligible to many of us who have gone through
+the same sorrow, and counted each moment of companionship with some
+dear one about to leave earth as priceless gain, to be treasured in the
+sacredest recesses of memory for evermore.
+
+It has been thought that the object of the visits to Bethel and Jericho
+was to give parting directions to the schools of the prophets at each
+place; but that is read into the narrative, which gives no hint that
+Elijah had any communication with these. Rather the contrary is
+implied, both in the fact that the 'sons of the prophets' came to the
+travellers, not the travellers to them, and in their addressing Elisha,
+as if some awe of the master kept them from speaking to him. An Elijah
+marching to his chariot of fire was not a man for raw youths to
+approach lightly. Their question is met by Elisha with curtness and
+scant courtesy, which indicates that it was asked in no sympathetic
+spirit, but from mere love of telling bad news, and of vulgar
+excitement. Even the gentle Elisha is stirred to rebuke the gossiping
+chatterers, who intrude their curiosity into that sacred hour. There
+are abundance of such busy-bodies always ready to buzz about any
+bleeding heart, and sorrow has often to be stern in order to be
+unmolested.
+
+II. The second stage is the passage of Jordan. The verbal repetition of
+the same dialogue at Jericho as at Bethel increases the impression of
+prolonged loving struggle between the two prophets. At last, they stand
+on the western bank of Jordan, at their feet the spot where the
+hurrying river had been stayed by the ark till the tribes had passed
+over, before them the mountains bordering Elijah's homeland of Gilead
+on the left, and away on the right the lone peak where Moses had died
+'by the mouth of the Lord.' The soil was redolent of the miracles of
+the Mosaic age, and the dividing of the waters by Elijah is meant to
+bring the present into vital connection with that past, and to
+designate him as parallel with the former leader. Note the vigour with
+which he twists his characteristic mantle into a kind of rod, and
+strikes the waters strongly. The repetition of the former miracle is a
+sign that the unexhausted Power which wrought it is with Elijah. The
+God of yesterday is the God of to-day, and nothing that was done in the
+past but will be repeated in essence, though not in form, in the
+present. 'As we have heard so have we seen.' The former miracle had
+been done for a nation; this is performed for two men. It teaches the
+preciousness of His individual servants in God's eyes. The former had
+been done through the ark; this, by the prophet's mantle. Power is
+lodged in the faithful messenger. God's strength dwells in those who
+love Him. The former miracle had been the close of the desert
+wanderings and the gateway to Canaan. Though Elijah's face is turned in
+the opposite direction, does not its repetition suggest that for him,
+too, the impending translation was to be the end of wilderness
+weariness and toil, and the entrance on rest?
+
+III. Elisha's request is the next stage in the story. How far they two
+'went on' is not told. The Bible does not foster the craving to know
+the exact situation where sacred things happened, the gratification of
+which might feed superstition, but could not increase reverence.
+Possibly they had drawn near the eastern hills, and were out of sight
+of the fifty curious gazers on the other hank. Elijah at last spoke the
+truth which both knew. How true to nature is that reticence kept up
+till the last moment, and then broken so tenderly!--'Ask what I shall
+do for thee, before.' Probably he did not mean any supernatural gift,
+but simply some parting token of love; for he is startled at the
+response of Elisha. A true disciple can desire nothing more than a
+portion of his master's spirit. 'It is enough for the disciple that he
+be as his Master.' They covet wisely and with a noble covetousness who
+most desire spiritual gifts to fit them for their vocation. It was an
+unworldly soul which asked but for such a legacy.
+
+The 'double portion' does not mean twice as much as Elijah's portion
+had been, but twice as much as other 'sons of the prophets' would
+receive. Elisha reckoned himself Elijah's first-born spiritual son, and
+asked for the elder brother's share, because he had been designated as
+successor, and would require more than others for his work. The new
+sense of responsibility is coming on him, and teaching him his need.
+Well for us if higher positions make us lowlier, in the consciousness
+of our own unfitness without divine help! Elijah knows that his spirit
+was not his to give, and can only refer his successor to the Fountain
+from which he had drawn; for the sign which he gives is obviously not
+within his power to determine. If the Lord shows the ascending master
+to him who is left, He will give the servant his desire.
+
+A portion of their 'spirit' is the very thing which teachers and
+prophets cannot give. They may give their systems or their methods,
+their favourite ideas or cut-and-dry maxims and principles, and so
+leave a race of pygmies who give themselves airs as being their
+disciples, but their spirit they cannot impart. Contrast with this
+limitation of power confessed by Elijah, His consciousness who breathed
+on eleven poor men, and said, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost.' No man could
+say that without absurdity or blasphemy. The gift impossible to man is
+the very characteristic gift of Jesus, who 'has power over the Spirit
+of holiness.'  Must He not thereby be 'declared to be the Son of God'?
+
+IV. The climax of this lesson is that stupendous scene of the
+translation. Note how the 'Behold' suggests the suddenness of the
+appearance of the fiery chariot, which came flaming between the two men
+eagerly talking, and drove them apart. The description of the
+departure, in its brevity and incompleteness, sounds like the report of
+the only eye-witness, who had the fiery chariot between him and Elijah,
+and was too bewildered to see precisely what happened. All he knew was
+the sudden appearance of the fiery equipage, and then that, suddenly,
+and apparently swiftly, a rushing mighty wind swept away chariot and
+prophet into the heavens. He saw it, as the next verse after this
+passage tells us, only long enough to break into one rapturous and yet
+lamenting cry, and then all vanished, and he stood alone with an
+apparently empty heaven above him, the whirlwind sunk to calm, and
+Elijah's mantle at his feet.
+
+The teaching of the event is plain. As for the pre-Mosaic ages the
+translation of Enoch, and for the earlier Mosaic epoch the mysterious
+death of Moses, so for the prophetic period the carrying to heaven of
+Elijah, witnessed of a life beyond death, and of death as the wages of
+sin, which God could remit, if He willed, in the case of faithful
+service. Enoch and Elijah were led round the head of the valley on the
+heights, and reached the other side without having to go down into the
+cold waters flowing in the bottom; and though we cannot tread their
+path, the joy of their experience has not ceased to be a joy to us, if
+we walk with God. Death is still the coming of the chariot and horses
+of fire to bear the believer home. The same exclamation which fell from
+Elisha's lips, as he saw the chariot sweep up the sky, was spoken over
+him as he lay sick 'of the sickness whereof he should die.'
+
+But the most instructive view of Elijah's translation is its parallel
+and contrast with Christ's Ascension. The one was by outward means; the
+other by inward energy. Storm and fire bore Elijah up into a region
+strange to him. Christ 'ascended up where He was before,' returning by
+the propriety of His nature to His eternal dwelling-place. The one is
+accomplished with significant disturbance, of whirlwind and flame; the
+other is gentle, like the life which it closed, and the last sight of
+Him was with extended hands of blessing. Each life closed in a manner
+corresponding to its character. The one was swift and sudden. The other
+was a slow, solemn motion, vividly described as being 'borne upwards'
+and as 'going into heaven.' The one bore a mortal into 'heaven.' In the
+other, the Son of God, our great High Priest, 'hath passed through the
+heavens,' and now, far above them all, He is 'Head over all things.'
+
+
+
+
+THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH AND THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST
+
+'And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold,
+there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them
+both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.'--2 KINGS
+ii. 11.
+
+'And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them,
+and carried up into heaven.'--LUKE xxiv. 51.
+
+
+These two events, the translation of Elijah and the Ascension of our
+Lord, have sometimes been put side by side in order to show that the
+latter narrative is nothing but a 'variant' of the former. See, it is
+said, the source of your New Testament story is only the old legend
+shaped anew by the wistful regrets of the early disciples. But to me it
+seems that the simple comparison of the two narratives is sufficient to
+bring out such fundamental difference in the ideas which they
+respectively embody as amount to opposition, and make any such theory
+of the origin of the latter absurdly improbable, I could wish no better
+foil for the history of the Ascension than the history of Elijah's
+rapture. The comparison brings out contrasts at every step, and there
+is no readier way of throwing into strong relief the meaning and
+purpose of the former, than holding up beside it the story of the
+latter. The real parallel makes the divergences the more remarkable,
+for likeness sharpens our perception of unlikeness, and no contrast is
+so forcible as the contrast of things that correspond. I am much
+mistaken if we shall not find almost every truth of importance
+connected with our Lord's Ascension emphasised for us by the comparison
+to which we now proceed.
+
+I. The first point which may be mentioned is the contrast between the
+manner of Elijah's translation, and that of our Lord's Ascension.
+
+It is perhaps not without significance that the place of the one event
+was on the uplands or in some of the rocky gorges beyond Jordan, and
+that of the other, the slopes of Olivet above Bethany. The lonely
+prophet, who had burst like a meteor on Israel from the solitudes of
+Gilead, whose fervour had ever and again been rekindled by return to
+the wilderness, whose whole career had isolated him from men, found the
+fitting place for that last wonder amidst the stern silence where he
+had so often sought asylum and inspiration. He was close to the scenes
+of mighty events in the past. There, on that overhanging peak, the
+lawgiver whose work he was continuing, and with whom he was to be so
+strangely associated on the Mount of Transfiguration, had made himself
+ready for his lonely grave. Here at his feet, the river had parted for
+the victorious march of Israel. Away down on his horizon the sunshine
+gleamed on the waters of the Dead Sea; and thus, on his native soil,
+surrounded by memorials of the Law which he laboured to restore, and of
+the victories which he would fain have brought back, and of the
+judgments which he saw again impending over Israel, the stern, solitary
+ascetic, the prophet of righteousness, whose single arm stayed the
+downward course of a nation, passed from his toil and his warfare.
+
+What a different set of associations cluster round the place of
+Christ's Ascension--'Bethany,' or, as it is more particularly specified
+in the Acts, 'Olivet'! In the very heart of the land, close by and yet
+out of sight of the great city, in no wild solitude, but perhaps in
+some dimple of the hill, neither shunning nor courting spectators, with
+the quiet home where He had rested so often in the little village at
+their feet there, and Gethsemane a few furlongs off, in such scenes did
+the Christ 'whose delights were with the sons of men,' and His life
+lived in closest companionship with His brethren, choose the place
+whence He should 'ascend to their Father and His Father.' Nor perhaps
+was it without a meaning that the Mount which received the last print
+of His ascending footstep was that which a mysterious prophecy
+designated as destined to receive the first print of the footstep of
+the Lord coming at a future day to end the long warfare with evil.
+
+But more important than the localities is the contrasted manner of the
+two ascents. The prophet's end was like the man. It was fitting that he
+should be swept up the skies in tempest and fire. The impetuosity of
+his nature, and the stormy energy of his career, had already been
+symbolised in the mighty and strong wind which rent the rocks, and in
+the fire that followed the earthquake; and similarly nothing could be
+more appropriate than that sudden rapture in storm and whirlwind,
+escorted by the flaming chivalry of heaven.
+
+Nor is it only as appropriate to the character of the prophet and his
+work that this tempestuous translation is noteworthy. It also suggests
+very plainly that Elijah was lifted to the skies by power acting on him
+from without. He did not ascend; he was carried up; the earthly frame
+and the human nature had no power to rise. 'No man hath ascended into
+heaven.' The two men of whom the Old Testament speaks were alike in
+this, that 'God _took_ them.' The tempest and the fiery chariot
+tell us how great was the exercise of divine power which bore the gross
+mortality thither, and how unfamiliar was the sphere into which it
+passed.
+
+How full of the very spirit of Christ's whole life is the contrasted
+manner of His Ascension! The silent gentleness, which did not strive
+nor cry nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets, marks Him even
+in that hour of lofty and transcendent triumph. There is no outward
+sign to accompany His slow upward movement through the quiet air. No
+blaze of fiery chariots, nor agitation of tempest is needed to bear Him
+heavenwards. The outstretched hands drop the dew of His benediction on
+the little company, and so He floats upward, His own will and
+indwelling power the royal chariot which bears Him, and calmly 'leaves
+the world and goes unto the Father.' The slow, continuous movement of
+ascent is emphatically made prominent in the brief narratives, both by
+the phrase in Luke, 'He was carried up,' which expresses continuous
+leisurely motion, and by the picture in the Acts, of the disciples
+gazing into heaven 'as He went up,' in which latter word is brought
+out, not only the slowness of the movement, but its origin in His own
+will and its execution by His own power.
+
+Nor is this absence of any vehicle or external agency destroyed by the
+fact that 'a cloud' received Him out of their sight, for its purpose
+was not to raise Him heavenward, but to hide Him from the gazers' eyes,
+that He might not seem to them to dwindle into distance, but that their
+last look and memory might be of His clearly discerned and loving face.
+Possibly, too, it may be intended to remind us of the cloud which
+guided Israel, the glory which dwelt between the cherubim, the cloud
+which overshadowed the Mount of Transfiguration, and to set forth a
+symbol of the Divine Presence welcoming to itself, His battle fought,
+the Son of His love.
+
+Be that as it may, the manner of our Lord's Ascension by His own
+inherent power is brought into boldest relief when contrasted with
+Elijah's rapture, and is evidently the fitting expression, as it is the
+consequence, of His sole and singular divine nature. It accords with
+His own mode of reference to the Ascension, while He was on earth,
+which ever represents Him not as _being taken_, but as _going_:
+'I leave the world and go to the Father.' 'I ascend to My Father and your
+Father.' The highest hope of the devoutest souls before Him had been, 'Thou
+wilt afterwards take me to glory.' The highest hope of devout souls since
+Him has been, 'We shall be caught up to meet the Lord.' But this Man ever
+speaks of Himself as able when He will, by His own power, to rise where no
+man hath ascended. His divine nature and pre-existence shine clearly forth,
+and as we stand gazing at Him blessing the world as He rises into the
+heavens, we know that we are looking on no mere mysterious elevation of a
+mortal to the skies, but are beholding the return of the Incarnate Lord,
+who willed to tarry among our earthly tabernacles for a time, to the
+glory where He was before, 'His own calm home, His habitation from
+eternity.'
+
+II. Another striking point of contrast embraces the relation which
+these two events respectively bear to the life's work which had
+preceded them.
+
+The falling mantle of Elijah has become a symbol known to all the
+world, for the transference of unfinished tasks and the appointment of
+successors to departed greatness. Elisha asked that he might have a
+double portion of his master's spirit, not meaning twice as much as his
+master had had, but the eldest son's share of the father's possessions,
+the double of the other children's portion. And, though his master had
+no power to bestow the gift, and had to reply as one who has nothing
+that he has not received, and cannot dispose of the grace that dwells
+in him, the prayer was answered, and the feebler nature of Elisha was
+fitted for the continuance of the work which Elijah left undone.
+
+The mantle that passed from one to the other was the symbol of office
+and authority transferred; the functions were the same, whilst the
+holders had changed. The sons of the prophets bow before the new
+master; 'the spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.'
+
+So the world goes on. Man after man serves his generation by the will
+of God, and is gathered to his fathers; and a new arm grasps the mantle
+to smite Jordan, and a new voice speaks from his empty place, and men
+recognise the successor, and forget the predecessor.
+
+We turn to Christ's Ascension, and there we meet with nothing analogous
+to this transference of office. No mantle falling from His shoulders
+lights on any of that group, none are hailed as His successors. What He
+has done bears and needs no repetition whilst time shall roll, whilst
+eternity shall last. His work is unique: 'the help that is done on
+earth, He doeth it all Himself.' His Ascension completed the witness of
+heaven, begun at His resurrection, that 'He has offered one sacrifice
+for sins, for ever.' He has left no unfinished work which another may
+perfect. He has done no work which another may do again for new
+generations. He has spoken all truth, and none may add to His words. He
+has fulfilled all righteousness, and none may better His pattern. He
+has borne all the world's sin, and no time can waste the power of that
+sacrifice, nor any man add to its absolute sufficiency. This King of
+men wears a crown to which there is no heir. This Priest has a
+priesthood which passes to no other. This 'Prophet' does 'live for
+ever,' The world sees all other guides and helpers pass away, and every
+man's work is caught up by other hands and carried on after he drops
+it, and the short memories and shorter gratitudes of men turn to the
+rising sun; but one Name remains undimmed by distance, and one work
+remains unapproached and unapproachable, and one Man remains whose
+office none other can hold, whose bow none but He can bend, whose
+mantle none can wear. Christ has ascended up on high and left a
+finished work for all men to trust, for no man to continue.
+
+III. Whilst our Lord's Ascension is thus marked as the seal of a work
+in which He has no successor, it is also emphatically set forth, by
+contrast with Elijah's translation, as the transition to a continuous
+energy for and in the world.
+
+Clearly the other narrative derives all its pathos from the thought
+that Elijah's work is done. His task is over, and nothing more is to be
+hoped for from him. But that same absence from the history of Christ's
+Ascension, of any hint of a successor, to which we have referred in the
+previous remarks, has an obvious bearing on His present relation to the
+world as well as on the completeness of His unique past work.
+
+When Christ ascended up on high, He relinquished nothing of His
+activity for us, but only cast it into a new form, which in some sense
+is yet higher than that which it took on earth. His work for the world
+is in one aspect completed on the Cross, but in another it will never
+be completed until all the blessings which that Cross has lodged in the
+midst of humanity, have reached their widest possible diffusion and
+their highest possible development. Long ages ago He cried, 'It is
+finished,' but we may be far yet from the time when He shall say, 'It
+is done'; and for all the slow years between His own word gives us the
+law of His activity, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.'
+
+Christ's Ascension is no withdrawal of the Captain of our salvation
+from the field where we are left to fight, nor has He gone up to the
+mountain, leaving us alone to tug at the oar, and shiver in the cold
+night air. True, there may seem a strange contrast between the present
+condition of the Lord who 'was received up into heaven, and sitteth on
+the right hand of God,' and that of the servants wandering through the
+world on _His_ business; but the contrast is harmonised by the
+next words, 'the Lord also working with them.' Yes, He has gone up to
+sit at the right hand of God. That session at God's right hand to which
+the Ascension is chiefly of importance as the transition, means the
+repose of a perfected redemption, the communion of the Son with the
+Father, the exercise of all the omnipotence of God, the administration
+of the world's history. He has ascended that He might fill all things,
+that He might pour out His Spirit upon us, that the path to God may be
+trodden by our lame feet, that the whole resources of the divine nature
+may be wielded by the hands that were nailed to the Cross, that the
+mighty purpose of salvation may be fulfilled.
+
+Elijah knew not whether his spirit could descend upon his follower. But
+Christ, though, as we have said, He left no legacy of falling mantle to
+any, left His Spirit to His people. What Elisha gained, Elijah lost.
+What Elisha desired, Elijah could not give nor guarantee. How firm and
+assured beside Elijah's dubious 'Thou hast asked a hard thing,' and his
+'If thou see me, it shall be so,' is Christ's 'It is expedient for you
+that I go away. For if I go not away the Comforter will not come, but
+if I depart, I will send Him unto you.'
+
+Manifold are the forms of that new and continuous activity of Christ
+into which He passed when He left the earth: and as we contrast these
+with the utter helplessness any longer to counsel, rebuke or save, to
+which death reduces those who love us best, and to which even his
+glorious rapture into the heavens brought the strong prophet of fire,
+we can take up, with a new depth of meaning, the ancient words that
+tell of Christ's exclusive prerogative of succouring and inspiring from
+within the veil: 'Thou hast ascended on high; Thou hast led captivity
+captive; Thou hast received gifts for men.'
+
+IV. The Ascension of Christ is still further set forth, in its very
+circumstances, by contrast with Elijah's translation, as bearing on the
+hopes of humanity for the future.
+
+The prophet is caught up to the glory and repose for himself alone, and
+the sole share which the gazing follower or the sons of the prophets
+straining their eyes there at Jericho, had in his triumph, was a
+deepened conviction of his prophetic mission, and perhaps some clearer
+faith in a future life. Their wonder and sorrow, Elisha's immediate
+exercise of his new power, the prophets' immediate transference of
+their allegiance to their new head, show that on both sides it was felt
+that they had no part in the event beyond that of awe-struck beholders.
+No light streamed from it on their own future. The path they had to
+tread was still the common road into the great darkness, as solitary
+and unknown as before. The chariot of fire parted their master from the
+common experience of humanity as from their fellowship, making him an
+exception to the sad rule of death, which frowned the grimmer and more
+inexorable by contrast with his radiant translation.
+
+The very reverse is true of Christ's Ascension. In Him our nature is
+taken up to the throne of God. His Resurrection assures us that 'them
+which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him,' His passage to the
+heavens assures us that 'they who are alive and remain shall be caught
+up together with them,' and that all of both companies shall with Him
+live and reign, sharing His dominion, and moulded to His image.
+
+If we would know of what our manhood is capable, if we would rise to
+the height of the hopes which God means that we should cherish, if we
+would gain a living grasp of the power that fulfils them, we have to
+stand there, gazing on the piled cloud that sails slowly upwards, the
+pure floor for our Brother's feet. As we watch it rising with a motion
+which is rest, we have the right to think, 'Thither the Forerunner is
+for us entered.' We see there what man is meant for, what men who love
+Him attain. True, the world is still full of death and sorrow, man's
+dominion seems a futile dream and a hope that mocks, but 'we see
+Jesus,' ascended up on high, and in Him we too are 'made to sit
+together in heavenly places.' The Breaker is gone up before them. Their
+King shall pass before them, and the Lord at the head of them.'
+
+There is yet another aspect in which our Lord's Ascension bears on our
+hopes for the future, namely, as connected with His coming again. In
+that respect, too, the contrast of Elijah's translation may serve to
+emphasise the truth. Prophecy, indeed, in its latest voice, spoke of
+sending Elijah the prophet before the coming of the day of the Lord,
+and Rabbinical legends delighted to tell how he had been carried to the
+Garden of Eden, whence he would come again, in Israel's sorest need.
+But the prophecy had no thought of a personal reappearance, and the
+dreams are only dreams such as we find in the legendary history of many
+nations. As Elisha recrossed the Jordan, he bore with him only a mantle
+and a memory, not a hope.
+
+'Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same
+Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like
+manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.' How grand is the use in
+these mighty words of the name Jesus, the name that speaks of His true
+humanity, with all its weakness, limitations, and sorrow, with all its
+tenderness and brotherhood! The man who died and rose again, has gone
+up on high. He will so come as He has gone. 'So'--that is to say,
+personally, corporeally, visibly, on clouds, perhaps to that very spot,
+'and His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives.' Thus
+Scripture teaches us ever to associate together the departure and the
+coming of the Lord, and always when we meditate on His Ascension to
+prepare a place for us, to think of His real presence with us through
+the ages, and of His coming again to receive us to Himself.
+
+That parting on Olivet cannot be the end. Such a leave-taking is the
+prophecy of happy greetings and an inseparable reunion. The King has
+gone to receive a kingdom, and to return. Memory and hope coalesce, as
+we think of Him who is passed into the heavens, and the heart of the
+Church has to cherish at once the glad thought that its Head and helper
+has entered within the veil, and the still more joyous one, which
+lightens the days of separation and widowhood, that the Lord will come
+again.
+
+So let us take our share in the 'great joy' with which the disciples
+returned to Jerusalem, left like sheep in the midst of wolves as they
+were, and 'let us set our affection on things above, where Christ is,
+sitting at the right hand of God.'
+
+
+
+
+ELIJAH'S TRANSLATION AND ELISHA'S DEATHBED
+
+And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of
+Israel, and the horsemen thereof.'--2 KINGS ii. 12.
+
+'...And Joash, the King of Israel, came down unto him, and wept over
+his face, and said. O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and
+the horsemen thereof.'--2 KINGS xiii. U.
+
+
+The scenes and the speakers are strangely different in these two
+incidents. The one scene is that mysterious translation on the further
+bank of the Jordan, when a mortal was swept up to heaven in a fiery
+whirlwind, and the other is an ordinary sick chamber, where an old man
+was lying, with the life slowly ebbing out of him. The one speaker is
+the successor of the great prophet, on whom his spirit in a large
+measure fell; the other, an idolatrous king, young, headstrong, who had
+despised the latter prophet's teaching while he lived, but was now for
+the moment awed into something like seriousness and reverence by his
+death.
+
+Now the remarkable thing is that this unworthy monarch should have come
+to the dying prophet, and should have strengthened and cheered him by
+the quotation of his own words, spoken so long ago, as if he would say
+to him, 'All that thou didst mean when thou didst stand there in
+rapturous adoration, watching the ascending Elijah, is as true about
+thee, lying dying here, of a common and lingering sickness. My father,
+my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.' Seen or
+unseen, these were present. The reality was the same, though the
+appearances were so different.
+
+I We have in the first case the chariot and horsemen seen.
+
+To feel the force of the exclamation on the lips of Joash, we must try
+to make clear to ourselves what its original meaning was. What did
+Elisha intend when he stood beyond Jordan, and in wonder and awe
+exclaimed, 'The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof'?
+
+It does not seem to me that the interpretation of the words now in
+favour is at all satisfactory. It tells us that the expression is to he
+taken as in apposition with the exclamation 'My father, my father'; and
+that both the one phrase and the other mean--Elijah! Yet what a
+preposterous and strange metaphor it would be to call a man a chariot
+and pair, or a chariot and cavalry! It seems to me that the very
+statement of this explanation, in plain English, condemns it as
+untenable. It is surely less probable that Elisha in that exclamation
+was describing Elijah than that he was speaking of that wondrous
+chariot of fire and horses of fire that had come between him and his
+master, and that his exclamation was one of surprised adoration as he
+gazed with wide-opened eyes on the burning angel-hosts, and saw his
+master mysteriously able to bear that fire, ringed round by these
+flaming squadrons, possibly standing unscathed on the floor of the
+chariot, and swept with it and all the celestial pomp, by the
+whirlwind, into heaven.
+
+But why should he say 'the chariot of _Israel_'? I think we take
+for granted too readily that 'Israel' here means the nation. You will
+remember that that name was not originally that of the nation, but of
+its progenitor and founder, given to Jacob as the consequence and
+record of that mysterious wrestling by the brook. And I think we get a
+nobler signification for the words before us if, instead of applying
+the name to the nation, we apply it here to the individual. When Elijah
+and Elisha crossed Jordan they were not far from the spot where that
+name was given to Jacob, 'the supplanter,' whom discipline and
+communion with God had elevated into Israel. And they were near another
+of the sites consecrated by his history, the place where, just before
+the change of his name, the angels of God met him and 'he called the
+name of the place Mahanaim.' That means '_the two camps_,' the
+one, Jacob's defenceless company of women and children, the other,
+their celestial guards.
+
+It seems reasonable to suppose that, in all probability, a reminiscence
+of that old story of the manifestation of the armed angels of God as
+the defenders and servants of His children broke from Elisha's lips. As
+he looks upon that strange appearance of the chariot and horses of fire
+that parted him and his friend, he sees once more 'the chariot of
+Israel and the horsemen thereof,' the reappearance of the shining
+armies whose presence had of old declared that 'the angel of the Lord
+encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.' And now
+the same hosts in their immortal youth, unweakened by the ages which
+have brought earthly warriors to dust and their swords to rust, are
+flaming and flashing there in the midday sun. What was their errand,
+and why did they appear? They came, as God's messengers, to bear His
+servant to His presence. They attested the commission and devotion of
+the prophet. Their agency was needful to lift a mortal to skies not
+native to him. Strange that a body of flesh should he able to endure
+that fiery splendour! Somewhere in the course of that upward movement
+must this man, who was caught up to meet the Lord in the air, have been
+'changed.' His guards of honour were not only for tokens of his
+prophetic work, but for witnesses of the unseen world and in some sort
+pledges, suited to that stage of revelation, of life and immortality.
+
+How striking is the contrast between the translation of Elijah and the
+Ascension of Christ! He who ascended up where He was before needed no
+whirlwind, nor chariot of fire, nor extraneous power to elevate Him to
+His home. Calmly, slowly, as borne upwards by indwelling affinity with
+heaven, He floated thither with outstretched hands of blessing. The
+servant angels did not need to surround Him, but, clad no longer in
+fiery armour, but 'in white apparel,' the emblem of purity and peace,
+they stood by the disciples and comforted them with hope. Elijah was
+carried to heaven. Christ went. The angels disappeared with the prophet
+and left Elisha to grieve alone. They lingered here after Christ had
+gone, and turned tears into rainbows flashing with the hues of hope.
+
+II. We have in our second text the chariot and horsemen present though
+unseen.
+
+We are now in a position to appreciate the meaning of Joash's
+repetition to Elisha of his own words, spoken under such different
+circumstances.
+
+Elisha was by no means so great a prophet as Elijah. His work had not
+been so conspicuous, his character was not so strong, though perhaps
+more gentle. No such lofty and large influence had been granted to him
+as had been given to the fiery Tishbite to wield, nor did he leave his
+mark so deep upon the history of the times or upon the memory of
+succeeding generations. But such as it had been given him to be he had
+been. He was a continuer, not an originator. There had been a long
+period during which he appears to have lived in absolute retirement,
+exercising no prophetic functions. We never hear of him during the
+interval between the anointing of Jehu to the Israelitish monarchy and
+the time of his own death, and that period must have extended over
+nearly fifty years. After all these years of eclipse and seclusion he
+was lying dying somewhere in a corner, and the king, young but
+impressible, although, on the whole, not reliable nor good, came down
+to the prophet's home, and there, standing by the pallet of the dying
+man, repeated the words, so strangely reminiscent of a very different
+event--' My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen
+thereof!'
+
+And what does that exclamation mean? Two things. One is this, that the
+angels of the Divine Presence are with us as truly, in life, when
+unseen as if seen. So far as we know, it was only to Elisha that the
+vision had been granted of that chariot of fire and horses of fire. We
+read that at Elijah's translation on the other side of Jordan, and
+consequently at no great distance off, there stood a company of the
+sons of the prophets from Jericho to see what would happen, but we do
+not read that they did see. On the contrary, they were inclined to
+believe that Elijah had been caught up and flung away somewhere on the
+mountains, and that it was worth while to organise search-parties to go
+after him. It was only Elisha that saw, and Elijah did not know whether
+he would see or not, for he said to him, 'If thou shalt see me when I
+am taken from thee, then' thy desire shall be granted.
+
+The angels of God are visible to the eyes that are fit to see them; and
+those eyes can always see them. It does not matter whether in a miracle
+or in a common event--it does not matter whether on the stones by the
+banks of Jordan or in a close sick chamber, they are visible for those
+who, by pure hearts and holy desires, have had their vision purged from
+the intrusive vulgarities and dazzling brightnesses of this poor, petty
+present, and can therefore see beneath all the apparent the real that
+blazes behind it.
+
+The scenes at Jordan and in the death-chamber are not the only times in
+Elisha's life when we read of these chariots and horses of fire. There
+was another incident in his career in which the same phrase occurs.
+Once his servant was terrified at the sight of a host compassing the
+little city where Elisha and he were, with horses and chariots, and
+came to his master with alarm and despair, crying, 'Alas! my master,
+how shall we do?' The prophet answered with superb calmness, 'Fear not:
+for they that be with us are more than they that be with them .... Lord,
+I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the
+eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full
+of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.' They had always
+been there, though no one saw them. They were there when no one but
+Elisha saw them. They were no more there when the young man saw them
+than they had been before. They did not cease to be there when the film
+came over his eyes again, and the common round took him back to the
+trivialities of daily life.
+
+And so from the mouth of this not very devout king the prophet was
+reminded of his own ancient experiences, and invited to feel that,
+unseen or seen, the solemn forms stood 'bright-harnessed,' and strong,
+'in order serviceable,' ranged about him for his defence and blessing.
+
+And are they not round about us? If a man can but look into the
+realities of things, will he see only the work of men and of the forces
+of nature? Will there not be--far more visible as they are far more
+real than any of these--the forces of the Eternal Presence and ever
+operative Will of our Father in Heaven? We need not discuss the
+personality of angels. An angel is the embodiment of the will and
+energy of God, and we have that will and energy working for us, whether
+there are any angel persons about us or not. Scripture declares that
+there are, and that they serve us. We may be sure that if only we will
+honestly try to purge our eyes from the illusions and temptations of
+'things seen and temporal,' the mountain or the sick chamber will be to
+us equally full of the angel forms of our defenders and companions.
+
+Do we see them for ourselves; and, not less important, do we, like
+Elisha, lying there on his deathbed, help else blind men to see them,
+and make every one that comes beside us, even if he be as little
+impressible and as little devout as this king Joash was, recognise that
+in our chambers there sit, and round our lives there flutter and sing,
+sweet and strong angel wings and voices? Will anybody, looking at you,
+be constrained to feel that with and around you are the angels of God?
+
+Still further, another cognate application of these great words is that
+one which is more directly suggested by their quotation by Joash. It
+does not matter in what way the end of life comes. The reality is the
+same to all devout men; though one be swept to heaven in a whirlwind,
+and another lady slowly away in old age, or 'fall sick of the sickness
+wherewith he should die.' Each is taken to God in a chariot of fire.
+The means are of little moment, the fact remains the same, however
+diverse may he the methods of its accomplishment. The road is the same,
+the companions the same, the impelling--I was going to say the
+locomotive--power, is the same, and the goal is the same.
+
+Of Enoch we read, 'He was not, for God took him.' Of Elijah we read,
+'He went up in a whirlwind to heaven.' Of Elisha we read, 'He died and
+they buried him.' And of all three--the two who were translated that
+they should not see death, and the one who died like the rest of us--it
+is equally true that 'God took' them, and that they were taken to Him.
+So for ourselves and for our dear ones we may look forward or backward,
+to deathbeds of weariness, of lingering sickness, of long pain and
+suffering, or of swift dissolution, and piercing beneath the surface
+may see the blessed central reality and thankfully feel that Death,
+too, is God's angel, who' does His commandments, hearkening to the
+voice of God's word' when in his dark hearse he carries us hence.
+
+
+
+
+GENTLENESS SUCCEEDING STRENGTH
+
+'He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went
+back, and stood by the bank of Jordan; 14. And he took the mantle of
+Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the
+Lord God of Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they
+parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over. 15. And when the sons
+of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The
+spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and
+bowed themselves to the ground before him. 16. And they said unto him,
+Behold now, there be with thy servants fifty strong men; let them go,
+we pray thee, and seek thy master: lest peradventure the Spirit of the
+Lord hath taken him up, and cast him upon some mountain, or into some
+valley. And he said, Ye shall not send. 17. And when they urged him
+till he was ashamed, he said, Send. They sent therefore fifty men; and
+they sought three days, but found him not. 18. And when they came again
+to him, (for he tarried at Jericho,) he said unto them, Did I not say
+unto you, Go not! 19. And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold,
+I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth:
+but the water is naught, and the ground barren. 20. And he said, Bring
+me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. 21.
+And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in
+there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there
+shall not be from thence any more death or barren land. 22. So the
+waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha
+which he spake.'--2 KINGS ii. 13-22.
+
+
+The independent activity of Elisha begins with verse 13. How short the
+gap between the two prophets, and how easily filled it is! Not the
+greatest are indispensable. God lays aside one tool, but only to take
+up another. He has inexhaustible stores. The work goes on, though the
+workers change, and there is little time for mere mourning, and none
+for idle sorrow. Elisha's first miracle is almost an experiment. The
+mantle which lay at his feet had been thrown over him by Elijah when he
+was called to his service, and it was now a token that office and power
+had devolved on him. His first steps tread closely in Elijah's track;
+as those of wise and humble men, called to higher work, will mostly do.
+The repetition of the miracle by the same means, and the invocation of
+the Lord as the 'God of Elijah,'--a new name, to be set by the side of
+'the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob'--express the humility which
+seeks to shelter itself behind the example of its mighty predecessor.
+The form of the invocation as a question indicates that Elisha had not
+yet attained certainty as to his power, as not yet having proved it.
+'Where is the Lord God of Elijah?' is not the question of unbelief, but
+neither is it the voice of full confidence, which asks no such
+question, because it knows Him to be with it. It is the cry, 'Oh that
+Thou mayest be here, even with unworthy me! and art Thou not here?' The
+faith was real, though young, and clouded with some film of doubt. But,
+being real, it was answered; and it was because of Elisha's trust, not
+Elijah's mantle, that the waters parted. God will listen to a man
+pleading that ancient deeds may be repeated to-day, and, by answering
+the cry addressed to Him as the God of saints and martyrs of old, will
+embolden us to cry to Him as our very own God. We may learn from that
+first half-tentative miracle the spirit in which men should take up the
+work of those that are gone, the lowliness fitting for beginners, the
+wisdom of seeking to graft new work on the old stock, the encouragement
+from remembering the divine wonders through His servants in the past,
+and the true way to assure ourselves of our God-given power; namely, by
+attempting great things for Him, in dependence on His promise.
+
+The miracle was wrought partly for Elisha, and partly for others who
+were to acknowledge his authority. These sons of the prophets, who
+stood on the eastern bank of Jordan, had probably not been witnesses of
+the translation, even if their position commanded a view of the spot.
+Purer eyes and more kindred spirits than theirs were needed for that.
+
+But they saw Elisha returning alone, and the waters parting before him,
+and, no doubt, as he came nearer, would recognise what he bore in his
+hand--Elijah's well-known mantle. They hasten to recognise him as the
+head of the prophets, and their acknowledgment accurately expresses his
+place and work. Elijah's spirit rests on him, even though the two men
+and their careers are very different, and in some respects opposite.
+Elisha is distinctly secondary to Elijah. He is in no sense an
+originator, either of fresh revelations or of new impulses to
+obedience. He but carries on what Elijah had begun, inherits a work,
+and is Elijah's 'Timothy' and 'son in the faith.' The same Spirit was
+on him, though the form of his character and gifts was in strong
+contrast to the stormier genius of his mightier predecessor. Elisha had
+no such work as Elijah--no foot-to-foot and hand-to-hand duels with
+murderous kings or queens; no single-handed efforts to stop a nation
+from rushing down a steep place into the sea; no fiery energy; no
+bursts of despair. He moved among kings and courts as an honoured guest
+and trusted counsellor. He did not dwell apart, like Elijah, the strong
+son of the desert; but, born in the fertile valley of the Jordan, he
+lived a life 'kindly with his kind,' and his delights were with the
+sons of men. His miracles are mostly works of mercy and gentleness,
+relieving wants and sicknesses, drying tears and giving back dear ones
+to mourners. He is as complete a contrast to his stern, solitary,
+forceful predecessor, as the 'still small voice' was to the roar of the
+wind or the crackling hiss of the flames.
+
+But, nevertheless, 'there are diversities of operations, but the same
+God.' It is well to remember that one type of excellence does not
+exhaust the possibilities of goodness, nor the resources of the
+inspiring Spirit. The comparative merits of strength and gentleness
+will always be variously estimated; but God's work needs them both, and
+both may join hands as serving the same Lord in diverse ways, which are
+all needed. We should seek to widen our discernment to the extent of
+the rich variety of forms of good and of service which God gives.
+Elijah and Elisha, Paul and Timothy, Luther and Melanchthon, are all
+His servants. Well is it when the strong can recognise the power of the
+gentle, and the gentle can discern the tenderness of the strong, and
+when each is forward to say of the other, 'He worketh the work of the
+Lord, as I also do.'
+
+The search after Elijah, insisted on by the sons of the prophets, is of
+importance only as showing their low thoughts and Elisha's gentle
+spirit. He is their head, but he holds the reins loosely. Fancy anybody
+'urging' Elijah 'till he was ashamed'! The shame would very soon have
+mantled the cheek of the urger. But though, no doubt, Elisha would tell
+what had happened, these 'prophets' only think that Elijah has been
+miraculously borne somewhither, as he had been before, and seem to have
+no notion of what has really happened. How hard it is to heave heavy
+men up to any height of spiritual vision! How vulgar minds always take
+refuge in the most commonplace explanations that they can find of high
+truths! 'Gone up to heaven! Not he! He is lying, living or dead, in
+some gorge or on some hillside. Let us go and look for him!' There is
+nothing on which some people pride themselves more than upon being
+practical--which generally means prosaic, and often means blind to
+God's greatest deeds. To go scouring wady and mountain for a man who
+had been taken up into heaven was practical common sense indeed! But
+Elisha's gentleness is to be noted. He let them have their own way.
+Often that is the only plan for convincing people of their errors. And,
+when the fifty scouts come back empty-handed, all he says is a quiet
+'Did I no say unto you, Go not?' 'The servant of the Lord must not
+strive,' but 'in meekness' instruct 'those that oppose themselves'; and
+the effectual instruction is often to let them take their own course.
+
+The miracle of healing the waters is of the beneficent kind usual with
+Elisha, inaugurates his course with blessing, and typifies the healing
+power which God through him would exert on men. Jericho had been
+recently rebuilt in spite of the curse against its builders. The
+bitterness of the spring seems to have been part of the malediction;
+for men would not be so foolish as to rebuild a city which had only
+impure water to depend on. However that may be, the main lesson of the
+miracle, beyond its revelation of the spirit of gentle compassion in
+Elisha, is the symbolical one. The new cruse and the salt are emblems
+of the divine gift which cleanses the human heart. Salt is an emblem of
+purification, and its emblematic meaning prevails here over its natural
+properties; for the last thing to cure a brackish spring was to put
+salt into it. The very inadequacy, as well as inappropriateness, of the
+remedy, points the miraculous and symbolical character of the whole. A
+jar full of salt could do little to a gushing fountain. But it figured
+the cleansing power which God will bring to bear on us, if we will; and
+it taught the great truth that sin must be cleansed at the fountain-
+head in the heart, not half a mile down the stream, in the deeds. Put
+the salt in the spring, and the outflow will be sweet.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE OIL FLOWS
+
+'And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto
+her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a
+vessel more. And the oil stayed.'--2 KINGS iv. 6.
+
+
+The series of miracles ascribed to Elisha are very unlike most of the
+wonderful works of even the Old Testament, and still more unlike those
+of the New. For about a great many of them there seems to have been no
+special purpose, either doctrinal or otherwise, but simply the relief
+of trivial and transient distresses. This story, from which my text is
+taken, is one of that sort. One of the sons of the prophets had died in
+Shunem. He left a widow and two little children. The creditor,
+according to the Mosaic law, had the right, which he was about to put
+in practice, of taking the children to be bondmen. And so the
+penniless, helpless woman comes to Elisha, as a kind of deliverer-
+general from all sorts of distresses, and tells him her pitiful tale.
+He asks her what she wants him to do, and she has no counsel to give.
+Then the thing to do strikes _him._ He asks what she has in the
+house. It was a poor, bare hovel of a place. There was not anything in
+it save a pot of oil, which was all her property. He sends her to
+borrow vessels, of all sorts and sizes. He takes the pot of oil, and
+shuts the door. Then she sets the two boys fetching and carrying; and
+herself taking up the one possession that she has, in faith she pours;
+and dish after dish is filled, and still she pours; and they were all
+filled, and she kept on pouring. Then she said, 'Bring some more'; and
+the boys answered, 'There are not any more,' so then the oil stopped.
+
+There was no very special reason for all this. It is not at all like
+most Biblical miracles. I do not suppose it had any symbolical
+intention; but I venture to do a little gentle violence to the
+incident, and to see in the staying of the oil when no more vessels
+were brought to be filled, a lesson addressed to us all, and it is
+this: God keeps giving Himself as long as we bring that into which He
+can pour Himself. And when we stop bringing, He stops giving.
+
+Now, if I may venture to be fanciful for once, let me tell you of three
+vessels that we have to bring if we would have the oil of the Divine
+Spirit poured into us.
+
+I. The vessel of desire.
+
+God can give us a great many things that we do not wish, but He cannot
+give us His best gift, and that is Himself, unless we desire it. He
+never forces His company on any man, and if we do not wish for Him He
+cannot give us Himself, His Spirit, or the gifts of His Spirit. For
+instance, He cannot make a man wise if he does not wish to be
+instructed. He cannot make a man holy if he has no aspiration after
+holiness. He cannot save a man from his sins if the man holds on to his
+sin with both hands, like some shellfish with its claws when you try to
+drag it out of its cleft in the rock. He cannot give the oil unless we
+bring the vessels of our hearts opened by our desires.
+
+If God could He would. 'Ye have not because ye ask not.' But we are
+never to forget that God is not led to begin His giving because we
+petition Him, but that the infinitude of His stores, and the endless,
+changeless, unmotived, perfect love of His heart, make self-
+communication--I was going to use a very strong word, and I do not know
+that it is too strong--necessary to the blessedness of the blessed God,
+and, long before we ever thought of Him, or sought anything from Him,
+there was pouring out from Him all the fulness of His love: just as we
+may conceive of the sunshine raying out before the orbs that were to
+circle round it had been completely shaped, but were still diffused and
+nebulous.
+
+But, while God is always giving, our capacity to receive determines the
+degree of our individual possession of Him. Or, to put it in the
+plainest words--we have as much of God as we can take in; and the
+principal factor in settling how much we can take is--how much we wish.
+Measure the reality and intensity of desire, and you measure capacity.
+As the atmosphere rushes into every vacuum, or as the sea runs up into
+and fills every sinuosity of the shore, so wherever a heart opens, and
+the unbroken coast-line is indented, as it were, by desire, in rushes
+the tide of the divine gifts. You have God in the measure in which you
+desire Him.
+
+Only remember that that desire which brings God must be more than a
+feeble, fleeting wish. Wishing is one thing; _willing_ is quite
+another. Lazily wishing and strenuously desiring are two entirely
+different postures of mind; the former gets nothing and the latter gets
+everything, gets God, and with God all that God can bring.
+
+But the wish must not only rise to intensity and earnestness, but it
+must be steadfast. Suppose these two little boys of the widow had held
+their vessels below the spout of the oil-pot with tremulous hands,
+while they looked away at something else, sometimes keeping the vessels
+right under, and sometimes shifting them on one side, it would have
+been slow work filling the unsteadily held vessels. So it is in regard
+to receiving God's best gift. Our desires must be unwavering. A cup
+held by a shaking hand will spill its contents, or will never receive
+them. 'Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the
+Lord.' The steadfast wish is the wish that is answered.
+
+Is it not a strange indifference to our true good that we who have
+learned, as most of us have learned only too well, that in this world
+to wish is not to have, should turn away from the possibility that lies
+before us each, of passing from this disappointing world of vain
+longings into a region where we cannot wish anything that we do not
+get? There is only one thing about which it is true that, if you want,
+and as much as you want, you will have; and that thing is found when we
+turn away our wishes from the false, fleeting, and surface
+satisfactions of earth, and fasten them upon God, 'Who is able to do
+exceeding abundantly above all that we ... think.' Wish for Him, and
+you have what you have wished. Wish for anything else, and you may have
+it or you may not, but depend upon it the fish is never half as big
+when it is out of the water as it felt to be when it was tugging at the
+hook.
+
+II. Another vessel that we have to bring is the vessel of our
+expectancy.
+
+Desire is one thing; confident anticipation that the desire will be
+fulfilled is quite another. And the two do not certainly go together
+anywhere except in this one region, and there they do go, linked arm in
+arm. For whatsoever, in the highest of all regions, we wish, we have
+the right without presumption to believe that we shall receive.
+Expectation, like desire, opens the heart.
+
+There are some expectations, even in lower regions, that fulfil
+themselves. Doctors will tell you that a very large part of the
+curative power of their medicine depends upon the patient's
+anticipation of recovery. If a man expects to die when he takes to his
+bed, the chances are that he will die; and if a man expects to get
+better, Death will have a fight before it conquers him. There are
+hundreds of cases, in all departments of life, where he who sets
+himself to a task with assured persuasion that he is going to do such
+and such a thing will do it. 'Screw your courage to the sticking-place,
+and we'll not fail,' said the heroine in the tragedy; and there is a
+great truth in her fierce encouragement.
+
+All these illustrations fall far beneath the Christian aspect of the
+thought that what we expect from God we receive. That is only another
+way of putting 'According to thy faith be it unto thee.' It is exactly
+what Jesus Christ said when He promised, 'Whatsoever things ye ask when
+ye stand praying believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.'
+
+I am afraid that a great many of us often have expectations fainter
+than desires; and that we should be very much surprised if the thing
+that we ask for, in the prayers that we so often repeat by rote, were
+granted to us. You will hear men praying for holiness, for clean
+hearts, for progress in the Christian life, for a hundred other such
+blessings. They do not expect that anything is going to come in
+consequence, and they would be mightily at a loss what to do with the
+gift if it did come. The absence of expectancy in our public petitions
+is to me one of the saddest features in the Christian life of this day.
+If you expect little, you will get little; and we do expect far less
+than we ought. We cannot raise our confident expectations too high; for
+'He is able to do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we ask' as
+well as 'think.' The Apostle has set the limit of our expectations, in
+the same context, and here it is: 'That we may be filled with all the
+fulness of God.' There are two limits: one is the boundless
+illimitableness of God's perfection, and the possibilities of our
+possession of Him are not exhausted until we have reached that infinite
+completeness. But then, there is a practical, working limit for each of
+us; and that is--what do you desire? and what do you expect? God can
+give more than we can ask or think, but He cannot at the moment give
+more than we expect or desire.
+
+True, the vessels that we bring to be filled with the oil are not like
+the vessels that the fatherless boys brought. These were of a definite
+capacity; and the little cup when it was filled was filled, and there
+was an end of it. But the vessels that we bring are elastic, and widen
+out. The more that is put into them the more they can hold, so that
+there is no bound to the capacity of a heart for the reception and
+inrush of God; and there will not be a bound through all the ages of a
+growing possession of Him in eternity. But for to-day, desire and
+expectancy determine the measure of the gift.
+
+III. Lastly, one more vessel that we have to bring is obedience.
+
+'If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.'
+_There_ is one case of the general principle that wishes and
+anticipations are all right and well, but unless they are backed up and
+verified by conduct, even wishes and anticipations will not bring God's
+gift. For it is possible for a man who, in his better moments of
+devotion, has some desires after a loftier range of goodness and a
+completer conformity to God than he ordinarily has, to rise from his
+knees and rush into the world, and there live in some lust, or
+uncleanness, or vice, or indulgence, or absorption in the cares of this
+life, in such a way as that desires and anticipations shall vanish. If
+we fill our vessels full, before we take them to the source of supply,
+with all manner of baser liquids, there will be no room for the oil. We
+may contradict and stifle our desires by our conduct, and by it make
+our expectations perfectly impossible to be fulfilled. Are our daily
+doings of such a nature as that the Spirit of God, which is symbolised
+by the oil, can come into our hearts; or are we quenching and grieving
+Him so that He
+
+                  'Can but listen at the gate
+                   And hear the household jar within'?
+
+Desire, Expectancy, and Obedience--these three must never be separated
+if we are to receive the gift of Himself, which God delights and waits
+to give. All spiritual possessions and powers grow by use, even as
+exercised muscles are strengthened, and unused ones tend to be
+atrophied. It is possible, by neglect of God and of the gift given to
+us, to incur the stern sentence passed on the slothful servant--'Take
+it from him.' By disobedience and negligence we choke the channel
+through which God's gifts can flow to us. So, brethren, bring these
+three vessels, and you will not go away with them empty. 'Open thy
+mouth wide, and I will fill it.'
+
+
+
+
+A MIRACLE NEEDING EFFORT
+
+'So she went, and came unto the man of God to mount Carmel. And it came
+to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off, that he said to Gehazi
+his servant, Behold, yonder is that Shunammite: 26. Run now, I pray
+thee, to meet her, and say unto her, Is it well with thee? is it well
+with thy husband! is it well with the child? And she answered, It is
+well. 27. And when she came to the man of God to the hill, she caught
+him by the feet: but Gehazi came near to thrust her away. And the man
+of God said, Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her: and the
+Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me. 28. Then she said, Did
+I desire a son of my lord! did I not say, Do not deceive met 29. Then
+he said to Gehazi, Gird up thy loins, and take my staff in thine hand,
+and go thy way: if thou meet any man, salute him not; and if any salute
+thee, answer him not again: and lay my staff upon the face of the
+child. 30. And the mother of the child said, As the Lord liveth, and as
+thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And he arose, and followed her.
+31. And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the face
+of the child; but there was neither voice, nor hearing. Wherefore he
+went again to meet him, and told him, saying, The child is not awaked.
+32. And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was
+dead, and laid upon his bed. 33. He went in therefore, and shut the
+door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord. 34. And he went up, and
+lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon
+his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and stretched himself upon the
+child: and the flesh of the child waxed warm. 35. Then he returned, and
+walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon
+him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.
+36. And he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called
+her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son. 37.
+Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the
+ground, and took up her son, and went out.'--2 KINGS iv. 25-37.
+
+
+The story of Elisha is almost entirely a record of his miracles, and
+the story of his miracles is almost entirely a record of deeds of
+beneficence. Exception has been taken to it on the ground of the
+strange accumulation of supernatural works, which have been said to
+make it like some mediaeval saint's legend. But why should it not be
+true that, after Elijah had proclaimed the truth, his successor's
+function was to enforce it chiefly by his acts, and to seek to draw
+Israel back to God by 'the cords of love' and the gentle compulsion of
+mercies? The careful consideration of the work of the two prophets
+makes the peculiarities of Elisha's perfectly intelligible. This story
+of the great lady at Shunem, her joy over her only child and his
+piteous death 'on her knees,' is one of the tenderest and sweetest
+pages in the history. Late won and early lost, the poor boy lies pale
+and dead on Elisha's bed at Shunem, while the mother hurries across the
+plain of Jezreel to Carmel,--a distance of some fifteen or sixteen
+miles,--where Elisha was then living, probably near the place of
+Elijah's sacrifice. This passage begins with her approach.
+
+I. Note first the meeting (verses 25-28). Somewhere on the slopes of
+Carmel, commanding a view of the plain stretching away in the blue
+distance eastward, sat the prophet. His eye was keen, though probably
+he was now old, and he recognised the lady at a distance, as she rode
+swiftly towards the mountain. He appears to have suspected that this
+unusual visit meant some calamity, and his gentle heart went out
+towards his hostess and friend. Gehazi could not get back sooner than
+she could come, but sympathy could not sit passive and watch her
+approach. So the instinctively despatched message beautifully witnesses
+the prophet's keen affection, and, as it were, the eager leap of his
+sympathy. So swift and ready to flash into act is the fellow-feeling of
+the Highest with the sorrows of us all; so should be the compassion of
+each with another. The higher in gifts or office in the kingdom a man
+is, the more is he bound to carry his sympathy in an outstretched hand.
+It is worth very little when it comes slowly. It is priceless when it
+runs to meet the mourner before she speaks.
+
+The detailed question put into Gehazi's mouth describes the circle
+within which this woman's heart moved,--her husband, her child,
+herself. If these were well, nothing could be very ill; if ill, nothing
+could be well. But the message, which came so warm from Elisha's lips,
+had been cooled on the road, and sounded formal from Gehazi. It is hard
+for selfish indifference to carry tender words without freezing them.
+The bearer of sympathy must be sympathetic. As Gehazi spoiled Elisha's
+message, so we Christians too often do our Master's, and cool it down
+to our own temperature. The fact that Gehazi had done so is suggested
+by the curt answer, 'Peace!' It is often quoted as the language of
+resignation, but it seems much rather to be evasion of the question,
+and that because her sorrow shrank from unveiling itself to the
+questioner. Nothing makes grief dumb so surely as prying and yet
+indifferent intrusion. A tenderer hand than Gehazi's is needed to
+unlock the sad secret of that burdened breast.
+
+It was perhaps partly pique at her silencing him, and partly mere
+unfeeling attention to 'propriety,' which made the servant wish to
+check the convulsive grasp of the feet, which the master allowed.
+Underlings are more careful of what they suppose to be their superior's
+dignity than he is. Much is permitted to love and sorrow, by a prophet,
+which would be repressed by smaller men. 'Her soul is bitter within
+her' pardons much, and only unfeeling critics will be punctilious in
+dealing with even the extravagances of grief. But Elisha had another
+reason than pity. He wished to know her pain, and therefore he let her
+cling to his feet; for only there would she find her tongue. Does there
+not shine through the figure of the gentle prophet the image of the
+gentler Christ, who will not have the poorest and foulest spurned from
+His feet, though it be 'a woman who was a sinner,' and lets us come as
+close to Him as we will, even to hide our faces on His breast, that we
+may pour out all our sorrows and sins to Him?
+
+The limitations of the prophet's knowledge he frankly owns. How much
+better would it have been for the Church if its teachers had been more
+willing to copy his modesty, and said about a great many things, 'The
+Lord hath hid it from me'!
+
+The mother's answer is indeed the cry of a 'bitter' heart. Its abrupt
+questions and its reticence as to the child's death are pathetically
+true to nature, and sound yet across all these centuries as if the
+bitter cry were for a grief of to-day. 'Did I desire a son?' She
+upbraids Elisha and Elisha's God for having forced on her an unasked
+blessing. 'Did I not say, Do not deceive me?' She did (verse 16); and
+she upbraids Elisha again for a worse deceit than she had meant then,
+by mocking her with a gift which was wrenched from her hands so
+suddenly and soon. How many a sad heart is to-day tempted to raise this
+cry of anguish! And how patient is Elisha with wild words, and how he
+discerns, beneath the apparent rough reproach, the misery which it
+implies and the petition which it veils! Elisha's Lord is no less
+tender in His judgment of our hasty, whirlwind words, when our hearts
+are sore; and if only we speak them to Him and cling to His feet, He
+translates them into the petitions which they mean, and is swift to
+answer the meaning and pass by the sound of our bitter cry.
+
+II. We note the ineffectual experiment of the staff (verses 29-31). The
+supposition that Gehazi was sent in such haste with the hope that the
+touch of the staff might bring back life, is dismissed as 'impossible'
+by most commentators, who have therefore some difficulty in saying what
+he was sent for. Some of the Rabbis answered, 'To prevent
+putrefaction,' which would set in soon on that harvest day. Others say
+that the intention was to 'prevent more life escaping from him.' But
+'dead' is not usually supposed to be an adjective admitting of
+comparison. Others find the reason in the wish to deliver Israel from
+the superstitious veneration of such things as the staff, by showing
+that it was powerless. But verse 31 plainly implies that the result of
+Gehazi's attempt was not what had been expected. Why need there be any
+hesitation in taking the natural meaning, and supposing that Elisha
+sent his servant quickly, 'if peradventure' the touch of his staff
+might suffice, and followed in person, because he did not know whether
+it would. There is nothing unworthy of a prophet who had just confessed
+his ignorance in the supposition. His unobtrusive spirit delighted to
+hide its power behind material vehicles, as is seen in most of his
+miracles; and, if he remembered how he himself, in his early days, had
+parted the waters with his master's cloak, he might think it possible
+that his servant should work a miracle with his staff.
+
+The Shunemite quotes his own words on that far-off day; and perhaps she
+was reminded of them by perceiving the analogy of the two incidents.
+But her clinging to Elisha shows her doubt of the success of the
+attempt; and she was right. Why did the staff fail? Perhaps because of
+its bearer. Gehazi always appears unfavourably, and Elisha's staff
+loses its power in such hands. The mightiest instruments are weak when
+selfishness and coldness wield them. An unworthy minister can make the
+Gospel itself impotent. It is an awful thing to carry 'the rod of Thy
+strength' and to hinder its exerting its energy. But possibly the non-
+success of the attempt was meant to teach Elisha and us that miracles
+of life-giving are not to be wrought so easily, but need the effort of
+the prophet himself. We cannot delegate the work of God, and no sending
+of others will do instead of going ourselves. Such things are not
+achieved without much personal toil, pains, and self-sacrifice.
+
+III. So we come to the last step, the communication of life (verses 32-
+37). It was noon when the child died. The mother's journey would take
+three or four hours, and the return at least as much. It would then be
+dark when the two reached her desolate home. She had laid the boy on
+Elisha's bed, as if even that brought her some comfort. It is difficult
+to say whether 'them twain' (verse 33) means him and the mother, or him
+and the child; but the expression of the next verse, 'went up,'
+suggests that the prayer with shut door was in the lower part of the
+house, and that the mother's cry was joined to the prophet's petitions.
+Such prayer is the true preparation for such a miracle. Beautiful
+consideration, born of sympathy, led him to shut out curious onlookers,
+and then to go up alone to the little chamber where that pale, tiny
+corpse lay. No eye but a mother's could have seen what followed without
+profanation; and a mother's heart would have been torn by hopes and
+fears if she had seen.
+
+The actual miracle is remarkable for two peculiarities--the effort
+required and the slowness of the process. Of course, there is a
+profound and beautiful use to be made of the prophet's action in laying
+himself upon the dead child, mouth to mouth, and hand to hand, if we
+regard it as symbolic of that closeness of approach to our nature, dead
+in sins, which the Lord of life makes in His incarnation and in His
+continual drawing near. It is His own life which Jesus imparts, and it
+is imparted because He comes near and touches us. It is the warmth of
+His own heart which passes into those who live by derivation of life
+from Him. And Elisha may well stand as symbol of Jesus in this miracle.
+But besides that use of the narrative, which is no mere fanciful
+playing with it, we should also note the difference between the prophet
+and Christ in their miracles. Jesus raises the dead by His bare word.
+His expressed will is all-sufficient. Elisha prays, and then puts forth
+somewhat prolonged efforts, from which at first there is no effect, and
+which drain him of force, so that he is obliged to pause and leave the
+chamber, and gather himself together for a renewal of them. The ease of
+the one sets the difficulty of the other in a strong light. And the
+life which came back with a rush, in full stream, at Christ's bidding,
+comes only by degrees at Elisha's prayer and work. The one worker is
+the Lord of life, who speaks and it is done; the other is but the
+channel of power, and the appearance of effort and gradualness in
+result is owing to the narrowness of the channel, not to the inadequacy
+of the power.
+
+In all Elisha's gentleness and lowliness there is yet a certain dignity
+as God's prophet; and it was not fitting that he should come from the
+scene of such a miracle with the glow of it upon him, to seek for the
+mother. So he summons her by Gehazi, and then, with beautiful delicacy,
+leaves her to go alone into the chamber. None are to see the transports
+of her joy, not even the author of it. How beautiful, too, are the
+quiet words, 'Take up thy son'! She has no words; but, for all answer,
+comes close to him (there is no 'in' in verse 37), and once again, but
+with what different feelings, clasps his feet. Not even Gehazi, or any
+other stickler for propriety, has the heart to thrust her back this
+time. The story draws a curtain over that meeting in the prophet's
+chamber. Sad hearts who have vainly longed for such a moment, can fancy
+the rapture. But the day will come, not here, but in the upper chamber,
+when parted ones shall clasp each other again; and many a mourner shall
+hear Jesus say from the throne what He once said from the Cross,
+'Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother.'
+
+
+
+
+NAAMAN'S WRATH
+
+'And Elisha sent a messenger unto Naaman, saying, Go and wash in Jordan
+seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be
+clean. 11. But Naaman was wroth, and went away.'--2 KINGS v. 10,11.
+
+
+These two figures are significant of much beyond themselves. Elisha the
+prophet is the bearer of a divine cure. Naaman, the great Syrian noble,
+is stricken with the disease that throughout the Old Testament is
+treated as a parable of sin and death. He was the commander-in-chief of
+the army of Damascus, high in favour at Ben-hadad's court; his
+reputation and renown were on every tongue, _but_ he was a leper.
+There is a 'but' in every fortune, as there is a 'but' in every
+character.
+
+So he comes to the prophet's humble home in Samaria, and we find him
+waiting, a suppliant at the gate, with his cavalcade of attendants, and
+a present worth many thousands of pounds in our English money.
+
+How does the prophet receive his distinguished visitor? In all the rest
+of his actions we find Elisha gentle, accessible, forgetful of his
+dignity. Here his conduct would be discourteous if there were not a
+reason for it. He is reserved, unsympathetic, keeps the great man at
+the staff-end, will not even come out to receive him as common courtesy
+might have suggested; sends him a curt message of direction, with not a
+word more than was necessary.
+
+And then, naturally enough, the hot soldier begins to explode. His
+pride is touched; he has not been received with due deference. If the
+prophet would have come out and chanted incantations over him, and made
+mystical motions of his hands above the shining patches of his leprous
+skin, he could have believed in the cure. But there was nothing in the
+injunction given for his superstition to lay hold of. His patriotic
+susceptibilities are roused. If he is to be cleansed by bathing, are
+not the crystal streams of his own city, the glory of Damascus, better
+than the turbid and muddy Jordan that belongs to Israel? So he flounced
+away, and would have sacrificed his hope of cure to his passion if his
+servants had not brought him to common-sense by their cool
+remonstrance. He would have done any great thing which he had been set
+to do; he had already done a great thing in taking the long journey,
+and being ready to expend all that vast amount of treasure, and so
+surely there need be no difficulty in his complying, were it only as an
+experiment, with the very simple and easy terms which the prophet had
+enjoined.
+
+Now, all these points may be so put as to suggest for us
+characteristics of that gospel which is God's cure for our leprosy. And
+the whole story shows us as in a glass what human nature would like the
+gospel to be, and how we sick men quarrel with our physic, and stumble
+at those very characteristics of the gospel which are its main glory
+and the secret of its power. My only purpose in this sermon is to bring
+out two or three of these as lying on the surface of the story before
+us.
+
+I. First, then, God's cure puts us all on one level.
+
+Naaman wished to be treated like a great man that happened to be a
+leper; Elisha treated him like a leper that happened to be a great man.
+'I thought, he will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the
+name of the Lord his God.' The whole question about his treatment turns
+on this, Whether is the important thing his disease or his dignity? He
+thought it was his dignity, the prophet thought it was his disease. And
+so he served him as he would have served any one else that in similar
+circumstances, and for a like necessity, had come to him.
+
+And now, if you will generalise that, it just comes to this--that
+Christianity brushes aside all the surface differences of men, and goes
+in its treatment of them straight to the central likenesses, the things
+which, in all mankind, are identical. There are the same wants, the
+same sorrows, the same necessity for the same cleansing beneath the
+queen's robes and the peer's ermine, the workman's jacket and the
+beggar's rags.
+
+Whatever differences of culture, of station, of idiosyncrasy there may
+be, these are but surface and accidental. We are all alike in this,
+that we 'have sinned, and come short of the glory of God'; and our
+Great Physician, in His great remedy, insists upon treating us all as
+patients, and not as this, that, or the other, kind of patients. The
+cholera, when it lays hold of ladies and gentlemen, deals with them in
+precisely the same fashion that it does when it lays hold of waifs on
+the dunghill; and a wise doctor will treat the Prince of Wales just as
+he will treat the Prince of Wales's stable-boy. Christianity has
+nothing to say, in the first place, to the accidents that separate us
+one from the other, but insists on looking at us all as standing on the
+one level and partaking of the one characteristic. We may be wise or
+foolish, we may be learned or ignorant, we may be rich or poor, we may
+be high or low, we may be barbarian or civilised, but we are all
+sinners. The leprosy runs through us all, according to the diagnosis of
+Christianity, and our Elisha deals with Naaman as he deals with the
+poorest footboy in Naaman's cavalcade who is afflicted with the same
+disease.
+
+Now that rubs against our self-importance; a great many of us would be
+quite willing to go to heaven, but we do not like to go in a common
+caravan. We want to have a compartment to ourselves, and to travel in a
+manner becoming our position. We are quite willing to be healed, but we
+would like to be healed with due deference. You are an educated man, a
+student; you do not like to take the same place as the most unlettered,
+and to feel that the common fact of sin puts you, in a very solemn
+respect, upon the level of these narrow foreheads and unlettered
+people. And so some of you turn away because Christianity, with such
+impartiality and persistency, insists upon the identity of the fact of
+sin in us all, and passes by the little diversities on which we plume
+ourselves, and which part us the one from the other. Dear brethren, I
+am sure that some of my audience have been kept away from the gospel by
+this humbling characteristic of it, that at the very beginning it
+insists on bringing us all into the one category; and I venture to ask
+you to ponder with yourselves this question, Is it not wise, is it not
+necessary that the physician should look only at the disease and think
+nothing of all the other facts of the patient's character or life?
+Surely, surely, it is a fact that we are transgressors, and surely it
+is a fact that if we be transgressors that is the most important thing
+about us--far more important than all these diversities of which I have
+been speaking. They are skin-deep, this is the central truth, that we
+have souls which ought to stand in a living relation of glad obedience
+to our Father in heaven; and which, alas! do stand in an attitude often
+of sulky alienation, often of indifference, and not seldom of
+rebellion. If so, then it is both wise and kind to deal with that
+solemn fact first. In wisdom and in mercy Christianity deals with all
+men as sinners, needing chiefly to be healed of that disease. 'The
+Scripture hath concluded all under sin'--shut up the whole race as in a
+great chamber, that so cleansing and forgiveness might reach them all.
+They are gathered together as patients in a hospital are gathered, that
+their sickness may be medicined and their wounds dressed.
+
+For this impartiality of the gospel, putting us all on one level, and
+its determination to deal with us all as sinners, is but the other side
+of, and the preparation for, that blessed universality of a sacrifice
+for all, and a gospel for the whole world. Do not quarrel with your
+physic because the Physician insists upon dealing with you as sick men.
+
+II. Then take another of the thoughts that come out of the incident
+before us. God's cure puts the messengers of the cure well away in the
+background.
+
+Naaman, heathen-like, wanted something sensuous for his confidence in
+the prophet's cure to lay hold upon. If the prophet would only have
+come out, and done like the sorcerers and magic-workers of whom he had
+had experience; if he would have come weaving mystical incantations,
+and calling upon the God whom he worshipped, but whom Naaman did not,
+and making passes with his hands over the leprous places--then there
+would have been something for his sense to build upon, and he would
+have been ready to believe in the prophet's power to cure. But that was
+the very thing which the prophet did not want him to believe in. Elisha
+desired to conceal himself, and to make God's power prominent. He
+wished to cure Naaman's soul of the leprosy of idolatry as well as to
+cure his body; and we see, in the sequel of the story, that the very
+simplicity of the means enjoined and the absence of any human agency,
+which at first staggered the sensuous nature and offended the pride of
+Naaman, at last led him to see and confess that there was no God in all
+the earth but in Israel. Therefore the prophet keeps in the background.
+His part is not to cure, but to bring God's cure. He is only a voice.
+He brings the sick man and God's prescription face to face, and there
+leaves him. Naaman would have liked to force him into the place of a
+magician, in whom miracle-working power resided. Elisha will only take
+the place of a herald who proclaims how God's power may be brought to
+heal. So men have always sought to turn the messengers of God's cure
+into miracle-workers. Making the ministers of God's word into priests
+who by external acts convey grace and forgiveness, is a superstition
+that has its roots deep in human nature. It is not that the priests
+have made themselves so much as that the people have made the priests.
+Here is an instance in a rude form of the tendency which has been at
+work in all generations, and has been the corruption of Christianity
+from the beginning, and is doing mischief every day--the tendency to
+place one's confidence in a man who is supposed to be, in some
+mysterious manner, the bearer of a grace that will cure and cleanse.
+And the prophet's position in our story brings out very clearly the
+position which all Christian ministers hold. They are nothing but
+heralds, their personality disappears, they are merely a voice. All
+that they have to do is to bring men into contact with God's own word
+of command and promise, and then to vanish.
+
+Christianity has no 'priests,' Christianity has no 'sacraments.'
+Christianity has no external rites which bring grace or help except in
+so far as by their aid the soul is brought into contact with the truth,
+and by meditation and faith is thus made capable of receiving more of
+Christ's Spirit. Our only commission is to bring to you God's message
+of how you may be healed. When we have said, 'Wash, and be clean,' as
+plainly, earnestly, and lovingly as we can, we have done all our
+appointed office. We are heralds, and nothing more. Our business is to
+preach, not to do rites, or minister sacraments. Our business is to
+preach, not to argue. We are neither priests nor professors, but
+preachers. We have to deliver the message given to us faithfully. We
+have to ring out the proclamation loudly. The virtue of a town crier is
+that he make people hear and understand. The virtue of a messenger is
+that he repeats precisely what he was told. And a Christian minister
+has to lift up his voice and not be afraid, to see to it that his
+speech be plain, and that it do not overlay the message with fripperies
+of ornament, or affectations, or personalities, and to plead earnestly
+and lovingly with men to come to the divine Healer. John Baptist's
+description of himself is true of them. With rare self-abnegation, he
+would only reply to the question, 'Who art thou?' with 'I am a voice.'
+His personality was nothing. His message was all. A musical string
+cannot be seen as it vibrates. So the man should be lost in his
+proclamation. We are heralds and nothing more, and the more we keep in
+the background and the less our hearers depend on us, the better. If
+you want priests who will 'call on the name of their God, and wave
+their hands over the place,' and convey grace and healing to you by
+anything that they do for or to you, you will have to go beyond the
+limits of New Testament Christianity to find them. So men quarrel with
+their medicine because their cure is purely a spiritual process,
+depending on spiritual forces, and sense cries out for sacred rites and
+persons to be the channels of God's healing.
+
+III. And now, lastly, God's cure wants nothing from you but to take it.
+
+Naaman's servants were quite right: 'My father! If the prophet had bid
+thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?' Yes! Of
+course he would, and the greater the better. Men will stand, as Indian
+fakirs do, with their arms above their heads until they stiffen there.
+They will perch themselves upon pillars, like Simeon Stylites, for
+years, till the birds build their nests in their hair: they will
+measure all the distance from Cape Comorin to Juggernaut's temple with
+their bodies along the dusty road. They will give the fruit of their
+body for the sin of their soul. They will wear hair shirts and scourge
+themselves. They will fast and deny themselves. They will build
+cathedrals and endow churches. They will do as many of you do, labour
+by fits and starts all through your lives at the endless task of making
+yourselves ready for heaven, and winning it by obedience and by
+righteousness. They will do all these things and do them gladly, rather
+than listen to the humbling message that says, 'You do not need to do
+anything--wash!' Is it your washing, or the water, that will clean you?
+Wash and be clean! Ah, my brother! Naaman's cleansing was only a test
+of his obedience, and a token that it was God who cleansed him. There
+was no power in Jordan's waters to take away the taint of leprosy. Our
+cleansing is in that blood of Jesus Christ that has the power to take
+away all sin, and to make the foulest amongst us pure and clean.
+
+But the two commandments--that of the symbol in my text, that of the
+reality in the Christian gospel--are alike in this respect, that both
+the one and the other are a confession that the man himself has no part
+in his own cleansing. And so Naamans, in all generations, who were
+eager to do some great thing, have stumbled, and turned away from that
+gospel which says, 'It is finished!' 'Not by works of righteousness
+which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us.' Dear brother, you
+can do nothing. You do not need to do anything. It is a hard pill for
+my pride to swallow, to be indebted to absolute mercy, which I have
+done nothing to bring, for all my hope, but it is a position that we
+have to take. Hard to take for all of us, very hard for you who have
+never looked in the face the solemn fact of your own sinfulness, and
+pondered upon the consequences of that; but most blessed if only you
+will open your eyes to see that the stern refusal to accept anything
+from us as working out our salvation is but the other side of the great
+truth that Christ's death is all-sufficient, and that in Him the
+foulest may be clean.
+
+                'Nothing in my hand I bring.'
+
+If you bring anything you cannot grasp the Cross. Do not try to eke out
+Christ's work with yours; do not build upon penitence, or feelings, or
+faith, or anything, but build only upon this: 'When I had nothing to
+pay He frankly forgave me all.' And build upon this: 'Christ alone has
+died for me'; and Christ alone is all-sufficient. 'Wash and be clean';
+accept and possess; believe and live!
+
+
+
+
+NAAMAN'S IMPERFECT FAITH
+
+'And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came
+and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no
+God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a
+blessing of thy servant. 16. But he said, As the Lord liveth, before
+whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it; but he
+refused. 17. And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be
+given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will
+henceforth offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other gods,
+but unto the Lord. 18. In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that
+when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he
+leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow
+down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this
+thing. 19. And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a
+little way. 20. But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said,
+Behold, my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at
+his hands that which he brought: but, as the Lord liveth, I will run
+after him, and take somewhat of him. 21. So Gehazi followed after
+Naaman: and when Naaman saw him running after him, he lighted down from
+the chariot to meet him, and said, Is all well? 22. And he said, All is
+well. My master hath sent me, saying, Behold, even now there be come to
+me from mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets: give
+them, I pray thee, a talent of silver, and two charges of garments. 23.
+And Naaman said, Be content, take two talents. And he urged him, and
+bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of garments
+and laid them upon two of his servants; and they bare them before him.
+24. And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand, and
+bestowed them in the house: and he let the men go, and they departed.
+25. But he went in, and stood before his master. And Elisha said unto
+him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi? And he said, Thy servant went no
+whither. 26. And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee, when
+the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to
+receive money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards,
+and sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants? 27. 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. 15-27.
+
+Like the Samaritan leper healed by Jesus, Naaman came back to give
+glory to God. Samaria was quite out of his road to Damascus, but
+benefit melted his heart, and the pride, which had been indignant that
+the prophet did not come out to him, faded before thankfulness, which
+impelled him to go to the prophet. God's gifts should humble, and
+gratitude is not afraid to stoop. Elisha would not see Naaman before,
+for he needed to be taught; but he gladly welcomes him into his
+presence now, for he has learned his lesson. Sometimes the best way to
+attract is to repel, and the true servant of God consults not his own
+dignity, but others' good, whichever he does.
+
+I. The first point is the offer and refusal of the gift. The benefited
+is liberal and the benefactor disinterested. Naaman was a convert to
+pure monotheism. His avowal is clear and full. But what a miserable
+conclusion he draws with that 'therefore'! He should have said,
+'Therefore I come to trust under the shadow of His wings.' But he is
+not ready to give himself, and, like some of the rest of us, thinks to
+compound by giving money. When the outward giving of goods is token of
+inward surrender of self, it is accepted. When it is a substitute for
+that, it is rejected. No doubt, too, Naaman thought that Elisha was,
+like the sorcerers of heathenism, very accessible to gifts; and if he
+had come to believe in Elisha's God, he had yet to learn the loving-
+kindness of the God in whom he had come to believe. He had to learn
+next that 'the gift of God' was not 'purchased with money' and the
+prophet's acceptance of his present would have dimmed Elisha's own
+character, and that of his God, in the newly opened eyes of Naaman.
+
+Elisha's answer begins with the solemn adjuration which we first hear
+from Elijah. In its use here, it not only declares the unalterable
+determination of Elisha, but reveals its grounds. To a man who feels
+ever the burning consciousness that he is in the presence of God, all
+earthly good dwindles into nothing. How should talents of silver and
+gold, and changes of raiment, have worth in eyes before which that
+awful, blessed vision flames? A candle shows black against the sun. If
+we walk all the day in the light of God's countenance, we shall not see
+much brightness to dazzle us in the pale and borrowed lights of earth.
+The vivid realisation of God in our daily lives is the true shield
+against the enticements of the world. Further, the consciousness of
+being God's servant, which is implied in the expression 'before whom I
+stand,' makes a man shrink from receiving wages from men. 'To his own
+Master he standeth or falleth,' and will be scrupulously careful that
+no taint of apparent self-seeking shall spoil his service, in the eyes
+of men or in the judgment of the 'great Taskmaster.' Elisha felt that
+the honour of his order, and, in some sense, of his God, in the eyes of
+this half-convert, depended on his own perfect and transparent
+disinterestedness. Therefore, although he made no scruple of taking the
+Shunemite's gifts, and probably lived on similar offerings, he
+steadfastly refused the enormous sum proffered by Naaman. 'The labourer
+is worthy of his hire,' but if accepting it is likely to make people
+think that he did his work for the sake of it, he must refuse it. A
+hireling is not a man who is paid for his work, but one who works for
+the sake of the pay. If once a professed servant of God falls under
+reasonable suspicion of doing that, his power for good is ended, as it
+should be.
+
+II. The next point to notice is the alloy in the gold, or the
+imperfection of Naaman's new convictions. He had been cured of his
+leprosy at once, but the cure of his soul had to be more gradual. It is
+unreasonable to expect clear sight, with the power of rightly
+estimating magnitudes, from a man seeing for the first time. But though
+Naaman's shortcomings are very natural and excusable, they are plainly
+shortcomings. Note the two forms which they take,--superstition and
+selfish compromise. What good would a couple of loads of soil be, and
+could he not have taken that from the roadside without leave? The
+connection between the two halves of verse 17 makes his object plain.
+He wished the earth 'for' he would not sacrifice but to Jehovah. That
+is, he meant to use it as the foundation of an altar, as if only some
+of the very ground on which Jehovah had manifested Himself was sacred
+enough for such a purpose. He did not, indeed, think of 'the Lord' as a
+local deity of Israel, as his ample confession of faith in verse 15
+proves; but neither had he reached the point of feeling that the Being
+worshipped makes the altar sacred. No wonder that he did not unlearn in
+an hour his whole way of thinking of religion! The reliance on
+externals is too natural to us all, even with all our training in a
+better faith, to allow of our wondering at or severely blaming him. A
+sackful of earth from Palestine has been supposed to make a whole
+graveyard a 'Campo Santo'; and, no doubt, there are many good people in
+England who have carried home bottles of Jordan water for christenings.
+Does not the very name of 'the Holy Land' witness to the survival of
+Naaman's sentimental error?
+
+The other tarnish on the clear mirror was of a graver kind. Notice that
+he does not ask Elisha's sanction to his intended compromise, but
+simply announces his intention, and hopes for forgiveness. It looks ill
+when a man, in the first fervour of adopting a new faith, is casting
+about for ways to reconcile it with the public profession of his old
+abandoned one. We should have thought better of Naaman's monotheism, if
+he had not coupled his avowal of it, where it was safe to be honest,
+with the announcement that he did not intend to stand by his avowal
+when it was risky. It would have required huge courage to have gone
+back to Damascus and denied Rimmon; and our censure must be lenient,
+but decided.
+
+Naaman was the first preacher of a doctrine of compromise, which has
+found eminent defenders and practisers, in our own and other times. To
+separate the official from the man, and to allow the one to profess in
+public a creed which the other disavows in private, is rank immorality,
+whoever does or advocates it. The motive in this case was, perhaps, not
+so much cowardice as selfish unwillingness to forfeit position and
+favour at court. He wants to keep all the good things he has got; and
+he tries to blind his conscience by representing the small compliance
+of bowing as almost forced on him by the grasp of the bowing king, who
+leaned on his hand. But was it necessary that he should be the king's
+favourite? A deeper faith would have said, 'Perish court favour and
+everything that hinders me from making known whose I am.' But Naaman is
+an early example of the family of 'Facing-both-ways,' and of trying to
+'make the best of both worlds.' But his sophistication of conscience
+will not do, and his own dissatisfaction with his excuse peeps out
+plainly in his petition that he may be forgiven. If his act needed
+forgiveness, it should not have been done, nor thus calmly announced.
+It is vain to ask forgiveness beforehand for known sin about to be
+committed.
+
+Elisha is not asked for his sanction, and he neither gives nor refuses
+it. He dismissed Naaman with cold dignity, in the ordinary conventional
+form of leave-taking. His silence indicated at least the absence of
+hearty approval, and probably he was silent to Naaman because, as he
+said about the Shunemite's trouble, the Lord had been silent to him,
+and he had no authoritative decision to give. Let us hope that Naaman's
+faith grew and stiffened before the time of trial came, and that he did
+not lie to God in the house of Rimmon. Let us take the warning that we
+are to publish on the housetops what we hear in the ear, and that, if
+in anything we should be punctiliously sincere, it is in the profession
+of our faith.
+
+III. The last point is Gehazi's avarice, and what he got by it. How
+differently the same sight affected the man who lived near God and the
+one who lived by sense! Elisha had no desires stirred by the wealth in
+Naaman's train. Gehazi's mouth watered after it. Regulate desires and
+you rule conduct. The true regulation of desires is found in communion
+with God. Gehazi had a sordid soul, like Judas; and, like the traitor
+Apostle, he was untouched by contact with goodness and unworldliness.
+Perhaps the parallel might be carried farther, and both were moved with
+coarse contempt for their master's silly indifference to earthly good.
+That feeling speaks in Gehazi's soliloquy. He evidently thought the
+prophet a fool for having let 'this Syrian' off so easily. He was fair
+game, and he had brought the wealth on purpose to leave it. Profanity
+speaks in uttering a solemn oath on such an occasion. The putting side
+by side of 'the Lord liveth' and 'I will run after him' would be
+ludicrous if it were not horrible. How much profanity may live close
+beside a prophet, and learn nothing from him but a holy name to sully
+in an oath!
+
+The after part of the story suggests that Naaman was out of sight of
+the city before he saw Gehazi coming after him. The cunning liar timed
+his arrival well. The courtesy of Naaman in lighting down from his
+chariot to receive the prophet's servant shows how real a change had
+been wrought upon him, even though there were imperfections in him.
+Gehazi's story is well hung together, and has plenty of 'local colour'
+to make it probable. Such glib ingenuity in lying augurs long practice
+in the art. If he had been content with a small fee, he needed only to
+have told the truth; but his story was required to put a fair face on
+the amount of his request. And in what an amiable light it sets Elisha!
+He would not take for himself, but he has nothing to give to the two
+imaginary scholars, who have come from some of the schools of the
+prophets in the hill-country of Ephraim, thirsting for instruction. How
+sweet the picture, and what a hard heart that could refuse the request!
+Truly said Paul, 'The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.'
+Any sin may come from it, and be done to gratify it. 'Honestly if you
+can, but get it,' was Gehazi's principle, as it is that of many a man
+in the Christian Churches of this day. Greed of gain is a sin that
+seldom keeps house alone. Naaman no doubt was glad to give, both
+because he was grateful, and because, like most people in high
+positions, he was galled by the sense of obligation to a man beneath
+him in rank. So back went Gehazi, with the two Syrian slaves carrying
+his baggage for him, and he chuckling at his lucky stroke, and
+pleasantly imagining how to spend his wealth.
+
+'The tower' in verse 24 is more correctly 'the hill,' and it was
+probably there where the little group would come in sight of Elisha's
+house. So Gehazi gets rid of the porters before they could be seen or
+speak to any one, and manages his load for a little way himself,
+carefully hides it in the house, and, seeing the men safely off,
+appears obsequious and innocent before Elisha. The prophet's gift of
+supernatural knowledge was intermittent, as witness his ignorance of
+the Shunemite's sorrow; but Gehazi must have known its occasional
+action, and we can fancy that his heart sank at the ominous question,
+so curt in the original, and conveying so clearly the prophet's
+knowledge that he had been away from the house: 'Whence, Gehazi?' One
+lie needs another to cover it, and every sin is likely to beget a
+successor. So, with some tremor, but without hesitation, he tries to
+hide his tracks. Did not Elisha's eye pierce the wretched hypocrite as
+with a dart? and did not his voice ring like a judgment trumpet, as he
+confounded the silent sinner with the conviction that the prophet
+himself had been at the spot, though his body had remained in the
+house? So, at last, will men be reduced to stony dumbness, when they
+discover that an Eye which can see deeper than Elisha's has been gazing
+on all their secret sins. The question, 'Is this a time to receive?'
+etc., suggests the special reasons, in Naaman's new faith, for
+conspicuous disregard of wealth, in order that he might thereby learn
+the free love of Elisha's God and of Jehovah's servant, both of which
+had been tarnished by Gehazi's ill-omened greed. The long enumeration
+following on 'garments' includes, no doubt, the things that Gehazi had
+solaced his return with the thought of buying, and so adds another
+proof that his heart was turned inside out before the prophet.
+
+His punishment is severe; but his sin was great. The leprosy was a
+fitting punishment, both because it had been Naaman's, from which
+obedient reliance on God had set him free, and because of its
+symbolical meaning, as the type of sin. Gehazi got his coveted money,
+but he got something else along with it, which he did not bargain for,
+and which took all the sweetness out of it. That is always the case.
+'Ill-gotten gear never prospers'; and, if a man has set his heart on
+worldly good, he may succeed in amassing a fortune, but the leprosy
+will cleave to him, and his soul will be all crusted and foul with that
+living death. How many successful men, perhaps high in reputation in
+the Church as in the world, would stand 'lepers as white as snow,' if
+we had God's eyes to see them with!
+
+
+
+
+SIGHT AND BLINDNESS
+
+'Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with
+his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. 9. And
+the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that them
+pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down. 10. And
+the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and
+warned him of, and saved himself there, not once nor twice. 11.
+Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this
+thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not shew
+me which of us is for the king of Israel? 12. And one of his servants
+said, None, my Lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel,
+telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy
+bedchamber. 13. And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send
+and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.
+14. Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host:
+and they came by night, and compassed the city about. 15. And when the
+servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an
+host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant
+said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? 16. And he answered,
+Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with
+them. 17. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his
+eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man;
+and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots
+of fire round about Elisha. 18. And when they came down to him, Elisha
+prayed unto the Lord, and said, Smite this people, I pray Thee, with
+blindness. And He smote them with blindness according to the word of
+Elisha.'--2 KINGS vi 8-18.
+
+
+The revelation of the angel guard around Elisha is the important part
+of this incident, but the preliminaries to it may yield some
+instruction. The first point to be noted is the friendly relations
+between the king and the prophet. The king was probably Joram, who had
+given up Baal worship, though still retaining the calves at Bethel and
+Dan (2 Kings iii 2). The whole tone of things is changed from the
+stormy days of Elijah. The prophet is frequently an inhabitant of the
+capital, and a trusted counsellor. No doubt much of this improvement
+was owing to Elijah's undaunted denunciation, but much, too, was due to
+Elisha's gentle persuasion. We are often tempted to do injustice to the
+sterner predecessors when we see how the gentler ways of their
+followers seem to accomplish more than theirs did. Unless winter storms
+had come first, spring sunshine would draw forth few flowers. All
+honour to the heroes who begin the fight, and do not see the victory.
+
+The Syrian king's way of warfare was not by a regular continued
+invasion, but by dashes across the border on undefended places; and
+time after time he found himself out in his calculations, and troops
+enough to beat him off massed where he meant to strike. No wonder that
+he suspected treachery. The prompt answer of his servants implies that
+Elisha's intervention was well known by them, and measures the
+reputation in which he stood. Let no one suppose that thwarting Syria
+was an unworthy use of a supernatural gift. The preservation of Israel
+and the revelation of God were worthy ends, and all that is accessory
+to a worthy end is worthy. It is foolish to call anything a trifle
+which serves a great purpose.
+
+Joram had learned to obey the prophet, and his people and their enemies
+had learned that Elisha was a prophet. That was much. He had no great
+revelations of the deep things of God to give to his generation or to
+posterity, but he gave directions as to practical life which bore on
+the wellbeing of the state; and that office was not less divinely
+conferred. It is a good thing when God's servants are not afraid to
+make their voices heard in politics, and a safeguard for a nation when
+their counsels are taken. The quiet prophet was more to Israel than an
+army.
+
+The 'great host' sent to capture Elisha shows the terror which he had
+inspired, and the importance attached to getting possession of him. It
+is, too, an odd instance of the inconsistency of godless men, in that
+it never occurs to the Syrian king that Elisha, who knew all his
+schemes, might know this one too, or that horses and chariots were of
+little use against a man who had Heaven to back him. Dothan lay on an
+isolated hill in a wide plain, and could easily be surrounded. A night-
+march offered the chance of a surprise, which seems to have been
+prevented by the unusually early rising of Elisha's servant, the young
+successor of Gehazi. Apparently he had gone out of the little city
+before he discovered the besiegers, and then rushed back in terror.
+Note the strongly contrasted pictures of the lad and his master,--the
+one representing the despair of sense, the other the confidence of
+faith. The lad's passionate exclamation was most natural, and fear
+darkening to bewildered helplessness is reasonable to men who only see
+the material and visible dangers and enemies that beset every life. The
+wonder is, not that we should sometimes be afraid, but that we should
+ever be free from fear, if we look only at visible facts. Worse foes
+ring us round than those whose armour glittered in the morning sunshine
+at Dothan, and we are as helpless to cope with them as that frightened
+youth was. Any man who calmly reflects on the possibilities and
+certainties of his life will find abundant reason for a sinking heart.
+So much that is dreadful and sad may come, and so much must come, that
+the boldest may well shrink, and the most resourceful cry 'Alas! how
+shall we do?' It is not courage, but blindness, which enables godless
+men to front life so unconcernedly.
+
+How nobly the calmness of Elisha shows beside the lad's alarm! Probably
+both were now outside the city, as the immediately following verse
+speaks of the mountain as the scene. If so, Elisha had gone forth to
+meet the enemy, and that must have brought fresh terror to his servant.
+The quiet 'Fear not!' was of little use without the assurance of the
+next clause; for there is no more idle expenditure of breath than in
+telling a man not to be afraid, and doing nothing to remove the grounds
+of his fear. That is all that the world can do to comfort or hearten.
+'Fear not?' the youth might well have said. 'It is all very easy to say
+that; but look there! How can I help being afraid?' There is only one
+way to help it, and that is to believe that 'they that be with us are
+more than they that be with them.' The true and only conqueror of
+reasonable fear is still more reasonable trust. The two parts played by
+the servant and the prophet are united in the man who cleaves to Jesus
+Christ as his defence. He would not cling so close to Him but for the
+fear that tightens his grip. He would tremble far more but for that
+grip. He who says in his heart, 'What time I am afraid, I will trust in
+Thee,' will presently get to saying, 'I will trust, and not be afraid.'
+
+Note, further, the sight seen by opened eyes. Elisha did not pray that
+the heavenly guards might come; for they were there already. Nor does
+it appear that he saw them; for he did not need that heightened
+condition of spiritual perception which appears to be meant by the
+opening of the eyes. And what a sight the trembling young man saw!
+Where he had seen only barren rock or sparse vegetation, he saw that
+same fiery host that had attended Elijah in his translation, now
+enclosing the unarmed prophet and himself within a flaming ring. The
+manifestation, not the presence, of the angel guards was the miracle.
+It was a momentary unveiling of what always was, and would be after the
+curtain was drawn again. I suppose that no reverent reader of Scripture
+can doubt the existence of angelic beings, or their office to 'minister
+to the heirs of salvation.' To us, indeed, who know Him who is the
+'Head of all principalities and powers,' the doctrine of angelic
+ministration is of less importance than that of Christ's divine help;
+but the latter truth does not supersede the former, though its
+brightness throws the other, about which we know so much less, into
+comparative shadow. But we may still learn from this transient
+disclosure of 'the things that are,' the permanent truth of the ever-
+active presence of divinely sent helps and guards, with all who trust
+in Him.
+
+This manifestation has several features of resemblance to that given to
+Jacob, in his most defenceless hour, when he saw beside his unprotected
+camp of women and children 'God's host,' and, in a rapture of thankful
+wonder, named the place 'Mahanaim,'--'Two Camps.' The sight teaches us
+that God's messengers are ever near, and then most near when needed
+most. It tells us, too, that they come in the form needed. They are
+warriors when we are ringed about by foes, counsellors when we are
+perplexed, comforters when we mourn. Their shapes are as varied as our
+needs, and ever correspond to 'the present distress.' They come in
+power sufficient to conquer. There was force enough circling the
+prophet to have annihilated all the Syrians. True, they did not draw
+their celestial swords, but they were there, and their presence was
+enough for the triumphant faith of the guarded men. What living thing
+could come through that wall of fire?
+
+Our eyes are blinded and we need to have them cleared, if not in the
+same manner as this lad's, yet in an analogous way. We look so
+constantly at the things seen that we have no sight for the unseen.
+Worldliness, sin, unbelief, sense and its trifles, time and its
+transitoriness, blind the eyes of our mind; and we need those of sense
+to be closed, that these may open. The truest vision is the vision of
+faith. It is certain, direct, and conclusive. The world says, 'Seeing
+is believing'; the gospel says, 'Believing is seeing.' If we would but
+live near to Jesus Christ, pray to Him to touch our blind eyeballs, and
+turn away from the dazzling unrealities which sense brings, we should
+find Him 'the master-light of all our seeing,' and be sure of the
+eternal, invisible things, with an assurance superior to that given by
+the keenest sight in the brightest sunshine. When we are blind to
+earth, we see earth glorified by angel presences, and fear and despair
+and helplessness and sorrow flee away from our tranquil hearts. If, on
+the other hand, we fix our gaze on earth and its trifles, there will
+generally be more to alarm than to encourage, and we shall do well to
+be afraid, if we do not see, as in such a case we shall certainly not
+see, the fiery wall around us, behind which God keeps His people safe.
+
+Note, finally, the blindness. Elisha's dealing with the advancing host
+of Syria can only be rightly estimated by looking beyond the limits of
+the text. His object was to carry the whole army into Samaria, that
+they might there be won by giving them bread to eat and water to drink,
+and so heaping coals of fire on their head. The prophet, who was in so
+many points a foreshadowing of the gospel type of excellence, was the
+first to show the right way to conquer. Nineteen centuries of so-called
+Christianity have not brought 'Christendom' to practise Elisha's recipe
+for finishing a war. It succeeded in his hands; for, after that feast
+and liberation of a captured army, 'the bands of Syria came no more
+into the land of Israel.' How could they, as long as the remembrance of
+that kindness lasted? Pity that the same sort of treatment were not
+tried to-day!
+
+The blindness which fell on the Syrians does not seem to have been
+total loss of sight,--for, if so, they could not have followed Elisha
+to Samaria, nearly fifteen miles off,--but rather an ocular affection
+which prevented them from recognising what they saw. It was a
+supernatural impediment in any case, however far it extended. God did
+'according to the word of Elisha,' a wonderful inversion of the
+ordinary formula. But that was because Elisha was doing according to
+the word of the Lord. The prayers which are 'according to His will' are
+the answered prayers.
+
+They who see not the angels, see nothing clearly. There is a mist over
+every eye that beholds only the things of time, which prevents it from
+seeing these as they are, and from recognising a prophet when he is
+before them. If we would rightly estimate the objects of sense, we must
+discern, shining through them, the far loftier and greater things of
+eternity. That flaming background is needed to supply a scale by which
+to measure the others. The flat plain of Lombardy is most beautiful
+when its flatness is seen girdled by the giant Alps, where lies the
+purity of the snow which feeds the rivers that fertilise the levels
+below.
+
+
+
+
+'IMPOSSIBLE,--ONLY I SAW IT'
+
+'Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord,
+Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour he sold for a
+shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of
+Samaria. 2. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man
+of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven,
+might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine
+eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. 3. And there were four leprous men at
+the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we
+here until we die? 4. If we say, We will enter into the city, then the
+famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still
+here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of
+the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us,
+we shall but die. 5. And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the
+camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of
+the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there. 6. For the Lord had
+made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise
+of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to
+another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the
+Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. 7. Wherefore
+they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their
+horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their
+life. 8. And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp,
+they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence
+silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and
+entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid
+it. 9. Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day
+of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning
+light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may
+go and tell the king's household. 10. So they came and called unto the
+porter of the city: and they told them, saying, We came to the camp of
+the Syrians, and, behold, there was no man there, neither voice of man,
+but horses tied, and asses tied, and the tents as they were. 11. And he
+called the porters; and they told it to the king's house within. 12.
+And the king arose in the night, and said unto his servants, I will now
+shew you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we be hungry;
+therefore are they gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the
+field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them
+alive, and get into the city  13. And one of his servants answered and
+said, Let some take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain,
+which, are left in the city, (behold, they are as all the multitude of
+Israel that are left in it: behold, I say, they are even as all the
+multitude of the Israelites that are consumed:) and let us send and
+see. 14. They took therefore two chariot horses; and the king sent
+after the host of the Syrians, saying, Go and see. 15. And they went
+after them unto Jordan: and, lo, all the way was full of garments and
+vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. And the
+messengers returned, and told the king. 16. And the people went out,
+and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. So a measure of fine flour was
+sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according
+to the word of the Lord.'--2 KINGS vii. 1-16.
+
+
+The keynote of this incident lies in the promise in the first verse.
+The whole story illustrates man's too frequent rejection of God's
+promise, and God's wonderful way of fulfilling it.
+
+I. We note first the promise which common-sense finds incredible. It
+came from Elisha when all seemed desperate. The wonderfully vivid
+narrative in the previous chapter tells a pitiful tale of women boiling
+their children, of unclean food worth more than its weight in silver,
+of a king worked up to a pitch of frenzy and murderous designs, and
+renouncing his allegiance to Jehovah. Such faith as he had was strained
+to the breaking point, and his messenger was sent to tell the prophet
+that the king would not 'wait for the Lord any longer.' That was the
+moment chosen to speak the promise. It came, as God's helps, both of
+promise and act, so often come, at the very nick of time, when faith is
+ready to fail and human aid is vain. Before we had learned our hopeless
+state, they would come too soon for our good; after faith had wholly
+parted from its moorings, they would come too late.
+
+Note the precision and confidence of the promise. The hour of the
+fulfilment, and the price of flour and the cheaper barley are stated.
+Man's promises are vague; God's are specific. Mark, too, the entire
+silence of the promise as to the mode of its fulfilment. Probably
+Elisha knew as little as any one, how it was going to be accomplished.
+The particularity and vagueness combined are remarkable. A hint as to
+how the thing was to be done would have made the belief in the fact so
+much easier. Yes, and just because it would have smoothed the road for
+worthless belief, it was not given, but the apparently impossible
+promise was left in nakedness, for any one who needed sense to animate
+his faith, to scoff at. Is not that emphatic assertion of the fact, and
+emphatic silence as to the 'how,' a frequent characteristic of God's
+promises? If ever we are kept in the dark as to the latter, it is for
+our good, and for the encouragement of our growth in utter dependence
+and perfect trust. It is not well for the trusting soul to ask too
+curiously about methods intervening between the promise in the present
+and its accomplishment in the future. It is better for peace and the
+simplicity of our trust, that we should be content to cling to the
+faithful word, and to 'believe... that it shall be even as it was told'
+us, without troubling ourselves about His way of effecting His
+purposes. Passengers are not admitted to the engine-room, nor allowed
+on the bridge. Let them leave all the working of the ship to the
+captain.
+
+II. The noble who blurted out his incredulity had a great deal to say
+for himself from the common-sense and worldly point of view. But he
+need not have sneered, in the same breath, at old miracles and new. His
+sarcasm about 'windows in heaven' refers to the story of the flood; and
+perhaps there is a hint of allusion to the manna. He neither believed
+these ancient deeds, nor the promise for to-morrow. Why not? Simply
+because he--wise as he thought himself--could not see any way of
+bringing it about. There are many of us yet who have the same modest
+opinion of our own acuteness, and go on the supposition that what we do
+not see is invisible, and what we cannot do, or imagine done, is
+impossible. Why should not the Lord 'make windows in heaven' if He
+please? Or, how does the pert objector know that that is the only way
+of fulfilling the promise? He will be taught that he has not quite
+exhausted all the possibilities open to Omnipotence, and that something
+much simpler than windows in heaven can do what is wanted. Unbelief
+which rejects God's plain promises because it does not see how they can
+be fulfilled is common enough still, and is as unreasonable as it is
+impertinent. Elisha was as ignorant as this nobleman was, of the means,
+but his faith fixed its eyes on the faithful word, and trusted, while
+sense, self-conceit, and worldliness, a mole pretending to have an
+eagle's eye, declared that to be impossible which it could not see the
+way to bring about, and thereby exposed only its own blind arrogance.
+
+III. Elisha's answer (v. 2) sounds like Elijah. The utmost gentleness
+is stirred to pronounce condemnation on self-confident unbelief, and a
+gentler gentleness than Elisha's, even Christ's, shrinks not from
+executing the sentence. Is not the sentence on this scoffing lord the
+very sentence pronounced ever on unbelief? In his case, it was
+fulfilled by the crowd that pressed, in their ravenous hunger, through
+the gate, and trod him down; but in ordinary cases, in our days, the
+natural operation of unbelief is to shut men out from the fruition, of
+which faith is the necessary and only condition. It is no avenging and
+arbitrarily imposed exclusion, but the necessary result of self-made
+disqualification, which brings on the unbeliever the doom, 'Thou shalt
+not eat thereof.' The blessings of the religious life on earth, and the
+glories of its perfection in heaven, are only enjoyable through faith.
+These are not so plainly visible to the unbelieving heart as the scene
+at the gate was to the nobleman; but, in some measure, even those who
+do not possess them do, in some lucid moments, see their worth. It is
+one sad part of the sad lives of godless men that they have their
+seasons of calm weather, when, in the clearer atmosphere, they catch
+glimpses of their true good, but that they yet do not behold it long
+and close enough to be smitten with the desire to possess it; and so
+the sight remains inoperative, or adds to their condemnation. Not to
+taste is the sadder fate, because there has been sight. To have eyes
+opened at last to our own folly, and to see the rich provision of God's
+table, when it is too late, will be a chief pang of future
+retribution,--as it sometimes is of present god-lessness.
+
+IV. Passing over for the present the account of the discovery by the
+four lepers, we may next note God's way of fulfilling His promise. A
+panic would spread fast in an undisciplined army, and history supplies
+examples of the swift change into a mob under the influence of
+groundless terror. There is nothing wonderful in the helter-skelter
+rush for the Jordan, or in the road being littered with abandoned
+baggage. The divine intervention produced the impression which
+naturally brought the flight about, and the coincidence of the prophecy
+and the panic which fulfilled it stamp both as divinely originated. But
+if we looked on events as devoutly, and saw into their true character
+as deeply as the author of the Books of Kings does, we should see that
+many a similar coincidence, which we trace no farther than to men or
+circumstances, was due to the same divine cause which made the Syrians
+to hear 'the noise of a great host.' Track the river of life to its
+source, and you come to God.
+
+'The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth.' Imaginary terrors are apt to
+beset those who have no trust in God. If we fear Him, we need have no
+other fear; but if we have not Him for our anchorage, we shall be
+driven by gusts of passion and terror. The unseen possibilities of
+attack and defeat may well terrify a man who has not the unseen God to
+keep him calm.
+
+Windows in heaven, then, were not needed, and the arrogance which said
+'Impossible!' had not measured all the resources of God. A very wise
+scientist here in England proved that the Atlantic could not be crossed
+by a steamer, and the first steamer that did cross took out copies of
+his book. How foolish men's demonstrations of impossibility look beside
+God's deliverances! We have not gone through all the chambers of His
+storehouse, and 'His ways are far above, out of our sight.' Let us hold
+fast by the faith that His arm is strong to do whatever His lips are
+gracious to engage, nor let our inability to see where the river gets
+through the mountains ever make us doubt that it will reach the sunlit
+ocean.
+
+V. We may throw together the remaining parts of the incident, as
+showing how the fulfilled promise was received. These four lepers had
+heard nothing of it, when despair made them venturesome. How reckless
+they were, and how they harp on the one gloomy word 'die'! The thought
+was familiar to them, and yet, lepers though they were, life was sweet,
+and a chance of prolonging it, even as slaves, was worth trying. They
+chose twilight, that they might be unobserved. We can see them creeping
+cautiously, with beating hearts, towards the camp, expecting every
+moment to be challenged, and possibly slain. How their caution would
+diminish and their wonder grow, as they passed from end to end, and
+found no one! There stood the horses and asses, left behind lest their
+footfalls should betray the flight, and every tent empty of men and
+full of spoil. The lepers seem to have gone right through the camp
+before they ventured to begin plundering; for the 'uttermost part' in
+verse 5 and that in verse 8 are naturally understood of its opposite
+extremities. Then, secure against surprise, they eat and drink as
+ravenously as men who had been starving so long would do. Twilight had
+deepened into darkness before hunger and greed were satisfied. Not till
+then did they awake to their duty; and even when they bethink
+themselves, it is fear of punishment, not care for a city full of
+hungry men, that moves them. But their tardy awaking to duty is couched
+in words which carry a great truth, especially to all who have tasted
+the Bread of Life. It is 'not well' to 'hold our peace' in 'a day of
+good tidings.' If we have good news, especially _the_ good news,
+its possession obliges us to impart it. If we have tasted the
+graciousness of the Lord, we are bound to tell of the stores we have
+found. 'He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him.' 'Of how
+much sorer punishment...shall he be thought worthy,' who keeps to
+himself the food of the world?
+
+Lepers were strange messengers of good, but the message graces the
+bringer, and they who tell good tidings are sure of a welcome. God does
+not choose great men for the heralds of His mercy, but the
+qualification is personal experience. These four could only say, 'We
+have seen and tasted,' but that was enough. The king's caution was very
+natural, and would have been quite blameless, if God's promise had not
+been spoken the day before. But that made the slowness to believe a
+sin. Feeling one's way over untried ice is prudent; but if we have
+previously been told that it will bear, it proves our distrust of him
+who told us. The despatch of the chariots to make a reconnaissance was
+needless trouble. But men are always apt to think that faith is but a
+shaky ground of certitude unless it be backed up by sense. When God
+gives us His word to trust to, we are wisest if we trust to it alone,
+and we may save ourselves the trouble of sending out scouts to see if
+it is really beginning to be fulfilled. Elisha had no need to wait the
+report of the charioteers before he believed in the fulfilment of the
+promise, which others had found incredible when spoken, and too good to
+be true even when fulfilled. Let us trust God, whether sense can attest
+the incipient accomplishment of His words or no.
+
+
+
+
+SILENT CHRISTIANS
+
+'Then they said one to another, We do not well; this day is a day of
+good tidings, and we hold our peace; if we tarry till the morning
+light, some mischief will come upon us; now therefore come, that we may
+go and tell the king's household.'--2 KINGS vii. 9.
+
+
+The city of Samaria was closely besieged, and suffering all the horrors
+of famine. Women were boiling and eating their children, and the most
+revolting garbage was worth its weight in silver. Four starving lepers,
+sitting by the gate, plucked up courage from the extremity of their
+distress, and looking in each other's bloodshot eyes, whispered one to
+another, with their hoarse voices: 'If we say we will enter into the
+city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we
+sit still here we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto
+the host of the Syrians; if they save us alive we shall live; and if
+they kill us we shall but die.' So in the twilight they stole away. As
+they come near the camp there is a strange silence; no guards, no stir.
+They creep to the first tent and find it empty; and then another, and
+another, and another, till at last it admits of no doubt that certainly
+the enemy has gone, leaving all his baggage behind him, So for awhile
+they feast and plunder--small blame to them! And then conscience wakes,
+and the same thought occurs to each of them: 'This is not patriotic;
+this is scarcely human; it is a shame for us to be sitting here gorging
+ourselves whilst a city is starving within a stone's-throw.' So they
+say one to another in the words of my text.
+
+Now these men's consciousness of the obligation imposed upon them by
+the knowledge of glad news, their self-reproach for their silence,
+their conviction that retribution would fall on them if it continued,
+and their resolve therefore to clear themselves, may all be transferred
+to higher regions, and may fairly illustrate Christian responsibilities
+and duties.
+
+I wish to say one or two very homely, plain things about Christian
+men's obligation to speech, and the sin of their silence. My remarks
+will have no special reference to any particular forms of Christian
+activity, but if I succeed in impressing on any a deeper sense of duty
+in reference to declaring the Gospel than they possess, then all forms
+of it will be prosecuted with greater vigour and consecration.
+
+I. I wish first to dwell for a moment on that--I was going to use a
+plain word and say--_hideous_; I will substitute a milder term,
+and say--_remarkable_, fact of Christian silence.
+
+I take this congregation as a fair average representative of the
+ordinary habitudes of professing Christians of this generation. How
+many men and women there are sitting in these pews, who, if I asked
+them the question, would say that they were Christians? and what
+proportion of these, if I asked them the further question, 'Did you
+ever tell anybody anything about Jesus Christ?' would say, 'No, never!'
+I know this, that in regard to all the recognised and associated forms
+of Christian work which cluster round a Christian congregation, it is
+the same handful of people that do them all. It is just like the bits
+of glass in a kaleidoscope, there are not many of them though you can
+shake them up into a great number of patterns, but they are always the
+very same bits. So I could go through pew after pew, if it would not be
+very personal, and find men and women, one after another--rows of them
+--that, so far as any of the united work of a church goes, are
+absolutely idle. They are worthy kind of people, too, with some real
+religion in them; but yet, partly from shyness, partly from indolence,
+partly because (as they think) they have so much else to do, and for a
+number of other reasons that I do not need to dwell upon, they fall
+into the great army of idlers, and are just so much dead weight and
+surplusage, as far as the work of the Church is concerned.
+
+Now I do not mean to say that, because professing Christian people do
+not work in any recognised forms of Christian service which are
+attached to a congregation, therefore they are not doing anything. God
+forbid! There are many of you, for instance, mothers of families, whose
+best service is to speak about Jesus Christ to your children, and to
+live according as you speak, and that is work enough for you. There are
+many more of us, who, for various legitimate reasons, are precluded
+from taking part in organised forms of Christian service. Do not so
+fatally misunderstand me as to suppose that I am merely beating a drum
+to get recruits for societies. What I want to impress upon every
+Christian person listening to me now is simply this, the anomaly of the
+fact, if it be a fact, that you are a _dumb_ Christian. You can
+all speak, if you will; you all have people with whom your speech is
+weighty and powerful. There are doors open before each of you. Ask
+yourselves, have you gone in at the open doors? or is it true about you
+that you have never felt the obligation to make your Master known to
+others, or, at all events, have never felt it so strongly that it
+compelled you to obey? The strange fact of Christian silence is one
+that I emphasise to begin with.
+
+II. Let me say a word next about the sin of this silence.
+
+These four poor lepers had not had much kindness dealt out to them in
+their lives, and they might have been pardoned if in their moment of
+joy they had remained in the isolation to which they had been condemned
+by reason of their disease. But they think to themselves of the hollow
+eyes in Samaria there, and the hideous meals, that might stay hunger
+but brought no nourishment, and of the king with sackcloth beneath his
+royal robes, and, forgetting everything but their abundance and these
+people's empty stomachs, they say, '_Not thus_ must we do,' as the
+Hebrew might be translated, 'this is a day of good tidings, and we hold
+our peace; and that is a sin. And if we continue dumb, then before
+morning some kind of punishment will come down upon us.'
+
+Now, let me put what I have to say on this matter into two sentences.
+
+First of all, I say that such silence is inhuman. You would all
+recognise that in the case of an actual, literal, instead of a
+metaphorical, famine. What would you say about a man who contented
+himself with sitting in his own back room, where nobody could see his
+abundance, and feasting to the full, whilst his fellow-citizens were
+dying of starvation? Why! you would say he was a brute. And if
+Christian people believed as thoroughly that men and women without 'the
+Bread of God which comes down from Heaven' were starving and dying of
+hunger, as they believe that men without literal bread must die, there
+would not be so many dumb ones amongst them; and they would feel more
+distinctly than any of us feel now, the responsibility that is laid
+upon them, and the inhumanity of the sin.
+
+Dear brethren! God has made this strange brotherhood of humanity in
+which we live, all intertwined and intertangled together, mainly in
+order that there may be scope for brotherly impartation to the needy,
+of the gifts that each possesses. And He has given to each of us
+something or other which, by the very terms of the gift and the purpose
+of the bestowment, we are bound to impart to others. The meaning of our
+being born into the brotherhood of humanity is that God's grace, in
+some shape or other, may fructify through us to all; and I say that the
+man who possesses any kind of gift, and, especially, God's highest
+gifts of wisdom and of knowledge, and most of all, the highest gift of
+spiritual knowledge and moral and religious truth, and keeps them to
+himself, in his idleness is sinfully active, and in his selfishness is
+inhuman and cruel. The very constitution of humanity says to us that
+'we do not well,' if in the 'day of good tidings' of any sort 'we hold
+our peace.' The possession of mere physical or abstract truth does not
+turn its possessors into its apostles, but the possession of moral and
+spiritual truth does. We are, every one of us, responsible for all the
+eyes which we could have opened and which are still dark, and for every
+soul that gropes in ignorance, if we possess something that would
+enlighten its darkness.
+
+But then, further, let me say that this sin of silence is in sheer
+contradiction of every principle of Christianity. Why has God given you
+His grace, do you suppose? For what purpose comes it that you are
+Christians? Were you converted that you might go by yourselves into a
+solitary heaven, do you think? Are you important enough to be an
+ultimate end of God's mercy? Or are you indeed an end, but only that in
+your turn you might be a means of transmitting? Does the electric
+influence terminate when it reaches you, or is it turned on to you that
+from you it may be passed to others? The very purpose of the existence
+of a Christian Church is counterworked and thwarted by dumb Christians.
+We Nonconformists can talk abundantly when ecclesiastical assumptions
+have to be fought against, about the priesthood of all believers. Very
+well, if that principle is a true one--and it _is_ a true one--it
+has other applications than simply controversial, and is meant for
+other uses than simply that you should brandish it in the face of
+sacerdotal claims and priest-ridden churches. 'Ye are all priests,'
+that is to say, the meaning of the existence of a Christian Church is
+to raise up a cloud of witnesses, and make every lip vocal with the
+name of Jesus Christ the Lord. And you, dear brethren, you, the idlers
+of a church and congregation, are doing all that you can to thwart the
+divine purpose, and to destroy the very meaning of the existence of the
+church to which you belong.
+
+And let me remind you, too, that such silence is clearly contrary to
+all Christian principle, inasmuch as one main purpose of the Gospel
+being given us is to shift our centre from ourselves, first to Christ,
+and then, if I may so say, to others. The very thing from which
+Christianity is meant to deliver us is the very thing that these idle,
+silent believers are indulging in, namely, the possession of God's
+gifts for their own profit and enjoyment. What is the use of your
+saying that you are Christian people if, in your very religion, you are
+practising the very vice that Jesus Christ has come to destroy?
+Selfishness is the opposite, the formal contradiction, of Christianity,
+and in the measure in which your religion is self-regarding, it is no
+religion at all. You are doing your best to counterwork the very main
+purpose of the Gospel upon yourselves, when in silence you possess, or
+fancy that you possess, the gift of His love.
+
+And then, still further, let me remind you that this absolutely un-
+Christian character of silence is manifested, if you consider that the
+end of the Gospel for each of us is to bring us into full and happy
+sympathy with Christ, and likeness to Him. And how is that purpose
+being effected in His professed 'followers,' if they know nothing of
+the experience of looking on the world with Christ's eyes, or of the
+thrill of pity caught from Him, and have no sympathy with, in the sense
+of any reflected experience of, the sense of obligation to help the
+helpless which nailed Him to the Cross? We say that we are followers of
+One who 'so loved the world' that He died for it; we say that we long
+to be transformed into His likeness, and yet we put away from ourselves
+the spirit that regards our brethren as He regarded us all; and never
+dream of copying, howsoever feebly in our lives and efforts, the
+pattern that was set before us in His death.
+
+O dear brethren! 'if a man see his brother have need, and shutteth up
+his bowels of compassion against him, how dwelleth the love of God in
+him?' And if a Christian looks upon a world without Christ, and has
+only a tepid sympathy and a faint realisation of the misery, and never
+does anything to lighten it by a grain, how can he pretend that he
+takes Jesus Christ for his Pattern and Example? Silence is manifestly a
+sin by reason of its inhumanity, and its contrariety to every principle
+of the Gospel.
+
+III. Now, still further, let me point you to the retribution on
+silence.
+
+These four men, no doubt, had some superstitious idea that mischief
+might come to them in the darkness. But they expressed a truth when
+they said, 'If we be silent, some evil'--or, as the word might be
+translated, 'some _punishment_ will find us.' I desire to lay this
+on your hearts, dear brethren, that like all other selfish things, the
+silence of the Christian does him harm instead of good.
+
+For instance, if you want to learn anything, set yourself to teach it.
+In trying to spread the name of Jesus Christ by your own personal
+effort, you will get a firmer hold of the truths that you attempt to
+impress upon others. I do not know any better cure for a great deal of
+unwholesome and superfluous speculation than to go into the slums and
+see what it is that tells there. That is a test of what is central and
+what is surface, in Christianity. I do not know any better discipline
+for a man whose religion is suffering from too much leisure and
+curiosity than to take a course of evangelistic work. He will find out
+then where the power is, and a great many cobwebs will be blown away.
+Be sure of this, that convictions unspoken, like plants grown in a
+cellar, will get very white in the stems, and will bear no fruit. Be
+sure of this, that a religion which is dumb will very soon tend to lose
+its possession of the truth, and that if you carry that great gift hid
+away in your heart it will be like locking up some singing-bird in a
+box. When you come to open it, the bird will be dead. There are, I have
+no doubt, many whom I am now addressing whose religion has all but, if
+not entirely, ebbed away from them, mainly because they have all their
+days been dumb Christians. That is one part of the punishment.
+
+And another part is that silence is avenged by the dying out of the
+sympathies which inspire speech. It is the punishment of the selfish
+man that he becomes more selfish. It is the punishment of the heart,
+which never expands in sympathy, that its walls shrivel and contract,
+until there is scarcely blood enough between them to be impelled
+through the veins. Feelings which it is joy and nobleness to possess
+are nurtured and strengthened by expression; and the silent Christian
+is punished by becoming at last utterly indifferent to the woes of the
+world and to the spread of the Gospel. I think I could lay my finger,
+if I dared, on some of my audience who have got perilously near to that
+point.
+
+And then again let me remind you that there is another form of the
+punishment, and that is the loss of all the blessed experience of the
+reaper's joy; and let me point you in a sentence to the final time of
+retribution. There shall stand in that last day, as Scripture teaches
+us, humble workers before the Throne who will say, 'Behold! I, and the
+children whom Thou hast given me.' And there will stand some before the
+Throne, solitary; and I wonder if they will not feel lonely when they
+go into heaven, and find not a soul there to look them in the eyes and
+say, 'Thou didst lead me to the Christ, and I am here to welcome thee.'
+'He that soweth and he that reapeth shall rejoice together.' Do you not
+think that then there will steal a shadow of shame across the spirit of
+the servant who stood idle in the market-place all the day with the
+wretched excuse, 'No man hath hired me,' when the Master had hired him
+beforehand, and given him such wages in advance?
+
+O dear brethren! the cure for silence is to keep near that Master, and
+to drink in His Spirit; and then, as I beseech you to do, think, think,
+think of your obligations in the light of the Cross until you can say,
+'Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints is this _grace
+given_,' not this burden imposed, 'that I, even I, should preach'
+the Name that is above every name. 'Open Thou my lips, and my mouth
+_shall_ shew forth Thy praise.'
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture
+by Alexander Maclaren
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***
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