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AN

EXPOSITOR'S NOTE-BOOK:

OR,

BRIEF ESS A YS

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SAMUEL COX, ' ' I
AUTHOR OF "the PRIVATE LETTERS OF ST. PAUL AND ST. JOHN,'
"THE QUEST OF THE CHIEF GOOD," AND
" THE RESURRECTION."

PHILADELPHIA :
SMITH, ENGLISH, AND CO.
710, ARCH STREET.
MDCCCLXXIII.

Puhlished in this country by special arrangements with Messrs.
Hodder and Stoughton, of London,

PREFACE.

IT has pleased God to grant me, for twenty years^
a more quiet and sequestered lot than that
which falls to most teachers and servants of the Word.
Those years, happily for me, have been spent mainly
in studying, translating, and expounding the Holy
Scriptures ; in forming an acquaintance with the large
and various library we commonly call the Bible.
¦" The Book ' is indeed ' the Book of books ' in more
senses than one. For not only does it include within
one pair of covers an immense number of books
written by men of the most diverse gifts and dis
similar conditions, during two thousand changeful
years; but these books, by virtue of the lofty themes
of which they treat, and of that Divine inspiration
which gives life to every page, invite and repay study
as none others do. Nor, I am fully persuaded —
though in saying this I pronounce my own condem
nation — is any man fully competent to expound any

PREFACE.

one of these books who has not, in some good mea
sure, mastered all. They are bound each to each by
the most subtle, unexpected, and far-reaching links
of connection. Joel, for instance, learned much that
he taught from Moses, who lived a thousand years
before him ; and the Apostle John, writing his Apoca
lypse nearly a thousand years after Joel's hand had
mouldered into dust, borrowed some of his most ex
pressive symbols from the gifted son of Pethuel : or, to
take an instance even more remarkable, and more un
suspected perhaps by the casual reader of the Bible,
the Gospels hardly record a single sentence or figure
of speech employed by John the Baptist, the germ of
which may not be found in the prophecy of Malachi
the Messenger. So that he who really ' searches ' the
Scriptures with fidelity and patience, whatever scep
tical prepossessions he may bring to the quest, is
more and more impressed with the sense of a vital
unity in them which can' only be accounted for by
the guiding and controlling inspiration of one and the
self-same Spirit ; while he who has risen by faithful
and patient study beyond the reach of doubt, although
he will rejoice in the largeness and goodness of the
land thrown open to his inquiring feet, is apt never
theless to be afflicted with a despair of ever possessing
himself of it, so large is it, so full of hidden wealth.
1 make no pretensions, therefore, to be a competent
expounder of any book, or even of any passage, of
Holy Writ. Indeed, I feel more incompetent than

PREFACE. V
ever now that I have, and perhaps because I have,
given many years and my best endeavours to the
study of the Bible, and have carefully examined
about half the books it contains. But in the course
of these more continuous studies I have now and then
lit on passages, mostly obscure or otherwise hard to
interpret, on which I saw, or thought I saw, a little
light. And on these passages I have written brief
expository essays, some of which are now collected
in this volume. Most of them have appeared in print
before ; and, as they were usually written for Maga
zines designed for the Christian public in general, and
not simply for men of culture and scholarship, they are
popular, and occasionally even hortatory, in their
tone. But most of them, too, even where they seem
to handle only simple themes, are sincere, attempts
to deal with difficulties or obscurities, or to shew
the worth and suggestiveness of passages which are
commonly overlooked : the Parable of the Sower, for
example, is not an exceptionally difficult scripture;
but I am not aware of any previous attempt to ex
plain the very real difficulty suggested by the words
in which our Lord gives his reason for speaking to
the multitude in parables. In fine, as throughout
these occasional papers, which have often been a
welcome relief to graver and more exhausting labour,
I have tried to render the Sacred Volume more clear
and attractive to those who cannot give it the serious
and continuous study it demands, I would fain hope

PREFACE.

that, in this collected form, they may find some
acceptance, and do a little good.
I need only add that the reader will be the more
likely to benefit by them if he will be at the pains
to read for himself the several Scriptures on which
they are based ; and that, wherever he finds any
Scripture cited in other words than those of our
Authorised Version, he may be sure that I have tried
to give the sense of the original Greek or Hebrew
more exactly.
Nottingham, October, 1872,

O N T E N T S.

CHAP. TAGE
I. THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR (Genesis iv. 7). - - I
II. THE SONG OF THE SWORD (Genesis iv. 23, 24). - - 19
III. Joseph's coat (Genesis xxxvii. 3). - - ¦ - 3'
IV. JOSEPH IN prison (Genesis xxxix. 20 ; and Psalm cv. 17). 40
V. divine ordinances of labour (Exodus xviii. 13-26). 52
VI. king bramble (Judges ix. 8-15). - 64
VII. THE golden mice AND EMRODS (i Samuel vi). - - 76
VIII. don't CRY OVER SPILT WATER (2 Samuel xiv. 14). - 91
IX. ONE HEART AND ONE STEP (i Chronicles xii. 33). 103
X. THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID (2 Samuel xxiii. 1-7) - 115
XI. LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD FOR TROUBLED
MEN (Psalm viii. 2) - - 131
XII. I WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE (Psalm xxxii. 8). 151
XIIL CHEERFULNESS (Proverbs xvii. 22). .... 161
XIV. THE MORAL OF CHANGE (Ecclesiastes vii. 14). - 171
XV. AN ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON (Isaiah xxi. I-IO). - 183
XVI. THE ORACLE OF DUMAH (Isaiall Xxi. II, I2). . 201
XVII. THE PARABLE OP THE SOWER (Matthew xiii. 3-23). - 213
XVIII. THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH (Mark iv. 26-28}. - - 249
XIX. THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM (Matthew vii. 3-5). - 266
XX.! ON GIVING HOLY THINGS TO DOGS (Matthew vii. 6). - 279
XXI. THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS (Luke vii. 4O-43). 293
XXII. THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST (Matthew viii. 23-27) - 314

viii INDEX.
CHAP. PAGE
XXin. ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENTS (Luke xiii. 1-5). - 326
XXIV. MALCHUS (Matthew xxvi. 51-56). - - 336
XXV. THE CROWN OF THORNS (John xix. 2). - - 349
XXVL SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING (John Xxi. 3). - 36 1
XXVII. THE PARTING BENEDICTION (Luke xxiv. 50-3). 373
XXVIII. GIVING AND TAKING (Acts XX. 35). . 388
XXIX. POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAl) BECAUSE OF THE
ANGELS (l Corinthians xi. 10). - 402
XXX. ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT (2 Cor. xi. 9). 419
XXXI. ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND (2 Timothy iv. II). - - - 439

AN
EXPOSITOR'S NOTE-BOOK.

I.-
W^t €vsnt!^£x at % ganr.
Genesis iv. 7.
THIS passage, confessedly a difficult one, consists of
three sentences or phrases which our Authorized Ver
sion renders thus: (i.) "If thou doest well, shalt thou not
be accepted?" (2.) "And if thou doest not weU, sin lieth
at the door." (3.) "And unto thee shall be his desire, and
thou shalt rule over him." In the first of these sentences
there is nothing to detain us. By common consent the
literal translation of the Hebrew is : " If thou doest well, is
there not a lifting up ?" i.e., a lifting up of Cain's fallen coun
tenance; and its sense is sufficiently given in our English
Bible. The difficulty is started by the third sentence, and
is only to be solved, I believe, by an amended translation
of the second. Throughout the verse Jehovah is repre
sented as remonstrating with angry jealous Cain ; and, in its
final sentence, Cain is assured or wamed, " Unto thee shall
be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." llHiose desire
is to be to Cain ? over whom is he to rule ? In this ques
tion lies the difiiculty of the passage. I

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

The answer to it which was commonly accepted in Eng
land half a century ago could surely have originated only in
"the most aristocratic church in Christendom." It held
that "the right of primogeniture" was taught in the sen
tence, and affirmed that it was Abel's desire which was to
be unto Cain, that it was Abel, the younger brother, over
whom Cain, the elder brother, was to rule. The answer is
utterly inadmissible; and that for two reasons. It makes
bad grammar, and it makes bad sense.
It makes bad grammar of the sentence. For a pronoun
should agree with, and point back to, an immediately ante
cedent noun. The pronouns "his" and "him" in the clos
ing phrase of the verse ought therefore to'refer to a noun in
the foregoing phrase. But we must count back seven com
plete sentences before, in verse 4, we light upon the name
of Abel. And to leap over the intervening nouns and
participles in this fashion is, to say the least of it, a very
curious feat of grammatical gymnastics.
The reading makes bad sense as well as bad grammar.
The right of primogeniture is, after all, a somewhat ques
tionable right.* But were it never so unquestionable, if it
be taught here, it is surely taught very much out of season
and in singularly extravagant terms. Following and con
firming the law of nature, Holy Scripture commonly speaks
of a young man's desire as toward his bride, not toward
his brother ; it commonly teaches, not that the elder is to
"mle" the younger son, but that both are to be in subjec-
* This so-called "right" is commonly based on the Old Testament
Scriptures. It is remarkable, therefore, that these very Scriptures, re
present the Almighty as contravening the right of primogeniture in
almost every conspicuous instance. Thus, for example, Abel, and even
Seth, are preferred before Cain, Isaac before Ishmael, Jacob before
Esau, Moses before Aaron, Abraham, Joseph, and David before their
elder brethren. That surely must be a somewhat dubious "law" to
which there are such constant and notable exceptions.

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

tion to their parents. The stoutest advocates of the right
of primogeniture might well hesitate to declare that the first-
bom was to rule over his juniors as a husband over his wife,
a father over his children, or even a chief over his clan.
Nor, even if this " right " were to be pushed and sanctioned
to its utmost verge, is this the place in which we should
look for a formal expression of it. Jehovah is pleading
with Cain against the murderous anger which was rising in
his breast and hurrying- him on to a ^deed most foul and
unnatural. And what can be more incongruous, what more
absurd, than to suppose this solemn merciful remonstrance
rising to its climax in an utterly irrelevant remark about the
law of primogeniture ?
Both on grammatical and critical grounds, therefore, we
must, I think, pronounce this reading of the passage to be
quite inadmissible. Driven from one untenable position,
certain expositors have taken up another. They have
adopted Lightfoofs interpretation, which does not so much
as touch the real difficulty of the case. Lightfoot proposed
to read for " sin lieth at the door," " a sin-offering lieth at ¦
thy door." It is a sufficient objection to this emendation
that, though the Hebrew word came to mean " sin-offering"
as well as " sin," yet as sin-offerings, in the technical sense,
were still two thousand years distant, it is not allowable to
introduce a technicality of the Mosaic ritual into the history
of the Adamic family. Moreover, the proposed emendation
throws no light where we most need light; it in no way
helps us to decide whose desire is to be unto Cain, over
whom it is that Cain is to rule.
We are therefore shut up to a third reading which is
sanctioned by most Hebrew scholars of modern times —
by Gesenius, Kalisch, Keil and Delitzsch, and Lange, with
many more. They say that the Hebrew word, which the
Authorized Version translates "lieth at," is the participial

4 THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.
form of a word which means " to lie down, to recline," and
is specially used of beasts of prey who crouch before they
spring ; that the participle in Hebrew, as in most other lan
guages, is often used substantively ; that it is used substan
tively here: and that therefore we ought to translate the
second sentence of the passage, " If thou d^oest not well, sin
is a lier in wait ; " or, better still, because in a single word,
"sin is a croucher" — "at the door." That is to say, the
Divine warning to Cain is, that Sin crouches before his
heart, like a wild beast lurking about a tent, waiting its
opportunity to spring in.
Taken thus, we get the missing antecedent for the pro
nouns of the third sentence, though in this also it will be
well to make one or two slight variations such as the He
brew permits. The two sentences then read : " If thou
doest not well, Sin is a croucher at the door ; and his desire is
against thee {i.e., the Croucher's desire), but thou shouldest
rule ouer him." With these emendations the passage yields
a clear grammatical order ; the pronouns " his " and " him "
point back to "the Croucher" of the foregoing phrase.
And the sense is as clear as the grammar. The Divine
remonstrance mounts to a true climax. Cain is wamed
that, while he is nursing his angry jealous thoughts. Sin, like
a ravening beast, as crafty as it is cruel, is crouching outside
tile door of his heart, only waiting for the door to be opened
by any touch of passion to spring in ; and he is admonished
to keep the door shut lest he be overcome of evil. He is
warned that the " desire " of the Sin, which looks so fair and
tempting to the eye stained and discoloured by passion, is
against him, that his only safety consists in subduing and
mling over it.*
"¦ It is impossible vnthout a disquisition on the Hebrew of this pas
sage, which would be out of place here, to show how strong and con
clusive are the arguments in favour of the reading given above. Here

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

Now taken thus, the passage contains a comparison and
a warning which we may do well to consider. It compares
Sin to a beast crouching at the door of the heart, watching
its opportunity to leap in. It warns us that the Croucher's
desire or lust is antagonistic to our welfare ; that, if we would
do well, we must subdue and rule over it.
I. The Comparison. There are two main features in it:
craft and cruelty.
(i.) Craft. The first thing it tells us of Sin is, that it is
"subde, fiiU of wiles and " all deceivableness." It is hke a
wUd beast, beautiful in outward seeming, lithe and graceful
in its motions ; its feet shod with velvet, its strength robed
in a coat of many colours. It is like a stealthy crouching
beast, lurking in ambush, stealing unheard and unseen from
thicket to thicket, or gliding softiy through the long tangled
grass, availing itself of every inequaUty of the ground, hid
ing behind every trunk or bush, approaching its victim hke
a fate — silent, invisible, unerring.
The simihtude is terribly trae, as we may see from the
story of the very first sin committed in the world, a sin
familiar to Cain's thoughts as to ours. The stealthy and
masked approaches of the beast of prey are not more crafty
than the arts by which Sin drew nigh to our first parents,
making every available circumstance subservient to its de
sign ; assuming a familiar and beautiful form, conferring on
the serpent the noble gift of human speech, pretending pro
bably that the serpent had won this gift by eating the for
bidden fiiiit ; attempting the woman first, as the weaker of
the two and the more susceptible ; for the man, adding to
all other temptations the force of his love for the woman,
I can only give such arguments as the English reader may foUow.
He may need to be reminded or assured that the argument from the
Hebrew is indefinitely stronger than that which can be kid before him.

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

who had already been overcome ; appealing at once to the
strength of appetite, the desire for wisdom, the lust for rule;
casting doubt on the inviolability of the command which
kept the way of the tree, hinting that perhaps God had not
uttered it, and that, if He had. He might not stand to it,
that it was a mere threat intended to hold them down, as
long as possible, from the divine power and knowledge and
blessedness of which they were capable. Like a croucher,
Sin drew near their door; and, when his wiles availed to
open it, sprang in, and vn'ought our woe as well as theirs.
They were beguiled from their simplicity. They were
brought into bondage of evil ; and we have still to pluck at
the bonds with feeble impatient hands.
As we study the record of Adam's sin, whether we take
the record as historical or parabolic, we may see how tme
the story is ; how sin continually repeats one and the same
deceit ; how we are conquered by the very wiles by which
he was overcome. Into the body, taken from the dust, we
are told that "God breathed ttie spirit of lives, and man
became a living soul." This phrase " the spirit of lives "
covers, as St. Paul held, three forms or modes of super-
sensuous existence : the understanding, which apprehends all
natural phenomena, the whole visible universe ; the reason,
which deals with the invisible and spiritual world ; and the
conscience, which is conversant with moral relations, which
pronounces this right and that wrong, which prompts to
duty and restrains from sin. These faculties indeed pertain
to man as man, and therefore we may fairly assume them
to have been inherent in " the living soul " of Adam. And
the assumption is confirmed by the fact that, even in Eden,
he was provided with a sphere for tiie use of these various
modes of activity, and availed himself of them. For the
use of his understanding there was the whole circle of
natural phenomena, the sun which ruled the day, the moon

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

which ruled the night, the beasts of the field, the fowl of the
air, the flowers and trees of the garden, to many, if not all,
of which he gave " names " which summed up their several
qualities ; " what he called them, that they were." For the
use of his reason there were the mysteries of his own nature,
the invisible laws by which the universe is governed, fellow
ship with angels, communion with God, converse with the
Eternal Word, " the Voice of the Lord," who walked with
him under the branches and over the fragrant sward of the
garden. For the use of his conscience there were the
duties he owed to his helpmeet, to all other his companions,
and to the Giver of every good and perfect gift.
So long, as these several faculties wrought in due subor
dination and harmony, the senses being subject to the
understanding, the understanding to reason, and the reason
to conscience, man continued " very good," God took plea
sure iii the work of his hands. It was by violating this
orderly subordination, by jarring its harmony into discord,
that man fell. There came to him an hour of trial, a crisis
in which his loyalty was put to the test. One tree, and
only one, was forbidden him, under penalty of death. But
its fruit is very fair; a mysterious fascination lurks in it,
perhaps also a mysterious power. As he looks upon it
strife and debate spring up in his " spirit of lives." Sense
says, "The fmit is at least pleasant to the eye, and probably
good for food." Understanding says, " It surely is a tree
to be desired to make one wise." Reason says, "Ah, but
the invisible threatenings of a Divine Command hang all
about it : you must not touch it if you would." Conscience
says, " To do God's will is always the highest wisdom, the
highest good : do not eat of it, lest you die." Reason and
conscience were the superior powers, and might have had
their way. But here the tempter stepped in with his " Ye
shall not surely die ; ye shall become as God." And thus

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

reinforced, sense and understanding usurped the superior
seat ; the divine order was violated ; and the violation of
-that order was death. For the death of the man, as distin
guished from the death of the body, is simply the subjection
of that which is highest in him to that which is lowest; it is
the triumph of sense over the spirit. Once suffer that fatal
usurpation, and the body becomes a prison in which the
spirit lies bound and tormented, a grave in which it tends
to corruption.
This is the story of the First Sin as it is told in the
Sacred Record. And even if we read that ancient Record
not as history, but as parable, not as a literal narrative of
fact, but as a dramatic expression of the general human
experience, — we must admit, we are bound by our very
theory to admit, that the story is an over-true story ; that
it reflects the common experience of man. As Adam fell,
so we all fall. As in him, so in us, the proper natural
order of the human faculties is broken up by the imperious
cravings of inordinate passion.
In our early innocent days we walk as in Eden. The
earth is very fair and beautiful ; all men are true, all
women gracious and pure. Youth scouts the lessons of
sage experience, and thinks no duty hard, no enterprise
impossible, no pleasure dangerous. It moves on, fiill of
delight and hope, as through the golden days of Paradise.
But only too soon there comes a day of trial, the crisis
which brings " the knowledge of good and evil." The im
portunate senses crave a gratification which can only be
had beyond the bounds of law. The understanding whispers
welcome flatteries of a good and wisdom beyond the cus
tomary reach. And though reason pleads the claims of
duty and the blessedness of obedience, though conscience
admonishes and threatens and brandishes her thongs, " Sin
has a thousand treacherous arts " by which to beguile them.

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR. 9
The imperious appetites have their way. The forbidden
fruit is plucked and eaten ; the fatal usurpation of the
baser over the higher nature is commenced. And now
eager youth, hot with shame, and seeking to hide itself from
the Voice of the Lord, finds itself an outcast frorn the Eden
of its prime. The fiery sword of violated avenging law
guards it from his approach. A curse has fallen and
darkened over the fair beautiful earth. The claims of
labour grow stem, exacting, rigorous. Duty grows hard.
All the brave enterprises, which once looked so near and
easy, fade to an inapproachable remoteness. And now we
can see the evil in men and women as well as the good,
and begin to suspect other evils than we see. The Garden
disappears or rises into the heaven of our dreams. All
that remains is a barren earth, bristling with thorns and
briars, which will yield us no sustenance except as we com
pel it by toil, a hard earth which is to be softened only by
the sweat of our brOw.
Is not this a tme story — a story in which we all have
played our parts, and still play them ? Is it not thus that
man still falls day by day ? The due order and subordina
tion of his nature are broken up. Conscience does not rule
the reason as it should, nor reason the understanding, nor
understaiiding the sensual appetites. The larger part of
men are the obvious slaves of sense. No doubt they do
in some sort cultivate the understanding. They seek to
acquaint themselves with their fellows aad the laws by
which they are governed, with the properties of matter, the
virtues and culture of plants, the habits of animals, and the
best mode of breeding and rearing them. But what is their
motive? Do they not, for the most part, study natural
phenomena for the gain they may have thereby? Except
only a few who are animated by a pure love of wisdom,
they do not so much as aim at raising and purifying the

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

thoughts of men. Understanding, given to rale, has sunk
into the mere slave and pander of sense, and is held in
value in proportion as it gratifies our craving desires and
appetites and lusts. , Even of the few who love wisdom for
its own sake, and hold physical appetites in rigorous sub
jection to the understanding, are there not some by whom
the higher claims of the reason are neglected or denied?
Are there not those who, while they study all natural
science, turn with an unscientific impatience and distmst
from that which is supernatural, from the truths and facts
of the world invisible and eternal? Nay, even of those
who are conversant with the invisible world, who study the
laws of thought and the tides of passion, who speculate on
the origin and the end of all things, on the abstract of truth
and the archetypes of existence, are there not some who
neglect the claims of conscience and fail in their duty to
God and man ?
Alas, the whole human world, from those in whom sense
rules over all, through those in whom the visible and
present exclude the invisible and eternal, up to those in
whom reason is exalted over conscience,— all have violated
the true order of their being, and come short of the glory
God meant them to achieve. On every stage occupied by
man, from the lowest to the loftiest, the inferior faculties
degrade the nobler ; and this mysterious humanity of ours,
which once reflected the very image of God, is like a lake
that holds a cahh gracious heaven in its bosom; no sooner
does any wind sweep over it than the unruly waves break the
fair reflected image into a thousand distortions, and all the
tumuh of earth succeeds to the grace and serenity of heaven.
Our own experience has made us familiar with the
genesis and progress of sin : we have fallen a thousand
times before the very craft, the very device, by which our
first parents were ensnared. The desires and lusts which

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

haunt the senses, and the understanding which holds by
sense, demand an excessive unlawful gratification. At first
reason and conscience withstand the claim. The repulse
only whets desire and makes the craving lust more vehe
ment. They return to the attack. If again withstood,
they return again, perhaps under some new disguise, always
with new force ; till at last the resistance of reason and ¦
.conscience is overcome, and sonie pretext is found for
yielding to the clamorous desire. At times, no doubt, the
citadel of the soul is taken by storm, the passions rising in
sudden furious insurrection ; but oftener it falls by treachery,
or before stealthy and masked approaches. Reason and
conscience, instead of being carried by fierce assault, are
lulled to rest. No sign, no portent warns them of the
coming peril ; no torches flash on the darkness, no tramp
of armed men invades the silence. The spirit, like the
Master, is betrayed with a kiss, by a friend. Step by step
the power of evil draws nigh ; but no warning voice is
heard. One of the band of affections which wait upon the
spirit has been won over ; others of them are weakened by
~4Qng travail, or are sleeping for very weariness. And the
spirit, -taken at unawares, is led away captive, to suffer many
stripes, to endure many strange indignities and griefs, per
chance to pass through the grave itself before it be redeemed
from its j:aptivity.
Orxagain : Sin clothes itself in fair disguises ; it stands
..before us comely and attractive as the unfalleneloq
serpent. The^ing spirit speakstingjigtl^Siepr^hets.
Satan transforms himself into ail~|^dof light. Evil looks
like good — better thin any goodUve have yet known. It
offers us pleasure, wipdom, powe^f a godlike strain ; we
have only to put forth our hands, an^^i they are ours. Now
and then, perhaps, the disguise is lifteu' J^"^ j->,a=-ciife'' breath
from heaven. We still hear a voice sweet and melodious

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

as an angel's ; but we catch glimpses of a grovelling ser
pent-form and the baleful hunger of its eye. We waver and
hang in poise. But the voice sounds on ; the charm works;
our scruples fade ; we begin to side with the tempter, and
to frame plausible excuses for yielding to his allurements.
We do not wish to be disenchanted. We insist on it that
he resume his disguise. We see things not as they are,
but as we would have them be. We call evil good, dark
ness light, bitter sweet. Deceived at first, we carry on the
cheat, and end by deceiving ourselves. The sin that was
outside is now within us. 'The Croucher has crept through
the door.
We are not " ignorant of his devices." Our own experi
ence translates these figures of speech into famihar ominous
prose. We have been " drawn aside of lust, and enticed ; "
in us "lust has conceived, and brought forth sin." The
edge and strictness of our scraples have been worn down ;
the force of high spiritual resolves has been frittered away ;
the charm of things pleasant to the eye, though not good for
food, has grown upon us till we have "consented to sin."
And therefore we feel our need of the warning suggested 1
the image before us. We know that every time we
temptation we become an easier prey to. the wile^il^ied bjj
that every hour we neglect or postpone a diJl»ijf facultie
into a more habitual neglect. We know that, sd^f our^
we suffer him to approach, the Croucher widejls OhJaktVi
preaches to our hearts; that every time he f^ters h^<iei;3
more" difficuit-4p^ expel. Dajm^xio^ it?,,, «Let us then
listen to the warning : ^'?Ske treed .. -^. . lest any of
you be hardened by the deceitfulness of his sin ; " " lest by
any means, as the serpeiit beguiled Eve by his subtiety, so
your minds should be- corrupted from the simplicity and
-pi«i±j^iiMaT>wre^*a»01ffmt.'' *
• Heb. iii. i^ ; and 2 Cor. xi. 1

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR. 13
(2.) Cruelty, no less than craft, characterizes the Croucher
at the door. The most crafty beasts are the most cmel.
They crouch that they may spring, and rend, and tear.
And Sin is cruel, and fatal in its cruelty. If it crouch, it is
that it may spring ; if it spring, it is that it may destroy.
Revert once more to the first sin. The man and the
woman whom God placed in the garden had but one posi
tive commandment to fulfil, i.e., they had only one method
of testing and proving their loyalty to Him who had loaded
them with benefits. Of all the trees of the garden whose
fmit was good for food they might freely eat. Only one
tree was forbidden them, and that because, whatever sense
might say, it was not good for food. Prompted by sin, they
broke the solitary injunction which restrained and defended
their liberty ; they turned their only test and proof of obe
dience into an occasion for insulting and defying the Majesty
of Heaven. And that one sin unpeopled Paradise. It
brought human life and immortality under the sorrowful
obscurations of death. It reduced the whole creation into
a bondage to vanity and corraption in which it groans and
travails to this day. It gave a false bias to the whole course
of human history. Sin, taking occasion by the command
ment, slew man; for in Adam all die. Was not that a
, ideous and unparalleled craelty ?
' Or glance at the sin of Cain. He had one brother, and
he murdered him. The world was wide, but not wide
enough for them both. Abel, "meek and gentie as the
sheep he tended," was so good a man that God Himself
"attested him to be righteous." But there is no rath in
sin. The very excellence of Abel, as expressed in his
" more excellent gift," was the very occasion of which Sin
availed itself to make Cain a murderer and a fratricide.
Proofs of the malignity, the horrible and insatiable cruelty,
of sin may be found through all the subsequent annals of

14 THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.
the race. They are "writ large" on every page of the
human story. But why should a sinful man, speaking to
sinful men, adduce and multiply proofs of the cruelty of
sin ? We know its craelty, for we have felt it. It has laid
its fierce implacable hand on every one of us, lacerating all
the nobler affections of the soul, opening wounds in some
of us that will never close until we have seen corruption.
There is not a man on earth who, were he to lay bare his
heart, could not shew the wounds, and scars of the wounds,
inflicted by this ruthless foe of 'our peace. If we are not
sensible of them, it is because we are dead, because we
have lost the proper susceptibilities of life. Once quick
ened, and we cannot but discover them, cannot but find
that the Croucher has torn and bitten while it has fawned
upon us. Old wounds will smart, and ache, and throb.
As spiritual consciousness returns, it will be with us as vidth
the wounded soldier left on the field, whose pains, merci
fully sheathed for a time in swoons, rack and torture him
afresh as life recovers its abandoned seat. The energies
which we would gladly devote to Him who has quickened
us, will have to be painfully redeemed from their bondage
to death. When we would do good, evil vnill be present
with us. Old habits, although renounced, will assert their
power, and defeat our endeavours after holiness. And then,
rising upon us through manifold infirmities, relapses, and
penitent regrets, there will come the conviction that Sin
has left its crael enfeebling traces on our nature, and well-
nigh unfitted us for the toils and honours of a divine service.
II. The Warning. "If thou doest not well. Sin is a
Croucher at the door ; andi his desire is against thee, but thou
shouldest rule ovef him." The warning indicates our danger,
and our safety.
(i.) It points out our danger. He who does not well is

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

very near to doing iU. A merely negative virtue is in peril
of becoming positive vice. He who neglects opportunities
of doing good, by his very neglect of them does evU. The
holy war admits no neutrals; we must be for God, or against
Him. This is one thought suggested by the Warning; but it
suggests another of a much more hopeful cast. For it
imphes that sin is external to man, not an essential part of
his nature, but a foreign adverse power which has only an
usurped authority ; it represents evil as a croucher without
the door, and capable of being kept out. " Sin is a trans
gression of the law '' written on the heart as well as of the
law engraved on tablets of stone. "He that sirmeth
wrongeth his own soul" and therefore does a great wicked
ness against God. Sin is not an inseparable element of our
humanity, but an ahen and separable adjunct. Only as we
are without sin, or are redeemed from it, do we rise to the
proper perfection of our nature. Christ was without sin, yet
He was the Perfect Man.
We need to remember and to emphasize the fact that
sin is not of the essence of our nature ; for much depends
upon it. It makes redemption possible; for how should
they be redeemed from evil of whose nature evil is an
essential and inseparable quality ? It is because when we
sin we wrong our own souls, and voluntarily submit to an alien
external power to which we ought not to submit, that we are
responsible and guilty creamres. It is because sin and
manhood are distinct, separable, and even antagonistic
powers, that Christ can take away our sin without taking
away our manhood, that He can perfect our manhood by
taking sin away. The Croucher lurks outside the door, and
can only enter as we admit it ; nay, even when admitted,
it remains an alien from whose tyranny we may be de
livered.

i6 THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.
This is the hope which is implied in the Warning, and
which lends it force ; that the soul and sin are distinct and
adverse powers, that we may be freed from the usurpations
of evil without loss, nay, with infinite gain, to our humanity :
and yet there is dread in it too. How can we think without
fear of being pitted against so crafty and ruthless a foe?
a foe who has left the print of its fangs and talons even on
the best and noblest of our race ? We may well fear the
Croucher. God would have us fear him, that we may cease
to do evil, learn to do well. For it is the evD-doer about
whom the Croucher has his settled haunt. He that has
once been drawn aside of lust and enticed may expect to be
enticed again. The door that has been often opened, that
still stands ajar, will not remain unvisited. The wild beast
will return to its accustomed covert, even though compelled
to leave it for awhile. The expelled demon, "wandering ,
through dry places, seeking rest and finding none," will
bethink itself of " the house whence it came out," and come
back, perchance bringing with it " seven other spirits worse
than itself"
It is very trae that the Croucher lurks before all hearts,
that at times it finds an entrance to every heart, that we are
never in this world proof against its wiles and assaults.
But it is our happiness to know that those from whose
hearts the Trath has scared sin, though never quite out of
danger, are freed from the worst and most perilous assaults
whether of its cruelty or its craft. There is one presence
which evil cannot enter. It cannot meet the eye of God.
And as He who inhabiteth eternity also inhabits the humble
and contrite heart, those who are lowly and penitent and
delight in God are never long exposed to its malice. Sin
has no more dominion over them, though now and then it
stirs up unquiet passions to revolt. They are only in danger'
when they have grieved the Holy Spirit and caused Him to

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR. 17
depart And as He never leaves them but for a moment,
never forsakes them but that He returns in great mercy,
their peril is soon past The Croucher is not at their door
often or long. But it is not thus with those who do iU.
Only in well-dmng can we commit our souls to the Creator.
To be without God is to be in a constant peiiL Every time
we dp one of the evil deeds which " proceed out of the
heart," we open the door through which the Croucher leaps
in. (2.) The Warning indicates our safety. "His desire is
against thee, but thou shouldest rule ever him." That the
desire of sin is against, is adverse to, man is sufficientiy
e\'ident It banished Adam firom paradise. It murdered
Cain by making him a murderer. It has brought discord,
defilement, death into our souls. So soon as the law
of sin has begun to work in us, we have found it a law of
death. Its desire is against us. And we have only one
alternative. We must either subdue it, or be slain by it
We cannot escape the conflict And the conflict begun,
our foe win grant no truce, nor consent to any terms
short of an entire surrender to its controL It is our only
wisdom, as it is our imperative duty, to strive unto blood
against the fierce passions and lusts of the flesh and of the
mind. If we parley with them, they outwit us. If we sub
mit to them, they destroy us. The Croucher cannot be
tamed. It must be caged, starved, slain. "Let not sin
reign in your mortal bodies ; " " Its desire is against thee,
but thou shouldest rule over it"
But how is this wily foe to be caught? how are the
strength and fierceness of this crael foe to be subdued?
Truly if we were called to the task alone, we might well
despair. Sin has too firm a hold on us to be readily dis
lodged- It has too often crouched both at, and within, the
door to be easily kept out But our comfort is that we are

THE CROUCHER AT THE DOOR.

not called to the task alone. He who warned Cain that
the Croucher was at his door, would have helped Cain to
repel him. And He, who warns us that sin is our subtle
and implacable antagonist, will help us to detect its wiles
and to withstand its assaults. It only needs that Christ
shew himself on our side, and evil will not court another
overthrow. It was thought of old, it is still thought by some, that
relics — splinters of the true Cross, to wit — are a sovereign
defence against all things ill. But the trae defence against
evil and all that holds of evil is not the cross upon the breast,
but the Christ within the heart And this is a defence we may
all have. Behold He stands at the door — the door so often
opened to the Croucher — and knocks : and if any man hear
his voice, and open the door, He will come in, treading in
the steps of the Croucher, and with his pure and blessed
feet obhterating the foul tracks of evil, making our purified
hearts temples not all unmeet for his presence and service
and praise. We have only to bid Him enter, and the Victor
over sin will give us the victory.

IL
Zlt ^000 jof % ^iaatk
Gexesis IV. 23, 24.
FROM the creation of man to the destmction of men
by the Flood the current of human history flows in
two main streams, streams which run apart for seven genera
tions, and then commingle only to fall and be lost in the
cavern of a common doom. On the one hand, we have the
Cainites, that is, Cain and his descendants, busily occupied
with the arts and inventions of life ; and, on the other hand,
we have the Sethites, that is, Seth and his descendants, who
remain " upright " in the BibUcal sense, and do not seek out
inventions, who hold fast their allegiance to God, and lire
the simple orderly life He ordained for primitive man. Even
fi-om the brief antique records which Moses has collected
for us, the " books " which he quotes, and although we know
nothing but the names of many of the men on either pedi
gree, a carefiil student may trace the course of each of these
divergent lines of action to their culmination in the seventh
generation fi-om Adam.
Let us glance, first, at the one or two brief hints we have
of the .history of the younger branch of the human family
the Sethites. AVhen her third son was bom. Eve called him
Seth;'* "for," she said, " God hath given me another seed
' Genesis iv. 25.

THE SONG. OF THE SWORD.

instead of Abel, because Cain slew him." Seth means " the
gift," or " the compensation : " his very name, therefore,
indicates that he is to take the place of " righteous Abel,"
and by his' piety to compensate his parents for the meek
and holy son they have lost. But does he act out his name,
and fulfil the mother's hope ?
There are one or two indications that he does. When,
for instance, a son is bom to him, he calls his name Enos,
" the weak or frail one : " and the choice of this name
signifies, we are told, that at least in this branch of the
human family the frailty of our weak human nature was
recognized and confessed. But still more suggestive are
the words which immediately follow : * " Then began men
to invoke the name of the Lord : " for this 'phrase denotes a
solemn and united invocation of Jehovah, the public recog
nition of " the name " of God, i.e., of his presence and of so
much of his character as He had then revealed : it may
mean thai prayer was now first added to the sacrifices which
hitherto had been the only form of worship. And though
at first we might suppose the phrase, " then began men," f
includes the whole human family, yet a little thought will
convince us that it can only include those of Adam's de
scendants who had settled round him. Cain had wandered
away into the land of Nod. He and his, therefore, could
have no part in the worship of the Sethites. While he and
his children were building a city and seeking out inventions,
upright Seth and his children were acquiring the supreme
art of life, a common and orderly worship of the God of
heaven. The devotion to the service of God culminated in Enoch,
the seventh from Adam, who "walked with God" in a
* Genesis iv. 26.
f The word "men," indeed, is not in the Hebrew. We might read
" Then began ihey to invoke," etc.

THE SONG OF THE SWORD.

devotion so intense and perfect that, as the reward of his
godliness, he was " translated that he should not see death ;"
he was made meet, while yet in the flesh, for the incorrapt
and immortal realm, for the ampler service and sevenfold
splendours of heaven.
Now let us glance at the elder line. When Cain was
branded and banished for his sin,' he complained:* "Behold
Thou hast driven me from the face of the earth, and from
Thy face must I hide myself" This " face of the earth,"
from which he is driven, was, says Keil, the spot, " where
God had revealed his face, i.e., his presence, to men after
their expulsion from the garden," the one spot hallowed by
the manifestation of the Divine Majesty and Grace. Cain
felt that in leaving this, he left God and the knowledge of
God ; that the bond which had united the family of man
was broken ; that he must go forth solitary into a world all
dark and haunted by threatening shadows. And here we
have our first indication of the godlessness or irreligion of
his race. They are, or they think themselves to be, driven
from the face of the Lord.
We soon light on a second indication. Cain wanders, a
fugitive and a vagabond, until he reaches a land which he
calls " the land of Nod^' i.e., the land of "flight " or " banish
ment" He still feels that he is banished from the presence
and favour of God, that the old bond of unity, broken by his
crime, can never be repaired : and so, as the years pass, he
tries to create a new bond. He buUds "a city," an enclosed
space with fortified dwellings. This shall be the s)rmbol of
their unity and strength, since he can no longer count on the
presence of Jehovah. And in the erection of this city we
ha,ve the first step of a course which' men have trodden
ever since : it opened the reign of invention. Architecture
and fortification, or the first radiments of these arts, were
* Genesis iv. 14.

THE SONG OF THE SWORD.

invented by Cain : valuable as they are, or may be, it is to
be feared that the motive of their origin was simply distrust
of God.
Cain's tendency to trast in his own wit and strength, rather
than in the Divine goodness which even his sin could not
ahenate, rose to its fuU height in Lamech and his family ;
the intermediate steps of the progress being passed over by
the sacred historian in the case of the Cainites as in that of
the Sethites. Lamech is the seventh from Adam through
Cain, just as Enoch is seventh from Adam through Seth ;
and as in Enoch the characteristics of the line of Seth came
to a head, so also the characteristics of the line of Cain
came to a head in Lamech and his children. They invent
the arts, but they also serve the lusts of the flesh. While
the Sethites rise into " sons of God," the Cainites, despite
their grand gifts, sink into mere " children of men."
And here, as I believe, we come on the explanation of a
passage which has perplexed many minds, and which has,
it must be confessed, a very mythical sound. " The sons
of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair ; and
they took them wives of all which they chose .... and
when the sons of God came to the daughters of men, they
bare children to them : these are the heroes who of old
were men of renown."* For this is no fable, as some have
supposed, of a secret intercourse of angels with women.
Probably it is a simple description of the historic fact that,
after the translation of Enoch, or possibly before it, the
Sethites, the pious race which had not been driven from the
face of God, also became corrupt, no longer suffered God's
Spirit to reign in their mortal bodies ; t that they not only
intermarried with the daughters of the ungodly race of Cain,
* Genesis vi. 2 — i,.
f Genesis vi. 3. "My Spirit shall not always reign in man, while
he is also flesh."

THE SONG OF THE SWORD. 23

but, following the evil example of Lamech, became poly-
gamists, manied as many wives as they cared to have — " all
whom they chose," i.e., all whose beauty charmed them.
From this point onward, firom the union of these two races
hitherto distinct, the shadows multiply and darken on the
page of the human story. All men more and more walked
after the flesh, instead of ruling the flesh by the spirit ; tiU at
last they grew so utterly corrapt, the thoughts of their hearts
being only evil all the day long, that it repented the Lord
that He had made them, and grieved him to the very heart
But let us return to Lamech and his family, the family in
which the characteristics of the fine of Cain eflioresce with
a splendour which stiU charms the world.
Although we have the names of so many men, we have
only the names of four of the women who existed before the
Flood. These four names are Eve, Adah, ZiQah, and
Xaamah. The latter three are the names of women all of
whom were members of the family of Lamech ; Adah and
ZiUah were his wives, Naamah was his daughter. And
these names indicate that the original and noble conception
of woman, as the helpmeet of the man, was being rapidly
superseded by that voluptuous and degrading view which
has ever since prevailed in the East For each of these
names emphasizes that which is merely superficial and sen
suous, that which kindles desire. Adah is "the beautiftd
one," or "the ornament;" ZiUah means "shadow," and
embodies an allusion to that shade firom the fierce heat
which is so welcome to those who have to abide the smitings
of an Oriental sun : " and Naamah is " the sweet or lovely
one : " they axe aU pleasant toys, and httie more. The pure
and noble ideal of the trae woman, the true wife — such an
ideal, for instance, as King Lemuel learned of his mother*
— ^must have been veiy remote from Lamech's thoughts
* Proverbs xxxL 10 — ^31.

24 THE SONG OF THE SWORD.
when he named his women thus. No mere " ornament," or
grateful "shadow" was she of whom it is written: "Strength
and honour are her clothing. She openeth her mouth with
wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She
looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not
the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her
blessed. The heart of her husband doth safely trast in her.
Her own works praise her in the gates."
Where Lamech's slight contemptuous view of woman is
held, it is natural that marriage should degenerate into poly
gamy. He is the first of the human race who had more
wives than one. The father of a family of inventors, this
was his invention, his legacy, to the human race — a legacy
which perhaps the larger half of men still inherit, to their
cost and ours.
Of his children, Jabal ("increase ") was the father of such
as dwelled in tents, the inventor of the nomadic pastoral
life ; while Jubal (" sound "), own brother to Jabal,* was the
inventor of the lyre and the pipe, the first rude forms whether
* It is worthy of remark that in the Bible, as in the primitive tradi-
ditions of most races, there is this hint of the close coimection between
the happy leisure of the pastoral life and the invention of musical instru
ments. 'Walter Savage Landor, in a boyish poem long since out of print,
has a few lines which suggest the process by which the shepherd is led
on, naturally and easily, by the very conditions of his vocation, to invent
the earliest form of the instrument of which even the mighty organ is
but a development. ' ' By bounteous rivers, 'mid his flock reclined.
He heard the reed that rustled in the wind ;
Then, leaning onward, negligently tore
The slender stem from off the fringed shore ;
"With mimic breath the whisper soft assa/d.
When, lo ! the yielding reed his mimic breath obey'd.
'Tvvas hence ere long the pleasing power he found
Of noted numbers and of certain sound.
Each mom and eve, their fine effect he tried •
Each morn and eve he blest the river's reedy side ! "

THE SONG OF THE SWORD. 25
of wind or stringed instruments being made by his capable
hands. Tubal-Cain (probably " copper-smith "), " a mighty
man W9S he," and hammered out the edge-tools of the
ancient world : while Naamah, his sister, is said by the
Rabbis, to have been " the mistress of sounds and songs,"
i.e., a poetess and a cantatrice, the first oi singers in a double
sense. A rarely gifted family this, a family to which all the
world owes an enormous debt to this very day ; and yet a
wicked family — forgetting God, and relying on their own
great wit and strength.
Yes, a wicked family : we need to remember that, and to
leam from it that there is no necessary connection between
gifts and goodness. But we should also mark how frank
and honest a book the Bible is. It brands the children of
Cain as the ungodly race : but the Bible does not, as foohsh
good men often do of their ungodly contemporaries, omit
to mention the gifts they had, the service they did. It tells
us how splendidly they were endowed, how much we owe
them. Let us mark, too, how even ungodly men may serve their
race and be God's instraments for good, inventing arts which
in purer hands become most helpful and ennobHng. Nor let
us shrink from saying that the inventors of song and poetry,
of edge-tools and instraments of music, must have had
much good in them, even if they had more evil. It was
not their fault that they were born in " the land of banish
ment," or that their blood was tainted by the crime of Cain.
It is to their credit that, even in the land of banishment,
they invented arts which, for many of us, have re-opened the
gates of Paradise and brought heaven nearer to our hearts.
Had they seen what we have been permitted to see, and
heard what our ears have heard, of the Divine Grace, we
may hope that "they would long ago have repented" of their
alienation from God, and consecrated their gifts to his

26 THE SONG OF THE SWORD.
service. Even as it is, one can hardly forbear the hope that,
if ever we are so happy as to reach heaven, we shall find the
first poet and the first musician there before us.
But it is high time that we got to our song — a song which
was first sung to the accompaniment of Jubal's lyre, the
melody of which Jabal piped to his flocks, and which Tubal-
Cain, the mighty smith, shouted to the rhythm of his clang
ing anvil. It may be translated thus : —
" Adah and ZiUah ! hear my voice ;
Ye wives of Lamech ! give ear to my speech :
I vrill slay men for smiting me.
And for wounding me young men shall die.
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Lamech seventy and seven. "
This is the most antique song or poem in the world, the only
poem which dates from before the Flood, the sole literary
rehc of the antediluvian race. Of course it has been read
in many different senses, and its meaning has at times been
darkened by those who assumed to explain it According
to some of the Commentators, Lamech is a murderer stung
by remorse into a public confession of his guilt According
to others, he, the polygamist, acknowledges that his sin vsuU
bear a more fraitful progeny of ills than that of Cain, that
polygamy will prove more fatal to human peace than mur
der. One of the fathers handles this song with rare
ingenuity. He conceives it to mean that as Cain's sin
increased for seven generations, and was then washed away
by the deluge ; so Lamech's sin would be followed in the
seventy-seventh generation by the advent of Him who taketh
away the sin of the world. But, as usual, the Rabbis bear
off the palm, their traditions being even more ingenious and
elaborate than any of the patristic conjectures. Their tradi
tion runs thus : — " Lamech was bUnd, and Tubal-Cain was

THE SONG OF THE SWORD. 27
leading him : and he (Tubal-Cain) saw Cain, and he appeared
unto him Hke a wild beast ; so he told his father to draw
his bow, and he slew him. But when Lamech knew that it
was Cain, his ancestor, whom he had shot, he smote his
hands together, and struck his son between them, so that he
also died." His wives, horror-stricken, withdrew from him :
and this is the song he sings to conciliate them and win
them back. And, then, the Rabbis so translate the song
as to make it harmonize with their tradition.
There are many more, and more rational, interpretations
of this antique poem ; and of course it would ill become any
one to decide with authority where doctors differ. But the
interpretation which the ablest critics are rapidly adopting,
and which I hold to be incomparably the best, is that which
names it " the Song of the Sword." Whatever else may be
doubtful, this seems certain, that Lamech is in a vauntiag
humour as he sings; that he is boasting of an immunity
from vengeance superior to that of Cain ; and that, because
of some special advantage which he possesses, he is encour
aging himself to deeds of violence and resentment Now,
just before the song of Lamech we have the verse which
narrates that Tubal-Cain had learned to hammer out edge-
tools in brass and iron. Suppose this great smith to have
invented a sword or a spear, to have shewn his father how
effective and mortal a weapon it was, would not that have
been likely to put Lamech into the vainglorious mood which
inspires his poem? May we not rationally conclude that
his song is " the Song of the Sword ; " that, as he wields this
new product of Tubal-Cain's anvil, Lamech feels that he has
a new strength and defence put into his hand, a weapon
which will make him even more secure than the mark of
God made Cain ? The most learned scholars and the most
competent critics think we may so conclude. They hold
that this ancient song expresses " that Titanic arrogance of

28 THE SONG OF THE SWORD.
which the Bible says that force is its god (Hab. i. 2), and
that it carries its god (i.e., its sword) in its hand (Job xii.
6)."* Assuredly, this interpretation falls in very happily with all
that we know of the Cainites, and of Lamech, in whom their
characteristic qualities culminated. "While the children of
Seth, the sons of God, rose to the pure saintly devotion of
an Enoch, who lived and moved and had his being in God,
the children of men, the sons of Cain, produce as the flower
of their race a Lamech, who makes his sword his god ; who
struts before his harem brandishing this new terrible weapon,
and boasting that henceforth he will take vengeance, not
sevenfold, but seventy times seven, on all who may thwart or
injure him. We have only to put these two men, Enoch and
Lamech, side by side, in order to bring into the most strik
ing contrast the characteristic differences of the two ante
diluvian races'; the boastful arrogance and violence of
Lamech's song is the true foil to the sacred and divine
composure of the man who "walked with God, and was not,
because God took him."
In the old world, then, as in the new, there were evil men
and good men — men who walked in a vain show, and men
who walked in a constant and growing concord with Him
who is the "Author of Peace in his holy places." In
Lamech we have only the extreme type of a large class, —
men who take the sensuous view of life. These are they
who, without intentional or deliberate wickedness perhaps,
* Delitzsch in loco. This conjecture gathers new force if we accept
Ewald's derivation of Lamech's name. Ewald derives it from an Arabic
root, which " expresses the idea of snatching .or robbing ; " and main
tains that the very name indicates him to have been "a predatory
savage," the freebooter of the ancient world. The " Song of the
Sword " would be singularly appropriate in such a mouth.

THE SONG OF THE SWORD.

29

forget God, who quietly and habitually ignore Him ; whose
real trust is in their own strength and wit ; who believe wis
dom to be a defence, and wealth a defence, and trained and
organized power a defence, and that they need not go beyond
these. They are sufficient to themselves, whether in the
toil and conflict of life, or in its hours of ease and relaxation.
They can find all the delights they need in music, or poetry,
or some of the kindred arts which wait to minister at their
call ; and they never or rarely rise beyond these, never
taste the joys of a spiritual communion with God, or look
forward with desire to the services and felicities of the
heavenly world.
Enoch also is a type of character — the type of those who
take the spiritual as distinguished from the sensuous view
of human life ; who, while they bear their part in all the
labours that are done under the sun, seek in everything they
do to do it as to God ; and while they frankly accept all the
recreative and refining ministries devised by the art or wit of
man, accept them as the gifts of God, and so find an added
sweetaess in them. Like Enoch, they walk with God
through all the difficult and, tangled paths of hfe, are sus
tained by Him in the hours of their weakness, guarded by
Him in their times of peril, and find their fellowship vnth
Him grow more intimate, more ennobling, more consolatory,
year by year.
The end of these respective lines of action is set forth in
the several fates of Lamech and Enoch. In Enoch we see
the spiritual man rising into the heaven which his life has
prepared him to inherit and enjoy : while in Lamech and
his children we see the servants of sense sink into the doom
for which their course and habits of life had fitted them, —
their thoughts growing more evil, their deeds more corrupt,
until the flood arose and swept them away. Each goes to
his own place.

30 THE SONG OF THE SWORD.
The same great moral forces, which worked on to widely
separate issues in the antediluvian world, are now at work
among us. Evil and good, death and life, both are with us,
both still striving together on the earth. But, thank God, we
may look for a happier close to the conflict than that ancient
close. Evil triumphed then, and death ; but through the grace
of Him who tasted death for every man, and came to destroy
every evil work, we know that in " the end " which is now ap
proaching, evil will be overcome of good, and death be swal
lowed up of life ; that it will not repent God that He ever
made man on the earth, nor grieve Hipi to the heart, but
that there will be a divine and eternal joy in the presence of
God over " the nations of the saved."

IIL
Genesis xxxvil 3.
THE voice of Truth should always be musical to us and
welcome. Even when it corrects our most familiar
and habitual conceptions, we should be glad to hear it,
accepting as friendly service whatever helps to bring our
thoughts into a closer correspondence with truth and fact.
As servants and lovers of Him who is the trath, we profess
that it is thus with us ; that we are very willing to relinquish
all inaccuracies of thought, very happy to rise to a more
exact apprehension of any Scriptural fact or dogma. Yet
we do not find it easy to act out our profession. It takes a
good deal to persuade us, for instance, that our view of any
Christian doctrine is imperfect ; it often takes still more to
convince us that we have misconceived any Biblical fact
which has long since taken form in our imaginations. Of
all om faculties, perhaps, the imagination is the most re
luctant to part with any of its treasures, the most averse to
change. The fact we have misconceived may be of no
doctrinal or historical moment ; but if it has laid hold of the
heart, if it has taken a certain place and shape in our im
agination from childhood, it requires even a painful effort
on our part before we can relinquish it, or so much as
modify our conception of it

32 JOSEPH'S COAT.

Joseph's "coat of many colours "has thus seized the
popular imagination. It is familiar to us all. We have
heard of it, and pictured it, from our earliest years. It has
become part of our mental furniture. The most distant and
figurative allusion to it is promptly taken. Possibly we
have thought it' very foolish of Jacob to distinguish one of
his sons above the rest We have very probably thought it
absurd that a lad of seventeen should strat about in peacock
hues, and that grown men should be moved to passionate
anger by his gay robe instead of laughing at it and at him
for wearing it. Vulgar prints, in which Joseph's coat is de
picted as though it had been cut from a patchwork quUt,
may have offended our eyes. But, none the less, the coat
of many colours has had, and has, a certain sacred charm
for us. We have conceived of it as blending rich varied
hues into a beauty and magnificence resembling those of the
shawls, and tunics, and imperial robes woven in Indian
looms. Joseph without his coat would be as strange to us
as Moses without his rod or David without his harp. True,
nothing of any importance hangs by his coat, no dogma, no
theory ; but it has its place in our imagination, and we do
not like to let it go. We could better spare a better thing.
And yet how can we keep it ? How, at least, can we
refuse to modify our conception of it ? It was 7iot a coat of
many colours, although our Authorised Version says it was.
The Hebrew words mean simply, " a tunic reaching to the
extremities," as, I believe, no one who has looked at them.
will dispute. The words describe a garment such as was
commonly worn in Egypt and the adjacent lands — a long
white linen robe extending to the ankles and wrists, and
embroidered with a narrow stripe of colour roimd tiie edge
of the skirt and the sleeves. And if this white linen gar
ment be but a poor substitute for the rich gorgeous robe
which has so long held its place in oiu thoughts, it has its

JOSEPHS COAT. 33

compensations. For it helps us to understand the envy,
the fierce murderous jealousy, of Joseph's brethren. That
they should be moved to kill him, or even to sell him for a
slave, because he wore a gay coat and went fine, is almost
inconceivable ; but this long linen tunic meant more than a
mere coat of many hues. It was worn, as a rule, only by
the most noble and opulent classes, by king's sons and
daughters, by priests and scribes, by those who were exempt
from manual labour. All who had to toil for their daily
^)read wore short coloured garments which would not easily
stain and did not hamper the free movement of the limbs.
In their primitive shepherd life the sons of Jacob must have
had much rough laborious work to do. They had to wander
through a pastoral and sparsely peopled region, feeding
their flocks wherever they found grass for them to graze ;
they had to climb mountains, to cross streams swollen with
rain, to contend with the " evil beasts " and birds which
preyed on their kids and lambs, to shear sheep and fodder
cattle, to draw water from deep wells, to plough and sow,
to mow grass and reap corn, to drive back marauding Arabs,
to endure the keen frosts of S5Tian winters and the fierce
heat of the summer sun. The long linen robes of the
learned and royal classes would have been inappropriate
and cumbersome to them. And when Jacob gave Joseph
such a robe, he very plainly declared that, however rough
and hard the work they had to do, this son of his love was
to be exempted from the toUs -in which their lives were
spent; that he was to live easily and softly, and to be
guarded from rough weather. And it is not hard to under
stand how they would resent that
We must bear in mind too that, in those times, the father
was the ruler, the despot, of the family ; that at his option
or caprice he could make any one of his sons, even the
youngest, heir to his wealth and blessing. Joseph's brethren3

34 JOSEPH'S COAT.

would remember that both their fath""; Jacob and their
grandfather Isaac had been younger sons ; yet the in
heritance had devolved on them. And when they saw
Joseph tricked out in his robe of state, set apart and set
above them from his youth, they must have felt that in all
probability he would inherit their father's property and
position, while they would be left to shift for themselves
or to sink into his dependants. That could not have been
a pleasant prospect to strong passionate men like Judah,
and Reuben, and Levi, who were very conscious that by
their thrift and skill they had done much to augment the
value of their father's flocks and herds. And when this
dainty lad of seventeen began to tell tales of them ; when
Joseph began to bring " tiieir evil report " to their father, to
dream dreams of his superiority over them, it is no wonder
that their wild Eastern blood took fire, and that they re
solved to put a bloody close to his tales, and dreams, and
pretensions. They had borne that their father should " love
Joseph more than all his children ; " but that when Joseph
was seventeen years old, of an age therefore to lighten their
labours by sharing them, his father should deck him out in
a garment which plainly said that, instead of partaking
their labours, he should rule over them, this was more than
they would brook.
Had Joseph's linen tunic anything to do with his dreams ?
I think it had. For a lad just budding into manhood, — and
a Syrian lad of seventeen is a man, and often a married
man, — singled out for special honour, may very namrally
have had great thoughts of himself thoughts which would
give colour even to his dreams. At first he dreams* that,
with his brothers, he is binding sheaves in a field ; and, lo,
his sheaf stands upright, while tlieir sheaves gather round
and fall down before it ! The dream was simply a figura-
* Gen. xxxvii. 5 — 8

JOSEPH'S COAT. 35

tive expression of the actual facts of his hfe and theirs. He
did stand aloof and upright in his dress of honour, while
they were bending in labour and ministering unto him.
Father Jacob is not angry with this dream, although his
sons are angry ; it falls in with his scheme and intention.
But, when Joseph dreams "a dream more,'' when he
dreams* that the sun and the moon, as well as the eleven
stars — his father and mother, that is, as well as his brethren —
bow down before him and make obeisance, Jacob is then
angry enough. For, though Jacob meant that his children
should do obeisance to Joseph, he had no intention of doing
obeisance himself
Altogether, one fears that the household at Hebron was
not a happy one, nor happily ordered. Isaac is fast sinking
toward the grave. Rachel has lost her Hfe in giving life to
Benjamin. Leah, Billah, and Zilpali are much taken up
with the claims of their respective sons,, and love each other
as three wives in one tent are likely to do. Jacob is very
fond of Joseph — very proud of him; but he has a little fear
of him, as well as much occasional anger. Joseph is
" assotted " on his white tunic and flattering dreams ; while
his brethren resent their father's preference for him, and
brood over schemes of revenge. Not a happy, not a well-
ordered household, although it is the household of him who
is a prince with God and prevails.
Joseph's two dreams are really one. The' second is only
a repetition of the first in a higher and more absolute form.
In the first, his sheaf stands in the middle of the field, while
the other sheaves stand round about and make obeisance to
it. In the second, Joseph stands in the middle ^of the
universe, while the sun, and the moon, and the stars make
obeisance unto him. What they both came to is simply
this ; that Joseph is the centre round which all things turn ;
* Gen. xxxvii. 9 — 11

36 JOSEPH'S COAT.

that he is a very important person, and that all things have
the honour to serve him. So high are the thoughts, so lofty
and self-regarding the ambitions which that unlucky white
tunic has put into his head.
Yet, after all, is not this the common dream of youth ?
Have we not all dreamed it, splendid and selfish as it is ?
Unless we have been fretted with petty cares, and worn
down with mean toils amid base conditions from our earliest
years, do not we all don Joseph's white mnic in our youth
and dream of a greataess sole and peculiar to ourselves ?
When the energies of life move freely and harmoniously
within us, does not the future stretch out before us in
widening vistas all bright with the golden hues of hope?
Do we not look out upon the world with fresh eager eyes,
and feel that, beautiful as it is, it is nevertheless ours ? Ah,
how great and successful we are to be ! How noble and
heroic ! How much good we are to get and do ! What
happiness we are to give and to enjoy ! The heavens smile
upon us with a constant benediction ; the earth laughingly
offers us all her wealth. Men, ah, how brave and good.
they are ! and women, ah, how fair and pure ! Why should
any one fret, or doubt, or fear ? And, above all, why should
we, to whom God has given gifts, and talents, and sweet
secret fountains of hope and bliss not conferred on all,
perhaps not on many ?
We have aU dreamed this dream, I take it, and have
found it to be only a dream. The white tunic has only too
soon been stained. Like Joseph, we have soon had to gird
up its long skirts, and to take our part in the work and the
suffering of the world. We have been sold, or — in this
more unhappy than Joseph — we have sold ourselves, into
the captivities of evil. Great temptations have assailed us
as a great temptation assailed him ; and we have not always
had the grace either to fight it down or to "flee forth."

JOSEPH'S COAT. 37

When we have refused to sin against God and man, when
we have denied our strongest passion in order that we might
do the right, the reward has been as long in coming to us
as it was. to him, or it has not seemed to come at all. We
awake out of our dream, and instead of being strong we are
weak ; we poorly fill a lowly place instead of sitting at the
centre of the universe with sun, moon, and stars making
obeisance to us. As the flush of youth dies out of us, the
bright heavens are often clouded, and the bountiful earth
reluctantly yields us only a niggardly return for our toil.
We discover much that is weak and cowardly in those who
were once our heroes ; our very heroines grow imperfect
and dubious to us. We have done hardly any of the good
we thought to do. We find self-conquest very hard, and
the conquest of the world altogether impossible. We are
content now if we can only muster strength for the task of
the passing day, and get a little quiet rest at night. We no
longer dream of doing great things for God and man, or of
compelling all things to submit to our will and to contribute
to our pleasure.
Now this, although a most painful, is a most gracious dis
enchantment. If it dissipates our early dreams, it should
substimte for them a waking and eternal reality which
infinitely surpasses them. Joseph's dream came true,
though, his white tunic was soon soiled with the sand of the
desert pit and with the blood of the goat's kid. Joseph's
dream came trae, though it was fulfilled in a way and by
means too wonderful for him to anticipate. Instead of
simply succeeding to his father's inheritance, and ruling his
eleven brethren, he stood next to Pharaoh, and governed
busy populous Egypt. His father and brothers did make
obeisance unto him. Nay, the very sun and moon, which
govern the tides and rains, and mete out years of famine and
years, of plenty, even these served him and helped him to

38 JOSEPH'S COAT.

the throne. Through the pit and the prison, by the path
of sorrow and captivity, he rose to be the very centre of the
world ; for " all the world went down into Egypt to buy
com of Joseph."
And, in like manner, our loftiest and most sangukie
dreams come trae, if only we suffer our early disappoint
ments and failures to have their proper effect upon us. Set
ting out in life with high thoughts of ourselves, we are taught
our weakness, that we may learn to make the Almighty God
our strength and put our trast in Him. If we learn the
lesson — if, when men disappoint us, we turn to God — if,
when we discover how weak we are, how sinful, how incom
petent to realize our own ideals, we also discover how good
and strong He is, and ask Him to make us what He would
have us be, then our loftiest thoughts, our brightest hopes,
are far outdone. For God has high thoqghts of us and for
us. It is his design to crown us with glory and honour, to
give us dominion over the works of his hands, to put all
things under our feet All things become ours as we become
his in Christ, whether life or death, things present or things
to come. Sun, moon, and stars — the whole universe makes
obeisance to us and becomes serviceable to us so soon as
we take our trae place. So soon as we acknowledge ovu-
selves to be his children, so soon as we suffer the Son to
make us sons, we inherit aU things, and our dream, Hke
Joseph's, is fulfilled.
No words are traer than those in which Cowper has
described the position and heritage of the man who is re
stored to the love of God by faith in Jesus Christ : —
" He looks abroad into the varied fields
Of Nature, and though poor, perhaps, compared
With those whose mansions glitter in his sight,
Calls the delightful scenery all his own.
His are the mountains, and the valleys his.
And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy

JOSEPH'S COAT.

39

With a propriety that none can feel
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye.
And, smiling, say, 'My Father made them all.' "
To US, with the dreams of youth lying shattered and
broken around us, life may often seem intolerably flat and
unprofitable ; and even the comely face of Nature may wear
no smile for us, her bountiful hands hold forth no gift that
we shall care to take. But if we learn to call God our
Father, a broad flood of light and hope is forthwith shed
upon our life and over the world — a light which will never
fade, a hope that will never make us ashamed. Then our
dream will come trae to-morrow if not to-day, and we shall
sit with God in the centre of the universe, sun, moon and
stars making their obeisance to Him and to us.

IV.
in '§xmn.
Genesis xxxix. 20 ; and Psalm cv. 17.
THERE are many passages in the later books of the
Bible which supplement the narratives given in the
earlier books, and throw new light upon them. These sup
plementary scriptares have hardly attracted the attention
they deserve. The trath is, they are hidden away in those
obscure nooks and comers of the Inspired Word which we
seldom visit ; and if by happy chance we light upon them,
it would take more labour than we always care to expend to
look up the narratives they illustrate, and to compare these
with those. Let us try to rescue one of these supplementary
scriptures from the general neglect which has befallen it
It is not so striking as many others : nevertheless, or I am
much mistaken, it will give us a new ¦ conception of a
familiar incident in the life of Joseph, — a conception we
could not have gathered from his biography in the Book of
Genesis. I. That biography, in its general outline at least, is more
familiar to us than most of the Old Testament stories ; it is
enshrined among our earliest and most pleasant memories.
We all know that Joseph was his father's darling ; that,
moved by envy, his brethren sold him to the Ishmaelite

JOSEPH IN PRISON. 4,

merchants ; that the Ishmaelites carried him down to Egypt,
and sold him for a slave to Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's
guard ; and that, for refusing to lend himself to the lust of
Potiphar's wife, he was cast into " the prison, a place where
the kin^s prisoners were bound." Possibly, too, we think
ourselves intimate with the incidents of liis prison life. We
know that he gamed the good-wiU of his gaoler ; that he
interpreted the dreams of the king's cup-bearer and the
king's baker, who were " with him in ward ; " and that, " at
the end of two full years," he was released from his dungeon
that he might interpret the dream of Pharaoh.
But if we have taken our whole impression of his prison-
life from the Book of Genesis, our impression cannot be
either accurate or complete. For, though the inspired
narrative tells us that Joseph was bound, * though it records
his earnest entreaty that the cup-bearer, when he was re
leased, would do his utmost to deliver him, t though it
represents him as speaking with a certain bitterness of hav
ing done nothing to deserve that he should be thurst into
this hole," % though, therefore, it implies that Joseph was the
victim of a gross injustice, and had a keen sense of the in
justice done to him, — it nevertheless leaves the impression
on our minds that, for a prisoner, his condition was a sin
gularly happy one, that he enjoyed an altogether excep
tional freedom, and rose to no small measure of official
place and dignity. "The Lord was with Joseph, and
shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the
keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison com-
' Genesis x], 3. f Genesis xl. 14, 15.
X Genesis xl. 15. " Here also have I done nothing that they should
put me into the dungeon." So the Authorised 'Version renders the
phrase; the word rendered "the dungeon" should, however, be
rendered "the hole:" it is "applied to a prison as a miserable hole,
because often dry cesspools were used as prisons. " — Keil and Delitzsch's
Commentary, in loco.

42 JOSEPH IN PRISON.
mitted to Joseph's hands all the prisoners that were in the
prison ; and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of
it The keeper of the prison looked not to anything that
was under his hand ; because the Lord was with him "
(Joseph), " and that which he did, the Lord made it to pros
per." So much stress is laid on 'the favour shewn to Joseph
by the governor of the state-prison, that we namrally con
ceive of his position as one of unusual freedom, with but
•little in it to quicken resentment or regret
"Stone walls do not a prison make.
Nor iron bars a cage : "
and here at least were no envious brethren to grudge him
honour, no licentious mistress to tempt him to sin against
God and man. If his mind were quiet and at peace, Joseph
might very well be content with his position; the virtual
governor of the king's prison had no reason, one should
think, to envy the slave in Potiphar's house.
So we should think. But, as we leam from a supplemen
tary scripture, Joseph was by no means of our mind, nor
were his eircumstances altogether so happy as we have
supposed them to be. In Psalm cv., ver. 17 — 19, we read :
— " He sent a man before them : Joseph was sold for a
slave. They tormented his feet with fetters ; his soul came
into iron, until the time when his word came ; the word of
the Lord cleared him." The Hght shed by these words
shines into the dark Egyptian dungeon, and enables us
to see the prisoner and his condition more distinctly.
Honoured and trasted as he was, he was nevertheless
" tormented with fetters." He was a prisoner, although a
favoured prisoner, and thought more of his captivity than of
the favour which softened its rigours. If his fetters were
slender and light, still they were fetters, and no free man
will brook the chain. In these earlier Israelites, moreover,

JOSEPH IN PRISON. 43
there was the Arab strain of blood and habit ; and, to this
day, an Arab dreads bondage more than death. Accustomed
to wander, a freeman, about the broad Syrian plains, Joseph
found the stifling air of a dungeon hard to breathe. He
was a young man, too ; at the very age, therefore, when free
dom is most precious, bondage most intolerable. No wonder,
then, that his " fetters " were his " torment." He would re
sent them with the fuU passion of the youth and the nomad.
And he was bound in misery as well as in iron ; he sat in
an inner darkness and in the shadow of death, " His soul
came into the iron," says the Hebrew Psalmist : as wi
should phrase it, " the iron entered into his soul." Besides
all the natural passion of the nomad and the youth, there
was the religion of the Hebrew to embitter his captivity.
For he had been taught by Jacob that good would come to
the good, and evil to the evil; that prosperity was the sign
of the Divine favour, and adversity the " note " of the
Divine anger. And he had tried to be good, and to enjoy
the Divine blessing — tried very hard. Had he not always
kept his father's commandments, and foUowed things of
jgood report, although his brethren were men of "evil re
port,"* and sought to lead him into evil ways ? And what
had he gained by that? Simply the murderous jealousy
and hatred of his brothers. Had he not in thefuU flush of
youthful passion resisted the allurements and entreaties
of the beautiful Egyptian, because he would not sin against
God ? And what had he gained by that ? Simply the stigma
of having committed the very wickedness it was so hard not to
commit, and its doom — the dungeon and the fetter. When
the perturbed cup-bearer came to him with a dream, had he
not used the strange mystic wisdom which he held to be his
choicest gift for his neighbour's comfort ? And what had he
gained by that ? Simply that the cup-bearer forgot him and
* Genesis xxxvii. 2.

44 JOSEPH IN PRISON.
left him to his fate. Were all women vricked then ? and all
men ungrateful and unjust ? Was there no God after all ?
or was there, instead of a faithful gracious Father, pure and
generous as the heaven in which He dwelt, only an austere
and capricious despot, as fickle and unjust as Potiphar or
Pharaoh? Those early dreams of his, too, dreams of a
happy greataess which had suffused his youthful hrain with
their splendours of hope— were not these from God ? He
had taken them as from God : so also had the wise vener
able father who had talked vidth God face to face, and who
was skilled in reading the omens of human fate and 'circum
stance. Were they mere lies sent to betray him? Was
there no truth, no fidelity, in heaven or on earth ? Had his
father forgotten him as God seemed to have done ? Did
God hate him as his brothers hated him ? Did the keeper
of the prison trust him only because he was useful and
saved him trouble ? Was he, so young, so ardent, wdth
such capacities for vdsdom and rale and enjo)rment, to drag
out his days in a dungeon, in that hole, abandoned of God
and man? never again to breathe the free air, never to
taste the common delights ; and all because he had been fool
enough to believe in God and goodness, and to do his duty
in scorn of consequence ?
Thus, vdth some such despairing thoughts as these, Joseph
sat, bound in misery and iron, for two full years, darkness
and the shadow of death gathering round him : " they tor
mented him with fetters;" "the iron entered into his soul."
This, at least, is the conception of his prison-life suggested
by the Psalmist — a very different conception from that we
should have gathered from the book of Genesis, a different
and a traer conception. Through long bitter months he
bends sad questioning eyes on a heaven no longer flushed
with rosy dawns of hope, but dark with the hues of doubt
and despair.

JOSEPH IN PRISON. 45

Yet, as we know, the road to the throne lay through "that
hole ; " and but for the hateful fetters which tormented him,
he would never have worn the signet from Pharaoh's hand,
nor the golden chain which Pharaoh flung round his neck.
From ruling the state-prison, he was caUed to rule the state.
"The. word of the Lord cleared him," and all the bright
dreams of his youth were outdone. He leamed, learned
by happy experience, that the great Ruler of men is no aus
tere capricious tyrant, but a most just and gracious Lord ;
that father Jacob had mourned for him, refusing to be com
forted. With his good he overcame the evil that was in his
brethren, turning their hatred to love and self reproach.
The night in which he sat ushered in a long and brilHant
day. If his fetters tormented him, it was only that he might
grow perfect through suffering : if the iron entered into his
soul, it was only that it might make him strong.
II. Now the prison-experience of Joseph is by no
means an exceptional experience. Its value for us lies
mainly in the fact, that it helps us to understand the com
mon lot of man. For most of us, although we are not
thrast into a dungeon, although we are not compelled to sit
bound for years in misery and iron, are nevertheless familiar
with the perplexities of thought, and with that brooding
half-despairing melancholy the iron of which entered into
his soul. It would seem, indeed, to be a law of the Divine
government, that in proportion as men are great in capaci
ties for service, they should have their capacities developed
by bitter and long-sustained afilictions. " The poets learn
in suffering what they teach in song." Great captains, great
statesmen, great inventors, great reformers and philanthro
pists have almost, if not quite, invariably to cut their way
to success through hindering thickets or forests of obstrac-
tion. All the eariier steps of their course are marked by

46 JOSEPH IN PRISON.
their blood. They have to fight as for their life before the
world will permit them to serve it. They are shackled by
the customs of their time, the prejudices, the established
modes of thought and action : and simply because they are
before their age and see its real issues and needs with a
clearer eye than their neighbours, they have to waste their
energies for years against the obstacles which every man is
ready to thrust into their path. It is long before they
gather the momentum requisite to carry them sheer through
the barriers which " the milHons — mostly fools," build up
before them. Often they can only settle to their real task,
and take their trae place in the regards of men, when they
are weary, and their strength is .well-nigh spent Nor is it
otherwise with those who would be sincerely or greatly good.
It is almost impossible to recall a teacher or saint of ancient
times whose earlier years were not familiar vidth sorrow and
defeat, who was not hampered and obstracted on every side
from the very moment in which he set himself to teach a
new trath, or to enforce a purer morality. Patriarchs, pro
phets, psalmists, apostles were all tormented with these fetters,
and felt the iron of them in their very souls. Nay, even in
our own age, so ready to brag of its superior light and sweet
ness, we know very well that no man can think for himself
and therefore think differentiy from his neighbours, or shew
any originality in goodness, or even so much as attempt to
rise above the common and low levels of Christian faith and
obedience, than he is instantly beset by manifold obstrac-
tions — reviled, thwarted, or forsaken. "Bring out the fet
ters," is the common cry even in the Church ; " clap him
into prison. He is going too fast." Even if there be no
formal active opposition, he has to conquer the inertia, the
indifference, the ready suspicion of his neighbours, before
they will let him teach them what it has cost him much to
learn, before they wiH believe that earnest and devout study

JOSEPH IN PRISON. 47
has taught him more than they know. And while this con
flict is going on, he will often mistrast himself, often despair
of men ; sometimes he will even doubt the trath of trath
and the goodness of God. Like Joseph, he may indeed
carry a brave composed countenance, and go about in his
prison v?ith wisdom and discretion, rendering what service
its hard conditions will permit ; but none the less his fetters
torment him, their iron enters into his soul.
More or less this is the experience of all good men ; and
the mystery, the apparent injustice, of it often tortures and
afflicts them far more than the mere suffering it involves.
How shall we explain the mystery ? What comfort can
we give them ? Shall we say ? — " Your lot is for the
present very hard ; but you will have your compensations
by-and-by. The world or the Church will Hsten to you, or,
if they do not, God will. Your fetters will faU off,- the dark
prison-gates will roll open, and you will go forth to enjoy
a success all the sweeter for the bondage in which you now
mourn." Shall we say that ? If we have only that to say,
we shall be miserable comforters. There may be, indeed
there is, a certain comfort in such a hopeful prophecy.
But the comfort does not go very deep ; for it does not
remove the apparent injustice of the case ; and till that be
done, we only lay our hands on the hole of the asp, instead
of plucking out its venom. The mere fact that Joseph was
afterwards raised to the throne of Egypt did not justify the
wrong previously done him, if it was a wrong. No subse
quent happiness could bring back the two bright years of
youth which he had lost in the darkness of the dungeon,
nor even compensate him for them. And the good men
to whom we take our comfortable prophecy of future suc
cess, might reply to us with some natural resentment :
" We are not children that we should take an undeserved
whipping, and, because we are afterwards comforted with

JOSEPH IN PRISON.

kisses and sugar-plums, pronounce the injustice just
Whatever success we may have by-and-by, that will not
restore these wasted years, nor explain why we are suffered
to waste them and to sit shrouded in the darkness of de
feat, and neglect, and misery."
And there would be reason in their resentment For
good men, men really bent on doing good and being good,
care most of all to possess and do the good at which they
aim. To be useful is more to them than to be successful
in the personal sense, or to be happy. Their first want is
to be able to think of God as just and true in his ways, not
to have sumptuous fare, and gay apparel, and easy pleasant
times. Before we can give them the true comfort, we
must see and be able to say, that the years spent in un
successful toils are not wasted years ; that the defeats, and
neglects, and sorrows which they mourn over are sent to
them in justice and in love.
Now this is the very comfort suggested by our new con
ception of Joseph's prison-Hfe. Rightly viewed, that
mournful phrase, " the iron entered into his soul," is a
most hopeful and animating phrase. For if, on the "one
hand, it sets forth the misery and despair of the captive ;
on the other hand, it sets forth the inward strength bred
of that despair and misery. It is a good thing to have iron
in the soul, although to get it there involves so great a pain.
Iron in the soul is as requisite as iron in the blood, as in
dispensable to spiritual strength as to physical health, if by
" iron " we understand, as we may, the manly hardness
which can endure the blows of adverse circumstance, the
shocks of change. Joseph's two fuU years in that hole of
a dungeon were by no means wasted years. The natural
force of his character, as we can faintly discern in the
Sacred Chronicle, had been emasculated and warped by
the unwise petting of the father who doated on him. As

JOSEPH IN PRISON. 49

he loiters about in his coat of state, exempted from the
toils exacted of his brethren, we can detect a certain strut
in his gait He is innocent and pure ; but he is vain, and
a little childish for a lad of his years. He tells tales of his
brothers. He recounts his dreams of greatness with a sim-
pHcity, a quiet faith in his superiority over them, which
could hardly fail to incense them. He makes no allowance
for temptations the full force of which he has not felt He
shows no sign of manliness, no capacity for sway, no com
petence to handle men and rale events. But a few years
in slavery and prison make a surprising difference in him.
All his softness, and vanity, and over-simplicity — all his
talkati-jjeness, and assumption, and incompetence are clean
taken out of him. From the moment he leaves the prison,
he carries himself with a discretion, a modesty, a manly
wisdom and resolution which never fail him. He moves
before us a bom raler of men, with forward-looking eyes,
with a swift yet composed activity, with the tact of a
courtier and the generosity of a prince. He is a Hebrew
and a shepherd ; he is therefore of a vocation and a strain
most obnoxious to the Egyptians, since their great public
danger was the raids of the wandering Arab shepherds —
Abraham's children, Joseph's cousins — ^who frequented the
Arabian border. He had to carry the country through
seven successive years of famine, during which he bought
up all the small proprietors of the land, and converted
Egypt into a royal patrimony. In short, he carried the
State through the most radical revolutionary changes.
And yet he, who a few years since was so inapt that he
could not conciliate the love of his own kinsmen, is well-
nigh adored by the alien race which had so many plausible
reasons for hating him : throughout the long period of his
rale we hear of no single movement of revolt, nor even of
a single murmur against his authority. Not in vain has
4

so JOSEPH IN PRISON.
the iron entered into his soul. He has suffered, and is
strong. Now there is trae comfort in that, for it plucks the sting
of injustice from the sorrows of the good. If we must
suffer, if we must submit to many hindrances, overget much
opposition, see many years pass before we can teach the
truth or do the work on which we have set our hearts ; if,
'before we find our lives bathed in the light of the Divine
favour, we must sit in darkness and in the shadow of death ;
if, before we can walk in the freedom of a perfected obedi
ence, we must be long bound in misery and iron, we shall
be content if only we know that the iron is thrust into our
souls to make us strong. We can be patient and hopeful
when once we are assured that all our defeats and disap
pointments, our failures and reverses and broken illusions,
are parts of the discipHne by which God is training us for
the work we long to do, and are qualifying us to enjoy the
freedom we crave. If only om character is being moulded
and hardened, and its capacities brought out by suffering,
then it is not unjust of God to inflict suffering upon us. It
is not unjust, although we have not deserved the suffering,
nor can ever deserve it : it is most tender and gracious,
since He who is afflicted in all our afflictions will be very
sure not to lay upon us more than we are able to bear, and
is thus preparing us to be and do all that we most desire to
do and be. If we can become perfect only through suffer
ing, shall we not thank Him for the suffering which perfects
us ? If only as we learn to rule in the prison of deferred
opportunities and defeated hopes, we can become fit to rale
over the " many cities " of the heavenly kingdom, shall we
shrink from the prison which leads to the throne ? If the
iron must enter our souls that we may be strong amid the
flatteries and the adversities of fortune, shall even the fetters
which torment us be unwelcome to us ?

JOSEPH IN PRISON. 51
Do any say, " Ah, but the day is long in coming ; some
times, so far as we can see, it never comes ; the darkness
never quite clears off, the fetters never fall. If some men
suffer and are strong, others suffer and are weak. What
comfort is there for these?" There is this comfort — that
the discipline begun here is often completed hereafter.
Our lives are so long, if we did but know it, and we have
so much to learn, that the whole earthly lot of some— and
these often the most capable and heroic souls — is a mere
captivity as compared with what it will be, a mere training
for a task beyond their present reach. Till we can see
them no longer, they sit in darkness, bound in misery and
iron. The rast of their fetters is never washed out of theii
souls until they reach that stream of living waters which
men name Death. What then? If God has been so long
in fitting them to his hand, in attempering' them to his pur
pose, we may be very sure that He vrill not cast them away
and his pains on them ; but that He is reserving them for
some lofty work, some high perilous enterprise, whose trials
and perils only select souls can affront If we see the iron
entering into their souls, do we not also see that He is try
ing and purging them, bringing them to a more heavenly
temper and a finer edge ? How, then, can we doubt that
He will yet use them in his great conflict with evil, and give
them a place of honour in it ? How can we doubt that the
longer He delays to use them the more heroic is the strife
lO which they are devoted, the more glorious the honour for
which they are reserved ?
If the world wants iron dukes and iron men, God wants
iron saints, and therefore He suffers the iron to enter their
souls.

'§ibxm ®xlmuas of %'sibmx.
Exonus XVIII. 13 — ^26.
JETHRO, the father-in-law of Moses, is one of the most
striking figures reflected in the glass of the Word. He
is described in general terms as the priest and prince of
Midian — combines in himself, therefore, both sacerdotal
and royal functions. More particularly, he is the sheikh or
chief of the Kenites, a clan of the vast tribe of Midian,
dwelling on the shores of the Gulf of Akaba. He is the
very type of the Arab chief, such as he remains to the pre
sent day. His numerous flocks feed round the well of
Midian, tended by the seven daughters for whom, when the
rough shepherds would have driven them from the well,
Moses stood up. He is very grateful to "the Egyptian"
who " delivered his daughters out of the hand of the shep
herds, and drew water, and watered their flocks." He treats
him with the princely hospitality and courtesy which are
still to be found in the Arabian tents, and gives him one of
the seven daughters to wife.*
When the children of Israel, in their flight from Egypt,
encamped on "the Mount ofGod,"t the old chief, attracted
from far by the tidings of his kinsman's fame, presents him
self before the "Man of God":— "I, Jethro, thy fatiier-in-
law, am come unto thee, and thy wife, and thy two sons
* Exodus xi. 15—22. f Exodus xviii. i. etsej.

DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR. ' 53

with her. And Moses went out to meet his father-in-law,
and did obeisance, and kissed him" — gave the fuH Arab
salutation on each side of the face; "and they asked
each other of their welfare," greeting each other with that
rapid and vociferous outburst of question and answer
which still characterizes the meeting of Arabs, but which
soon lapses into silence as hand in hand " they come into
the tent " to confer privately of what each really wishes to
know.* Jethro listens to "all that the Lord had done unto the
Egjrptians for Israel's sake, and all the travail that had come
upon them by the way, and how the Lord delivered them."
He " rejoices in the goodness which the Lord' had done to
Israel," and with his own priestly sanctity acknowledges
the greatness of Jehovah, his kinsman's God. He offers
sacrifices unto Jehovah as " greater than aU' gods," even the
gods which he himself had worshipped ; and " Aaron," the
future high priest, " and aU the elders of Israel came to eat
bread with Jethro," — to join, that is, in the solemn feast of
thanksgiving which succeeded to and prolonged this act of
worship. Jethro is the first friend whom Moses has met, the first
councillor since he cut himself off from the wisdom of
Egypt : he is very loth to part with him. He pleads and
entreats — " Come thou vnthus, and we will do thee good."t
At first Jethro refuses to give up the wild freedom of his
nomadic life — "I will not go." But knowing that Jethro
with his Bedouin instincts and knowledge of the vrilderness
would be an invaluable guide, Moses renews his entreaties
— " Leave us not, I pray thee ; for thou knowest how we
should encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to us in
stead of eyes. And if thou vidlt go with us, what goodness
* Dean Stanley's "Jewish Church," pp. 141 — 3.
f Numbers x. 29 — 32.

54 DIVINE ORDINANCES 01 LABOUR.
the Lord will do to us the same will we do to thee." At
last Moses prevails ; for though " Moses let his father-in-law
depart, and he went away into his own land," * he must
afterwards have returned, bringing many of his tribe with
him. All through the subsequent history of Israel, even in
its most settled and civiHzed ages, we come on the traces
of the Kenites, Hving their free desert life, dwelling in
tents, and drinking no wine ; one with the people of the
Jews, and yet retaining their Arab customs ; producing men
disting\iished in the worst times by their fidelity to God and
to the habits of their fathers, — as, for instance, Jabez, who
was " more honourable than his brethren ; " Jonadab, the
austere sectary, who rode with Jehu when that vehement
prince sought to extirpate every worshipper of Baal through
out the land ; and that little band of Rechabites, who, in
the final siege of Jerusalem, pitched their tents in the streets,
and rather than drink wine endured the parching tiiirsts of
famine.t During his visit to Moses, " on the morrow " after his
arrival, Jethro saw with infinite concern that Moses sat aU day
long listening to the complaints of the whole camp, wearing
himself out in efforts to do justice, wearing the people out by
keeping many of them standing before him from morning to
evening, and then sending some of them away with their
suits unheard. He remonstrates with the exhausted Judge —
"The thing thou doest is not good; thou wilt surely wear
away, both thou and this people.'' He suggests that inferior
judges should be appointed in every tribe — " men of trath
who fear God" — to rule over tens, fifties, hundreds, and
thousands, with power to decide all " smaU matters,'' and to
refer " the hard causes '' to Moses : in short, Jethro suggests
that subordination of rulers and judges, of elders or sheikhs,
with which he was famihar in the tents of Midian, and which
* Exodus xviii. 27. f Jeremiah xxxv.

DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR. 55
may be found among the Arab tents in fuH operation to this
very day.
How valuable is a little common sense — and how scarce !
Here was Moses, a man trained in kings' palaces, deeply
skilled in all the wisdom of Egypt, and yet he has to wait
till Jethro comes — a mere man of the desert, before to a
self-evident evil he can apply a self-evident remedy. He
is wearing out his own strength in vain efforts to do justice
among the thousands of Israel, and yet it never strikes
him that he need not listen to all their petty squabbles,
but may very safely commit the decision of them to inferior
men. " The thing thou doest is not good : " but is it not good
to administer justice, even though it be administered to
ignorant fugitive slaves and have to handle all their base and
sordid quarrels ? Yes : it was the duty of Moses to admin
ister justice ; it was the duty of the people to ask for justice
instead of coming to blows : and duty is always good, even
though it be irksome. The error lay in the mode of dis
charging the duty. It might be discharged more efficiently,
and without exhausting the energies either of the people or
of the judge. It was a lawful, a laudable work, pushed to a
perilous extreme ; and it was not the work itself but the un
due extreme to which it was pushed that was not good.
Labour is good ; but if we labour unvrisely, so as to over
task and enervate our faculties, the labour which in itself is
good becomes, through our perversity, an evil.
Labour, the Division of Labour, and the Intermission of
Labour, are all Divine Ordinances, and only as we accept
aU three do we get the fuU good of all our labours under
the sun.
I. — Labour is an Ordinance of God. Moses, even though
he act on Jethro's suggestion, is not to cease from the task

56 DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR.
of admistering justice. On the contrary, justice, by his
wiser action, is to be more perfectly and efficiently adminis
tered. Moses is to select trae and " able men," " such as
fear God and hate covetousness," to be rulers of thousands,
and hundreds, and fifties, and tens. The " great matters "
and the " hard causes " are still to be brought to him. He
will have plenty to do in deciding the more difficult and
complicated cases, and in selecting men competent to rale
and judge — plenty to do, but no longer too much.
And in like manner with us : whatever merciful allevia
tions and remissions of toil the good providence of God
may have brought, there is plenty of work for every man
to do — work which he cannot neglect save to his own
hurt, and to the loss of the community at large. No man
is so unhappy or so likely to become a burden to himself
and a pest to his neighbours as he who neither has a daily
task set him, nor sets himself a task. Labour braces the
energies of mind and body, and makes the after-rest sweet
It conditions all good things ; for aU good things are hard to
get ; and in the labour of getting them Hes our best safeguard
against temptations to evU.
God is very bountiful ; and doubtless the united labours
of every man in England produce enough for each and all,
enough to secure the common weal and to give every man
as many good things — as much education, as much influence,
as much property, as much leisure — as he could wisely use.
But while some stand idle aU the day long, while the pro
ducts of the national labour are so unequally distributed as
that the few have more than they can use for good and the
many have not enough to keep the spectres of AVant and
Ignorance at bay, even the busiest man may well feel called
to add to his labours the stady of political science or what
ever other wisdom will teach Irs how all may be compelled
to work and the fair distribution be attained. No able man

DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR. 57
can withdraw his labours from the public stock without
doing a public wrong. For though labour be not a curse,
yet, through the sin of man, a curse has fallen on labour.
The earth, once prolific of good and nourishing growths, has
been smitten into comparative sterility, or is fertile in noxious
and obstractive growths. Thorns and thistles spring up
where we might have found wheat or vines, healing herbs or
luscious fruits. The earth may still be coaxed and com
pelled into yielding all that men require ; but to get this
yield demands much labour at the hands of man — a labour
in which all must unite. Tis an universal, and therefore,
we may be sure, a merciful ordinance — " In the sweat of thy
face shalt thou eat bread ; " and if any man's brow be dry,
it is because others are sweating beyond their strength.
There is work for all, and need for every man's work, of
whatever sort it may be — from thinking the thoughts or
pursuing the scientific discoveries which clear the road along
which the world is to advance, down to working a loom or
digging a field ; from managing a large estate so as to develop
all its manifold capabilities of service, down to trimming its
hedges or hauling its coal.
If, moreover, a curse has been pronounced on labour,
making it hard, a blessing has been pronounced upon it
and put into it The Lord Jesus wrought with his hands
in the just Carpenter's shop. He and those whom He in
spired have taught us that we may do all we do, labour at
the basest and meanest toils, to the glory of God ; that we
may find a sacramental efficacy in our labours, and through
our labours render a sacramental service.
So that if, on the one hand, the curse pronounced on
labour urges, on the other hand the blessing pronounced on
labour invites, us aU to ,take our part in the work of the
world. If we do not do whatsoever our hand findeth to do,
and do it with our might, our neighbours suffer for it, and

58 DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR.
we miss a benediction we might have had. Till all men are
wise, and good, and well-provided, we dare not fold our
hand in our bosom ; or because we fare comfortably, if not
sumptuously, ask, while Lazaras lies perishing at our very
gate — " And, pray, who is my neighbour ? "
II. — The Division of Labour is an Ordinance of God.
Moses will surely wear away if he do everything for himself,
and "by himself alone." Let him therefore hearken to the
practical wisdom of Jethro, and, dividing the work among
many, that which is "too heavy" for him will become light
to them. Divide the labour, and conquer the difficulty.
There is parable here as well as history. For at first
man, like Moses, attempted to " perform " everything " by
himself alone." Every family had to make its own tents,
feed its own sheep, grow its own corn, cut out its own
garments. No scripture of Heavenly Wisdom taught them
the simple secret of Civilization — to unite in common
labour, and to apportion the several parts of the common
labour to the most skUful and competent hands. They
were taught this secret by the Providence which speaks
through human experience. Nor was it long before they
leamed that if one man by giving himself whoUy to the
labours of agriculture could grow food enough for fifty men,
the other forty-nine would be set free from planting and
tending each his little plot of ground, and might give them
selves this man to one handicraft, and that to another —
Jabal to keeping flocks, and Jubal to making musical in
straments, and Tubal-Cain to working in metals ; and that,
by thus dividing their labour and combining to partake its
products, the conveniences and comforts of their life might
be indefinitely increased.
And this secret God has been teaching through the
ages. He has stored the earth with all the treasures

Dli^INE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR. 59
necessary to the welfare of mankind, and planted in man all
the faculties and energies necessary to the discovery and
appropriation of these treasures, and then left him to dis
cover and appropriate them. Many of these treasures are
closely hidden — coal and iron, for instance ; yet men have
been left to detect them, to discover their properties and
uses by successive experiments, and the best modes of
turning them to account Discovery, prompted by need,
has kept pace with need. Every cenmiy, every decade, and
of late almost every year, has brought the knowledge of
some new force of nature, or some novel appHcation of an
old force, which has multipHed the provision for men's
wants in exact proportion as men and their wants have
multiplied. Mechanism, inspired by Steam, now does the
work of many millions of men, and work which no conceiv
able number of men, unaided by mechanism, could possibly
have achieved; yet man's labour has not grovm less, but
rather more. What would have become of the world if
steam had not been discovered, or if iron still lay hidden
in the depths of the earth ?
And these discoveries of nevsr forces, or new appHcations
of force, would obviously have been impossible had every
man continued to wear himself out in vain efforts to make
his ovra clothes, and grow his own wheat, to keep his own
sheep, and hunt his own game. It is the wise division and
distribution of labour to which we owe all the services and
comforts of civiHzed life ; and the wiser the distribution, the
higher the civiHzation. It is this division of labour which
multipHes the products of labour, and not only sets men
free to invent improved methods of labour, but also puts
them in the way of inventing them. If, for instance, one
man could make a tent in ten days, ten men, each of whom
was trained to make his separate part, would tam out not
ten, but fifty or a hundred, tents in the same time; and

6o DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR.
each of the ten, always handling the same tools and working
on the same substance— canvass, or wood for poles and
pegs, or palm fibre or hemp for ropes — ^would naturally im
prove his tools to save his pains, and discover qualities and
capabilities in the substance which only long familiarity
could detect. From such simple beginnings as these has
risen that division of the whole civilized community into
separate trades and professions, and these trades and pro
fessions again into many component elements and speci
alities, which multiplies its productive power to an almost
infinite extent, and keeps the discovery of our means and
appliances of labour up to the level of our growing numbers
and wants. Compare the value of the labour of a thousand
EngHshmen or Frenchmen with that of a thousand Arabs or
Indians, and you will gain some conception of what the
world owes to God's ordinance for the division of labour —
what it owes of safety, convenience, comfort, education,
peace. III. — The Intermission of Labour is an Ordinance of God.
Man is not a machine that he should do nothing but work,
though he often uses himself as if he were. If he give him
self to incessant labour, or if, like Moses, he simply carry
labour to an excess, he will surely wear himself away and
yet not achieve that at which he aims ; while if he will listen
to some wise Jethro, and lighten his labour, he may long
retain his strength, and ui the long run do a larger stroke of
work than if he went at it with the feverish excitement
which preys upon the strength it evokes. To wear out is
better than to rast out ; but it is best of all neither to rast out
in sloth nor prematurely to wear out in undue toils. There
have been races and generations to whom the appropriate
message was, " Go to the ant, thou sluggard ; consider her
ways, and be wise : " but the message which we need to

DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR. 61
hear is rather, "The thing thou doest is not good; thou
wilt surely wear thyself away." Not but what labour is
good, but that the labour which, not content with using the
interest of our daily strength, draws upon and exhausts the '
capital of constitutional health, makes that which is good in
itself an evil to us. And in this generation, competition has
grown so keen, and large capitalists can nurse up such
enormous fortunes out of the smallest profits, and the whole
world is so bound together by commercial ties which make
the disasters of distant lands near and heavy oppressions,
that not a few among us tread a narrow causeway between
dishonesty on the one hand and insanity on the other, and
are in perpetual imminent danger of missing their footing.
They are so absorbed by the cares and anxieties of business
that not unfrequently they altogether lose that fresh innocent
enjoyment of their life which they ought to have, and fail to
raise their eyes to anything higher than price-lists, and
share-quotations, and market-returns.
Now this obviously is not good. It is to buy the means
of living at the cost of life itself and all that makes it worth
having. To follow any vocation vrith so absorbing an in
terest as to undermine health and to neglect the higher ends
for which life is given, is both unwise and wicked. It is to
sin against the law which God has written on our bodies —
a law which is very prompt to avenge itself, and against the
law which He has revealed in our reason and experience.
Better surely is a crast and enjoyment therewith than sump
tuous fare and no appetite for it " Plain living and high
thinking" compose a happier lot than high living and the
low thoughts that can only creep about the earth, and never
wish to creep beyond the narrow pale of traffic. If the pur
chase money be your better life, even though you should get
the whole world in exchange, you have made but a poor bar- ¦
gain of it with all your skill of business.

62 DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR.
And, therefore, lest our hearts should be unduly set on
labour and its prizes, God has ordained the intermission of
labour. Not only has He given us an inward monitor which
warns us when mental or vital powers are overtasked, to
seek out holiday mirth and recreative sports, to change the
air we breathe and the scenes on which we look if perchance
we may thus change the wearing current of our thoughts ;
He has also fixed bounds to our labour beyond which we
cannot or ought not to pass. Seven times a week the day
draws to an end, and the night comes on in which most of
us at least are compeUed to rest. The curtains of darkness
are drawn, and gracious restorative sleep — '' sleep which," as
Sancho Panza so graphically expressed it, " covers a man all
over like a cloak " — hushes the busy fret and worry of the
spirit, carrying us into a balmy vacancy, or a strange yet
pleasant drearn-land, and sending us back to our work, with
the morning light, fresh as the morning air. Once every
week, too, there retams the Day of Rest, on which we cease
from our toils, and withdraw our minds from the noisy labours
and corroding anxieties of traffic. Ah ! if men would obey
this divine ordinance, if they would abstract their minds as
well as their hands from labour night by night as they return
to the home, and Sunday by Sunday as they come up to the
House of God, instead of wearing themselves away, they
would carry an intenser vigour to their toils, and do more
though in lesser time. It is because they will not rest when
God says, " Rest," nor worship when God says, " Worship,"
that so many are urged into mania, or borne to a premature
grave. For this Holy Day is not simply a day of rest from busi
ness toils ; it is also a day of worship, and thus its sanitary
and restorative character is indefinitely enhanced. It is the
strain of one unvarying round of thought which saps om men
tal and vital forces ; and to have our thoughts lifted at regular

DIVINE ORDINANCES OF LABOUR. 63
and frequent intervals into a higher and calmer region than that
in which they more commonly move, is health to them and
invigoration ; the mind, raised out of and above its custom
ary cares, recovers tone, and elasticity, and strength. Viewed
simply as a diyine provision for "the reHef of man's estate,"
the worship of the Sanctuary is beyond all price ; and when
this worship extends through the whole week, and finds ex
pression even in the labours of our calling, — ^when we can do
even these to the glory of God, and no longer fret about the
issue of our labours because we believe that He knows all
our needs and will supply them, then we have reached that
impregnable shelter and fortress in which whosoever abides,
though he be still assailed^ can never be overcome by the
cares of life ; then, "dwelling in the shadow of the Almighty,"
we rest with child-like confidence in his promise both for
the life that now is, and for that which is to come.
Hence it is that when we are over eager in our labours for
present good, or what we think a good, God so often sends
some ragged Jethro — some warning sickness or calamitous
loss, some sorrow that, passing through all our defences,
smites and cleaves our very heart. Not because He gradges
our prosperity, or would aba;te our happiness, but because
He would have us rise to that sacred rest and satisfying
peace which even adversity cannot take away. He often
sends a chastening whose message, if we will hear it, is, "The
thing thou doest is not good. Thou vrilt surely wear thyself
away, and wastefuUy expend thy life on things which perish
as you handle them. Turn ye at my reproof; for why should
ye die?"

VL,
'§,xxiQ §ramblt
Judges ix. 8 — 15.
" T)EHOLD the fig-tree and all the trees. When they
X-/ shoot forth, ye see, and know of your own selves,
that summer is nigh at hand." Now, if we set ourselves to
" leam the parable of the fig-tree and all the trees," what
have they to teach us ? That summer is nigh at hand? Yes,
that, and much more than that ; they have so much to teach
us, indeed, that it would not be hard to leam a new parable
of them every day the whole year through. The Lord Jesus
has interpreted many of their utterances for us. So also
have the ancient Hebrew writers who were before Him.
Most of the more antique Hebrew parables, indeed, are
taken from the vegetable kingdom. In the Hebrew litera
ture the vine, the cedar, the thorn, the thistle take the
place which in the fables of India and Greece is occu
pied by talking beasts and birds and fishes. And of all
these parables or fables, the parable of Jotham has the first
claim on our thoughts ; and that for at least two reasons.
First, for the manner of its telling : no other fable was ever
told, I think, under circumstances and in a way so striking
and impressive. Second, for its antiquity : in all probability •
it is the most ancient of fables, as Lamech's is the most
ancient of songs.

KING BRAMBLE. 65

To learn this parable we must transport ourselves in
thought back, through more than thirty centuries, to the
time of the Judges. Then the children of Israel had but
newly entered on the land of promise. They had not yet
fully subdued and possessed themselves of it The land
was still infested by remnants of the fierce heathen races they
were sent to supplant. There was no king in Israel, no
national organization or unity. Tribes and families dwelt
apart. " Every man did that which was right in his own
eyes," and what was right in his eyes was often wrong in
God's. They were hemmed in, on the one hand, by organ
ized kingdoms, by proud warrior races possessed of the arts
of an ancient civiHzation ; and, on the other hand, by the un
civilized nomadic races who had opposed their entrance into
the land. Both were bitterly hostile to the Hebrew people
and the Hebrew faith ; both impoverished the land by per-
pemal forays, and often, for years together, incorporated
broad tracts of it with their, dominions.
To meet and check these alien foes God raised up chief
tains or judges, usually from the tribe imperilled at the
moment, and inspired them with a valour before which the
invaders trembled and fled. Of these judges Gideon was
the greatest. To the valour which was their common
attribute, he added a singular sweetness and nobility of
nature ; insomuch that, when he had driven out the invading
Midianites, the men of Israel came to him with the prayer,
" Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's
son." It was the first attempt to institute an hereditary
monarchy, and though Gideon rejected the title of king,
he henceforth ruled in royal state. With the royal state, he
adopted the royal license of the time, taking to himself many
wives and concubines. By his wives he had threescore and
ten sons, of whom Jotham, the speaker of our parable, was
the youngest. Among his concubines was a woman of
S

66 KING BRAMBLE.

Shechem, the ancient capital of Israel, in which city, as in
some others, the heathen inhabitants of the land were suffered
to dwell side by side with the IsraeHtes. By this heathen
slave, the daughter of a subject race, Gideon had a son,
named Abimelech, who inherited the daring of his father,
without his goodness and sweetness of nature. On the
death of Gideon, the bastard Abimelech resolved to take
his father's place. He hurried to Shechem, collected the
members of his mother's family and race, and appealed to
their feeHng of clan and kinship : " Remember," he said,
"I am of your bone and flesh, while the other sons of
Gideon are of the Hebrew blood, and will treat you as
aliens and slaves." They responded to the appeal : " He is
our brother," they said, "we can make better terms with
him." They helped him with money from the public
treasury. With this money he hired men; he marched
with them to Ophrah where his seventy halfbrothers held
their court, surprised them, slew them all on one stone —
save Jotham, who escaped^ — and returned in triumph to
Shechem. The men of his mother's tribe went out to meet
him ; and, as he stood beneath the venerable and mighty
oak from beneath which Joshua had addressed the nation,
they saluted him, the first in sacred history, with the name
of King.
A feast was held to celebrate his elevation to the royal
dignity. And at the feast, while they pledged the king
beneath the sacred oak, there occurred a singular and
ominous interraption to their mirth. A voice was heard high
in the air, and looking up, they see Jotham, the one son of
Gideon who had escaped the slaughter, standing on a spur
of Mount Gerizim that projects over the vaUey in which
they were gathered. He stands on the conspicuous cliff,
inaccessible from below, which still towers over the very
spot, — vast caverns opening immediately behind him into

KING BRAMBLE. 67

which he can plunge long before they from below can climb
round to the dizzy pinnacle on which he rests ; and from
which, as recent experiments have proved, his voice would
be audible through the vaUey. Straight, but far, beneath
him are the revellers at the royal feast. Around them
spreads the unparalleled mass of verdure in which, alone of all
the cities of Palestine, Shechem is embosomed to this day
the whole valley being covered with the cedar, the oak, the
olive, the fig, the vine, and the thorny fragrant underwood.
Jotham is there to denounce the crael worthless bastard
who has destroyed his father's house, and to rebuke the
men of Shechem with their crime in electing him their king.
The wooded scene before him gives form to his thoughts.
He cries, " Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God
may hearken unto you." With this brief adjuration he
plunges at once into his parable, a parable in which, grave
as the occasion was, we can still detect some touches of his
father's quaint bright humour. In effect his parable runs
thus :
Once upon a time the trees went forth to do what you
are doing now, to anoint a king. And,, first, they went to
the Olive, and said, " Reign thou over us." But the Olive
replied, " My veins ran oil : shall I leave my fatness to ran
up and down for the other trees ? Not I." Then they went
to the Fig, and said, " Reign thou over us then." But the
Fig-tree replied, " My veins ran honey : shall I leave my
sweetness to run up and down for the other trees ? Not I."
Then they went to the Vine, and said, " Come thou, then,
and reign over us." But the Vine replied, " My veins run
wine : shall I leave my good cheer to run up and down for
the other trees ? Not I." Out of heart with many rebuffs,
they came, last of all, to the Bramble, and said, " O Bramble,
wilt thou reign over us ? " " That wiU I," said the Bramble,
" with all my thorns. There is no wine, no honey, no oil

68 KING BRAMBLE.

in my veins. I wiU cheerfully run up and dovra for the
other trees. But I pray you do not mock me. If I am
indeed to be your king, come all of you, oak and cedar,
olive, and vine, and fig-tree, and put your trast in my
shadow. If not, and you fail in the reverence you owe me,
I pray heaven that I may catch fire, and set you all on fire,
till even the tall big cedars there are consumed." Thus
spoke the Bramble, being naturally of a hot fiery tempera
ment ; and the trees were caught in their ovm trap ; and the
loftiest of them had to do homage to the lowest, and the
noblest to the most base. And even so King Bramble was
not appeased ; but when he had had his will of the trees,
" to serve his private ends," he did catch fire, set them on
fire, and the whole forest was consumed.
This, in substance and spirit, was the parable of Jotham ;
and no scholar reading it in the Hebrew can fail to be strack
with the quaint humour which pervades it, or to be surprised
at meeting vrith these humorous touches on an occasion so
gTave and tragic. Jotham's intention in the parable is not
hard to trace. His father Gideon, some phase of whose
character is set forth in each of the nobler trees, such as the
vine, the fig, the olive, and the cedar — the venerated judge,
whose sweet temper broke forth in a humour as bright and
cheerful as wine, was the hero first chosen by the men of
Shechem and the men of Israel to be their king. He had
shewn himself too wise, too good, too gracious to assume the
royal title and to lord it over his brethren. And now, for
getting Gideon's "goodness," they had chosen base Abimelech,
mean and worthless as the bramble, and fuU of crael thorns,
to be their king, although his hands were red with the blood
of Gideon's sons. He would prove a trae bramble-king to
them ; out of him there would go forth a fire which would fly
from hill to hill, till even distant Lebanon kindled into
flame.

KING BRAMBLE. ¦ 69

The prediction was fulfiUed. Within three years the men
of Shechem, who now cried of Abimelech, " He is our bro
ther, and shaU be our king," remembered that he was the son
of Gideon the Hebrew. They revolted against his tyranny.
The insurrection was quenched in their blood. Shechem was
utterly destroyed. Again the rebels, defeated and scattered,
drew to a head in the wide com-fields at the end of the
valley ; and again they were overthrown with great slaughter.
The survivors betook themselves to the lofty tower, the
stronghold of the Temple of their League. Abimelech
advanced against them over the mountain's and through the
forests of Zalmon. He cut do-nm a bough, and bade his men
also provide themselves with boughs. They piled up the
branches round the stronghold, kindled them, and the tower
with its inmates was consumed. At Thebez he attempted to
repeat the same rase. He advanced to fire the vast heap of
boughs and underwood ; as he appHed the torch he was feUed
to the earth by " a piece of a millstone," flung by a woman's
hand, and bade his armour-bearer thrust him through, that it
might not be said, " A woman slew him ! " Thus fire broke
forth from the Bramble-King to devour the men of Shechem ;
and fire broke forth from the men of Shechem to devour the
king. "Thus God recompensed the wickedness of Abimelech,
which he did unto his father, in slaying his seventy bre
thren." It is the wild story of a wild time. Nevertheless, it has
lessons for us; but the moral commonly drawn from it is
surely one of the few lessons it does not teach. The common
moral is, that monarchy is aHen to the will of God ; that here
from the first He condemns the monarchical form of govem-
ment " See," cries Democracy, " in the earliest recorded
parable we are taught that kings are mere brambles, full of
thorns of offence, and that those who submit to them are
consumed in the fire which they kindle." This political con-

70 KING BRAMBLE.

elusion has been drawn, indeed, from the whole scope and
tenor of the Hebrew history, from Jehovah's reluctance
to give his people a king, and from the terrible calamities
which came upon them so soon as the monarchical fomi of
government was established among them.
Both these arguments are singularly illogical, and may be
turned in a moment against those who use them. Jotham's
parable, even if we are to take this Hebrew lad as a grave
political authority, condemns only one base criminal who
chanced to be called a king : it would have been just as per
tinent had he been called a judge instead of a king. The
parable impHes that if the Olive, or the Fig, or the Vine, had
been elected to the regal function and had accepted it, all
would have gone well with the forest : it is only the election
of the base ungracious Bramble which is condemned. In
short, the parable denounces not kings, but bad kings.
So, again, it is very trae that Jehovah was reluctant to give
the Jews a king. But why ? Simply because He claimed to
be their King, and the best king they could have. And if it
be easy to infer an argument against monarchy from his
reluctance to grant them another king than Himself, it is
equally easy to infer an argument for monarchy from the fact
that He Himself was and is a king.
s,^^ The trae political lesson of Jotham's parable is surely
this : that the highest places in the State should be given
only to the best men ; that the bramble should never be per
mitted to usurp the place of the olive or the vine, and that
the vine and the olive should not shrink from the duties
which their very sweetaess and fataess impose upon them.
When men of noble character, and great parts, and refined
culture withdraw from public life — as, for instance, we are
told they do in America — and leave the administration of
pubHc affairs to the ignorant and greiidy and unsc'rapulous ;
or when, as often happens in England, men who are worth-

.KING BRAMBLE. 71

less as brambles, simply because they have a long purse
or a long pedigree (and brambles are at least as old as
the Curse),. are thrast into seats of honour and responsibility
— then we may predict, with Jotham, that a fire wiU break
forth from them in which much that we love will be consumed.
If Gideon vnll not rale, and Abimelech will ; or if we are
base enough to prefer a base Abimelech before a noble
Gideon, we may be very sure that evil will come of it, and
not good : we shall not gather grapes off briars, nor figs off
thistles : we may confidently look for thorns and flames in
lieu of wine and honey.
This, I apprehend, is the true poHtical moral of the
parable. . It is a most religious moral ; for it teaches us in
what spirit our political duties should be discharged, that
they should be discharged in the fear of God ; it warns us
that so often as we help to put a bad man into a good place,
we so far forth conspire against the best interests of our
country, and are traitors to the common weal.
.But it is not this moral which chiefly commends Jotham's
parable to our thoughts. It contains a lesson stiU more
pertinent to the time : it warns us against one of the most
special and pressing dangers of the Church. There is, per
haps, no danger more threatening to the efficiency arid
peace of the Christian Church in these realms than the
growing tendency of men of culture and refinement to
decline from its communion and service. The best men,
those most fitted to guide and instract the Church, are "too
often either outside its pale, or, if within it, are content to
seek their own growth in knowledge or grace rather than to
teach in the pulpit and the school, or to visit the poor and
sick, or to conduct any of the enterprises by which the
Church seeks to save and serve the world. They try, they
tell us, to be good and to do good, to live out the Christian
law in theii' homes and in their business; some of them-try

72 KING BRAMBLE.

also to hold communion with the wise of past ages, to grow
by study, and thought, and prayer, into more perfect men ;
but they do not care, they think it no part of their duty, to
expose themselves to colHsion with ignorant and vulgar
minds, to busy themselves in the toils of active service, to
quit the seclusion of the home and the stady for the labori
ous repetitions of school and church work. All that, they
hold, would be for them a waste of time which they can
occupy to better purpose. In brief, it is with us as in the
days of Jotham : the Olive says, " My veins ran oil ; shall I
leave my fatness to nm up and down for the other trees ? "
And the Fig says, " My veins ran honey ; shall I leave my
sweetness to ran up and down for the other trees ? " And
the Vine says, " My veins run wine ; shaU I leave my good
cheer to ran up and dovra for the other trees, and, above
all, for these miserable brambles who will tarn upon me
with aU their thorns ? "
Now we must admit that it is the pecuUar and strong
temptation of the wise and happy, of men of culture and
refinement, to pursue their own clear lofty aims, and leave
the world around them to take its own way. AU who have
stood on the Mount of Vision and Contemplation are dis
posed to abide there, and to leave the publicans and harlots
and demoniacs below to get on as best they can. And
therefore we need not be surprised to find that men refined
by culture addict themselves to stady, and shrink from
vulgar and monotonous toils. If we were Olives, perhaps
we should think more of our own " fatness," especially if we
could plead that by this we "honoured God and man," than
of running up and down to serve the other trees. So also
if we were Fig-trees, and could allege not only our own
" sweetness," but also our " good frait," or if we were Vines,
and could plead " the wine which cheereth God and man,"
'we might easily persuade ourselves that it was' our duty to

KING BRAMBLE.

73

neglect our duty to the other trees, and to go on hoarding
up the fatness or the sweetness or the brightness which was
not without its use. It would be easy to do that, only too
easy. But "every tree for itself, and the forest wiU do very
well," means, when translated into the higher region, "Every
man for himself, and let the Church get on as it can.'' Can
the Church get on on these terms ? Nay, God has not ap
pointed us to live single and disunited lives, but a common
life. We are a fellowship, a communion ; each needs help,
and should give help. Those who on plea of refinement
and self cultare excuse themselves from active participation
in the common work of the Church, injure the Christian
community in many ways. First of all, they leave the
Church to be governed and represented before the world
by men of less wisdom than themselves, often by vulgar and
ignorant men, who hinder even when they mean to help.
Then, too, the Church within itself is not So well taught and
ruled, nor so full of grace and peace, as it might be, were
those who are most . competent to help to yield their help.:
¦brambles often kindle fires where olives would yield oil and
vines give wine. Moreover, they sin against the divine law
which binds gifts to service, which commands us to use for
the common good whatever talents we have received. And,
last of all, they miss their own special aim, they mar even
their own self-cultare ; for all God's gifts thrive with us and
make increase to themselves in proportion as we are faithful
stewards of them and use them for the general good. Here,
indeed, our figure fails us ; for in the natural world the Olive
would not grow richer in oil, nor the Fig in honey, nor the
Vine in wine, were it to shift from place to place, and go up
and down to serve the other trees. But in the spiritual
world no Olive, no Fig, no Vine comes to its full perfection,
or yields its best frait, save by going up and down for others,

74 KING BRAMBLE.

save by serving and helping them. In the spiritual kingdom
the Olive that thinks only of its own fatness, the Fig that
thinks only of its own sweetness, the Vine that thinks only
of its own bright exhilaration, is terribly apt to degrade mto
a mere hjiar, fuU of rending thorns, and quick to kindle into
flame. '- ,,- »^>-
It would be a strange and quaint spectacle were we to
see all the trees of a great forest stumping up and down on
their broad gouty roots to inquire after and forward each
other's welfare. But there is a spectacle far stranger than
this, although it be so common : it is that of a Christian
Church whose members do not go up and dovra to serve
each other, and help forward the common welfare, each
according to his several abiUty, and all with all their might.
Let us leam a lesson, then, from this quaint parable of the
antique world. Let us leam from it that, if we have any
special gifts — any sweetness or richness of natare, or any
power to brighten and exhilarate the sad hearts of men —
we have it not for our own sakes merely, but that we may
serve our neighbours with it, and help them to a sweeter,
richer, brighter life. All our gifts are but broken and im
perfect rays of the glory of God. And how does He use
his glory, the glory of his wisdom, the glory of his power,
the glory of his love ? Does He not devote power, wisdom,
love, all that He is and has, to the good of his creatures ?
And how can we hope to please Him, and to receive more
of his glory, save as we devote what He has given us to the
service of men whom He made, and loves, and serves ?
But some wiU say, " How willingly would we serve men if
we could ! But we have no special gift, no great opportuni
ties. We have nothing to give which our neighbours would
accept. The little we can do is not worthy the name of
service." Is it not ? In a forest, or an orchard, there must
be trees of many kinds. AU cannot be olives, nor aU figs,

KING BRAMBLE. 75

nor aU vines. But if every tree yield its frait, and the best
frait it can, does not the orchard prosper ? Under the larger
trees there must be many briars, many brambles — perhaps a
score or a hundred of these for every tree that throws lofty
branches into the air. And a few of these brambles might
get together, and say, " We are of no use ; the forest does
not need us ; men do not care for us. O that we could bear
olives, or figs, or grapes ! As it is we are good for nothing
but to be cut down and cast into the fire. Why should we
wait for that ? Let us catch fire and bum the forest dovm.''
But need the brambles thus despair of themselves ? Ask
the birds who dine off the hips and haws of the thorns aU
the winter through ! Ask the boys who pluck blackberries
off the briars ! Even the bramble, if, instead of catching
fire, it wUl give itself to its proper work, is capable of bearing
a frait which many prize above the sour olive or the too
luscious fig, a frait as sweet, but not so perilous, as the grape.
And just as the bramble may always either yield frait,
or store up the sweet juices which tarn to frait, so we,
if we wUl use our few gifts, and the trivial opportunities
which every day brings us, maybe always either yielding our
frait, or making ready to yield frait which our neighbours
wiU find both nutritious and sweet

VIL
^i ^alkn '^m mli (Bxaxahs,
I Samuel vi.
THAT surely is a very curious story which we read in
this Chapter. Probably, we were aU strack with it
when we were children, and framed some picture in our
minds of Dagon, the fish-god, and the sacred ark, of the
golden emrods and the mice. One child, I know, used to
think of the ,ark of God as a miniatare copy of the ark in
which Noah rode the flood, and of the emrods as miniatare
copies of the rod which budded in Aaron's hand. Probably
we all had similar fancies and conjectures. Probably, too,
most of us since those early days have had our hearts drawn
to other Scriptures more immediately bearing on our life and
duty, and have ceased to take much interest in this and
other stories which once quickened our curiosity, and won
der, and imagination. It is by no means unlikely that many
readers of the Bible are quite unable to say what an "emrod"
is. It is almost certain that, excepting only a few scholars
whose studies have led them into certain unfrequented by
paths of literature, none of them could explain the purpose
for which golden images of mice and emrods were made, or
the method in which they were supposed to work.
Yet there are good reasons why this singular Scripture
should, if possible, be rescued from the neglect into which

THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS. 77
it has faUen. Not only is every Scripture, and this among
them, profitable for instraction when once we understand it ;
not only is it desirable that we should have some help to
give our children, whose minds are apt to be greatly taken
with Scriptures such as this : but also this is only one of
many similar Scriptures ; to understand this is to get the
key to those. Once apprehend the meaning of these golden
mice and emrods, and we have the clue, to much that the
Historical Books record of Eg3rptian magicians, Babylonian
soothsayers and "wise men," Persian magi, and Philistine
diviners : we have a clue to many aUusions to astrological
arts in the poetic and prophetical books of the Bible. Only,
to get this clue into our hands, we must travel back many
centuries, and enter into a state of thought and conviction
very alien to the spirit of modern times. We shaU have"
need of patience, and, in some measure, of " the historical
imagination." In the time of the Judges, nearly four thousand years ago,
before ancient Rome and Greece were so much as names,
when the Hindus were plunging down, from the mountains
of Armenia, on to the fertile plains we now call Hindostan,
before the Asspian, Babylonian, and Persian empires were
founded — in that early dawn of history the Jews were con
tending with a score different races for the possession of
Palestine. Of these races the PhiHstines were the last to be
conquered, the bravest and the most indomitable. It is one
of many signs of the tenacity with which they held the land,
that to this day we caU it by their name — Palestine"- being
only a modem form of the word Philistine. As they ad
vanced to the conquest of this lovely and fertile country,
the Jews, a trae hiU-race, swept along the highlands, leaving
* The Hebrew word is PeUsheth, which the Vulgate renders indif
ferently Philisthiim, Philisthcea, and Palaesthini.

78 THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS.
many of the rich plains in the hands of the Philistine chiefs.
One such plain, hard by the very heart of the land, was long
held by them. Its chief cities were five— Ashdod, Gaza,
Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron ; names which are among the
few surviving relics of the extinct Philistine language. A
covenant or league was formed by the lords of these five
cities, an aUiance offensive and defensive against the Israelites
who were perpetually sweeping down from the hiUs upon
them. When Eli was old, and Samuel was stUl being trained for
judge, a decisive conflict took place between the men of
the plains and the men of the hills. The Israelites were
overthrown with great slaughter, and the Ark of God, the
palladium of the chosen nation, was carried off by the
victorious Philistines.
At this point our story begins. The Philistines took the
ark first to the city of Ashdod, their sacred city ; and set
it up as a trophy and spoil of war in the temple of Dagon.
Next morning they found the image of Dagon, an immense
fish with the head and arms of a man, prostrate before the
ark, the god of Philistia doing reverence to the God of
Israel. This prostration, however, might be purely acci
dental. And so they set Dagon on his base again : but
no, it was no accident ; for the next morning, Dagon was
found once more prostrate, while now his head and palms,
broken from the trunk, were found lying on the threshold
of the temple. " Therefore," adds the historian, " neither
the priests, nor any that come into Dagon's house, tread on
the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day " (ver. 5).
I quote that verse because we have, perhaps, a curious
confirmation of it, and if sO, certainly a curious instance of
the way in which customs of worship spread through the
East and endure long after their origin has been forgotten,
in the fact, that at this day in India priests and devotees

THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS. 79
leap over the thresholds of their temples, holding them too
sacred to be touched by the foot of man.
All Ashdod was in consternation at the defeat of their
god. The consternation grew more intense as the people
found that the hand of the Lord, the God of Israel, was
heavy upon them. The Lord "destroyed" them, and
" smote them with emrods,'' we are told.
And here, that we may have done with a topic not easy
nor pleasant to touch, let us raise and lay the question :
" What were these emrods ? " In brief, they were the
disease we call " bleeding piles " — a disease very common
in Eastern lands, where the extreme heat induces indispo
sition to exercise, and the liver is very apt to grow sluggish
and weak. The word " emrods '' is vernacular English for
the Greek compound from which we derive the technical
medical terms " hemorrhoids," " hemorrhage," and " he
morrhoidal" — all of which designate a flow of blood.
" Emrods " is simply a vulgar corraption of " hemorrhoids."
This painful disease became so prevalent and so fatal in
Ashdod that its inhabitants recognized a divine judgment.
To be quit of it, they sent the ark to their neighbours of
Gath, where there was no temple of Dagon to provoke it.
But here, too, the same plague made its appearance. The
Gittites sent on the ark to their neighbours of Ekron. The
Ekronites were in great alarm. They cried, "They have
sent the ark of the God of Israel to us, to slay us and our
people ! " Their dismal prognostics were verified. Many
died; many were smitten with emrods; while an army of
field mice devoured their harvest
Always in reading of these ancient plagues we have to
bear in mind, that we can form only a faint conception of
them from our own experience. We must go to the East
for paraUels to them. A parallel to this plague of mice is
furnished in the recent history of Ceylon. In 1848, the

8o THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS.
coffee-crop of that fertile island was utterly destroyed by
mice, and the people, losing thir staple harvest, were
reduced to the most terrible misery and want. No wonder,
then, that, smitten by three plagues — by death, by emrods,
and by mice — there was " a deadly destruction in the city
of Ekron," and that feeling " the hand of the Lord to be
very heavy," " the cry of the city went up to heaven.''
Evidently, it was time to call in whatever wisdom and
piety were in the land. The priests and the diviners
responded to the call. Their counsel was, " Send back
the ark, and do not send it away empty. Prepare a tres
pass-offering. Make five emrods of gold, one for each
city of the League, and five mice of gold. Put them into
a chest. Put ark and chest into a new cart drawn by
milch cows which have never felt the yoke. Start them,
and let them go where they will. If they forsake their
calves, and take the road to the hills, that will be an omen,
a sign that the God of Israel is guiding them and returning
from us to his own people, a sign that we have hit on the
right expedient for the present distress." The story goes
on to tell us that this counsel was taken : and that the
cows, "lowing as they went" lowing for their abandoned
calves, took the straight way to the hiUs, turning aside
neither to the right hand nor to the left, and that the men
of Israel, busy with their wheat harvest, stood up among
the sheaves, and shouted vpith a joy beyond the joy of
harvest as they recognized the retarning ark of the Lord.
These poor cows again, dumb though not mute, martyrs,
carry our thoughts to India. Just as in Palestine, cows
which had never known the yoke were devoted to a
religious service, so in India, young and unused bulls are
consecrated to the service of the gods. The emblems oi
Siva are stamped on their quarters whUe they are still
young, and from that moment they are sacred. In Benares,

THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS. 8i
the most sacred city of India, the narrow over-hanging
streets are thronged vrith these " holy buUs " which have
never known the yoke, an4 which no man may strike or
injure, although they help themselves to whatever they
fancy and obstract the course of traffic. The unchanging
East is often our best commentary on the Bible.
But now, what did the diviners of PhiUstia mean by the
golden mice and emrods ? In what way were these images
to reUeve their bodies from disease and their fields from the
swarming mice ? It is the answer to this question which
yields us a clue to many dark and involved Scriptures.*
At first we might think that these golden images were
meant simply as a recognition of the power of that God
whose seat was the ark. No doubt they had this mean
ing. They were a confession that the emrods and the mice
came from Him, that they were signs of his power and
anger ; they were a confession that the Philistines had done
wrong to offer violence to " the ark of his strength." But
this is only a partial answer to our question. It would have
been more natural to any but diviners t simply to offer the
usual beasts as a sacrifice or trespass-offering to the offended
God. Why did they rather make tiny golden images?
What divination was there in these ? What did the diviners,
or magicians, mean by them ?
* Amos V. 26, for example, and aU the passages which mention the
teraphim. For teraphim were probably talismanic figures ; so possibly
were "the Blind and the Lame," cceci et claudi, of 2 Sam. v. 6^8.
t That the Philistines were devoted to the arts of divination, and
thought to excel in them, is apparent from many indirect allusions in the
Hebrew prophecies. Thus, for instance, Isaiah (chap. ii. ver. 6) assures
the Jews of his generation that God had forsaken them, —
" Because they fill themselves from the East,
And are diviners like the Philistines."
The fact that the Philistines were diviners par excellence, of course
makes the talismanic interpretation of the golden mice and emrods the
more probable. 6

S2 THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS.
The real and fuU answer to this question comes from the
astrological systems of antiquity. Up to about three hun
dred years ago all men, or almost all, European no less than
Asiatic, believed that the stars had a strange mystic mflu-
ence on the health, fortanes, and destiny of men, cities,
kingdoms. They set themselves to read and interpret the
heavens ; to reduce their interpretations to a science, a sys
tem, that they might not only teU, but affect, the fortanes of
men. In the East, in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon,
Persia, as also in Greece and Rome, astrology was a learned
profession. No enterprise of any moment was entered upon
except under the direction of magi, diviners, augurs. Col
leges were established in which this science was taught and
stadied. Its adepts were statesmen, and the friends and
counsellors of princes. Throughout the East the diviner is
still a power in the State and in private life, though here in
the West he has no power, save as a gipsy promising hus
bands to foolish maids, or as a preacher expounding unful
filled prophecies. But in ancient times no profession was
so lucrative, or offered such prizes to ambition. And this
profession was based, as I have said, upon the universal be
lief, the sincere and profound conviction, that human destiny
was foreshadowed and ordained by planetary and stellar in
fluences, that aU earthly events were but passing reflections
of the secrets written in the ancient heavens. Many refer
ences to this conviction are found in the Bible, none more
beautiful and graphic than those in the Book of Job. Thus,
for instance. Job speaks of those who "ban days," and
are "of skiU to rouse the Dragon" — the Dragon being a
heavenly constellation, the enemy of light, and therefore of
man. He affirms that God is —
"Maker of the Wain, the Giant, and the Cluster,"
i.e., the consteHations we caU the Bear, Orion, and the

THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS. 83
Pleiades ; God therefore is lord of their secrets and influ
ences : nay, more, this Maker of the stars is also a —
" Doer of great things past finding out,"
wonders and mysteries which no diviner can foretell. Nay,
the poet puts even into the mouth of Jehovah the challenge —
" Canst thou fasten the links of the Cluster?
Canst thou loosen the fetters of the Giant ?
Canst thou bring forth the constellations in their season ?
The "Wain and her offspring, canst thou guide them ?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven ?
Canst thou determine their influerue upon the earth ? "
Though these words are put into the mouth of Jehovah
Himself, they imply that the stars have an influence on the
fates of men ; they adopt the terms and conceptions which
the astrological science of that time had made famihar in
the mouths of men. For the contemporaries of Job believed
that these constellations had a sovereign influence on human
destiny ; and that the diviners were able to avert their evil
influence or to secure their good influence, or, at lowest, to
predict what their influences would be : they held that
diviners could {z.%X^Vi. the links of the Pleiades and unloose the
fetters of the gigantic Orion, that they did know the ordi
nances of heaven, and could in some measure determine
their influence upon the earth.
This knowledge and its exercise the diviners, as I have
said, set themselves to reduce to a system. They determined
the kind of influence which each of the planets exerted on
those who were bom under it ; and in our own language we
still have traces of the prevalence of this system. Thus, for
instance, we stiU speak of some men as having a "jovial"
temperament, and of other men as having a " satamine "
temperament. And our words, according to their history
and derivation, reaUy mean that the " saturnine " man was

84 THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS.
bom under the influences of the planet " Satam," and tae
"jovial" man under the influence of the planet Jupiter or
"Jove." The ancient astrologers, however, were not con
tent simply to mark under what planet a man was bom.
They studied the relative position of his planet to the other
stars. To facilitate their calculations they divided the whole
heaven of stars into consteUations, into the signs of the
zodiac ; and spoke of the Serpent, the Scorpion, the Dragon,
the Giant, just as we still speak of the Bear, the Lion, the
Fishes, or the Virgin. These consteUations were supposed
to modify the influence of the planet under which a man
was born ; an unlucky planet might at the moment of his
birth be in a lucky sign or house, a fortunate planet might
be in, or near, an ominous constellation. All these points,
the relation of the ruling planet to all the constellations, had
to be taken into account before an accomplished diviner
would cast a nativity, or teU a fortane, or pronounce whetaer
this moment or that were favourable to the commencement
of a grave enterprise. It was this systematized knowledge
of the stars and their supposed influence on human destinies,
which lay at the base of the "wisdom of the magicians of
Egypt, the diviners of Chaldea, the magi of Media, the
oracular priests of Greece, the augurs of Rome. Before all
they were astrologers, though they also studied other sciences
and could draw omens from the flight of birds, from the
entrails of fowls, from dreams, from chance words that met
the eye.
But how were they to tarn their knowledge to practical
account ? To foretell the future was much ; but how much
more would it be, if they could also shape the future, if they
could save men from the calamities they foresaw, or redeem
them from plagues which had faUen upon them ? To this
problem also the ancient diviners appHed themselves, and
not, as they thought, without good success. Indeed they

THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS. 85
invented many occult methods of either injuring or benefiting
men and States, of which we need mark only one. This is the
talismanic* method alluded to in the passage before us. For
instead of reading, "Ye shall make images of your emrods
and images of your mice," we ought to read, " Ye shaU make
talismans of your emrods and talismans of your mice.'' We
get the word " talisman " from the Arabic. The original
meaning of the word is doubtful ; but the Greeks understood
it to denote certain magical characters which were supposed
to carry a supernataral force, in short, what we call a charm.
From the ancient writers of Arabia we leam how a talis
man, or charm, of this kind was composed. They held that
all earthly things are but shadows of heavenly things, and
that the celestial forms have an overruling influence on all
earthly forms of life. Thus, for instance, if they wished to
give a man a talisman that would make him safe against the
bite of serpents, they got the exact moment of his birth.
Their books told them what planet " ruled his birth," what
planet was then in full lustre. They waited for the moment
in which this planet was " out of combustion," i. e., not
shining at its strength, the moment in which thus shorn of
its lustre it entered into the constellation which they
called the Serpent The favourable moment having arrived,
they made a tiny stone or metal image of a serpent, engraved
ceitain mystic letters upon it; and heire was the talisman.
So long as the man carried that about him, no serpent could
* The Hebrew word in I Sam. vi. 5 is tsalntS ; and this is closely
connected with the Arabic thelesm and talismath, flie Chaldaic tsal-
manija, and the English talisman. All these are evidently forms of one
and the same word. The Hebrew fohfi seems to have had for its root —
meaning a shadow. Talismans shadowed forth destiny. Of course the
word is often used merely to denote an image, or a likeness, without
any sub-reference to (talismanic arts. It would not be safe to find a
talismanic allusion in the word, except where, as here and in Amos v. 26,
the context implies or confirms it.

86 THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS.
hurt him. Ancient literature is full of marvellous stories *
of the power of these talismans. For instance, an Arabian
author gravely assures us that he knew of a Saracen servant
who was bitten by a scorpion : his master healed him by
applying to the wound a talismanic stone, on which, when
the moon was in the sign Scorpio, the figure of a scorpion
had been engraved. An ancient Greek geographer, Ptolemy,
teUs a similar story of a city in Syria, in the middle of
which a stone, having on it the figure of a scorpion, was set
up on a waU. 'Whoever was bitten by one of these pests,
hastened to the wall, took do"wn the magical stone, appHed
it to the bite, and was immediately healed. Strange and
incredible as these stories sound to us, there can be no
doubt that the ancients sincerely believed them. Almost
every city had its taUsman, or its palladium, on which its
prosperity depended or its exemption from some plague to
which its position exposed it. At Grand Cairo, where the
inhabitants were often seized by crocodiles, they at last
made a talisman, a leaden crocodile inscribed with an
Egyptian charm. No sooner was it buried in the foundation
of a temple than the crocodiles grew harmless ; no sooner
did a conqueror cause it to be melted than the crocodiles
resumed their ancient ferocity. Constantinople, which suffers
much from storms, had its talisman — a figure balanced on
one foot in a brazen ship. While it stood entire upon its
column, the tempestaous waves were stayed, no vessel
suffered shipvsreck. When the sea began to be as unmly
as before, search was made, and it was found that some
fragments of the ship, none knew how, had been broken off.
They were restored, and once more there was calm. The
' I take most of the stories which follow from that repertory of curious
learning, the works of Master John Gregorie, vol. i. chap. viii. (A.D.
1 684), where he cites the various authorities from which he has gathered
them.

THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS. 87
inhabitants were so impressed by this singular occurrence
that they determined to try an experiment. They purposely
took away some of the brass rigging, and no vessel could
approach the coast ; they replaced it, and the adverse winds
were hushed.
Of aU the diviners of ancient and modem times, from
Balaam down through Simon Magus to Cagliostro, I sup
pose none have so deeply impressed the popular imagination
as ApoUonius of Tyana.* He traveUed through the ancient
world, blessing men and cities with talismans of the most
sovereign potency — talismans against storks, tortoises, horses,
against torrents, and against the north wind. What a bene
factor he would have been had he left us a talisman against
the east wind ! But that which is most to our purpose is,
that coming to Antioch, and finding it infested with a
plague of scorpions, he made a little scorpion of brass, set it
up on a pillar in the, midst of the city, and forthwith, says
the veracious historian, " the scorpions vanished out of aU
their coasts."
That these stories are told in simple good faith, that the
ancients honestly and profoundly believed in the virtue of
talismans, is beyond a doubt. If we wanted proof, we
might find it in this singular fact, that the Primitive Chris
tians, t within fifty years after the death of St John, were
driven to ask, " If God be the Creator and Lord of the
"Svorld, how comes it to pass that the talismans of ApoUonius
have so much overrated the course of nature ? for we see
* ApoUonius was bom nearly at the same tinSe as Christ, and lived
about a hundred years. He was believed to have raised the dead,
healed the sick, cast out devils, fireed a, young man from a lamia, or
vampire, with which he was enamoured, prophesied, seen in one country
events that were occurring in another. He " filled the world with the
fame of his miracles, and of his sanctity. " The pagan writers constantly
oppose him to Christ.
\ See Justin Martyr. Res. ad Orthod. qusst. xxiv. 2, 5.

88 THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS.
that they have stUled the waves of the sea and the raging of
the winds, and have prevailed against noisome flies and the
incursions of wild beasts." If Jews and Christians could
make that admission, we need not feel any surprise at find
ing that the Philistines believed in the efficacy of talismans,
that they made talismanic emrods and taHsmanic mice to
scare away the disease that preyed upon their strength, and
the pest t^at made war upon their fields. Christians of
much later date than those who were dismayed at the
marvels of ApoUonius have not only beheved in talismans,
but made them. Christians, indeed, were the most leamed
astrologers of the Middle Ages. One of them, Paracelsus,
has left us directions how to shape a talisman against the
very plague which ravaged the PhUistine fields. To rid a
house of mice, he bids us " make an iron mouse, under the
conjunction of Saturn and Mars, and in the House of Upsilon.
Inscribe upon its belly, Albamataiox," with other words of
the magical jargon. "Then place the talisman in the
middle of the house, and the vermin shaU instantly leave
the place." If Paracelsus, a modem Christian of profound
learning and noble gifts, could boldly teach that, how can
we blame PhiHstine lords, who Hved twelve centaries before
Christ was bom, for believing that golden images of mice
and emrods would prove a charm against their plagues ?
how blame them for believing that, so long as these taHs-
mans were laid up before the ark, and the ark remained m
the land, they would be safe — at least from hemorrhoids and
field-mice ?
I am not sure, even, that modem science does weU to as
sume that there is no foundation for a faith so primitive and
wide-spread as that which Hes at the basis of astrology. In
an universe so coherent and harmonious, in which the most
unexpected relations and correlations are perpetuaUy dis-

THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS. 89
covered, who shall say that the stars have no influence upon '
human destiny, that there are no prophecies written in the
ancient heavens which it concerns us to know ? It would
be wiser, I think, and even more scientific to say, " That
may very well be. All we know at present is that, if there
be such an influence we cannot trace it, nor discover its
laws." For myself, at least, I am not prepared to admit
that the " wise men " of antiquity were such fools as they
are often held to have been, nor such rogues. I cannot
bring myself to believe that they wittingly palmed obvious
and monstrous delusions upon their fellows, that they pre
tended to powers which they knew they did not possess. I
should be no whit surprised if science were yet to discover
new secrets in the sky, new harmonies between heaven and
earth. It may be that as the old Greek historians, whom
our fathers set down as credulous setters forth of fables, are
now proved to have been accurate and leamed chroniclers,
so also the diviners and astrologers, whose science we reject
as mere impostare, -will yet justify themselves, and help our
sons to a wider scientific knowledge than we have reached.
But whatever influences and predictions are, or are not,
in the stars, whatever occult and mysterious harmonies of
earth vrith heaven have yet to be discovered, our principal
concern is to know that God worketh all things ; that it is
He who brings forth the constellations in their season —
Hevi\io has, set ordinances in heaven, and determined their
influences upon the earth — He, the Doer of great things
past finding out and wonders that cannot be numbered.
He may shape our destinies and predict them by the celestial
signs, just as He may administer his providence by the
angels who excel in strength and wait to do his vrill. These
are questions which we may discuss, and on which we may.
differ. The one question we need to have settled beyond
aU doubt is, that, whether by subordinate ministers or with-

90 THE GOLDEN MICE AND EMRODS.
out them, it is He who shapes our lot and guides our feet ;
hat however many servants He may or may not employ, we
are stiU and always in his hands. If He is our Father, and
our reconciled Father, if He loves us and cares for us, it is
enough ; for if not a sparrow can fall to the ground without
our Father, how, vrithout Him, should a star have any
influence over us, whether adverse or benign ? If He is our
Father, and in his minute tender care of us numbers the
very hairs of our heads, how should any angel, be its intents
¦wicked or charitable, be other to us than a spirit of health, a
minister of grace ? The universe may be more complex and
concordant than we suppose ; heaven and earth may be more
full of august and solemn ministries ; between the mighty
music of the spheres and the rhythms of human life there
may be antiphonies, echoes, responses, too subtle or too
vast for our ears to grasp : but so long as the universe is
his, and all its innumerable hosts do his wUl, we may at
all times hear the sentinel —
""Who moves about from place to place.
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well."
God is with us and in us ; and his presence is the tme
talisman : trasting in this, we are secure in aU perUs and aU
vicissitudes. If He make us sore, He wUl bind up ; if He
braise, his hands wiU make whole. In six troubles He "svilf
deliver us, nor in seven shall evil touch us. So that He be
with us and for us, we may laugh at ravage and famine, at
change and death ; for then even the stones of the field wiU
be in league with us, and the stars in their courses wUl fight
on our behalf If we love Him, nothing can in anywise
harm us, for nothing can separate us from his love. In
Him aU thmgs are ours — ^Hfe and death, heaven and earth —
things present and things to come-

VIII.
"ira't €xu abn Sp Mato."
2 Samuel xiv. 14.
AVERY wise woman was the Wise Woman of Tekoah.
One sentence of hers has lived through thirty cen
turies ; it still lingers on the lips and in the hearts of men.
Which of us wiU leave even so modest a bequest as this to
the ages that come after us ?
The Wise Woman makes but a single appearance on the
historic scene, yet she -will never be forgotten. In her
interview with King David she only once rises, from the
facts of the particular case she had in hand, to one of those
broad and rapid generaUzations which have an inestimable
value for us as well as for king Da-vid, for all men as well as
for us. But for a single sentence, a sentence which simply
expresses a general trath in an appropriate and graphic
figure, we should hardly have cared to remember her. If is
by right of this apt beautiful saying that she holds an earthly
immortality. Ah, how God must have bound us each to
each, what subtle far-reaching Hnks must bind all the
children of Adam into one, how solemn and mysterious an
influence the humblest of us may exert on aU, when the
obscure Prophetess^ of that dark age and distant land can
StiU touch our hearts and shape our thoughts !
" JVe must needs die, and are as water spilt upon the
ground, which cannot be gathered up again." — What stiong

92 "DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER."
sad words these are ! sad with an infinite despair con
cerning the dead, as also concerning the living — for they too
must die ; and yet strong vrith the patience which can
endure even the burden of that dark hopeless mystery.
As we ponder them, the Prophetess seems to look upon us
from the darkness of the past "with wan pensive face, and to
warn us in mournful yet kindly accents that we cease fretting
at the inevitable. " The dead are dead. The living must
die. They and we are as water which, once spilt, cannot be
gathered up again. It is of no use to cry over spilt water.
Rather, drink of any fresh sweet cup which is stiU left you.
Amnon is dead, and all the weeping in the world wiU not
bring him back to life ; but Absalom is aHve, and though
he too must die, for the present he is yoimg and very
comely. Take him to thy heart, O foolish David, that
sittest in the dust mourning for dust, and let him comfort
thee for the son thou hast lost. Why mourn and weep over
the water which the thirsty earth hath sucked from thy
thirsty eyes, when fresh fair water in another and more
comely cup is'offered to thy lips ?"
But what heartless Epicurean doctrine have we here?
This is but an ancient version of " To-morrow we die ; let
us therefore eat, and drink, and make merry to-day." It is
the philosophy of " the Stye,'' not of the Church. It may
suit brates who live only for the present, but "wiU not suit
men who, with large discourse of reason, look before and
after. What father, what mother, ever forgot their first-bom
because other babes were vouchsafed them? Who can cease
to remember what has been in the past, or to forecast what
may be or might have been in the futare, because the
table of the present is sumptaously furnished and adorned ?
Yet before we condemn the Wise Woman's saying as
tending to a base and sensual Epicureanism, let us observe
that it carried comfort to King David, who was very far

"DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER."

93

from Hving in " the Stye," though he may have spent a day
or two in it now and then. The words of the Prophetess did
not teach him to despair of the dead, but to shew mercy to
the living. For three years he had wept for Amnon,
"mourning for his son eveiy day ; " was it not time that he
ceased to weep ? For three years he had steadfastly refused
to see Absalom, who, though he had grievously sinned m
killing Amnon, had not sinned "without the foulest provoca
tion, but had murdered Amnon only to avenge his sister's
murdered innocence : and now that King David's soul
began to yearn toward Absalom, was it not time that he
should " fetch home again his banished son ? " The water
was spUt; and to spUl more water was not the way to
gather that up again. Amnon*was dead ; but for David to
treat Absalom as one who, though alive, was dead to him,
would not restote Amnon to life. Grief for the dead could
not absolve the living from their duties — their duties to the
living. Men and women, who have grave imperative work
to do in the world, must not waste the time and energy they
need for the discharge of duty in cr)ring over spUt water.
Let them rather accept the facts of life as they find them,
spilt water and all; let them accept even those sorrowful
losses and changes which seem to obscure all the joys of Hfe
and to take away the very heart for duty, and under their new
sorrowful conditions do the best they can for God and man.
This, I take it, was what the Wise Woman meant — net
selfish Epicurean indulgence, but manful godly heroism.
As appHed to David her words carried this lesson: — "Death
is the common event, too common to be an evil. Get good
out of it then, what good you may and can. Do not let it
weaken, but rather strengthen, you for the duties which
remain to you. Do not let it ahenate you from the living,
but rather bind them to you in closer and more tender ties."
Their larger ^d more general appHcation, the principle of

94

"DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER!'

the words, I take to be :— " Don't fret over the mevitable,
the irreparable. The past is past, and cannot be recaUed :
therefore be the more intent on a wise use of the present
Instead of crying over spUt water, or trying in vain to gather
it up from the dust — you wUl only disfigure your face and
poUute your fingers if you do that-pbetake you to the foun
tain of living water, drink of the untainted perennial spring.
Let your feet wear a track which shaU guide other feet to its
pure waters. Let your example be a standing invitation to
your neighbours, that they also may repah to the fountain
which no dust can defile, and drink of the clear life-giving
waters which flow on for ever."
Now if we take, first, the more Hmited, and, then, the more
general application of this priifbiple — that it is vain to fret at
the inevitable — and bring them into connection with our
own experience of life and death, we shaU find them both
instractive and consolatory.
I. Let us apply this principle to the limited facts of death
and bereavement Each and aU of us, "we must needs die."
We know that, and confess it Yet when death comes to
us, we are commonly taken by surprise. If, for instance,
our neighbour's child die, that does not seem to us so very
shocking and unnataral ; we are soon ready with the com
monplaces about death and sorrow and hope which have
probably irritated more afflicted souls than they have com
forted. But if our child die, we find the commonplaces
which our neighbours now administer to us singularly worth
less and ineffective. We are taken at unawares. The un
expectedness of our bereavement embitters our bereavement ;
and, not infrequently, there is some resentment in our grief:
we have, or we conceive that we have, had an injustice done
us as well as a loss inflicted on us. Why should our child
have been taken rather than another's ? With the whole

"DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER!' 95
world for his field, why should Death have picked out and
plucked just the one flower, or one of the few flowers,
which made our little garden gay ? And we nurse our
sorrow, which is often also in part a vsrrath, refusing to be
comforted. We fold our listless hands, and, because the, one
task is taken from us which we loved, we neglect other
tasks. The child or the friend whom we have lost takes a
special dearness in our thoughts ; and, in our sad tender
worship of his memory, we too often undervalue and faU in
our duty to the living. We think we have a right, a right
hardly and bitterly earned, to indulge our grief That stem
practical duties should intrude upon it, and call our thoughts
away from it, we resent as a fresh wrong. In short, we insist
on crying over our spilt water, and on making futile efforts
to gather it up again, neglecting meanwhile, or wilfully, if
not angrily, putting from our lips the unspUt water which
God has gathered into many precious vessels for our comfort
and refreshment.
Now all this, nataral as it is, is nevertheless wrong. "Can
it be "wrong if it be nataral ? " Surely, yes : for our natare
is weak and fallen ; all its issues, therefore, cannot be good
and right Our imperfect natare is not the standard of right
and wrong, but God's perfect -vvill. And there are many
things opposed to that "will which, in our varying moods,
seem nataral to us, and are nataral to us, and for our indul
gence in which we seek no other justification.
That the resentment, the hopelessness, the abandonment
to grief which too often' characterize our sorrow for departed
friends are alien to the wUl of God there can be little doubt.
Even the Wise Woman of Tekoah teaches us that we should
set a term, a limit, to our grief; that we should not suffer it
to absorb aU the thoughts and affections of the soul, or to
vrithdraw us from the duties and solaces still left to us.
Amnon is dead, but the comely Absalom still lives. Let us

96 "DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER."
love him, and serve him, and gather from his love to us what
comfort and strength we may. The bereavement we have
suffered may have affected, it may have shot a disastrous
change through, aU the conditions of our life. Well, there
is no help for it. We are not lords of fate, and cannot shape
our circumstances as we please. These are ordered for us
by God, who speaks to us through the facts of life no less
than through the words of Inspiration. And it is of no use
to kick against the goads to which his pro"vidence has har
nessed us : if we do that, we shall only add the smart of
fresh wounds to the dull aching of the "stroke which has
already faUen on us. Fretting -will not alter the inevitable.
We must accept it, whether "with our -will or against it Let
us then accept it "with a patient cheerfulness, and so take
the sting out of it. 'Tis weak, 'tis useless to sit down and
weep over spilt water when we have yet a long steep path to
cHmb, and many around us who look to us for guidance and
refreshment. Let us be up and doing, and, in serving the
living, hallow and soften our grief for the dead.
But what is this ? Have we escaped the Epicurean "stye"
only to wander in the cold windy " portico " of the Stoics ?
We might well thmk we had, were this all that the Wise
Woman has to teach us. It is not difficult to understand how,
were we to stop here, many a bereaved parent or child might
say, " All that is very well for men cast in an heroic mould :
they may find comfort in it ; but I am weak : in me the crash
ing sense of loss bears down the sense of duty. Whyremindme
that it is of no use to cry over spUt water ? I know it, and
hence my tears. I weep the more because I weep in vain.
How am I to get hope from the loss of hope ? If the water
could be gathered up, I would not sit and grieve. Then I
would strain every nerve, however faint the prospect of
success. But now what can I do save mourn to despair
over an irreparable loss ? "

"DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER." 97
There is comfort in the Wise Woman's words even for
those who are thus beggared of hope and "distract with
grief" We may find in them a larger and more consolatory
meaning than any of which she was conscious. For, ob
serve : this spilt water of hers — what after all becomes of it ?
Though we cannot raise it up again, it nevertheless does rise
again ; no particle of it is lost For a Httie while it lies in
the dust, and helps to make that finitful. But no sooner
does the sun shine upon it "with a fervent heat than it eva
porates; its baser and more earthly parts remain in the
earth to fractify it, but its major and more ethereal parts
rise through the air, rise toward heaven, and put on new
and more perfect forms, forms which, though in"visible to us,
are no less real than those it wore while we could see it.
The water spUt upon the ground may be gathered up again;
it must be gathered up again. It will be drawn up into the
skies, to form part of a gracious cloud, which by-and-by
¦will faU in enriching showers on the' parched fields; and,
that purpose once served, it will be again lifted to the skies,
again to fall, again to rise, — so passing into a life of per
petual service. Nay, as it falls, it may reflect the splendours
of the sun, and help to form the gracious beautiful rainbow
which carries a prophecy of hope over all the earth and Hfts
all hearts to heaven.
And is there not hope, is there not comfort, in that?
Our child, our parents, our kinsfolk and friends "must
needs die, and be as water spilt upon the ground." We
cannot, by weeping for them, win them b^ck to life, any
more than by crying over it we can gather the spilt water up
again. But God, who is our sun, "wiU shine upon them.
The eternal Light "wiU raise, purify, ennoble them, consecrat
ing them to an eternal service, perhaps causing them to carry
hope and consolation to many dejected hearts. As there
are many mansions in our Father's house, so also there are

98 "DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER."
many ministries in his service. And our departed friends,
invisible to us, are in his eye, in his employ, living not less
reaUy, but more really than while they were stUl -with us.
Let us not then degrade them in our thoughts. Let us
neither weep for them as though they were simply dust
mingling with dust, nor seek by so much as a -wish to draw
them do^wn from the service in which is their rest
II. But if we bring the more general application of this
principle — that it is vain to fret at the ine^vitable — ^hometo our
experience, we shall find that it has instraction for aU men,
and not only for the sorro^wful and bereaved.
The vanity of fretting at the irreparable is a principle
capable of many and large applications. Not only must we
needs die, we all do die daily. Our whole physical stmc-
ture, as we are often reminded, changes every few years :
our mental stractare changes faster stiU. The body of our
flesh does not contain even one of the particles of which it
was composed a few years since ; and in these years our
mental make, if indeed any vital process of gro^wth have
taken place, has passed through many vicissitades and
shifted into many new forms. We are each of us many men
in one. If we have half-a-dozen photographs taken in a day,
the general resemblance is not more marked than the dif
ferences of expression. Shew them to a stranger, and he
¦will often fail to see that the same man sat for all. But it
we are, much more have we been, many men. And as we
recaU the past, as we remember our former selves, and com
pare what we are -with what we were, if we see some changes
for which we are thankful, we also see much which inspires
regret ; and as the years pass, 'and the inevitable changes
ensue, we are too apt to waste time in crying over spUt water
and trying to gather it up again.
" I am not the man I was," is sooner or later the language

"DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER." 99
of most men ; " not so quick in apprehension, nor so fresh in
feeling, nor so strong Whether for the encounter with temp
tation or the discharge of duty. What opportunities I have
lost — opportanities that -will never recur ! What taints I have
contracted — taints which aU the waters in the sea cannot re
move, and all the perfumes of Arabia wUl not sweeten ! What
might I not have been had I not suffered time to slip through
my fingers unused? What might I not do now, vrith my
larger knowledge of life, if I possessed the vigour and ardour
which once I had ! " When this language is sincerely used,
when we thus look back on our " dead selves," bemoaning
them instead of making them " stepping-stones to higher
things ; " when we are thus haunted with the ghosts of lost
opportanities and past sins, we are filled with a regret
singularly like the sorrow of bereavement And this regret,
like that sorrow, is very apt to weaken us still more, and to
interpose between us and the duties we yet have to dis
charge. We lose time in mourning the loss of tiwk. We waste
strength in sorrowing over a strength that is gone. We miss
present opportunities while lamenting opportunities that are past.
O that we could understand once for all that it is useless,
and worse than useless, to cry over spUt water ! The past
is past ; and it vrill be wise of us to " let the dead past bury
its dead," and not to expend the little strength that is left us
in digging graves for it and watering them vrith our tears.
No self-upbraidings, however mournful or passionate, will
bring back a single bygone opportunity, or remove a single
stain, or restore a single energy which has been misspent.
Here we stand, embodying in our present characters the
manifold result of past experiences. It is vain to mourn that
we are what we are. The weaker we are, the more need to
husband our strength; the more frequent and ample the
opportunities we have missed, the more we should strive to
improve those which are still open to us ; the more we have

loo "DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER."
sinned, the harder will be our conflict with evil. These,
such as we have made them, are the facts ¦with which we
have now to deal, and they are not to be washed out of
their natural shape by any tears we may lavish on them.
Our true wisdom vrill be, not to fret at them and their
stubborn hardness, but to accept them and make the best
we can of them. The past has given form to the present
conditions of our life ; within these we must move and act :
and, if we be men in understanding, men and not chUdren
or babes, we shaU address ourselves to walking within the
narrow difficult limits which they impose upon us, instead
of bemoaning that by past heedlessness we have made them
so difficult and so narrow.
" Are we not, then, to repent of our sins and mistakes ? "
Assuredly we are : this also is one of the inevitable
conditions, one of the painful results, of past weakness ; and
we must submit to it. But a godly repentance is far removed
from that moody indolent grief in which we too often
indulge as we review the past The true cleansing virtue
of repentance does not he in the tears we shed, but in the
amendment which, trasting" in a higher strength than our
own, we hopefully attempt. To repent is not simply to
weep over, it is " to leave the sins we loved before."
And in nothing, perhaps, is the healthy bracing spirit of the
Gospel more conspicuous than in this,^that when we are
truly sorry for our sins we find that our sorrow is of a kind
which worketh life; that while we are stiU mourning over
our manifold offences, it virtually says to us, " Leave all
those with Him who has made an atonement for the sin of
the worid. Cast that heavy sorrowful burden on Him. who
careth for you. And now, with a lightened conscience and
a cheerful trust, address yourselves to the work that Hes
before you. Forget that which is behind ; press onward to
tiiat which is before.''

"DONT CRY OVER SPILT WATER." lot
Not that the Gospel, strong and gracious as it is, detaches
their natural consequences from our past transgressions
because we are sorry for them, or severs the links which, in
the spiritual as in the natural world, bind effects to their
causes. It does not do that. We still bear the scars of the
old wounds, scars that often ache and throb. We are still
very open to temptation in those respects in which we have
yielded to temptation. The evil bias of former habits often
deflects* our souls from their trae course. But still the
Gospel does teach us to regard all that evil past as belonging
to a life with which we have now done. It teaches us that
we have begun a new life ; and though its conditions are
not so happy and auspicious as they might have been had
our past been more -vrisely ordered, the Gospel bids us accept
our conditions such as they are with manly resolution and
cheerfiilness ; and it reinforces our flagging energies with
the assurance of a Di"vine help, and with the large bright
hope of ultimate victory over evU in every form. The
water which might have strengthened and refreshed us is
spilt ; it cannot be gathered up again : but here, through
the grace of God, is a new costly cup fiUed to the very brim
¦with the water of life — a water which, as we drink it, will
change into a sfrengthening' gladdening wine.
Nay, more : though we cannot gather up the spilt water,
God can, and does. The sun of his love shines down on
the earth on which it has faUen, and lo, it rises from the
earth in new and purer forms ! All the useful and helpful
elements of our past experience are gathered up by Him,
and detached from the polluting dust with which they were
blent From our very sins and errors and mistakes God
evolves a gracious teaching for us, so soon as we are able to
hear it. The memory of the transgressions we deplore goes
with us into the new life, no longer to threaten and affright
us, but to deepen our love for Him who has redeemed us,

I02 "DON'T CRY OVER SPILT WATER."
to supply the dark shadows before which the lights of hope
and joy burn with a more cheerful and welcome radiance.
The recollection of past opportanities neglected or abused
becomes an incentive to a more diligent use of the oppor
tanities still vouchsafed us. The very tears we have shed
are drawn up into the spiritaal heaven, to fall in fertiHzing
showers on ground barren but for them; and as they fall,
the Sun of Righteousness shines full upon them, and lo, a
new bow of hope stretches across our brightening heaven,
giving us the welcome assurance that, unfruitful as we have
been in the past, henceforth seed-time and harvest shall
never fail us.

IX.
®m i^art umli ®xit S%.*
" Fifty thousand who could keep rank ; they were not of double heart."
Or, more accurately: "Fifty thousand who could keep rank, who were
not of a heart and a heart." — i CHEONictES xii. 33.
THE Bible is surely the most comprehensive of books.
Nothing human is alien to it. It contains whatever in
terests the minds of men, whatever touches their hearts, what
ever illustrates their life. Who, for instance, would have
thought to find the muster-rolls of an army in the Word of
God ? Who would have thought that these ancient documents
could have become profitable, as St Paul says all Scripture
is, for instruction, for conviction, for setting men right and
keeping them right? Yet here, in the sacred history, in
this single Chapter, we have five lists, or muster-rolls, five
authentic documents from the Hebrew archives ; and these
lists are so illustrated with note and comment as that they
become full of interest and instraction to all subsequent
generations. How valuable and instructive these apparently worthless
Hsts would be to the Jews of later times we may see at a
glance. Nearly five centaries since, here, in England, there
was long war between the Houses of Lancaster and York ;
in this War of the Roses the great bulk of the ancient
• A Sermon to the Robin Hoods, Preached at Nottingham.

I04 ONE HEART AND ONE STEP.
English nobility perished. If our historians could recover
an authentic list of the leaders in that war, illustrated by
some contemporary hand with marginal notes on the claims ¦
and services of the distinguished men who espoused either
cause, would they not count it among their chief treasures,
and gladly give it a place in their chronicles ? Would not
as many of us as stady the history of our race feel that such
a document was almost of priceless value ? In Hke manner,
nearly three thousand years ago, " there was long war be
tween the House of Saul and the House of David," in
which " Da"vid waxed stronger and stronger, and the House
of Saul waxed (waned would seem the more appropriate
word) weaker and weaker." In this war the fate of Israel
hung in suspense. 'What could more profoundly interest
any patriotic Jew of after ages than to trace the war through
all its stages and vicissitudes ? What would be more
valuable to him than ancient documents which gave him
authentic information of the princes and captains wlio
fought on either side, which marked the several crises at
which they espoused the rival causes, and recorded the
exploits by which they had deserved well of their country ?
To us, indeed, this patriotic mterest in the muster-rolls of
Da-vid's army may be wanting, since we are not of the
Hebrew blood. But here another exceUence of the Bible
comes to our aid. Although the historians of the old Testa
ment were men of the most national and exclusive tempera
ment, although we can trace the Hebrew character and the
Hebrew bias in all they wrote, yet they were so overraled
by the Spirit of God that their writings are even more
human and universal in their tone than they are Hebrew
and local. It seems almost impossible for them to copy
the pedigree of any noble Jewish family without adding
some touch of description or reflection which either lights
up the past history of man or comes straight home to every

ONE HEART AND ONE STEP. 105
heart. There is hardly one of those long lists of names,
from which we commonly turn in weariness, in which we
may not find an incidental note or remark full of valuable
suggestion. It is in such a Hst, for example, that we learn
that "Enoch walked with God ; and he was not, for God
took him."* It is in such a list that we light on Lamech's
" Song of the Sword." t It is in such a Hst that we meet
Jabez, " who was more honourable than his brethren," and
are allowed to overhear the pathetic prayer of that brave
chieftain — ¦" Oh that Thou wouldest bless me indeed, and
enlarge my' border, and that Thine hand might be with me,
and that Thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not
grieve me."+ And it is from another such list, a mere dry
catalogue of names, that we get almost our only glimpse of
the life of Joseph's brethren and children in the land of
Goshen, and learn how their homesteads and fruitful fields
were ravaged by the desert clans. § In short, there is no
"dry" place in Scriptare in which, if we look for it, we may
not find a -little verdure or light on some spring of pleasant
water; there is not a pedigree or catalogue that is not
adorned with some scrap of history or poetry which the
world, if it only knew of it, would not ¦willingly let die.
Take, as a final illustration, thfe Chapter before us. I
suppose many of you have never read it, that you have
glanced at it, and passed it by as a mere barren list of names in
which you had no possible interest or concern. No interest !
You could not make a greater mistake, unless, indeed, you
have no taste for history, for dramatic dialogue, for military
adventure, for pithy pungent suggestions. Glance at it
again, and mark how much, besides mere names, it contains
and implies. Most of us have the vaguest and most inade
quate impression of the means by which David rose to the
* Genesis v. 24. f Genesis iv. 23, 24-
X 1 Chronicles iv. 10. § i Chronicles vii, 21 — 23.

io6 ONE HEART AND ONE STEP.
throne. The popular conception seems to be that, for a few
dark months, he haunted the Cave of AduUam, where there
resorted to him " every one that was in distress, and every
one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented,"
and that by the aid of these ragged followers he conquered
the grand military monarchy of Israel, led by Saul, one of
the bravest captains of the time ; whereas the fact is, that
for many years Da^vid was slowly gathering to himself all
the finest and most patriotic spirits in Israel, the most war
like and accomplished soldiers, organizing them ¦with the
most faithful pains and care ; tiU from Hebron, where he
was elected king, he could launch against the House of Saul
a splendidly organized army of more than three hundred
thousand men, officered by the most gaUant and skilful cap-
tair^s of a warlike race.
The muster-rolls of this Chapter yield one of many proofs
of the extreme care ¦with which those who flocked to David's
standard were organized. They carefully mark the suc
cessive periods at which first one band of brave men and
then another rallied to his cause. And on these roUs there
are brief notes, possibly contributed by the hand of David him
self, of the special qualities of these men, of the warlike
exercises and weapons in which they were individually
expert, of the exploits they had performed, or of any
dramatic incidents which had marked their adhesion to his
standard. The First Muster-RoU (w. i — 7) records the names of
certain captains of the tribe of Benjamin, Saul's tribe, who
attached themselves to David while he was stiU forbidden
the presence of the king ; and carefully marks that these
men and their followers were expert in the use of the sling
and the bow, and that by long practice they had made
themselves as skilful in the use of the left hand as of the
right

ONE HEART AND ONE STEP. 107
The Second Muster-RoU (w. 8 — 15) records the names
of certain sons of Gad who separated themselves to David
when he dwelt " in the fortress toward the desert " — i.e. the
fortified rock — ^which is elsewhere called "the Cave," or
" the Hold " of AduUam. These Gadites are described in
Oriental terms of praise. Men of might, men of war expert
in battle,' they could handle shield and buckler ; their faces
were like the faces of lions, their feet as s^wift as those of
roes cantering over the hills. To join David they had left
their ancestral home on the farther side of Jordan, crossed
that rapid dangerous river when it was in full flood, fought
their way through the abettors of Saul on either side of the
river, " putting to flight the valleys " Ij.e. the inhabitants of
the vaUeys) "both on the east and on the west" of the
stream. Of men who had performed such a feat the
chronicler says, " the least of them could stand against a
hundred, and the strongest against a thousand;" just as we,
in our more moderate Western speech, used to brag that
one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen.
In the Third Muster-RoU (w. 16 — 18) we are told of
other men of Benjamin who, with some of the sons of
Judah, repaired about this same time to David at AduUam.
Their names are not recorded, but the chronicler or annotator
seems to have been much impressed by a brief dramatic
scene which occurred at their reception into David's camp.
The tribes of Benjamin and Judah were the two tribes most
faithful to the House of Saul. When, therefore, David's
sentinels and outposts sent him word that a band of the
children of Benjamin and Judah were approaching the camp,
the suspicion occurred to David that they might be joining
him only to betray him to Saul. With his native fearlessness
he went out to meet them and judge for himself He said,
" If ye be come peaceably unto me to help me, you and I
shaU be of one heart; but if ye come to betray me to. mine

ig8 one heart and ONE STEP.
enemies, although there is no wrong in my hands, the Lord
behold and punish." Amasai, the chief captain of the band,
thus solemnly greeted, was seized vrith one of those sudden
impulses which the devout Hebrews recognized as an in
spiration from heaven. " The Spirit came upon him, and
he exclaimed, Thine are we, O Da^vid !
And on thy side, thou son of Jesse !
Peace, peace be unto thee ;
And peace to every one that helpeth thee ;
For thy God helpeth thee.
Surely, a very singular scene to take place at the gate of an
entrenched camp, and not ¦without a certain interest and
pathos even for us 1
In the Fourth Muster-RoU (-w. 19 — 21) we have the
names of seven captains of the tribes of Manasseh, who
"fell to David" at a much later period, ¦when, after his
exUe in Gath, he had returned to Ziklag, only a few days
before the defeat and death of Saul. All we are told of
them is that " they were mighty men of valour," and that
they helped David to chastise the marauding Amalekites
who had pluhdered his camp. But the chronicler appends
a note, very brief but very graphic, which teUs us why
David had been sent away from the PhUistine court of
Gath before the PhiHstine army joined battie with the army
of Israel. The Kmg of Gath loved David, but the lords of
his court refused to trast him. They said, after due de
liberation, " For our heads he wUl fall away to his master
Saul " — i.e. he will betray us, he -will give up our heads, to
make his peace ¦with his former king.
The Fifth Muster-RoU (w. 23 — 40) contains a list of the
captains and soldiers who had raUied round David at
Hebron to make him king in place of Saul ; nor does it yield

ONE HEART AND ONE STEP. 109
in historic interest to any of the lists that have gone before
it. In some cases it gives only the numbers from each
of the tribes who had espoused the cause of David, though
now and then it mentions the name of some illustrious cap
tain or prince. But besides giving the numbers from each
tribe, it often briefly characterizes them. Thus the twenty
thousand eight hundred men of Ephraim are characterized
not only as " mighty men of valour," but as having already
acquired " fame " by previous exploits. The two hundred
captains of Issachar are described as men " who had under
standing of the times so that they could see what Israel
ought to do" — men, i.e. of fine political sagacity; "and all
their brethren acted according to their mouth " — i.e. took
the ad^vice of these skilful statesmen. The fifty thousand of
Zebulun are described as " expert in war, and in the use of
all weapons of war," as men " who could keep rank, because
they were not of a heart and a heart." Most of the tribes
have some brief characterization of this kind. But when
the chronicler sums up, he says of the whole three hundred
thousand what he had already said of the fifty thousand of
Zebulun : " All these men of war, that could keep rank, came
with z. perfect heart to Hebron, to make David king over
all Israel." No wonder that they succeeded in their aim.
Three hundred thousand men who knew how to keep rank,
and were of a single heart, might still overtam a kingdom,
if not overrun the world.
Now, I have no apology to make for caUing your atten
tion to these ancient mUitary Hsts, for I have no sympathy
¦with ¦ those who think any part of Holy Scriptare un
worthy of study. With St Paul, I hold " all Scripture " in
spired of God, to be profitable for men. Our time has been
weU spent if we have only learned to read this Chapter,
this Scripture, more intelligently. And this morning of all

ONE HEAR! AND ONE STEP.

mornings it surely cannot be inappropiate to talk of camps
and muster-roUs, and to learn that even these things are not
uncared for by the God who sent his Son to save the
world. If He cares for them, are not we to care for them
too ? If it was his Spirit that moved holy men to insert
these antique military documents in the Sacred Chronicle,
we surely may be moved by the same Spirit to inquire
what they mean.
And yet I should be sorry to close without speaking a little
more directly both to your consciences and to the present
occasion. It is much to know what a wonderful book the
Bible is, how every part of it is full of interest and instrac
tion ; but it is far more to feel that the traths of the Bible
lay hold of every phase and department of our Hfe, that
what we do in anything we may do as unto the Lord, and
not merely unto men. Let me, therefore, before I close,
say a few words to my special audience of this morning,
speaking to you, first, as to Volunteers, and then as to Men.
Now, as volunteers, when you hear of fifty thousand men
' ' who could keep rank," that may seem to you no very won
derful achievement. You may think that it would be very
strange if soldiers could not at least march. AU I can say
on that point is, that I have seen some volunteer and a good
many line regiments at the march-past on parade, whose
notion of a right line must have been a little eccentric if they
thought they were keeping one, and who certainly presented
a somewhat wavering and uncertain front. / don't know
much about it, but I don't think it becomes any young
soldier to be too sure that he can even march — so sure, at
least, as to neglect his drill. But of course the sacred
chronicler means much more than marching on parade when
he says that the men of Zebulun " could keep rank." He
means that they could keep rank amid the storm of battle,
that they could repel a charge, or advance to the assault with

ONE HEART AND ONE STEP.

unimpaired order ; that they could close up when comrades
fell fast, and present an unbroken and undaunted front to all
the perils whether of triumph or defeat, not breaking into
wild pursuit in the hour of victory, nor dissol-ving into a mere
rabble when the day went against them. And to keep rank
in that fashion is to be a soldier indeed.
If you ask him what was the secret of this all-enduring
order and courage, his reply hits the great secret of unity,
organization and success. They could keep an unbroken
rank under all temptations and disasters, because " they were
not of a heart and a heart; " because they were animated by a
single over-mastering purpose, by an entire and perfect
devotion. In each man, as in the whole army, there was a
single and supreme aim. They did not think of safety and
victory, but of victory alone. They had not one heart in
the field and another heart craving for home and ease.
They were " all there," breathing a purpose which absorbed
all passions and affections of the soul. They did not doubt
that God had chosen David for their king. They did not
regret that . David had been chosen rather than another.
They were bent, vrith a whole heart, an undivided ¦wUl, on
forcing a passage for him to the throne. They had no bye-
ends to serve. ., They were not thinking of personal ease, or
plunder, or fame. In the enthusiasm of the time they forgot
themselves, and were -willing to sacrifice themselves to secure
the end they had set before them. It was this singleness
of heart, this oneness of purpose, this entire devotion to
what th^y held to be God's will and made their o^wn will, in
¦virtue of which they could keep rank even when menaced by
danger and death on every hand.
And it is this unity of heart, this singleness of motive and
purpose, which is still the secret of order and victory.
Almost any aim — any enthusiasm — however base in itself, if
only it infect a whole race, or even a whole army, is the

ONE HEART AND ONE STEP.

surest omen of triumph. No savage tribe ever worshipped
an idol or fetish more hideous and despicable than that
" glory,'' that mere lust of conquest and domination, which
has made the French the pest of Europe for the last two or
three centuries ; and yet, when it has inflamed men with its
full rage, and there is a Napoleon to command and lead
them, what marvels has it accomplished ! And if a motive
so base, an enthusiasm so selfish and vainglorious, can inspire
men with an indomitable courage and fortitude ; if it can
nerve them to endure all hardness and to die in a rapture —
what may we not expect if the fire be from heaven, not from
hell ? if the enthusiasm which unites the heart be an enthu
siasm for a righteous cause ? When men feel, as the servants
and soldiers of Da\ad felt, that they are putting their lives in
jeopardy for their country and their God ; when they know
they are pursuing no low, no personal aim, not serving for
hire, nor seeking the bubble reputation in the cannon's
mouth ; when their motto is, " Defence, not defiance,'' and
they serve for patriotism, not for fame, for love and not for
lucre : then, surely, we may expect of them a patient heroism,
m undaunted courage, before which those who are moved
by lower aims vrill fall, as of old tiine the Cavaliers feU
before the Puritans, as in these days the French have gone
down before the Germans.
I do not say this as flattering you on what you are, but as
ivaming you of what you ought to be. It is to be feared
that in every Volunteer Corps there wUl be some who join
because they like to sport an uniform, because they take
kindly to athletic exercises, because they are fond of shoot
ing, or for some other reason as personal and as inadequate
IS these. But the volunteers of Christian England ought to
be men who can keep rank, because they are not of a heart and
% heart, because they are animated by a single supreme
purpose ; because, in devoting themselves to the service and

ONE HEART AND ONE STEP. 113
defence of their country, they believe they are doing the
will of God. Any motive short of this is only too likely to
faU you in the day of trial, if that day should ever come ;
but, standing on this, you are on a rock taat can never
be shaken ; for if it be your supreme aim to do the will of
God, you can always be doing that will whether in life or in
death. And now, last of all, a few words to you as to men. The
secret of unity in our individual lives is one with the secret of
unity in a camp or an ariny. We bring order and peace into our
lives as we cease to be of a heart and a heart, as we become
of one heart, and a perfect heart before God. If you consider
what is the cause of most of the calamities and miseries of
men, you will find that it lies in their being drawn in different
directions by contrary and warring desires. A man loves
wealth, for instance, and would fain have it ; but he also
loves pleasure, and in seeking the one, often loses the other.
Or a man loves distinction, but he also loves ease ; and even
to win fame he ¦will not give himself with entire devotion to
study and endeavour. Or a man loves duty, really wants to
do what is right ; but he is very open to this temptation or
that ; and so he is for ever wounding and blunting his con
science and missing his mark. Or a man sincerely loves
God, but still more sincerely he loves himself, and cfa never
quite give up his own will to the Divine wUl, or let charity
altogether conquer the selfishness native to him. And thus
it comes to pass, that being of a heart and a heart, having
one heart tending toward heaven and another heart pulling
us down to earth, we swing from change to change, and pass
from sorrow to sorrow, and never enter into a constant and
settled peace. How should we be at peace until we have
but one heart in our breast, and that heart have a supreme
aim and affection to which we subordinate all else ? And as
we are immortal, and must live on when the earth and all
8

114 ONE HEART AND ONE STEP.
that it holds fades from our sight, how can we know peace,
or hope to know it, untU our supreme good be as immortal
as ourselves, until our affections are fixed on Him who
inhabits eternity ?
Think how weak we are, how helpless, even though we be
young and strong ! We stand at the mercy of a thousand
accidents which we cannot avert; we crave a thousand
objects which we cannot reach; we are thrown from hope
to fear, from sorrow to joy, by forces over which we have no
control; our hearts are for ever seeking rest, yet finding
none. And yet all the while there Hes a good close to our
hands better than all earthly good, a peace which passeth
all understanding. For if we loved Him who is best worthy
of our love, should we not love God ? If we were -wise, and
looked before us, and resolved to do what would be best for
us now and hereafter, in eternity as well as in time, should we
not try, above all things, to make God's ¦will our will, and to
secure Him for our friend ? Let us but love Him and
make it our chief aim to make his will our -will, and nothing
can any more harm, nothing distarb us. For his ¦will must
be done, and is done, both in heaven and on earth ; and if
his will be ours, our will must be done too. Then, it ¦wiU
not be worth while for us to break rank, to -violate the trae
order of our lives, in order to escape danger or death ; for
what can danger do save bring our Father to our help ? and
what death, save take us home to Him ? We shall then be
of the thousands who know how to keep rank, because we
are no longer of a heart and a heart

X.
W^ttmiMoxhofM^m,
2 Samuel xxiii. i — 7.
" 'T^HERE is nothing," says Montaigne, " of which I am
X so inquisitive as the manner of men's deaths, their
dying words, looks, deportment ; nor is there any passage
of history which takes up so much of my attention. Were
I a ¦writer of books, I would compUe a register of the
various deaths of people, with notes which would instruct
me both how to live and how to die." If we cannot go
the fuU length of the French essayist and say, " There is
nothing of which we are so inquisitive,'' yet most of us are
inquisitive as to the manner in which men die ; we like to
hear the last words which fall from their lips. For we
know that death often throws a new light on life — a Hght
in which many of our judgments are modified or even re
versed, so that what we had hitherto put last takes the first
place and what we had held to be first retires into the last
place in our thoughts and desires. We know, too, that
when men die, as they often change and correct their judg
ments of the past, so also they often see the futare more
clearly, and speak to us of the great spiritual realities in
a higher than their accustomed strain. And as it is of in
expressible moment to us rightly to apprehend both the
life that now is and that which is to come, we are glad to
hear their last words, to ponder them, to follow out any

Ii6 THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID.
clue or suggestion which may help us to think more ac
curately of ourselves, of our duties, and of the prospects
which lie before us.
Moreover,

" The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony,"

smce

" -where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
He that must say no more, is listen'd more
Than they whom youth and ease have taught to gloze ;
More are men's ends marked than their lives before :
The setting sun, and music at the close.
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last —
¦Writ in remembrance more than things long past."
But if we like to hear the last words of most men, if even
" the last dying speech and confession " of a criminal has
a certain impressive interest for us, there is a special reason
why we should stady the last words of the wise Hebrews
whom we meet in the Old Testament Scriptures. We have
a special interest in their words, not simply because they
were great men, and good, and wise, nor even simply be
cause they were men who had known the inspiration of the
Almighty ; but because, as they lay a-dying, they were often
raised above even their wont : because they were then the
subjects of a singular exaltation in which they penetrated
more deeply than ever into the councils of God, read the
meaning of past history more clearly, and more clearly
foresaw what form and pressure the future would take
from the past. Jacob and Joseph are familiar instances of
this high dying mood.' As he was dying, Jacob read the
events of his past life in a new light, and his children's
characters, and was able to discern what God's meaning
was in the events by which he had been tried and trained,

THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID. 117
what his sons were like in heart and spirit, and to what
destinies their peculiarities of character would infallibly
conduct them.* As Joseph "lay a-dying" he had a still
larger vision. He saw and foresaw not only what special
features the changes of life would develop in the characters
of his sons, and what fate awaited them, but also what God
had begun to do for the nation, what was the significance,
what would be the issue, of the pro-vidences which had
befaUen them ; how surely God would visit them, redeem
them from bondage, redeem them through bondage, and
lead them to the land promised to their fathers. His spirit
passed in a triumph, for the -vision was clear ; and, looking
forward through the years, he saw the thousands of Israel
marching through the wilderness and carrying with them
his unburied bones, to lay them with the dust of his
fathers .t
David's last words are less familiar to us, but not less
valuable — not less, but more. For if Jacob, when he died,
foresaw the fate of a family, and Joseph the fate of a nation,
David saw, and rejoiced to see, the destiny of mankind.
His d)ang eyes were fixed on that great Advent which
changed the old world into the new world in which we live,
on the dawn of that new Christian day which has come to
the earth like the clear shining of the sun after rain, and
clothed it in fresh tender green.
One reason why David's last words are less famihar to
us than those of some of his fathers is, probably, that the
translation of them in our Authorised Version is so in
accurate and misleading. Our translators, however, are not
much to blame for that David's words are very brief,
abrapt, enigmatical ; the verbs and connecting particles are
often omitted : and nothing but that larger knowledge of
Hebrew -with which in these days God has rewarded the
* Genesis xlviii and xlix. f Genesis 1. 24, 25.

ii8 THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID.
Studies of devout men would enable us to translate and in
terpret them. Whether it was so designed or not we can
not tell, but, in the Sacred Record, the last words of David
fall brokenly from his Hps, as though uttered with difficulty
and pain. They sound like the murmurs of a d)dng man
straggling for breath, who nevertheless has somewhat of the
utmost moment to say, and nerves himself to gasp out the
more weighty words and phrases, lea-ving his hearers to
piece them together and to speU out their meaning.
I give in a note the best translation of these "last words "
I can frame,* but no translation will convey their signi
ficance ; they must be interpreted and explained. For the
sake of order and convenience we may divide them into a
* I. Now these be the last words of David.
The oracle of David, the son of Jesse :
The oracle of the man, the highly exalted.
Of the Anointed of the God of Jacob,
Of the lovely one in Israel's psalms.
2. The Spirit of Jehovah speaks ¦within me,
And his word is on my tongue,
3. The God of Israel saith,
The Rock of Israel saith to me : —
A Ruler over men, just,
A Ruler in the fear of God.
4. And as light of the morning when the Sun rises.
As a morning without clouds :
From shining after rain tender green (springeth) out of the earth.
5 For is not my house thus with God ?
For He hath made an everlasting covenant ¦with me,
Equipped with all (things), and attested ;
For all my salvation, and all (his) good pleasure.
Should He then not cause it to spring forth ?
6. But the wicked, — as rejected thorns are they all,
"Which men do not grasp with the hand,
y. But whosoever toucheth them
Equippeth himself -with iron and spear-shaft,
And they are utterly burned with fire where they stand.

THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID. 119
Prelude and a Revelation. The Prelude extends to the
middle of ver. 3 ; the Revelation, beginning there, extends
to the close of ver. 7. Taken together, they shew how
David read the secret of his past life, what he thought its
supreme meaning was ; how it was related to the history of
Israel and of the' world ; what hope there was in it for the
Hebrews and for all men ; what light it threw on the future
destiny of the human race.
I. The Prelude. By their very form the opening words
of the Prelude point back to an antique prophecy, the pro
phecy of Balaam on the fate and glory of Israel (Numbers
xxiv. 3, 4.) If we compare the two, we shall at once dis
cover their resemblance and their contrast.
Oracle of Balaam, the son of Beor ;
Oracle of the man with closed eye ;
Oracle of the hearer of Divine words.
Who sees the vision of the Almighty,
Falling down, and ¦with opened eyes.
Thus Balaam introduced his prophecy. Da-vid introduces
his prophecy with the words —
Oracle of David, the son of Jesse ;
Oracle of the man, the highly- exalted.
Of the Anointed of the God of Jacob,
Of the lovely one in Israel's psalms.
The correspondence is close and ob^vious ; it is impos
sible to doubt that Balaam's "oracle" suggested at least
the form of David's " oracle." But why did Da-vid adopt
this antique form ? why faU back on the prophecy of the
Seer of Pethor concerning the destiny of Israel ? Clearly,
in order to intimate, by his very first words, that he also
was about to speak of the destiny of Israel, that he was
about to take up Balaam's theme, to carry on his prophecy

THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID.

of the Star and the Sceptre and the Ruler who should come
out of Jacob. Once more that ancient " oracle " is about
to open its lips, to announce the issues of the national life.
It is no mere deduction of human reason to which we are
about to listen, but an inspiration from the Almighty who
from of old has revealed His counsels to men : it is no
family or personal interest with which the dying king is
about to deal, but the supreme interest and hope of the
elect race.
Hence, in ver. 2, he affirms —
The Spirit of Jehovah speaks -within me,
And his word is on my tongue.
Not always, nor ordinarily, a prophet, David feels that he is
a prophet now, that he has escaped the limits of tune and
sense, that he sees things as they are and as they will be ;
and that he is moved by the Divine Spirit to utter what he
sees. Commonly, when the Spirit came on him, it moved
him to give lyrical expression to Di^vine laws and promises
which were as familiar to every true Israelite as to himself,
to turn God's statutes mto songs. But now he is not simply
a psalmist ; a deeper mightier inspiration shakes him ; he
is as the priest, waiting with ineffable longings in the inner
shrine of the sanctuary, to whom a God reveals Himself
and utters words big with fate. All the epithets he em
ploys confirm this thought His oracle is more than the
oracle " of David, the son of Jesse," of the " anointed"
king, of the sweet psalmist. He is not only a man, but a
man whom God has " highly exalted ; " not only a king, but
" the Anointed of the God of jFacob; " not only a psalmist,
but the singer of " Israel's psalms." It is not only he who
speaks, but " the Spirit of Jehovah," " the God of Israel,"
and "the Rock of Israel." These national and sacred
names are thus perpetually introduced, these changes are

THE LAS! WORDS OF DAVID.

rung on them, to forewarn us that we are to hear the
voice of God rather than the words of man, and that the
Oracle is about to speak on no personal theme, but on a
national theme, on that one great theme which lay at the
very heart of Israel's life and hope, — the Advent of the true
King of men, the establishment of the kingdom of heaven
on earth.
But if, in the Prelude, David's oracle corresponds to
Balaam's, it also contrasts with it ; and, doubtless, the con
trast is designed to suggest that the son of Jesse is about to
speak more definitely, more fully, than the son of Beor, to
teach us what the elder prophet did not know. Balaam
was an ahen ; he was " a man of God who was disobedient
to the word of the Lord." The eyes of his spirit were for
the most part closed ; it was only in an occasional vision
that they were opened. The vision threw him into a trance,
into an ecstasy : it came upon him like an armed man, and
felled him to the earth. He had no clear knowledge of
what he saw ; he saw a good which he was not to share.
But David is no alien ; he is an Israelite indeed, of the
seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah. He has kept the
statates of the Lord. He is famUiar with visions and voices
from heaven. He is " the man " who has been" highly ex
alted," in that God has both anointed him king and gladdened
his heart -with the tender music of " lovely '•' psalms. He is
to share the good he foresees ; the blessing for Israel and
for the human race is for ever associated -with the covenant
God has made with David and his house. Preferred so far
before Balaam, lifted so high above him, chosen and caUed
and blessed as man, as king, as psalmist, when he speaks of
the hope of Israel, he vriU sound a higher strain than an
alien from the commonwealth of Israel and a traitor to
Jehovah. His -vision -will be no cloudy and imperfect
g'.impse of a Star and a Sceptre ; he wUl see the King, the

THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID.

true King of men, and the new day which the ELing -will
make for men.
This, then, is the Prelude in " the last words of Da-vid."
May we not hope much from a commencement so lofty, so
benign ? Must he not, after exciting expectation with these
solemn, mysterious, yearning chords, strike on a theme
which -will fill and satisfy the ear? A preface so stately
and sublime demands a large and noble utterance.
II. Let us, then, proceed to The Revelation, and mark
how grandly our utmost expectations are fulfilled.
What is it that David sees in the future as his eyes grow
large and clear with the inspiration of the Almighty ? He
sees A Ruler over men, just,
A Ruler in the fear of God.
That is to say, he foresees that in due time the ideal Ruler,
the true divine King, wiU arise on the earth, who wiU be of
a perfect justice, because he rales in the fear of God. It is
the King for whose advent the earth groans and travails ;
the King whom men have been trying to find in all their
political schemes and revolutions; a King of a perfect
equity, meting out to men of every condition the due reward
of their deeds, attempering his justice with mercy because
He fears God. It is the King of whom in after ages the
prophets prophesied —
Behold the days come, saith the Lord,
That I -will raise up unto David a righteous Branch ;
A King shall reign and prosper,
And shall execute judgment and justice in the earth :
And this is the Name by which He shall be called,
Jehovah our Righteousness.
It is the King of whose advent seers and sages dreamed

THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID. 123
in hope, believing that men, so miserable under the unjust
rulers who consumed them, would be lifted by his coming
into ecstasies of joy and praise; that they would "rejoice
greatly and shout for joy," because their true King had come
to them at last, "righteous and having salvation." It is the
King who in his lowliness rode into Jerusalem on an ass,
welcomed by the hosannahs of little children ; who went
meekly to the Cross, and tasted death for every man, that
He might redeem us unto life eternal. It is the King who
wUl come again, in the glory of his Father, to repeat in
power all that He once wrought in meekness, to establish
his kingdom on the earth, and to gather into it the nations
of the saved. This is the King whom king David saw when
death lifted the crovm from his weary head, — Christ, the
ideal Ruler, the sole, trae, and perfect King of men.
As he looked steadfastly into the fiiture, this tender yet
august Figure rose before him ; and as he contemplated it
he saw — oh, -with what thankful wonder and surprise ! — a
kingdom which surpassed all earthly kingdoms by as much as
" the Just One," the ideal Ruler, is fairer than the sons of
men. One cannot but be touched by the sweet pure figures
in which the kingdom of Christ passed before the mind of
David. Think what the kings he knew were like — the kings
of Egypt, Ass3rria, PhUistia ; what Saul was like ; nay, even
what David's own reign had been like. What tyranny and
mutiny, what wars, famines, exactions, revolts had he known
in these ralers and their realms ! With what surprise and
delight, then, must he have beheld a King whose reign was
to be the reign of gentleness and fostering love; a just
King, and yet a King whose influence should be " as the
light of the morning when the sun rises" of " a morning with
out clouds," of a morning that, coming and shining after
rain," would bring a fervent gracious heat, beneath which
the earth would clothe itself in robes of fresh and " tender

124 THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID.
green " (ver. 4). Da-rid had often seen the fields smitten
into barrenness by the fierce heat of an Oriental sun ; he
had heard the rushing showers of the hea-vy Eastern rains,
and when the morning broke vrithout clouds and the sun
shone on the saturated earth, he had seen the barren plains
turn green in a day, the tender grass springing up as at the
touch of an enchanter's wand, and the lilies of the field
clothing the grass as -with the robes of a king and loading
the air vrith fragrance. And it was under this figure that he
conceived the Messianic reign. When the true King came,
the darkness in which men sat would be over and gone ;
the rain of tears, falling for ever because of the tjnranny of
man to man, would cease. The Sun would rise with healing
on his wings. A new happy day would be bom out of the
eternity of God. All that was pure, and lovely, and sweet
in human character and life would spring to meet it, and
rise into new, fairer, and more fruitful forms.
Alas ! that the King should have come, and that the
kingdom should even yet be so far off ! Alas ! that David's
hope should still be a hope to us, and Httie more ! Yet let
us cherish this hope. It wiU be fulfiUed. When our hearts
are sad and weary, let us patiently look forward to the day
yet to dawn, the morning without clouds, whose sun, shining
after our tears, -wiU draw forth aU the peaceable fruits of
righteousness. But what guarantee have we, what guarantee had David,
that this hope wiU ever be fulfiUed? David's hope was
based on a "covenant" (ver. 5). As from afar he beholds
the days of the Son of Man on the earth, he triumphantly -
demands — For is not my house thus with God?
that is, " Does not my house stand in such a relatira to
God that the righteous Ruler wiU spring from it?" And he

. THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID. 125.
answers his question by appealing to an " everlasting cove
nant " which God had made with him :
For He hath made an everlasting covenant with me.
Equipped with all (things) and attested ;
For all my salvation and all (his) good pleasure,
Should He not then cause it to spring forth ?
Now this " covenant " points back to the earliest years of
his reign. No sooner had he sat do-wn on the throne, and
got rest from his enemies round about, than he determined
to build a house for God. The prophet Nathan brings him
the word of the Lord. David is not to buUd the house ;
that honour is reserved for his son. Yet because he had
thought to build a house for God, God wUl make him a
house. Again and again the prophet assures the king that
his throne, his kingdom, shall be established for ever.'* This
promise Da-rid calls " a covenant," a contract, because he
understood that, on the one hand, he and his seed were
pledged to build a house for God, and that, on the other
hand, God would found a permanent house for him and his
seed. This covenant, often in his thoughts through life,
was still in his thoughts- as he died. But his thoughts
have grown and broadened as he has brooded over the
promise, until now, at last, he sees its full scope. God has
promised that his seed, his kingdom, shall endure for ever.
But the universal and eternal kingdom cannot be a merely
Hebrew kingdom ; the trae ideal King cannot be merely a
Hebrew sovereign. The trae King, absolutely just, ruling
always in the fear of God, must be that Messiah of whom
aU the fathers had spoken, whose day even father Abraham
saw afe,r off and was glad ; His kingdom must include all
the nations. God's promise to him (David) cannot be
broken ; in some form, the King must come ; at some time,
• 2 Samuel vii. 11 — 16.

126 THE LAST WORDS OF DA VID.
the kuigdom must be set up. If his seed are to produce
the Di-rine King and to possess the eternal kingdom, the
Messiah must be of his seed. No jot, no tittle of God's
word can faU. On his word, his promise, his covenant, the
dying king bases his hope for his house and for the world ;
he is sure that the Christ will come, and vrith Him the uni
versal reign of justice, and peace, and love.
Have we no similar, no superior, guarantee ? Assuredly,
we need it For David's Son and Lord has come, but men
received Him not. The light has shone into the darkness,
but the darkness comprehended it not The new " day "
has da-(vned, but the rain is not over yet : the clouds are not
gone ; they stiU darken our heaven : the earth is not yet
covered -with " tender green." And as we consider under
what tyrannies men stUl groan, how much misery and pain
and dreadful rage of revolt stUl tortares their hearts, we find
it difficult even to hope that the trae King -wiU yet reign
over all; that the darkness vrill be utterly swept away
before the incoming light ; that a tender Di-vine Hand -wiU
wipe away all tears from all eyes ; that even the desert -wiU
gladden into verdure, and the -wilderness blossom and re
joice like the rose. When our hearts are thus sad and
hopeless within us, what shall we do, what can we do, but
trast in our " covenant," the covenant of God -with the man
Christ Jesus ? Christ has offered Himself a sacrifice for us :
and shall not God give Him to see of the travail of his soul ?
Christ has reared a house for God, in which myriads worship
at this day : shall not God found a house for Christ that
will endure for ever, and give Him a kingdom that cannot
be moved ?
David could rely on his covenant because it was " equip
ped -with aU things," because it provided for all events, even
for " the faUing away " ot his seed : because God had
assured him that, even if his seed should commit iniquity.

THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID. 127
though He would chasten them. He would not take away
his mercy from them. The covenant was " attested" made
sure, by this gracious provision ; for if even the faithlessness
of men could not annul the covenant, what could annul it ?
God would never be faithless ; and therefore David was
certain that God would cause " aU the salvation " promised
to his children to spring forth, that all the " good pleasure "
of the Lord, as expressed in the covenant, would be accom
plished. Is not our covenant, then, an everlasting covenant ?
Has not God pledged Himself that the world shaU be re
deemed, that aU flesh shall see his salvation ? Has He not
assured us that the unfaithfulness of men shall not make his
redeeming purpose of none effect ? that if the seed of Christ
commit iniquity, though He -wUl chasten them for their sins.
He wUl never remove his mercy from them ? We too, then,
have a covenant on which we may rely. It is equipped at
aU points, makes pro-rision for aU events. If our unfaithful
ness cannot annul it, nothing can annul it ; for God is
faithful who hath promised : He cannot change nor lie. It'
is on God's redeeming purpose and intention, on his eternal
-wUl for the salvation of all who can and wiU be saved, that
we must stay our hearts when they are weak and sad. We
cannot buUd our hopes on ourselves, on our fidelity, our
loyalty, for we veer and change before every breath ; nor on
our neighboms, for they are variable as we. But God sits
on high, above all reach of change, carrying out the stead
fast purpose of his love through the very vicissitades which
obscure Him from our sight and set us doubting whether
for ourselves or others. Let us trast in Him. Let us rest
in the love from which "neither death, nor even life,"
neither time, nor even change can in anywise separate us.
David, then, has seen the trae King of men, and the
benedictions which are to flow to men from his reign; he
has disclosed to us the sure basis, the everlasting covenant

THE LAST WORDS OF DAVID.

on which he rests his hope in the advent of this King. But
even yet the "oracle" is not complete. That it may be
complete, it must also warn us of the judicial and con
demnatory aspects of the Messianic reign. . In what soft
pastoral images does the Shepherd- King set forth the happy
influence of the coming of the ideal Ruler ! When He
comes, there is to be a sunrise -without clouds; after the
long night of weeping, light and joy are to come with the
morning ; the earth is to robe itself in tender green. How
peacefully the words flow on ! what bright happy thoughts
they suggest ! But when Christ sets up his throne among
men and opens the kingdom of heaven, — is there nothing
in the scene to quicken sad thoughts and hea-vy forebodings?
Yes ; when Christ came in great humility there were many
who received Him not. Now that He comes day by day, in
his Word and Spirit, there are many who do not receive
Him. And when He comes in great glory, there -wUl stiU
be some who -will not have Him to reign over them. We
do not pretend to know, we do not need to know, the
exact nature of the doom which wUl fall on those who
persist in rejecting Him. But we do know that their doom
is dark and terrible, so dark and terrible that we should
strain every nerve to save men from it
Now, that David's " oracle " may be complete, he is per
mitted to see this aspect of the Divine kingdom also, and
to set it forth in appropriate images. He stiU uses images
drawn from pastoral life. But, now, we hear nothing of
cloudless mornings and of suns that shine after rain. He
now speaks to us of thorns which have been "rejected,"
that is, condemned to extirpation, that they may no longer
suck the soil's fertiHty from wholesome and fraitful growths
(ver. 7). When men clear the ground of these noxious
thorns, he says, they "do not grasp" them "with the
hand ; " they put on " iron " gauntiets to puU them up with,

THE LAST WORDS OF DA VID. 129
and beat them off with the heavy " spearshaft," and gathei
them together, and bum them in the very place in which
they grew. The parable is homely enough, but how
terrible ! Trae, David was not a modern theologian, and
probably did not conceive the future of the wicked as we
conceive it But he knew that to be wicked was to be
miserable. He knew that if we reject God, God must reject
us ; that if we degenerate into worthless thorns which cum
ber the ground, we must give place to trees that bear good
frait. Do not we know it, too ? Is it not reasonable and
just — ^nay, is it not kind even to us — that if we are worth
nothing, we should become nothing? that if we w/// injure
our neighbours, we should be separated from them ? Is it
not right and just that the mercy which we despise should
be -withdrawn from us? that if we can only be safely
touched ¦with iron glove and spearshaft, we should be con
sumed from the land which we make barren ?
These, then, are the scenes which passed before David as
he lay a-djring; these are the scenes which pass before us as
we listen to the " oracle " of the son of Jesse. First of all,
there rose before him an image of the perfect Man, the
ideal Ruler, ¦with no iron sceptre in his hand, raling over
men not by force, but by justice, not for his own aggrandize
ment, but for their good ; blending mercy with justice be
cause He is animated by the fear of God. As the lines of
that august yet gracious Form grow dim, there rises before
him a vision of the earth drenched with fertilizing showers,
rejoicing in the clear shining of a morning "without clouds,
and greeting the benignant rays with springing verdure and
fragrant incense. Then, he remembers -the day when he
first sat in peace on the throne of Israel, resolving in his
grateful heart that he would build a house for the God who
had " highly exalted " him. What a humbling and be-
Tvildering pain it was to him to leam that this honour was
9

THE LAST WORDS OF DA VID.

denied him ! that the blood on his hands, though its stains
had been contracted in the service of God, unfitted him to
build a temple for Jehovah ! And God, how tenderiy He
had tamed sorrow mto joy by choosmg that moment to
assure him that his own house should never fail, that the
true King of men should be a branch from his stem, that
the renovated earth and new heavenly day should be pos
sessed by his seed ! And, last of all, there rises up before
him a field overran with thorns, which the Divine ministers
pluck up with gauntleted hands, and beat down ¦with theii
burnished spears, and commit to the consuming flames.
What a grand ¦vision it is ! How wide its scope ! How
much it suggests ! What a magnificent consummation of
David's magnificent career ! What a divine close to that
most human hfe ! The psalmist rises into the seer, the king
into the father of the King of kings ; and Da^vid passes from
us radiant with an excellent and surpassing glory, at his
highest moment, in his loftiest mood, the heavenly and
eternal splendour davming on him as his eyes close on the
pomps and vanities of earth. Let us give God thanks for
his great happiness, and pray that we too may be happy in
our death, although no "vision" be granted us, and no
" oracle " faU from our Hps, through our faith in Christ the
King and our siure hope in the coming of his kingdom.

XL
%Mt (Sj^xlhm ©ffb's Stouglwlir for fenWf b
"Out of the mouth of very babes and sucklings hast Thou founded a
strongholdj because of Thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy
and the avenger." — Psalm viii. 2.
AN ancient and common interpretation of these words
is, — ^That when David sang of very babes and suck
lings as a stronghold founded by God against his eneinies,
he did not mean literal " babes and sucklings ; " what he
meant was, that God often uses men who, as compared with
the adversaries of his faith and law, are weak as babes and
sucklings, to queU and overcome all the strength of the
world, the flesh, and the devil. In short, David's words are
to be taken as a poetical expression of the familiar law, that
God chooses weak things to overcome the strong, and
foolish things to overcome the wise. This is the common
and accepted interpretation of these words, and its most
common Ulustration has been the victory of the primitive
disciples— a few poor, weak, illiterate men — over aU the
wealth, leaming, and power of the great Roman Empire.
The interpretation is sanctioned by most of the doctors and
lathers* of the Christian Church.
*' This interpretation, so common in the Church, has never foimd
favoui in the Syn^ogue. The rabbis have a surprising love for

132 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD'
None the less, this common and received reading is
demonstrably untenable. It sins against two of the plainest
laws of interpretation. All sound Commentators admit that,
when any words of Scripture can be taken literally, they
ought to be takfen literally; that when, by taking them
as they stand, we can get good sense and sound morality
out of them, we ought to take them as they stand, and not
betake ourselves to spiritual, mystical, or figurative methods
of handling them. It wiU be my main object to shew that,
taken just as they are, in the most literal way, David's
words yield very good sense and very sound morality ; and
that to put a figurative or spiritual meaning upon them
would be, therefore, a sin against an accepted 'canon of
interpretation. v
But before I do that, let me briefly indicate how the com
mon and received explanation of the passage sins against
another law of interpretation. This second law is. That we
ought to interpret scripture by scriptare, to read any one
passage by the light which other passages shed upon it, — a
children. They apply to children and schools all the Scripture verses
that speak of flowers and gardens. The Talmud is full of stories which
indicate their love of "the little ones." Here are two such stories,
the latter of which shews in what sense the Jewish "masters" read
David's words. "There was once a great drought, and the most pious
men prayed and wept for rain, but none came. At length an insigni
ficant-looking person prayed to Him who causes the winds to blow and
the rains to fall ; and instantly, the heavens covered themselves with
clouds, and the rain fell. " Who are you," they cried, " whose prayers
alone have prevailed?" And he answered, " I am a teache^ of little
children." . . . . " When God was about to give his law to the
people. He asked them whom they would ofi'er as their guarantees that
they would keep it holy. And they said : 'Abraham.' God said:
' Abraham has sinned ; Isaac, Jacob, Moses himself, they have all
sinned : I cannot accept them.' Then they said : ' May our children
be our witnesses, and our guarantees?' And God accepted them;
even as it is written, ' From the mouth of the little babes has He
founded his empire.' "

FOR TROUBLED MEN.

133

law so obviously good and wise that it needs no -rindication.
Mark only how it bears on the theme in hand. These very
words of David are cited in St. Matthev/s Gospel,* and
cited in a way which is quite decisive as to their meaning.
When, at the close of his public ministry, the Lord Jesus
went into the Temple, little children, who had heard their
fathers and mothers use the words only the day before, came
round Him, cr)nng, " Hosanna to the Son of Da-rid !
Hosanna to the Son of David ! " Certain of the Pharisees
were much displeased with them, and vrith Him for not
silencing them. They said to Him, " Hearest thou not
what these say ? " meaning, " Why don't you stop this foolish
outcry?" And the Lord Jesus replied, "Yea; have ye
never read. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou
hast perfected praise ? " These little children in the Temple
were not weak foolish men, nor feeble UHterate saints. They
were simply " little children." Yet our Lord applies Da-rid's
words to them. He at least understood that when David
spoke of "babes and sucklings,'' he meant "babes and
suckHngs." Here, then, we have a scripture by which to
interpret David's scripture. We are bound to read his
Psalm in the light which Matthew's Gospel throws upon it.
And read in that light, it means that Httie children, real
"babes and sucklings," such as we have all taken in our
arms, are God's stronghold for troubled men. Commen
tators may have put or found another sense in the words.
We may have understood them in another sense. But
which of the Commentators is comparable with Christ ?
If He stood alone, opposed to the scholars and expositors
of aU ages, we must side with Him rather than with them,
even though, to side vrith Him, we must give up a thought
which has gro-wn familiar to us.
It is in deference to his authority, then, that we take
• St. Matthew xxi. i6.

134 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD
Da-rid literaUy, and understand him to affirm that little chil
dren are God's stronghold for men when they are hard
pressed by the enemy and the avenger. But how ? — ^how can
children be a refuge for us from trouble and doubt and fear?
¦What good sense, what good morality, is there in such a
thought, such a figure of speech, as this ? The fact that
our Lord Jesus Christ confirms Da-rid's thought only makes
us more anxious to know what it really is, and to recog
nize its ethical beauty and force.
I. It will help us to get at this thought, if, for a moment
or two, we consider the general drift of the Psalm, and how
that fits into our experience.
Now if we walk out on any clear night, our eyes are con
stantly dra-wn from earth to heaven. The calm pure
splendour of the moon, the stars that cluster and droop from
the blue dome above us, the pale ever-changing cloud-fres
coes which the -winds paint upon it, " take " our hearts -with
their beauty. If our walk lead us through field and wood
and valley, we feel the harmony of earth and heaven. There
are silence and loneliness and cahn around us as weU as
above us ; and through these God speaks with us, and sheds
sensible influences of peace on our carefiil hearts. It is as
though He, the Holy and Beautiful One, were aU about us,
displaying his glory to us in the heavens above and the
earth beneath, calling us not to rest only, but to rejoice, m
Him. And then no words rise more natarally to our lips
than the famUiar verse, " O Lord, our Lord, how exceUent
is Thy name m aU the earth ! " But should our walk take
us through thronged and turbulent streets, we feel the con
trast between earth and heaven. We tam from the noise
and tamult of the town, from the foul jest and dranken oath
and noisy song, from the rattle of wheels and the glare of
lamps, to the pure white lustre of moon and stars which

FOR TROUBLED MEN. 135
makes our earthly lights gross and dim, to the order and
purity of the heavenly host, to the silence which reigns
on high. And now perhaps our thought is, " Lord,
what is man that Thou shouldest remember him? or the
son of man that Thou shouldest visit him ? " Man seems
too poor and gross and base a creature to live on an earth
so fair and beneath a heaven so calm and bright, a blot on
the beauty of the universe, a discord that jars upon its har
mony. Both these moods were kno-wn to Da-rid. As he stood
on his palace-roof when the toUs and cares of the day were
over, as he looked out on the grandly-shaped hills that lay
round about Jerusalem in peacefid repose, and then up to the
calm bright splendours of an Oriental sky, he felt the har
mony of earth vrith heaven, and rejoiced in the " excellent
name " of Him by whom the heavens and the earth were
made. As he looked down on the city, aU dark vrith tangled
shadows cast by the narrow lofty streets, and thought of
the -rice and crime and misery which haunted the shadows,
he also felt the contrast of earth with heaven, and was
amazed that God should care for men and send his light to
disperse their darkness.
But David had the happy and serene temperament of the
trae poet AU the bright happy qualities of his natare were
reinforced by an unwavering faith in the Di-rine goodness.
And, therefore, he did not yield, and least of all on the
night on which this Psalm w£nt singing through his heart, to
the sadness and despair which the contrast between earth
and heaven often breeds in us. He is obstinately sanguine.
He will hope both for himself and for his race. If there is
a divine order and glory in the heavens, there is also, there
must be, a divine order and beauty in human Hfe. Man
was not meant to be the base sinful creatare he is. God
made him but a Httie lower than the angels — nay, but a

136 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD
Httie lower than Himself,* crovmed him with glory and
honour, put all things under his feet. God meant man to
rule on earth as He Himself rales in heaven, as calmly, as
purely, as happUy; and David vrill not believe that the
weakness of man is, in the end, to make God's purpose of
none effect. If God's will and man's will are for the present,
and in much, opposed, David is very sure that at last God's
will must prevail. Man may degrade himself, but neverthe
less God will exalt him. Man may pollute himself, but never
theless God will purify him. The Divine purpose must be ac
complished, the divine end must be reached. Earth wUl yet
be a reflex of heaven, and man the very image of God.
How wonderfully David's dream was fulfilled, we aU
know. In due time there sprang from the stock of Jesse
David's Son and Lord, a Man, a Son of Man, who came to
redeem the earth from its bondage to vanity and corraption,
to take away the sin of the whole human race, and to make
his strength perfect in their weakness.
David did not, and could not foresee that. StUl, even in
his day, there was much to confirm his hope for humanity,
and notably this : Fallen as man was, he had not altogether
lost his dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowl of the
air, and the fish of the sea. This faculty of rale indicated a
faculty of obedience. Man cannot be wholly out of har
mony with God's laws so long as he can sway God's creatures
to his will. Only as he obeys the laws of the universe can
he turn them to account, and rale over any of the works
of God's hands. He does to some extent rule over some
of these works and make them serve him. He must there
fore be obeying some of ^the divine laws. And as he can
StiU obey some laws, he may leam to obey aU, and so regain
* The fifth verse of the Psalm should be rendered,— "Thou didst
make him but a little lower than God, and crownedst him Vidth glory
and honour. "

FOR TROUBLED MEN. 137
his primal dignity. Once " lord of himself," and man -will
be lord of all things.
This, or something like this, was one ground on which
David based his hope for men, when his heart was troubled
and dejected by the doubts which their sins had bred. It
their disobedience to some di-rine laws filled him vrith despair,
the despairing mood changed and rose into glad anticipa
tion as he remembered their obedience to other laws. If he
grew sad as he noted the vices and crimes into which they
had fallen, he grew bright and joyful as he remembered that
God had made them to possess and rule all things, and that
their present imperfect rule over God's works bore -witness
to the Divine intention, and prophesied its ultimate fulfilment
But it is not a Httie surprising, not a little pathetic, to
observe where Da-rid goes for a second ground of hope. He
goes to little chUdren. In " babes and sucklings " he finds,
he believes God meant him to find, " a stronghold ; " a refuge
from doubts, and misgivings, and fears ; a fortress in which
he vrill be safe from all the sad thoughts and questionings
which at times perplex and darken his conception of the
infinite excellence of God. Men may become " enemies " to
God. Finding the world so much out of course with their
aims and desires, they may oppose themselves to the scheme
and order of the Divine Providence, and seek a futile
"revenge" for their disappointments and defeats in tradu
cing the wisdom or the goodness of Jehovah. But " babes
and sucklings," these at least are content with the lot God
has appointed them. They trust, and love, and are at peace.
And therefore, when Da-rid's heart is chafed by the clamours
of men, who first rebel against the divine laws, and then
charge God with the miseries their rebellion has brought on
them ; or when evU and wavering thoughts arise within his
heart because he himself has rebelled against the divine or
dinances, he betakes himself to little children as to a strong-

138 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD
hold in which he is safe against' all assaults, in which hif
heart may regain its forfeited serenity and peace. -
II. Already, then, we may see that Da-rid's words, taken
in their most literal meaning, contain a thought which com
mends itself to our common sense. Let us now put his
thought to a test which vrill at once prove it and bring it
home to us. David was a poet ; and it lends no slight con
firmation to his thought about children that at least the
poets have been true to it To them the prayer is famUiar —
" O may I be a child in heart,
Although a man in years."
Thus, for instance, Wordsworth, in his sublime ode on
"Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood," sings his delight in the innocence, the heavenli-
ness, of babes and sucklings, his sorrow over its loss. Let
us set the English poet to interpret the Hebrew psalmist ?—
" Not in entire forgetfiilness.
And not in utter nakedness.
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in cmr infancy !
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.
But he beholds the light and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy :
The youth who daily firom the East
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the -vision splendid
Is on his way attended :
At length the man perceives it die away
And fade into the common light of day. "
Is not that a lovely pictare, and as true as it is lovely? Do
we not thus pass from infancy to matarity, finding the splen
dour of life darken as we shift from babe to child, from boy

FOR TROUBLED MEN.

139

to youth, tUl to the man all the glowing visions of eariier
days fade into the common light of day, in which it is well
if we have just light enough for our task ? Is not our life a
pilgrimage from East to West, from the mounting splendours
of sunrise to the gathering dusk of evening ? Is it not our
, best hope that, as we near the West and the evening shades
darken round us, we may behold the more spiritual but
evanescent hues of sunset, and in them the promise of a
coming day?
Here is another pictare from the same poem. Words
worth depicts the innocent sports of childhood, intending,
of course, that we should contrast them vrith the toUs and
cares and grosser pleasures of after-life : —
"Behold the child among his blisses,
A six years' darling of pigmy size !
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes !
See at his feet some little plan or chart,
Some firagment of the dream of human life.
Shaped by himself -with newly leamed art ;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral :
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song :
Then vrill he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife :
But it will not be long
E'er this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part."
As the poet broods on the simplicity and gaiety with
which a chUd mimics the joys and sorrows, the toils and
cares, of graver years, on his clear' insight and quick re
sponse to trath and love, he breaks out into remonstrance
with him on the eagerness with which he longs to exchange

I40 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD
these innocent delights for the labours and anxieties of
manhood. Addressing the chUd whom but now he de
picted, he exclaims : —
" Thou, whose exterior semblance does belie
Thy soul's immensity ;
Thou best philosopher who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind.
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep
Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind —
Mighty prophet ! Seer blind !
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toUing all our lives to find :
* * * *
Thou little child, yet glorious in thy might
Of heaven-bom freedom ....
Why with such eamest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee -with a weight.
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."
I have quoted so much of this ode, not only on the principle
of setting a poet to interpret a poet, but also because I
think that in Wordsworth's experience we have the most
c^xact and perfect Ulustration of Da-rid's thought To
David little children were a stronghold when he was vexed
and fretted by the discontents of men whose -wUl was " in-
lOrrect to heaven;" And is it not obvious from every line
of his ode that Wordsworth also found chUdren a strong
hold? He, like David, is pertarbed as he contemplates
I he, lives of men, their ignoble toUs for unworthy ends, their
base pleasures, the miseries they impose on themselves by
their -riolation of divine laws. And when the heavy and
the weary weight of all this unintelligible world oppresses
him, arid leads him to despair of men, — whither does he run
for refuge and comfort? where does he look for proof of the

FOR TROUBLED MEN. 141
inherent greatness of humanity ? where seek to rekindle his
hope in the immortality of man ? He too betakes himself
to little children, to " babes and sucklings." In their com
parative purity, in the heavenly sweetness they bring with
them from God, their home ; in their simplicity and obe
dience, their serenity and peace, their content and trust and
love, he finds " intimations " of man's greatness, and of the
greatness of his destiny. Of so divine an origin, must he
not be capable of a di-rine strength, and purity, and blessed
ness ? Is so fair a promise to be altogether belied ? Is it
possible that these fine capacities for faith, hope, love, joy,
rest will be destroyed by contact with care and sin ? Must
they not, even when hidden from our eyes, be discernible by
God, when beyond our reach, be recoverable by Him ? If
the child is father to the man, can manhood not only obscure,
but obliterate, aU the graces which childhood shews ?
Thus the poet makes children a stronghold for his
troubled wavering heart And on such a point as this no
man's opinion carries the weight of that of a poet ; for a
man is a poet in virtae of his clearer -rision of trath, and
not only for his more musical expression of it The poet is
a seer, one who sees farther than other men, who has a
quicker and profounder insight into the facts and traths of
human experience. And therefore what he tells us about
childhood and its meaning is better worth our acceptance
than the dicta of sage or commentator.
But if our hearts are sometimes distarbed in their trust of
God by the sins of other men ; if, because they are so weak
and wicked, we waver in our hope for them, we are still
oftener dejected and hopeless for ourselves, because we have
proved so vricked and so weak. Is chUdhood a stronghold to
us in this mood? Yes, — and even our own childhood. Let
us hear another poet comment on David's thought, one of
our ovm poets, though comparatively few of us know him, or

142 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD
make much of him. In his " Retieat," Henry Vaughan takes
up the very case I have supposed. He is sick and weary oi
himself He can find little in himself to love, small ground
for hope. And in this strait he recalls the happy years of his
chUdhood, longs to regain their purity and peace, and finds
some hope for himself in the memory of what he has been
when he can find none in the contemplation of what he is.
"Happy those early days, when I
Shined in my Angel infancy !
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white celestial thought :
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of His bright face :
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul could dwell an hour,
And in these weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity :
Before I taught my tongue to wound '
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt all through this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness."
As he recalls the innocence and happiness of that early
time, he cries : —
" O how I long to travel back
And tread again that ancient track 1
* * * »
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move ;
And when this dust falls to the um,
In that state I came, return."
Here again one of the wisest and devoutest of men, Hke

FOR TROUBLED MEN. 143
David, like Wordsworth, found childhood a stronghold
in which he was secure from besieging doubts and fears.
The man sees little to love, to approve, to warrant hope, in
himself; but as he remembers the child he was, he takes
heart. Then white celestial thoughts were famihar guests
with him : may he not leam to entertain them again ?
Then the face of God was lovely to him, and not far off :
may not he, who could once see God, hope to see Him
again ? Then clouds and flowers, all divine works, were
full of glories in which he espied shadows of eternity : may
he not hope that eternal traths ¦wUl once more become
present facts to him ? Then, when conscience was without
a wound, and sensual delights were not sinful delights,
through aU the fleshly dress of his mortal body he felt
bright quickening shoots of everlastingness : are these
promises and hints of immortality never to be carried out ?
Thus the' man takes refuge in the chUd, and meets the
doubts bred by the halting obedience of his maturity with
the hopes suggested by earHer happier years.
III. The poets are wiser than we; their experience of
life is far more valuable than ours : and they, as we have
seen, confirm David's thought. But does not our own
experience confirm it also ? Our experience may be less
valuable than that of the great seers and singers, yet for us
it may have a greater force of suasion. Let us, therefore,
having listened to the verdict of abler judges, judge for our
selves whether David is right.
Da^vid says, or impHes, that when the discontents and
mutinies of men against the Divine Laws had distarbed his
heart and lowered his hopes for humanity, he turned from
men to babes and sucklings; and that he found in their
trast and love, their content and peace, a stionghold from
doubt and care. Abiding in this stronghold, he grew calm

144 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD
and hopeful again, strong enough to overcome all the doubts
and fears which intercourse with evU men had quickened
within him. And he ranks this stronghold, the influence of
children, with man's lordship over nature — declares the one
fact to be just as valuable and hopeful as the other. Does
our experience confirm his thought, and his estimate of its
value ? When we are fretted and pertarbed by the weak
ness and e-rils that haunt our own natare ; or when we
contemplate the lives of men, their ignoble toils, their base
pleasures, their rebellions and miseries,— where do we go
for refuge and comfort? where do we look for proofs of
man's inherent greataess, of his sublime destiny? If we
betake ourselves to God, if we resolve that we wUl trast in
his goodness, and the sa-ving purpose of his goodness,
despite our doubts, that we will believe that every cloud
which veils his love itself is love, we do well. We also do
well if we fall back on the native dignity of man ; if we say,
" God would not have made him so noble in reason, so
infinite in faculty, nor have placed him over all the works of
his hands, unless He had kind thoughts and high thoughts
concerning him." But we shall stiU do well if, like Darid,
we find, not only a refuge in God, but also a stronghold in
babes and sucklings; if, after betaking ourselves to the
Father in heaven, we also betake ourselves to the little ones
whose angels do always behold our Father's face. In their
innocence, their simplicity and obedience, their serenity and
peace, we may find proofs of man's true greataess, hints ot
the happy future which awaits him ; and our hearts are not
so strong in hope that we can afford to neglect aught that
feeds our hope. It is a fair and reasonable argument, as we
have seen, to say, " If in his origin man be so pure and so
divine, must he not be capable of a divine strength, and
holiness, and blessedness ? Is so fair a promise as may be
read in the face Of every smiling babe to be altogether and

LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD. 145
for ever belied? If the chUd is father to the man, — can
manhood not only obscure, but oJDliterate, all the graces
which childhood shews ? "
That is fair argument : but the best logic is so often con
tradicted by facts that we cannot trast argument alone.
What says experience then ? your experience ? Have you
not found in children a stronghold of the Lord? If you
are so happy as to have, or to have had, little chUdren
about you, David's thought can hardly be quite strange to
you. I appeal, not to mothers,— we all know what they
would say,^but to you, husbands and fathers. You go
home, sornetimes, weary, dejected, out of heart Your affairs
have not gone well with you. Workmen have been lazy,
wasteful, ungrateful ; customers have cheated you ; rivals
have stolen a march on you : creditors have been urgent and
threatening. You have seen so much of false pretence, or
of undisguised selfishness, men who make a great show of
religion have been so miserably untrue to their profession,
that your spirit is sore and hea-vy -within you. " It is a mad
world,"' you say, " and a bad world. Men don't get their
deserts. The good faU ; the vricked thrive." For the time
you have lost your faith in men, your hope for them ; and
you barely trast in God Himself, He seems so far off and so
indifferent. You think that it is hardly worth your while to
toil and deny yourself in order to serve them and please
Him — hardly worth God's while to try to redeem them info
righteousness, charity, and peace.
Now, if in that mood, you talk with men, you may get a
littie comfort from them ; and also you may not. They may
be hard and unsympathetic ; and in that case you -will
be more angry or more dejected than before ; or they may
accord you their cordial sympathy, and cap every story you
teU them with similar stories, tiU you think worse of men
than ever. But if you go into your nursery, if you go to

146 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD.
little chUdren who know nothing of the vrickedness of men,
and of the care it breeds, you are sure of comfort You
cannot talk to them of what is in your heart, indeed ; but
you can listen to their chUdish innocent prattle. Their
pleasure at seeing you, their innocence, their simplicity and
sincerity, their shouts, and sports, and embraces make
another man of you ; or rather, and better still, they make a
child of you. When you are with them, you actually find
yourself talking the nonsense of your o-wn childish time,
with the old chUdish lisps and abbre-riations and imitative
sounds. You become a chfld with chUdren — i.e., you be
come frank, simple, cordial, kind. You forget your cares.
Your dejection melts away. Your spirits rise. In short,
you have found your "stronghold," and can say, " Out of
the mouth of babes and sucklings God has given me
strength — strength for endurance, strength for hope. There
must be good in men, and good in store for men, each of
whom came into the world a babe such as mine." Even
though you have never thought of them as a refuge, and as
God's refuge, for your pertarbed and weary spirit, you have
found them a refuge and a help. They have dra^wn you out
of yourself — out of your frets, and doubts, and fears.
God does not give us all chUdren of our own ; but there
are chUdren all about us, if we care to love them and take
pleasure in them. And we have aU been children ; and the
memory of childhood — has not that often been a safeguard
and a ground of hope ? Most of us have found it a tme
stronghold. When we have looked vrith saddened eyes on
our ovra character and career, when our sense of defect and
weakness has been keen, and we have seen littie or nothing
in ourselves on which to found the prospects of a happy
future, we have perchance recaUed those early days when
God was near to us, and to live was a pleasure, when
heavenly and peaceful thoughts were familiar to us, when

LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD. 147
we believed all we were told and were quick to respond to
every sign of love. And when we have thus turned from
our present to our past selves, from the fact that heaven was
about us in our infancy we have derived a hope that we
might recover the child spirit and grow meet for heaven
again. If we have not, it is because we have not learned
what God meant childhood and chUdren to be to us. ChUd
hood is a prophecy of heaven ; for do we not believe that
all children who die go to heaven ? Nay, childhood is in
some sort a heaven ; for to an unperverted child, faith, hope,
love are not difficult; they are easy and natural. And
therefore in every man there, at least, has been the capacity
of leading a spiritual and heavenly life, the life of faith, and
hope, and charity.
When we recall oiu chUdhood, what do we remember ?
Do we not remember that we were then far more quick than
we are now to trast, to love, to beheve ? If we have
changed for the worse,- do we not regret the change ? Do
we not long to recover the simplicity, the sincerity, the con
fidence, the good-vrill of that better time? Do we not
cry — " And, O, for a matt to arise in me,
That the man I am may cease to be ! "

or pray —

" Lord, / would be a child in heart.
Although a man in years ? "

If we do, that is the best proof that the heart of a little child
is not altogether dead -within us. If we do, we may yet
find childhood our stronghold in a sense deeper and traer
than any in which I have yet used the phrase. For the
Lord Jesus, who said that children were in the kingdom of
heaven, and that their angels stand nearest God, also bade
•IS become as little children, that we may enter his king
dom. And He does not bid us do what we cannot do.

148 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD.
Nay, He Himself, the FeUow of the Lord of Hosts, became
a Httie child that we, though hardened and aged by many
sins, might be " bom again " and become as little children
in Him. If the mere memory of our own chUdhood
quickens the longing in us to become chUdren again, "to
travel back and tread again that ancient track," it also
assures us that we can keep his commandment For so
long as the heart yeams for purity, for obedience, for simple
trast and love, these graces are not impossible to it. The
heart that is dead does not yearn. The heart that is dead
to goodness, to faith, to charity does not crave them. If
we crave them, our very craving, so that it be strong and
sincere, proves that we may have them. For God, vrith whom
all things are possible, waits to renew us in the spirit of our
minds, to cause it to turn again to .the spirit of a little chUd.
He is glad to have his children back, to have sinful hardened
men grow little children again, and come and sit at his feet.
Every desire we have for the chUd-spirit is kindled in us by
Him. By these He is seeking to draw us to Himself, from
whom we once came -with the simplicity and beauty of
childhood upon us, from whom therefore we may once more
receive, if we wish it and He wiU give it, the simpHcity and
freshness of children. If we do wish it. He will give it : for
He is our Father, and loves us, and longs for our return
even more than we long to return to Him, our home.
IV. StiU, we may admit David's thought to be a tme
thought, -without adopting his estimate of its value, without
granting it to be worthy of its place in this Psalm. And at
first, indeed, there does seem a vast disproportion between
David's two grounds of hope for the human race. One
ground is man's sovereignty over the animate and inanimate
creation; the other is the simplicity, the obedience, the
trast and love of Httie chUdren. But the more we reflect

LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD. 149
on this second ground of hope, the more readily shall we ac
knowledge it to be large and solid and momentous as the first.
For, consider : here are the generations of men, each grow
ing hard, selfish, sordid, sceptical of virtae, indisposed to
trast and believe and love. By the time that the men and
women of any generation have been married a few years,
they have had to endure much that it is bitter and painful
to meet — ^many losses, many sorrows, many disappointments.
The comm«n cares of the household and the market absorb
much of their energy and time and regard ; the romance is
beginning to fade out of their lives, and all the rich colours
of hope and youth. Life lies before them grey and a little
sad — a scene of toil for the most part, and too often of toil
for merely selfish and worldly ends. And then — the little
chUdren come to them, vrith songs and mirth, with inno
cence, content, gaiety. They come to redeem their parents
from their worldliness, to soften their hearts, to quicken
tender thoughts in them, to make them unselfish, loving,
kind. Think what human life would be but for chUdren,
if we had no " babes and sucklings " to love, to work for,
to play with, to reprove our grossness with their innocence,
our worldliness vrith their unworldliness. Would it be worth
having ? Would not aU the sweetness and spirituality of it
be gone ? Why, half our mirth, and more than half the
motives which ennoble and purify our toils, half our piety
and more than half our love come to us through children !
¦What sports and recreations should we have, to call us
away from our dradgery, but for them ? What kind thoughts,
what tenderness, what good resolves, what laughter, what
tears, do we not owe to them ! What lessons of heavenly wis
dom and goodness do we leam whUe teaching them ! How
often do we suppress an evU word or look lest we should
injure them ! How often do we think of God that we may
speak to them of Him 1 how often pray that we may teach

150 LITTLE CHILDREN GOD'S STRONGHOLD.
them to pray, or because, more even than for ourselves, we
desire God's blessing on them ! With what force do the
simplest words of supplication from their lips strike upon
our hearts ! With what a pure and sacred gladness are we
filled as we see them take delight in acts of kindness and
self sacrifice !
It is the little children who save the world — save it from its
worldliness, its selfishness, its hardness of heart. That God
sent them in their innocence and simplicity to make us pure
and simple — that He sends them generation after genera
tion : — is not that, after all, quite as weighty and hopeful a
fact as man's lordship over the beasts of the field, and the
fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea ? Was not David
right in regarding " babes and sucklings " as one of God's
greatest gifts to the race, a gift full of divine promise and
hope ? Are they not a " stronghold " for our thoughts, our
affections, our pious trast in God, when our hearts are fretted
with cares and hardened with regrets ? Are they not a
stronghold for the world as well as for us? Let us thus
regard fhem. Let us take them as God's stronghold, as
designed by Him to be our strength in hours of misgiving
and fear. And because He has given them to us, Ifet us
try to use them for the highest ends and to train them for
the highest ends, seeking to foster them in all -virtae and
holiiess. The better they axe, the more they will speak to
us of God and of his goodness. The more we leam of them
and the more we grow like them, the more we shall be able
to teach them, and to draw from them the strength and com
fort God designed them to give.

XII. I
*'| torn ^nih t^n toitJ^ Im %."*
Psalm xxxii. 8.
IT would not be easy to overrate the worth of this Psalm.
Its value has been recognized by spiritual men of all
ages, and by inspired men. St Paul quotes it more than
once -with an emphasis which shews at what high rate he
valued it, — using its verses to express his thoughts and
sanction them. Its value lies very much in the fact, that,
whUe it records David's personal experiences, and because it
records them with the utmost simplicity and frankness, it
expresses some of the cardkial and most common experiences
of all godly men. It reflects his spiritaal moods, reflects
them so clearly that we see his inmost heart, and seeing his,
recognize our own. For " as face answereth to face in the
glass, so heart of man to heart of man."
The stages of spiritual experience which it sets forth are
not peculiar to one person, but belong to aU who have
entered on the life of the spirit Nor are they pecuHar to
any period of spiritual development ; they belong to every
period. The consciousness of sin, and the penitent con
fession of sin, the sense of forgiveness, and a growing trast
in the forgiving love of the loviig Father ; — these are not
* A sermon preached at a Communion Service held on the last night
of a year.

152 "/ WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE."
Stages of spiritaal experience through which we pass, passing
through them and leaving them behind. They perpetually
repeat themselves. They are tabernacles which shift, we
shifting with them, but never removing far from the sacred
precincts. They are lines of our lot within which our
whole spiritual being and history move, and must move so
long as we " bear the image of the earthly," so long as we
" bear about this body of sin and death." The coming in
of the Gospel has not removed us beyond their limits, or
emancipated us from their control. In respect of these, we
are much where David was, ha-ring to " acknowledge sin,"
and to "confess transgression;" aspiring after the blessed
ness of the man " whose transgression is forgiven, and whose
sin." though, and because, he would not hide it, "is covered;'
rejoicing that the Di-vine " hiding-place " is still open, and
running into it to find ourselves, like the grateful Psalmist,
" compassed about -with songs of deliverance."
Occupying his position, we need his hope ; and we have
it. To us, as to him, the voice of the Heavenly Majesty
comes, saying, "I will instract and teach thee in the way thou
shalt go: / will guide thee with mine eye:" a most wel
come, an altogether invaluable, promise. We who have not
been able to walk -with even and steady foot, who have
tripped and stambled even when walking in the right way,
and who have so often wandered into crooked and deflected
ipaths, are to have, not only the teaching ^nd guidance of the
all-wise Father, but the guidance and teaching of his eye.
What that means, what of vigUance, protection, solicitous
and directing love, our own experience will help us to
understand. I. We have many organs, but none so expressive as the
eye ; many languages, but none so eloquent as tiiat of looks.
Who among us has not read in some well-loved eye im-

"I WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINF EYE." 153
r perious command, imploring solicitation, melting reproach,
benign approval ? And who has not felt the language of at
least that eye to possess a power beyond that of words, more
significant, more winning, more irresistible ? A look says
more, and goes farther, than a word ; and that, not simply
because the eye is more frank and truthful than the tongue,
but mainly because the delicate mystic utterances of the eye
can only be interpreted by affection. We guide strangers
by the directing finger, or the spoken word. We utter
commands to those who are servants, but not friends.
Even to these, we may employ the language of the eye.
They may see it dilate in astonishment, fix into command,
melt into pity, kindle into anger. But its more subtle
speech, — the glances which find no comment in word or
gesture, the minute contractions and dilations, the delicate
play of light and shade, the rising and falling of an inward
fire, which reveal the passing inward moods of the mind : it
takes love to interpret these. Those who are parents will
find no difficulty in apprehending what is meant by the
guidance of the eye. You sit vrith your chUdren round the
hearth. Friends and strangers enter your circle. Even
they can read some of your looks, more of them in pro
portion to their intimacy with the real man who sits inside
the courteous host. But there -will be many which they will
not see ; many which, seeing, they will not be at the pains to
study ; and many more which, -with all their pains, they will
interpret in some mistaken sense. Looks will pass from
you to wife or child, in which they . will read restraining
admonition, covert criticism, appeals for aid to sustain or
change the currents of conversation, passing disgust at the
vulgarity, or conceit, or prosing of the speaker of the
moment, or the quick effusion of warm approval at the
utterance of some generous high-toned sentiment, — looks
in short of subtle and infinite variety, which only the love

154 "I WILL GUIDE IHEE WITH MINE EYE."
that quickens sympathy, and the sympathy which brings
knowledge, can ¦ read aright Nay, so significant and ex
pressive is this language of the eye that, if you care to try
the experiment, you may even say one thing to your child
and look another; and he, reading the famUiar symbols,
interpreting them by the -witchery of love, discerning which
is the more imperative command, shall disobey your word
to obey your look, — the voluble expressive tongue proving
no match for the dumb yet more expressive eye.
¦When, therefore, our Heavenly Father promises to guide
us his erring chUdren vrith his eye, we are to understand
that we are children, no longer servants, no longer merely
friends, but children whom He dearly loves despite our
errors ; children whose love to Him, underlying all errors of
thought and action, He recognises, and -wiU enlarge : chil
dren who by virtae of our love are to be admitted to his
more familiar and household thoughts, who are to discern
and share the play of Divine emotions of which others see
not even the outward signs, or, seeing, do not apprehend
We are to understand that his eye, the eye that never
slumbers nor sleeps, wUl watch over us with more than
parental sohcitade, and kindle in our defence with fires of
more than parental love and courage. We are to understand
that his heart will be in his eye, so that if, from amid the
sorrowful environments and perplexities of our earthly lot,
we bend an upward look to Him, we shall find Him looking
down on us with a strengthening compassion, a guidmg wis
dom, a redeeming love. We are to understand that in pro
portion as we love Him, we shaU grow wise to mteipret the
guiding instractions of his eye, untU at last He wiU not need
to speak to us in words, much less coerce us -with penalties
of law, but only have to look the enlightening thought into
our mmds, the directing sanctifying influence into our hearts.
Of old time He spake to the people by Urim and Thum-

"1 WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE." 155
mim — the stones dn the high priest's breastplate blazing with
light or veiling their lustre, to indicate his wUl. Our Urim
and Thummim is his eye. It stUl rests on the heart — the
priestly heart — the heart sanctified by love and service, and
it StUl gives the oracular response. We have only to look
upward in simple, single-eyed and single-hearted faith, and
the loving glance meets us, shining in approval, or clouding
to warn us ; in either case " instracting and teaching us in
the way which we should go." The difficulty, if difficulty
there be, lies not in obtaining the response — God's eye is
always on us, and always beaming with the light of love ;
but in preparing our vrill and heart, in making them sensitive
to receive the photograph of that scene of future duty which
He would have us traverse, and seeing it, to traverse it The
Eye of Love is full of meanings ; it is only that our imper
fect love faUs to look for them, or faUs to interpret them.
The Heavenly Oracle is always open, open to all : it is only
the seeking worshipping heart that is wanting. No man ever
yet, whatever his perplexities, freed himself from the bias of
personal desire and the trammelling obliquities of social
judgments, and then looked up in simple childlike appeal,
without seeing the eye of God raying out guidance, and read
ing in the Divine glance, " This, this is the way, walk in it, >
and all shall be well -with thee." It is our happiness, it is
among the supreme privUeges of the Christian lot, that God
thus teaches us ; that his eye shines over us, a guiding star,
a beneficent and healing sun, observant of which, we, who
have to travel the dusty and confused roads of this mortal
life, may always learn whither He would have us go, and by
what way.
2. The difficulty of obtaining and benefiting by this gentle
Divine guidance lies, as I have said, with us, not with God ;
it springs from our wayward will, and weak capricious affec-

156 "/ WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE."
tions. Now the Psalmist suggests two reasons why we
should seek to have the difficulty removed, two reasons why
the guidance here promised us should suffice.
And, first, it should be sufficient for us as rational men.
No creature, save only man, is capable of this Divine eye-
service. His capacity indicates his duty, his privilege.
Because he can be guided by God's eye, he should be guided
by it. All other creatures need coercion and restraint
They must be coerced into the service of man, and restrained
after they are in his service. They cannot be led -with a
look, or held back by a glance. This ob-riously is the Psalm
ist's thought, when to the promise, " I wUl guide thee vrith
mine eye," he adds, " Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule,
which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held
in by bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee." The
mule and the horse, destitute of rational faculty and moral
sensibiUty, "having no understanding," cannot be guided by
purely spiritual influences, stUl less by the most soft and
subtle of these. But man, with a reason which may pene
trate all mysteries, and a moral sense which may be refined
till it yield to the gentlest impact and tremble beneath the
most exquisite and delicate touch, should bend and turn at
the mere glance of God, requiring none other restraint but a
look. It is shameful and a disgrace to him, if, with his high
and capable nature, he should need the rude handhng and
coarse control appropriate to the natare of beasts. They
must have bit and bridle — the bridle to guide and the bit to
hold them in ; but for rational sensitive man the restraint
and guidance of the eye should suffice — the pure eye sham
ing him from sin, the loving eye winning him to a holy obe
dience. 3. Then, too, not only as rational, but as redeemed men,
the guiding invitation of the eye should suffice to rale us.

"/ WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE." 157
This guidance is promised to t)avid, and through him to all
who are in the like benediction vrith himself It is promised
to him and to them, not simply as men, but as penitents, as
forgiven penitents, as penitents who have found refuge from
their fears, and aid against their natural infirmities, in God ;
as penitents who have broken through the perilous and dis
tressful silence of conscious guilt, and are now in the Hiding-
Place, compassed about vrith the songs of deliverance.
These are men in whom there is a true spiritual life ; in
whom, therefore, are the organs of spiritaal perception and
sensation. They have not only reason's far-seeing eye, but
the farther-seeing eye of faith. They have, besides the
natural susceptibilities of conscience, the -wider, more subtle,
more quickly and delicately apprehensive sympathies of love.
Their sins have been forgiven, their fears hushed into com
posure ; their dangers are lessening in the distance ; they are
in the Eternal Refuge ; they are clothed with the armour of
righteousness, and over it the shining robes of joy : and by
all the darknesses and perils they have escaped, by all the
immunities and liberties for which they have exchanged them,
they are bound to obey the lightest glance of the redeeming
God. 4, But why speak of obligation ? If the Lord and Go
vernor of men, in his infinite tenderness, lay aside bit and
bridle ; if in place of the coercions and restraints of law, He
seek to guide us by the admonitory and appealing glances of
his love : — shall not we be tractable and content ? shall we
not joy and rejoice in his grace? Tme, Yi^has claims upon
us. Our reason is his breath ; our faith his gift ; our love
the pale reflection of his o-wn. He made us, and made us
anew, forgiving our transgressions, heaHng our diseases,
redeeming our life from destmction, crowning us with his
loving-kindnesses, satisfying us with good things, renewing

158 "7 WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE."
in us the eagle strengths of an immortal youth. But shall
we enforce Him to produce his claims, when all He asks of
us is that we suffer Him to add yet another and a di-riner
benediction — to guide us "with his eye, instead of ruling us
vrith his rod— to instract us vrith a look, in place of holding
us in -with bit and bridle ? If there be any spark of reason in
us, any tenderness of love ; if our redemption has been not
in word only, but in deed and in power, we shall take this
guidance, not as an enforced claim, but as an undeserved
heart-melting act of grace ; we shall accept it, not as bending
to the majesty of law, but as joyfully welcoming a boon. It
will make us exceeding glad that our Father no longer en
graves his -wUl on tables of stone, against which we may be
broken, but looks it into our hearts, that, his vrill becoming
our vriU, our obedience may have aU the grace and freedom
of voluntary service.
5. Our opportanities of lo-ring' obedience are very great
The bit and bridle of Law are not imposed on us. The very
spirit and genius of the Gospel may be defined as " a guid
ing by the eye : '' our whole spiritaal life is raled and shaped
by love. Our one all-absorbing all-including duty is " look
ing unto Jesus,'' that we may find Him looking on us, that
we may catch, interpret, obey his glance. Yes, even in
those matters which are most outward and formal — as, for
instance, the order of public worship or of Christian feUow-
ship, — ^we are taught not by rigid laws, but by looks, by
hints, by subtle spiritaal impulses and delicate intimations
which come and go like the -riewless wind. The New
Testament contains no verbal law enjoining in set terms
the observance of a Sabbath, or the duty of adding our
selves to the outward communion of the saints. If you wait
for a stem indisputable enactment, you may wait for ever.
But if you will be guided by the Di-rine eye, there are looks

"I WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE." 159
and guidances enough. Gentle but most significant direc
tions -will look out upon you from the words and example
of Christ, from the words and examples of those who had
most of his spirit ; subtle mystic impulses -will come to you
as you read from the ever-living ever-quickening Spirit
who interprets the written Word to the heart : and these
glances, these hints and impulses, will exert on you a far
more persuasive and compelling influence tljan the letter
of the sternest law. You will not so much as think of being
bound ; in the gladness of conscious freedom, you will re
joice to keep the holy day, and to enter into the holy fel
lowship. 6. I do not think I ought to close without reminding you
that, if you will not be guided by God's eye. He .will hold
you in with bit and bridle. If, to use the expressive words of
a certain Commentator, "you will be as beasts before Him,
God will deal -with you as beasts : " the cold sharp bit vrill be
thrust between your teeth, and, haply, the lash not spared.
The "small cords " once sold in the Temple were woven by
the merciful Christ into a scourge with which He drave the
godless profaning merchants from the sacred precinct. And
your sins in the hand of Christ will become a scourge ; your
neglects of his grace and guidance will be so used by Him
as to chasten and correct you. Be not afraid when the day
of correction comes to you, as it comes to all. Neither de
spise the chastenings of the Lord, nor faint before them.
Wisely taken, they are the beginnings of all good. It is
better even for a horse to be tamed with bit and bridle, and
bent to useful work, than to live a useless self-indulgent life,
and at the last to rash off in wild stampede to unkno-wn
harms. And how much better is it for a man that he should
have aU needful corrections, and be won by them to a free
and glad obedience, than that he should be left, unchas-

i6o "/ WILL GUIDE THEE WITH MINE EYE."
tened, to travel on to the great darkness ? Let us welcome
even bridle and bit, if these wUl prepare us to enter into the
fruition of the promise, " I will guide thee -with mine eye."
7. This comfortable Divine assurance, in common vrith
all others, has a special force and sweetness at this season.
It is well that, as the Old Year closes, and we sit as in
the midnight darkness, we should hear the cheerful bells of
promise ring in the coming day, the New Year. It is weU
that as we strain our ear to catch the remoter sounds, we
should find the whole air clangorous with the merry peals in
whose rich haimony all notes of sorrow, all discords of heart
and life, are drowned. And if all promises are doubly wel
come when they come to us as omens and harbingers of good
in some new tract of tine on which we are entering, surely
this promise has a special comfort and assurance. Life is
so complex, its course so obscure and involved ; for us,
the straight upward path of duty is so steep and wearisome ;
it is crossed and recrossed at every turn by so many curving
crooked ways of error, which at least at the outset are green
and in-riting, that it is often hard for us to discern our path,,
or, discerning, to walk in it Any promise of guidance is
most welcome to the perplexed wayfarer on this road. Any
promise of guidance is then, of aU times, most welcome,
when the wayfarer is just passing another way-side stone
which marks one stage of the journey as accomplished, but
also points to a new untrodden track which lies before him.
Let us, tired storm-beaten wayfarers, as we enter on the
opening paths of this New Year, listen to the glad beUs of
promise, and take to ourselves all the comfort and hope of
the assurance, "/ will guide thee with mine eye ! "

XIIL

Proverbs, xvii. 22.
SOLOMON says "A merry heart doeth good like a
medicine." The proverb is complimentary to a profes
sion not much accustomed to compliments. Most of us,
when we are well, sneer a little at medical men, at the incom
pleteness of their science, the uncertainty and oppositions
of their practice, and are disposed to doubt whether their
medicine does much, or indeed any, good. But when we
fall iU, how welcome they are ! how we hang upon their lips !
— "¦Where be our jibes now?" — and if besides potion and
pill, leech and lancet, the doctor brings vrith him a cheerful
sanguine heart, how doubly welcome he is ! For indeed,
the doctor is a medicine too, and often a better medicine
than any he can prescribe. Merely to have talked over our
symptoms with him, to have put ourselves into his hands, to
have heard from the lips of one famihar with disease that
there is no great harm done yet : this often is half our cure.
Frequently the doctor has to prescribe very littie else but
himself; we take him instead of his physic, for five or ten
muiutes every day — ^his cheerful kindness acting both as
sedative and stimulant — and are sensibly better every time
he comes.
The doctor is often the best medicine, and does infinitely
It

1 62 CHEERFULNESS.
more good than his drags ; still, other mediciies are also
good if used with a good discretion. God has caused heal
ing herbs to grow, and iifused a medicinal virtue into waters
and minerals, making provision, in his fatherly goodness, for
our diseases before disease was known. And these remedies
for iUs the flesh is heir to, if applied with a judicious thrift,
are effectaal to recaU departing health, and to mcrease
strength to them that have no might, or Httie might But
¦ the best tonic, the best medicine, is a cheerfiil heart. For,
as the wise kmg elsewhere remuids us, " The spirit of a man
can sustain" whatever "infirmities" may weaken his body,
or diminish his fortune; but "an infirm spirit," a weak hope
less heart, is more than any man can bear.
Medicines are either preventive or curative; but prevention
is better than cure. And a cheerful heart is both a preven
tive and a cure ; but it is better to take it in time. The
wise economy which bids us by simple precautions avert
pronounced forms of disease, also bids us avert the hearier
depressions of sorrow by cultivating an equable and hopefiil
habit of mind.
Medicines, whether remedial or preventive, imply disease,
and our liabUity to it ; and, in Hke manner, to prescribe
cheerfulness is to imply that there are many causes of sad
ness and melancholy around us, and that we are likely to be
infected by them. And, indeed, it is wonderfiU that we so
seldom take the infection, or take it so lightly. There must
be a surprisingly elastic recuperative energy in our hearts to
hold them so stiffly up against the depressions of Fortune and
Misfortune. For the world is fuU of travail ; tongue cannot
utter it. External events go seldom to our mind. The
cares of business, the strain on invention and endurance, the
failure to produce what we conceive and aim at, the indolence
and dishonesty of servants, or the injustice and prejudice of
masters, the failure of correspondents and customers, the

CHEERFULNESS. 163
fluctaation of trade demands and trade fashions, the ebb
and flow of commercial currents, or worse, the seeming
caprice -with which at times they cut out new channels and
run in new directions, forsaking places or classes which they
once enriched : what an , incalculable amount of laborious
and depressing thought do even these few words represent ?
Or, if we take the home-life, how full that is of hea-vy and
sorrowful soHcitudes ! Husband and wife do not agree, the
twain have not become one ; or, if she set herself to him
" like perfect music unto noble words" and he to her like
noble words to perfect music, the harmony of this supreme
psalm of life is broken by the rude discordant hand of Death.
A thousand cares and tender trembling anxieties attend the
rearing and due education of chUdren ; a thousand more
gather round the task of placing and settling them in life :
nor are their cares less to whom God denies the gift of
children. If we do not have them, we fret and murmur be
cause we are denied them ; and if we have them, how seldom
do they quite answer to our hopes !
The farther we extend our -riew the more shadowed and
doleful is the prospect. If we look, beyond home and
business, only to the little section of the world with which we
are famihar, how many waters of bitterness we may find de-
fertilizing the soil and blighting all happy growths ! Think
of the ignorance and -rice shrouded in our courts and alleys
and back streets ; an ignorance so dense as not to compre
hend' the light which rarely shines upon it ; a -rice so com
plete as that, mistaking itself for virtae and conceiving of
evil as good, it rises into z. profession. Think of the widow
vainly straggHng for her chUdren's bread; of the chUdren
afflicted with forms of hereditary disease, or proclivities to
e-ril bom of their father's sins, with " defects of will and
taints of blood ; " of the poor w'omen overtasked, starved,
beaten, and sometimes murdered by drunken brates whom

1 64 CHEERFULNESS.

they love through all ; of the poor men toiling, footsore and
clemmed, from factory to factory and workshop to workshop,
to find the honest labour to which surely they have some
right, but which nevertheless evades their search ; of the
poor sufferers of either sex who vrith a sweet unfaltermg
patience endure through long years extremes of pain which
would drive us mad, and for whose relief no merciful Heaven
interposes. As we think of these scenes, and others which
these recall, even the most sanguine heart pauses, falters,
and sheds tears which all but quench the lights of faith and
hope. Nor do matters mend if we look within, if we re-riew the
course and progress of our spiritual life. In the inner, as in
the outer, world we come on the signs of failure, disappoint
ment, defeat. Though we have striven against evil for years,
we are not safe from it, or from any form of it ; though for
years we have followed after good — and that vrith such an
Example and such a Helper ! — we have no such secure hold
of it, or of any one of its gifts and graces, as to be quite sure
either that we have it, or that if we have it, we shaU never let
it go. To many, perhaps to most of us, it seems as though
we stood very much where we did when we first started in
our quest of life ; as though, vrith aU our labour, we had ac
quired no soHd and enduring gains. Old weaknesses prove too
strong for our new strength ; old wounds re-open, bleeding
into new languors, smarting into new pains ; our feet are still
caught in nets which we have a thousand times broken
through ; the accustomed snare is spread in our sight and
yet we are taken in it The heights of duty on which we
would fain stand are still as steep and difficult as ever, " the
shining table-lands" as far off; and we begin, if not to doubt
of the possibUity of goodness, yet to despair of ever becom
ing good.
In short, the whole air of both the worlds in which we

CHEERFULNESS. 165
live, the external and the internal, is tainted with an infection
whose touch has passed upon us; a disease is in the
atmosphere we daily breathe : we lieed a medicine which
shall either prevent us from succumbing to its malign influ
ence, or restore us if we have fallen sick, — a counteractive
to the poison we have inspired.
The trae medicine, the medicine that will do us good, is a
cheerful heart This sovereign disinfectant will keep the air
immediately about us sweet, and will also sweeten the air
about the beds of the neighbouring sick. If the heart be
settled in a thankful rest, it is strong for endeavour and
for endurance. Labours before which a despondent heart
faints are easy to a brave cheerfulness. Falls which break
the bones of the weak are a stimulus and a theme for
laughter to the strong. Cares which seem intolerable to the
outwom and depressed sit lightly on the refreshed and
buoyant spirit. The clouds which hang, black and threaten
ing, in the heaven of the brooding and dejected soul,
obscuring the very providence of God, tam their silver
lining on the trustful, and speak of a more perfect light at
hand. Even the sense of failure and shortcoming which
afflicts the fearful self-questioning heart, obstracting its pro
gress and causing the very lapses it fears, nerves the hopeful
to fresh efforts to make the crooked straight and the rough
places plain.
Nor, though at first it might seem otherwise, is any cura
tive so good for our sorrowful neighbour as that cheerfulness
which is our own best preventive and safeguard. To weep
with them that weep is indeed a duty, and, as assuring them
of our sympathy, ¦wiU be helpful to them ; but if we can only
weep, how shall we ever staunch their tears ? Pity is sweet,
and grateful to us, if it be the unassuming pity of those whom
we love ; but through the pity which shares our grief there
must run a growing strain of strengthening hopefulness, if we

1 66 CHEERFULNESS.
are to be comforted into patience, and to rise from patience
into the hope that maketh not ashamed. Those who can
only pity us, and are no less dejected by sympathy than we
by sorrow, add to our sorrow, and weigh us down when they
should lift us up : in place of, first, confining the waters of
affliction within due bounds, and, then, shedding on them the
bright lights of cheerful day, with tiieir tears they sweU the bitter
stream till it breaks aU bounds and plunges into a suUen
darkness. And hence, to those who toss on weary beds of
pain there is no medicine of a more sovereign quality than
the tender patient face of one who has over-mastered a grief
more profound and poignant than their o^wn, or the bright
natural cheerfulness of those who wUl not believe that any
cloud can quite put out the sun. The Comforter is almighty;
and every comforter must be strong enough to lift his
brother's burden as well as pitiful enough to grieve over the
shoulders it has galled.
But, it may be objected : — " This strong and stiengthen-
ing cheerfulness is after all very much a matter of nataral
temperament ; it does not lie ¦within the scope of the wiU:
some men are born vrith a merry heart, and, ¦without effort,
do good wherever they go ; while others are so organized
as to be the inevitable prey of despondency." Are you
advised of that ? No Christian can be, or at least should
be, at the mercy of the FataHst conclusion. The merciful
God, who is afflicted in all our afflictions, who has home
our infirmities and carried our sorrows, does not ask im-
possibUities of us : He asks us to give nothing to Him
which He does not, or wUl not, first give to us. And it is
He who enjoins cheerfulness, who bids us carry the medi-
cme of a merry heart through a world smitten with sonow-
ful infections. Past all doubt there is a diversity in our
natural organizations, and their resulting temperaments,
which makes it more difficult for some than for others to

CHEERFULNESS. 167 -
do good like a medicine : but what are our difficulties to
Him vrith whom all things are possible ? If He bids us do
that which it is hard for us to do, it is only because He in
tends to bestow on us the intenser energies of his grace ;
and He can tarn water, even bitter water, into the wine
that maketh the heart glad ! And He has bidden us be
of a good, a cheerful, heart. It is not simply that the
revelation of his truth, through the whole scale of its tones,
is set in the major key, occasional minors and discords
serving only to enhance the brightness of the prevailing
harmony ; it is not simply that we may infer the duty of
carrying a cheerful heart with us from the royal law of
charity : God has also given us express and repeated in
junctions to rejoice, to rejoice evermore, even in the day of
tribulation, — injunctions which, because given to all, are
no less binding on the man of melancholic temperament
than on those who are naturally gay.
Nay, more : In his kindly -wisdom, He has devoted one
whole book of Scriptare — the Bible being a literatare
rather than a book — to the task of enforcing a cheerful
enjoyment of his gifts and our labours ; although, with our
usual perversity, we have mistaken that of all books for the
most mournful and. saddening in the Sacred Canon. Mainly
because we think so much on the surfaces of things instead
of toward their centre, and are, therefore, more apt to
seize on the letter that kUleth than on the spirit which
giveth life, we have most of us regarded the book of Eccle
siastes simply as a manifold variation on the mournful
theme, " Vanity of vanities : aU is vanity ! " the vrise
Preacher's cheerful inspiriting music has saddened into a
dhge. Yet, as Ewald has long since shewn, it is impossible
to bring an understanding stadious heart to the book -with
out discovering that its trae and- raling intention is to
encourage men, perplexed by change and dejected by the

1 68 CHEERFULNESS.

dis-illusionizing processes of experience, to a patient endur
ance of ineritable disappointments, and a prompt hearty
enjoyment of the remaining and sufficient goods of Hfe.
The constant and recurring moral of the book is, that
" everything is beautiful in its season,'' and in its season
should be thankfuUy enjoyed, without too curious an in
quest into its probable genesis and duration ; that there is
nothing better, that it is the last result of ¦wisdom, for a
man to "enjoy all the good of his labour;" and that this
capacity of -wise enjoyment is God's best gift to man.
The cheerful heart that medicines our pain is, then, the
gift of God ; and because it is the gift of God, it is open
to us all, however delicate or satamine our nataral tempera
ment may be. And like aU other the gifts of God, we
come upon it while we are walking in the path of obedience.
To " fear God and keep his commandments is the whole
duty of man," even as to take the good of God's gifts and
his own labours is the best happiness of man ; and only by
doing the duty do we reach the happiness. If we would do
good like a medicine, we must become good by the
obediences of faith. Of faith : for by faith alone are we
set free to obey the commandments ; in faith alone have
we the power of obedience. To a vrise enjoyment of the
present it is indispensable both that the past should be
clear of guilt, and that the futare should be clear of anxious
doubt. We cannot climb the difiicult steeps of duty with
a hea-vy burden on our back ; nor shall we care to climb
them if the table-lands above, instead of shining in their
natural radiance, are dark with wrathful mists drawn from
the waters of misgiving. The burden must be unbound,
the mists dispersed, before duty -wiU grow attractive to us,
or our heart, like a released bird springing up into its
native heaven, break forth into singing. It is because the
burden has been unbound — borne for us by Him who

CHEERFULNESS. 169

died on the redeeming cross ; it is because the mists have
been dispersed, life and immortality shining vrith unclouded
radiance from the top of the mountain which we must
climb in order that we may see the face of God and be
satisfied -with his likeness : it is because God has made an
atoning sacrifice and set a great light of hope to rale our
day, that we can, every one of us, enjoy present good with
a merry heart. The past is clear from sin, if only we
believe on Christ ; and if we believe on Him, the future is
all bright with promise. There is nothing, save the weak
ness of our faith, to impede our obedience, or to jar the
music of our cheerfulness into jangling discords of discon
tent If, then, it be the highest -wisdom to secure the highest
good within our reach, it is our highest wisdom to keep our
hearts sweet and merry by vital faith in God, in the
redemption He has -wrought, in the providence which He
administers. The cares of business vrill not unduly tax the
strength of him who firmly believes that, while he is bound
to discharge the duties of his vocation with all diligence, he
is not answerable for the issue of his toils ; and that the
hand of Him who doeth all things well " shapes our ends "
for us, " rough hew them how we wiU;" The solicitudes of
home will not prey upon the heart which trasts a God who
is a Husband to the vridow and a Father to the fatherless ;
who guides the steps of all committed to his care with a
more than paternal wisdom, and comforts them in all their
sorrows as a mother comforts her ailing or frightened child.
The innumerable miseries and erils that are in the world, —
miseries so immitigable, evUs so profound, as almost to
break our hearts in our more weary and brooding moments,
-will not break our hearts if we traly believe in the fatherly
Providence which still evolves good out of things e-ril and
changes every winter into spring. Nor shaU we smk into a

170 CHEERFULNESS.
despairing shame as we review the progress of our personal
spiritaal life, marking its failures and shortcomings -with an
angry wonder at our persistent foUy, or -with an almost
hopeless sense of our inbred weakness, if only we hold fast
our faith in the redemption of God ; a redemption wrought
for the weak and foolish, a redemption which vrill know no
close till it lands us, body and soul, complete glorified men,
in the heaven in which He dwells. Let us put our trast in
Him, rene-wing our trast by frequent meditation and wor
ship, and in renevring our trast, we shall renew our youth of
spirit ; however incredible it may seem to our present halt
ing faith, we shall subdue our natural despondencies and
doubts and fears, and carry the medicine of a cheerful heart
through a world all infected and diseased -with sorrows bred
of sin, a medicine which, whUe preserving us in health, -wiU
also have healing for them that are sick.

XIV.
W^t "^axnl of ^MQt
Ecclesiastes vii. 14.
" Sperat infestis, metuit secundis.
Alteram sortem bene prseparatum
Pectus." Horace, Lib. II. Car. x.
OUR life is a strange tangle. With what rapid yet un
certain alternations we pass from mirth to grief ! Nay,
how marvellously afe good and e^ril, sorrow and gladness,
blended in almost every act we do and every accident that
befalls us ! Whoever may order our lives for us, it is very
certain that the ordering of them is not left in our hands. If
it were, our emotions would be more simple, our conditions
more stable and more constant; we should abide in prosperity,
our joy would be unmixed with grief As it is, we live in a
constant flux of change. We know not what a day may
bring forth. Almost all we know of to-morrow is that it wiU
w^be as to-day ; it may be more abundant, but its abundance
is just as Hkely to be burdensome and painful to us as it is to
be helpful and invigorating. To-day we may be clothed in
garments of heaviness, to-morrow we may exchange them for
the robes of mirth. To-day we try with trembling lips to
frame some words of comfort for those who moum an irrepar
able loss ; to-morrow our lips run over with laughter and utter
good vrishes for those who sit at the very climax of joy and

172 THE MORAL OF CHANGE.
hope. In a few hours, perhaps in one, we pass from a wedding
to a deathbed, from a birth to a funeral. We never contmue
in one stay ; we shift through a series of perpetaal changes,
to one thing constant never. Nay, even at the same
moment, the same circumstances breed contradictory emo
tions in us, and our hearts are wasted by conflicting currents
of passion. The gladness of prosperity is dashed by the
new weight of labour and responsibiHty it imposes on us ; or
by the fear that it ¦will soon pass and leave us more destitute
than before ; or by the fact that it has come too late, and
that those for whose sakes we most cared for it have gone
beyond our reach, and can no longer share it with us. The
sadness of adversity is relieved by the kindnesses of friends,
by the new knowledge it brings us of the worth or unworth
of those who have professed much good-will for us, by our
indignation against those who have injured us, or by the
novel sense of strength, strength to bear and to dare all
things, which it awakens vrithin us.
Now it is quite impossible that we, who are subject to so
many changes, so many accidents, so many surprises,
should not speculate and ask questions about the source
from which they all flow, and the meaning or purpose with
which they are fraught. And of course, when these questions
are distinctly raised, -we reply : " It is God who ordains all
our circumstances, and changes of circumstance ; and because
God is good, all things are working together for our good."
We say that ; but do we always quite mean and believe it ?
Not quite, nor always, I fear. For when the changes of life
are adverse to our wishes, when they injure our interests or
supposed interests, we find it very hard to believe that God
is good, and that He is doing us good. It may -with reason
be doubted whether any one of us is so vrise that he would
not at times, if he had the power, arrange things more to his
mind than God does. If when trade is slack we could

THE MORAL OF CHANGE. 173
secure a large and steady demand for our wares, would trade
be slack with us long ? If we could secure fine weather
when we want it, or think we do, should we not forbid the
rain to fall and the tempest to rave ? If we could prevent
the death of a husband, a -wife, a child, or if we could arrest
any change adverse to our affections or to our temporal
interests, should we not at least be tempted to pit our vrisdom
against the vrisdom of God, and to take our way rather than
his ? It would seem then, whatever we may say, and
however honestly we may mean it for the moment, that we
do not always quite believe God to be good and to be doing
us good ; we do not believe that all the changes of our Hfe
are raled by his large kind wisdom, so ruled as to promote
our tme interest and our true happiness.
The language we commonly use about the accidents of
life points to the same conclusion. A ship goes down at sea,
but a few of the crew get into a boat that rides out the storm,
or " some on boards and some on broken pieces of the
ship" they come safe to land; and we say, "What a
merciful pro-ridence ! " Yes ; but if there was a merciful
pro-ridence in the rescue of the few, was there no providence
in the loss of the many ? A husband sickens toward death ;
the doctors give him up ; his wife and children lose all hope :
but by some mysterious recuperative energy he suddenly
mends; he recovers, and their mouths are filled -with
laughter and praise. Again we say, " What a kiid provi
dence ! " Yes ; but in the very hour of his recovery a
hundred men, each as dear to their wives and children as
he to his, passed into the sUence and separation of death.
Was there no providence in their deaths; or was that
providence not kind ? A lad and lass who love each other
dearly have been kept apart by judicious or injudicious
friends ; at last they overcome all obstacles, and are married
with the frank consent of those who lately opposed their

174 THE MORAL OF CHANGE.
union. We triumph in the triumph of a true constant
affection, and say, " God has been very good to them ! "
He has been good to them; but there are hundreds of
unhappy lovers in the world for whom no marvel is wrought,
and who are kept apart to the very end. Is not God good
to these ? Are the miserable, the separated, the afflicted,
the bereaved, in addition to aU their other burdens and
griefs, to be told that God does not care for them, that no
providence, or no kind favouring pro-ridence, watches over
them and graciously orders their steps ? To say that would
be to say that God cares least for those who most need his
care ; that He is like base selfish men, and fiUs the rich with
good things, whUe the poor He sends empty away ! 'Who
could love and honour such a God as that ? Not even the
selfish rich man himself, for even he, if he is to have a God
at aU, must have a God a little better than himself
We may be very certain, then, that, as siirely as there is a
God, his providence extends to all the changes and accidents
of human life, adverse as well as prosperous, sorro-wful as weU
as joyful. And this conclusion of instinct and reason is
confirmed by the vrise Hebrew Preacher. He says : — " In
the day of prosperity be thou content; and in the day of
adversity remember that God hath made this as well as that,
in order that man should not be able to foresee that which is to
come." He affirms that "both this and that," both adversity
and prosperity, are " made " and sent by God ; that the
unhappy and afflicted stand -within the circle of his pro-ridence
no less than the fortunate and successful. Nay, more ; not
content with affirming that God conducts the whole vicissitade
of human life, the Preacher also aflSrms that this -ricissitade
is a "beautiful -ricissitude," that it has a most gracious
meaning and end.
This much-experienced Sage, who, m his quest of the
chief good, had tried all the extremes of fortune, argues that

THE MORAL OF CHANGE. 175
both prosperity and adversity have their peculiar dangers,
and leaves us to imply that it would not be good of God to
pemiit us to be too long exposed either to the one or to the
other, that it is good^ of Him to drive us hither and thither
before uncertain winds of change.
What, then, is the danger of prosperity ? It is not quite
the danger we might have supposed : it is discontent. That,
we might have thought, is the special danger of the poor and
troubled, not of those who prosper in their way. And yet
when we begin to stady the ways of men, we soon discover
that those who are well to do or rich are, as a rule, much
vexed -with discontent. As a rule, I believe, those who are
most fluent in complaint are not men who are doing a small
trade, but men who are doing a large trade ; not even those
who are losing money, but those who are making it You
shall hear more murmurs and frets from a fine lady lapped in
luxury in a single hour than from many a poor hard-working
woman in a whole day. You vrill often find that as a man
prospers in his trade or profession, and rises towards wealth,
his heart grows fuller and fuUer of care and vexation ; he talks
more gloomily of his position and prospects, and does less for
the service of God and man. Do we not all see and know
that, while loss and pain and care often train men in patience,
resignation, trast in God, content -with his vrill, those who
prosper and grow rich are in constant peril of losing their
love for quiet simple pleasures, for mental culture, for
spiritaal service ; in constant peril of sinking into so eager a
pursuit of greater wealth, or higher position, or wider influence,
as that they cannot be satisfied with such things as they have
or use them to noble purpose ? Even when they have so
much that they hardly know how to " bestow their goods,"
they StiU ask for more. Now, what is the very kindest
thing God can do for a man whose very prosperity breeds
discontent, care, distrast Surely it is to take his prosperity

176 THE MORAL OF CHANGE.
away from him, and so to give him at least a chance of
leaming what humble content is like. If he cannot be at
rest, if he cannot grow in knowledge, faith, joy, peace, whUe
he is "weU off," by aU means let him become "Ul off;" he
may then leam that a man's life does not consist in the
abundance of things which he possesseth ; that tme peace
does not He in ha-ring all things go to his mind, but in a
cheerful and unforced acceptance of the will of God. Many
a man is proud of his estate or business — of the economy,
order, and exact adjustment of part to part which mark its
management, who ought to be very much ashamed of the
neglected state of his conscience and heart. Many a woman
is proud of her diamonds who cares little for the ornament
of a meek and quiet spirit It is his conscience and heart,
not his estate or business, it is her spirit, not her diamonds,
which he and she -will carry into the eternal world -with
them ; and if God can only induce them to cultivate spuit
and conscience and heart, by taking their diamonds and
possessions away from them, is it not most merciful of Him
to take these away, and so quicken them unto Hfe eternal ?
¦What is the danger of adversity ? It is, as the Hebrew
Preacher suggests, despair. The man who is long steeped m
penury, or disappointment and defeated hope, is apt to for
get that the iUs of life are sent by God, that the Divine
Providence is over him no less than over the lucky, the suc
cessful, the opulent We instinctively regard prosperity and
good luck as signs of the Divine favour ; we instinctively take
pain and misfortune as signs of the Divine displeasure. We
think God is angry -with us if we do not get on, if we do not
carry out our schemes and reach our aims. Yet the best and
greatest of those bom of woman, the only Perfect Man, was
poor, despised, and sorrovriiil. He had not where to lay his
head tiU he pillowed it on the cross ; the world gave him no
home but a tomb. That of itself might teach us that good

THE MORAL OF CHANGE. 177
men do not always get on ; that God does not always give
those whom He loves best happiness and success.
This, however, is a lesson we find it hard to leam. If we
are left long in our poverty and trouble we grow " deject and
-wretched; " in our dejectionwe begin to despair of ourselves
and to distrast the mercy of God. No peril is more threaten
ing to our spiritual life than the bitter heartbreaking spasms
of self-despair and self-contempt, which at times torment the
man for whom the world seems to have no work, no place,
no use, the man in whose hand everything faUs. And,
therefore, in his great mercy God often relieves our dejection,
and recovers us from our misery. Commonly, indeed, we do
not pass in an instant from one extreme of human fortune to
the other; we are not beggars to-day and rich in lands and
goods to-morrow; we are not, like Job, stripped of all we
hold dear in a day, and in a day enriched with more than
we had lost The process is more gradual, better adapted
to our weakness, to which sudden and large changes are
always hazardous. The darkness of our sorrow grows bright
with a few faint and scattered rays of hope ; or the light of
our prosperity gradually darkens over with gathering clouds'
of loss and disappointment, with which the light cannot long
contend. In strange subtle ways we are elated and de
pressed ; small changes pass on our outward conditions
which produce large interior changes ; a Httie success or a
littie happiness excites a great hope, or a smaU disappoint
ment, a trifling loss, excites many regrets and fears, much
shame and care, heavy foreboding. And thus, at the touch
of wholly disproportionate causes, we swing from mood to
mood, from change to change — aU things bright at one mo
ment, all soon dimmed, our hearts being for ever tossed on
shifting currents of hope and fear.
What is the meaning of it aU ? What is God driving at ?
What is the purpose and end of this perpetaal vicissitude ?

178 THE MORAL OF CHANGE.
Why does He not leave us alone, that we may know a littie
rest before we go hence and are no more seen ?
The wise Hebrew Preacher answers this question also ;
though at first, I confess, his answer sounds very inadequate
and perplexing. All he has to say is, that God conducts
us through these adverse and prosperous changes " in order
that man should not be able to foresee that which is to come!'
If that be God's end, there can be no doubt that He attains
it. For, as I have said, the play of change across our life
is so swift and incessant, that almost the only thing we know
about to-morrow is that we cannot tell what it will bring
forth. If all God means is to make the futare dark to us,
if this be the moral of change, if this be the Divine purpose
and intention of it, then beyond aU question that purpose
is achieved ; for with respect to that which is to come we
are completely, hopelessly, in the dark. We know, indeed,
that changes vrill come, and must come; but we cannot
foresee when, or how, or to whom they will come. There is
not one of us who can penetrate the futare, and say, " This
is what will happen to me."
Nay, even if we could foresee that which is to come to us,
we could not say whether it would work us good or iU, so
blind are we, so helpless. If we were to acquire competence
or wealth, that might seem a good to us ; and yet it might
prove the worst of ills, by releasing us from those habits of
active labour on which the health of body and mind depends,
by inducing indolent self-indulgent habits, by -withdrawing
our thoughts from God, and our dependence on Him, and
the service we owe Him. Were we to lose a child to-day,
we might call that a loss and mourn over it as an irreparable
calamity ; and then, -within a week, God might caU us to
Himself, and there is our chUd waiting to welcome us home,
and our loss turns out to be great gain. Or a child is bom
to us, and we rejoice because we have got good ; but in a

THE MORAL OF CHANGE. 179
few years the child sickens and dies, or it turns out iU, or
we sicken and die, or we turn out ill, and all we have got is
new care, new sorrow. We walk on a path which may
break off abraptly at any step, even the next; beneath a sky
which may darken at any moment, even the next We can
neither calculate the issues of our most trivial action, nor
count on the stability of our most constant mood. We
cannot foresee how soon an entire change may sweep over
our whole prospect, nor what the character of that change
may be. We stand, bhnd, before a great darkness, through
which huge but dim forms of menace and of promise flit
confusedly, and are shaken by forebodings which may be
falsified by the event, or are radiant with hopes which are
only too likely to make us ashamed.
Is this all that God means by hiding the future from us ?
Does He only want that we should feel how blind and
helpless we are — ^blind to foresee, helpless to avert, the
changes which are approaching us ? No ; this is not aU. The
whole scope of the Hebrew Preacher proves that even he
meant to suggest more to us than this. He meant to teach
us that, because we are helpless and blind, we must put our
trust in the God who " makes this as well as that," who has
hidden the future from us that we may commit our way to
Him to whom the future is present. Our prosperity is
shattered or our adversity relieved, our joy sinks towards
sadness, or our sadness rises into joy, that, feeHng our own
inability to command our circumstances and emotions, we
may remember and confide in Him who " orders all things
as He please." This is the trae moral of change ; this is
what it teaches us, and was meant to teach us : to rest in the
Lord and wait patiently for Him ; to trast in God, and,
because we trast in Him, not to fret ourselves because of
him who prospereth in his way by bringing wicked devices
to pass.

i8o THE MORAL OF CHANGE.
Is this simple moral of such -rital importance to our
welfare, then, that it is worth while we should lie at the
mercy of so many accidents, and walk through life so blindly,
in order to leam it ? Ah, yes, it is — it is. For, first of all,
we are apt to think too much of mere outward good and ill,
to care too much about prosperous and adverse conditions.
If we could tell what was about to happen, if we could make
things happen to our mind, we should shrink from all pain
and loss ; we should surround ourselves -with comforts and
enjoyments ; we should dwell in an unbroken prosperity ;
no change, nor fear of change, would perplex our breasts.
And, meantime, all that is noblest and best in us, all the
high faculties which can only be developed under the
pressure of necessity, would be left impotent and untrained.
Our life would not be worth having could we order it to our
mind. " O life ! -without thy chequered scene
Of right and -wrong, of weal and woe.
Success and failure — could a ground
For magnanimity be found,
For faith, mid ruined hopes serene ?
Or whence could virtue flow ? "
And, again, whatever uncertainties may be hidden in the
futare, it also contains some certainties, some changes and
events which must shortly come to pass. It is very certain,
for instance, that we must die; and how are we to meet
death without fear if we do not trast in God, if we cannot
then commit our souls to his care who rales the world to
which we go no less than the world we leave behind us ?
While if we do trast in Him, if we can commit our souls
into the hands of a Creator whom we have tried and found
faithful, what harm can death do us, what terror can it have
for us ? If God be with us, and love us, and we love Him,
the death that takes us a Httie nearer to Him, and lets us

THE MOI^AL OF CHANGE. i8i
see his love more clearly, that can have no danger for us, no
terror. The Hfe in death and beyond it is also among the certain
ties of the future ; and how can we hope for a happy im
mortality unless we trust in God ? unless by a present trast
in Him we prepare and nerve ourselves for the untried con
ditions of the life to be ? All its conditions, unknown to
us, are familiar to Him ; and, if we suffer Him to order our
steps for us and follow Him with a cheerful goodwill. He
-will train us for the world and the life of which we know so
little, but He knows all.
Whether for this life, then, or for that which is to come, we
need, beyond all other needs, to put our trust in God. And
therefore it is good of God, and good for us, that we should
have prosperity and adversity strangely blended in our lot,
that He should send us "both this and that." As we cannot
teU what may happen, we are obliged, if we would know- any
rest or peace, to trast Him who can teU what vrill happen.
Simply because a filial trast in our Father in heaven is the
sole condition of happy peaceful life in all worlds, in eternity
as in time, it is most kind and gracious of Him to teach us
that truth, even though, in order to beat it into us. He has
to expose us to a constant vicissitude.
Does any man object : " But might we not have learned
this lesson and gained this good on easier terms ? " Let
him draw his answer from our common experience. Long
and painfully as God has been teaching us this lesson, have
we even yet leamed to trast Him fully? and if not, how
should we have learned it on easier terms ? In order that
He might disclose our weakness to us, and assure us of the
absolute necessity of an absolute confidence in his wisdom
and goodness, He has made our life a mere -ricissitade, a,
perpetual succession of happy and mournful changes ; He
has made all the conditions of our life so insecure that we

i82 THE MORAL OF CHANGE.
cannot foresee that which is to come a day, or an hour,
hence. Not a day passes,, not an hour, but that we are
reminded of the irresistible power of the forces amid which
we move, and of the ingcratable counsels of that WUl by
which they are animated. And if with all this sharp and
constant teaching we have not leamed to commit our way
unto God, there is not the slightest chance that we should
have leamed to rest in Him had the lesson been taught
less incessantly, less impressively.
The conclusion of the whole matter is simply this : God
has made us for Himself; made us, that is, to be like Him
self, to share his perfect blessedness and peace. By smUes
or frowns, by prosperity and adversity, He compels us to
look up to Him; to rise to the height of our nature; to
place our treasure and affections beyond the reach of change ;
to value most that which is worth most and la^s the longest ;
to find a deeper peace than we sought, and a more perfect
happiness. He wiU no more leave us alone than a -wise
father would leave chUdren alone who cared only for toys
and sports and sweetmeats. He will have us to our books,
and make men of us. If we are lazy and wilful, we may
get more of the rod than we shaU like to have ; but, willing
or unwUling, by rod or by smUe, He means to make men of
us, trae men, and good, and strong. Is not that the best
proof of his love for us ? Let us thank Him, then, for tiie
love which moves Him to correct and tram us for his serrice,
for his joy — now by the stripes of adversity, and again by
the gifts of prosperity ; let us set ourselves, as to the chief
task of life, to leam and practise a simple, constant, filial
trast in Him.

XV.
*» @h on % J^eH of iatglajt.
Isaiah xxi. i — lo.
THE conquest of Babylon by the Perso-Medic army ^i
Cyras is, thanks to Daniel, one of the most famihar
incidents of ancient history. The defence of that great city
against Jhe open and direct assault of his troops had been
so skilful that Cyras long despaired of success. As a last
resource, he ventured on a stratagem so critical, so hazardous,
as to prove that he at least did not fear " to put his fortune
to the touch, and vrin or lose it all."
Withdravring his forces from the vicinity of Babylon, he
retired to a distance along the banks of the Euphrates.
Here, selecting a suitable spot, he set his troops to cut
channels by which the main volume of its waters might be
diverted from their course. When the channels were cut
he waited for the arrival of a great feast in which, to pay
due honour to their gods, the inhabitants of the city were
wont to indulge in dranken revelry. The feast came, and
was kept with unusual splendour and extravagance. As
though to mark his contempt for the enemy, Belshazzar the
king abandoned himself to the spirit of the hour, and gave
a drinking banquet to a thousand of his lords. The whole
city, with steady loyalty, followed the example of the king,
and plunged into " pious orgies " in which riot and excess

1 84 ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
were blended with religious frenzy. The public danger was
forgotten. No sufficient precautions were taken against
surprise. The gates opening on the river were neither
closed nor guarded. A single sentinel on the alert might
have saved the city. Soldiers however are not famous for
their abstinence ; and the gua,rds deserted their posts and
revelled with the citizens unrebuked.
Meantime the Persians opened their sluices, and let off
the water till the river became fordable. They marched on
and on for mUes between the lofty massive walls which pro
tected the banks of the stream ; and in which, as the Greek
historian-* remarks, had they been detected, they would have
been caught "as in a trap " and destroyed man by man
vrithout any possibility of escape or defence. They reached
the open and unguarded gates which led up from the river
to the heart of the city. They rose like shadows in the
darkness from the stream — formed into column — advanced ;
and then commenced a slaughter grim and great. The
dranken reveUers could render no assistance. The king
was paralyzed with fear at the miraculous hand-writing which
sprang from the wall of his banqueting-room to announce
that he had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
The Persians burst into the palace, and slew him and his
lords in the midst of their orgy. They carried fire and sword
through the city. When the morning broke, the empire
had passed from the Babylonian to the Persian dynasty.
This, in brief outline, is the tragic story of the fall of
Babylon, a story with which we have been famUiar from
childhood. Familiar to us, it was also familiar to the
prophet Isaiah, although he lived a hundred and fifty years
before the city fell into the hands of the Medes and Persians.
In prophetic vision he foresaw the very event on which we
look back, although the Babylonian Empire was then in the
* Herodotus i. 191.

xSAIAHS ODE ON THE- FALL OF BABYLON. 185
very prime and fulness of its power. His foresight of this
great catastrophe was indeed so vivid and intense, and has
come down to us in forms so abrapt and grand, that, as we
study them and arrive at the conception that -was in his
mind, the old story becomes instinct -with new power and
impresses us with a new and profounder awe.
The -rision is recorded in the first ten verses of Chapter
xxi. of his Prophecy : but these verses are so crowded with
historical allusions, they breathe emotions so passionate,
thought and passion change so swiftly into new forms, that
probably very few of us have been at the pains to master
them. If we would master them, the very first thing we
have to do is to understand that Isaiah was a poet, and that
the "fine frenzy" of the poet was never more fully upon
him than when he penned this "burden" or recited this
" oracle." He 'is like one that dreams and speaks his
dream. There is none of the clear order of the historian
or the homiUst in this sublime poem, though ordinarily
Isaiah is singularly clear and lucid in his style. For the
moment he is in an ecstasy ; whether in the body or out ot
the body he cannot tell. He is caught up to a height from
which he beholds the future; the shadows of coming. events
crowd and pass before him. And, like St Paul in his trance,
Isaiah sees things which cannot be uttered, and things
which can only be hinted at in bardic symbols and measures.
So that, before we take his meaning, we have to translate his
poetry into prose, to expand his hints, to explain his allusions,
to interpret his symbols, to reduce his dramatic utterances
and impersonations within the limits of simple narrative.
The very title of his -rision, or of this poetic record of his
vision, is both a riddle and a poem. He calls it "The
Burden," or, to use a word which carries the Hebrew sense
more nearly to modern ears, "The Oracle of the Desert
of the Sea." "The Desert of the Sea" is the Prophet's

i86 ISAIAHS ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
name for Babylon ; and as Babylon was a large and most
fertUe inland plain, no name could at first seem more in
appropriate to it : it was not " a sea," or near the sea : it
was not " a desert," for of all lands it was the most proMc
of grain. That the name was nevertheless appropriate we
may infer from the fact that Herodotas,-* the Greek his
torian, speaks of this vast fertUe plain in similar terms. The
plain on which Babylon stood ran at the South into the
Arabian desert, and owed its amazing fertiHty to the in
numerable fountains and springs which rose up in it, and to
the great rivers which flowed through it Of these the
mighty Euphrates, fed by the mountain snows and rains
which poured into it through a thousand affluents, used
annually to overflow the whole land, transforming it into a
sea, until the great Ass)Trian despots cut their canals and
constructed the massive dams which held the river -within
its bounds. "Desert of the Sea," therefore, was probably
an ancient name, and was certainly no inappropriate name,
for the Babylonian plain. On the Prophet's lips, moreover,
the title is said to have had a moral, no less than a physical, '
significance. The crael and idolatrous Babylonians were as
" a desert" in which the national life and faith of race after
race perished and was lost As " the sea " pours forth its
waves to beat on every shore, so Babylon sent out a multi-
tade of armies to sweep over and destroy aU lands. It is to
set it forth in this malign and destractive aspect that the
Prophet gives it a name which blends the two things most
terrible to the ancient Oriental mind — the sea and the
desert. Both sea and desert were then held to be homes of
mystery and dread, fatal to man. And therefore Babylon,
the enemy, the rathless conqueror and destroyer of aU
nations — fatal,, dreadful, irresistible — might fitly be called
the Desert of the Sea. "' Herodotus i. 184.

ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON. 187
Of this fierce crael race Isaiah is about to speak. He is
to tell a vision he has had, a vision which sums up all the
oracular intimations concerning Babylon which he has
received from on high ; a -rision which, because it gave the
sum and substance of all he knew and foreknew of that
great -wicked city, he entitles, " The Burden," or " The
Oracle of the Desert of the Sea."
So much for the title of the poem. Now take its opening
lines — " I. Like as whirl-winds rash on in the South,
So it Cometh from the desert, from a terrible land. "
Mark the indefiniteness of the object in this sentence, and
what grandeur it gives to the verse. " It cometh from the
desert" It! What? T^a^ is precisely the question which
a man in a dream, in a trance, would not stop to ask. He
would be content simply to feel that something terrible was
sweeping across the scene and that it came from a terrible
land. He would not pause to ask what it was, or to de
mand that it should take definite shape. And in recording
his vision, Isaiah breathes a vague terror, such as he himself
had felt, into his words, and through his words into our
hearts. Before he tells us in plain terms that his vision was
very terrible to him, he leaves an impression of terror on
our minds. From the dreaded mysterious Desert, the very
home of terrors, there sweeps up a breath, an influence, a
vague undefined horror, as full of menace and affright as the
storms which rush up from the tropical regions of the South.
Layard, on the very site of Babylon, has described these
storms as they come rushing out of the South, filling the air
with sand, blotting out the lights of heaven, clouding mid
day with the darkness of night, poisoning men with their
fiery breath, and at times smiting down massive houses, or
even whole villages, to the ground. And as all Nature is

i88 ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
menaced, shaken, con-vulsed by these fiery tempests, these
- whirlwinds which carry havoc and death in their wings, so
Isaiah is shaken and con-vulsed by the storm of terror which
suddenly springs up in his souL
" 2. A grievous -vision is declared unto me :
The spoiler spoileth and the destroyer destroys.
' Go up, O Elam ; besiege, O Media :
I will put an end to all her sighing.' "
It is this that has shaken him — the grievous -rision and
the awful voice. As he looks more steadfastly through the
storm of terror and grows familiar vrith the scene, Babylon
shapes itself to him as a plunderer and a murderer, spoiling
and destroying on every hand ; while, above her, there
sounds the awful voice of the Divine Majesty summoning
her foes to go up against her. No traer image of the fierce
cruel race which the genius of Nebuchadnezzar raised to be
the raling race of the world could be given than that of " the
spoiler'' and " the destroyer." Dissolute and luxurious in
their habits, the Babylonians hid under their soft luxurious
exterior a fierceness, an insatiable lust of blood, such as has
marked many Eastern tribes — such, for instance, as we our
selves have often found in " the mild Hindoo." The Hebrew
prophets describe them as " a bitter and hasty," a " terrible
and dreadful" people, " fiercer than the evening wolves," a
people who " made the earth tremble and did shake king
doms ; " and all the historians of that time charge them with
a savage thirst for blood which often took the most bmtal
and ferocious forms. They conquered wellnigh all the
kingdoms of the then kno-wn world ; they piUaged every
country they conquered : and often went far to depopulate
the countries they piUaged. In Judea, for instance, the land
became a mere haunt of wUd beasts after the Babylonians
had subdued it ; and from Jerasalem they pillaged even the

ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON. 1S9
sacred vessels of the Temple. ¦What wonder, then, that in
-rision they appeared to Isaiah as " the spoiler spoUing and
the destroyer destroying?"
As, in his vision, he contemplates the fierce race in whose
steps trod rain and destraction, a great voice sounds through
the air, summoning the enemies of Babylon to go up against
it and besiege it It is the voice of Jehovah that cries, " Go
up, O Elam ; besiege, O Media." There would be no ob
scurity in this sublime challenge, this Di-rine command, to
Isaiah. For as Elam was a prophetic name of Persia, and
the historic name of a Mesopotamian province lately con
quered and added to the Persian Empire, he would under
stand that Jehovah was summoning the Medes and Persians
to destroy the vast populous city of Babylon. But wherefore
does Jehovah utter the command ? Is He only a mightier
despot that He should cry havoc and let slip the dogs of
war ? Does He delight in blood ? Has He any pleasure
even in the death of the -wicked ? No : it is because He is
the trae King and Father of men, because He hates death
and oppression and vnrong, that He issues the command.
He has heard. He has heard the sighing of the captives who
have lain so long at the caprice of the fierce crael Babylo
nians. They may have thought themselves forgotten, aban
doned of Heaven, amid the accumulating miseries of their
capti-rity ; but Heaven has not forgotten them, nor He that
sitteth in the heavens. He has counted their sighs —
sighing -with them, and has been afflicted in aU their afflic
tions. And now He comes out of his place to avenge
and deliver them, " to put an end to aU their sighiig," to
StUl their lamentations.
Isaiah beholds the impending vengeance; and though
he rejoices in it, it is nevertheless " a grievous -rision" to
him ; a vision so grievous that as it passes before him, he
cries:

I90 ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
" 3. My loins are filled -with pain ;
Pangs have taken hold of me
Like the pangs of a woman in travail
I writhe so that I cannot hear ;
I am bowed do^wn so that I cannot see :
"4. My heart throbs :
Horror hath bewildered me :
The darkness of night which I love
He hath turned for me into quaking."
A more graphic description of the nightmare horror inspued
by a terrible dream was surely never penned. The Prophet,
his nerves all ¦wrang and fevered by the exhausting labours
of his daily ministry, loves the dusk of evening, the cool of
the day, in which he may be stUl and meditate on God : it
brings him calm thoughts and peaceful repose. But not to
night, not to-night For to-night he falls into a trance ; his
spirit is carried forward through the years : it is the night of
doom to the Babylonian Empire, night of judgment, night of
terrors. And as he contemplates it, his spirit is racked and
con^vulsed with anguish and affright His heart throbs ; his
loins are cramped with pain, torn vrith throes ; he writhes so
that he cannot hear; he is so bent dovm and bowed to
gether with the fierce spasms which torment him that he can
see nothing clearly ; he is stanned and bewildered ¦with hor
ror. But why? AVhat is Babylon to him or he to Babylon,
that he should be thus " broken and distract" at the mere
foresight of her fall ?
We too commonly and hastily conclude that the great
Hebrew prophets and psalmists cared only for the Hebrews,
for their interests and their welfare. There are a thousand
proofs in the Old Testament Scriptures that they held nothiig
human to be alien to them, that they cared for the- whole
human family; that, in proportion as they were "in the
Spirit," their love for all men grew trae and deep. And
here is one of the proofs. Isaiah was a Jew — a Jewish

ISAIAHS ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON. 191
patriot ; and therefore he felt with and for the Jews — felt
first and most for them : but Isaiah was also a man, a man
of God ; and therefore he felt ¦with and for all the men whom
God had made. As he forecasts the terrors which are about
to faUupon the heathen world, he is terrified; their judgment
smites him with an intolerable anguish : were the doom
about to alight on his own people and on himself, he could
not be' more profoundly touched and moved. His fine
humanity, sensitive to all human woe, carries him for the
time beyond the range of merely personal or national feeling.
Among the captives whose sighs have entered into the heart
of the Almighty King are thousands of Isaiah's own race :
the Jews are in bondage to Babylon, a bondage most bitter
and degrading. They therefore will be delivered, their
bonds wUl be broken, their sighs will be changed to mirthful
songs, when Babylon, the mistress and despot of the world,
IS smitten do-vra. And yet the Hebrew Prophet, rejoicing
in the joy of his people, is con-vulsed -with anguish as he
anticipates the judgment which is to set them free. They
indeed vrill be redeemed ; but, ah, at what a cost ! How
many miserable souls will be destroyed 1 What blood will
be shed, what foul wrongs and shames -will be inflicted on
inyriads, before the vast populous empire can be overthrown \
Babylon must have filled in Isaiah's thoughts much the
place which Rome held in the mind of a cultivated Spaniard
or Carthaginian of the early Christian centaries. To him the
Medes and Persians, plunging dovni from their unknown mys
terious mountain fastnesses upon the wealthy Babylonian
plain, must have seemed much as the Goths and Vandals
seemed to the more civiHzed races of Europe when they came
pouring down the Alps to carry sword and fire through the
storied plains of Italy. The whole Christian world shuddered
and groaned when Rome fell ; and as her fall to the modem
so was the fall of Babylon to the ancient world. So great

192 ISAIAHS ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
and tragical a catastrophe might weU strike any thoughtful
mind with awe, and rack any humane heart with pain. To
Isaiah's excited and projected imagination, it shaped itself
as a day of judgment, as the end of the then world : and there
fore "his loins were filled with pain;" "his heart throbbed"
wUdly as though it would burst ; he was bewUdered with
horror and aft'right He would have been less, not more,
than man, could he have beheld so vast and a-wful a tragedy
without ha-ving his soul shaken to its profoundest depths.
How deeply he was moved is apparent from the whole
stractare of this poem, from its abrapt transitions, its weird
changes of person and subject It hurries on -with the
hurrying tarbulent spirit of the Prophet The intensity of
its tone never once relaxes. Its passion is at a white heat
throughout It crowds a separate drama, a separate tragedy,
into every few lines. Here is one of these tragedies : —
"5. They cover the table:
They set the watch :
They eat, they drink.
' Arise, O ye princes !
Anoint the shield ! ' "
Without a pause, -with no word of transition to indicate the
change of scene, the Prophet passes from a description of
his terror as the -rision passed before him, to a picture ot
Babylon on the night of its fall. At one moment standing
beside the Prophet as he writhes and groans in his trance, at
the next moment we find ourselves in the metropolis of the
world, in the palace of the great king. Belshazzar gives a
great feast to a thousand of his lords. In honour of the
gods they are to revel through the night, although the
Persian army stiU threatens the city. " They drank vrine
and praised the gods." The orgy* is at its height when a
fery hand springs from the wall to write, mystic words of
* Daniel v. 4.

ISAIAHS ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON. 193
doom. The interpretation of the writing fills the reveUers
vrith consternation; and whUe they stand amazed, the guards
rash in to announce that the Persians have entered the city
and are at the palace gates. This is the scene which Isaiah
describes in the curt graphic words of this verse, the tragedy
which he compresses into a few lines. " They cover the
table," give themselves to feasting. '"They set the watch,"
that they may revel on undisturbed, not dreaming that the
watch may prove as faithless to their duty as king and lords
to theirs. " They eat, they drink." And whUe they are
flushed vrith wine and mirth, the faithless guards break into
the banqueting-haU vrith the cry of battle : "Arise, O ye
princes ! Anoint the shield ! " caUing them to instant war.
This, then, is the first scene in Isaiah's vision ; the first
intimation he has of the meaning of that great horror which
has faUen upon him in his trance. The splendid palace of
Babylon, blazing with lights, breaks into the darkness of
the night; he beholds the reveUers plunged in mirth and
wine, and hears the cry of alarm raised by the affrighted
guards. As yet this is all he sees. The vision is not clear. He
would fain know more — fain know how the terrible doom
was to be accomplished While he is possessed by this
longing, there occurs to him one of the strangest of mental
phenomena — ^that dual action of the brain, that double
consciousness, of which most of us get an occasional
glimpse in our dreams. So to speak, he is no longer one
man, but two ; he is in two places, discharging two separate
functions, at the same moment; two distiict currents
of thought and feeling flow through him at the same
instant of time ; two voices within him question and reply :
he stands apart from and criticises himself, carrying on a
dialogue as between two different persons. Isaiah habitually
conceived of himself as set on a watch-tower, " the watch-
13

194 ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
tower of di-rinely illuminated reason," to look out over the
world and through the ages that he might discover and
teach the moral laws by which God governed the lives of
men, that he might warn them of the results of their actions
and of the things that would shortly come to pass. And
now in his dream, in his trance, he is both the watchman
who stands on his high tower reporting what he sees, and
the prophet who Hstens to the report As I have said, our
own dreams give us our best key to this singular and ab
normal frame of mind, and should help us to understand the
verses which follow :
"6. For thus said the Lord to me ;
Go, set a watchman :
'What he seeth, let him declare.
,7. And he saw an array of cavalry —
Horsemen in pairs.
An array of asses, an array of camels :
And he hstened as keenly as he could listen.
8. Then he cried out like a lion,
I stand alway upon the watch-tower, O Lord, by day ;
And on the watch I keep my stand all night.
9. And, behold, here cometh the array of men —
Horsemen in pairs ;
And it crieth aloud, saying,
' Babylon is fallen, is fallen !
And He hath dashed all the images of its gods to the ground !' "
The watchman is Isaiah himself; it is his own projected
form which stands day and night on the tower, gazing
steadfastiy out on the world, eager to detect any movement,
any omen of change. And yet it is also Isaiah himself who
receives the report of the watchman, and criticizes his
bearing — ^his keen listening, or (as the Hebrew, borrowmg
a figure from the Hstening horse, expresses it) his " erect
and stiffened ear," his impatience for a sign, his voice

ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON. 195
growling like that of a lion. In short, it is Isaiah alone
who is before us; although, with the weird double-con
sciousness peculiar to exalted mental states, he conceives of
himself as both speaking and Hstening, both watching and
receiving the watchman's report.
But let us translate his poetry into prose, and mark how
it bears on the theme of his Ode. The first spasms and
throes of horror are past; the Prophet is longing to see
more clearly into the darkness which enshrouds the city of
Babylon — the darkness which as yet has been broken only
by the blazing palace in which the king and his lords revel
and are dranken. ¦What horrors does the night veil ? What
shadowy forms are those which move to and fro in the
darkness around the royal palace and the walls of the city ?
What sounds are these which break faintly and confusedly
on the silence of the night ? That he may see and hear and
know, he is commanded to go up — to set a watchman on a ¦
tower, as he phrases it; to arouse himself, to exert his
utmost power, to strain every faculty, to scan the horizon
with his most searching glance, to listen as keenly as he can.
He obeys the command; and the dim forms take clearer
shape. He beholds a multitudinous array, warriors riding
on' horses, on asses, on camels. It is the Persian army
advancing through the darkness to the siege of Babylon.
And it is curious, it is most instractive, to note that, whUe
Isaiah is wrapt in the poetic fervours of a spuitaal ecstasy,
his observation is as keen and trae as that of the most
prosaic of men. No brief description of the Perso-Medic
army could weU have given more characteristic traits. The
Medes were renowned horsemen, as we leam from the
Greek historians, and rode to battle " in pairs." In the
Persian host camels and asses were a noted feature. Thus,
for instance, Herodotas tells us that Cyras gained his great
-rictory over the Lydian army of Croesus by means of the

196 ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
immense number of camels he took into the field ; * the
natural antipathy of the horse to the camel throvring the
Lydian cavahy into immediate confusion : and that his
successor, Darius, achieved his -rictory over the Scythians
by means of the number of asses he employed.! The
Persian army was " an array of cavalry — horsemen in pairs,
an array of asses, an array of camels." As the Prophet
watches, the long procession sweeps on and on, in silence,
through the gloom ; he can catch no sound, no cry of defeat,
no note of -rictory, although he listens as keenly as he can
listen ; till at last it vanishes in the darkness, even the strag
glers in the rear ha-ring passed by, and he can see no more.
StUl he stands on his tower, gazing and listening with
faculties strained to their utmost tension, waiting for some
decisive sign. The hours pass as hours do pass in dreams,
the moments lengthening out into days ; he is half conscious
that a dreadful tumultaous conflict is being waged in the
darkness ; that the long terrible array which passed before
him has entered the city whose king and lords he had seen
reveUing in their Hghted haUs; that they have taken the
alarm, and -with anointed shields have rashed from then
orgy to repel the invader. He waits, and listens, and looks,
racked with tortures of suspense, till he can bear his suspense
no longer. Losing all patience, he cries out like a lion, -with
the hoarse deep roar of a wounded and angry lion : " I
stand for ever upon the watch-tower, O Lord, by day ; and
upon my watch I keep my stand all the nights ! " Babylon
was taken in a single night ; and the Prophet in spirit is
li-ving through that night : but to his pertarbed and anxious
soul it seems that many days and nights have passed, and
that he is stiU left in suspense. He complains of God to
God, cries out against being left so long at his post without
receiving any decisive token Of the issue of the conflict,
* Herod, i. 80 t Ibid. iv. 129.

ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON. 197
vrithout seeing anything but that mysterious procession
which has now vanished from his sight.
He lifts up his voice like a lion ; but his cry dies away
on his lips, his remonstrance is checked, his impatience
rebuked. For, as he cries out, the scene once more clears ;
and lo, a cavalcade issues from the darkness ! It is the
very procession which he had seen before, though now shorn
of its numbers. The asses and camels are no longer in the
train ; only the fleet horses, the horsemen riding in pairs.
Their air is joyful and elate : they carry glad tidings of
-rictory. They are the chosen men of the Persian host
despatched to carry the news of Cjrras's success to the
various provinces of his empire. They clash their shields ;
they brandish their spears ; they cry — and the cry enters the
Prophef s heart : — " Babylon is fallen, is faUen ! And all the
images of its gods hath He dashed to the ground ! "
Stirriig music this — ^is it not ? The very echo of it makes
our pulse beat somewhat faster. The vast empire founded on
conquest — degraded by lust, by craelty, by injustice, by
daring impieties disguised under religious forms — has fallen
never to rise again. Its bestial gods' are hurled from their
dark thrones: "Bel boweth do-wn ;Nebo stoopeth ; Mero-
dach is broken in pieces.'' The Persians, with their pure faith
in Ormasd, " the Master of Purity," then iconoclastic hatred
against all -risible representations of the great Sphitual
Intelligence who rales aU worlds and aU men, have " dashed
the graven images" of Babylon to the earth ; in which from
that hour they began to rot.
This then is the issue of that mysterious conflict, the dim
apprehension of which shook the Prophet's soul vrith an
intolerable dread; this is the light that arose upon him
out of that great darkness : — The great empire of wrong
destroyed, her captives set free, their sighs exchanged for
raptarous songs.

igb ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
WeU might he conclude his Ode with the pathetic cpn-
solatory verse : —
"10. O thou my threshing and child of my threshing-floor !
That which I have heard from Jehovah-Sabaoth,
The God of Israel,
Have I declared unto you."
Whatever the interpretation we may put on these words,
they are instinct with a most tender grace. Most of the
Commentators — and no doubt they are right — take the first
sentence of the verse as a description of the people of Israel
They have been carried away captive into Babylon. It is
Jehovah who has carried them there as to a threshing-floor,
and laid them on it as a " child " is laid in the bosom. They
are there that they may feel the flail of his righteous indig
nation against their sins. But though He judges and afflicts
them. He has not forgotten to be gracious. He is simply separ
ating the corn from the chaff, beating out of them that which
is worthless or evil. They -will come out of the Babylonian
barn pure from their sins. And even whUe they groan under
the strokes of judgment and conceive of God as an Enemy
and an Avenger, his heart is set upon them ; they are stiU in
his love and pity. He speaks of them with sighs of tender
ness, sighs of which we catch the echo in tiie tender phrase,
" O thou My threshing and the child of My threshing-floor ! "
This is one interpretation of these gracious words ; and I
believe it to be as trae as it is pathetic and beautiful. But
surely they are also open to a larger interpretation, an
interpretation which suggests that God loves all men as weU
as the Jews, loves them however evU they are, and however
heavy the judgments with which He seeks to detach from
them the evils to which they cling. Jeremiah, a later
prophet than Isaiah, takes up his predecessor's figure of
speech, and gives it a new and larger turn. He too speaks

ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON. 199
of the fall, the destraction of Babylon. And in speaking
of it,* he describes Jehovah as coming down into its midst
"like a destroyuig wuid;" as sending "fanners that shall fan
her ;" as affirmmg, " The daughter of Babylon is like a
threshing-floor; it is time to thresh her; yet a little while
and the time of her harvest shall come." All these images,
like Isaiah's, are taken from the barn ; but, according to
Jeremiah, the wind and the fan are to be used on Babylon
itself : Jehovah cares for the heathen no less tha,n for the
Jews, so cares for them and loves them that He is at the
pains to thresh them, to separate the evil in them from
the good, that the evU may be consumed and the good
gathered into, his garner. And I cannot but think that, if
Isaiah foresaw the benefits Israel was to receive from the
winno-wing hand of Jehovah, he foresaw also the benefits
which would accrae to the heathen. He speaks, as the
verse itself informs us, in the name of Jehovah-Sabaoth,
" the God of Hosts," as well as in the name of " the God of
Israel." And "God of Hosts" is a title which indicates
that God is the Lord of all the hosts of heaven and of eartii,
the God of all races and kindreds and tribes ; that the Baby
lonians are under his rale no less than the Jews, that
heathen and Hebrew are alike to Him ; that with Him
is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither bond nor
free. Isaiah's very use of this Divine name indicates that,
like Jeremiah, he held the fall of Babylon to be a divine judg
ment on the Babylonians — a divine judgment, and therefore
a judgment of mercy, a judgment designed to separate the
good in them from the evil and to fit them for his heavenly
gamer. «
* Jeremiah Ii. i, 2, 33. The whole Chapter indeed should be read ;
it contains a wonderful and subhme description of the Fall of Babylon,
and shews how large a space that catastrophe occupied in the minds o
men. The fiftieth Chapter is on the same theme and should also be
read.

20O ISAIAH'S ODE ON THE FALL OF BABYLON.
And now what lesson are we to leam from this Ode ? It
should perhaps be lesson enough that we have found a
Scriptare before dark grow fuU of light. But if other lessons
be desired, let us take these two, and think them out and
apply them for ourselves, (i) If the Ode teaches anything,
it teaches that however sorry and reluctant God may be to
afflict the children of men. He wiU not spare a single sfroke
so long as they cling to the e-vUs which degrade and desfroy
them. (2) If it teaches anything, it teaches that his design
in judging and afflicting us is always most mercifiU, that He
has no pleasure in our sufferings ; that He simply intends
them to separate the evU in us from the good, to make us
perfect and to fit us for an eternal blessedness. If we love
evil in any form, if we habitually do that which is wrong, we
may hide our e-ril habit from men, but we cannot hide it
from God ; nor can we evade the searching judgments by
which He seeks to free us from our bonds. And when the
doom falls, when the di-vine judgment searches us through
and through, we are to remember that God is not so much
angry vrith ics as -with the e-ril that is in us : we are to
remember that He loves us, and, because He loves us, vrill
make us quit our evU : we are to remember that He can
only lift his judgments from us as we renounce omr sins.

XVL
"^t @xndt of ittmE|»
One crieth to me out of Seir,
" Watchman, how far is it in the night?
How far in the night ? "
Saith the Watchman :
" Morning cometh, and also night.
If ye vrill inquire, inquire :
Return ; come again." (Isaiah xxi. ii, 12.)
ABRUPT in form, enigmatical in meaning, this Divine
oracle has nevertheless a certain grandeur and sub
limity even for those to whom its sense is obscure. He
who has heard Mendelssohn's " Hymn of Praise " has at
least one proof of its power to excite the imagination and
rouse emotion. In that fine work of art, the tenor soloist
demands, in sharp ascending minors, "Watchman, -wiU the
night soon pass ? " and replies, " Though the morning
come, the night wiU come also." The demand is thrice
repeated in the same sequence of notes, but each time it is
ra|ised a whole tone in the scale, to denote the grovring
intensity and urgency of the inquirer ; thrice the answer is
given in the same sequence, but for the sake of added
emphasis, it also is raised a tone the second time ; while in
reply to ' the third repetition of the inquirer, the soprano
breaks in with the joyful proclamation, " The night is
departing," and the choras take up and sweU and prolong
the glad news. As we Hsten, we feel that the music,

THE ORACLE OF DUMAH.

splendid as it is in itself, owes no little of its sublimity to
the splendid dramatic force of the words, to which it is set
But impressive as the words are even before we appre
hend their meaning, and though the very obscurity in which
they are shrouded may contribute to their effect upon our
imagination, if they are to teach us any clear moral lesson,
we must strip them of their obscurity, and endea-s'our to
ascertain what they really mean. It is not easy to do
that ; but let us at least attempt to do it as well as we can.
The oracle is "the Oracle of Dumah." ^WTiat, then, is
" Dumah ? " " Dumah " is a prophetic name for Idumea,
and Idumea was the hiU-country inhabited by the descend
ants of Edom. As you travel south from Palestine, the
goodly land — its verdure beautiful with daisies, hyacinths,
and red anemones — gradually fades into a sandy and barren
strip of desert As you cross this broad strip of sand, there
rises before you a double range of hills, stretching on the
"West to the Mediterranean Sea, and on the East slopiig
down into the Arabian Desert The higher and further
range is composed of limestone rocks and do-wns ; the
lower and nearer range of red sandstone. This nearer
range forms one of the most striking and pictaresque scenes
in Syria. The hiUs run to about two thousand feet in
height The friable stone of which they consist is aU worn
and split into deep seams, abrapt chasms, precipitous
ra-rines; while the broad rock-ledges are covered with a
fertile soil, very prolific in grain and wild flowers. Travellers
vie with each other in describing the profuse and gorgeous
colours of these rocks, the beauty and fertUity of the soU
into which they crumble. You walk, they teU us, on sweet
rich grass sprinkled with flowers, or on broad level plat
forms sprouting -with com, amid rock-terraces whose sides
glow with deep crimson hues, streaked and suffused with
purple and indigo and orange. AU the epithets of wonder

THE ORACLE OF DUMAH. 203
and admiration have been expended on the rich colouring
of these red hills, the effect of which is no doubt enhanced
by the background of white limestone cliffs and pale yellow
do-wns which rises beyond and above them. Amid their
chasms and ravines lie the caves and deserted rock-temples
of Petra. The whole raiige has two names in Scripture,
both taken from its characteristic features. The more
ancient name. Mount Seir, or the Rugged Mount (Seir
means " ragged"), is taken from the deep seams, the irre'gular
ridges, the abrapt cliffs, which everywhere break up the
surface ; the more modern name, Edom or Idumea (Edom
and Idumea are only two forms of the same Hebrew word,
a word which means " red"), is taken from the prevaihng
colour of the rocks.
God "gave Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession."*
Esau, the " red hairy " man, had the red ragged mountain-
range for his home. The feud between Esau and Jacob
was perpetuated by their descendants. The Edomites were
" children of the sword," and their swords were always
tamed against Israel. Through all the vicissitudes of the
Hebrew monarchy they were its foes, though, as a rule,
conquered foes. And when Nebuchadnezzar came up
against Jerasalem to destroy it, the Edomites joined his
army, took an active part in the sack of the city and the
slaughter of its defenders, and sfrongly urged the Babylo
nians to "raze it, raze it even to the foundation thereof"!
So that, if the first part of Isaac's prophetic " blessiig " %
on Esau — "the elder shaU serve the younger" — ^was ful
fiUed in the long subjection of the Edomites to the kings of
Israel, the second part of it was also fulfilled — ¦" It shall
come to pass that, when thou shalt have the dominion, thou
shalt break his yoke from off thy neck." It was the
memory of this long strife, and of the crael haste of Edom
* Deut. ii. 5. -j- Psalm cxxxvii. 7 ; Obadiah x. 14. J Gen. xxvii. 40.

204 THE ORACLE OF DUMAH.
to destroy Israel, which led the later prophets to denounce
so many woes on the inhabitants of the Red Range.*
" Because," say they, " he did pursue his brother -with the
sword, and did cast off aU pity, and his anger did tear
perpetually, and he kept his wrath for ever;" therefore
"Edom shaU be a desolation; every one that goeth by
it shaU be astonished, and shall hiss at aU the plagues
thereof" Even this brief description of Mount Seir, and this
slight aUusion to the history of Edom, -wUl help us to
understand "the Oracle of Dumah." Isaiah stands in
spirit on his watch-tower at Jerasalem, looking round on
the adjacent lands, eager to catch any movement, any omen
of change, in order that he may discover by what laws
Jehovah governs the sons of men, and that he may warn
the faithful of the things that will shortly come to pass.
He has already seen — seen -with a terror that unmans him
— the great Persian host plunging into the darkness in
which the city of Babylon is concealed, and issuing from it
vrith the cry of -rictory.t And now, as he broods over that
night of -wrath and terrors, a voice — quick, urgent, impera
tive — accosts and arouses him. It comes from the South,
across the plains, from the first range of hUls beyond the
Border. He who cries to him, " cries out of Seir,'' out of
the red ragged mountains. Dean Stanley even thiiks that
he may have seen the very spot from which the cry issued.
In advance of the Red Range there stands a lofty isolated
rock vrith an excavated cave on its Judean front, intended
apparently for a sentinel ; and from this " cave of the
sentinel," he thinks it not improbable the Edomite watch
man cried across to the watchman of Jerasalem, or that at
least this is the scene suggested by Isaiah's poem.
• Amos 1. II, 12; Jer. xlix. 7-18; Obadiah r-2I.
+ Isaiah xxi. i-io. See Essay xv.

THE ORACLE OF DUMAH. 205
For of course we are not to take Isaiah's words literally.
No voice, no sound, could reach from Mount Seir to Mount
Zion. Nor are we to suppose that the Edomites despatched
an embassy to the Prophet at Jerasalem to inquire of him
concerning the futare fate of Edom. Isaiah was a poet,
and describes in a dramatic form the thoughts and ques
tions which rose in his soul as he looked through the ages
and the shadows of coming events passed before him. He
had already seen that the Babylonians would conquer
Jerasalem ; arid that they, in their turn, would be conquered
by the Persians. But when the Babylonians came against
Jerasalem, the Edomites would join them in despoiHng the
city and slaying its inhabitants. If the Babylonians were
to be judged for their sin against Israel and the God of
Israel, -were the Edomites, who had shared their sin,
to escape their judgment? Were the very bitterest and
most unrelenting foes of the holy people to go scot-free?
These were questions which would very natarally arise in
his mind — questions to which he would long to get an
answer, but to which, as we shall see, he could obtain no
very definite reply. Instead of telling us in so many words
that these thoughts and mquiries were suggested to him as
he considered the future, Isaiah uses the Hcense of the
poet and conveys his thoughts to us in dramatic and ima
ginative forms. He represents himself as standing on a
lofty tower, like a watchman who abides at his post day
and night As he watches, he hears a voice ; one cries to
hin out of Mount Seir, and asks how it wiU go with Edom
in times to be ; and as the Prophet, -with all his questioning,
has no clear light on the future fate of Edom, he returns an
obscure and enigmatical reply. So long as we remember
that the Prophet is giving poetical expression to his own
thoughts and anticipations, their poetical form wiU only
serve to make them more vi-rid and intense to our minds :

206 THE ORACLE OF DUMAH.
but if we once forget that, if we take his poetry as narrative,
and read it in a literal way, we shall forthwith be plunged
into absurdities and contradictions.
The Prophet then longs to know what the fate of Edom
is to be, what doom is to overtake it for its sins. And this
longing he expresses under the form of a sentinel stand
ing on the rock of Edom, and demanding of him, " Watch
man, how far is it in the night? Watchman, how far in
the night?"
It is worth while to point out — for the quality of poetry
depends on such minute touches of art — that the sentinel
not only repeats his question, but repeats it in an abbre
viated form. "Watchman, how far is it in the night?
Watchman, how far in the night?" expresses in EngUsh
the Hebrew abbre-riation, though in the Hebrew it is much
more telling.* And both the repetition of the question
and the more brief and winged form of the question on the
second utterance of it indicate the extreme urgency of the
inquiry, the extreme haste and impatience of the inquirer.
He speaks as men speak when they are driven by the
stress of a great danger, or an overmastering anxiety, when
every moment is precious and not a word must be wasted.
And of course what he wants to know is, not, as our
Authorised Version suggests, exactly what hour and minute
of the night it is, or what sort of night it promises to be,
but whether the night is nearly over, whether the darkness
-will soon be gone. His question is not, " Watchman, what
of the night ? " — i.e., what is the night Hke, or what hour of
the night is it, — but " ho7V far is it in the night ? " how far
has it gone ? how nearly is it over ? Just as a man, sick
and sleepless in his bed, or lost in a dangerous district, or
tossing on a wreck, longs for the morning, so the Edomite
* The Hebrew runs thus : " Shomer, mah-millc^-ldh ? Shomer,
maJi-mUlell"

THE ORACLE OF DUMAH. 207
inquirer longs to have done vrith darkness and to behold
the dawn.
The precise historic period to which this question points
it is impossible to determine ; and, ' indeed, its date is of
little moment From the days of Isaiah tiU the Mahome-
dans converted Mount Seir into a desolation, that is to say,
for fourteen hundred years, there was hardly a period in
their history which was not clouded -with darkness. The
Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Nabathseans,
the Greeks, the Jews under the Maccabees, the Romans,
the Crusaders, the Mahomedans have each conquered
them in tam, and reduced them to an abject bondage, the
last lea-ring then cities heaps of rains, their fertUe com-
lands a mere jungle of wild flowers and weeds. From the
time of Isaiah onward, these sons of the bold Esau, these
brave " children of the sword," have sat in thick darkness,
longing for a freedom never granted them, and stUl sighing,
" How far is it in the night ? how far in the night ? "
Had the Prophet no comfort to give them ? Not much ;
nor, I think, did he much care to comfort them. Neigh
bours and brothers, the Edomites andkthe Israelites hated
each other as only brothers and neighbours can hate. And
Isaiah was an Israelite. Probably he longed to see the
indignation of God descend and consume them, and had
no doubt that it would be a most righteous indignation.
.Elsewhere,* and not without a certain tone of exultation,
he describes that indignation as falling on the guUty race.
He represents Jehovah as calling them "the people of my
ban ; " he describes the sword of Jehovah as drinking their
blood tUl it is dranken as vrith wine. The mountain
streams are tamed into pitch, the dust of the crambHng
rock into brimstone ; both are fired, and the fire is not
quenched day nor night, but its smoke goes up for ever.
• Isaiah xxxiii. 5-17.

io8 THE ORACLE OF DUMAH.
The palaces of Edom break out into thorns, its temples
into nettles and thistles. ¦Where nobles and princes once
congregated, the raven dwells vrith the owl, the pelican
with the hedgehog, the marten -with the jackall ; its streets,
once fuU of -rivid and intense life, are haunted only by
wood-de-vUs and afreets, and aU the doleful company of the
popular superstitions. For a people who deserved a fate
so miserable, or whom Isaiah thought to deserve it, he has
little consolation. As yet, indeed, he does not clearly fore
see what forms the Divine judgment vriU take, or how long
it wiU endure ; all he can see is that, if beams of brightness
shine upon them, they vriU . soon be obscured. To the
Edomite inquiry, " How far in the night?" the Watchman
repHes only, "Morning cometh, and also night. If ye will
itiquire, inquire. Return : come again.'' The night of
Israel's darkness is to have a bright and enduring morn
ing. They are the people of the morning-land ; unbroken
eternal day awaits them. But it is not thus -with Edom.
They may have glimpses of morning, dawns rosy -with hope.
They may conquer, as they afterwards did, the southern
cities of Judea ; they* may, as they did, subdue the Amale
kites. They may, in the persons of the Herods, Princes
of Idumea, usurp the throne of David, and seem to have
aU things at their feet. But if the morning comes to them,
so also will the night. They wiU never be suffered to
" continue in one stay." They are to be the mere slaves
of change, and every change wiU further weaken and de
grade them. The brighter the morning of their hopes, the
briefer it wUl be, and the darker the night to which it wUl
lead ; until, at last, every gleam of hope wUl have faded
out of their heaven, and final utter darkness wUl " devour
them up."
Is there any sign of relentmg, any tone of gracious warn
ing in the closing words of the Oracle ? —

THE ORACLE OF DUMAH. 209
" If ye -will inquire, inquire.
Return : come again."
I do not know. I am not sure. I am fain to beheve
that as, in thought, the Prophet dismissed the Edomite
inquirer with a prediction so gloomy, he felt some rath,
some compunction. Was it inevitable that their night
should be without a morning ? was it certain even ? No ;
it was neither certain nor inevitable. The Prophet cannot
see beyond that night ; but there might, nevertheless, be
some promise of good beyond it, even for the Edomites.
And therefore they might return and repeat their inquiries.
Might? Nay, the Prophet hopes they -wiU. He repeats
his invitation, makes it more -warm and urgent "If ye
will inquire, ye may," grows into the supplicatory, "Return :
come again." In that " Return, come again," there may
even be, as some of the Commentators suppose there is,
" a significant though ambiguous hint," a hint that if the
Edomites "return" to God, if they "come again" to his
"Temple and Prophet, because they beHeve what they have
already heard ; if they forsake their idols,* " the gods of
the chUdren of Seir," their night may yet know a morning
of gladness, and the moming usher in a day of perpetual
peace. In simple prose, then, the Oracle of Dumah comes to
this : Isaiah, looking onward to the future, longs to know
what destiny awaits the Edomites. But the vision is not
clear. All he can see is that the gleams of light which
shine upon them -will soon be swaUowed up in darkness.
He cannot contemplate their doom without a pang, and
therefore he resolves to keep them in mind. By-and-by he
may see their future more clearly, and see it in brighter
• colours. Perhaps, also, he has a faint hope that by repent
ance they may avert the Divine judgment, and secure a
* 2 Chron. xxv. 14, 15, 20; and Josephus, Ant. xv. 17, § 9-
14

THE ORACLE OF DUMAH.

happier destiny. These are the facts and feelings he has
to express. But, instead of putting them into direct prosaic
words, he suffers his imagination to transfigure them and
gives them a dramatic form. He stands on his high tower,
survepng the nations which surround his native land.
Looking through the ages, he sees what is coming upon
them. A voice — urgent, piercing, passionate with suspense
— cries to him from the red range of Seir, " Watchman, is
the night well-nigh gone ? well-nigh gone ? " And he
replies, "A moming comes, but it wiU soon darken into
a night whose end I cannot see. I may yet see it Come
again. Ask again. And Jehovah, retarn also to Him,
that He may retam to you, and send you a fair happy day."
On the whole, I do not tiiink the poem loses its sublimity
by losing its mystery. It rather gains, now that we under
stand the impressive dialogue to have been carried on
between the Edomite sentinel on his red ragged rock and
the Prophet on his watch-tower at Jerusalem ; now we
understand that even the sentinel and the watchmen are
only dramatic figures through which we behold the longings
and anticipations, the alternate hopes and fears, of Isaiah's
soul. And, now, may we not take this impressive dialogue as
setting forth the Divine Providence, which bends over us
and our relation to it ? How often, stang by many miseries,
sick with many fears, our despondent hearts dwelling in
great darkness and the shadow of death, do we lift -wistfiil
eyes to heaven, to Him who neither slumbers nor sleeps,
and cry, " O Lord, how far is it in the night ? how far in
the night? Is the darkness almost gone and the day at
hand ? Or are we never to be redeemed from our weak
ness and our sorrow ? Are we always to be tiius, sinful and
ashamed of our sms, bemoaning the bad habits we loathe

THE ORACLE OF DUMAH

and yet cannot renounce,, foreboding a loss we are not
strong eriough to bear, fearing a death we are not pure
enough to meet? Is there no hope for us here or here
after ? Are we to sit in gross shadows till we pass into the
'land of obscurity, dark as the shadow of death, where
there is no order, and the very light is darkness ? ' "
How often do the heavens seem pitUess, and send no
answer to our impassioned appeal, but " Moming cometh,
and also night?" However sad we are, however racked
vrith suspense, though we have lost the friends we most
loved, or apprehend the iU we most fear, the sun shines on,
the birds sing, our friends eat and drink and are merry, we
have to do our work, to take our food, to talk and smUe,
to listen to condolences, to endure remonstrance, to go
through the whole daily round as though nothing had
happened to us. And when the day is over, the night
comes, and we have to lie do-wn on a couch which has no
rest for us, to drag through the slow weary hours, and long
for the moming. At such times, in such moods, our life
grows very dark to us. Nature seems to have no sympathy
with us ; friends and neighbours cannot even understand
what our grief is like ; our duties are burdensome to us,
pleasure even more burdensome than duty. The strain is
hea-rier than we can endure ; it seems impossible that we
should struggle on long under a burden so heavy. And
yet the future holds out no hope to us but death. A few
faint watery gleams of brightness, and then the great dark
ness wiU rash down upon us, the night that has no end.
This duU despairing mood can hardly be unknown to
any who have passed the bounds of youth. When shall we
leam tiiat through this very mood God is speaking to us,
bidding' us cease from our idols, purging us from an undue
love of whatever comes between our souls and Him ? He
brings this horror of great darkness over us that we, deaf

THE ORACLE OF DUMAH.

for the time to the world, may listen for his voice, and
listening, may hear Him say, " If ye vrill inquire, inquire.
Return : come again. My throne is always open to you.
You may come to Me as often as you -wiU, and the oftener
you come, the lighter and more peaceful wiU be your hearts.
Only return and come, renouncing all self-trast and trast in
man, and your darkest night shall tam to brightest day.''
Whether Isaiah had, or had not, any such gracious thoughts
for the Edomites, we cannot doubt that God our Father is
full of grace and tenderness for us, and for all men. There
is no night vrith Him, and there will be no night for us
when once we are at one with Him ; no night, but only
clear eternal day.

XVII.
%^t f arable 0! % ^cto.*
" Take heed what ye hear." — St. MiwrHEW.
" Take heed hmv ye hear." — St. Luke.
WHEN the Lord Jesus laid aside the glories and
splendours which He had with the Father before
the world was. He doffed the robes of a king to put on the
weeds of the husbandman, and went forth to endure heat
and frost, rain and wild weather, that He might sow the
- quickening seeds of trath through that great field, the world.
He was " the Sower who went forth to sow ; " and all who
now speak the Word do but scatter seed which they have
found in his 'gamer or caught from his bountiful hand. And
He, like them, often laboured in vain, and spent his strength
for nought Like them. He found that there was a curse
upon the ground, that thorns and thisties sprang up ii it,
that the rock lay very near the surface ; that the soil was
here sterile, and there yielded only a brief unfulfiUed
promise of fertility ; that in this great field, and beneath
this world's unkindly weather, no frait could be brought to
perfection save by much labour and after many disappoint
ments. As we read this parable, 'indeed, we might very
weU interpret it as a prophetic lamentation over his unpro
ductive toils and defeated hopes. We might say, "There
are but four kinds of soil in the field ; and, of the four, three
* St. Matthew xiii. 3—23. St. Mark iv. 3—20. St. Luke viii. 5—15.

214 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
are bad and only one good." Such an interpretation would
very well accord vrith the pensive, almost despairing, mood
which is common in the Church just now, and which slackens
the zeal of many. I would remind those who are disposed
to interpret the parable thus of what has been too much
overlooked ; viz., that if there are three kinds of unpro
ductive soil in the field, there are also three kinds of pro
ductive soil. If some of the seed falls by the side of the
path, other falls on ground good enough to yield thirty-fold;
if some faUs on rocky places, other falls on the better ground
which yields sixty-fold; if some falls among thorns, other
falls on that best ground which yields a hundred-fold. And
every year the Great Husbandman is improving his estate,
digging about it and manuring it, rooting out the weeds,
deepening the soil, ploughing up the trodden paths, and
bringing a larger breadth of land into yield. Every year
the gamer grows fuller, and there is more seed-corn ready
for the sower's hand. Every year there are more sowers
who go forth to sow on all soils and beside all waters. Do
not despair of the world, then, nor of your labours to mend
and benefit the world. " Sow thy seed in the morning, and
stay not thy hand in the evening, since thou knowest not
which shaU prosper, this or that, or whether both shaU
prove good : so shaU the light be sweet to thee, and it shall
be pleasant to thine eyes to behold the sun."
In the two sentences placed as mottoes to this Essay, we
have the moral which Christ Himself drew from that parable
of the Sower with which, of all his parables, we are probably
most familiar. And it is both curious and instractive to
note that his moral, which is the natural moral and was
drawn by a divine wisdom, nevertheless indicates, not the
force and beauty of the parable, but the weakness and in
sufficiency of the most perfect paraboHc forms of iistraction.
Different hearers of the Word are compared to different

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 215
kinds of soil. The comparison rans very clear, and is. fiiU
of charming and profound analogies. Yet, when our Lord
would sum up the moral lessons of the parable, the com
parison altogether faUs. We are to be careful as to what we
hear and how we hear it ; but how can the ground exercise
any care as to what seed it 'will receive, or as to the con
ditions into which it will receive it ? It must take whatever
seed the sower casts upon it ; and if the good seed should
be choked by thorns or fail for lack of soil, the ground is
not to blame for that ; its conditions depend not on its own
but on the husbandman's care. It is he who should have
burned off the thorns, or gathered out the stones, or added
the necessary soU ; it is he who is to blame if the -wrong seed
be sown, or the ground yield no fruit
Thus, from the very first parable uttered by our Lord, we
leam that we must not push his analogies and comparisons
too far; that natural phenomena and processes are inade
quate expressions of spiritual trath ; that we must bring an
understanding and discriminating heart even to the most
perfect words ever uttered. To give its full force to the
moral of this parable, we must supplement the parable. We
must remember that different hearers of the Word are not
only like divers soils, but also like divers husbandmen ; we
must remember that just as the husbandman by skUl and
assiduity may compel the ground to bring forth, despite the
curse which has fallen upon it, so we by a wise assiduity
may constrain these sterile hearts of ours to bring forth
frait unto God. We can determine what seed we will re
ceive into our hearts ; and, therefore, we are to see to it
that we receive only the good seed of the kingdom, not the
tares which the enemy wiU only be too happy to scatter on
them, if we permit him. We can determine the conditions
of the soil into which the seed is to faU ; and, therefore,
we "are to see to it that there .be a good soil for the good

2x6 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
seed, a soU rich enough and deep enough to bring it to
perfection. "Take heed what ye hear," i.e., Take good care that
you hear the very word of God : " Take heed how ye hear,''
i.e., Take good care that you hear not the word of God in
vain. The first injunction means, Be sure you get the
trath ; and the second. Be sure you obey the trath.
I. First, then, we are to " take heed what we hear ;" to be
sure that we get the very trath of God.
Now, as I need hardly say, we are being taught every
day, and all day long. The air is full of seeds, and taey
are for ever falling on the ground. Every word we hear,
every thought kindled in us by what we see our neighbour
do, or by the duties we discharge, or by the books we read,
has a moral complexion and effect ; it either strengthens us
in our love of that which is good and right, or weakens it
And vrith all these seeds floating in the air, we need to be
very careful where they fall ; very careful that, if they be
evil seeds, we do not suffer them to light on our field.
Very careful, because the seeds of the tare, or zizanium,
which is a bastard com, are often so Hke those of wheat,
and some forms of e-vU so nearly resemble certain forms of
good, that we can hardly distinguish the one from the other.
Very careful, for if we once suffer these evil seeds to take
root -within us, we shall have to pluck them up by-and-by,
and shall not only have wasted labour and strength upon
them, but shall also have to endure the pain of the wrench,
and to leave a bare barren spot which wUl not easUy grow
fertile again.
But though this anxious care over the daUy influences of
good and e-ril which -risit us may fairly be included in our
Saviour's warning, there can be littie doubt that its mam
aUusion is to our choice of direct and definite instraction in

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 217
spiritual things. He had been teaching a people who had
many teachers besides Hin — teachers who, for the most
part, made void the commandment of God with their vain
traditions. And, as yet, the people listened even to Him rather
because He fed them than because He taught them, because
He wrought miracles rather than because He revealed trath. .
The loaves and fishes were more agreeable to them than
parables and warnings, though I daresay they thought the
parables very pretty, and the warnings very solemn and
weighty. Hence He admonishes them that their first ques
tion about any rehgious teacher should be, " What does he
teach ? Is it the trath of God ? " not " ¦What shaU we get by
listening to him ? " or " Has he a charming style?" or "Does
he use novel and eccentric forms of speech ? "
And, indeed, one can hardly say that aU need for this
warning has gone by. There are stUl many who select
their rehgious teacher, not mainly because he expounds the
word of God and brings it home to the conscience and
heart ; many who, Hke the Athenians of old, are engrossed
by the desire " to hear some new thing ; " many who, like
the elder Hebrews, prefer a prophet who is to them "as a
very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can
play weU on an instrument." Oratorical purple and fine
linen is more to them than Trath in sinple weeds. Of
course, the demand has created a supply ; and all through
the land we may find men on the strain to be original, and
who think themselves very deep when they are only muddy ;
or men who affect the popular orator, and load their speech
with purple patches of rhetoric, or twist it into eccentricities
and vulgarities alluring to dull and -vulgar minds : in short,
men whose main ambition is to shine, and to succeed, rather
than to teach what trath God has given them to know.
There is stUl need, therefore, to repeat the warning,
" Take heed to what you hear." Make it your supreme aim

2l8 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. ¦
to get the truth. Let, " What does he sow ? " be your first
question; not, "How does he sow it?"
With horny hand and clownish gestare the husbandman
scatters the seed-corn upon the soU; would he reap a heavier
crop if you were to find him in kid gloves, and teach him to
wave his hand with flowing grace ? ~ A dandy husbandman
would be a startiing phenomenon in the agricultaral world,
though in the ecclesiastical world you may meet him often
enough, and too often.
Are we, then, to prefer an unstadied and slovenly pro
clamation of the trath ? By no means. If the preacher be
wise, he will search out and set in order words that shaU be
acceptable, yet words of trath and life; he will press into his
service all his powers of wit, humour, argument, tendemess ;
he -will seek to dip the arrows of con-riction in healing balms,
to bend the bow of hope above the waters of penitence, to
carry guiding and comfortable rays into the darkness of doubt
or grief, to rebuke successful -wrong with an indignation that
shall burn like a fire, and to lift up patient unsuccessful merit
from the dust by force of sympathy and love. He wiU con
secrate all his faculties and energies to the service of his
Master, to the endeavour to carry the very truth to the
hearts of his brethren. But the defence and exposition of
the truth will be his supreme aim. He will care more for
what he teaches than for how he teaches it
And we — ^we are to care more for the good seed than for
the manner in which it is sown. To acquire a complete
knowledge of the trath — this should be our chief aim and
desire, as, indeed, of all who profess and call themselves
Christians. "Am I growing into a further acquaintance
with the Divine Word ? do I understand it better, read it
with a more intelligent method, find old difficulties disappear
ing, and new beauties claiming my regard ? does it shed a
fuller light of guidance on the perplexities of my daily path.

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 219
and a fuller light of hope across the darkness of my sorrows ?
am I learning to drink in more of its spirit and to give out
more of its spirit ? " — this is the main question with all who
" take heed to what they hear."
II. We are to take heed "how we hear;" to be sure that
we obey the truth. ,
In the parable we have a description of three unproductive
soUs, of three kinds of hearers who are none the better for
what they hear, but rather the worse. I wiU try to bring
out the characteristics of these unprofitable hearers by-and-by.
For the present let us confine our thoughts to the Good
Hearer, the model hearer, described by our Lord, and endea
vour to form some conception of him.
Each of the Evangelists will help us ; for St Mattnew tells
us that " he that receiveth seed into the good ground is he
that heareth the word and understandeth it; " St. Mark, that
it is he " who heareth the word and receiveth it ; " and St
Luke, that it is he who, " having heard the word," " keepeth
it in an honest and good heart, and bringeth forth fruit with
patience." I . The first characteristic of the good hearer is that " he
understands the word." Now the Greek verb here rendered
" understand" is very significant It denotes a state of
mind in which, having compared one statement with another,
having weighed each apart, and then placed them side by
side, having viewed the trath as truth, and then in its relation
to himself, a man gives it the assent of his whole inteUigent
natare, and affirms that it is true and shall be trae for him ;
that he believes it, and vrill act upon it It includes the
assent of the reason, and the determination of the wUl, and
the S)Tnpathy of the heart So that the very first character
istic of the good hearer of the Divine Word is a very large
and comprehensive one. Before you can claim to be such

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

a hearer, you must have studied and considered the trath
as it is in Jesus, and have weighed any objections to it of
which you are cognizant, and found them wanting. You
must have felt its adaptation to the needs of such a creature
as you are, placed in such a world as this. You must have
decided that it is from God ; that it is for you. Not only
must your reason consent to it as trae, you must also deter
mine to act upon it, and find your sympathies and affections
engaged by it This done, you will have' the first qualifi
cation of the good hearer ; foir we hear nothing to the best
advantage whUe we doubt it, or dislike it, or do not mean to
let it influence our life. It is only when we listen in faith,
in love, and with a resolve to benefit by what we hear, that
we are in a condition to make the most of the Di^vine Word,
and to get the most from it.
2. St. Mark's word is equally significant with St Mat-
thevsr's, and carries the thought still farther ; for to " receive"
in Mark's sense of the word, is "to take into one's-
self" It implies that the good hearer is so charmed
and won by the manifold adaptations of the divine truth to
his needs, so touched and penetrated by it, that " vrith joy
he embraceth it," receives it into his inner life, and suffers
it to become part of his very being: he prepares, so to
speak, a habitation, a sanctuary for it in the inmost recesses
of his spirit, from which, like the Shekinah in the Temple,
it sheds a hallowing and enlightening influence through aU
the courts of his Soul. So that the model hearer not only
understands the Word, not only gives it the sanction of
his inteUigence and will and affection, but, in virtae of
this sanction, admits it into himself, suffers it to dwell in
him, to become part of him, to become the guiding and
shaping spirit of his life ; insomuch, that he acts out its
dictates as by instinct, has no need elaborately and dis-
trastfuUy to argue them out, but at once recognizes them

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

as both his law and his choice. And, indeed, we are
masters of no branch of leaming, nor even proficients in it,
nay, we cannot even study it to full advantage, untU its
axioms, its rudimentary principles, its governing spirit have
become in this sense one with us — until we recognize and
obey them as by instinct. The successful farmer or mer
chant, for instance, knows a great .deal more than he can
put into words, or than he has learned from words, and
often acts in a way for which he could give no adequate
reasons. The one knows as by instinct what crop will suit
a certain soil, or what cross wUl give him the best breed, or
what manure to put upon a certain field ; while the other
instinctively recognizes good and bad investments, will not
put his money into what looks a very promising speculation,
and will put it into what an outsider suspects. Neither the
one nor the other could always give you his reasons, nor
describe the process by which he arrived at his conclusions.
They act from an instinct which has grown up from long
experience and a half-unconscious observation of the facts
and laws by which they are affected. Yet would not these
men make the very best and most appreciative of hearers,
were a friend very vrise in agriculture or in the secrets ot
the money-market to speak ? Would not they see infinitely
farther into his meaning than one whose knowledge was
gathered only from books, and had never been assimUated
into his very being like a daily food ? WeU, it is thus with
the hearers of the Inspired Word, they are the good
hearers, the best hearers, who have had a daily experience
of its traths, who have received it into themselves, of whose
spiritaal nature it has become part, in whom it works with
an instinctive accuracy and constancy ; so that they do not
need to consider what is right and wrong, or to argue about
it, but know the right from the wrong with a certainty
beyond the reach of logic. Speak the Word of God to

THE PARABLE OF IHE SOWER.

them, and it is full of meaning^ — full of meanings deeper
and more subtle than others can see ; for they have long
since not only "understood," but "received," the Word
into their heart of hearts.
3. But St. Luke warns us that, in the good hearer, this
heart into which the Word is received vrill be "a good
and honest heart," i.e., a heart sincere and eamest. Happily
for us, the Word of God may dweU, amid many obstrac-
tions, even in a false and insincere heart. Jacob was not
honest, yet the Word of God dwelt in him till it made him
honest ; and, if we love the truth, the trath wUl come to
us and find us out, even though there be much in us that
is subtle and untrae. Only, it wiU come to make us trae ;
come, therefore, to inflict much pain upon us, to excite an
inward struggle and conflict in which we shall often suffer
wounds and defeat And, obviously, a man with an untrae
heart will not make a good hearer of the truth. It wUl
have so much to rebuke and overcome in him, that he wiU
not be suflttciently at leisure from himself to stady its
larger aspects ; it vrill meet vrith such frequent disobe
diences, that it vrill not be able to confer the insight and
breadth of view which spring from obedience. Jacob was,
for the most part, a very bad hearer of the Word, simply
because he was false and insincere. He heard, for in
stance, that God had selected him, although he was the
younger son, as heir to his father — heir, therefore, to " the
promise." He quite "understood" that word; he "re
ceived" it into his heart ; it became part of his very life —
gave shape to his actions, his ambitions, his desires. But,
because that word was received into a false dishonest heart,
it set him plotting how to cheat his brother Esau of his
birthright, and Isaac his father of his blessing. He was
not a good, but a bad, hearer of the Word. Through his
false handling of it, it moved him to lie and cheat, instead

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 223
of being his strongest motive to trath and godliness. And
we cannot be good hearers untU our hearts become "good,"
i.e., candid and sincere. If we would know the secrets of
trath, we must become unselfish and unprejudiced ; we
must care rather to be on the side of trath than to find the
trath on our side. A sincere earnestaess, uncomplicated
and undiverted by other aims, wiU commonly reach its
aim. The man who -with single undi-rided purpose vriUs to
become rich, wUl commonly grow rich ; the man who wUls
to succeed in Hfe, and is not to be diverted from his aim
by any indolent cravings after self-indulgence, or any
desire to become noble, or .cultured, or happy, will, as a
rule, succeed : and in like manner, the Christian who sets
his heart on becoming rich in heavenly wisdom and the
gifts of grace, and keeps that resolve in a heart not to be
diverted from its quest, vrill surely achieve his resolve.
The seeds of humihty, purity, charity, knowledge, and
understanding, falling in that pure soil — a soil cleansed
from all noxious weeds — vriU spring up into a wealthy
harvest 4. Having received the Word into an honest heart, he will
"keep" or " hold it fast." He vrill not let it go, whatever
allurements or oppositions he may meet. He vriU not suffer
the good seed to be withered by wayside influences, nor
choked by the incoming cares or pleasures of life, nor ob
stracted by rocky impenitences. He has found it hard to
get the trath ; and, having got it, he will not part with it
At times, it may be very difficult to hold it fast. A great
gain or an intense delight may be purchasable at a small
cost of conviction ; a terrible danger may be averted by
a lie; a friend may be made happy by a slight de-ria-
tion from the path of integrity: but he -wiU hold fast
his integrity and trath. He wiU be assured that the laws
which he has deduced from the Word, the laws by which

224 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
he commonly governs his life, must not be reconsidered,
much less repealed, while the storm of passionate desire
is beating upon him ; that then, most of all, he needs
to abide by them. This is the good hearer — the man who
is a doer of the Word, and a doer when doing is most difii
cult, not a hearer only. He never forgets what manner of
man he is, or should be ; but, looking with a constant gaze
into the perfect law of our liberty, walks by it, and is blessed
in his deed.
Alas ! what a rebuke is this good hearer to us, who, in our
inconstancy, have a thousand gracious impulses which we
never carry out ; who are always being moved to the dis
charge of duties which we seldom carry through ; who are
again and again moved to a solemn and entire dedication
of ourselves to Him who is the trath, and yet are as fitful
and unstable in our allegiance as though we had received no
inspiration from on high !
5. The good hearer who understands the Word, receives
it into a good and honest heart, and holds it fast, also
" brings forth frait with patience!' And of all his character
istics this, as it is the most valuable, so also is it the hardest
to attain. To wait is even harder than to labour and to
obey. Unless we are to have our harvest very soon, we
have hardly the heart to sow. The husbandman has long
patience — must have it — till he receives the early and the
latter rain. " The winter frost must meUow the seed lying
in the genial bosom of the earth ; the rains of spring must
swell it, and the suns of summer mature it" So vrith
us. To become a good hearer, i.e., a good doer of the
Word, is a task which requires long patience. We must
suffer many a kiUing frost, many a darkening shower,
many a burning sun, before the good seed cast into our
heart by that great Sower who daily goes forth to sow will
gladden us with its thirty, or sixty, or hundred-fold. But

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 225
the longer we wait, the more precious vrill be our harvest —
it is only ill weeds that spring up apace — and the sweeter
the taste of the bread which has been so hardly earned and
so long in coming. It is so in the world around us, in
which " always there is seed being sown silently and unseen,
and everywhere there come sweet flowers vrithout our foresight
or labour. We reap what we sow, but Nature has love over
and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom
and frait that spring from no planting of ours." And God
is not unjust that He should forget our labour of love. We
shall reap all that we have sown, and more than we sowed.
For "He that giveth seed to the husbandman, and bread to
the eater," vrill "multiply" the seed we have sown, and
give us to eat of the fruit of our toUs. Let us be patient,
therefore, let us be steadfast, and stablish our hearts before
Him. III. But we must now speak of the ¦Unprofitable Hearers
of the Word — of the unproductive soils : of which three
kinds are placed before us in the parable, their character
istics being, for the most part, in direct opposition to those
of the good ground — of the profitable hearer.
I. And of these three sorts of Unprofitable Hearers, the
first set before us is he to whom the Word is as seed sown by
the path-side. As the sower goes over the field, scattering the
seed broadcast, some of it falls on the path, or close by the
side of the path, which rans through the field — where the
glebe has not been broken up by. the plough, — and lies on
its hard surface until it is either trodden down and crashed
beneath the feet of passers-by, or is caught up by the birds
which flock round the sower's heels. And this pretty
familiar rural scene is thus translated into the spiritual region
by our Lord Himself: "When anyone heareth the Word,
and understandeth it not, then cometh the E-ril One and
IS

226 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
snatcheth away that which was sovm in his heart, lest he
should believe and be saved."
Now, observe, the soil of the path and under the path
may be as deep and rich as the best of the field ; its nataral
capacity for yielding frait may be very large ; but it has been
trodden hard by many passing feet, so that the seed cannot
penetrate the surface, but lies there an easy prey to the
birds ; only rotting, not gro-wing, even should it escape their
keen eyes and the braise of the passiig heel. The first
unprofitable hearer, therefore, is not a man of a cold, hard
natare, nor of a natare aU overran with growths of evU ;
he is simply negligent and uninterested. Unlike the good
hearer, he does not understand ^e Word — i.e., he does not
perceive its bearing on himself, its true worth and import
ance to him ; he does not weigh, and ponder, and approve
it, does not give it the assent of his whole intelligent nature,
does not conclude that it is trae and shall be trae for him.
He has no objection to listen to it, but it does not penetrate
to the depths of his being ; it excites no personal interest,
does not throw out slight root-filaments on every side to
twine round t^e thoughts and affections which lie closest to
his heart. He conceives of religion as a useful social safe
guard, a moral police, a decency of life, a bulwark of esta
blished institutions, a charming occupation for romantic
women, a welcome opiate for the suffering, a beneficial
restraint upoh the poor ; but not as the one supreme ques
tion and interest for men of all sorts and conditions. The
Church does not lay hold of him, though he attends its
services, as the market does, or the home. The Bible,
though he reads it — at least in public — does not touch him
so nearly as the newspaper or the ledger. Speak to him of
sin, and righteousness, and judgment to come, and he vrill
listen with courteous deference, will catch your phrases,
perhaps, and repeat them, and hold them to be his creed

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 227
but you do not touch and move him as when you tell
him that cotton is going up, or that coals are cheaper,
or that there is a short supply of wheat, or that there is a
growing demand for lace. The link between the Word and
his life is somehow lacking, although it is often only a single
link that seems wanting. The facts, truths, laws of the in
visible spiritual world have no vital interest or relation for
him ; their electric currents do not pass to him and stimu
late him to holy thought and action. And yet, you cannot
but feel that the man has good stuff in him, if only you
'could get at it ; that he is of a tender, devout, charitable
nature, although that which is spiritaal in him is undeveloped.
The good seed lies there on the hard poHshed surface, or
sHps off from it, or is carried off by the next swift-winged
troop of thoughts that flit by : nevertheless, you feel that if
the seed were once in the soil, it would bear much frait ; that
if he understood the Word, he would " believe and be saved."
How has he reached this condition ? what has made him
thus impervious to spiritual truth ? Alas ! he has made his
heart a highway, has suffered all thoughts and desires, evil
as well as good — the villain lust vrith its hea-vy tramp, and the
light airy fancy floating in gossamer robes —to pass to and
fro. For many a day his heart has lain open like a public
thoroughfare ; all base and low and sensual imaginations have
claimed their right of way over it, no less than those which
are pmre and noble, tiU the soil, good enough in itself, has
been trodden hard, and can no more take seed or bear frait
untU the keen grindiig ploughshare of affliction has been
driven through it Meantime, there are plenty of winged
thoughts about to snatch up any good seed which seems
disposed to lodge upon it, plenty of heavy feet to crush it
And these thoughts need not be evU thoughts, though
they be turned to an evil use, nor thoughts to which a
man shduld altogether refuse access. The peasant passing

228 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
through the field, whose hea-vy boot braises out the life of
the seed, may be on his way to Church or on an errand of
neighbourly duty and good wUl. The birds who pick it up
follow a nataral instinct, and are not thieves though they
steal the grain. The fault is not with them ; but in the
want of trae -rital relation between the soU and the seed. If
the seed were in the ground, where it should be, instead of
on it, no foot of peasant, no hungry bird, could harm it.
And if the Divine Word were in the hearer's heart, instead of
outside it, no external impression could injure or remove it
As it is, it lies at the mercy of any, even the most natural
and innocent, succeeding impression. He has. felt the
Word faU upon his heart, perchance, hard though it be ; he
has dimly and from afar apprehended that there is a life,
a reality, in the trath of God which he has not hitherto re
cognized ; and he has thought, as he listened, that it wiU be
well for him to look into the matter for himself some day :
but the sermon over, .the organ begins to play, and the
sweet innocent music, with its new impressions, carries off
part of the impression previously made. Then foUow neigh
bourly salutes and inquiries, a pleasant walk or chat, and
by dinner-time the good thought is gone. The man has
been so accustomed to let all kinds of impressions come
- and go, that he feels rather relieved when this has taken
flight ; and so he goes on and on, a perfectly honest amiable
fellow whom everybody likes, meaning no harm, yet doing
this great harm, — that he is not only hardening his o\\'n
spiritual nature and frittering away its strength, not only
preparing sharp pangs for himself in the future, but helping
to keep the world at a low unspiritual level of life, and
hanging, like a retarding clod, on the chariot-wheels of the
Divine King.
2. The second Unprofitable Hearer is he to whom the
Word is as seed sown in rocky places. In the great field in

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 229
which the sower goes forth bearing precious seed, there are
places in which the hard rock crops up closp to the surface ;
and the seed which falls into the shaUow soil that covers the
face of the rock, springs up very quickly in the heat which
the rock holds and radiates : but because there is littie mois
ture and no depth of earth, the sun scorches them, and they
wither as quickly as they grew. And, says the Lord Jesus,
translating these familiar nataral symbols into spiritual
traths, " He that receiveth the Word into rocky places is he
who heareth the Word, and at once vrith joy receiveth it, yet
he hath no root ii himself, but changeth with the changing
time : he believeth for a while, but in time of temptation,
he standeth aloof; and when tribulation or persecution
ariseth, immediately he is offended."
This second hearer, then, is a man of shaUow superficial
character, such as we often meet ; a man of no depth or
earnestaess, who does nothing thoroughly, brings nothing
to perfection.
And that, surely, is a very true touch which describes a
man of this superficial stamp as being of a hard and im
penetrable heart. Under the light thin surface of easily
stired dust there lies a bed of rock. For it is among those
who lead a life of light enjoyment, who are easily moved,
very sensitive to the impact of circumstance, and who fread a
round of trivial cares and ambitions and pleasures, that we
learn how heartless men can be. It is not among the poor,
or the busy, but among the elegant votaries of pleasure and
fashion, that men — ay, and women too — are trained to stifle
emotion, to discard enthusiasm and dread it, to harden
themselves into indifference, to cultivate that selfishness
which is the death of all love and all riobiHty.*
* For the thought, and for some of the expressions, of this paragraph,
I am indebted to Robertson's fine discourse on " The Parable of the
Sower." See " Robertson's Sermons," First Series.

230 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
And when a man of this s'ensitive yet shallow character
has the Word of God earnestly pressed upon him, it often
happens that, strack by its novelty and moved by the
passion of the moment, he forthwith " receives it with joy ; "
not only understands and assents to it, but, like the good
hearer, receives it into himself, suffers it to dwell and work in
him, and shape his course. For awhile his Hfe is changed ;
he is eager to give his susceptible and easily-moved heart
altogether to this new stimulating excitement Nothing in
his experience was ever comparable to it. He -wUl break
through all rales of decorum and good sense to shew his
esteem for it, and to make others esteem it as he does.
He lives in a rapture, and would have all men share it with
him. But, like aU other raptures, it is quickly past, its force is
soon spent The times change, and he changes with the
time. He has no root in himself, and cannot vrithstand
any influence that is brought to bear upon him. A strong
temptation comes, and he has no strong faith -with which to
meet it. The excitement is over, and now the rehgious life
looks as dreary to him as all previous forms of life had
looked. "Tribulation or persecution ariseth, and imme
diately he is offended." He does not "keep" the Word;
his nerveless hands cannot hold it fast. As quickly as he
received it, so quickly he lets it go. 'When it was novel,
full of untasted pleasurable excitements, fuU too of gracious
promises and hopes for the futare, he was charmed with it ;
now that it brings loss, self-denial, inward strife, pain, and
reproach — why should he cHng to it ? Just as the heat of
the sun, which makes the good deep soil fraitful, scorches
up the quick-springing seed that Hes upon the rock, so the
very tribulation which would have matared the growth of
the good hearer, working ii him experience and patience
and hope, destroys the faith of the insincere and heartless

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 231
hearer of the Word. ' " The blessing of the New Testa
ment" is his bane.* All he ever really cared for was him
self — ^his own excitements and gratifications ; and when the
Word demands that this base self of his should be laid on
the altar or stretched on the cross, he starts back in dismay,
he stands aloof, he is offended. He liked that the sun
should shine upon him, but that it should shine upon him
" with a burning heat," that it should become " a consuming
fire " to his selfishness and sin, this was more than he bar
gained for, more than he will brook. And so the good
seed, which sprang up so quickly and hopefully, perishes for
want of depth, for want of root.
Is not this description true to experience — to our expe
rience of other men, perhaps even of ourselves ? Do we
not perpetaally see men of a light facUe nature catch excite
ment from their excited neighbours, and strain themselves
into a sudden maturity of religious speech and service under
the heat and pressure of .a religious, or even irreligious,
re-rival, only to fall away as quickly as they came, to wither
as rapidly as they sprang, to pass under the influence of
some other excitement as utterly as they were moved by
this? Are not these phenomena so famUiar to us as to
have bred a habit of distrast? When we see men thus
carried out of and beyond themselves with sudden extreme
fervours, do we not sadly forebode that their fervour vrill soon
cool, or that in a while they will be just as ardent in^ their
pursuit of some new stimulant ? And is not our sad forebod
ing fulfilled in nine cases out of ten ? Let us learn, then,
to hold fast the Word, and. to have long patience, as weU as
to receive it with joy. If we are of a light, susceptible,
* " Prosperity is the Blessing of the Old Testament ; Adversity is
the Blessing of the New ; which carrieth the greater Benediction, and
the clearer Revelation of God's Favour." — Lord Bacon's Essays : Of
Adversitie.

232 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
easily-moved temperament, apt to rash into all extremes
and to pursue all immediate objects with disproportionate
eagerness, let us be on our guard. Let us seek the aid
and grace of God. Let us welcome the hammer which
breaks up the rock to deepen the soU; lest, despite our
ready zeal, we should prove castaways, and find the good
seed scorched and -withered up whUe yet in the stalk.
3. The third Unprofitable Hearer is he to whom the Word
is as seed sown among thorns. For besides the trodden
paths and rocky places covered with shaUow soU, there are
broad patches in the field which are thick -with the seeds of
thorns ; and these spring up -with the good seed, but faster
than the good seed, so that it is choked before it can yield
fruit. Now if we ask, who among aU the hearers of the
Word answers to this thom-infested soU? the Lord Jesus
replies, " He who received seed among the thorns is he
who, when he has heard the Word, goeth his way ; and the
cares of this world, and the deceitfiilness of riches, and
the pleasures of life, and the lust of other things enter
ing in, choke the Word, and he bringeth no fruit to
perfection." Observe : the ground in this case is good enough to grow
either wheat or thorns, but not good enough to grow both,
i.e., not good enough to bring both to perfection. Here,
on this soU, the seed has a better chance than before. It
gets into the soil, takes root, springs up, forms the ear even.
It is not trodden do-wn, nor snatched away; nor is it
scorched up for want of moisture and depth. Long after
the husbandman, going his rounds, has discovered that the
sides of the paths wUl be bare, and seen the withered stalks of
the seed sown on the rocky places, he hopes that this on the
thorny ground is domg fairly well, though there are too
many weeds among it But when it has well-nigh accom
plished its task, and its promise is at its best, it is choked

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 233
by quicker growths, and not suffered to mature the full corn
in the ear.
Now it is thus vrith some hearers of the Word. Like the
good hearer, they understand, they receive, they even hold
it fast They do not suffer the impression it has produced
to fade away instantly, like seed picked up by birds the very
moment it has fallen ; nor do they renounce it so soon as it
demands a stout resistance to temptation, or a patient en
durance of trial — like seed that, after it has sprang, withers
in the stalk. They keep the Word through all such trials
and tests as these. But, nevertheless, they suffer it to be
choked when it is on the point of bearing. Much as they
love it, they love much beside it; and these other loves
grow very quickly, and overtop that, and suck away the
juices which should nourish it ; insomuch that the life and
power of religion are graduaUy drawn out of them, and
though fruit is formed in them, they do not bring it to
perfection. ¦What, then, are the thorns which thus thwart and choke
the Word ? Some of them are, (i.) " The cares of this
world : '' those daily recurring anxieties about what we shall
eat, and what we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be
clothed, which distract our attention; so that, whUe, the
Word of God draws us one way, these petty cares and
worries draw us another way. Like Martha, we are so
cumbered with anxious thought about the service of the
house and the body, that we have no leisure to sit at the
Master's feet, and feel aggrieved that others should sit there,
instead of sharing our burden and lightening our cares.
Have we not all known many men and many women — for
this seems to be a special weakness in good women, and
springs very naturally from their special lot and duty — the
promise of whose early faith has been in much belied by
excessive cares of this kind ; who have suffered these thorns

234 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

to grow so high, that the good growths of faith have been
hardly -risible in them, and have ran great danger of being
choked ?
(2.) Other of these thorns spring from " the deceitfulness
of riches " — from the peculiar and subtle craft -with which
they beguile us from the simplicity that is in Christ And
though, like the cares of this world, riches are not in them
selves an evil, yet all moralists, all careful observers of
human life, have admitted that wealth has a special trick of
graduaUy withdrawiig men from the love and service of
the truth. As a rale, rich men are content with the world
as it is — naturally ; for, as they think, the world has dealt
very kindly by them, and therefore they see no great need
for bettering it. And then, if they hoard their money, it
speedily becomes a rival -with Christ in their affections;
while, if they spend it, they multiply the luxuries and en
joyments which relax their moral fibre, and dispose them to
an easy toleration of much that is mean and sensual in them
selves and in their neighbours. If they seek to rise in the
world, to make themselves a great place and name, they
must give themselves to the endeavour -with a devotion
which is always in danger of becoming excessive ; whUe,
if they give themselves to philanthropy and the Church,
they are caressed and flattered by the Church — ah, shame
to the Church ! — and the world ; the moral standards are a
little lowered for their convenience — ^for who can judge
a munificent benefactor hardly? — tiU at last they come
to think of themselves more highly than they ought to
think, and value the Mammon which blesses them with so
many exceUent good gifts as highly as that other Master
whose service they combine with his. In short, wealth has
many vriles ; it is full of all deceitfulness ; and no man is
worthy of profounder honour than the rich man who keeps
himself unspotted, whether bv world or chturch. The deceit-

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 235
fulness of riches is as ugly and poisonous a thorn as any
which seek to overtop and choke the good seed.
(3.) " The pleasures of life, and the lusts of other things,"
are more common weeds, but hardly less fatal. They rain
thousands where the deceitfulness of riches rains one. Who
that has gone through life with open eyes has not again and
again seen the young man, who, while still young, gave him
self ardently to the service of religion, beguiled from his
simplicity by the lures of lust and pleasure ? He does not
suddenly and completely fall away, but first this pleasure
solicits him, and then that, and among them they choke his
early devotion. He must educate himself; he must be as
other men are, and do as they do ; he wants to excel in a
game of skill, or to make a good volunteer ; he must win
yonder girl for his -wife ; he must pro-ride for his children ;
he must vnrite a book, or take out a patent, or extend his
business : and all these aims and desires, innocent apart and
in themselves, when combined and excessively pursued are
full of peril. There is no one of them, perhaps, which, if
the issue were distinctly raised, he would not sacrifice for
Christ's sake ; but among so many -rigorous and quick-
springing thorns, the good seed has but a poor chance, and
seldom brings its frait to perfection.
Alas ! of how many souls might this sad story be told !
How many a fair bright promise has thus been nipped in
the bud ! How many a man whom Jesus might have loved,
and has loved, has thus made shipvnreck of the faith ! Let
us see to it, then, that we come not into their number. Let
us see to it that these deadly thorns do not make us unfrait-
ful hearers of the Word of trath and grace.
IV. But our study of this famihar parable will not be com
plete unless we add a few words on ihe True Function of
Parables.

236 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
(i.) As the Lord Jesus sat in the boat addressing the
multitude on the adjacent shore, pouring forth parable on
parable, his disciples were surprised and perplexed. If in
speaking to them, wheh they were alone -with Him, He had
disclosed " the mysteries of the kingdom " under the thin
veil of parable and allegory, it would seem that He had not
heretofore adopted the parabolic method in his discourses
to the people. There is a tone of affront, perhaps, as well
as of surprise, in their question, ""Why speakest Thou unto
them in parables?" the tone of men who felt that "the
mysteries " were sacred to the initiated, and should not bri
exposed to the popular gaze.
Our Lord's reply to their question, at least as reported by
two of the Evangelists, has long been recognized as one of
the most painful and difficult passages in the whole range of
New Testament Scriptare. St. Mark * reports His answer
thus : " And He said unto them. To you is given the mys
tery of the kingdom of God; but to them that are without all
things are done in parables, that seeing, they may see and not
perceive, and hearing, they may hear and not understand, lest
at any time they should turn and be forgiven!' St Luke t
reports his answer in briefer yet almost identical terms :
"And He said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries
of the kingdom of God, but to the rest va. parables, that seeing,
they may not see, and hearing, they may not understand."
Now if we take these words as they stand, and read them
in a plain honest way, they confirm that distinction between
the initiated and the uninitiated which was probably in the
disciples' mind; they admit that the "secrets" or "mysteries"
of the kingdom of heaven were to be veiled from the world
at large ; they teach that in speaking to the multitude, to
men in general as distinguished from his disciples, the Lord
Jesus selected the parabolic form of instraction in order to
* St. Mark iv. ii, 12. f St. Luke -riii. 10.

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 237
hide the trath from them, instead of to reveal it, in order
that they might not perceive and understand his meaning, in
order that they might not tam from their sins and be for
given. That is to say. He deliberately chose a method of in
struction which did not instruct, ' and came, not to save men,
but to condemn them.
Calvin affirms that that was our Lord's meaning, that He
wished and " intended that his doctrine should be beneficial
only to a few!' But let who wiU affirm it to have been
his meaning, can we, dare we believe it ? And yet how
are we to escape the unwelcome impossible conclusion?
The Greek gi-v'es us no help; there is no escape in that
direction. In the Original Text, quite as strongly as in our
Version of it, St Luke and St Mark assert that our Lord
spake in parables, in order that the people might not per
ceive and understand the mysteries of the kingdom, in
order that they might not be forgiven and tam unto God !
So that we are in a crael dilemma. We must either admit
that two of the Evangelists did not fully and perfectly ex
press our Lord's thought ; or we must admit that our Lord
purposely hid the traths He came to teach from the vast
majority of men, and set Himself to hinder them from
accepting the grace and salvation of God.
Now, whatever even St Mark and St. Luke may say, can
we possibly make this latter admission ? Impossible ! All
that is purest and best in us, all that we know of Christ
and all that we love in Him, conspires with our common
sense and our common humanity to protest against it We
say : " Nothing could be more absurd and suicidal in any
teacher than to adopt a method which did not teach, to
utter his thoughts in forms which hid, instead of disclosing,
his meaning ; and we cannot believe that the Great Teacher
adopted a course so monstrous and unnataral." We say
again : " Nothing can be more foreign and opposed to the

238 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
very Spirit of Christ than that He should deliberately speak
to men so as to mislead them and bind them down to
their sins. He came, not to veU, but to declare, the Father;
not to hide, but to unfold, the trath ; not to blind men, but
to open their eyes ; not to close the kingdom of heaven
against them, but to throw it open to them and to draw
them into it ; not to condemn, but to redeem, them ; and
nothing shall ever make us believe that He set forth the
trath in forms which men might see yet not perceive, in
words which they might hear yet not understand." We say
still further : " As simple matter of fact and experience, it is
not trae that the parables conceal the thoughts and grace of
Christ from men; they reveal them. The parable of the
Good Samaritan does not put us in doubt as to who is our
neighbour ; it teaches us, vrith the most tender and persuasive
emphasis, that 'nothing human is alien to us,' that every
man who needs our help is our neighbour, even though he
also be our enemy. The parable of the Prodigal Son does
not hide from us the love of our Father who is in heaven,
but discloses that love with a pathos and a power so di-rine
that, beyond all other forms of speech, it touches and melts
our hearts. With such parables before us, with our know
ledge of the happy effects they have produced, of what use
is it for any man to tell us that Jesus spake in parables in order
that, seeirig, men might see and not perceive, and hearing,
they might hear and not understand, lest at any time they
should turn to God and be forgiven ? The parables have
turned myriads to God, and taught them both to seek and
to find the forgiveness of their sins. And it is precisely
' the multitude,' the simple and unlettered, those who are
least versed in spiritaal things, to whom the parables are
most welcome, to whom they are instinct with the di^rinest
instraction and power."
These arguments cannot be gainsaid." Christ was too

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 239
wise to use words that concealed his thoughts, and did come
to unveil, not to veil, the traths of the kingdom, to help
men to forgiveness, not to harden them in' their sins. And so
far from hiding the trath from men, or hinderiiig them from
taming to God, the parables do, beyond all other forms of
speech, convey the trath to them and make it a saving power
¦within them.
What shall we say, then ? that Mark and Luke miscon
ceived our Lord's words on the trae purpose and function of
parables ? Better say that than ourselves misconceive the
Author of our salvation. But, happily, we need not say it
If we interpret Mark and Luke by Matthew, aU we need say
is, that they give a condensed and therefore an incomplete
report of our Lord's words, a report which we cannot rightly
understand untU we read it in the light of Matthew's fuller
report. So soon as we turn to his Gospel,* we cannot but
wonder that we should ever have been perplexed and pained
by words which admit of a perfectly simple and candid ex
planation. St Matthew tells us at length, and with precision,
what Jesus said when his disciples asked Him why He spake
to the multitade in parables. He said, " Because unto you
it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,
but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him
shaU be given ; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be
taken away even that which he hath. Therefore speak I unto
them in parables, because (not Hn^ order that,' but 'because,')
seeing, they see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do they
understand. And the prophecy of Isaiah is being anew ful
filled upon them, which saith. By hearing ye shall hear, and
shall not understand ; and seeing, ye shaU see, and shaU not
perceive : for this people's heart is waxed fat, and with their
ears they have become dull of hearing, and their eyelids
have they draWn do^wn over their eyes, lest at any time they
* St. Matthew xiii. 10— 15.

240 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
should see -with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and
should understand with their heart, and should turn, and I
should heal them.''
No doubt even this passage has difficulties of its own, and
hints at that mysterious interaction of the Di-vine and human
wills which is one of the standing, and perhaps insoluble,
problems of human thought. But how completely it removes
the difficulty suggested by the more condensed reports of
Mark and Luke ! For, here, it is the people who have
closed their own eyes, not Christ who has closed them : it is
they who will not perceive and understand because they
dread the presence and lavv- of God, and do not want to be
converted and healed. Here, our Lord speaks to them in
parables, not to hide trath from them, but to force it on them ;
not in order that, seeing, they may not perceive, and hearing,
they may not understand, but because they have long failed
to exercise their spiritaal faculties of perception, and, if they
are ever to perceive the trath, must have it set before them
in bright vi-rid pictares ; if they are to understand it, must
have it "embodied in a tale." Isaiah had predicted that they
would sink into this low and gross spiritaal condition, that
they would come to hate the trath and to shrink from it
The prediction has been fulfilled. The Lord Jesus sees
that they cannot bear the white Hght of truth, that it must be
broken into attractive colours ; that they -will not Hsten to ab
stract utterances of trath, that these are " mysteries " to them;
that, if it is to "find " them, the truth must take homely and
familiar forms. Therefore — to win them, not to ahenate them;
to bring them to God, not to keep them away from Him —
He speaks to them in parables. He treats them as children
whose senses have not been exercised to discern good and
evil, and tells them stories such as children love, but stories
which convey the truths of the kingdom to minds otherwise
closed against them. He is seeking to approach and take

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 241
them by surprise ; to get the trath into their minds before
they discover what He is doing with them. And therefore He
paints them pretty pictures of natural scenes, and scenes drawn
from human life ; and while they are looking with interest at these
pictures, before they have time to " draw their eyelids down,''
they find that they are gazing on the symbols of spiritual and
eternal truths. He tells them pretty homely stories ; and,
lo ! whUe they are listening with charmed and attentive ear, a
divine moral peeps^through the stories, and they find that
they are hearkening to that voice of God which hitherto they
have refused to hear and understand.
This, beyond a doubt, was the meaning and intention of
our Lord in speaking to the multitude in parables ; for this
accords with all we know of Him and of his mission to the
world. He spoke in parables because He knew that " trath
in closest words may fail," whUe
" Trath embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors."
When his disciples asked Him, " ¦Why speakest Thou unto
them in parables ? " his answer virtually was : " To you para
bles may not be necessary, for unto you it is given to know
the mysteries of the kingdom ; but for these they are neces
sary, for no such knowledge has yet been given to them. I
cannot speak to them as I might to you. They are chUdren
in understandiig ; they need pictares, illustrations, fables,
stories ; only through these can I hope to give them any
glimpse into the mysteries which are or wiU be famihar to
you." And if we, perplexed by his answer to the Twelve,
repeat the same question. He quotes Asaph at us, and tells
us in so many words : " / open my mouth in parables, that I
may utter, not that I may conceal, things that have been kept
secret from the foundation of the world, that I may publish to
all the mysteries which heretofore have been the possession
only of the initiated few." ' 16

242 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
If any ask, " But how came Mark and Luke so much to
misrepresent the answer which Matthew reports in fuU ? we
reply, " They do not so much misrepresent, as condense, what
the Master said. If you carefully compare the three reports,
you vriU find that St Matthe-w's six verses are compressed
into two verses by St. Mark, into one verse by St. Luke, and
that in St Matthew's fiiUer report there is some authority for
every word in the two shorter reports."
If any pertinacious objector still affirm and ask: "But,
after all, the two shorter reports of Mark and Luke do give
a -wrong impression of what Jesus said and meant ; you
yourself have admitted that this wrong impression has
deeply perplexed and pained many minds : how can you
vindicate them for so reporting their Master's words as to
convey that He spoke in parables in order to hide the truth
from the multitade and to hinder them from forgiveness ? " I
can only repeat the admission : " They do convey our Lord's
meaning imperfectly : it is very pleasant to be able to correct
the wrong impression they make on our minds by the more
perfect report of Matthew. I can only say that, if brerity
be the soul of wit, it by no means conduces to historical
accuracy. I can only suggest that, perhaps, they were per
mitted to pain and perplex our minds vrith their condensed
and incomplete report, in order to sting us to stady and re
flection, that we might be compeUed to compare Scriptare
¦with Scriptare, and thus possess ourselves more fully of the
'mind of the Spirit.' For the most part we read Holy Scrip
ture so heedlessly and perfunctorUy that, if there were no
paradoxes in it, no dUemmas, if we were not at times driven
as into a corner from which we can find no loophole of
escape, we might never lay a strong grasp even on the traths
we most need to know. And if St Mark and St Luke,
by incompletely reporting their Master's words on parables
have so pained and bewUdered us by the meaning they

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 243
seemed to suggest, that they have stimulated us to thought
and research, for us at least they need no further vindication.
We thank them for the dark perplexity behind ¦which the
Saviour of men seemed to vanish from our eyes, or even to
be transformed into the Antagonist of men ; and we thank St
Matthew for restoring Him to us, for shewing us his gracious
face smiling out upon us through a window long closed, and
enabling us to hear the tones of his mercy in words that
have long sounded unworthy of the lips on which sat the
law of kindness."
2. But, now that the difficulty is out of our way, let us
try to conceive somewhat more vividly the low spiritual
condition into which the Jews of our Lord's time had sunk,
and how necessary it was, therefore, if He was to speak to
them at all, that He should speak to them in parables.
' We are all conscious in ourselves of two great tendencies
which go far to explain the religious history of men in all
ages. We find ourselves in a world the use and beauty
of which depend on forces that evade our research and lie
beyond our control. Beautiful as it is, too, it is yet at times
shaken by con-vulsions or smitten -with plagues which we
can neither comprehend nor reduce to order. We long to
understand this fair nataral world, to understand how it
came to be, who rales it, and by what laws, and how its
occasional distarbances are to be resolved into harmony
with law. And yet this tendency and craving of the spirit,
this cry of our heart for God, for the living God, is con
stantly thwarted and contradicted by another. 'When the
creation has revealed a Creator to us and the laws of the
universe a Lawgiver, and our moral sense has taught us to
conceive of Him as righteous and holy and just, and the
voice of Inspiration has revealed his eternal hatred of aU
evil, we often shrink from a Presence so pure, or contrive
to forget it amid the occupations and cares and pleasures of

244 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
life. While we are children, when we first leam that it is
God who makes the sun to shine, and robes the flowers with
beauty, and teaches the birds to sing, and rides upon the
storm, and caUs forth the stars by name ; that it is He who
has appointed the several relations of men and ordamed
their tasks ; He who sends our health or sickness, our joy
or sorrow ; and that He is good and loves us, and is seek
ing to win our love by all the beauties and changes of our
lot; — when we first leam to see God in Nature and in
human nature, we are wonderfully impressed; the world
and life grow full of beauty to us, full of sacred mystery.
But as the years pass, and we are absorbed in exhausting
toils, plunged in sordid cares, depraved by customary sins,
we lose much of that early sense of a Divine presence and
good-will ; the world is no longer a mere scene of beauty to
us, life no longer a mystery whoUy sacred. The orderly
progress of Nature, its oscUlation between death and Hfe —
the sweep to death always ushering in a new and larger life ;
the return of spring vrith its perfumes and songs, the uni
versal outburst of the imprisoned life of field and wood ;
the toUs of husbandry, the mysteries of growth, the joy of
harvest, — all this wonderful life of Nature culminating in the
StiU more wonderful life of man, in place of being a revela
tion becomes a veU, hiding God from us ; instead of a har
mony of voices calling us to worship, it too often becomes
a discordant summons to labours of which we are weary or
to pleasures by which we are defiled. Even the best of us
too commonly live amid aU these mysteries of life in a hard
mechanical way, or are roused by them to a merely scientific
curiosity or a merely sesthetic admiration, instead of being
awakened to a renewed and deepened sense of the Divine
, activity and goodness. The prophecy of Isaiah is fulfiUed
anew upon us : seeing, we see, yet do not perceive; hearing,
we hear, but do not understand.

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 245
We can feel little surprise, therefore, that the Jews were
for ever faUing into the same mechanical temper, — forgetting
the God who gave them -winter and summer, seed-time and
harvest, and crowded every field and garden -with a thousand
mute or vocal witnesses of his presence and bounty. Even
in their better times they were for ever putting God out of
their thoughts, growing unmindful of his presence whether
in Nature or in the Temple. Hence it was that they were
so often smitten with plagues and miseries, so often taught
that it was God, and God alone, who gave them showers and
fraitful seasons ; He who caused the pastares to grow green,
and the trees to yield their fruit ; He who fiUed their barns
with grain, and their vats with new wine ; He who was seek
ing them, and speaking to them, through aU the changes of
life and all the forms of their worship.
And when the Lord Jesus came to manifest his glory unto
Israel, they were at thei- worst, — most insensible to Him
who spake to them through the kindly ordinances of Nature,
the words of Scripture, the ser-rices of Synagogue and Temple.
Seeingr they saw not; hearing, they did not understand.
Therefore He spake to them, and was obliged to speak to
them, in parables. How else could He teach them to see
God in all they saw, to hear Him in all they heard ? Their
very familiarity with the seasonal changes of the natural
world and vrith the common relations of life blinded them
to their wonder and beauty. That a sower should go forth
to sow ; that the seed should rise through blade and ear to
the fuU com in the ear ; that different fOils should yield dif
ferent returns, or even the same soil under different cul-
tares : aU these and the like famihar processes had lost
their charm of spiritual meaning and suggestion. Christ
spake to them in parables in order to recover this charm
for them, in order to teach them that the whole varied
universe is fuU of a Divine presence and teaching, that

246 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
it was for ever speaking to them of a God who was immanent
in it and using it as an organ by which to reveal Himself to
men. And far as we have advanced, high as we have risen, do
not even we need that Christ should come and speak to us
in parables ? Have not we forgotten the God who is
about our path, who besets us behind and before ? Have
we not hidden Him behind a veil of cosmical forces
and natural laws? Does He speak to us through all
his works and all the changes through which we shift?
When men sow seed and find it mingled with tares ; when
they tend sheep and seek out green pastures for them ;
when a farmer agrees vrith his labourers for so much a day ;
when a merchant buys and sells pearls or other wares of the
market ; when a woman sweeps a house, or puts leaven in
meal ; — do these and the like acts speak to us of aught be
yond their effect on prices, on health of body, on our personal
comfort and gain ? Are they quick with suggestions of
spiritual realities, or have these all died out of them long
ago? In our common relations, as husband and -wife,
fathers and children, neighbours and friends, masters and
servants, do we find anything more than natural relations,
any hints and remembrances of the relations we sustain to
God, to Christ, to the Church, to the spirits of men ?
¦What is Nature but a vast and complex parable ? What
is human Hfe but a parable still more complex, subtle, and
involved ? Each of them is instinct with God, instinct there
fore with a Divine wisdom and goodness, had we but eyes
to see and ears to hear. Did we but recognize his constant
presence, and feel that He is all about us, to save and bless
us and make us good, we should " turn " to Him day by
day and be daily cleansed and strengthened by his " forgive
ness.'' It is because Nature has become a mere mechanism
to us, and life a mere routine, that we are so weak, so rest-

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 247
less, so craving, so sinful. Were our eyes but opened, they
would for ever fall on mysteries of beauty and goodness;
were our ears unstopped, they would be ravished by the
music of an eternal good-will and love.
Consider the man of science, how in the dullest scene, in
objects which to us are simply indifferent or repulsive — in
weeds and stagnant ponds, in worms and noisome pests, in
dismal swamp or gloomy tropical forest — he finds a whole
world of loveliness, and is rapt in ecstasies of wonder and
admiration. And if we saw the God and Father of all^.
and the proofs of his kind ¦wisdom and redeeming love, in
all that meets the eye or affects our life, would there not be
wonders enough for us to admire ? might not we at times'
rise into the ecstasies of love and worship ? It is because
seeing, we see, but do not perceive a Divine Presence, and
hearing, we hear, but do not catch the tender pleadings of
a Divine Voice, that to us, as to the Jews, Christ speaks in
parables which explain the spiritual meanings of the fair
world in which we dweU and of the life we now five in the
flesh. Instead of a vague admiration of general laws, me
chanical forces, and chemical affinities. He would have.
us know and trast the God "who covereth the heavens
vrith clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who causeth.
the grass to grow upon the mountains," and to learn how
"fire and hail, snow and vapour," sunshine and stormy
weather, fulfil his word. And therefore it was that, by his
parables. He made the world and all that it inherits speak
to us of our Father in heaven, and of his love for us, and of
our duty to Him ; so that when the sun shines, or the vrinds
blow, or the rains fall, or the lightning flashes out of the
clouds, or the birds sing, or the grass grows, or the wild-
flowers clothe the grass as vrith a robe of many colours, or
the tares and poppies spring up in the wheat ; or when the
shepherd tends his flock, or the farmer puts his hand to the

248 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
plough, or a merchant sets out on his travels, or chUdren
play in a market-place, or a wUd dissolute lad comes home
in tears and rags : whatever goes on about us in Nature or in
human life is fuU of spiritual teaching and comfort for us, if
only we have listened to the parables of Christ and leamed
to look out on the world through his eyes.
Can it be, then, that He who has thus brought the trath
of God home to us, who by his parables has taught us to
look for it and to find it everywhere, wishes to hide the truth
from us, that we may perish in our sins ? It cannot be. He
opened his mouth in parables that he might utter thmgs
which had been kept secret, but were henceforth to be the
common property of man. The parables of Christ are a
con^rincing proof that God loves us, and is for ever seekmg
to open our eyes and to unstop the ears which we have
closed, that He may forgive our sins and reconcile us unto
Himself Let us confide in Him, then, and leam of Him,
that to us also it may be given to know the mysteries of
the kingdom of God, because we too are the servants and
aposties of Christ.

xvin.
St. Mark iv. 26-28,
THERE is one parable uttered by our Lord which,
either because it is related only by St. Mark, or be
cause it has been much misunderstood, has received far less
attention than it deserves. It rans thus: "So is the kingdom
of God, as if a man should have cast the seed into the ground,
and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should
spring and grow up he knoweth not how; for the ground
bringeth forth fruit of itself; first the blade, then the ear,
after that the full com in the ear."
Now this parable, which, as I have hinted, has suffered
many things at the hands of its critics, is one of three
parables, the form of which is derived from the most familiar
processes of agricultare. The first of this triad is the
Parable of the Sower, in which a husbandman is represented
as scattering seed on a great variety of soUs with an equal
variety of result, to set forth the infinite diversities of the
human heart, and of the modes in which it receives the truth
of God. The second is the Parable of the Tares of the
Field, in which we have a husbandman sowing good seed
in a good field, and an enemy coming by night to scatter
tares among the wheat ; in which, therefore, the intermixture
of error with trath is imaged out, and the immense activity

250 THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH.
of evU in obstracting the growth of that which is good. And
the third is this parable of St. Mark's, the Parable of the
Seed, in which the inherent vitality and productiveness of
the good seed and of the trath of God are the main points
of comparison. ,
And this latter parable has, as I have said, suffered much
at the hands of its readers. Many readers of the New
Testament simply confuse it, either with the Parable of the -
Sower or the Parable of the Tares ; it has no separate and
marked indi^riduality for them : while a few critical readers,
who have separated it from other parables in their thoughts,
announce, as the result of theiar study, that we have here a
rough draft either of the Parable of the Sower or of the
Tares ; that our Lord's first effort to give the parable shape
having failed. He afterwards recurred to it with better success,
and gave it a more perfect form.
But the trath is, that this parable, though very brief, is one
of the most exquisite and matterful ever spoken ; nor, if we
¦will only look for them, is there the slightest diffiailty in
tracing the lines of divergence and contrast between this and
the other parables. The difficulty, rather, is to miss them.
In motive and meaning the three are wholly distinct. In
the Parable of the Sower, as I have pointed out,* the
emphasis of illustration lies on the diversities of soU into
which the seed is cast, and the variety of results which these
diversities occasion : it faUs on the wayside, to be carried off
by the fowl of the air ; it falls on the thom-infested ground,
to be choked by the quicker growths of e^ril ; it falls on rocky
ground, to wither away for want of depth of root ; and it
falls on good ground, to bring forth fruit in some thirty, in
some sixty, in some a hundred-fold. In the Parable of the
Tares, again, the intense vigUance and activity of e-ril are set
forth : how, even on the best ground, and together with the
* See pre-yious Essay,

IHE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH. 251
finest of the wheat, those detestable tares of error will spring
up — a quick-gro-wing zizanium, a bastard corn, so like the
wheat that you can hardly distinguish the one from the other
till the ear is fornied or you try to Hve upon it. But in this
Parable of the Seed the emphasis is laid, not on the diversi
ties of soil, nor on the surreptitious intermixture of delusive
tares, but on the peculiar phenomena of growth, on the
germination of the good seed and the successive forms it
takes. It marks and emphasizes no less than three of these
phenomena of growth : first, its mystery — the seed " springs
and grows up we know not how;" second, its spontaneity —
" the earth bringeth forth fruit of itself;" and, third, its pro-
gressiveness — "first the blade, then the ear, and after that the
FuU com in the ear." In fact, the distinctive features of the
parable are as clear and marked as they well can be ; and,
but for our careless negligent handling of God's Holy Word,
it is inconceivable that truths so distinct as these should
have been confused together, simply because the same
figure, that of a husbandman sowing seed, is employed in
each of the three parables.
And the parable is as accurate and beautiful as it is well-
defined. With a few rapid touches it places before us a pic
ture -with which we are quite famihar, and discloses a mystery
to which our very familiarity often makes us blind. Men do
sow seed thus, casting it into the ground, then sleeping and
waking, leaving it to the operation of ascertained natural
laws. The earth does bring forth of herself, we cannot tell
how. Growth is beyond our knowledge. We can hasten
or retard it, but we can neither make the seed spring, nor
teU how it grows ; we cannot teU, for instance, which mil
prosper, this seed or that, nor why the one prospers and the
other does not Yet we help, and God helps. If we sleep
through the night, we watch, and weed, and water through
the day. And God ! God has implanted the vital principle

252 THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH.
in the seed, and the quickening nutritive powers in air, and
rain, and earth. We can bring the seed and the earth
together ; we can do something toward securing happy and
favourable conditions of growth; yet we cannot secure
growth : the harvest is of God, and varies at his pleasure.
We must be careful, indeed, not to push the figure too hard
or too far, as if, because " the earth bringeth forth frait of
itself" therefore we can do nothing to produce growth, or
foster it Only, when we have done aU that we can and
used all the helps at our command, there is stUl a mystery of
spontaneity, an orderly progressive development, which our
help does not explain. It is part of the mystery of life, and
what do we know of that 1 Natare herself bears witness to
our ignorance. The husbandman, as the parable reminds
us, sleeps through the night ; and that is just the time, as ,
science affirms, in which growth, for the most part, takes
place. Through the day the seed is busy storing up what
httie modicum of heat, moistare, nourishment, it can get;
and in the night, when men sleep, shews that it has got it —
i.e., grows. In the dark mysterious night, the mysteries of
growth have their appropriate place.
Now the kingdom of God, both as it comes in all the
world, and as it comes to the individual heart, is as seed
cast into the ground. It presents the same phenomena of
gro-wth — mystery, spontaneity, progressiveness.
I. Let us trace the phenomena in the history of the
Divine Kingdom in the world.
I. There is, first of aU, mystery. " The seed springs and
grows, we know not how." The kingdom of God did not
come " with observation." Of aU lands, Judsea is to us the
most sacred and wonderful ; and, of all people, the people
of the Jews. The holy land, the chosen people, these are
the channels through which we have received the salvation

THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH. 253
of God. But the land, so sacred to us, was not sacred to
the Romans and the Greeks; to them it was one of the
least, and least regarded, provinces of the empire. The
people, so holy and wonderful to us, were despised by them
as a singularly obstinate, malignant, and intolerant race.
That was the last place, and these the last people, from
whom the raling nations would have looked for a disclosure
of heavenly trath, for a benignant and victorious faith. And
had they looked for it, the probabUity is that they would
have missed it They would have gone for it to the metro
polis; to the temple in which the rabbis taught, and the
priests offered sacrifices ; to the most crass and bitter
enemies, therefore, of the faith of Christ, "rhe " Light of
the World " dawned, not in metropoHtan Jerasalem, but
in provincial Galilee^n GalUee, the darkest district of
the land, in Nazareth, the most depraved village of Galilee.
There was a mystery in the very origin of the kingdom,
therefore ; the good seed sprang up in the darkness.
And an equal mystery attended its growth. It grew, as it
sprang, without observation. Men could not point to it and
say, " Lo ! here," or, " Lo ! there," " In the chamber," or.
In the desert." It was everywhere, though almost every
where unseen. As we trace the history of the Gospel in
primitive times, nothing is more surprising to us than the
mysterious rapidity -with which it diffused itself abroad.-
The fond persuasion of a few "lewd Galileans," it had
spread from heart to heart, from city to city, from race to
race, almost before the sages and ralers of this world had
seen enough of it even to denounce and persecute it. The
kingdom of heaven "took them by surprise," took them
" by force :" it embraced and overcame the kingdoms of the
earth or ever they were aware. Within three centuries after
its first proclamation the faith of the cmcified Christ became
the regnant faith of a world at enmity against God. The'

254 THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH.
one divine Seed, of which the present Christendom is the
present harvest, fell from heaven, grew up, as in a dry place,
in solitary unadmired beauty, blossomed, seeded, feU : but,
lo ! its seed-spores were carried abroad on every wind that
blew, found a prepared soil under every clime, brought forth
frait in every land. A single spark of light was kindled in
the thick darkness in which the people sat. It burned and
shone over Jerusalem. For a moment it suffered, or seemed
to suffer^ total eclipse^ — to expire in the darkness which
veiled the Cross. But it was only for a moment It re
appears, waxes at Pentecost into sudden splendour. It
shoots forth rays which travel to Antioch, to Ephesus, to
Philippi, to Corinth, to Athens, to Rome, to Ethiopia and
Egypt, to Spain, Gaul, Britain, tiU at last the darkness is
beautiful with a multitude of scattered points of light which
shine in aU the great centres of human activity. These
scattered points of light, moreover, expand, rise, difiiise tiU
their outer edges blend and mingle, and the whole civilized
world, even through the broad raral spaces which intervene
between city and city, is Ulumined by the gracious Hght;
tUl, in place of a night broken by scattered starry beams,
there dawns a new glorious day, above, a shining heaven,
a rejoicing fraitful earth, below. In vail do the astonished
ralers take counsel together to arrest the coming of this day
of the Lord. In vain do they rash hither and thither, as
the rays travel and spread, to tread out this point of light or
that ; the light shines on tiU the whole atmosphere is aglow,
and they themselves are transformed and glorified by its
refulgence. To their infinite surprise, they discover that
these scattered travelling light-points are not tapers, fashioned
by human skiU, nor bewildering marsh-fires rising from the
swamps of human ignorance, but simply prepared surfaces
which reflect the light of heaven ; they discover that a new
and brighter day has dawned upon them out of the etemity

THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH. 255
of God, and that henceforth even they must walk as chUdren
of the light and of the day. In less than three hundred
years after Pentecost the Christian Faith had conquered the
throne of the Cssars ; yet only fifty years before its triumph
it was reported to the emperor as " the obscure persuasion
of a few lewd Jews and Gentiles." Such, and so rnarvellous,
was the springing and the growth of the kingdom of God.
2. But as we consider the rise and growth of the heavenly
kingdom, we may note a second "^ea.amesi.OTx— spontaneity.
" The earth brought forth frait of itself" The progress of
the kingdom of God, rapid and marvellous as it was, was
largely independent of human aid. There are, as we all
know, many human powers and influences which we desire
to see working together for the good of any cause we take in
hand ; as, for instance, wealth, leaming, high birth and
breeding ; the ministries of art and song ; kinship with the
common aims, views, aspirations of men ; royal smUes ;
plenitude of means and advocates ; and, above all, organ
ization — the having a well-ordered society labouring at
a common purpose on a skilful plan. By a wise use and
application of these aids, if only we can apply them, we
expect to reach our end — to advance, estabhsh, consoHdate
the cause in which we take an interest. But none of these
were for the Gospel; all of them were against it — a banded
and apparently impregnable unity. Kings and ralers set
themselves against the Lord and against his Anointed One.
Leaming despised the new Faith too much to refute it The
arts were the ministers of the popular idolatries. Wealth
was no more disposed to risk its gains for trath's sake then
than now, nor to waste in quest of trath time which it might
so much more profitably employ. The popular habits were
incredibly corrapt, and shrank from the pUre Faith which
gave them" rebuke. The Church was not organized into
aggressive societies ; each of those who went forth in the

256 THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH.
service of the trath went where he was moved to go in
simple dependence on the prompting of the Spirit and the
providence of God. None of the outward advantages
which we have, or covet, were at the disposal of the
disciples. Yet, by manifestation of its inherent resources
and energies, the Faith everywhere spoken against conquered
the world, converting adversaries into advocates, overcoming
e-vU with its good. The kingdom spread and grew on every
side. The earth brought forth fruit of herself The good
seed germinated, breaking through the cold resisting clods,
springing and reaching upward to its native heaven, turning
to uses of nourishment whatsoever lay between it and the
light ; tUl it reached the light, and grew up into that great
life-tree whose leaves now heal nations.
3. In this mysterious spontaneous gro-wth, it displayed a
third phenomenon — progressiveness. " First the blade, then
the ear, and ' after that the full com in the ear." The king
dom grew from less to more, is grovring still, for the pro
gress is not yet complete. " The husbandman waiteth for
the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for
it ; " and we must " be patient unto the coming of the
Lord," if we would see the full procession of the seed of the
kingdom from the weakness of the green blade to the wealth
and beauty of the shock of corn fully ripe. As yet we see
but in part ; but even now aheady we can see that the pro
cess has begun, that even in our own time and that of our
fathers it has broadly and rapidly advanced. Since this
century dawned, many peoples that sat in darkness have
seen the great Hght ; many races, eating that which is not
bread and drinking that which satisfieth not, have now re
ceived the com of heaven and have drawn water from the wells
of salvation vrith great joy. Within even a shorter period
than that, there has been a marked advance in the simplicity
of Christian wisdom and the cathoHcity of Christian love.

THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH. 257
And to-day we may see tokens, though few and far between,
of a simpler faith, a broader charity ; the Bible is taking the
place of the creed ; the love of man is supplanting the de
votion to sect ; the di^riding Shibboleths are being " for
gotten out of our mouths ; " and the members of the one
famUy are beginning to recognize every man his brother,
and to draw together into a sacred unity.
But, alas ! the kingdom of God is still a coming kingdom :
it has not fully come as yet, and cannot while we are so
selfish and divided. The full corn in the ear is not fully
ripe. " The harvest is the end of the world," and that, for
our sins, is yet far off. ' StUl we may hope for that which as
yet we cannot see ; and ¦wiser men than we, using that large
discourse of reason which looks before and after, as they
have reviewed and forecasted the history of the heavenly
kingdom, have divided it into three main epochs, answer
ing to the three stages of development prefigured by the
blade, the ear, and the fuU corn in the ear. These epochs
they have named after the three chief Apostles — Peter, Paul,
and John. The Petrine era extends to the Reformation;
the Pauline to the present day ; while the Johanine extends
from the proximate future to the close of the Dispensation.
The Petrine is the era of morality and worship ; the Pauline
the era of dogma and philosophy ; the Johanine the era of
wise simplicity and childlike love.
When the Gospel was first proclaimed, it had little to fear
from the "outwom creeds" of men. The old pagan re
ligions had lost their ¦ritality and power. They had become
incredible. They were regarded as myths, or poems,
which set forth natural processes and relations ; as lending
a useful sanction to the police regulations of the empire ;
as affording a serviceable stimulus to the national unity or
enthusiasm : but not as faiths which were to rale the
thoughts and lives of men, and for which 'twere weU even
17

258 IHE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH.
to die. The real obstacles with which the primitive dis
ciples had to contend were the scepticism and the inveterate
immoralities which idolatry had bred, — the smooth polished
licentiousness of thought and conduct beneath which the
natural pieties of the human heart were entombed. To
bring life to the sepulchre in which a dead world lay and
stank amid infinite nameless corraptions — this was their
difficult, their superhuman task. And hence we find them
encountering an unbelieving generation with a constant
reiteration of plain facts — the death, viz., and the resurrec
tion of the Lord Jesus Christ, a world steeped in poUutions
of which it was well-nigh sick, with an invitation to a pure
worship and a pure life. This was the Petrine age, the
age in which Peter's devout practical spirit was most pro
minent, most prolific.
But, as the centaries passed, the Church itself became
heathenized. A pantheon of apostles, martyrs, saints sup
planted the divmities of Greece and Rome : the statue of
Jupiter, now baptized Peter, was again adored as a god.
Worship sank and hardened into a gorgeous ceremoniahsm.
Morality was turned from a discharge into an evasion of the
duties of life, or into a debtor and creditor account with
heaven, the balance of which was commonly against God.
The high priest of the Christian Church usurped the throne
of the most high God, and, once seated on it, led a Hfe
more infamous than that of any votary of Bacchus or any
flamen of Aphrodite.
Then arose Luther to purge the Church. Armed with a
scourge of small cords, borrowed from the tent-maker of
Tarsus, he drave out the unclean rabble which profaned the
house of prayer — the money-changers who, for a price, sold
indulgences to sin. In the Scriptares of St. Paul he found
the traths which were the best answer to the errors of his
fjma tbo best corrective to its vices. With the great tmth

THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH 259
of "justification by personal faith,'' and. its related dogmas,
he destroyed that system of priestly interference between
the soul and God which lay at the root of the prevailing
heresies and corruptions. Since then at least to a very
recent period, good men have been mainly occupied in con-
stracting doctrinal systems, and applying doctrinal tests;
in examining, proving, articulating those dogmas, which,
after all, compose only the skeleton of truth. This, too,
was a necessary task, an indispensable step in the progress ;
but we may hope that by this time it is nearly over and
done. For a skeleton, though a necessary, is a somewhat
unlovely, and even repellent, object. We must have one,
if we are to live ; but we need not be always curiously in
specting it, and still less should we, as some persons do,
wear it outside our flesh, and perpetuaUy thrast it in our
neighbour's face.
And there are hopeful symptoms that the dogmatic era is
dravring to a close. Many, in all sections of the Christian
Church, have leamed that -rital faith in Christ is " more
than all the creeds ; " that to live in holy charity is the
supreme duty of all who worship God in sincerity and trath.
Many dividing prejudices, bigotries, sectarianisms have
been renounced, and even those who have not renounced
are beginning a littie to distrust them. In aU quarters of the
common Temple there is a sensible stir and movement, not
this time, thank God, away from each other, but toward each
other ; not indicative of a desire to retreat into separate
courts, but of a determination to break do-wn all party waUs,
and to rend all dividing veUs, that there may be one service
in His house who is the God and Father of us all. Many
auspicious omens seem to point to the coming of " the full
corn in the ear ; " to the advent of a time in which the
catholic spirit of the loving and beloved John wUl be the
animating and dominant spirit of aU who serve Christ

26o THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH.
May God speed its coming, and give us grace, each accord
ing to his several abUity, to speed it too.
II. But we have also to trace the operation of these
same phenomena in the spiritaal history of the individual
man. I. And, first, for tnystery. The good seed springs up we
know not how. In some cases, indeed, and to a certain
extent, the reception of the trath, the germination of the
seed of the kingdom, may be matter of distinct conscious
ness. The ploughshare of affliction may have passed over
the heart ; the hammer of judgment may have broken and
pulverized the rock; the fire of Di-rine Love may have
burned up the briars and thorns which infested the soU,'and
in the good ground thus prepared good seed may have been
strewn by a hand of which we are aware. We may be able
to recall the very trath which first awakened conviction,
and the circumstances which had prepared us to receive it.
But, very commonly, the planting and germination of tmth
are matter of unconsciousness. We cannot tell when the
seed fell, or how it grew, where or how we began to live
unto God. Winged seeds of trath were floating through
¦ the air, and some of them fell softly in a quiet unregarded
comer of our heart. Silent and unseen they lay, pushing
forth vital germs in the darkness. Not tiU the blade began
to appear above the smface did we know that the Great
Husbandman had commenced his gracious culture.
Because of this mystery in the sprmging of the seed many
genuine believers hold themselves in doubt, and often fear
that God has not caused the trath to take root within them.
They forget that in its inception aU life is weak and un
conscious. The babe comes plaining into the world, seeing
nothing, ha-ring no conscious enjoyment of it's powers —
most of its powers as yet lying dormant The seed puts

THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH. 261
forth its first tender germ, escaping the bondage of the husk
only to meet the cold hard clods ; not till it reach the light
can it clothe itself in beauty, and wave freely in the free air
of heaven. And it is thus with the beginning of the spiritual
life, with the germination of the Divine seed.. For a time
it lies beneath the surface of consciousness. After the first
faint joy of escape from the husk of sinful habit, there comes
the sense of darkness and obstraction. Hindering clods
gather round it, seeming to thwart and oppress the rising
life. Not till it has reached the light of day can we be sure
that it has begun to live. If any of us know what this means,
let us take heart. That we cannot teU when the seed fell,
or how it sprang, what the truth was which first impressed
us, or how it gathered force, need not disturb our peace.
Mystery is a law of growth. The obstructions which seem
to thwart our growth vrill not really thwart it ; they are there
only that the energies of our life may be concentrated, may
gather new vigour from resistance. So soon as we are
strong enough to pierce them, the hindering clods wUl not
hinder, but feed, our growth; they wiU yield us the very
discipline and nutriment we need.
And this mystery attaches, not only to the first, but to all
subsequent seed. It is not the words we hear, but the words
we receive and appropriate, which really spring up and
, bring forth fruit within us. And the process of that growth,
is it not this ? An unregarded word — a, word to which,
when we heard it, we gave little heed — sinks sUently into
our heart. It Hes there, stUl and quiescent, for days, weeks,
months, perchance; tUl at last, touched and quickened by
some inward experience, it rises into life, becomes a blessing
and a joy — we cannot teU how !
Nay, even when we seek consciously and of set purpose
to gather seeds of trath, and to compel them to germinate in
our minds, when we steadfastly give ourselves to the stady

262 THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH.
of the Word, that we may possess ourselves of its hidden
store of good, much of the process is stUl very mysterious.
Our best thoughts, our profoundest insights, come to us; we
do not go step by step to them, gradually approaching them
by logical advances ; but suddenly they are with us, taeir
beauty unveiled, their power manifest. Almost all who
have to teach the truth wUl admit that, if they -wish to com
prehend some deep saying of Holy Writ, to feel its real
inward force, to master its inmost secret, they have to wait
as well as to think and pray ; they -wiU tell you that often
their best course is to let it lie in their minds for weeks or
months, without making any immediate or conscious effort
to master it As they go about their daily tasks the Word
lies, apparently inactive, floating on the current and surface
of their thoughts ; yet all the while, it is thro-wing out one
delicate fibre here and another there, taking root dovmward
and pushing stems upward, connecting and interpreting
itself through whatever books they read, whatever thoughts
and affections are excited within them, tiU at last it gives up
its secret, yields its frait, and their joy of han'est is deep
ened by the joy of conquest. The seed grows, they know
not how, tUl it has frait in itself, and only a vigorous effort
is requisite to crash it into flour and knead it into a living
bread. 2. But, again, we have to mark the spontaiieity of the
spiritual growth. The good seed "bringeth forth frait of
itself" If we cannot compel the seed to grow in our o-wn
hearts, stiU less can we make it grow in other hearts. It
must bring forth frait of itself; that is, by virtue of the
principle of life which God has infused into it, and of the
means of life with which He has graciously surrounded it
And here we come on a very needful warning against im
patience, agamst undue iiterference. In order that there
may be growth, the Sun of Righteousness must shine upon

THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH. 263
the seed sown ; the dew of heavenly grace must fall ; and,
if these quickening influences be vouchsafed, the seed will
thrive on any soil, however thin and poor, without our help.
Less depends on our efforts than we sometimes think. We
may, indeed — nay, we should — weed and water and watch
through the day ; but, after all, the great growth will be at
night, when we are asleep : and the good seed will spring
up, not so much from anything we have done, as from
the vital reproductive power which God has given to his
trath, and the gracious influence which He sheds from
above. We must have been very heedless, or very unfeeling, if
we have not often felt how helpless we are ; if we have not
learnt that Paul may plant, and Apollos water, but that God
alone can give growth. You have doubtless seen those
whom you love exercised vrith doubts, beset with fears. A
good work seems to have been begun upon them, but it
makes no progress, or appears to make no progress. You
have felt, perhaps, as if you could almost coin your life away
to give them life ; but there is nothing that you can do : and
you stand by in a passion of unavaUing solicitude and
prayer. But, happily, that is just the best thing you can
do — ^pray to the Growth-Giver. Beneath his blessing, the
earth vriU bring forth of itself, if only you will let it alone.
Have faith in God, and in God's Word, and in God's Spirit;
have no faith in yourselves, or in anything that you can do.
Break up the soil ; sow the good seed ; water it with your
tears and prayers : and then leave it calmly and hopefully
with God. Don't be impatient for results, but have patience,
and, if need be, "long patience." Don't be like foolish
chUdren, for ever digging up the seed to see whether it
grows or how it grows. But rest in the assurance, that who
soever goeth forth weeping and sowing precious seed shall .
return again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

264 THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH.
3. Then, finally, as progressiveness is another law of
spiritual growth, we have another reason for patience and
hope. In our impatience, we often expect not only that
the good seed wiU visibly grow the very moment it is sown,
but even that it wiU bring forth firuit. No sooner has the
trath been planted in our hearts, or at latest the green blade
of profession has scarcely peeped above the soil, than we
think we are to eat of its precious frait and be satisfied.
We cannot tarry for the slow natural processes through
which the fruit ripens and is made perfect ; and so we
employ all kinds of artificial stimulants to hasten the harvest
We ran after religious novelties and excitements ; we attempt
to bend our thoughts and feehngs to a high strain of devo
tion to which they have not fairly risen ; and, as the reward
of our impatience, we are oppressed -with a sense of the
unreality of our spiritaal life, and sometimes either harden
into hypocrisy or drift into a settled scepticism. Growth,
natural, steady, progressive growth, should be our aim — the
growth which is the natural expression of the inward strength
we have gained by a wise use of the truths, and gifts, and
ordinances of God — growth never hasting, yet never rest
ing — the growth which springs from the vi-rifying beams of
the Lord our Sun, and the continual dews of the Holy Spirit,
and a frank susceptibility to aU pure and nourishing influences
whether from earth or heaven. Let us be patient, then,
¦"'ith the patience of faith. The sower sleeps and rises
night and day ; but God never slumbers nor sleeps. He -
-will not forsake the work of his o-wn hands, nor suffer any
seed of his planting to wither and die.
Let us be charitable and considerate, as weU as patient
In the field of the Church the good seed is to be found in
all stages of development : here, in the green blade ; there,
in the ear ; and yonder, in its golden prime. And it does
sometimes happen that the blade sets itself up to judge the

THE PHENOMENA OF GROWTH. 265
ear, and condemns it because, unlike itself, it bears the full
com. Let us not judge one another any more. Whatever
our stage in the divine progress may be, our main business
is to grow, to bring our frait to its ripe maturity, not to
judge the neighbouring stalks.
Let us remember, moreover, that the seed grows mainly
in the night, and so learn to take thankfully whatever dark
nesses or sorrows the Great Husbandman may send, know
ing that his will and purpose are that we should bring forth
frait, and bring it forth more abundantly.
Last of all, let us acknowledge that if we are without frait
unto God, that is our fault, not his. The Divine Sower has
scattered many good seeds on our hearts. He has neglected
no means of culture — the sun has risen and shone, the
gracious quickening rains have fallen. If the seed has not
sprang, it is because we have resisted his culture and
ministry ; because we have permitted the thronging pleasures
of life to make a common highway of our hearts ; because ¦
we have suffered the cares of life, or the deceitfulness of
riches, or the lusts of other things, to enter in and choke the
good word of trath and make us unfraitful. We need not
remain fraitless. We dare not be like the barren ground
which brings forth only noxious weeds and poisonous
thorns, " whose end is to be burned." The Growth-Giver
waits to give us growth, to conduct us through all the steps
of the divine progress — first the blade, then the ear, and
then the full corn in the ear, which, so soon as it is fully ripe,
-will be gathered with joyful shouts and merry songs into the
gamer of our God.

xix.
Matt. -vii. 3 — S'*
THE metaphor of the splinter and the beam was in
frequent use among the Jews. Thus, for instance,
Rabbi Tarphon, when lamenting the impatience of correc
tion which marked his time, complains that if any one said
to his neighbour, " Cast out this or that straw from thine
eye," the response was sure to be, " Cast out the beam from
thine own eye." The good man, being one of those just
persons who need no repentance, never dreamt that
there zvas a beam in his eye, and that therefore the retort
was perfectly fair. He could see straws in every eye but
his o-wn, and was quite ready to pluck them out ; but
when his neighbours offered the same kind office to him,
he took the offer as an insult He was a rabbi, and there
fore not open to censure or reproach. If any wind of
doctrine blew specks or straws into an eye so sensitive as
his, he was perfectly able to rab them out without his neigh
bours' help.
* "'Why starest thou at the splinter in the eye of thy brother, and
apprehendest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? Or, how wilt
thou say to thy brother, ' Let me puU out the splinter from thine eye,'
and, behold, the beam is in thine own eye ? Hypocrite ! Pull out,
first, the beam from thine own eye ; then, thou shalt see clearly to pull
out the splinter from the eye of thy brother. "

THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM. 267
The Lord Jesus adopted the Hebrew metaphor, but not
in the' Hebrew spirit On his lips it does not justify, but
censures, those who assume to judge and rebuke their
brethren. He affirms that the retort which shocked the
Rabbi was a fair retort. He affirms that those who were
quick to detect straws in their neighbours' eyes usuaUy
carried a beam in their own.
I. In what way does this Parable of the Splinter and '
the Beam cormect itself with the main argument of the
Sermon on the Mount ? Thus : — The Lord Jesus had
been teaching that the righteousness of his disciples must
exceed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees. In their alms,
in their prayers, in their fasts, in the conduct of their daily
life, in their anticipations of the future, they were to shew a
modesty, a charity, a self-distrast, a filial confidence in their
Father in heaven, which had no place in the righteousness
of the Pharisees and Scribes. Now the Scribes and Phari
sees had a very quick eye for their neighbours' faults, and
tongues very ready to condemn them. It was part of their
righteousness to be strict, harsh, severe in their judgments.
They were holier than others : and how could they impress
that fact upon their neighbours more profoundly than by
rigorously condemning their errors and defects ? In their
insane self conceit, they divided humanity into two classes :
they formed one class, all other men formed the other class.
This other class, although it included nearly the whole world,
they called " the rest," " the refuse," and thanked God they
were not Hke them. They did not regard even their own
brethren according to the flesh as brethren ; they held that
even the Jews were, for the more part, altogether bom in
sin. " You are not to do that," said the Lord jesus to his
disciples. " In this, as in so much else, your righteousness
must surpass that of the Scribes. You are not to separate

268 THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM.
yourselves from any man. A man does not cease to be a
mai-i, nor a brother a brother, because the wind has blown a
splinter into his eye. You have no right to judge him. If
you do judge him, you shall be judged ; and the very measure
you mete out to him shall be meted to you. Nay, if you
begin to judge him, to quarrel with the straws in his eye,
that very moment you assume to be his better, his superior,
not his brother : by that very act, because it shews you are
of a proud unbrotherly heart, you prove that you carry. a
beam in your eye for every spHnter you rebuke in his : in
censuring him, you condemn yourselves. Judge not, there
fore, that ye be not judged. Do not ' stare ' at the mote
in your brother's eye till you forget that he is your brother ;
but remember, rather, how far your eye is from being single
and clear. Do not gad about bidding your neighbours stand
and mark how deftly you can extract their splinters, but
practise on your o-wn tiU you can prove yourself their brother
by helping them so dexterously and modestly that, whUe
you cleanse their eyes, they shall hardly know it is you who
do it."
This I take to be the meaning of our Lord's Parable as
part of his Sermon on the Mount. But now let us detach
it from its connections, and consider it by itself apart.
2. If, as you are walking do-wn a street, a passing gust should
flick a speck of dust, or a tiny splinter of straw into your
eye, would that sharpen your sight ? Rather, it would so
cloud and embarrass your sight that your next-door neigh
bour might strat by, with as big a beam as he could carry
protruding from his brows, and you be none the wiser.
And if a straw or a splinter would thus impair the nataral
clearness of your vision, how much more would a beam ?
If that were thrast into your eye, you would give up aU hope
of ever seeing clearly again. Yet our Lord speaks of a beam
in the eye as though it sharpened some men's sight ! It is

THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM. 269
when the beam is in their own eye that they detect the
tiniest mote in their brother's eye !
On the other hand, if, while you were suffering from a
speck of dust or a tiny splinter floating in the humours of
the eye, some friend were to offer to brush it out ; and you,
clearing and steadying the eye for a moment as best you
could, and looking intently at him, were to see- a great beam
jutting out from beneath his brow : would you think highly
of his competence for the task ? Would you not rather in
stinctively say, " First pull out the beam that is in thine Own
eye ?" Yet our Lord implies that those who carry a beam
in their own eye are precisely those who deem themselves
most competent to extract even the minutest specks which
trouble the eyes of their neighbours !
In the physical region, then, the Parable both does, and
does not, hold good. On the one hand, a beam in the eye
does not sharpen its sight : and, on the other, a beam in our
neighbour's eye is a very good reason why we should not
trast hin to pluck straws out of ours.
But in morals the case is different There a beam in the
eye does sharpen sight. For when we say of a man who
censures our faults, " He has a beam in his own eye,"
what we mean is, that he himself is guUty of the same or of
similar faults. And to have committed a "fault does make
us more sensitive to the faults of others; to have sinned
opens our eyes to signs and symptoms of which we were
before unconscious. A pure child or maiden might pass,
smiling and unharmed, through scenes which to many of us
would be full of guilty and impure suggestion. We' must
break through the hedge of law before we can eat the frait
of the Tree which stands in the midst of the garden : we
rise, or faU, to the knowledge of good and evil only as we
lose our innocence. The bigger the beam in our own eye,
the more quickly do we detect the smallest splinters in our

270 THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM.
brother's eye. Probably, of all creatares the devil has the
keenest and greediest eyes for evU, and is the very first
to detect, the faintest motions of irregular or inordinate
desire within us. And, certainly, as many of us have
found to our cost, our e^vU tempers and passions make
us very quick to detect thC like passions and tempers in
others, — so quick, indeed, that we sometimes see them
when they are not there, the beam in om- oivn eye casting a
a shadow into other eyes which we mistake for a splinter
or a straw. Thus, for example, a man who thinks more
highly of himself than he ought to think, is the -first to
detect and to resent any motions of vanity in his asso
ciates ; a quarrelsome woman scents her neighbour's anger
in the vrind when the bystanders are unaware that any
storm is a-brewing to their peace : those who are rude, in
hospitable, domineering, false, are instantly offended at their
own faults in a neighbour's conduct, even though their
neighbour has she^wn them in much lesser degree, and
sometimes when he has not shewn them at aU. Indeed I
have known men whose sight has been so sharpened by
the very big beam they carried in their o-wn eye, that
they have gone about clutching indiscriminately at every
straw or splinter they met, scratching or bruising the faces
iii which they could detect no speck, making the blemish
they could not find.
Let this, then, be our first lesson : that, if we are so quick
to see straws in the eyes of our neighbours that we can
hardly look into any face without detecting one, the proba
bUity is that we carry a beam in our o-wn eye of which we
greatly need to be rid.
3. But again : — If, in walking down the street, we were
to see a neighbour blinded and in pain, rubbing his eye in
the hope of rubbing out some speck or mote, but rubbing it
in rather than out, would it not be kind and brotherly of us

THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM. 271
to Stop and offer him our help? And if we ourselves
chanced to be suffering at the time even more than he, if
the splinter in our eye were so big that it might be caUed a
beam, would there not be an admirable self-denial in our
kindness ? If we offered help when we ourselves were in
such sore need of help, would it not be very hard that,
in return for our kindness, our neighbour should call us
" Hypocrite ! " and bid us look to ourselves ?
Yet that is just what the Lord Jesus does, or seems to do.
He says we are hypocrites if, with a beam jutting from our
ovm eye, we say to our brother, " Let me pull out the
splinter from thine eye." Is it hypocritical, then, to do a
kindness, and to offer help, when we ourselves stand in
need of help? By no means. But if we are greatly in
need of help, and do not know it, and so soon as our
neighbour wants only a little help, we are very conscious of
that, there is, to say the least of it, something imperfect and
untrue in our perceptions. For why do we say to our
brother, " Let me pull out the splinter from thine eye ? "
Simply because we think it injurious to any one to have a
splinter in the eye. Yet, all the whUe, we have not a
splinter merely, but a beam, in our own eye ! With the
tongue we say one thing; with the eye, another. Our
words mean, " O it is very -wrong and bad to suffer the
smallest speck to remain in the eye ; " our conduct means,
" There is no great harm in letting even a beam remain in
it." That is to say, we are hypocrites ; we talk one thing
and act another ; we say what we do not believe ; we are
judging our neighbour by a standard we do not apply to
ourselves. If the sinner rebuke sin, who wiU Hsten ? If
the sinner, while rebuking sin, affect a righteous austerity
and assume to be innocent of transgression, who wUl not
scom both him and his rebuke ? Not only has he no right
to rebuke us, but obviously he does not beHeve in his own

272 IHE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM.
rebuke. He is making a mock of us, and discharging his
private spleen through the pure law of God.
4. But here we touch on a question of grave practical
moment. The question is : " Are only the holy to open
their mouths against sin ? Are we all to refrain from rebuke
because we have all come short of the glory of God ? "
There can be no doubt that the holier we are the more
effective our rebukes will be, though, possibly, we shaU be
the more sparing in the use of them ; for we all know that
if any vrise and holy person, whom we profoundly respect,
quietly warn us against our besetting sins, we feel that he has
some right to rebuke, — and the more right, the less need.
When Miss Nightingale went about among the sick soldiers
in the Crimean hospitals, there was no need for her to rebuke
them for profane language or obscene jests, although these
were familiar to many of their lips. They felt they could not
utter them in a presence so kind and pure. Many of them
we are told " folded their hands as if in prayer" whUe she
passed by. And I suppose that if any one of them, from
mere force of habit, had dropped a word unfit for her to
hear, her mere look would have been rebuke enough to
make him wish that he had bitten out his tongue rather than
have uttered it. Do you imagine that when she spoke to a
man, if she ever did, of his faults and sins, he felt that she
had no right to speak, that she was a hypocrite for her pains ?
But why not ? Simply because, as they looked up into that
pure single eye, they could see the splinters in their ovra,
and grew ashamed of them. See, then, what force a holy
character gives to rebuke ! See how a holy character is
itself the most gentle and the most effective rebuke of eril !
If you would reprove deeds of darkness, you must bring
them to the light, not to a darkness only less deep than their
own. But some man wUl say, " We can't aU of us be such saints

THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM. ¦ 273
as that ; and are we to hold our tongues tiU we are ? " God
forbid ! Or by what right would any of us exhort and rebuke
our brethren ? To " hold our tongues" might, indeed, be
very good discipline for many of us ; still, there are times in
which we should and must speak. At such times all depends
on how, in what temper and spirit, we utter our rebuke.
From this man with the beam in his eye we may leam at
least what to avoid. What are his faults ?
His first fault is, that he does not know the beam to be
there. He walks about "staring" at the tiny straws and
splinters m other men's eyes, but does not apprehend the
huge beam that is in his own eye. Now we all know how
irritating that is. If a bad-tempered man lecture us on our
sins of temper, or a niggard on our want of liberality, or a
Pharisee on our lack of rehgion ; if, without any sense of his
own faults, he is for ever rebuking our faults, we resent his
interference ; we wonder how he can have the face to lectare
us on sins which are still more prominent in him than in us :
we are so occupied in considering the beam in his eye that
we cannot recognise the splinters in our own, or make very
light of them. But if he were to come to us confessing and
lamenting his faults, teUing us how they stood in his way,
how they had injured and debased him, how he longed and
strove to be quit of them, we should Hsten to him ii a very
different spirit His confession of sin would quicken our
consciousness of sin, his dread of it would awaken a whole
some dread in us, his endedvour to be quit of it would
stimulate our endeavours. In the light of his confession,
our very splinters would swell into beams ; and finding our
selves so radically diseased and maimed, we should go for
healing to the Great Physician of soiUs.
The second fault of this man is like unto the first. Be
cause he is not conscious of the beam in his own eye, he
assumes airs of moral superiority, and carries himself like a
18

274 THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM.
judge instead of a brother. The parable puts before us a
man who, though worse than others, thinks himself better.
He walks through street and market-place, an incarnate
censure, staring at the splmters in the eyes of all he meets,
and, instead of yielding brotherly help, calls them as criminals
to his bar and condenms them. Hence it is that our Lord
lays such emphasis on the -word " brother," repeating it no
less than three times in this brief parable.
Now if we would consider that every man whom we meet
is our brother, that single consideration would have two
happy effects on us. First, every time we met a man with a
diseased or injured eye, we should say, " He is my brother,
and because I am of one blood with him, I may be afflicted
with the disease from which he suffers, and, at the least,
must be liable to it." And, again, we should say, " He is
my brother, and therefore I must deal tenderly vrith him ;
his pain is my pain, his defect my defect ; I must help him as
I would help myself" Given in this spirit, how wholesome
and precious our rebukes would be ! How gently we should
handle the irritated eye ! how carefully we should endeavour
to remove the mote which impaired the clearness of our
brother's vision !
Put these two pictures side by side, and you wUl not
doubt from which of them we should draw our inspiration.
There goes a judge, immaculate in his own conceit, and
lifted far above the common ran of men ; he stares with cold
rebuke at the splinters which deform all eyes but his, and
condemns in others faults not comparable to the crimes -with
which he pollutes the judgment-seat And here come two
brothers ; and as they faU on each other's neck, they cry,
" Ah, brother, I see you are troubled with the very straws
and splinters which afflict me ! Help me, and let me help
you, that we may both be quit of them."
5. Is not this parable trae to our experience of hfe?

THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM. 275
Does it not contain a warning of which we all stand in need ?
ye's, all, however wise we may be, or however lowly our
estate ? By what e-vU instinct of our nature it is, or what
combination of instinct with circumstance, it is impossible to
say, but somehow it does happen that we all have an inbred
and assured persuasion of our superiority to our neighbours.
We may not acknowledge it ; we may not be conscious of it
even : for it is the beam in our eye, which, as a rale, we do
not "apprehend." But we may become conscious of it, if
we -will ; and we ought, if we can.
Here, for instance, is a woman who does not profess to
be at all original or profound ; she has neither invented
anything for herself, nor studied the methods and inventions
of others deeply : she is merely doing what she has been
accustomed to do all her life. Nevertheless, she has some
where picked up certain habits and modes — methods of
cooking, for example, or of managing a house, or of train
ing children — which she quietly assumes to be, which she
is quite sure are, the very best in the world. She sincerely
pities the poor housewives who follow different traditions,
the poor chUdren who are brought up on a different method,
the poor servants who are managed and taught to go about
their work in a different way. She don't want to boast ;
but for making of butter, or making a bed, or making a
tart, or getting through a spring cleaning, or guiding a
kitchen, or dressing and feeding a baby, she has a calm
profound conviction, unbroken by a single doubt, that she
may back herself against the world ; and were the world
to beat her, she would never know it In all these domestic
matters she has a righteousness of her own, that is, a right
way of her o-wn ; and she has no doubt that her righteous
ness far exceeds that of her sister scribes and Pharisees.
Here, again, is a man of no unusual weight of brain,
vrith comparatively little education and experience. He

276 THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM.
would be unfeignedly shocked at the thought of claiming
superiority over all men, of presenting himself as the very
acme and flower of the human race. Yet unconsciously
he does claim this superiority, and that in many ways.
Take only one of them. He knows nothing of political
economy as a science. He takes aU his political -riews
from the solitary newspaper he reads. He has had no
opportanity of studying the history of nations, of fracing
to their issues the political experiments which have been
repeated again and again from the beginning of the world.
Nevertheless, he believes and appropriates all that his
paper teUs him. He gives " his views," the good man, by
which he means the views of his newspaper, on aU political
topics, and holds himself ccinpetent to pronounce on the
most subtle and complicated political problems. He never
doubts but that he is right, and that all who differ from
him are wrong. He has repeated the same opinions so
often that they must be trae. There are men to whom he
would defer on other points, but on these political points
he will defer to no man, for on these he is above mistake,
infallible as the Pope himself. And nothing seems to shake
his faith, nothing avails to teach him how incompetent he
is to handle questions so large, and which have their roots
so deep in human life and history. I absolutely knew a man
who, though three times bankrupt in ten years, was for ever
urging on the Chancellor of the Exchequer his scheme for pay
ing off the national debt ! He actually dated one or two of
his schemes from a debtors' prison ! Of all husbands the most
obedient, of all men the meekest I have met, and the most in
competent to manage his own affairs, he never for one instant
distrasted his capacity to rule the destinies of Great Britain.
It is against this unconscious self-assumption that our
Lord warns us in this Parable. The very moment tiiat we
assume to be wiser and better than our neighbours, to look

THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM. 277
down on them vrith superior scorn or superior pity, we
begin to carry a beam- in our eye which we do not appre
hend ; and a beam that, whUe impairing our moral vision
in all other respects, wiU sharpen our sight for the straws
and splinters in other eyes. And, perhaps, the most
remarkable point in the parable is, that our Lord seems to
think religious persons specially liable to this strange dis
order of the eye. It was the Scribes and Pharisees, the
most religious men of their time, who judged their brethren,
and condemned almost as many as the/ judged. It was
his disciples who were in danger of tilting at other men's
splinters vrith their beams. It is we, therefore, we who
worship God, who most need to listen and take heed to the
warning. That tooted persuasion of our ovm superiority
to other races and other men which, as we have seen,
infects our common life, is only too apt to taint our very
worship arid to impair our charity. In our religious, even
more than in our domestic and political creed, we are in
danger of accounting ourselves right in that odious sense
which puts all who differ from us in the wrong.
Are all men our " brothers ? " 'What, even " the rest,"
"the refuse," out there in the -wOrld, who make no pro
fession of faith, and attend no place of worship ? We find
it very hard to believe that they are, although our Father
in heaven causes his rain to faU on them, and his sun to
shine on them, and his Spirit to strive with them. We are
tempted to say, ' We believe ; we are members of the
Christian Church ; we help to extend the kingdom of
Christ in the earth. Surely we are somewhat, better than
they ! ' Perhaps we are better : but even if we are, our
brother does not cease to be our brother because he has
been wild and fooHsh and sinful, because he has faUen
before temptations from which we have been kept ; and the
way to win him to a better life is, not to affirm otur supe-

2/8 THE SPLINTER AND THE BEAM.
riority, but to shew that we still hold him for a brother and
would be glad to help him. Even for ourselves it would
be better if, instead of saying, " We beHeve," we were to
consider how little of all that Christ has revealed has yet
come home to our faith ; if, instead of saying, " We are of
the Church," we were to ask, "What has the Church
gained by our adhesion to it ? " if, instead of saying,
" We have helped to extend the kingdom of Christ," we
were to say, " How little we have done to extend his
kingdom, whether in our own or other hearts ! "
And if we find it hard to refrain from judging what we
call "the world," — is it any easier to refrain from judging
what we call " the Church ? " Do the various sects which
compose the Church give each other credit for having
honestly reached their several conclusions, and beHeve that
those who differ from them are as sincere and devout, as
dear to God, as they themselves ? Do they never condemn
their o-wn faults in others ? never snatch at splinters uncon
scious of the beam they carry ? We have need to remember
that this habit of discerning and pluckmg at splinters in
other eyes is the surest proof that a beam is in our own, and
the very beam most fatal to clear spiritual vision and healthy
spiritual life. For no error of creed is half so fatal as the
want of charity which denies the brotherhood of any who
put their trust in Christ. We may have all knowledge, the
faith that removes mountains, and a martyr's zeal ; but if
we have not charity, we have nothing, and are nothing.
And, moreover, we have need to remember that as we are
judge or brother, Christ wiU be Brother or Judge to us.
Judge, and ye shall be judged. Be a brother, and Christ
wiU not be ashamed to caU you brethren. For -with what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Give
judicial measure, and you wUl have judicial measure. Give
fraternal measure, and you wiU have fraternal.

XX.
'$mxh hdsxt 3Mnt
St. Matt. vii. 6.
OF all the minor parables, or proverbs, contained in the
Sermon on the Mount, this perhaps is the most com
monly and the most loosely quoted. There are 'few who
seem to have a clear and definite conception of its original
meaning. The general impression appears to be that it
stands apart, having no connection vrith either what goes
before or what comes after it ; that it is an aphorism thrown
loose upon the world, complete in itself, and to be applied
in any way we think fit to apply it Nor do the Commen
tators yield us much help. Many of them, indeed, take
chapters v. to vii. of St Matthew's Gospel as containing
only brief notes, only " the heads," of the sermon delivered
on the mountain, riot as giving a connected discourse ; and,
naturally, they do not expect to find in it logical sequences
and the Hnks which bind thought to thought Other of the
Commentators have looked for these links — not with the
happiest results. They have been content to find verbal
and formal connections ; to point out how one word may
have suggested another : and hence they have missed those
deeper and more subtle connections and developments
which give force to the thought of every separate sentence.

28o CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE.

If we would understand what our Lord meant, what He
really had in his mind, we shall get Httie help from books ;
we must be at the pains of fraciig out his meaning for
ourselves. I. First of aU, then, let us look carefully at the words He
uses and try to read them in the sense in which they would
be taken by those who heard them.
Give not the holy, or, that which is holy, to the dogs. The
Greek term which our Authorised Version renders "that
which is holy" would be more accurately rendered by "the
holy things." It is a technical term, and signifies the sacri
ficial meats laid upon the altar of God.* Of these meats no
unclean man was permitted to eat ; how much less, then,
an unclean dog ? To the Jewish mind there could hardly
be a more scandalous profanation than for a priest to take
hallowed meats from the altar and cast them to dogs. For
we must remember that to the Jew the dog was not what he
is to us. To us, he is a favourite companion, a faithful
guardian, a pleasant, and often an accomplished, friend. To
the Jew, he was odious and unclean ; even to touch him was
to become unclean. In Jerasalem then, as now through
out the East, the masterless dogs gathered in hordes, prowl
ing through the streets by night, devouring the offal, and at
times attacking the belated traveUer. They were the scaven
gers of the city, and were spared simply because, in those
unsanitary days, they fulfilled that necessary function.
Throughout the Hebrew Scripture the word " dog " is used
as a term of reproach and contempt, just as it was in Europe
through the Middle Ages, when " dog of a Jew," " dog of
an infidel," " dog of a Christian,'' .were phrases common on
* See Leviticus xxii. 6 — 16 in the Septuagint, where t6. S.yia is thus
used several times ; as also in Jeremiah xi. 15, and Haggai ii. 12.
The Fathers apply the same term to the consecrated elements of the
Eucharist.

CASTING- PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. 281
men's lips.* Regarding the dog thus, we can easily con
ceive vrith what horror a Jew would be filled at the mere
notion of giving the holy sacrifices of the altar to the un
clean scavengers of the streets.
" Neither cast ¦ye your pearls before the swine, lest they trample
them under their feet, and turning, rend you." Swine, like
dogs, were pronounced unclean by the Hebrew law. Lazy,
greedy, sensual, self-willed, offensive, they are still held
unclean among all nations — except, perhaps, the Irish.
Men have gone far enough, and low enough, for objects of
worship ; but I do not remember to have read of any tribe
which paid divine honours to the pig. In Judea they had
a more formidable breed of swine than ours, a breed armed
with sharp tasks, with which, when enraged, they would turn
upon a man and rend him.f
Pearls are among the most valued and admired ornaments
of the Orient, and were commonly used as a symbol of what
men held to be precious, especially of the wise sayings of
rabbis and sages.
But where is the sense of casting pearls before swine?
¦Who would think of doing that ? What is the point of like
lihood in so strange a figure as this ? We can see how, if
sacrificial meats were cast to dogs, they would rash upon
them and devour them : but what appetite should swine
* To liken oneself to a dog was, and to this day is, in the East, the
last form of self-debasing humility. Thus, for instance, the traveller
Knox relates a story of a nobleman in Ceylon who, when asked by the
king how many children he had, replied, with the base servility which
a Western finds it so hard to understand, " Your Majesty's dog has
three puppies." Thus, too, Mephibosheth, son of Saul, when he came
trembling before David, said : ' '. 'What is thy servant, that thou shouldest
look upon such a dead dog as I ? " (2 Samuel ix. 8. )
t The word a-rpa^^vres well expressed the quick sharp turn of the
boar ; and the pr/^oiiri. the nature of the wound he inflicts, which is for
midable not so much from its depth as from being a long tearing or
ripping up, or, as we have it, rending. — Trench, in toco.

282 CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE.
have for pearls ? The point is, I believe, that pearls are
like some kinds of grain vrith which swiie are fed ; inso
much that we ourselves caU the smaller sorts of pearls seed-
pearls. If these pearls were cast before swine, they would
rush upon them eagerly, mistaking them for food. So that
the figure suggested to our Lord's hearers by the second
sentence of the Parable would be such as this. There goes
a man with a sieve full of seed-pearls, which he casts before
the greedy swine. The S'wine, having no sense of humour
in them, are enraged at finding hard stones between their
teeth when they looked for soft nutritious grain ; they tam
upon the man, gore and rend him with their tusks, tramp
ling the deceptive pearls under their angry feet.
We are now, I hope, in a position to understand the
words of the Lord Jesus very much as his hearers under
stood them. The first warning is, " Do not give haUowed
meats of the altar to the foul scavenging dogs who haunt
the streets ; " and the general meaning of it may be, " Do
not give holy things to unholy persons." The second
warning is, " Do not cast pearls, instead of grain, before
the greedy swine ; " and its general meaning may be, " Do
not give things of price to those who cannot appreciate
their value."
2. Now these are useful sayings, and they are expressed
in figures so graphic that the world will not willingly forget
them. But was there any need for the Lord Jesus to come
down from heaven to give us such maxims as these —
maxims which, read in this sense, may be easily matched
from Confucius, or Menander, or Epictetas, or even from
any collection of English proverbs ? Can we believe that
He meant no more than we have yet leamed from Him ?
Are these cold prudential aphorisms to be our only reward
for our attempt to enter into his meaning ? We cannot
beHeve it. We know enough of Him who spake as never

CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. 283
man spake to be sure that there must be a deeper and
more spiritual, as weU as a more definite, meaning in his
words. Our only doubt or difficulty is how to reach that
meaning. And here, surely, the context ought to help us.
Let us look, then, at the words which precede this proverb,
and see if they have any help to give. The verses which
immediately precede it contain the parable of the Splinter
and the Beam. They warn us against judging and con
demning in others the very faults of which we ourselves are
guilty. They assure us that so often as we judge our
brother, even though we have not cortimitted his fault, we
sin against duty and charity ; against duty, since God has
reserved all judgment to Himself; against charity, since
God has bidden us love our brother and not judge him.
By the mere act of judging, therefore, we convict ourselves
of a graver fault than that we condemn ; with a beam in
our own eye, we pluck at the splinter in our neighbour's
eye. Is there any connection between that parable of the
Splinter and the Beam, and this proverb about holy things
and dogs, pearls and swine ?
Assuredly there is ; but it is a connection which throws
light on that rather than on this. Indeed, we might think
that the one passage contradicted the other. For, in the
former, we are taught that we are not to judge any man ;
we are warned that, if we do judge others, we condemn
ourselves : while in the latter, we are taught that we are to
judge men, and to condemn some of them as no better than
dogs or swine. They are to be unclean to us, unholy,
contemners and despisers of that which is good; foul,
greedy, sensual, devihsh. In four consecutive verses we
are taught that we are, and that we are not, to judge our
neighbours !
And, indeed, we must do both. The one counsel is not
complete vrithout the other. Let any sage say : " You

284 CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE.
must not judge men : you must have no opinion about
them : you must accept them aU as good, and treat them all
as good; for what are you better than they?" and we
should feel that he had given a command we could not
keep. We should reply : " I do not want to be harsh and
crael in my conceptions of character. I 'wish to think as
kindly of my neighbours as I can. But to have no opinion
of them, to pronounce no verdicts on character — that is
mere nonsense, whoever talks it. I must think about them,
and come to some conclusion about them, or how should I
conduct my business, or vrisely order my friendships, or
take my part in pubHc Hfe ? As I consider them, I can't
help seeing that one man is better than another. If I am
glad to know that all men have more good in them than I
can see, and some men a great deal more good than I gave
them credit for, I cannot but know and admit that some
men are very bad, — unclean as the dogs that roam the
streets, greedy and sensual and filthy as the pigs fattening
in their stye. Would you have me try to please God by
shutting my eyes to the obvious facts of human life, and by
pretending that I don't see what I do see ? " We need not
scrapie to speak thus : we are in good company, in the
very best. For the Lord Jesus Himself says that some men
are as bad as swine and dogs, and that we are to think
them as bad, and to treat them accordingly.
The one parable completes the other. But does it not
contradict the other ? If we say, if we only say it to our
selves, " This man is a very dog ! " and, " That man is no
better than a pig!" have we not both judged and con
demned them ?
That depends on our motive, and spirit, and intention.
If we usurp the seat of judgment, and call our neighbour
to our bar ; and if, after we have heard the case, we say,
•' You are a dog, and I wiU lay my whip on you," obviously

CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. 28S
we judge him ; and, judging him, condemn ourselves, since
we have no right to judge him. But if we say to ourselves,
" Ah, poor fellow ! he is as greedy and sensual, as dead to
all that pertains to the intellect and the spirit as the pigs
there in their stye ; and therefore I must do my best to
help him to a higher life ; therefore, too, I must be careful
how I handle him even when I try to get him out of the
stye:" — if we say that, is that to judge him? Is it not
simply to take thought for him, and consider how we may
most wisely and kindly serve him ? To a dog the holy
meat of the altar is no better than carrion. To swine
pearls of price are of less value than common grain : to
give them pearls is not to serve them, but to exasperate
them and make them hate us. And we must remember
that when we have to deal with men who have sunk hog-
ward or dogward. If we would do them any good, we
must feed them, as God feeds us all, with food convenient -
for them, food adapted to their need and appetite. The
truths which are dearest to us would be incomprehensible
to them. We must meet them on their own ground, and
try patiently, littie by little, and step by step, to lead them
higher. When, therefore, our Lord says, " Give not the holy
things to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before
swine," He does not contradict his former saying, " Judge
not, lest ye be judged." He would still have us be our
neighbour's brother, not his judge. If we think, if we
know, any of them to be degraded by lust and passion to
the level of unclean beasts, we are not coldly to condemn
them for their degradation, nor to leave them in it.- Nor,
on the other hand, in attempting to help and redeem them,
are we to offer them hallowed things and things of price
which they are sure to profane and despise, since that
would be only to add to their guilt. We are, rather, to

286 CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE.
adapt ourselves, so far as we honestly or wisely can, to
their low moral conditions, to take thought and pains to
adapt the traths and gifts of the Spirit to their necessities
and powers.
3. And now let us read the passage once more : " Give
not the holy things to the dogs ; neither cast ye your pearls
before the svrine, lest they trample them under their feet,
and, taming, rend you." Have we gained any fresh insight
into it ? Not much, I fear. It may be hoped that some of
irs terms have a new and more definite meaning for us. We
can now see, perhaps, that, instead of contradicting the
parable of the Splinter and the Beam, it supplements that
parable and makes it complete. But, nevertheless, if we
were asked to define the precise meaning of the passage, to
say exactly what we suppose to have been in our Lord's
mind when He uttered it, — ^who the dogs were, and what
holy things were not to be given to them ; who the s-wine
were, and what pearls were not to be cast before them, — we
might StiU find it hard to reply. Before we shall be in any
position to reply, we must recall the main drift of the Ser
mon on the Mount Here, as we might naturally expect,
lies the trae key to the passage : the Sermon itself inter
prets, as it should interpret, the several sentences of which
it is composed.
As we stady this Sermon we find its main topic to be the
righteousness, or right rule of life, which Christ came to
teach, and its immeasurable superiority over the righteous
ness which was the highest knovm to man before He came,
the righteousness of the law. It opens with benedictions on
virtaes which were not then accounted -virtaes, but which
are nevertheless to be the characteristic virtues of the new
righteousness. It proceeds to affirm tiiat these -virtues com
pose a righteousness which far exceeds that of the Scribes
and Pharisees, the accepted and honoured exponents of the

CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. 287
Law. All through the Sermon, sometimes latent, but com
monly expressed, there runs this comparison between the
old righteousness and the new; until the closing parable,
that of the two men, one of whom built his house on the
sands, while the other got down to the rock, sets forth the
fate of those who trusted in the old righteousness and of
those who trasted in the new. In short, the Sermon on the
Mount, besides other and diviner qualities, is a true work of
art ; it is as logical and sequent a discourse on one leading
topic, dominated by one ruling motive, as though it had a
text or thesis, and divisions, and all the customary logical
forms. It is only as we keep this main topic in mind that
we can interpret its parts and sentences.
We have already seen how it helps to interpret the para
ble of the Splinter and the Beam. "When we considered
that parable, we saw that the Lord had the Scribes and
Pharisees and their righteousness in view. They were the
men who, carrying beams in their own eyes, were for ever
plucking at the splinters ui their neighbours' eyes. "You
must not do that," said Jesus to his disciples : " you must
have a higher righteousness than theirs. You must not be
so quick as they are to see faults in your neighbour ; you
must be more quick than they are to discover faults nearer
home." And it is not to be supposed that in the very next sen
tence of his Sermon the Master had dropped his dominant
theme. He was still thinking of their righteousness and of
the righteousness that was to exceed theirs. One character
istic feature of their righteousness, as He Himself had just
pointed out,* was its ostentation. They did that which was
good, " to be seen of men." They said their prayers at the
comers of the streets, so timing their walk as that the hour
of prayer might catch them where the throng was thickest,
• Matt. vi. I— 18.

288 CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE.
in order that, strack by the length and fervour of their
supplications, the crowd might exclaim, " O, what holy men !"
When they fasted, instead of afflicting their souls and
mortifying the flesh in secret, they disfigured their faces, that
their sour looks might proclaim their pious austerity to all
they met They gave alms as they went in and out of the
crowded gates of the Temple, or threw them into the vessels
"shaped like trumpets" — O appropriate symbol! — which
stood in or near " the Treasury," for the reception of offer
ings, that their shekels might rattle in the ears of men and
obtain for them a good report They had their reward.
They were seen of men. The fame of their piety went
abroad. But were those who admired and praised them the better
for it ? They were the worse rather than the better. They
got a false conception of piety, of religion. They came to
think of it as a thing beyond their reach, as proper to Scribes
and Pharisees, to wise men who could frame devout sen
tences, and austere men who could endure long fasts, and
rich men who could bestow much alms. They admired it — •
from a distance. It did not quicken their consciences, nor
touch their hearts.
The Lord Jesus had already taught his disciples that
such a righteousness was self-righteousness and self-display
rather than piety toward God and charity toward man ; that
its bad motives tainted its good deeds with corraption. He
now teaches them that such a righteousness is a profanation
of holy things. Prayer is the confidential intercourse of the
soul with the Father who is in secret. Fasting is self-denial
for benevolent and spiritual ends, not self-display. Charity
is doing good hoping for nothing again ; it is the hidden
treasure of a spirit reconcUed to God and man. To take
this secret intercourse into the pubHc streets, to turn self-
denial into self display, to parade before the multitude acts of

CASTING PEARLS BEFC RE S'.VINE. 289
kindness which ceased to be kind when they were known
was to give the holy things to dogs ; it was to desecrate that
which was most sacred. To drag these interior and hidden
treasures to the glare of day, and bid men count them up
and admire them, was to cast pearls before s-wine. The
devout and tender moods of the soul, the moods in which
it rises into communion vrith God or confers benefits on
man, were sacred, precious, inestimable. Unspiritual men
could not- comprehend them, nor sympathize with them :
they would only turn them into a jest or whet a sneer upon
them. To expose them to such treatment was to profane
them, and to take nothing but loss by the profanation. It
was to break through the sacred modesty and reserve in
which our deepest emotions instinctively veU themselves, to
make them common instead of sacred, to vulgarize and
desecrate them. In fine, it was to give the holy things of
the interior temple to the dogs, and to cast the pearls of the
spiritual treasury to the swine.
No more emphatic confirmation of our Lord's warning
can be conceived than that which the history of the Scribes
and Pharisees suppHes. They found, if ever men did, the
dogs and s-wine only too ready to turn upon them with task
and tooth. They aimed, not so much at being pious, as at
vrinning a great reputation for piety. And, no doubt, there
were simple and sincere souls who thought only too weU of
them. But the multitude were not deceived by their osten
tations, simulations, or exaggerations of devotion, austerity,
and charity. The corhmon people, as we leam from the
Talmud,* gave them nicknames, which prove that the
Pharisees, in place of vrinning honour, were bringing religion
into contempt. They called one sort of them Kizai, or
"bloody-browed Pharisee," because, walking with closed
eyes in order that they might not see the women they passed
* Talmud of Babylon, Sola 22 b. 19

290 CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE.
in the streets, they were for ever braising their foreheads
against walls and piUars. Another sort they called Medinkia,
or " the pestle Pharisee," because as a sign of modesty and
humility they held themselves bent double, like the handle
of the ancient pestle. Another they called Shikmi, or " the
Pharisee of the strong shoulders," for the habit they had o
walking with bent back, as though bearing the whole burden
of the Law. The " what-there-is-to-do-I-do Pharisee," and
the " dyed Pharisee " whose religion was soon washed out oi
him, were other varieties of the same class. This was how
"the dogs" and "the swine'' of Jewry "turned" on the
Scribes and Pharisees, and " rent " them in pieces. These
" hypocrites " took their fasts, their prayers, their charities
into the streets ; they thrast the most secret and sacred acts
of the soul upon the crowd ; and the crowd, instead of imitat
ing and admiring them, turned them into a jest and theme for
derisive laughter. They profaned the religious habits and
emotions which they so highly valued and yet so little under
stood ; and the crowd could see no reason why it should
reverence what they had profaned.
That which the Lord Jesus here warns us against, there
fore, the exact point to which, as I take it. He directs our
thoughts, is that profanation of the personal religious life
which consists in publishing its secrets before the world, in
much talk about our moods and frames and feelings, in the
ostentatious discharge of religious duties or an ostentatious
observance of forms of worship. The soul is a temple ;
and this temple, besides that outer court of which all who
care to enter it are free, and that inner court sacred to
friendly feet, is also a holiest of all which should be open to
none but God. Here, vrithin the veil, there are laid up before
Him "holy things," precious "pearls," the mementos of
whatever is most sacred in our experience, the sacrifices we
have made for Him, the self-denials by which we have sub-

CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. 291
dued the flesh, the charities by which we have ministered to
our brethren, the gifts of grace which we have won by
fervent effectual prayer ; and these are not to be laid bare to
every eye, nor exposed to the coarse handling of the multitade.
In the primitive Church, when the public service was over
and the faithful were separating themselves from their retir
ing neighbours, to gather round the table of the Lord and
eat and drink vrith Him, the deacons of the Church cried,
t6. s,yi.a tols i-pois, " the holy things to the holy persons," thus
" fencing " the table, and warning the unbeHeving and dis
obedient from the feast. And so often as rade feet would
press into the secret places of our spiritual life, or we our
selves are tempted to profane them by parading our
devotion or our charity before men, the old warning cry issues
from the lips of the Master Himself, "The holy only to the
Holy;" and we "shut the door" of our " secret chamber,"
and speak with the Father who is in secret and who seeth in
secret, and the place on which we stand becomes holy ground,
and the poor dwarfed chamber is transfigured into a temple
suffused vrith the splendoiurs of a Divine communion.
We should greatly misunderstand our Lord did we suppose
that He intends any hint-against social or public worship, or
in any way to suggest that the traths of the Gospel, even the
most spiritual and profound, are to be concealed from the
public eye. He Himself has taught us to unite in common
worship, to love and value the communion of the saints.
He has taught us to give the Gospel to all men as freely and
as fully as it has been given to us. But, none the less, if
we have a trae devotion, and a true charity, if our godliness
be vital, sincere, deep, it will have its reserves. We shall
not place all our religion in endless talk about rehgion, nor in
attending pubHc means of grace, nor in outward forms or
observances of any kind. There wiU be gracious experi
ences, communions, straggles, sacrifices, acts of service and

292 CASTING PEARLS BEFORE SWINE.
charity which wiU be 'known only to our Father : there -will
be pearls which we shall not cast before s-wine, hallowed
things of the altar which we shall not give to the dogs, no,
nor to our most inward friends ; just as there are sins which
we shall confess to no priest but the High Priest of our
profession, to no friend but the Friend who sticketh
closer than a brother.
And just now, when many have so strong a faith in talk
and organization and pubUcity as that they are losing much
of the bloom and delicacy of the spiritual life ; when so
many pray in pubHc who seldom pray at home, or give
donations that -wiU be paraded in a published list, but hardly
ever help a friend in secret, or rush from one religious service
to another, but seldom deny themselves to serve a neighbour,
— we greatly need to take our Lord's admonition to heart.
The true strength of our life lies in a constant secret feUow-
ship with Him ; and the effect of this fellowship will come
out in a course of conduct more sweet and pure and gentle,
rather than in much " babble," or noisy fervours, or osten
tatious zeal.
If we have this hallowed life, this heavenly treasure, let us
not give that which is holy to the dogs, nor cast our pearls
before s-wine. ¦When we fast, when we chasten our souls
from their lusts, let us not be of a morose countenance, and
repel men by our sour looks. Let us pray behind closed
doors as well as in the open sanctuary. ¦When we give alms,
let it not be that the trumpets may sound before or after us.
And for this secret righteousness our Father who seeth in
secret will reward us, not openly* perhaps, but with grace,
in secret, by virtue of which we shaU walk before Him with
a more perfect heart
* The word "openly," or, rather, the Greek word for "openly," is
not found in some of the oldest Greek MSS. at St. Matt. vi. 4, 6,
and 18.

XXL
St. Luke vii. 40—43.
THROUGHOUT his ministry the Lord Jesus spake
" the present trath," the truth adapted to the time and
the conditions of the time. His words, his parables, were
suggested by the occasion on which they were spoken, and
fitted into it Hence we can only catch the full drift of his
words as we acquaint ourselves with the circumstances and
the persons to whom they were addressed.
I. This parable of the Two Debtors was spoken in the
house of one Simon, a Pharisee, and in the hearing of a cer
tain woman who was a sinner, and had found, in Christ, the
Friend of sinners. The two debtors of the parable heard
the parable ; he to whom little had been forgiven sat, as host,
at the head of the table ; she to whom much had been for
given stood, an uninvited guest, at the feet of Christ The
story which fell from the lips of Christ was the spiritual sum
and interpretation of the scene around Him. To understand
the story we must glance at the scene.
Simon had invited Jesus to eat with him. We cannot tell
what motive induced a Pharisee, and apparently a Pharisee
of the straitest sort, to desire the company of the Nazarene
who was so obnoxious to his class. It has been supposed
that he was moved by gratitude ; that, having been healed

294 THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
by Christ, he desired to make him some slight retam. For
the credit of humanity let us hope that that is not trae. It
is well nigh incredible that even a Pharisee should deal so
niggardly and hardly -with a benefactor as Simon dealt vrith
Jesus. Let us rather hope that he had been strack with
some passing word uttered by Him who spake as never man
spake, and had resolved to examine — and as a mler and
teacher of the people he was bound to examine — the claims
of Jesus for himself
But whatever the motive of the invitation, Jesus accepts
the invitation — ^mark the grace and comfort of that — and
comes into the Pharisee's house. Mark the grace and com
fort of Christ's acceptance of the Pharisee's hospitality,
whatever its motive ; for it teaches us to hope and believe
that on any invitation, however poor and unworthy. He vriU
come to us, and come to give us as much as we can take.
If there be but a single spark of holy desire burning amid
manifold obstructions in our hearts. He vriU come and seek
to fan it to a flame.
The Pharisee asks Jesus to his house, but the Sinner
comes unasked into the presence of Jesus. We need not
curiously inquire into her motive. It is clear and patent
Love is her inspiration, the love of one who has sinned
much, and to whom much has been forgiven. It seems
strange to us that a woman of her evil notoriety should be
allowed to enter the guest-chamber of a rigid moralist, a
strict Pharisee. But a sHght acquaiitance -with the social
customs of the East — where often the meals are aU but
public, and aU comers welcome ; where, as the lowest slave
or peasant may rise to be a minister of state, our class dis
tinctions are unknown, and the feeling of a common humanity
is infinitely stronger than vrith us — ^greatiy detracts from
the strangeness. In her earnest longing and devotion, too,
she would make a way, if she could not find one, to His

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 295
presence whom she loved much, and whose service was her
new chief joy.
And she did love Him. He probably had spoken the
first words of a pure tenderness that she had heard for many
years, and taught that weary heart, weary with its long
straying, to find rest. He had shewn her the possibihties
of virtue stiU open to her, and had lifted up a gate of hope
when her dark path seemed all closed in. And she, poor
outcast, is wholly won to his service. She lavishes on Him
every mark of love and reverence. Standing behind Him
as He reclined at table, she weeps at the memory of his
redeeming goodness, her tears falling on his feet. Then the
tear-stained feet must be dried, and she wipes them vrith
her unpent hair, thin now, perchance, and -with many a streak
of prematare grey. Stooping to wipe his feet, she takes
courage to press them vrith her polluted lips, and finds a
cleansing virtue in those blessed feet which were nailed, for
our advantage,, to the bitter cross. It is a pathetic scene ;
and that incident of the dishevelled tresses is of a tender
beauty not easily matched. " The hair," says St Paul, " is
the glory of the woman," and this glory she devotes to his
service whose forgiving love had made her a " woman " once
more. What is hy^hest and best in us is baser than that
which is lowest in Christ, finds its true honour in subjection
to Him, its true use in doing Him service. We may well
give our " glory " to Him who for us gave up the glory He
had with the Father before the world was..
The Lord Jesus does not shrink even from the harlot's
touch and adoration. He knows what it aU means ; that
Hps, which cannot speak for sighs, are faltering out love in
kisses ; that, in breaking the alabaster box and anointing his
feet -with the costly ointment vrith which she once adorned
herself, she is renouncing her eril courses, seizing the king
dom of heaven with a forcible con-vulsive grasp ; that, in

296 THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
devoting the glory of her hair, she is devoting her whole
body, soul, and spirit to his ser-rice. Jesus, the Saviour,
does not shrink ; but Simon, the Pharisee, does. He can
not read the thoughts and intents of the heart. He has
no conception of a pollution which is not external and
notorious, or of a holiness which is not formal. He is
shocked, indignant — sees only the sinner in the penitent :
he is perplexed and bewUdered — cannot understand how
any man who pretends to be religious and a teacher of re
ligion should suffer the -rile to approach him. But, though
he is perplexed, he does not ask for an explanation. Like
the Pharisee he was, he begins to " speak within himself" —
to chop logic, to utter harsh hasty condemnations. He
frames this dUemma in his thoughts : — " This man, if he
were a prophet, would have known who and what manner
of woman she is that toucheth him ; for "¦ — and one can
imagine -with what an air of intense -rirtaous disgust he
would draw himself up — "she is a sinner. He is not a pro
phet if he does not know what she is, for the prophet is a
discemer of spirits ; and he is not a prophet if he does know
what she is, for no prophet would suffer the touch of one so
vile." Ah ! he did not know that of which he spake. Yet there
is something to be said for him. We cannot expect even a
Pharisee to be wiser than his generation — though too often
he affects to be at least that — or than his class. And the
Jews and Pharisees of his day held that every prophet was
a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and
that the greatest of the prophets, the Messiah, would possess
this divine instinct in its full perfection. In the Messiah
they, like Simon, expected one who would know what was
in them, and not need that any should testify of them.
Hence Nathanael, so soon as Jesus had shewn Himself
master of his spiritual secret, cries, " Whence knowest thou

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 2l,;
me ? " and at once concludes, " Thou art the Son of God ;
thou art the King of Israel." Hence also the Samaritans,
so soon as they are persuaded that Jesus can tell them " aU
that ever they did,'' instantly acknowledge Him to be " the
Christ of God." Hence, too, Simon shapes his dilemma,
" This can never be the Prophet sent from God ; for either
he does not know this woman what she is, and then he
has not the prophetic gift ; or knovring her, he suffers her
to touch him, and then he has not the prophetic sanctity."
It was not bad logic for a Pharisee. It indicates that he
was doing his proper work — testing the claims of one who
claimed to be both a Prophet and a Saviour. It indicates
also that he was a Pharisee rather than a man, and had
lost the power to do that work. He knows not, he is no
longer capable of judging, either the woman, or the Prophet,
or himself. All his conclusions are erroneous : in the peni
tent woman he sees only an abandoned, irredeemable sinner;
he supposes himself to be better than she is, and wiser than
Jesus ; he virtually affirms that the true Prophet is not and
cannot be the Friend of Sinners. There is something to be
said for him, but not much. He was, perhaps, trying to do
his duty, but all the man being swallowed up in the Jew
and the Pharisee, he was no longer capable of doing it.
To the inward process of Simon's thought the Lord Jesus
replies -with the parable of the Two Debtors. There is much
grace and condescension in this reply. Simon had invited
Jesus to his house, yethad not treated Him with the usual cour
tesies and honours shewn to a guest — had saluted Him with
no kiss, given Him no water for his feet, poured no fragrant
nard upon his head. At his own table he had sat in harsh
judgment on the Guest to whom he had been openly rade —
first treating Him as an inferior, and then inwardly condemn
ing Him as an impostor. But Jesus does not meet open
rudeness vrith open rebuke. He stoops to -rindicate Plim-

298 THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.

self, and hides even his vindication in a parable, the key
to which only Simon held. Not only does He spare the
Pharisee an open humiliation. He also affords him the very
proof for which he was asking. Simon had secretly said
within himself. This man is no prophet, for He cannot read
character and thought. And Jesus repHes by readmg his
character, by answering his unspoken thoughts. Was not
this a very gracious Guest and Teacher ?
But his fidelity is equal to his grace, and is indeed a part
of it. The Parable sets forth very plainly the spiritaal con
dition both of the Pharisee and the Penitent " Thou and
she, both are sinners, both debtors, though one may owe
more than the other, and neither of you is able to pay
his debt. You cannot meet the claim for fifty pence
any more than she can meet the claim for five hundred
pence." This was faithful speaking, surely; and would
have been a most surprising revelation to Simon had he
carried an open ear. He a sinner — he, the devout Phari
see, who gave tithes of all he possessed ! He not able
to pay his way vrith God— he, who rather thought God in
debt to him !
And after this fidelity what mercy, what tendemess are
in the words, "And when they had nothing to pay, he
frankly forgave them both t" Ah, Simon, if ear and heart
were open now, how happy were you, how blessed 1
The deahng of Christ with this blind Pharisee is very
admirable. But is his dealing vrith us less admirable?
Nay, verily : for He comes to us as he went to Simon,
meeting our thought to -widen it, supplying our want to
deepen it. If we are trying to discover the trae Prophet,
or the trae Faith, or the trae good of life. He vrill help us,
giving us trath as we are able to bear it, but making every
fresh discovery of truth a mean to larger discoveries. If we
are exercised in our thoughts and desires about any one

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 299
form of good or trath, longing for that and speakings of that
within ourselves, He vrill give us that ; but, having received it,
we shall find it deepen the very want it suppHes, and excite
new stronger cravings for trath and goodness. So, too, if
Jesus came to Simon to con-rince him of sin, and then to
proclaim the forgiveness of sins, He comes in like manner
to us. As we listen to his word we, to our no small surprise
and consternation, find that we have ran in debt to God
and have "nothing to pay " our debt with ; the sense of sin
oppresses and afflicts us ; and even as we are foreboding
arrest and judgment, lo. He comes again, to announce a
frank forgiveness, to cancel our debt and set us free !
The Pharisee is very hard of hearing. Simon does not
profit by the courtesy and grace of Christ. Although the
parable was introduced by the emphatic words, "Simon, I
have somewhat to say to thee" he does not take it as ad
dressed to him, or as having any bearing on his spiritual
condition. When the Lord Jesus, having spoken the para
ble, asks, " Tell me, therefore, which of them will love
him most ? " he calmly answers, as one who has no personal
interest in the question, " I judge him to whom most was
forgiven." Delicate courtesy and indirect rebuke having
failed to awaken the man slumbering vrithin the Pharisee,
the Lord Jesus breaks through all reserve and utters open
rebuke. This, too, is part and parcel of his love. For,
surely, if a man be hard of hearing, so that when you speak
gently to him he cannot gather what yet it gravely concerns
him to know, it is the part of kindness to raise one's voice
and speak to him in loud tones, even though the tones be
somewhat shriU and harsh. If a man is deeply in debt, but,
negHgent of habit and careless of accounts, does not know
that he owes a doit, is it not more friendly to make hin:
listen while you teU him how deeply he is involved, even
though you can only beat down his negligence vrith severity,

300 THE- PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
than to let him remain ignorant of his condition tiU the •
officer hale him before the judge, and the judge cast him
into a prison from which there is no release till the utter
most farthing be paid ?
In love, then, Christ utters open rebuke. "He turned
to the woman and said, Seest thou this woman ? " Simon
had not seen the woman yet ; as yet, he had seen only the
sinner. Look, then, on the woman at last, O Pharisee.
Look upon her in the light of the parable you have just
heard. Look on thyself too, for as yet thou hast not seen
thyself — the Pharisee hiding the man from thy incurious
eyes. She ! does not she love much ? And you, how much
do you love ? You gave no water to the weary Master,
though that be the common rite of hospitality. You saluted
Him with no kiss, though that be the common sign of friend
ship and welcome. You poured no fragrant ointment on
his head, though that be the common sign of joy and
festivity. You have sat noting his every action -with austere
eyes, judging and misjudging Him in your heart But this
woman, this sinner, O righteous Pharisee, has repaired all
thy omissions. For water she has washed his feet vrith
tears, wiping them with the tangled tresses of her hair. For
the kiss on cheek and brow, she has not ceased to kiss his
feet. For the oU of anointing, she has brought the precious
ointment which once enhanced her beauty. In place of
judging and misjudging, she has worshipped Him, lavishing
on Him every token of a pure reverent love. She loves
much — and her love is the open sign of her forgiveness.
Thou poor blind Pharisee ! If love be the proof of forgive
ness, how much hast thou, lo-ring so little, been forgiven ?
Let us take warning by the example of Simon. For if
the 'gracious accents of love and in-ritation do not move us,
Christ wUl " change his voice." As we grow deaf, his voice
will sound rougher and louder^ for He loves us too much ,

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 301
not to make us hear ; till at last, if we harden ourselves
against Him, and will not hear his voice, it wiU peal through
the trump of judg.ment, and awaken us with terrible shocks
of surprise. It is our happiness to have a gentle Teacher —
a Teacher who does not, unless our obstinate inattention
compel Him, " lift up his voice." But if we wiU not listen,
if we will not yield to the gentler ministries of his grace,
and follow the impulses to obedience quickened in us by
his love. He can, simply because he loves us, be very stern,
and speak in tones of rebuke which we cannot help but
hear. And, on the other hand, if we listen, his voice grows ever
sweeter, his »bearing more gracious. The woman who was
a simer gained no immediate response to her service.
Christ speaks to Simon before He speaks to her. But when
He tams from the Pharisee to the Penitent, how tender
and gracious ,are the words of his mouth. He gives her
absolution: "Thy sins, though many, are forgiven." He
teaches her truth : " Thy faith hath saved thee." He urges
her to duty : " Go in peace." And in these three words
spoken to the penitent harlot, we have the abstract and
. brief chronicle o his deaHngs -with us. His voice, the
voice which at first rebuked us for our sins, grows very
tender so soon as we confess our sins with a contrite heart,
and renounce the e-ril habits of our life. Whether we owe
much or little, this Gracious Creditor frankly forgives us —
frankly ; there is no reserve in his pardon, He is wholly
reconciled to us. " Thy sins, whether many or few, are all
forgiven thee," is the absolution He pronounces on all who
truly repent them of their sins. And, to absolution, He adds
instruction. Just as He taught the poor woman to whom
He forgave so much that it was not her regret for the past
by which she was saved, nor her good resolves for the
future, but that faith which had instantly closed with his

302 THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
offer of grace, and which, linking on her life to his, had
secured strength for purity; so also He early teaches us
that we are saved by faith, that our faith is the -rictory
which overcomes the world, that only as we are one with
Him by vital faith can we either be redeemed from past
offences or strengthened for the trials which await us. And,
to instraction. He adds command. We are not to stay
weeping at his feet, or rapt in the joy of an intimate com
munion vrith Him. The world of duty awaits us. We are
to go back into it, and do all things as unto Him, that we
may enter into peace. By a happy accident the very last
word flashed along the first electric wire that was laid be
tween England and America was " Forward." ' And this is
the first and last word of the Master to those who believe,
" Forward." Don't stand weeping over-long about the
sinful past Don't be overmuch taken up with present joys.
Redeem the time. Use the hours as they pass. Forget
that which is behind. Reach forth to that which is before.
Live so that each to-morrow find you further than to-day.
II. Now this Parable suggests a question of grave im
portance, a question the answer to which branches out into
many forms of practical trath. Indeed the question is
suggested both by the Parable and by the Narrative of
which it forms part. In the Parable, the Debtor who owes
five hundred pence seems to have the advantage over the
Debtor who owes but fifty. More is forgiven him, and he
loves more ; he is quit of the larger debt, and proves the
better man. In the Narrative, the Woman who is a sinner
seems, in like manner, to have the advantage over the
man who is a Pharisee, the harlot over the devotee. She
is more open to the words of Christ, and, once forgiven,
shews incomparably the warmer love. Now if this Parable
and Narrative stood alone, if they were not backed up by

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 303
many passages in the Gospels which leave the same im
pression on our minds, we might not care to raise the
question. Whether or not it is well to have sinned much —
whether the greatest love springs from the most heinous
transgressions, just as the fairest flowers and most fruitful
.trees spring from a plentifully manured soil ? But they do
not stand alone. The impression they make is deepened
as we listen to other Parables, as we tarn to other Narra
tives. Looking into the glass of the Word, we perpetually
see publicans and harlots pressing into the kingdom of
God before ralers and righteous men. Listening to the
songs of heaven, we constantly hear the richer tones of a
profounder joy over one sinner reclaimed from the error o'
his ways than over ninety and nine just persons who need
no repentance. In the Parable of the Two Sons, as in that
of the Two Debtors, the advantage seems to lie with the
more sinful and rebellious. The Son who when in-rited to
work in his father's -rineyard replies, " I go, sir," never gets
there ; whUe the Son who says, " I vrill not," afterward
repented and went So, again, in the Parable of the Pro
digal Son, the Elder Brother who has served his father
many years, who has never strayed from home nor at any
time transgressed his father's commandment, — for him no
music sounds, no feast is spread, he has never had so much
as a kid that he might make merry vrith his friends ; but no
sooner does the Younger Brother return, the Prodigal who
had wandered into a far country and wasted his substance
in riotous living, than the best robe is brought forth, the
fatted calf is kiUed, and the whole house is ablaze with
festive Hghts and trembles to the merry dance. So, once
more, in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican :
the PubHcan who has broken both the moral and the
ceremonial law is preferred before the Pharisee who, if
somewhat Hfted up at the thought of his unwonted virtue.

304 THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
has nevertheless an unusual -rirtue to boast, in that he is
free from the sins of the market and the flesh, in that he is
neither an extortioner nor an adulterer, and has dUigently
laboured for that righteousness which is of the Law. So
that many passages, many parables, tend in the same
direction, and give the preference to the -rile and sinful
over the moral and the righteous; law-breakers have the
upper hand of the law-abiding : and those who have plunged
into the foul stye' of fleshly lusts seem nearer to heaven —
for love is heaven-7-than those who loathe it and flee from
it. Is it, then, an advantage to have offended much, to have
gone far and deep into sin? Is abstinence from gross
transgressions an evil rather than a good ? Is it credible
that the more a man has laid waste the nobler factUties and
passions of the soul, yoking them to fleshly lusts which war
against the soul, that the more deeply he has sunk into the
slough of self-will and sensuality — and sin includes all this :
— ^is it credible that the man who has done aU this is there
by made the more capable of rising to the fuU height of the
nature he has abused, and exercising that love which likens
man to God ? It is not credible. To suppose it credible
is to utter a monstrous hbel against God and man. Never
theless the utterances and parables which seem to support
this -riew subserve a most useful purpose; they contain
traths -\vhich we are very apt to neglect, and suggest warn
ings of which we stand ui constant need.
I. For observe, first, that Flagrant Sinners are much
more likely to discover that they are Sinners than Morahsts
and Ritualists. It is much more probable that the man who
owes five hundred denarii — about .;^i8o of our money —
-will perceive that he is in debt, and be impressed with a
sense of his indebtedness, than the man who owes fifty
denarii, or about ;£"i8. The notorious harlot, the extor-

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 305
tionate publican, whom all their neighbours regard as
sinners, making no secret of their opinion, are much more
likely to acknowledge their transgression, and have their
sin always before them, than the strict Pharisee whom al
the neighbours hold to be a saint It is nothing wonderful
that, of the Two Sons, he who said, " I wiU not go," when
asked to work in the father's vineyard, afterward repented
and went ; or that he who said, " I go, sir,'' quite meaning
it at the moment, afterward changed his mind and did not
go : the offence of the first was so flagrant, so glaring, that,
when his passion cooled, he could hardly fail to see it and
repent of it ; while the second if, when on his way to the
vineyard, he were tempted to turn aside to some more
pleasant occupation, could always comfort himself -with his
good intention, and, because he meant to go, fail to see the
sin of not going after alL It is quite in harmony vrith our
experience of human nature that the poor Prodigal, all his
substance wasted — ^homeless, foodless, smitten with despair,
should long for the comfort and plenty of his father's house;
and that the obedient homekeeping Brother should quite
forget both that he had ever broken any commandment and
that he had enjoyed aU his father's goods as though they
had been his own. It is not better to owe five hundred
pence than fifty, to be an extortionate Publican rather than
a religious Pharisee, a Prodigal rather than an obedient son.
But, nevertheless, it is very true that the larger our debt
the njore likely we are to be oppressed by it; that the
worse our life the more Hkely we are to confess how bad it
is ; that the farther we have strayed from it the more likely
we are to long for the home we have forsaken, and to re
turn to it. It is very trae that, if we owe little, we are in
danger of forgetting that we owe anything ; that, if our life
has been in the mam right, we are in danger of forgetting
how often we have been quite wrong in heart and motive ;
20

3o6 THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
that, if we have been on the whole dutiful sons, we are in
danger of forgetting that our obedience has been far from
perfect. And these are the traths set forth in the Parables
of our Lord. They yield no encouragement to sin; but
they discover the peril of those very just persons who,
while they judge flagrant sinners very harshly, suppose that
they have no need of repentance. To these the Parables
yield a very grave and a very necessary admonition.
2. Observe, secondly, that the Much and the Littie of
Sin are for the most part Measures of Conscience, not of
Iniquity. The Woman who was a sinner had openly
violated the laws of God and man, and at last had become
bitterly conscious of her sin. The man who was a Pharisee
had kept friends with the world and the world's law — out
wardly at least, and on the whole. But though he had not
openly broken through the hedge of God's commandments,
he was covertly creeping along it on the farther side, or
coming and going through the gaps which other men had
made. Scrupulous in the matter of tithes and ceremonies,
yet, if any of the fathers had made void the commandments
of God with their vain traditions, he did not scruple to
follow the fathers. He was self-confident when he ought to
have been humble. He was hard in his judgments, narrow
in his views, utterly mistaken in his interpretations of
character. Though the Woman weeps bitter tears of
penitence, he can only see the sinner in her, not the peni
tent Though Jesus speaks a parable expressly to him and
about him, he does not catch its drift, his mind not being
open to the trath. Though the Son of Man came, as the
holy prophets foretold, to seek and to save that which was
lost, no sooner does He permit one of the lost to touch
Him than Simon concludes Him an impostor and no
prophet There he sits, looking with austere eyes on a
scene that might weU have touched his heart, and condemn-

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 307
ing with self-righteous indignation One whose sandals he
had not troubled himself, and was not worthy, to unloose.
He is wholly lacking, though he be so pious a man, in
humility, in insight, in charity; but, because he sins in a
decorous religious way, he has no sense of his defects, no
consciousness of his sins. After all, he was deeper in God's
debt than the poor harlot whom he scorned. His circum
stances had been happier, his temptations not so great.
The best teaching, and the holiest influences of the time were
at his conimand. But he takes the good and perfect gifts
lavished upon him simply as the reward of his virtue : he '
does not perceive that they all come dovra from the Father
of Lights, and that, as they all come from God, he owes all
to God. And, despite his advantages and gifts, he has
sunk into the most inward and fatal sins — those sins of the
spirit which are far harder to eradicate than sins of the
flesh. He is arrogant, vindictive, intolerant He cannot
recognize trath even when Truth Incarnate speaks with
him. He is insensible to the touch of Divine Love. He
is aU fenced about vrith dogma, all hardened with spiritual
pride. So, again, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Elder
Brother has never wandered from his father's home : but, oh,
how far has he wandered from his father's heart who, when
the mansion is aU aflame vrith joy, wanders in the darkness
without and wiU not go in ! He prides himself on being a
dutiful son ; but where is his duty now that he meets his
father's tender entreaties with suUen reproach? How can
he be a good son who is so bad a brother ? He has never
known the misery of remorse, of wasted years, of a hopeless
future. He. has been always in the father's house. Yet,
after all, has he so much of his father's spirit as the Prodigal
who, that he may re-enter the home, will beg the place and
duty of a hired servant ?

308 THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
Ah ! the debtor who has been forgiven much, and who
loves much, is not always he who owed most. It is he who
dwells on his debt, broods over it, magnifies it and the
difficulty of meeting it, whom it galls and frets like a daily
and well-nigh insupportable burden, whom it follows
through rain and sunshine, fair weather and foul, dogging his
steps like an apparition, clea-ring to him like a cmse. And
hence it is that a noble David, in the agony of his remorse,
has his sin ever before him, and can see only that; and
a nobler Paul, in his deep self humiliation, accounts himself
the very chief of sinners. The debt may not seem large to
others, but it is much to him; he groans under the intoler
able strain, and when it is removed, breaks out into the tears
and songs of a sacred rapture, a joy too deep to be expressed.
And the debtor to whom Httie is forgiven is not so much he
who little needs forgiveness as he who does not feel how
much he needs it, who does not make conscience of sin,
whose heart is hardened against the impact of truth and
goodness ; who therefore can listen to Christ and sit with
Him, and yet not love Him much, giving Him no eager greet
ing, no cordial welcome, because not conscious of the magni
tude of the redemption He has wrought
The way to love much is not to sin much, but to think
much of sin. The best people think most of it ; those who
most strive against it have, and must have, the profoundest
sense of its power. For so long as we yield to any force,
nataral or spiritual, our task is easy and pleasant. It is not
till we try to saU against the wind, or row against the stream,
or swim against the current, that we discover the strength of
the force opposed to us. And in like manner, it is not till
we contend against evU, that we learn its power and our
weakness. To do that which is right seems easy only to
those who do wrong ; once make the attempt, and you wiU
change your thought To overcome a sin may not seem so

THE PARABLE OF' THE TWO DEBTORS. 309
difficult while- we yield to it ; but, the conflict once begun,
you will find that with all your energy, unless your energy be
reinforced from above, you cannot stand against it And
hence it is that those who are in the field against evil
acknowledge its terrible malignant power, whUe those who
are StUl at ease in the tents of sin make very light of it.
Once try to get out of debt to your Heavenly Creditor, and
though you may owe only fifty pence, the fifty will oppress
you till they seem five hundred or five thousand ; you will
know no peace until, confessing you have " nothing to pay,''
He frankly forgives you all.
3. Observe, thirdly, that Christ does not teach us to run
into Sin, but to hate Hypocrisy — the worst of Sins. It is
not the evil life of the Harlot, but her "much love" which
He approves; nor the extortion of the Publican, but his
penitence and humUity. To meet God's commands with a
blunt " I wiU not" is flat mutiny and rebellion, even though
we afterward repent and obey. To travel into the far coun
try remote from Him is not a virtue, but a -rice of blood and
will which He will scourge out of us with famine and irksome
bondage. To run into debt in the hope of after gain is to
forfeit both present and future good. To rash into sin in the
hope that, when at last we are forgiven much, we shall love
the more, is the death of all love. But, on the other hand,
there are worse sins than those which go before to judgment
— sins which under a show of godliness eat into the very life
of the soul, and from which even judgments can very hardly
redeem us. Simon has no doubt that he loves God, and God
him ; yet how can he love the God whom he has not seen
whUe he does not love the brother or sister whom he has seen,
nay, wiU hardly acknowledge that he is of one blood with them?
The Pharisee may have lived a more legal and cleanly life
than the Publican ; but how dweUeth the love of (Sod in him
who even in the temple ca'n boast of his conspicuous virtues^

3IO THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
and glance with sovereign contempt at the humble Penitent
who beats upon his breast and has no language but a cry for
mercy? Even though you afterward come to a better mind
it is a heinous offence to say " I will not" to God; but is it
not a still more heinous offence to say " I go. Sir," and yet
not to go ? to hide a disobedient heart under the outward
shows of deference and submission ? to mock God as well
as to disobey Him ? If the Prodigal Son be an open and
notorious sinner, is there not even a deeper taint of self-will
in the Elder Son who sits in judgment on both father and
brother and condemns both — the one for his leniency and
the other for offences repented and renounced ? Alas ! we
are all of us ready enough to condemn those who faU into
gross sensual transgressions, albeit they may have learned a
loathing for them we can never know ; and far too ready to
condone the offences of those who have a subtle unloving
heart, if only they make a fair show in the flesh. The man
who frequents the temple, and pays his tithes, and falls into
no flagrant violations of the world's law, is a thriving and
approved man, even though he give few signs of a true
spiritual life, and be lacking in humility, in charity, in
loyalty to truth, — even though he make himself the standard
by which all men are to be measured, or backbite and
devour his neighbours, or sit in judgment on men more
spiritual and catholic than himself. And therefore we have
great need to remember that, though the very Church her
self be loud in the praise of such men as this, Christ, the
Lord of the Church, met them with the severest rebukes
and threatenings that ever- fell from his gracious lips. It
was the religious men, the men who occupied the chief seats
in the synagogue and held themselves to be the very pink
of orthodoxy, whom he denounced as a "generation of
vipers," and menaced -with the deep " damnation of heU."
For it is the subtie spiritual sins — the pride, the ignorance.

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 311
the uncharity, which hide themselves under the cloak ot
godliness, that are most offensive to God and injurious to
man. To indulge in these is to misrepresent God, and to
keep men from the open paths which lead to his love and
service. It is to incur the heaviest debt of all, and to be at
the farthest remove from confessing, or so much as perceiv
ing, that we have "nothing to pay" with — at the farthest
remove, therefore, from the frank forgiving mercy of God.
4. Nor, finally, must we omit specially to note that
Christ specially warns us against forming those Hard Judg
ments of our Brethren, which of all Men the " unco' guid "
are most apt to form. Simon could hardly fail to see that
his life had been outwardly purer than that of the Woman
who was a sinner ; and, seeing this, he forthwith condemns
her, and Christ for suffering her to touch Him. He could
not see, he did not care to see, the penitence which was
washing away the stains of former guilt, the profound love
which was strengthening her for future obedience. The
Pharisee knew Publicans to be extortionate ; but had he
heard the cry, " God be merciful to me a sinner ! " and
thought what that meant, even he could hardly have used
" this Publican " to point his pious boast. The Elder
Brother knew that the Prodigal had fled from home and
wasted his substance in vicious riot ; but he did not see that
the man had come back all broken with remorse, yet all
healed with humUity and the strong resolve to amend. Had
he not been " out in the field " — looking very sharply, no
doubt, after the labourers on the estate, and keeping them
well up to the mark — when the younger Brother faltered out
the prayer, " Make me as one of thy hired servants ; " had
he gone into the house and seen the well-known form all
wasted with passion and dra-wn by famine, even his cold
heart might have glowed with fraternal love and pity. It is
our ignorance of men, our partial knowledge, the prejudice

312 THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS.
which will see only their offences against Heaven and us,
which lie at the bottom of most of our hard judgments.
We know very little of one another, and often not the best ;
yet we pronounce our hasty verdicts as though we had
studied the whole case.
But those who have themselves received mercy should be
merciful ; we have been forgiven that we may forgive : those
who know God best are most like Him. And the strange
thing is, that those who assume to know most of Him, who are
most assured of thdr forgiveness, who are loudest in their
boast of Heavenly Mercy, are often the most austere, the
most unmerciful, the most unforgiving in their thoughts and
judgments of others. Even though God has frankly re
mitted their debt of five hundred pence, they can hardly
beHeve that he wiU remit their neighbour's debt of fifty.
With the beam fuU in their own eye, they go about tUting
at the motes in their brother's eye, knovring neither them
selves nor him.
Now God loves us all, even the evU and unthankful, and
would have us all to be saved. And therefore he takes it
as a wrong done to Him if we despair of any man whom
He has made, and for whom, as for us, Christ has died.
Instead of judging them, He would have us judge ourselves.
Instead of condemning them, He would have us assure
them of his mercy by the mercy we shew them. Instead
of breaking the reed already bruised. He would have us
bind it up. Instead of quenching the smoking flax, He
would have us fan it to a flame. We may accept it as an
axiom of the spiritaal life, that we never shew ourselves so
unhke God, never provoke Him to a -keener anger, than
when we hinder any who are seeking his mercy by our un-
mercifulness : and that we are never snore fully in his spirit
and favour than when by our compassion we convey the
sense of his forgiving love to the broken and contrite heart

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS. 313
And, therefore, I am emphatically speaking in the spirit of
my Master when I invite you all, even the most sinful, even
those most oppressed with a sense of guilt, to rejoice in a
Love which only waits for the first weak motion of penitence,
in order to pour out the healing comforting tides of a forgive
ness that knows no bound. Only come, confessing that you
owe Him much and have '¦' nothing to pay," and your merci
ful Creditor will frankly forgive your debt, whether it be fifty
or five hundred pence. Only return to the Gracious Father
from whom you have wandered, and He wiU recognize
you while yet you are a great way off, and run to meet you ;
all heaven shaU be merry with music and dancing because
you have at last come to a better mind : and the Elder
Brother, so far from grudging you the fatted calf, or the
new best robe, wiU rejoice over you with a joy peculiar and
divine.

XXIL
%'^z Stillmu j}f % 3^f mpst
MATT. VIII. 23 — 27 ; Mark iv. 35 — ^41 ; Luke viii. 22—25.
THE Lake of Gennesaret, Hke most inland seas, though
commonly lying in tranquU beauty in its rocky basin,
is at times swept by sudden and dangerous storms. The
wind, rushing wUdly through the tortaous mountain gorges,
and often baffled by them, at last swoops down upon the
Lake. Confined by the surrounding rocks, which are lofty
and precipitous, it finds no outlet, but goes whirling round
and round, beating against its barriers of stone, and raising
a tempest which puts the little fishing-boats flying over the
surface of the Lake into no small jeopardy. It was one of
these sudden dangerous storms which disturbed the Master's
rest, a rest of which He had sore need. We learn from St.
Mark, that He had spent the day in speaking parables to a
vast multitude on the slope of a mountain on the GalUean
side of the Lake, and in afterwards expounding them to his
disciples. At last, when the evening was come, worn out
with incessant exhausting labour. He enters the boat, goes
to the stern, and falls quietly asleep, his head resting on the
stem-rail. Before they reach the opposite Gadarene shore,
the storm pounces on them, the little fishing-boat heels over
and rapidly fills with water ; even the fishermen among the
Twelve, familiar with all the changes and perils of the Lake
from boyhood, are alarmed. The peril is great, imminent ;

THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 315
yet, in his fatigue, the Master sleeps peacefully through the
tumult, undisturbed by the roar of the elements, by the water
which floats his robe, by the spray which dashes on his face.
But though unmoved by the piercing shrieks of the wind
and the hoarse menace of the waves. He wakes at the first
cry of his disciples. He reassures and comforts them ; He
rebukes the raving wind and the raging sea : the tumult sub
sides into a calm deep and unrufified as his o-wn.
It was the ark of Christendom which rode that flood ; and
in the ark there was a better Noah, the trae " rest " and
" comfort '' of Jehovah, destined to begin a new and higher
life for the world. Another sign than that of Jonah was
given to that generation — the sign of Jesus, in the dove-like
calm that slept through the storm, and hushed even the
storm to sleep : Jonah was the danger, Jesus the safety, of
the ship : Jonah, ill-named the dove, was rather the stormy
petrel which bred and foretold the tempest ; Jesus was the
trae dove, speaking of a new world in which all the tempests
of life should sink into a great calm.
Jesus sleeps and wakes : — He is a man, then, and a man
subject to our infirmities. Yet He is more than man : for
He sleeps through the peril which would not suffer his dis
ciples to rest, and awakes with divine composure, though
the boat is fast filling with water, and the night is dark, and
the storm loud, and cries of distress are ringing in his ears.
Lifting his serene head from its rade pUlow, He takes in the
whole significance of the scene at a glance. He is not
alarmed by the threatening imminent danger, nor fluttered
by the panic of his friends. Nay, as St. Matthew reports,
near and imminent as the danger is, He pauses to rebuke
and calm the tempest raging in the heart of his disciples
before He rebukes the vrind and the sea, and is more con-

3i6 THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST.
cerned at their lack of faith than at the peril He and they
are in. He was a man of like passions with us ; and yet, as'
we remember his divine self-possession and composure, we
may well cry, " What manner of man is this ! "
Critics, with that keen eye for flaws which we can only
admire at a respectful distance, have been much concerned
at the various and different terms in which the three Evan
gelists record the outcry of the alarmed disciples. Luke
reports that they cried, " Master, Master, we perish ! " Mark,
that they cried, " Master, carest Thou not that we perish ? "
Matthew, that they cried, " Lord, save us, we perish ! "
And these three cries do obviously denote different states of
mind. The critical concern has deepened when the various
reports of Christ's reply to this various appeal have been
compared. Mark reports that He said, " How is it that ye
have no faith ? " Luke, that He said, " Where is your
faith ? " Matthew, that He said, " Why are ye fearful, O ye
of httie faitii?"
On the ground of these serious variations in their several
reports, the accuracy, and even the veracity, of the Evange
lists have been impugned ! One almost scorns to answer
such a charge ; it betrays an entire absence of that acumen
and historical imagination which are the prime requisites of
the critical art Were a dozen men, imperilled and alarmed
by darkness and tempest, sinking in a sinking boat, bound,
or likely, to use precisely the same words, to wake their
Friend with an accordant chant as though they were uttering
a liturgical response ? Were they not likely to be animated
by a common feeHng indeed, but a feeling which would vary
according to their several characters, and to express that
feeHng in any words that first came to their lips ? 'Was it
improbable that some of them should say, " Master, Master,

THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 317
we perish ! " feeling that to Him it was enough merely to
state their danger, and marking its urgency by their repe
tition of the word " Master ? " Was it improbable that others
of them, half frantic vrith fear, should upbraid Him even
as they appealed to Him, and cry reproachfully, " Master,
carest Thou not that we perish ? " Was it improbable' that
still others should retain their confidence in his power and
grace, even in that supreme moment, and cry, " Lord, save
us, we perish ? " Instead of ca'rilling at these variations, we
should rather be thankful for them, since they indicate the
different characters of the men who were vrith Christ in the
vessel, and make our conception of the scene at once more
graphic and complete. Instead of urging them as an argu
ment against the veracity or accuracy of the Evangelists, in
¦ the fact that these men pourtray themselves in the undignified
postare of fear, that they confess how much they were
lacking in faith, we ought rather to find new proofs of their
honesty and the transparentfidelity of their reports.
But if the disciples broke on the Master with three dif
ferent cries, can we suppose that He made them three
distinct answers ? O fools and slow of heart that we are to
ask, or to be troubled by, such questions as that ! Grant
that our Lord answered their various appeal vrith a single
sentence, and that no one of the EvangeHsts has given us
the exact words He used : — what then ? He recognized the
sepafate tones of their appeal ; He read and responded to
the thoughts of all their hearts. He spake to them by voice,
and look, and gestare no less than by his words. And as
they Hstened to his single sentence, what more natural than
that each of them should find in it an exact response to his
mood ? " How is it that ye have no faith ? " " ¦Where is
your faith?" "Why are ye fearful, O ye of littie faith?"
No faith. Utile faith, unready faith, i.e., faith laid aside for the
moment and out of reach — ^this is what the different disciples

3i8 THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST.
heard in his rebuke, whatever the actual form He gave it
Was it not natural, ine-ritable ? Can you not tell, almost as
certainly as though you had been in the boat with them,
which of the disciples would hear one rebuke and which
another ? Are you not sure, for instance, that slow sceptical
Thomas, in so sore a strait, would have no faith, and give
all up for lost ? and that Peter, in so sudden a strait, would
be apt to find his faith had slipped for the instant beyond
his reach ? while John, even in so sudden and sore a strait,
would have a little faith — faith enough to keep him from up
braiding the Lord, and to impel the appeal, " Lord, save us,
we perish ? "
And, after all, however various the tones or words the
Apostles heard, or thought they heard, they all leamed the
great lesson of the Master's rebuke. Read which of the
Gospels you vrill, you feel that the gist and substance of the
rebuke was, that there was no need for fear whUe He was
with them, that if they had had faith, or faith enough, they
would not have feared. This is the great lesson of the
rebuke, the common lesson — that Faith is the conquering
opposite of Fear. Suppose the worst had come to the
worst with them; suppose the boat had fiUed and gone
do-wn, and the whole Apostolic company had been drowned
in the tempest — what harm would that have done them?
It would but have taken them home. We might have been
the poorer for it, but not they ; our loss would have been
their gain. ^Why, even we, every time we stand beside the ¦
grave in which we have laid a brother's dust, give God our
hearty thanks for that it hath pleased Him of his great
mercy "to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of
this sinful world," and from " the burden of the flesh," to
dwell with Him "in joy and felicity." Do we mean what
we say ? What then have we to fear ? We have overcome
" the last enemy." We should not fear, if only we had faith.

THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 319
or more than a little faith, or if our faith were ready to our
hand. Faith makes the unseen realities visible and clear to
us. Faith makes eternal truths present facts. It shews us
that loss is gain, that to lose our life is to find it, that to lay
aside the burden of the flesh is to be clothed upon -with a
spiritual and incorrupt body, that to leave the cares of time
is to enter on the pleasures which are for evermore. And,
therefore, perfect faith, Hke perfect love, casts out fear.
Christ never feared anything : He did not fear poverty,
change, loss, or death, nor the leper's touch, nor the spring
of the demoniac who clanked his broken chain among the
tombs, nor the wild vnrestle of wind and sea : why should
we fear aught that may befall us, when death itself will but
take us to "God, who is our home ? " Might not the Master
well rebuke us, and say -with mingled surprise and regret,
" How is it that ye have no faith ? " or " Why are ye fearful,
O ye of Httie faitii?"
The Apostles had some faith! or why did they cry to
Jesus to save them — why look to Him rather than to a bold
and skUful saUor like Peter ? but they had not much faith,
or ready faith, or they would not have feared. Perhaps they
could not find their faith, because it was so dark. For it is
at night that we are most subject to fear. We cannot find
our faith just when we most need it, when we cannot see
and measure our danger, when we are most helpless. That
is to say, we cannot depend on God just when we are most
dependent on Him, when we lie most completely at his
mercy. But if we fear, if we cannot trast God in the dark
night, is not that a proof that our fearlessness in the day
springs rather from self-trast than trast in God ? God is as
near us in the night as in the day. He never slumbers nor
sleeps that He may watch over and keep us whUe we sleep.
And the night puts, not our courage only, but our faith

320 THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST.
to the test. It is easy to be quiet and assured in the broad
daylight, when we can see, and act, and defend ourselves.
If it is not so easy at night, if we are then easily moved to
apprehension and distrust, because only God can see our
danger and defend us from it — what does that mean ? Does
it not mean that, after aU, we rely more on our own wisdom
and strength than on his, that we walk by sight, rather than
by faith?
So, too, in the night of sorrow, and loss, and bereave
ment, we are put to the test, and taught to know ourselves.
If, when we are smitten vrith a tempest of change, when we
are impoverished by vicissitades or called to part with those
whom we love, we cannot trast God and his vrise kind
ordering of our life, we may well doubt whether what we
thought our " faith " in brighter times was more than self-
confidence and a happy content with happy circumstances.
It is the night and the tempest which try our faith, which
tell us whether or not we have a real faitii. And hence
it is that those who have passed through deep spiritual
experiences, who have known many losses and griefs, if
they have improved thetn, are distinguished by a settled
calm which no shock of change disturbs, and at which we
of little faith, or unready faith, can only wonder and admire.
The ties which bind them to this -risible and temporal
world have been detached one by one ; the ties which bind
them to the world unseen and eternal have been multiplied
and strengthened. Future changes can only detach the
few weak Hnks which stiU bind them to earth ; the treasures
they may yet lose wUl be laid up for them in heaven ; their
heart is where their treasure is ; they walk by faith ; theu-
affections are above ; their life is hid with Christ in God.
¦When the Lord Jesus had rebuked his disciples. He re
buked the winds and the waves : when He had calmed his

THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 321
friends. He calmed the tempest* He speaks to the unruly
elements as to sentient intelligent creatures. He speaks to
, them with an imperial authority which proves Him to be
the Eternal Word by whom all things were created and
made. We a little lose, perhaps, the dignity and power
of his command to the wind and the sea by our translation.
In the Greek, each of his commands is given by a single
verb in the imperative mood. To the winds He said
" Sidira" " Be at peace," and to the waves " He^f^uMiro," " Be
StUl." And there is a simple divine dignity in the words
which irresistibly reminds us of the creative command,
Yehloth, "Let there be Hght," or the healing command
Ephphatha, " Be opened." His large style betrays Him. It
is the Lord of Nature who speaks. He speaks as one who
knows that his commandment rans very swiftly, with the
natural ease of one who knows that He has only to speak,
and it will be done, only to command, and it wUl stand fast
It is because He is the Lord of Nature as well as the
Friend of man, that we ought to trast Him, to put an entire
and hearty faith in Him, and to keep our faith always at
hand. And surely our study of this Scripture should in
crease and confirm our faith in Him. For it sets Him
before us not only as the Lord of Natare, but as the Lord
of its con-vulsions and storms, as holding even these in his
hand's. We are the slaves of custom, the fools of sense.
¦When the world around us is quiet and all things move in
their accustomed course ; while the sky is bright, and the
vrinds are low and soft, and the sea ripples with a fresh
tender music before the prow, we can trast the Lord, or
* Mark and Luke indeed narrate the rebuke of the -wind and the sea
before the rebuke of the disciples ; but they do not profess to stand on
the order of the two events, or give us any note of time and succession.
Only Matthew does that (viii. 26), " He saith unto them, 'Why are ye
so fearful, O ye of httie faith? Then He arose, and rebuked the
winds and the sea, and there was a great calm." 21

322 THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST.
flatter ottrselves that we trust Him. But let the earth quake,
or the thunder roll, or the svrift jagged flash stab the clouds ;
let the heavens gather blackness, and the winds rave, and
the waves rise and beat upon the boat, and we tremble as
though the Lord had ceased to reign. "Faith sees Him
always near ; " where then is their faith from whom even a
thunderstorm or the lurid shadows of eclipse can hide Him?
Where is their faith who doubt whether they shaU know
peace again, or give up all for lost, so soon as any grave
trouble or deprivation, any sickness or bereavement, befaUs
them? Let such " fearful souls fresh courage take." Christ
is Lord of Natme -even in its wUdest moods. At night,
when the tempest lowers, and the boat fiUs, and wave beats
dovm on wave. He has but to speak, and the winds are
hushed, the waves stUled, and there is a great calm. And if
He does not speak to them, He never faUs to speak to us,
and to speak peace to us, by the very war and strife of the
elements around us. When the storm was over, the dis
ciples said, " "What maimer of man is this who commands
the winds and the water, and they obey Him ? " And that
was what the storm came for, and was hushed for, to set
them thinking of Him, to give them tmer thoughts of the
Peasant Rabbi whom they loved but did not understand, to
teach them that He was Lord of all, to win them to a deeper
trast in Him. That, too, is what our disasters and our
happy fortunes come for, our tempests and our calms, our
perils and our deliverances. They come to set us thinking
of Him whom, in the quiet every-day course of our life,
we are too apt to forget. They come to teach us that
He is always with us, ordering all things according to
the good pleasure of his wiU ; and to constrain us to
trust in Him instead of in ourselves, by making us feel
how utterly we are in his hands. Sudden losses, sudden
partings, sudden dangers, overtake us; we never continue

THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 323
in one stay : our life swings sharply from vicissitude to
vicissitude, or heavily from grief to grief For a little
while we are at peace ; God's lamp shines over our heads,
and we walk happily by its light : but in a moment the
shadows darken round us, and the lamp goes out, and we
grope after God and cannot find Him. At an hour of which
we were not aware, without any omen or warning to prepare
us, that for which we looked not falls upon us — perhaps one
of the very last things we expected or had reason to expect
The child, a miracle of health and beauty a moment since,
lies cold at our feet ; the friend we most loved and trasted
fails in the very quahties for which we would have backed
him against the world ; the staff on which we most relied
fails us ; the prosperity which seemed as though it could
never be moved passes away in an instant " Many such
things as these doeth God with man." And when we ask,
¦What is the meaning of it all ? the answer comes — ¦" In the
day of prosperity and in the day of adversity remember that
God sends both this and that, in order that men should not
be able to foresee that which is to coine, and should trast
in Him who is able to foresee it." The surprises which
befall us teach us how terribly uncertain our life is, and all
that we hold dear in life ; they teach us how ignorant we
are, how impotent, how utterly in larger wiser hands than
our own. And if we are men indeed, and have discourse
of reason, we leam at last that our only hope of peace lies |
in faith — in knowing and trasting Him who rales this world
and all worlds, who sets aU our times upon the score. This
is the moral of change, this the function of the tempests
which swoop down upon us as we sail tranquilly on tranquU
waters, and before whose fierce breath we flee, beaten of
huge waves and strong.
Danger is not dangerous, nor death dreadful, if Christ be
with us and we have faith in Him. We may go down in \

324 THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST.
the Storm, or we may ride through storm into calm : but in
either case He saves us, and we can never perish; for he
that beheveth on Him hath eternal life, the life over which
time and 'the changes of time have no power. "With
Christ in the vessel we" may " smUe at the storm :" but do
we ? AU the sorrowful changes of Hfe are ours, and minister
to our good, if we are his, even to the last change of aU :
but it is hard for us to believe that life and death, things
present and things to come, are ours, because we are Christ's,
and Christ is God's, and aU things are his. A trae depen
dence on God makes us independent of all beside ; fearing
Him, we have nothing else to fear. Perhaps so many storms
and surprises come upon us, in order that we may learn this
lesson, and enter into the settled peace of faitii. ¦When they
come, let us not despair, even though our faith be little or
unready. Let us rather remember how tender and patient
He was with the Twelve, how He delivered them because
they trasted in Him, although their trast was neither pure
nor strong. From his grace to them, let us leam that even
an imperfect, selfish, upbraiding faith, so that it appeal to
Him, may weather the storm, and come to know Him better
through danger, and dehverance, and rebuke.
Christ was asleep in the boat, but He was neither dis
abled nor indifferent Had the disciples but trasted in
Him, and baled out the water that filled the boat, and run
before the storm, and sent their most skUful pilot to the
helm, all would have been well with them : they would not
have needed so much as to awake Him out of his sleep.
But this test was too hard for men of a weak and unapt
faith. And it is often too much for us. When our trial
comes, Christ often seems remote from us or indifferent to
our need and peril, lapped in dreams in which we have no
part : and we grow frantic 'with baseless apprehensions, and
cry out on Him, " Master, carest Thou not that we perish?"

, THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. . 325
Ah, and how patient He is with us ! how meek and kind
under our upbraiding ! Our faith has faUed us, and by our
very failures He sets us thinking — thinking how weak we are,
how good and great He is. And then, when we know Him
better. He repeats the trial. Again we are launched on the
sea, while He stands on the mountains of etemity, and
prays for us that our faith faU not. Again the night falls,
and the sea works and becomes tempestuous. But He
comes -with the storm, walking the waves on which we are
tossed ; and if at first we mistake our friend for a foe, and
the Spirit of all grace for a pale menacing ghost, we know
Him as soon as He speaks to us, and gladly receive Him
into the ship. We are at peace because He is vrith us;
and no sooner is there this peaceful trust vrithin, than there
comes a great calm on all without, and we find ourselves
where we would be. O how unsearchable are his riches,
and his grace past finding out !
FinaUy, the parable which iUustrates our personal life
also Ulustrates our collective life and destiny. The Church
is a boat, a sacred ark, tossed to and fro on the heaving
waters of Time, beaten from its course by many storms,
swept by many waves, often all but wrecked, not so much
by the rocks and shoals of time as by the mutinies and
contentions, the factiousness, the carelessness, the ground
less panics of its crew. The Church has often been, and
StiU oftener has been thought to be, in danger : yet it is in
no real danger while Christ is in it and the crew have even
a little faith in Him. Only, there must be peace in the
Church before there can be peace ui the world. Not tiU
our emulous contentions for pre-eminence, our selfish.
wranglings over " the goods " the Church carries as baUast
in her hold, our hard judgments and quick resentments,
have come to an end, wiU the Church ride prosperously on
her course to the desired haven.

XXIIL
Luke xiu. 1-5.
I
"AN old Maiden Gentlewoman," says Addison, in one
l\. of his inimitable Spectators, "whom I shaU conceal
under the name of Nemesis, is the greatest Discoverer of
Judgments that I have met vrith. She can tell you what
Sin it was that set such a Man's House on fire, or blew
down his Bams. . . She has a Crime for every Misfortune
that can befall any of her Acquaintance ; and when she
hears of a Robbery that has been made, or a Murder that
has been committed, enlarges more on the Guilt of the
Suffering Person than on that of the Thief or the Assassin.
In short, she is so good a Christian that whatever happens
to herself is a Trial, and whatever happens to her Neigh
bours is a Judgment''
Nemesis, a maiden in Addison's time, must long since
have married — married and brought forth many children.
Her descendants are to be met in almost every street.
Their name is Legion; their pedigree, at least on the
spindle-side, incontestable. Their hereditary characteristics
— that keen scent for other folks' sins, which yet is strangely
at fault when their own sins are in chase; their perfect
acquaintance with all the secrets of human guilt, combined
with an equally perfect exemption from its stains; their
* Written m May, 1865.

ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENIS. ^i-j
prompt pitiless indignation against those who suffer vnrong,
rather than against those who do wrong; — all these, with
many more, are patent to the most casual observer. Who
has not encountered these worthy children of an unworthy
mother? They "peep and mutter" in every neighbour
hood. Perambulatory oracular shrines, they walk in all
circles, and shrill their acidulous " woes " and " burdens "
into every ear. They are up to all defections, whether of
the right hand or the left. Milestones and mysteries, im
pervious to other eyes, are transparent to theirs, if, at least,
any evU secret be lurking in them. They are familiar -with
all bosom sins — except their own. For them every room
in the house has a cupboard, and every cupboard a skeleton;
and they can tell you whose it is and how it got there.
No sparrow falls to the ground but they can tell you of
which -wing he is lamed, and what he has done to deserve
it. No carcase falls in any desert, however solitary and
remote, but these vultures — who have no nose save for
carrion — are gathered together to eat and eke to dfecry.
No traveUer faUs among thieves but that, instead of help
ing or even passing him by, they stand beside him speculat
ing on his guUt, pouring not oU and wine but the venom of
their rebukes, into his wounds; and then, mounting then-
ass, they ride off, with the port of men who have done a
good deed that day, to make merry at their inn.
What they see or suspect, that they pubHsh abroad.
What is done in the darkness, that they bring to the light-
not that it may thereby be reproved, but that they may
plume themselves on their superior piety. What is done
in the chamber, that they proclaim from the house-top,
their house-top version being for the most part hopelessly,
if not vrilfuUy, corrapt They thrive on other men's decay,
grow strong on their infirmities, wax holy on their sins.
They pull out the plums from their neighbours' characters,

328 ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENTS.
and cry, " ^What good men are we !" If all save themselves
are so bad, are not they the more manifest saints ? Other
men's vices are the dung out of which these fair flowers
grow, the dross from which these precious ores are ex
tracted, the darkness in which these cheap candles shine.
Prophets vrithout inspiration, priests whose Urim and
Thummim are their ovm narrow prejudices and preconcep
tions, they pronounce " dooms,'' or give an interpretation
of them, which no sane mortal can believe, which the whole
sane world can greet only vrith inextinguishable laughter:
as when an Austrian high-priest assured the Itahans that
"Liberalism is a great sm, for which Heaven punishes
rnankind with the Vine Disease ; " or a Scotch Presbyter,
who habitually dons the prophetic mantle or some ragged
imitation of it, traces " the Potato Blight " to " the May-
nooth Grant ! "
In ridiculing and denouncing the temerity of these
" great Discoverers of Judgments " who " deal damnation
round the land," we are by no means fighting vrith what
Carlyle calls "defunct de-vUs," or slaying sins that have been
thrice slain. They live, and, to the shame of Christian
charity, are likely to live, long after we have dravm our last
breath. On how many occasions in the public history of
the last few years have we seen these " fools" of their own
conceit " rash in where angels fear to tread ! "
It is not very long since the heart of the nation was
shaken by the tidings that Albert the Good was suddenly
taken to his rest There was silence for ¦ a little space,
the whole people being stricken dumb with the greataess
and suddenness of the calamity. One of the earliest voices
that broke the sUence was that of the ablest bishop on the
Bench,* who comforted us in that time of our distress with
the pious consolatory remark, that the death of the Good
* The Bishop of Oxford.

ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENTS. 329
Prince was "God's judgment on our national infidelity."
And when Count Cavour, the most sagacious and loyal
statesman of modern times, fell beneath his great burden
of care, did not The O'Donoghue, amid the general grief,
exult over a patriot the latchet of whose shoes he was not
worthy to unloose, and bid the House of Commons mark
" the finger of God " pointing in vn-ath to that honoured
grave? It is not four years since the darkness of the Claydon
Tunnel, on the Brighton Railway, grew suddenly horrid
with groans, and shrieks, and mortal outcries, amid which
many poor souls sank into the deeper darkness of death.
Forthwith the " great Discoverers of Judgments " made
broad their phylacteries, and waxed prophetic on the
calamity which had wounded so many tender hearts. Was
it not on a Sunday that these poor souls were carried hence?
Manifestly, those who were majmed and crushed in the
collision were sinners above all the men of London and
Brighton, and the special sin for which this sore judgment
came upon them was that of breaking the Hebrew law of
the Sabbath ! The case was as clear as that of the Man in
the Moon, who, as all men know, was caught up to the icy
lunar bosom for picking up sticks on a Sunday ! And yet
only a few weeks before, and on a Sunday, there occurred
that memorable panic in Surrey Hall, in which almost as
many victims were maimed and crashed while the Preacher's
voice was still sounding in their ears ! And if these, whose
frames were mangled while they were offering the sacrifices
of worship, were not guilty above all men ; might it not be
that the unworshipping excursionists crashed by the colli
sion, had done nothing worthy of death? Within a fort
night, moreover, and this time on a Monday, there was
another accident to an excursion train.* Again groans,
* The accident on the North London line.

33° ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENTS.
and shrieks, and mortal outcries wounded the general ear ;
and by the light of burning carriages the maimed and dead
were extricated from the complex fatal heap. And if an
accident on the first day of the week is a judgment on
Sunday travelling ; was the accident on the second day of
the week a judgment on Monday traveUing? If every day
on which a great catastrophe has occurred is to be made a
dies non, or a dies nefasti, on what day of the week will it
be lawful to travel ?
It is not likely that any of us have forgotten the Cotton
Famine ; the dark cloud still hangs in the northern heaven,
though now many stars of hope shine through it. When
it was at its worst, when beneath that dismal threatening
shadow there sat thousands on thousands of patient men,
clemmed yet unmurmuring, men of whom all England
thought with a sacred ruth and pride, a wealthy dignitary*
of the wealthiest church in Christendom vnrote them — not
a cheque, but a pastoral letter. Alas ! this high dignified
priest is a great Discoverer of Judgments. He can teU you
what sin it was that blew down this man's bam, or set that
man's house on fire, as deftly as any old woman who ever
squatted on the tripod. By way of comforting the starving
" hands," he sent them the assurance that the cotton famine
was God's judgment on them for "spending money in
tobacco and intoxicating drink 1 " Now, to think of the
smug Dean thrasting his shovel-hat into the innermost and
best-informed circles of heaven, and then bustling down to
earth to explain, on the best authority, what The Almighty
is doing or about to do ; to think of him as calling down
lighming from heaven to break — a glass and a pipe, may
weU move the most unwonted midriff to laughter But to
think that an authorized expositor of divine trath, a shep
herd of souls, should go among the thousands who sat
* The Dean of Carlisle.

ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENIS. 331
sorrowful, and starving, and stanned, with a scourge instead
of a crook, and offer them an insult instead of a consola
tion ; to think of the many who, accepting such expositors
as true interpreters of the Dirine Word, must have turned
away from the waters of life fouled by those unbeautiful
feet ; — is it not well-nigh enough to drive even a patient
man to banning, or at the best to a prayer that their mouths
may be stopped who so vrickedly misrepresent the mercy
of God ?
The Civil War in America still drags its slow weary length
along. " A manifest judgment on slavery ! " cry the North
ern Abolitionists. " No," replies the South ; " it is as clear
an assertion of liberty as history knows.'' " You are both
-wrong,'' say the Mormons ; " it is a judgment on you both
for murdering our prophet, and expelling us from Utah.''
"Nay," reply certain English quidnuncs, "you are as much
in the wrong as the rest Some eighty years ago the States
wickedly rebelled against a good king and a light taxation,
and now they are justly given up to the tpanny of mihtary
despots, and crashed beneath an overwhelming burden of
debt." Now these are all instances in which public events occur-
riig vrithin the last five years have been interpreted, and
misinterpreted, by those who affect to be in the secrets of
God. It is impossible to glance over them without remark
ing, first, that just as slugs, and snaUs, and toads come out
after rainstorms, so these false prophets swarm after any
great calamity, their croak being loudest and hoarsest when
men sit sUent vrith dismay : secondly, that they each inter
pret the Divine Providence according to their private pre
judices and pocket theories, and, therefore, contradict each
other in the absurdest fashion — croak clashing with croak :
and, thirdly, that they carefully exclude themselves from the
operation of the vengeance, being " such very good Chris-

332 ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENTS.
tians, that whatever ha!ppens to them is a trial, whUe what
ever happens to their neighbours is a judgment"
But perhaps nothing is more remarkable in these Dis
coverers of Judgments than the impudent tact vrith which
they select the facts which make for their theory, and ignore
the facts which tell against it. If an excursion train meet
vrith an accident on the first day of the week, it is a clear
judgment on Sunday travelling, although, for a very ob-rious
reason, there are more accidents on every other day of the
week than on this; and the logical inference — ^if "judgments'"
were our sole criteria — would be, that of aU days of the week
Sunday was the best and safest for taking a journey. If one
rogue or hypocrite is detected, unmasked, punished, this
again, we are told, is a judgment of God : but if any ask,
"Is not the impunity of hundreds of rogues and hypocrites
also a judgment ? " we receive no reply, or a reply which
carries more commination in it than logic. In short, these
men have the valuable faculty which Carlyle ironically
lauds — " the talent of taking up simply what they can cany,
and ignoring all the rest ; leaving aU the rest as if it were
not there." You have only to compel them to take up and
carry all the facts, and they break dovm. The happiest
iUustration of this point is a story so good that, if it is not
trae, it ought to be trae. When Milton — old, poor, blind,
worn out -with many labours — had retired to obscurity,
Charles II. paid him a visit at his house in BunhiU Fields,
and found the statesman of the Commonwealth, the poet of
aU time, sitting at his door basking in the sun. " Do you
not see, Mr. Milton," said the cro-wned roui whom the de
generate Church styled Our Most Religious King, "that
your blindness is a judgment of God for the part you took
against my father. King Charles ? " " Nay," replied MUton;
" if I have lost my sight through God's judgment, what can
you say of your father, who lost his head!" One should

ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENTS. 333
hope that Our Most Religious never tried his hand again at
interpreting the ways of God to man.
We are far enough — as need hardly be said — -from deny
ing the doctriiie of a Divine Providence, or that it really
interferes in every even the most minute concern of Hfe.
With Cowper we say —
Happy the man who sees a God employed
In all the good and ill that chequer life :
or, with Wordsworth, Happy the man who rests in
An assured belief
That the procession of our fate, howe'er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
• Of infinite benevolence and power.
What we do deny is, that these Discoverers of Judgments
are in the secrets of The Almighty. To affirm that by an
invariable and most merciful law sin entaUs punishment —
national sins national punishments, personal sins personal
punishments — is the duty of every Christian teacher : but to
fix the times and assort punishments to sins, to affect to
stand midway between heaven- and earth and interpret the
mysteries of Providence, is simply stark presumption in any
uninspired man. It is not given to the sons of men, even
though they be priests and bishops, to comprehend the
.goings of the Inhabitant of Eternity. The sweep of etemity -
is large, and gives scope and verge for the play of retri
bution beyond the reach of mortal eye. To play the inter
preter, and say, "This punishment is a judgment on that
sin," is to play the fool.
Even heathen sagacity discerned that the Nemesis which
waits on men's sins was no swift-footed CamUla scouring the
plains of life, but an awful yet merciful goddess, daughter of
Night and Darkness, who weighs, and ponders, and threatens
with her brandished thongs, before she smites. And the

334 ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENTS.
thought personified in the Greek mythus is confirmed by the
Christian revelation. The Holy Scriptmes affirm the mys
tery and delay of retribution; that it is not measured on
mortal scales ; that the sweep and fall of its scourge are not
traceable by mortal eyes. They teach us that those "whose
feet are swift to shed blood" often outrun the pursuing
vengeance for a time, and for a long time, nay, beyond aU
bounds of time. They teach that many offences 'scape
whipping here, though sooner or later the impartial lash faUs
on aU. In Psalm and Parable they teU us that the wicked
are not plagued as other men : they raffle in purple and fine
Hnen, and fare sumptuously every day; whUe humble vfrtae,
clothed in rags, munches its scanty eleemosynary crust, and
has only a dog — and even that not its own — ^for physician,
and comforter, and friend.
The Gospel teaches us a more exceUent way of inter
preting the facts of Hfe than that of these presumptuous Dis
coverers of Judgments. Instead of harping on the bloody
fate of the men of distant GalUee, it bids us look nearer
home to " the eighteen " here in Jerasalem on whom the
tower fell and crashed them. Instead of dweUing even on
the mysterious fate of our close neighbours, it bids us come
quite home, and repent, lest we ourselves should likewise
perish. It teaches us, in effect, that no evU is so e-ril as the
spurious goodness which, separating us from our fellows,
cries to its neighbours as from a superior platform, " Stand
dovra there, for I am hoher than you." It teaches us that
the accidents by which we suffer, so far from being personal
judgments on personal sins, are parts of that great mystery
of evU, which is now suffered to task our thoughts and try
our faith, in order that it may by-and-by lead in a completer
beatitude, a profounder rest, an eternal good and joy.
The only safe moral we can draw from the judgments of
God, or what seem to us his judgments, is the warning.

ACCIDENTS NOT JUDGMENTS. , 335
1-^ Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." And this is a
warning which comes down to us reinforced by its fulfilment
in the history of those to whom it was first given. The
Jews did not "repent;" they did " likewise -^erx^." Just
as " the eighteen " were crashed by the falling tower, so the
desperate remnant of the holy nation were crushed, in the
final assault of the Romans on their beautiful city, beneath
the falling forts and walls. Just as by Pilate's perfidy the
blood of the Galileans was mingled with that of their sacri
fices, so the surviving Jews, driven from the walls into the
Temple, fell beneath the Roman sword, and were slain as,
for the last time, they bent to worship in the sacred precinct
Let us take the warning,. and not judge one another any
more. We are too apt, when we see any forlorn and solitary
brother sitting, like Job, among the potsherds, to sit down
beside him, like. Job's comforters, and hand him the very
sharpest and roughest of the sherds that he may scrape
himself withal. We are too apt, when any calamity befalls
our neighbours, to assume that they must be sinners above
all other men, and to speculate — sometimes in their hearing
— on the crimson and scarlet dyes of their guilt We need,
therefore, to remember that accidents are not judgments,
that accidents are not even accidents, since they are all
ordered of God, and fo.rm part of that gracious discipUne by
which He Hfts us through the graduated and rising circles of
his service. They are sent for our sakes, who only stand
and vritness them, as well as for the sake of those who
suffer them ; not that we may judge others, but that we may
examine ourselves. They are sent that we, \i we suffer by
them, may reach out hands of faith through time,
To catch
The far-off interest of tears,
And find in loss a gam to match.

XXIV.
MATTHEW xxvi. 51 — 56 ; MARK XIV. 47—49 ; LuKE xxn. 49-53 ;
and John xviii. io, ii.
THE healing of Malchus forins a striking episode in the
story of our Lord's arrest AU the EvangeHsts nar
rate it, each contributite some stroke or touch which serves
to' complete the picture. If, that we may have the incident
before us in all its detaUs, we collate the Gospels, fusing the
four narratives into one, the story runs thus. " Then came
they" {i.e., the band of officers and men which the Sanhedrin
had placed at the disposal of the traitor Judas, and the
multitade armed vrith swords and staves which accompanied
the Roman guard), " and laid hands on Jesus and took Him.
¦When they who were vrith Him saw what would foUow, they
said unto Him, Lord, shall we smite vrith the sword ? And
one of them, Simon Peter, having a sword" (there were
only two swords for the whole company of the Aposties,
but, of course, Peter would insist on carrying one of them),
" drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off
his right ear The servant's name was Malchus. Then
said Jesus unto him " (Peter), " Put up thy sword into its
place ; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the
sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot even now pray to my
Father, and He shall instantly give me more than twelve
legions of angels ? But how then shall the Scriptures be

MALCHUS. 337

fulfilled, that thus it must be ? The cup which my Father
hath given me, shall I not drink it ? And Jesus answered
and said" (to the band), "Suffer ye thus far. And He
touched his ear" (the ear of Malchus), " and healed him."
I. All the Evangelists narrate the wounding, but only
Luke, the physician, records the healing of the wound in
flicted on Malchus. To him the healing would have a
special, a professional interest He would not be content
to tell us that the ear was cut off without also telling us how,
at the tender di-rine touch of the Great Physician, the gaping
wound was healed and the severed ear replaced. Here is a
touch of nature beyond the reach of conscious art. If one
of the Evangelists were a physician, he would be sure to
mark and narrate the cure, though the others might pass it
by. That he does mark and record it is one of those slight
incidental e-ridences* which lend a stronger support to the
Christian documents than the large patent proofs which
might be the work of design. And it is well for us, it is a
theme for thankful praise, that the Divine Spirit moved men
of divers character and position to tell in their several ways
the single story of his love — the leamed physician, Luke,
no less than Matthew, the contemned Publican ; Paul, the
accomplished scholar, no less than fisherman Peter.
2. Of course it was Peter who strack the blow. No
doubt he strack vrith all his strength, meaning to cleave a
skull, though he only cut off an ear. Probably Malchus
caught the gleam of the descending steel, and by a svrift
instinctive motion evaded the full force of the stroke. The
other Aposties, when the multitude lay rude violent hands
-* Another of these undesigned e-vidences or coincidences is implied
in the fact that of the four Evangelists only John gives the name of the
high priest's servant. John was personally acquainted with Caiaphas,
as we leam from his Gospel (chap, xviii. 15), and therefore might well
be so familiar with the leading members of his household as to be able
to name them.

338 MALCHUS.
on the sacred person of the Lord, are content to ask,
" Lord, shall we smite vrith the sword ? " But while they
ask, Peter acts. With characteristic precipitation he strikes
wildly and furiously at the furious crowd. The lesson of
patient dignity which the life of Jesus had taught, and which
had received its crowning iUustration in the Vigil of the
Garden, is forgotten for the moment ; the fervent and
vehement passion native to the man flashes out, and the
sad holy calm of the hour is broken with a brawl. Yet
-wrong as Peter was — wrong in haste, vnrong in malice-^
probably we love him all the better for that hasty blow.
There is that in us which sympathizes with the ardent
passion that could not stay to reason and to calculate
consequences — with the instinct, the storgi, which flies
blindly and wildly to protect its beloved, even though it be
against a world in arms. There is that in us which sympa
thizes with the gallant knight who Hstened with streaming
eyes to the story of Divine love ; but who, when the priest
went on to narrate the indignities cast on Christ — the mid
night arrest, the mockings and scourgings, the rude insults
of the rade soldiery — broke out into a great oath and cried,
" Would God that I had been there, to strike but one good
blow for Him ! " Let us hope that there is also that in us
which is in S3mipathy -with the meekness of Him who went
as a lamb to the slaughter, who does not need the poor de
fence that we can give, who will not accept our hatred of
any brother, however sinful, as love or ser-rice done to
Him ; for it is harder — harder, and therefore braver and
higher — to endure and be still, than to shout and -wrestle
and strike. If we feel that we too could have struck with
Peter, let us ask whether we could have been gentle and
patient with Christ. That is the true greatness; tiU we
reach that, we shall not be perfect Many a man is " swift
to wrath," and thinks it brave and noble to resent personal

MALCHUS. 339

wrong instantly, strongly, who is not brave enough to
master himself, nor noble enough to suppress his wrath.
The true hero, the true conqueror, is he who can return
good for evil, and a blessing for a curse.
Yet, that we may not altogether despair of ourselves be
cause we are in much alien from the spirit of Christ, let us
remember that He finds room in his kingdom for all sorts
and conditions of men ; for forward fiery Peter as well as
for those who will not act until He give the signal for action
and approve their deed. Peter finds a place in the Master's
service no less than busy sagacious Andrew, or slow doubt
ing Thomas, or those other Apostles who were of so quiet
and unpresuming a spirit that we know little of them but
their names. Nay, Iscariot himself shall have a place so
long as he cares to fill it, and share with the rest in the
wisdom and grace of the Master. However faulty we may
be, however dull and slow of heart, however impatient and
precipitate, Christ will teach us, and find us a work to do
that will chastise and correct our faults. He will bestow
on us a teaching and discipline that will gradually -conform
us to his perfect image, while it conserves and purifies what
ever characteristic energy or virtue there may be in us.
3. It is Peter who strikes the blow; it is Malchus who
is struck. And Malchus is not a soldier of the Roman
guard, nor even a bailiff or apparitor in the pay of the
Sanhedrin ; he is the personal servant (SoOXos) of Caiaphas
the priest We may be sure that Peter strack at one of
those who were foremost in laying violent hands on Christ,
foremost in the attempt to handcuff or pinion Him. And
therefore we may be sure that Malchus was more eager to
arrest Him than either the baihff or the guard. " Like
master, like man : " and Malchus seems to have been only
a Caiaphas of a meaner sort; to have indulged a priestly
rancour which he could not veU under subtle glosses, and

340 MALCHUS.
which in him knew none of the restraints of cultare >3r of
high dignified position. It was all very well for Caiaphas
to argue in the CouncU that it was " better for one man to
die than that the whole nation should. perish." It was aU
very well for him to hide ugly murder under a fair cloak of
policy, to sit in state and question Jesus in courteous phrase
about " his disciples and his doctrine ; " and, then, formally
to remit Him to the secular arm for the due punishment of
his heresy and treason. But the ira?/?^ Caiaphas — Malchus,
the high priest's servant, does not care to disguise his
hatred. He has no subtle politic suggestion to offer, nor
can he break polished Sadducean jests over an enemy and
an enthusiast He expresses the priestly rancour as his
nature prompts, in curses and blows. Therefore he is
among the first to lay rough hands on Christ ; he is forward
to bind and lead away the Rabbi whom his master hated,
although there were guards and apparitors enough for all
that, had he cared to leave it to them.
Malchus has leamed this hatred of Christ from Caiaphas :
— must not Caiaphas answer for the sin of Malchus ? Ah,
how dreadful is the responsibUity which for the most part
we very lightly bear, our responsibUity for the influence we
exercise on chUdren, or servants, or dependents ! No man
liveth unto himself. Our loves and hatreds are espoused,
our conduct is imitated, our opinions and actions are pleaded
as a warrant or an excuse. At many a moment when we
think not of it, nor mean it, we distU our venom or our
virtue, our enmity or our charity, into the hearts of those
who are about us, confirming them in their antipathy tp
God and to their neighbour, or helping them to love God
and man. We shall aU meet some Malchus at the bar of
judgment for whom we shall have in large measure to
answer — a wife, a chUd, a friend, a servant, on whom our
example was fiuitiul in influences, good or bad. Let us see

MALCHUS. 341

to it that he be not able to lay his neglects of duty, or his
aversion to trath and goodness, to our charge. If we can
not answer for our own sins, how are we to answer for his ?
To encourage us in our endeavour to do men good and
make them better, let us note that even for this misguided
wricked Malchus the Lord has mercy. It is for him that a
miracle of healing is wrought Christ uses the power He
would not use on his own behalf for one who is eager to
insult and injure Him; for one who, iii laying his rade
hands on the Rabbi of Nazareth, is performing no miHtary
or legal function, no duteous service, but is rather coming
between the guard and their duty in order to gratify the
rancour he has caught from the priests. It is one of the
basest of men, in one of his basest moods, whom Christ
touches and heals. And if Malchus was not beyond the
reach of his compassion, who is ? In Him there is help,
health, healing, salvation for the vUest. Even in their
vUest moods they are not beyond the scope of his mercy.
He can give " a hearing ear " even to the disobedient and
the unthankful, even to those who, through disobedience,
have lost the very faculty of hearing. We may all come to
Him for grace, if in no nobler company, than with Malchus
and his crew : and, so that we find grace, it wiU not greatly
matter vrith whom we come.
4. There is in Christ that which answers to all needs.
If He has healing for Malchus, He also has healing rebuke
for Peter. The wound inflicted by the- sword must be
cured ; but also the sword must be taught to know its
place. Simon Peter — the old name Simon is given him to
indicate that he has once more acted according to his old
unregenerate naturCT— is wamed : " Put up again thy sword
into its place, for aU they that take the sword shall perish
vrith the sword." This rebuke has been interpreted -vari
ously, in opposite senses even. Some read it : " Put up

342 MALCHUS.
thy sword, but do not cast it away. Reserve it for its right
moment and use. The Church may strike, though it must
not strike needlessly and at random." Others read it :
"The sheath is the only proper place for the Christian
sword. It must never be drawn. No man may strike!'
But, various and contradictory as the interpretations of this
passage are, its real meaning is surely obvious enough to
those who care to find it. That it is wrong to use force in
the service of truth ; that the progress of a spiritual enter
prise cannot be advanced by carnal weapons ; that it is
ahen to the spirit of Christ to persecute and injure men in
the name of religion, or to seek to make them religious by
placing them at any civil or social disadvantage so long as
they are, or are thought to be, sceptical or schismatical, — -
this, surely, no candid man can well doubt who believes
that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world. He carried
no sword, nor should the Church. If the Master used no
force, should his servants use it? If He rebuked Peter
for using it, are we — are even Peter's successors — at liberty
to use it? You cannot make a rnan believe against his
wiU, though you may induce him to add hypocrisy to un
belief by saying that he believes. You will not change any
one of his convictions by cleaving his skull ; and of all ways
of touching his heart the most unlikely is that of thrusting
him through with a sword. You cannot make a man a
good hearer of the Word by cutting off his ears, nor will
you win him to a good confession by smiting him on the
lips. Whatever else the rebuke of Peter may mean, we
may be quite sure it means this : that we cannot serve God
by harming men, that we cannot bring them to a better
mind by force and violence.
But it means much more than this. Our Lord is here
laying down a law of his kingdom. As his custom was. He
generalizes his thought ; He rises from the particular to the

MALCHUS. 343
universal. One man, Peter, had taken the sword against
one, Malchus. And in rebuking Peter, the Lord Jesus
gives a rule which holds good of all men. The rule is no
new rule, but an old rule which we have had from the be
ginning. It is not peculiar to Christ. We find it in the
first book of Scripture, and in the last. In Genesis* we
read, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his
blood be shed." In the Apocalypse f we read, " He that
leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity ; he that kUleth
with the sword must be kiUed with the sword." Our Lord's
words, " All they that take the sword shall perish by the
sword," are simply an echo of the words of Moses, and find
an echo in the words of John. And all three — Moses, the
Lord Jesus, and John — lay down one section of the law of
Di-rine retaliation ; the law which attaches to every deed its
due recompense of reward, the law in virtue of which we
sow as we reap, and eat as we bake. Violence provokes
violence, always has provoked it, always will. Draw your
sword on the world, and the world will draw its sword on you.
Violence provokes violence, justice must be done in the
end, " with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to
you again," — this is the general principle involved in our
Lord's rebuke of Peter. Do any object to it? — " It is not
an universal principle; it does not always hold good. Many
soldiers have died in their beds, and some brigands and
murderers." We reply : These broad proverbial sayings are
not to be taken in the letter, but in their spirit Out of
Scripture we do not think of translating proverbs literally.
If we say, " No path without a puddle," no man supposes
us to mean that no road was ever found without a hole full
of dirty water in it : we are at once understood as meaning
that no way of life, however fair and prosperous, is without
its drawbacks and difficulties, its slippery and dirty places.
* Gen. ix. 6 t Rev. xiii. xo.

344 MALCHUS.

In like manner, when our Lord affirms, " AU that take the
sword perish by the sword," we are not to think only, or
mainly, of swords of steel. We are to understand Him as
meaning that all violence is fatal. It not only provokes
violence in return, but it also exhausts the vital energies.
If nothing else avails to keep men from indulging fierce and
savage moods, this might weU restrain them, that such an
indulgence weakens them and hastens their end. Let a
man habituaUy fight, and he is sure to be worsted some day.
Let a man habitaally indulge a furious and violent temper,
raving and striking at every provocation, and he -wiU not
live out half his days. He will consume them at double
speed. He takes the sword, and he dies by the swordhetakes.
But though we are to interpret these words of the Lord
in a large spiritual, rather than in a literal, sense, they
suggest a very definite practical question, and help us to
answer it " Is all use of the sword forbidden by the law of
Christ ? Is the magistrate never to use it, although he is to
bear it ? Is war in every case wrong and wicked ? " Surely
not For our Lord is not speaking of those who bear the
sword, not of those into whose hands it is given by the
powers that be, and therefore by the ordinance of God, but
of those who take the sword, who, as the Greek word im
plies, seize upon it, at the instigation of private motives, to
avenge personal wrong. The magistrate does not seize
upon the sword, nor use it for selfish ends. It is given him
by God, and given both that he may execute justice on
evil-doers and defend the nation against foreign foes. He
is especially commanded not " to bear the sword in vain," i.e.,
to use it when its use becomes necessary in order that he
may be an effective terror to them that do evil, whether the
evU-doers be native or alien. True, war is an evU. Trae,
violence provokes violence" and hastens death. But there
are even worse evils than war, evUs so malignant and irre-

MALCHUS. 34S

parable that, compared vrith these, death is a refuge and
a friend. Whatever renders a free, pure, noble. Christian
life impossible is more to be feared than even war or death.
To seize the sword is to die by the sword ; but to die by
the sword in defence of virtue or freedom, hearth and altar,
is better than to drag out an ignominious Hfe. It is simply
to refer our cause to God, and to give ourselves back, at
what we hold to be his call, into his wise gracious hands —
the hands which rule the world into which we go no less
than the world we leave.
5. But, O, how foolish and extravagant of Peter to
think that his single and unskilful sword was required for
the defence of Christ ! With what a royal magnificence of
speech does Christ put his silly conceit to the blush ! A
Roman legion was the grandest and most splendid sight,
the most terrible and in-rincible instrument known to Peter.
It consisted of at least six thousand picked men who moved
as one, and before whose levelled spears and constant un
daunted valour all the armies of the world had broken into
flight And the Lord Jesus bids Peter remember that, at a
word of his. He and the Apostles would find themselves
each the centre of a "legion of angels," surrounded by cen
tury on century of immortals clad in the intolerable splen
dours of a celestial panoply, before the sweep of whose
strong wings, or the mere rustling of whose spears, all the
chivalry of earth might flee unabashed. What magnificence
there is in the thought ! and what grace ! For, observe,
the Lord Jesus does not so much as conceive of any glory
for Himself in which the Eleven are not to share. If one
legion come, " twelve legions of angels " must come, one for
each of them, as well as one for Himself !
No man took the Hfe of Jesus from Him, or could take it.
He lay it down of Himself What could that craven " mul
titade," who had come out against the gentle unarmed

346 MALCHUS.
Teacher with swords and staves, as against a robber chief
tain like Barabbas, and whose leaders were even now
binding his hands and forcing him away — what could these
have done, or Caiaphas, or Pilate, or Rome itself, against
the Master of so many invincible legions ? He is conscious
of his might, but He will not use it ; the grand sense of
power surges up into his brain for a moment, but He sub
dues it ; He sees the angelic legions waiting, longing, for
the command, but He vrill not utter it. He goes a wUling
victim to the cross, and voluntarily lays down his life for the
world He loved so well, and which requited his love so ill.
Yet He must have been sorely tempted to use his power.
Suffering such as was now at hand was dreadful to Him, as
it is to us. We catch the accents of a holy shame and in
dignation in his demand, " Be ye come out as against a
robbtri" But He does not yield to righteous anger. He
wUl not use his power to escape the suffering He dreads.
Two reasons are assigned for his constancy. The first,
that only by submitting to the violence and insults of the
multitude could He fulfil the wiU of God. Ancient Scrip
tures had foretold that "thus it must be" with Him; and
these Scriptares disclosed the will of the Father. It was
enough. Let the Father's will be done, though obedience
to it meant shame and death. Thus He meets and conquers
the temptation to a selfish use of power, as -we may meet
and conquer our temptations, " with the sword of the Spirit,
which is the word of God."
Then, secondly. He draws on past experience for present
help. He asks, " The cup which my Father hath given me,
shall I not drink it?" Only a few minutes since, He had
passed through the agony and bloody sweat in the very garden
in which He is now arrested. Even for Him it was hard —
let us remember that, we who find it so hard — to accept the
Father's will, to yield Himself to death, to be made sin for
us. The cup had seemed very bitter, even intolerable, to

MALCHUS. 347

Him. Thrice He had prayed that the cup might pass from
Him ; and the cup had not passed. It was even now be
ing rudely thrast to his lips — God's cup,, though it came to
Him in man's hard insolent hands. But he had leamed to
say, " Nevertheless, not my will, but thins, be done." It had
cost Him an agony and passion to say that which we can
never fathom, over which we can only brood in awe and
contrition. But He had said it He had meant what He
said. And now He will not part with the blessing which
had cost Him so dear ; He will not waver from the r>;solve
reached in the hour of prayer and spiritual agony. He
recalls that, and profits by it In this wild scene of angry
confusion He wUl not revise the holy resolution at which
He had arrived. He will drink the cup which his Father had
sent Him, even though it is forced upon Him by these rade
violent hands. And thus He has taught us, with a power
beyond that of words, to profit by our spiritual conflicts, to
become perfect through suffering, to recall in moments of
temptation, when our hearts are heated and confused, the
resolves formed in htjurs of prayerful stilhiess, that we may
conquer in the strength which prayer has brought us.
6. When He had thus spoken, Jesus turned to the
multitude who had come out against Him. There seems to
have been some slight consternation and recoil in the eager
crowd when Peter struck his blow, some fear that the other
disciples might follow his lead. But so soon as they hear-
Jesus rebuke the rash ardent Apostle, they regain their
courage, their insolence. They fling themselves afresh on
the Master, and begin once more to pinion the hands that
were never opened but to bless, and to force Him away.
And the Lord Jesus, who had all power in heaven and
earth, who might have called legions of angels to the rescue,
stoops to ask a boon of his assailants. What does He ask ?
He asks for Uberty — but only for liberty to do one of them

348 MALCHUS.

a service. With courteous accent and pleading significant
gesture. He says to those who bind Him, " Suffer ye thus
far. Permit me to lift my hand to yonder stricken ear, to
heal that, and then do with me as you wUl." He came not
to be ministered unto, but to minister. He thinks of others,
even of his enemies, before Himself: and, to do them good,
will ask a favour He would not have asked for his own
relief When we were yet enemies. He loved us, and gave
Himself for us. And if He loved us when we were enemies
and far off from Him, may we not rely on his love if now we
are reconciled and brought nigh? If on his way to the
cross, with the world for his burden. He could tairy to heal
one of the basest and wickedest of those who brought Him
to the cross, may we not confidently expect his healing
power now that He has passed through death into life,
through shame into glory ?
It is very touching to remember that his last miracle of
healing was vn-ought for a man so vile and rancorous as
Malchus, for the man who was leading Him to death. It
is very touching to remember that the hands which had so
often been lifted for the relief of human suffering were
bound by one who himself had felt the virtue that went out of
them ; that the hands which had only been stretched out to
heal and bless were now fettered, and their gracious ministry
brought to a close by those whom they might ¦ still have
.served. But how animating, how fuU of comfort and hope,
is the thought, that He has risen from the grave, to which
they hurried Him, with new power to bless ; that He has
entered on a larger ministry of healing ; that even the basest
and most wicked of us may buy of Him, or beg if we can
not buy, healing balms for every wound,' an infallible
medicine for every disease that afflicts the soul ! He who
had mercy on Malchus, shaU He have no mercy for us ? If
Malchus was not, can we be, beyond the scope of his grace ?

XXV.
S|^ foto jcrf %lim\n,
St. John xix. 2.
NOT in craelty, perhaps, but only in mockery and scorn
did the rough soldiers of the Roman Guard cast a
purple robe on the bleeding shoulders of Christ, plat a crown
for his head, put a reed in his hand, and feign to do Him
homage as a king. All this was but a rade burlesque of the
ceremonies with which they honoured the general whom^ they
raised by acclamation to the throne, and was no doubt sug
gested by our Lord's claim to be the king of the Jews — a
claim which to them must have seemed simply preposterous
in the gentle unarmed peasant of Nazareth. To us, indeed,
the last hours of any man, even the most debased and
criminal, have a certain sanctity. Death gives him an interest
and dignity whoUy new. We treat him with respect, and
should hold it simply bratal to embitter his dying moments
with blows and insults. So much humanity at least we
have all learned from Christ. But to the Roman legionaries
such feelings were utterly unkno-wn. To them it would
seem a very proper jest that this soft-voiced Peasant — poor,
unfriended, abandoned — should assert a claim against
Caesar. No reverence for death, no humane sympathy with
a fellow-man about to be cast from the world, would restrain
their fuU enjoyment of the jest; and probably it was in a
rough good-humoured way, not with any studied malignity,
but with broad laughter and mirth, many a word of loud

350 THE CROWN OF THORNS.
coarse merriment on their lips, that they placed the crown
of thorns on that Sacred Head, and cringed and bowed in
affected deference before it. But if they did not mean to
be cruel, nevertheless they were cruel. It was only in insult
and derision, not to inflict bodily pain, that they imposed
the cro-wn of thorns ! Only ! But to a gentie sensitive
heart to be mocked in its agony is incalculably harder than
to bear physical pain. Insults are sharper than thoms ;
derision is more cruel than a blow. The very excuse we
make for the rough thoughtless soldiers simply renders the
sufferings of their Victim more keen and profound.
NaturaHsts have spent much labour on determining the
name of the plant from which the Guard broke the twigs
they platted into a crown — no easy task, since at least a
score of prickly shrubs were common in Palestine. Years
ago, however, they named one plant, and that perhaps the
most likely of all, Zizyphus Spina Christi, on the assumption
that it was this which furnished the crown of thorns.
Modern naturalists are pretty well agreed that it was this
zizyphus, a low growing shrub which the Arabs call Nabk; it
is as common in all the warmer parts of Syria as gorse is with
us ; the valley of the Jordan is absolutely overrun with it,
and converted into an impenetrable thicket : and it was very
suitable for the purpose, both because it has many sharp
thorns, and because its flexible pliant branches may easily
be twisted into a crown. In the deep green of its leaves,
moreover, it closely resembles the ivy from which crowns
were woven for imperators and victorious generals. A
crown which looked like the imperial wreath, but which,
instead of being cool and pleasant to the brow, inflicted a
multitude of minute irritating pains, — this was the crown of
thorns, the only crown which the world conferred on Him
who came to save the world, and who gat Him the victory
over death and sin.

THE CROWN OF THORNS. 351
Of this sacred relic Tradition babbles with even more
than its usual folly. We are told that Helena, the mother
of the Emperor Constantine, guided by a vision, discovered
the site of the holy sepulchre under a temple dedicated to
Venus ; and found in it, not only the Cross with its tri-
Hngual inscription, but also the crosses of the two thieves,
the nails, the crown of thorns, and other relics to which
men do homage to the present day. A superstitious fable
this beyond all question ; but there are historic facts con
nected with it which read us once more a lesson we often
need to learn, viz., that so soon as we begin to hold the
Christian faith in letter and form, instead of in spirit and
life, we degrade toward ritaalism, and will-worship, and
spiritual death. For this crown of thorns discovered, or
invented, to please the Empress Helena, was treasured for
the adoration of the faithful in the great church at Constan
tinople. It descended as a precious heirloom from Emperor
to Emperor tiU, in the thirteenth centary, it came into pos
session of Baldwin II. Baldwin, being hard pressed by
Turk and Tatar, hrst pawned the crown of thorns as security
for a loan from the Venetians, and then sold it to Lewis, the
King of France, for a sum amounting to about ^^54,000 of
our money. A relic that has been pawned and sold must
have lost much of its sanctity, one should think, and there
fore we need follow the history of this crown no further.
But I may mention that there are now several crowns o
thoms in the possession of the Roman Church, each claim
ing to be the very wreath worn by Christ : and I have some
where read a pretty legend of one of these crowns to the
effect that, on every Easter Sunday, it breaks into flower,
and fiUs the church with its sweet odours — a cha,rming theme
for a poem, had one a faculty that way.
We have now before us all that is knovra of the Crown of
Thorns, and a great deal more than is known in any stiict sense

352 THE CROWN OF THORNS.
of the word : we may therefore pass, from the fact that our
Lord was thus cro-wned, to the spiritual suggestions of the
fact I. And, first of aU, let us mark how the -wisdom of God
penetrates and overrales the folly of man. The pagan
soldiers meant only coarse derision when they platted a
crown of thoms arid put it on the head of Christ. But had
they been a conclave of Hebrew sages bent on framing a
sacred symbol which should speak heavenly truths to men
through all ages, they could hardly have hit on a symbolism
more instractive or more pathetic. For, according to the
Hebrew Bible, thorns, as they are a consequence, so also
they are an express -type, of sin. ¦Whether we read the story
of our first parents as spiritual parable or as authentic his
tory does not matter for our present purpose. In either
case it affirms that thorns and briers sprang up to rebuke
Adam's transgression. When he fell from his innocence, the'"*
gracious serviceable earth grew hard and stubborn. Instead
of nourishing only trees and plants that were pleasant to the
eye and good for food, it threw up a swarm of noxious briers
whose thorps plagued men's hands and feet when they tilled
the ground, and whose greedy roots sucked the soU's fer
tility from wholesome flowers and trees. There may be
parable here ; nay, there is parable. For these painful
thoms were an outward and -risible sign of the inward
disastrous change which had passed on men. They, too,
had become barren of wholesome gro-wths, fertUe in all
noxious growths. And these noxious growths of the soul
were pregnant with pain and misery and deatii; the sins
men committed wounded and pierced them with many pangs.
Hence all through the Bible , thoms are used as symbols of
sin, or of sinful men, or of the painful consequences in
which sin issues. The heathen nations were to be as thorns

THE CROWN OF THORNS. 353
in the sides * and in the eyes f of Israel for their sins.
The sons of Belial were as thorns to holy David. | Solomon
speaks of thoms and snares in the way of the froward, §
, meaning, of course, to warn taem against the moral
hindrances, temptations, pains, to which their frowardness
would expose them. Ezekiel promises the captives of his
day that, when they have repented and turned unto the
Lord, there shall no more be a pricking brier among them,
nor any grievous thorn ; || and Isaiah describes the peace
and bounty of the regenerated earth in the familiar words,
" Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and the
myrtle instead of the brier." ^
Thus, throughout Scripture, the punitive and painful
results of human sin, all the infirmities and languors and
pangs it breeds in us, and all the miserable degradations it
brings into our lot, are figuratively described as thoms
sprung from the thorns which avenged the transgression of
Adam, just as all our sins, in some sense, have their root in
his sin. When, therefore, by the ordinance of God, no less
than through the crime of man, a crownof thorns was placed
on the head of Christ, we are simply tracing out a pervading
symbolism of Scripture if we say : " In this crown of thoms
we have an illustration of the trath, that Christ came to
suffer for our sins, to carry our sicknesses, to become the
second Adam, to undo the work of the first Adam, and to
take away the sin of the entire race. As in the Adam all
die, so in the Christ shall all be made alive."
Nay, more : it is hardly fanciful, it is stUl in accordance
with the symbolism of Scripture if we mark how, whUe the
thorns pierce ouxfeet and hands, they pierced the very head
of Christ; and find in this fact a hint that, whUe we all
* Numbers xxxiii. 55. f Joshua xxiii. 13.
X 2 Samuel xxiii. 6. § Proverbs xxii. 5.
II Ezekiel xxviii. 24. If Isaiah Iv. 13. 23

354 THE CROWN OF THORNS.
suffer for our sins, Christ suffered most of all in that He, who
knew no sin, became sin for us, that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him. It is not fanciful, but in ac
cordance with the Bible symbolism, if we note that the
thorns, which speak of our shame, were woven into a
.crown for Christ; for, while our sins are our ignominy, it is
Christ's glory that He bare and took away our sins. It is
not fanciful if, from the fact that Christ wore as a cro-wn the
sins which are our shame and punishment, we infer the
hope that, as we become one vrith Him, our thoms -wiU be
woven into a crown for us, that even through e-ril we shaU
rise into a higher, larger, and more enduring good.
AU these spiritual hints and suggestions are fairly set,
like gems of the moming, in Christ's crown of thorns ; and
they are tiiere that, as we gaze upon them, they may shine
into our souls -with healing Hghts of hope. He who wore
the crown of thoms, in his infinite grace and pity, did offer
Himself a willing sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours
only, but for the sin of the whole world. For us men and
our salvation He did suffer an agony and passion such as
we can never know, can never so much as conceive ; the
thorns pierced his head, and not only his hands and his
feet Because He humbled Himself and became obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross, God did highly
exalt Him, and give Him a name that is above every name,
making of our very thoms an honourable crown for his up
lifted head. By his assumption of our nature, the Lord
from heaven, the life-giving Spirit, did become the second
Adam, and achieve a redemption wide as the world, a vic
tory in which death was swaUowed up of life. Through
his grace — not through our sins, but through the grace which
works through our sins and emancipates us from them — ^we
do rise from natural into spiritual men, " and gain, for
earthly Eden lost, a heavenly Paradise." AU the hints and

THE CROWN OF THORNS. 355
suggestions of the Crown of Thorns are confirmed by the
revelation of the Divine Love in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That it should be so fuU of hiits of trath and hopeful sug
gestions, shews that, in this, God's wisdom was once more
overruling the folly of men, his grace their malice ; that
here, as in all things. He was bringing good out of evU,
and compelling the very wrath of man to praise Him.
2. But if through the folly of man we have caught
clearer and broader glimpses of the wisdom of God, let us
now leam one of the deep practical secrets of that wisdom.
The secret is : That every true crown is a crown of thorns.
We are naturally intolerant of parn ; we shrink from suffer
ing ; and therefore we are slow of heart to believe that pain
is a condition of all pure joy, that only through suffering
can we enter into peace and glory. The truth is famUiar to
us, indeed, for it is the constant teaching of the New Testa
ment, the constant experience of our o-wn lives. But
familiar as it is to us, it is nevertheless unwelcome. In our
dread — O foolish dread ! — of pain and sorrow, we put it
from us ; and hence we are often unprepared for our sorrows-
and pains when they come upon us. It may help us to
receive and embrace this truth if we approach it by an un-
famUiar path, such as our theme indicates.
" Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," says our
great poet ; but the aphorism must be qualified. To say the
least of it, the uneasiness of kings may have many sources ;
it does not always spring from the crown. A bad king may
be rendered uneasy by every check on his despotic humours,
by the prosperity or glory of his rivals, by every sign of
growing freedom of thought and action in his subjects.
Our kings are little more than kings in name : their pains
and troubles, in so far as these are kingly, spring from sym
pathy -with their ministers or their people, not from any
grave political responsibUity resting on them. But suppose

356 THE CROWN OF THORNS.
a king to be a king indeed, a king in the ancient sense.
Suppose him, like David, really to make laws for his realm,
to control the destinies of his subjects, to govern them at
his -will. In proportion as he is a true and noble king, his
uneasiness will flow from a noble and royal source. He
-\rill task his powers to de-rise vrise laws, to promote the in
terests of all classes of his subjects, to supply their wants,
to train them in knowledge, capacity, freedom. If pestUence
invade them, if the harvest fail, if floods rise, if in their
ignorance they resist measures which he sees -wiU be for
their good, if he detect his magistrates in injustice, his
officers in oppression, — whatever goes wrong will bring him
pain and grief And as accidents and offences -will come,
even in the most favoured lands and the best governed
realms, the king vrill endure greater toils of thought, keener
pangs of heart, than any of those for whom he lives and
rules. AU their troubles wUl be his troubles, their losses
his losses, their shame his shame. His crown, in the very
proportion in which he is worthy to wear it, wUl be lined
with thorns.
The same law holds in every case in which men are called
to rale, whatever the character of the realm, and whether
their subjects be many or few. If you are a master and
have a few men under authority, if you are a teacher and
have a few children to train and control, even your cro-wn
will be a crown of thoms. Be hard, negligent, unjust ; be
yielding, easy, careless ; and in either case you vrill ine-rit-
ably have some trouble to face. Be vrise, just, sympathetic ;
really concern yourself for the welfare of those whom you
rale and for the success of their toUs ; and even thus you
vrill not pluck the thorns from your crown : every accident
that befaUs your workmen or your pupUs, every sign of
indolence, or wastefulness, or quarrelsomeness, or vice on
their part, wiU prick and sting you. Yet only as you suffer

THE CROWN OF THORNS. 357
these thorns, only as you heartily care for the men or
children entrasted to, you, only as you sadden in their
disappointments, grieve over their sins, rejoice in their
amendment, and hold yourself the richer for their gains, can
you become a good master or a good teacher.
There is no escape for us. Every joy has its cost of pain;
every honour must be won by labour and suffering. Even
the stadent who isolates himself from his fellows and plunges
into books, seeking to conquer knowledge and to rule his
thoughts wisely, can only reach his end by toil and pain, by
working when he is weary, by vigorously suppressing many
nataral cravings which, if indulged, would divert him from
his aim. The father who would rale his chUdren, and
make home happy, must take much thought and pains. He
must not only labour in order to pro-ride food and educa
tion for his family, he must lay a vrise, often a painful,
restraint on his own habits, and looks, and words, lest he
should injure them and undo the good effects of home, and
school, and church. At times he riiust brace himself to
correct their faults, not by random blows, or angry uncon
sidered words, or by severities of which he vriU be the first
to tire, but vrith patience, forethought, stedfastness, at the
cost often of a racking brain and a sore heart Even when
he has fairly dravm his children under rale, the thoms do
not drop from his crown. For now that a tender and -wise
love has grovm up between him and them, all their faults
and sins more sharply pierce his heart; accidents befall
them, and strike him with the deeper pain ; or death seizes
them, and his crown of fathejrhood is aU thorns.
Here, then, we begin to see vvhy Christ's crown must be
a crown of thorns. "What other crown could the Perfect
Man wear when the men He loved were so imperfect?
or the Perfect King when his subjects, distrusting his
wisdom, unwittiig of his love, were in hot rebelHon against

3S8 THE CROWN OF THORNS.
Him, and raised their hands against the Head before
which they should have bowed in adoration? But if He
could wear no crown but this, can we, who have his Spirit
and are being conformed to his likeness, wear any crown
but his ? His very Spirit in us causes us to rale ourselves,
to bring every high thought, every wandering and extrava
gant affection, into subjection to his pure law; to cast off
all sinful habits, to follow after holiness and virtue. And
this interior kingdom, which we are called to rale, has long
been wasted by rebellion and strife ; false lords have risen
up in it and brought it into captivity ; errors of thought
hold many of our inteUectual conceptions in chains ; base
passions have broken into mutiny, and usurped the dominion
due to reason, and charity, and hoHness : and we, poor
kings that we are ! have to conquer our kingdom before we
can rale it It is little more than " the likeness of a crown "
which wreathes our helmet ; but the thorns are there, and
pierce through the steel. ¦Whatever progress we have made,
if even at rare intervals the whole realm of inward thought,
and energy, and affection is brought into a happy consent
of obedience and worship, the trace is soon broken. Hardly
a day passes without our being made sorrowfully aware that
some province of the soul is in fierce insurrection against
the authority to which it made a show of yielding.
Nay, more : the self-same Spirit that caUs us to rule our
selves also calls us to the conquest of the world, or of some
little corner of it which, however smaU, is large enough to
hold all the forces of the world and aU the powers of dark
ness. We have to serve and help our neighbours — we who
ourselves stand in such bitter need of help ! We have to
contend with the spiritual wickednesses which are in them
— we vriio are so often overcome ! Everywhere around us
there is the same heavy task, the same unremitting and
deadly conflict, which we find vrithin. And how can we

THE CROWN OF THORNS. 359
achieve or contribute to that task save by manifold and ex
hausting labours ? how be always in the thick of that con
flict without taking as well as giving many wounds? If
there were no interior contest, no constant toil at home,
the sheer force of sympathy with our neighbours is at times
enough to break our hearts, if at least we have our Master's
spirit of love and pity. Think how many sorrows there are
in the world, what deep and wide miseries, what innumer
able and incurable evils ! Nay, think how many even in
our own narrow circles are at this very moment weeping
bitter tears of regret, anguish, despair ; how many faint in
languor and pain ; how many — and these the most pitiable
of all— eat and drink, and laugh and swear, while the very
soul is dying out of them, oppressed and strangled by the
lusts of the flesh ! If we are Christian in spirit as weU as
in name, if we have any share of our Master's purity, and
tendemess, and grace, all these miseries and evils are as
thorns in our crown. We cannot, we dare not, be indifferent
to them. At times they tear and sting us well-nigh into
despair, till, like Moses and Paul, we could -wish ourselves
blotted from the book of life, if only these poor souls might
be healed and saved.
¦What then ? Are we to jrield to despair ? Shall we re
linquish the task of self-rale and service because it is hard ?
ShaU we quit the field because the foe is strong, and the
conflict bloody, and every arm is needed ? Shall we say,
" Such a task, such a conflict is beyond mortal strength ? "
That wUl only be to take the thorns without the crown. To
yield to our base passions, to make no endeavour to stem
the miseries of the world, is to become base and miser
able : it is to become' thorns in the crown of Christ and in
that of aU good men. No; let our resolve be, "Never to
submit, nor yield, or even parley with the foe." It is through
such pams arid toUs as these that we grow strong in spirit

36o THE CROWN OF THORNS.
It is by such sufferings as these that we become perfect and
win immortal honour. It is as we redouble our endeavours,
as we give ourselves more stedfastly and earnestly to our
task,, and shew ourselves valiant in the conflict, that these
thoms of pain and grief and bitter sympathy -with human
woes are platted into a cro-wn more lustrous and honourable
than fine gold and gems of price.
Christ's crown of thorns broke into flower long ago ; its
sweet healing odours float through the heavenly temple, and
are wafted over the earth by every wind that blows. Let us
but be patient, stedfast, immovable, always abounding in the
work of the Lord, always shewing a good courage in the
wars of the Lord ; and in due time our crowns, of which
we should hardly be conscious now but for the thorns, -will
also blossom into flower, and vrill make us glad accordmg
to the days wherein they have afflicted us.

XXVI.
§iimm "^dtx Qots a-Jispixg,
John xxi. 3.
THE form of this passage is peculiar. Nothing in the
Gospel of St. John has prepared us for it. It is not,
I believe, to be matched from any other of the Gospels. If
the sacred historian had simply told us that Seven of the Dis
ciples went fishing on the Lake, there would have been nothing
unusual or surprising in that The strange thing is that, in
describing so sHght a matter, instead of maintainiig the
narrative tone, he is at the pains to report the very words of
a conversation ; that he teUs us exactiy what Peter said and
what his brethren replied. We shaU feel how strange this
is if we suppose the Gospel to be written in the same style
throughout. Suppose, for instance, we read, " Simon Peter
said, I am going up-stairs into the upper chamber; they
said to him. We also wUl go with thee : " or, " Simon
Peter said, I sing a hymn ; they said to him. We wUl sing
too." That surely would have been very tedious as well as
very strange. And why St John should have fallen into this
style when he has nothing more to teU us than that Seven
Disciples went a-fishing, it is by no means easy to say. It
is so hard to say, that many Commentators are quite sure,
for this among other reasons, that St John never wrote these
words ; they are quite sure, some, that the text is corrapt ;
others, that the whole Chapter was written by another hand.

362 SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING.
We need not, I hope and believe, resort to any such
" heroic " or desperate expedient in order to account for
the peculiar style in which this passage is written. The
nataral explanation of it, that which first suggests itself, is, —
That the peculiarity of style denotes something peculiar in
the event ; that the Apostle gives us the very words of Simon
Peter and his brethren because he thought them to be of
very grave importance. Yet they do not seem of moment
Nothing could well seem of less moment than the fact, that
seven fishermen went a-fishing. Nevertheless, I will try to
shew that this apparently trivial fact was of such moment as
to warrant any emphasis which St John could lay upon it
I. But to reach our term we must fetch a compass. We
must go back at least to the night on which the Lord Jesus
was betrayed. On that memorable night. He set forth his
approaching death, not only in clear words of prediction,
but also in those pathetic sacramental symbols which still
vrield a strange mystic power over all hearts. To that
power " the Twelve " were not insensible. Their hearts
were " troubled," " filled with sorrow.'' Now they seemed
first to realize the thought that their Master was to be taken
from them, and they left " comfortless," " orphaned " in the
world. But, suddenly, across the darkened and tearful
heaven of their thoughts there smUed a bow of hope. He,
who had predicted his death, predicted his immediate resur
rection from the dead, nay, promised that, so soon as He
was risen. He would go before them into Galilee.* Before
they have returned frofn the Feast to their Galilean homes,
He vriU be there. Not many days hence, although his
death must intervene, they may hope to see Him again, and
to renew the intercourse with Him which even death itself
could not break. Nay, more : He not only promises that
* Matt xxvi. 32.

SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING. 363
He will be in Galilee before them ; but, as we learn from St.
Matthew,* He "appoints " a special "mountain" on which
He vrill meet with them.
The Disciples forgot this promise ; and the Commentators
seem to have forgotten it too. None of them, so far as I
am aware, lays much sfress on it, or appears to perceive
how large a factor it was in the history of that time. Yet
the Gospels lay great stress upon it They not only record
the promise ; they also record the extraordinary means
taken to bring it to bear on the minds of the forgetful Dis
ciples. Angels are sent from heaven to remind them of it.
Christ Himself appears to put them in remembrance. The
angel who sat on the stone of the sepulchre, shining on the
astonished eyes of the holy women like " lightning " out of
heaven, bade them " go quickly, and tell his Disciples that
He had risen from the dead ; and, behold. He goeth before
you " — citing the very words of the promise t — " into Galilee;
there shall ye see Him." As they departed quickly from
the sepulchre with fear and great joy, and did ran to bring
his Disciples word, lo, Jesus Himself met them, and said to
them, J " Go, teU my brethren, that they depart into Galilee,
and there shall they see me."
Now had the Disciples remembered this promise, had
they acted on it when they were reminded of it, they -would
at once have started for their native GalUee, and hastened
to "the mountain where Jesus had appointed them." In
stead of weeping in their darkened city chamber, they would
have breathed the bracing mountain air; in place of mourn
ing a dead or departed Lord, they would have rejoiced in his
living gracious presence : for, however soon they reached the
appointed mountain, we may be very sure that Christ would
* Matt, xxviii. 16.
f Comp. Matt. xxvi. 32 with Matt, xxviii. 7.
% Matt, xxviii. 9, 10.

364 SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING.
have been there before them. The remissness and unbelief
of the Disciples cannot fail to astonish us till we remember
the overwhelming shock to their hopes involved in the death
of their Master, tUl we remember, too, how often in our
troubles we neglect or distrast many a comfortable and
gracious word. They forget the gracious hopeful promise.
They do not act upon it when they are reminded of it. They
tarry in Jerasalem, although expressly commanded to go into
Galilee. It is not till after a whole week, not tUl Christ
had appeared to Cephas, to the Ten, to sceptic Thomas,
that they leave Jerasalem for Galilee. Even when they
repair to GalUee, they do not climb the mountain where
Jesus had appointed them. They return to their homes;
they linger round the shores of the Lake.
It is at this conjuncture, that we meet them, or seven of
them. Probably they had been in Gahlee some days ; pos
sibly even a week or two ; and still they have not seen the
Master. Once more, despite the message of the angels and
the women, they appear to have forgotten all about the ap
pointed mountain. They know their Lord is no longer con
fined to this place or that ; thdt He is somewhere in the
invisible world, and may at any moment become visible to
them. UntrammeUed by physical limitations and restraints,
it is nothing to Him where they are ; it is just as easy for Him
to shew Himself by the Lake as on the Mountain. StUl He
does not shew Himself, and the days wear on in anxious
suspense and lessening hope. Four of the Eleven seem to
have given up all expectation of ever seeing Him again ;
they have left the apostolic company. But the seven most
prominent Apostles, earliest called and closest neighbours,
stiU hang together, their hearts tormented with eager yet sad
questionings, their hopes fast sicklying over with the pale
hues of doubt " Why does He not come ? Why does He
not come ? Will He come ? Shall we ever see him again ? "

SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING. 365
At last Peter's heart, always a little impatient, fails him,
and he cries, " I go a-fishing " — meaning, as I take it, " I
give it up. He will not come. We are the mere fools of
hope. Let us go back to our old state, and our old work."
To suppose, as some do, that the Seven went out fishing to
pass the time till their appointment vrith Christ fell due, is to
forget all that they had done for many days before. They had
never borne his promise in mind. They had not accepted
the testimony of angels, nor obeyed the commands of Christ
Himself -And we have no reason to conclude that in GalUee
they were -wiser or better men thauithey had been in Jerusalem.
To infer that the Seven went fishing in order to secure the
means of subsistence until they were sent forth to preach and
live by the Gospel, is to forget that for three years they
had been able to live without labour, that their temperate
wants were easily supphed, and that even in Jerusalem
they had no anxieties on that head, but seem to have been
able to stay as long as they would. Nor does either of
these hypotheses at all account for the emphasis which
St. John lays on the fact, that the Seven went out in their
boats to fish the lake. From his emphasis we may be
sure that he regarded it as a critical event, the very detaUs
of which he was bound to record. I see no way to account
for his emphasis but this : — That the proposal to go a-fishing
was the virtual renunciation of their hope to see Christ again
before He went up on high. Years before, he had decisively
called them away from the craft by which they had their
bread. They were to leave their boats and nets, to follow
Him, to become fishers of men. That they now went back
to their old craft, from which He had called them, appears
a clear indication that they had begun to distrust their call,
that they no longer expected to, see Him on this side the
grave, but felt that they must betake themselves to other
work than that He had assigned them.

366 SIMON PETER GOES A-FTSHING.
If this were the thought of their hearts, we need no pro
phet to tell us which of them would be the first to express
it. Peter, ever ready of lip, and of that sanguine tempera
ment which soonest reacts into despair, would be sure to
speak before the rest, to put their thoughts into words.
We might have foreseen, too, that even St. Peter, bold- as
he was of speech, would shrink from saying in so many
words, "I give up hope : I distrast the promise;" that he
would hint his thought in indirect pihrase, and leave his
brethren to infer its full import : that he would say, " I go
a-fishing," and let them put their own interpretation on his
words. If we have rightly caught his meaning, if, as I
believe, he was here repeating in a new form that denial
of Christ which he had so bitterly repented, he is not alto
gether without excuse. The last month of his life had been
full of keen excitements. He had gone through agonies
which were only inferior to those of his Master. He might
well be exhausted, and, in his spiritual exhaustion, perilously
open to temptation. And his temptation was very great.
For what more trying than protracted suspense, when on its
issues hangs death or life ? If, after weeks of intense spiritual
tension, our fate were to hang in the balance day after day;
if, as the days passed, we were brooding on the thought,
" Now, now, O surely now at last, I shall know whether I
am to live or die :'' should not we be apt at times to sink
into despair and forbode the worst ? That was Peter's trial.
Day by day he was thinking, "Surely the Lord will come
to-day, if He mean to come at all ! surely to-day ! " Is it
any wonder that at last, sick at heart with deferred hope,
he gave up hope, and was glad to get out of all that sicken
ing suspense of thought into rough hard work ? There lay
the smiling beautiful lake, the boats he had so often sailed,
the nets he had so often fingered : what a relief to a mind
all perturbed and broken with sorrowful disappointments to

SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING. 367
plunge once more into the familiar toils which would at least
brace his energies and restore the lost sense of reality !
We must make some allowance for St. Peter, then, for his
temptation was great ? Yes ; but we must not forget that if
Peter had been in his right place, if he had been on the
mountain where Jesus had appointed him, the temptation
would not have been there. We must not forget that, on
the Mountain, hope would have risen into glad fraition in
stead of sinking into despair. Nor may we forget that, in
assuming to speak out his thought, Peter took a new burden
of responsibility on himself, a burden he could very hardly
bear. The Six probably thought, as he thought, that hope
was gone, that it was well-nigh time to take to other work
than that to which they had been called by Christ But it
was Peter's "I go a-fishing" which brought out their "We
also go with thee." His word feU on hearts very ready to
kindle ; but, had he not spoken it, their hearts might never
have burst into flame. "When thou art converted, strengthen
thy brethren,'' was the Lord's injunction to Simon. Had he
obeyed it, had he said to his dejected comrades, " Brethren,
hope StUl; we have always found Him trae, and I forone-
wUl never cease to trast Him," the story would have had a
happier close : those who said " We also go with thee,"
when he cried " I go a-fishing," had he said, " Though He
slay me, yet wiU I trast in Him," would have replied, " We
too wiU trast Him." There is a mysterious and terrible
power in words ; and he who, faithless himself, suggests an
evU course to hearts of an imperfect fidehty, wUl have some
thing more to answer for than his own sin.
II. But let us foUow the Seven into their boat, and see
how it fared -with them in their fishing. It fared by no
means happily. They had put off at evening, toUed all
night, and caught nothing. Yet the Lake was fuU of fish,

368 SIMON PETER GOE^ A-FISHING.
and they cast their net on this side of the boat and on that.
A hard lot theirs^when they must give up catching men
for catching fish, and can't even do that ! All their know
ledge of the water and practised skiU avaU them nothing.
How should it, when they had forsaken the work appointed
them by God for a work of their own choosing ? When He
comes to their help, when at dawn Christ stands on the
shore, and bids them cast their net, and tells them where to
cast it, they catch fish enough, more than a hundred and
fifty great fish, so that they cannot haul their net, but have
to drag it after them to the beach.
Was there no teaching for them in this? Did not the
constant failure of that toUsome night warn them that fish
ing was not their work? Did it not remind them that
Christ had called them away to a higher task, and suggest
that they had done wrong in wilfully declining on the lower
task from which He had summoned them? Let us at all
events leam that we can only hope to thrive when we take
our daily tasks as ordained for us by Him ; that so soon
as we leave the work He has given us for tasks of our own
choosing, we have only too good reason for calculating on
failure and disappointment.
Many sad and desponding anxieties must have troubled
the Seven on their night of unsuccessful toil ; but of all
thoughts the most frequent and sad would be, I suppose,
that the gracious Master whom they had loved so weU had
forsaken them, and that, now He had left them, nothing
would thrive with them. Of course we cannot tell exactly
what shape their thoughts took. They were ignorant super
stitious men ; and their superstition and ignorance would
colour their conceptions of Him, and make them unworthy
of Him. They would have no doubt, I conceive, that He
was in the remote invisible world, no longer hovering near
the confines of the earth as He had done during the days

SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING. 369
which immediately foUowed the resurrection. They may
have conceived of Him as in " Abraham's bosom," in that
fair Paradisaical garden in which the Hebrews thought their
fathers were gathered, sitting dovm with Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob, with Moses and Elijah, with David and Isaiah,
partaking vrith them of the sweet fraits and services of the
celestial garden, talking -with them of the secrets of the
kingdom of God, and too intent on such high themes to
remember the poor sinful men He had left behind
Him in the world. But whatever form their thoughts as
sumed, there can be little doubt they made up their minds
that they should never see Him again on earth, that He had
forgotten them, or did not so remember them as to care for
them and help them. Every time they drew in their empty
nets the conviction would grow on them that, despite
his kind parting words, they could no longer hope to enjoy
his presence and the happy succours his presence had
always brought them. The clouded heavens of that
mournful night, its chill winds, its unfraitful sea, would
appear apt emblems of their future life now that they were
left " comfortless " in the world.
We know, indeed, that it was they who had forgotten
Him, not He. who had forgotten them; that, had they
remembered his promise and fulfilled its conditions, they
would have found Him better than his word. But they did
not know that as yet, though they were soon to learn the
lesson. The night passed, as the longest night wUl ; and, as the
cold morning slowly dawned down the hills and across the
Lake, there stands Jesus on the shore, although " they knew
not that it was Jesus." Even his famUiar salutation, "My
children — My chUdren, have ye aught to eat ? " awakens no
answering chord of memory in their hearts. It is not till
He repeats the miracle which had signalized their first call
24

37° SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING.
to his service that even the keen eye of love detects the
Presence so long desired, so little hoped for, and John cries
out in bhssful raptare, " It is the Lord ! "
It was the Lord. Had He forgotten them, or ceased to
care for them ? Ah, no ; for, see, a cheerful fire bums on
the strand; fish are broUing on "the coals," loaves are
baking ; and Jesus, in the old tones of considerate love,
cries, "Come, children, and breakfast with me! " Ah, no ;
He has not forgotten them, nor been unmindful of their
toil, and cold, and hunger; He has made provision for
their need, and welcomes them to the meal his care ha.<:
prepared. I can well believe that Simon Peter broke his fast upon
his tears. Now, as once before when he had denied his
Master, he may have " gone out," even from that gracious
Presence, to weep bitterly, and to braise his hasty unbeHev
ing breast with heavy strokes of compunction. And when
the Lord turned upon him -with the question, " Simon, son
of Jona, lovest thou me?" he might weU be "grieved;"
for, though he could appeal to the Searcher of all hearts to
attest his love, he could not but feel that, notwithstanding
his genuine love for the Master, he had once more proved
faithless and not believing.
And is not the whole story true to our experience ? How
often do we forget the gracious promises we have received,
and on which we should stay our hearts ! How often do
they seem unreal, impalpable, unreliable, remote from actual
Hfe, even when we are reminded of them ! How often do
we faU to fulfil the conditions of the promise, and then com
plain that God has forgotten us and his word to us !
How often also, thank God, do we find Him carmg for
us when we have failed to trust ui Him, and blessing us
although we have not obeyed his command — meetmg us
although we have not climbed tiie appointed mountain,

SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING. • 371
giving us a good success in our labours, although we have
for a time lifted our weak faithless hands from the work which
He assigned us ! How often does the voice of Infinite
Love cry to us, " ChUdren, chUdren, come from the cold
and darkness of faithless toils and defeated hopes to the
light of my grace, the comfort of my rest, the peace and joy
of communion with me ! " If we believe not, He is faithful ;
He cannot deny Himself, though we deny Him. And that
He may not deny Himself, that his kind promises may be
fulfilled in and upon us. He compels us, by failure and dis
appointment and grief, to come to the mountain where He
has appointed us, to climb those steeps of duty on which
He would have us walk ; or He follows us in our wander
ings, standing by the sea on which we are tossed, that we
may leave it, and follow Him to the mountain — aUuring us
by a present kindness to a kindness greater still.
Last of all, if this story be trae to our past experience,
it is also trae of experiences which are yet to come,
and from the very thought of which we sometimes shrink.
" The moming is dawning ; the grey of night going
away; the lake is stUl; and, yonder, standing on the
shore, in the uncertain Hght, there is one dim figure, and
one disciple catches sight of Him, and another casts him
self into the water ; and they find a fire of coals and fish
laid thereon and bread ; and Christ gathers them round his
table, and they all know that ' it is the Lord ! ' " That is an
apt symbol of " what the death of the Christian may well
become ; — the morning dawning, and the finished work, and
the figure standing on the quiet beach, so that the last plunge
into the cold flood that yet separates us wUl not be taken
vrith trembhng reluctance ; but, drawn to Him by the love
beaming out of his face, and upheld by the power of his
beckoning presence, we shaU straggle through the latest
wave that parts us, and scarcely feel its chiU, nor know that

372 SIMON PETER GOES A-FISHING.
we have crossed it ; till falling blessed at his feet, we see by
the clearer -rision of his face, that this is indeed heaven.
And looking back on ' the sea that brought us thither,' we
shaU behold its waters flashing in the light of that everlasting
moming, and hear them breaking into music on the eternal
shore. And then, brethren, vi^hen all the weary night-
watchers on the stormy ocean of life are gathered together
around Him who watched vrith them from his throne on the
bordering mountains of etemity, where the day shines for
ever — then wUl He seat them at his table in his kingdom,
and gird Himself, and come forth to serve them ; and none
shaU need to ask, 'Who art Thou?' or ''Where am I?' for
all shaU know that it is the Lord, and the full, perfect, un
changeable vision of his blessed face wiU be heaven."*
* From " Sermons by Alexander Maclaren, B.A. First Series.''
Published by Macmillan.

XXVII.
W§t iartiog '^mthxdxoxx, — ^ Bzxmon,
St. Luke xxiv. 50 — 53.
CRITICAL events set apart and hallow the localities in
which they occur. The place in which we have suffered
any of the great sorrows of life, or rejoiced in any of its nobler
prosperities, becomes to us a holy place ; our thoughts revert
to it vrith a lo-ring pertinacity, investing it with the sacred-
ness or delightsomeness of the events which happened to us
there : hence the charm which attaches to the home of our
youth, the sacredness which attaches to our father's grave.
Unconsciously, we invest the early home With charms drawn
from the dew and freshness of our youth, the parental grave
with hues drawn from the love and sorrow of bereavement.
It is singular, too, that at the approach of death, when we
stand on the threshold of the future world, when, therefore,
if ever, our thoughts might be supposed to rest exclusively
on what is before us, men not unfrequently look back on
the earlier experiences and scenes of their life, yearning with
importanate desire to re-risit the places in which their first
joys and sorrows were met, to round off their Hfe by ending
where they began. Very touching have been the utterances
of this desire, both in the old and the young. Their
parting spirits have often seemed detained by it, as
though they could not pass away untU the vrish were grati
fied, as though Death himself must wait untU they reached

374 IHE PARTING BENEDICTION.
the home ; whUe at other times the art-magic of strong desire
has caused the famUiar scenes to rise, real and beautiful as
of old, and pass before their eyes, while they lay " a-dying"'
in foreign lands.
Now, it is one of the cardinal -virtues of the Lord Jesus
Christ, one of his chief qualifications for the mediatorial
work, that He was, and is, " touched with a feeHng of our
infirmities," that He can and did enter into all the innocent
humanities of our nature. He was no cold, unimpassioned,
abstract man. In Him were aU the tendernesses, prefer
ences, and unsinful prejudices of human love. He could
like one man more than another — ^John was his bosom
friend : one people more than another — He had not " come,
save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ; '' one famUy
more than another — for it was vrith a peculiar affection that
He loved Martha, and Mary her sister, and Lazaras whom
He raised from the dead. He could also like one place
more than another ; for when his last earthly day was come
He led his disciples up the slope of Olivet, " as far as to
Bethany." On this mountain he had often prayed ; of its
two chief districts, Gethsemane and Bethany, the one was
the scene of his passion, the other the home of his friends.
From its side and summit He could look down on the hUl
Calvary, where He was cracified, and on that regardless
city which had led Him " vrithout the gate." The places
which had been hallowed by the most momentous and
sacred events of his human life, in which He had drunk
most deeply of the cup of his sorrows, and had divinest fore
tastes of "the joy set before him,'' all lay beneath his eye.
His last look fell on the slopes on which He had spent.
nights of prayer, the city in which He had lived his most
laborious days, the house in which He had rested and been
loved, the garden in which He had agonized, the hUl on
which He had died, the sepulchre in which He had slept

THE PARTING BENEDICTION. 375
He rose from amidst the scenes which were consecrated to
Him by love and sorrow, by labour and by prayer. To the
last a sharer in our humanity, displaying to the last a human
yearning and tenderness, his final lingering look took in not
only the friends who had " companied vrith Him from the
beginning," but also the places which had been hallowed to
Him by the events of his earthly career.
It is surely very pleasant to . see in Christ what we feel
in ourselves, to note these correspondences between his man
hood and ours. For why has Christ become like us, save
that we may become like Him ? Why has He partaken our
human natare, save that we may be made the " partakers of
his divine nature ? " Why has He taken our infirmities on
Him, save that we may be " filled with all the fulnesses of
God?" But we must not linger on this theme, pleasant and hope
ful as it is. The directer' teachings of the passage claim our
thoughts. Let us select two or three of them.
I. We may learn from it that Christ leaves us, not always
in anger, but often in benediction. "And it came to pass,
while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried
up into heaven.'' To be and to feel forsaken by Christ are
two very different things, though we often confound them.
He often leaves us when he does not forsake us. To mourn
an absent Christ may be a stronger . proof of love and a
better discipline of life than to rejoice in a present Christ.
Do these paradoxes seem incredible to you ? Do you ask for
proof? Well, there is proof enough and to spare. That
Christ's absence, or the sense of it, does not imply that He
has forgotten, much less forsaken, those who love Him, was
the very lesson which He set Himself to teach his disciples
during the days that preceded his death ; it was the very
lesson, by teaching them which He strove to prepare them

376 THE PARTING BENED/CTION.
for his departare into heaven. How He taught them this
lesson, by what a wise and loving discipline, is worthy of far
deeper and more protracted study than we can give it here
and now ; it is one of the most beautiful features of his whole
ministry : yet let us take one or two specimens of it
Only a few days before his cracifixion. He sends Peter
away to the sea, bidding him cast in, not a net, but a hook;
predicting that in the mouth of the very first fish that took
the bait he should find the stater — not any coin, but a certain
Roman coin of a defined value^ — which their exigencies re
quired. He does as he is bid, and finds it even as he was
told. Peter is thus taught that the prescience and power of
Christ are unrestrained ; that, present or absent, on the sea
or the dry land, all elements and all the creatures of the ele
ments, hearken to his voice and delight to do his wiU ; he is
thus taught that even when Christ is not present to his friends,
even when He has left them. He is stiU vrith them, and with
them to fulfil his word, although an endless array of con
tingencies seem to forbid its fulfilment
Again, and within a few days. He sends two of his dis
ciples to Bethphage to find an ass and a colt, and bring them
unto Him. He predicts the very objection the o-wners after
ward made, and puts into his disciples' mouths words which
even these owners were not able to withstand. So, also, He-
sends other two to a place where three ways met to find a
slave bearing a pitcher, and to follow him to an upper cham- j
ber furnished for the Passover. In both cases chances aa<?
contingencies seem needlessly multiplied ; the disciples have *
to ran the risk of suspicion, and of insult, and of suffering^
evil-doers. And yet in both we find the ti^= °'^i?ad'sne
wise and loving discipline. Christ was abo^^ hved his ir*
They were poor and mean men ; they might^^j rested ^^^^
forgotten, overlooked. Christ teaches thetSt- ^^ /enwhUfe
absent from them He is yet with them, directS|l^^ir steps,

THE PARTING BENEDICTION. 377
pro-riding for their welfare ; that, whether He has left them,
or sent them away from Him, He is still present -with them,
present to guide, defend, bless. He teaches them that even
when not there He knows what is transpiring at Bethphage
and Jerasalem ; knows not only what Herod, and Pilate, and
the chief priests, and Pharisees, are doing, but also of what
is being done by the lowly and the enslaved ; that He can
see and foresee the poor slave going with his pitcher to the
fountain of the Three Ways, and the ass and her colt stand
ing at the door of the caravanserai ; that his prescience ex
tends even to the furnishing of an upper room, that his
power can touch the heart of the distant householder.
Now, it is quite impossible, I thiik, to connect and con
sider these historic facts, without perceiving that they are part
of that wise and loving discipline of which I have spoken ;
vrithout perceiving that Christ was preparing his disciples
for his departare, teaching them that distance could not se
parate from Him, nor remove them beyond the reach whether
of his eye or his hand. The ob-rious-meaning of them was,
that as He could penetrate the depths of the sea and guide
its creatures at his vrill, so also He would look down on them
from the heights of heaven and direct them in all their
ways ; that as his eye was on the slave by the well and in
the upper chamber furnished for the Passover, so also his
eye would be on theiri, poor and despised though they were,
and his hand prepare a table for them : that as from the
mountain He touched the heart of the householder in the
city, and constrained their owners to give up the ass and her
colt in the village, so also when absent from them He would
incline the hearts of men toward them and restrain the rage
of their opponents. " As an eagle stirreth up her nest, flut-
tereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings," shews
them the use of the pinion and makes them use it, driving
them from the nest that they may leam to fly ; or, as a mother

378 THE PARTING BENEDICTION.
tries her chUd's strength, withdravring and retarning her
hand, before she sends him forth to walk alone ; so the Lord
Jesus before He went up on high taught his disciples to use
the wing of faith, taught them to walk alone — trying them,
proving them, sending them away, suffering them to rgtam,
that when He was carried up into heaven and received out
of their sight they might be able to dispense vrith his -risible
presence, might know that though He had left He had not
forsakai them.
Alas ! they did not profit by this preparatory discipline as
they should have done. When He was first taken away,
taken by death, they lost all hope, forgetting the lesson He
had taught Yet it was not whoUy wasted on them. 'When
He was taken away the second time, carried up into heaven,
they understood what was meant as, "while He blessed them
He was parted from them." They did not lose hope now ;
they knew that He had not forsaken, albeit He had left them,
and so they "returned to Jerasalem vrith great joy."
That discipline was given for their sake ; it is recorded
for ours. Christ often seems to leave us, to go up from
earth into an inaccessible heaven. For a brief season we
feel that He is with us. We rejoice in his nearness. Divine
joys flow from his presence. The sweetnesses of an intimate
feUowship are vouchsafed us. He speaks to us, and his
words awaken responses which echo songfuUy through aU the
courts of our souls. To his " Seek ye my face, "we respond,
" Thy face -wiU we seek ; " to his " Give me thine heart,"
" Our hearts are Thine." The sacrifices of obedience are
cheerfully paid. We sing and give praise. The indwelling
Christ, the Shekinah of the heart, fiUs the inner temple of
the soul with his glory. We gain insight ; we grow in grace ;
we feel the powers and graces of the Divine life unfolding
themselves within us. But, at the best, such seasons are
of the briefest. Very commonly they are succeeded by times

THE PARTING BENEDICTION. 379
of comparative deadness and exhaustion. The Christ seems
to have withdrawn his presence. " We weary the heavens
vrith the inquest of our beseeching looks," but no sign is
given. We turn our eyes inward to find the temple deserted,
the sacrifice consumed, the sacred fire burned out, the She
kinah invisible. And we moum and complain. We say
Christ has left, has forsaken, us. And yet why should we ?
Adoring contemplation is to be only our occasional attitude.
We have a warfare and a work. Our hands must not only
be lifted up in prayer, but armed for conflict and engaged in
toil. It is good to be with Christ on the mount It is also-good
to come down from the mount and labour with, and for, our
fellow-men. Let us remember that, " while He blessed us
He was parted from us," and that his benediction was given
to strengthen us for work and for endurance. He has with
drawn but for a time, and that we may leam how far, our
manhood has been replenished by fellowship with Him, how
far the Divine natare now dwells in us and is independent of
outward aids. He has but sent us from Him that He may
teach us we can never wander beyond his reach, that we
may find his prescience and power displayed in scenes and
modes in which we looked not for them. We think it would
be best to be always with Him. He knows that it is good
for us to be sent away on his errands, to meet the demands
men make on Him, or to urge his demands on them, or to
overget their opposition to Him and to us ; in all to behold
the manifestations of his grace and trath. — ^And this leads us
to our second lesson, sfa., that
II. Christ's benediction, even though it be a parting one,
should inspire joy and thankfulness. "And it came to
pass, whUe He blessed them. He was parted from them.
And they worshipped Him, and retamed to Jerasalem
with great joy." The disciples, as I have said, had not been

38o THE PARTING BENEDICTION.
taught and disciplined altogether in vain. At last they had
leamed what a parting benediction meant : "Use faith instead
of sight ; leave contemplation for labour ; express your love,
not in looks and words, but in patient waiting and strenuous
toil ; rise from the lower blessedness of ' recei-ring ' to the
higher blessedness of ' giving.' " Possibly, as they went up
the Mount of Olivet as far as to Bethany, they had thought,
" Never were men so blessed as we ; never were we so
blessed as now." Christ had risen, and yet was with them,
more glorious, and yet to the fuU as gracious as ever, lavish
ing on them the looks and tones of an eternal love. But
they were to touch even a higher blessedness than this ; and
they were to touch it in crowded streets, and opposing
throngs, in prisons, at the stake, and on the cross. A few
short weeks ago, and they had not conceived any higher
honour than that of beholding Christ in his glory. They
had said, " It is good to be here and thus ; let us build
tabernacles and abide here." But the discipHne through
which they had passed, the errands on which they had been
sent, the works they had been given to do, the sorrows they
had been called to endure — -this discipline has opened
their eyes to a yet higher honour and service, that of
reflecting and reproducing Chrisfs glory, that of "filling
up the remnant of his afflictions," and carrying on his
work of mercy. Hence they can "worship" Him even
while He departs from them, and retarn to the Jerasalem
which He has left " praising and blessing God."
Now, there are two modes in which Christ is parted from
us, two reasons why He hides Himself from us. We may
"grieve " Him away, cause Him to depart by lapsing into our
old sins; or it maybe "expedient" for us, may conduce to our
spiritaal culture, that we should lose the sense of his presence.
In this latter case " He blesses us while He is parted from
us; " in the former He blesses us by departing from us.

THE PARTING BENEDICTION. 381
He blesses us, I say, by departing from us. For consider
what it is you seek, or rather what it is that Christ seeks
to make of you, and give you. He is seeking to make you
not simply happy and at ease, but holy and loving ; to
give you, not a mere sensual -vulgar enjoyment, not a
mere present passing happiness, but a far deeper and
more blessed thing — the peace which flows from a perfected
manhood, from being altogether made like to Him. 'What
ever your thought may he, his thought concerning you is,
not merely that your sins shall be transferred to his account,
and his righteousness to yours ; but that your sins shaU, by
whatever painful processes, be really purged out of you, and
that by a real spiritual development you shall grow up into his
righteousness. It is a very small thing whether or not you are
at ease, free from disquietude of heart, at this moment or that ;
but it is a very great thing, to you the greatest of things, that
at every moment you should be grovring pure and wise, enter
ing more and more fully into the Divine life. He did not
draw back from suffering Himself; He became perfect through
suffering : and He vrill not withhold needful suffering from
you ; his very mercy will constrain Him to send it, that you
also may be made perfect When, therefore, you sin against
Him, what wiser or kinder thing can He do than depart from
you, and make you feel that He has departed? Nothing
wiU con-rince you of your sin if that -wiU not Nothing -will
make you repent and forsake your sin if that fail. You have
then to lament, not the clouds which obscure you'' heaven,
but the bitter waters of evil from which they have been
dravm. Shining on these, what can the Sun of Righteous
ness draw from them but mist and cloud ? You cannot be
too sorry that you have grieved Christ ; you cannot be too
thankful that, when you grieve Him, He departs, — ^by his
departure making you sensible of your offence. That is the
highest benediction you can then, receive.

382 THE PARTING BENEDICTION.
But, again, Christ may not only bless by parting from you.
He may also bless while parting from you. That is. He
may go away, may deprive you of the sense of his presence,
not because you have offended Him, but because He has
been teaching you new lessons and would have you practise
them, because He has been conferring new gifts and graces
upon you and would have you use them. He has been
leading you into some new path of duty, up some new height
of experience, and now He withdraws his hand to see whether
you can walk alone; He leaves you to yourself, that He
may test your fidelity and strength, and, by testing, augment
them. It was thus with " the Seventy." Christ taught them,
trained them, blessed them, and then sent them forth " as
sheep among wolves ; " sent them forth, timid, imperfect,
unheroic though they were, to do battle with the craelest
and most fatal prejudices and enmities. But the conflict
revealed in them unexpected powers ; they now leamed
how much Christ had done for them and given them while
they were yet with Him — ^learned it with wonder and de
light : astonished at their own triumph, they came back
exclaiming, " Even the devUs are subject to us ! " He
blessed them in, and while, being parted from them.
Or, again, Christ may wish to teach us new lessons, to
impart the powers and graces which can only be acquired
in the School of Sorrow. We may have embodied our partial
conceptions of trath in doctrinal formulas which, once helps,
have become hindrances to us ; or, through dwelling always
in one set of circumstances, we may have acquired one
sided habits of thought and feeling which mar our service
and contract our souls. Look, for instance, at Job. He
was an "upright" man, "perfect" even ii his loyalty to
such traths as he knew. He could charge himself with
no sin, and God charges him with none. But Job held a
dogma which was only partially trae, which therefore was

THE PARTING BENEDICTION. 383
pemiciously untrae. He held that outward prosperity was
the proof and reward of righteousness, that suffering was the
invariable consequence of personal sin. You see how this
docfrinal formula was likely to vitiate his creed and con
tract his sympathies, how it would provoke to self esteem
and uncharity, making him hard in his judgments of the
poor and unprosperous, inciting him to find in his own
enlarging prosperity the proof of his o-wn righteousness and
good desert WeU, God teaches him his error by intro
ducing new facts into his experience, by permitting an adverse
change on all his circumstances. At first, Job tries to make
the old formula cover the new facts, but he soon learns that
it is too narrow; he soon comprehends that suffering, in
stead of proving personal sin, may be a proof of the Divine
love ; that it may be sent for cultare, and not in anger ;
that even the tree which does bring forth fruit may be
" purged that it may bring forth more frait." Job, too, had
been just, generous, princely in his prosperity. " When the
ear heard him, then it blessed him ; when the eye saw him,
it gave witness unto him." But the nobler virtues of adver
sity—what had there been to develop these ? In these he
failed so soon as " God put forth his hand and touched all
that he had." That he might be " perfect and entire, want
ing nothing," God compels him to acquire these. In the
school of adversity he acquires meekness, patience, long-
suffering, and their kindred graces. Job would not have
been so long under the rod had he been an apter scholar ;
nor should we. When at last, and with many tears, he had
leamed his lesson, "he worshipped" and gave thanks
for the teaching vouchsafed him ; so also should we. To
lose the consciousness of Christ's presence that we may
grow wise or strong, that we may be cleansed from error
and made perfect in holiness — what is this but to have
Christ blessing us while He is parted from us ? And if in

384 THE PARTING BENEDICTION.
our loneliness, if while seeking after Him we do gain insight
or grace, have we not reason to "return with joy, praising
and blessing Him ? " He may have left us, as He left his
disciples, only to be more intimately vrith us, taking away
the blessings of his presence only to make them more
divinely ours.
You ask, perhaps, " Are we, then, to take up Peter's word,
' Depart from me, O Lord ; I am a sinful man ? ' " God
forbid. We are not to ask, but to acquiesce in Christ's de
parture. We are simply to rest assured that, whether pre
sent or absent. He is seeking our highest welfare, is affording
us the very discipline we need. We are simply to joy and
rejoice in his benediction, even though,- while He bestows it.
He should be " received up out of our sight" — Finally, we
may learn from this passage, that —
III. The sense of Chrisfs absence should lead us to the place
of his perpetual presence. " They returned to Jerasalem vrith
great joy, and were continiially in the Temple, praising and
blessing God." The Temple was the place of Divine mani
festation. God's "way" was "in the sanctuary." Christ
had been taken from them, but the Temple remained. It
seemed sad enough, no doubt, to come away from the
mountain to the crowded metropolis, — instead of beholding
the grace and trath of Christ, to look on the priests who had
cracified Him, and on sacrifices "which could not take
away sin." It must have been like going back into the old
shadow-land from which Christ had delivered them. But it
was right to go. Now that Christ, the Hving Temple of
God, was taken up into heaven, and until the Holy Ghost
came down from heaven to open his temple in their hearts,
they could do nothing better than carry their praises and
hopes into the ancient house of God. The divinest means
of grace they had ever kno-wn had been taken away, but

THE 'PARTING BENEDICTION. 385
they would not therefore neglect what means were left
Diviner means of grace were promised them and were draw
ing nigh, but they would not therefore neglect what means
they had. And they had their reward. They found Christ
in the Temple, or rather were found of Him. . The day of
Pentecost came, even as He had said, and with it gifts and
labours. The Holy Ghost fell upon them. The Spirit gave
them utterance. They preached Christ, the Resurrection
and the Life, winning to his faith and service thousands of
those who had just delivered Him to death.
They have taught us a lesson, left us an ensample. Had
they '' stood gazing up into heaven," hoping to see Christ
return, their hope would have m.ade them ashamed ; they
would not have "received the promise of the Father."
Their Master's command was, " Wait for that promise at
Jerusalem." They obeyed, and in their obedience lies our
lesson. For in our times of desertion and consequent dejection of
heart, we have all found it very hard, I suppose, to use the
common means of grace, or to discharge the common duties
of life. We would fain indulge our grief The service ot
the Sanctuary seems to have no blessing for us ; the daily
duty and the patient waiting in the discharge of duty grow
very wearisome to us. To sit silent on the ground, or to
break forth into bitter complaints, accords better -with our
mood than to stand in the Temple praising and blessing
God. We had rather imitate Job than the apostles, rather
brood over our sorrow than engage in service. Yet all this,
jiatural as it is, is utterly unwise and vn-ong. Mere grief and
bitterness of heart — because something has been taken away
crying over what is left, "All is vanity and vexation of
spirit" — wiU do us harm and not good. In obedience ana
worship lies our only hope. However long we delay,
must at last follow the apostles. Job suffered much through his
25

386 THE FARTING BENEDICTION.
delay, and after all had to do what the apostles did. It was
not tUl he had "seen God," till he had risen from the heap
of ashes to offer " sacrifice," that " the Lord turned his
captivity." The apostles were wiser in their generation.
They hastened to worship and obey. And so with you.
Christ may seem to have forsaken both the outer sanctuary
and the inner temple of the heart ; obedience may be dis
tasteful, the public service may seem unprofitable : but only
as you bring the daily sacrifices of obedience and seek the
Lord in his sanctuary will your captivity be tamed. It is
not yours to " sit upon the ground," or to " stand gazing up
into heaven." You have received commands ; obey them.
You have received promises; seek their fulfilment in the
Temple. The day of Pentecost will surely come. The
Spirit will give you utterance. " The Lord whom ye seek
shall suddenly come to his temple," to renew his manifesta
tion and to rekindle your joy.
And in this hope, dear brethren, many of you have doubt
less come up hither to-day. To some of you the spiritual
experiences which I have ventured to describe are quite
familiar. It may be that contact vrith the cares of life, or
exposure to the perpetual solicitations of sense, or the weary
never-ending conflict with temptation, or the pressure of
sorrowful self-condemning thoughts, or the mere dulling
influence of the mechanic round of duties in which you
walk, or even the exhaustion which comes of pleasurable
excitement, or, saddest of all, brooding and bitter regrets
for trespasses into which you have fallen — it may be that
some one of these things, or that several of them combined,
have darkened and deadened your spirits. You feel that
there is silence and desolation in the inward temple ; that
your faith goes groping after God with unexpectant and
almost blinded eyes. Christ has parted from you — gone up
into some inaccessible heaven. The fountains of spiritual

THE PARTING BENEDICTION. 387
strength and joy are sealed up. Only his touch can open
them ; and you cannot find Him, though you have sought
Him carefully and with tears. And so you have come to
the Sanctuary, the place of his perpetual presence, hoping
that He will once more manifest Himself unto you. Be of
good cheer, O forlorn and darkened heart! Weary and
heavy-laden, you have yet come to Hipn, and He will
give you rest His word is pledged ; his deeds have
pledged Him. He who of old left his disciples on the
mountain that He might meet them in the Temple, parting
from them for a while that He might gladden them with his
perpetual presence and the gifts of his Spirit, ceasing to be
with them that He might be in them — He will also meet
vrith you and dweU in you. Only wait and worship, and
He wiU come ; and, with Him, light and strength and joy !

XXVIII.
Acts xx. 35.
IN the pathetic speech in which St Paul bade farewell to
the elders of the Church at Ephesus, who were to see
his face no more, after appealing to their knowledge of his
disinterested labours among them — " I have coveted no
man's silver, or gold, or apparel; ye yourselves know that
these hands have ministered to my necessities" — he affirms
that he always taught them to " remember the words of the
Lord Jesus, how he used to say, // is more blessed to give
than to receive!' Now when and where did the Lord Jesus
say that? " There lives no record of reply." The saying is
not contained in any one of the Gospels. St Paul is not
quoting any Scripture, but an oral tradition. Nor do tae
Gospels give, or profess to give, a complete narrative of all
that Jesus said or did. They simply profess to set forth in
order the things which were most commonly and surely
believed in the infant Church. Indeed, the last Gospel, in
Its last verse, warns us that Jesus both did and said many
things which are not recorded. In his splendid hyperbole,
St. John states the reason which compelled selection, alleg
ing that if all the sayings and actions of Christ "should be
written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could
not contain the books that should be written." Many sayings
of the Lord Jesus must therefore have been famUiar to the

GIVING AND TAKING. 389
apostles, and have been current in the primitive Church,
which are not to be found in the Sacred Records. The
words which St Paul made his constant theme at Ephesus
composed one such saying — the only one, I beHeve, which
adorns the subsequent pages of the New Testament
I. But are none other of these sayings to be recovered ?
Were there no good men in the primitive Church to gather
up the fragments of our Lord's speech, that nothing might
be lost? The answer to that question is a somewhat
singular one, and not what we might have expected. There
were good men, disciples who sat at the feet of John,
Peter, Paul — men such as Barnabas, Polycarp, Ignatius,
Clement — and who gathered from apostolic lips many
words spoken by Jesus which have not come down to us.
And these men, and their immediate disciples, wrote books
which, in whole or in part, are in our hands. Yet, whUe
from their writings we might almost replace the entire
Gospel story, had the inspired records been lost, they make
hardly any additions to it Now and then they attribute
words to the Lord Jesus which are not contained in the
Sacred Narrative ; but for the most part they, are simply
repetitions, slightly varied, of sayings that are contained in
the Gospels ; or they are quotations made from memory,
and therefore slightly varying from the original. Hardly a
score sayings of the Lord Jesus not included in the New
Testament can now be recovered from the writings of the
bishops and fathers .of the primitive Church, from aU the
writings of all the holy men who lived for two centuries
after Christ's death. On about a score of these sayings,
however, scholars are pretty well agreed that they may be
accepted as genuine ; they assure us that in aU probabUity
they were uttered by the Lord Jesus, although, Hke the
saying quoted by St Paul, they are nowhere recorded in the

390 GIVING AND TAKING.
Gospels. Of these we shall briefly glance at about one
half The traditional saying of the Lord Jesus most frequently
used by the Christian writers of the apostolic time, and the
times immediately following that of the Apostles, is this :—
" Be ye good [or approved] money-changers!' This saying
was in great vogue. That it is genuine is well-nigh beyond
a doubt It is applied in various ways. Some of the early
bishops of the Church use it, for instance, toillustrateSt Paul's
maxim, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."
Try, they say, all dogmas, spirits, prophecies ; ring them like
coin, and keep only those which ring true. This is what
the Lord Jesus meant when He said, " Be ye good money
changers." Others find a deeper meaning in the words, and
these say : To every man the Lord distributes talents ac
cording to his several abihty ; and the secret of life is to so
invest and expend these talents, that at his coming He
may receive his own again with usury, and that we may
receive the reward of those who have wisely traded with
their talents and made them more. Let us, therefore, listen
to the Lord, and shew ourselves approved money-changers.
A second traditional saying is given in these two forms : —
" In whatsoever I find you (said our Lord Jesus Christ), in
that will I judge you;" and again, " Such as I find thee, will
I judge thee (saith the Lord)." In both forms it is in strict
accordance with the rale of Divine judgment which pervades
the whole Bible. Everywhere we are taught that we shaU
receive according to the deeds done in the body; — that what
we are will determine what we are to be.
In St. Matthew's Gospel we are taught that Jesus wrought
miracles of healing in order "that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet : Himself bare
our infirmities, and carried our sicknesses." Origen simply
gives us an expansion and Ulustration of this passage in

GIVING AND TAKING. 391

words which he attributes to the Lord Jesus : " Jesus saith:
For the sick, I was sick ; for the hungry, I hungered; and for
the thirsty, I suffered thirst."
Or again, what can be in more perfect harmony with our
Saviour's warning, that only as we take up the cross can we
follow Him, than anothe;r saying — a, saying attributed to
the Lord Jesus by no less a person than Barnabas ? " Those
who are fain to see me, and to lay hold of my kingdom, must
receive me in sorrow and much affliction!'
There are some words which have the very ring of the
Gospel in them, and on which, if at least we are good
money-changers, we shall not faU to discern the image and
superscription of the Great King. Such a saying one of the
early fathers heard from St. Matthew. The Lord Jesus
said to his disciples, " Be ye never joyful except when ye look
on your brother in love,'' a saying which breathes the very
spirit of Christian charity.
We are all familiar with the command, " Seek ye first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these
things shall be added unto you ; " and a saying attributed
to Christ by more than one of the fathers cannot, therefore,
be strange to us in the spirit, if the letter be new : " Ask
the great things, and the little things shall be added unto you;
ask also the heavenly things, and the earthly shall be added
unto you."
Judgment begins at the house of God. Only through
much tribulation can we enter the kingdom of God. Of
these old truths, which we have had from the beginning, we
have a new iUustration in a noble proverbial saying, which,
in one of two forms, many of the early disciples received as
from the lips of Jesus Himself: "He that is near me is
near the fire ; and he that is far from me is far from the
kingdom." And again : " Near the sword, near God ; far
from the sword, far from God." And, indeed, the sword

392 GIVING AND TAKING.
and the fire are very close neighbours to Christ — the sword
that separates us from fleshly lusts, and the fire which
purges away our sins.
In St Matthew we read : " Whosoever will be great
among you, let him be your servant ; and whosoever wiU
be first among you, let him be your slave : even as the Son
of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his
life a ransom for the many.'' To this passage an ancient
MS. 'copy of the Gospel adds : "And seek ye to increase
from little, and from greater to be less." The genuineness
of this saying is commonly admitted; certainly it is quite in
the heavenly maimer. It is just one of those deep enigma
tical sayings, of which so many fell from the lips of Him
who spake in parables. Its meaning seems to be : if you
are "little" in the world's esteem or in the Church's esteem,
and have but a few talents, seek to make them more, to
become "great," by heartUy serving God and man; and if
you are " great " in gifts or in repute, humble yourselves to
lowly services, and use your gifts to help the weak and
littie. Another of these traditional sayings connects itself with
the Gospel of St Luke. In that Gospel we read (chap. vi.
1-4) that, as Jesus and his disciples went through the
corn-fields on a certain Sabbath, the Twelve plucked ears
of corn, rubbed out the kernels, and ate them. To this
the Pharisees took objection, as a violation of the Sabbath
law. Jesus answers their objection by citing the example
of David, how he, when on the service of God, went into
the tabernacle on the Sabbath, and ate the shewbread,
which "it was not lawful for him to eat" To' this answer
the ancient MS. to which we owe the previous saying, adds
that, " On the same day He (Jesus) saw a certain man work
ing on the Sabbath, and said to him, Blessed art thou, O man,
if indeed thou knowest what thou doest; but cursed art thou

GIVING AND TAKING. 393
if thou knowest not, and a transgressor of the law." Here,
again, we have the record of a fact which probably trans
pired, of words which probably proceeded out of our Lord's
mouth. And, assuming it to be an accurate account, it is
easy to see how naturally it falls in with the story told by
St. Luke. Jesus led his disciples through the fields, as
also He wrought many of his miracles, on the Hebrew
Sabbath, in order to rebuke the rigid, formal, hypocritical
Sabbatarianism of the Jews ; in order to teach them that
the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
And if, while making his protest against their formahsm. He
saw a man making the same protest, "working on the
Sabbath," to shew that he also refused to be bound by law
when God had made him free, it was surely natural that
Christ should recognise a fellow-labourer in the cause of
trath. On the other hand, the man may have been very
far from claiming spiritual freedom or protesting against the
current bondage to formalism ; he may have been working
on the Sabbath only out of greed, or self-will, or irreligion :
and in that case, was it not natural that Christ should
rebuke his transgression ? Suppose the man to have known
what he was doing, and he was doing a good work, and
would be "blessed" in his deed. Suppose him not to
have known, to have meant no protest against the rigid
letterism of the Pharisees, and he was doing an evil work,
and provoking the curse as "a transgressor of the law."
Here, then, are nine of the traditional sayings of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and by far the weightiest of those which are
thought to have been uttered by Him. Here are a few out
of the multitude of words which could not be -written in the
Gospels, lest the books should grow so big that the world
itseff could not hold them. And what are they v/orth ? In
one sense they are of the greatest value ; m another sense
they are of no value at all. They are of the greatest value

394 GIVING AND TAKING.
to us, since we would not wUlingly let any word of Christ die
— since every saying of his must contain a rich wisdom from
which we may enlarge our wealth. They are of no value at
all in this sense — that they add nothing essential to the
Gospel story. They do not supply any new truth, they
simply repeat and illustrate old traths. They do not en
large, they simply confirm, our conceptions both of the
Divine Speaker and of the words which proceeded out of
his mouth. Curious and valuable as they are, and dear to
the Christian heart for the sake of Him who uttered them,
the Gospel of our salvation is complete without them. It
teaches the very traths they teach in other and more
perfect forms, and gives us all we need to know in order
that we may be estabhshed in the trath and grace of Christ
Jefeus the Lord.
II. Although no such saying is recorded in the Gospels,
St Paul tells us that the Lord Jesus used to say, " It is more
blessed to give than to receive." And this, like other sayings
which tradition ascribes to Him, is quite in the heavenly
manner. It would not task our faith to believe that Jesus
spake these words, even though we did not receive them on
the authority of an inspired apostie. They ring true. They
are of the heavenly mint. " Good money-changers " would
be in no danger of refusing them. The words contain just
one of those axioms of Divine wisdom which were frequent
on the lips of Christ — one of those pregnant maxims which,
if it cross our surface impression, is found to be in perfect
accord with our deeper thoughts.
It is better, " it is more blessed to give than to receive."
This is the Divine trath concerning giving and receiving ;
but it is by no means a self-evident trath to some minds. AU
men are not good money-changers ; the rales of the heavenly
exchange are not famUiar to them : they think "giving" very

GIVING AND TAKING. 39S
poor thrift, and " receiving " the true blessedness. If you
take this Divine maxim to a man whose heart is in his purse,
he wiU be apt to reply, " That is your rule, is it ? Well, try
it on with me. You give, and I'll take ; and let us see who gets
tired first." And, no doubt, he will wag his head, and think
himself monstrous shrewd as he laughs over his wit and
your anticipated discomfiture. But talk with him for a few
minutes, and, if he -wUl listen, you need not despair of con
verting even him to your point of view ; for if the maxim
sound romantic, too refined for human nature's daily use,
nevertheless it is in daily use, and commends itself to com
mon sense no less than to inteUigence and piety. Get him
to think, and the most prosaic grasping soul alive will soon
admit that it is at least more agreeable to give than to receive.
The giver, at least for the moment and so far as the matter
in hand is concerned, takes a higher position than the
receiver. Out of his penury, or out of his abundance, he
confers a boon, bestows a favour, rivets an obligation. The
receiver is bound, by the courtesies of social custom, to feel
grateful to him, or to feign a gratitude he does not feel.
Hence it comes to pass that to receive a gift gracefully is so
much more difficult than to confer one ; to do a kindness so
much easier than to accept it. Even children are sensitive
to the difference between giving and receiving. Fond as
they are of getting presents and " tips," they are still fonder
of saving up their pence and exhausting their ingenuity in
devising liberal things, in choosing or making some gift,
ridiculously useless for the most part, to those whom they
love. There are few prettier sights than to see a littie chUd,
its face all blushes and smUes, bring its tiny offering to
father or mother on some birthday festival ; there are few
more healthy emotions than the pride and glee with which
the little one sees its gift duly received and admired. Its
heart sweUs with a gladness far sweeter and nobler than the

396 GIVING AND TAKING.
frar-k joy with which it pounces on any gift you may bestow
upon it, although that also is very pleasant to see. And
among men the same rule holds. Point our friend of the purse
to a man with the soul of a pauper, living all his days off
the alms-basket, creeping and cringing through life with
open supplicating palm, his eyes glittering with ravenous
hunger for good things he has neither courage to seize nor
energy to earn, and ask him whether that man answers to
his ideal ? whether that is the life he would choose for him
self? or whether, having earned a competence or a for
tune by sagacious industry, he would rather be known as
a benefactor than a beggar, as helping on the best inter
ests of the town in which he Hves, and raising many a poor
down-trodden soul from the dust ? Our friend need not be
a Christian, he need only have the soul of a man in him, to
confess that "it is better to give than to receive."
But the Lord Jesus used to say, not simply, " It is better,"
but " It is more blessed to give than to receive ;" that is, it is ,,
more Divine, more God-like. God, who receives so littie,
gives aU. The very utmost we can do for Him is to retam
Him his own again with usury. He fills his eternal year
with an incessant bounty. The very law of his life is self
impartation, self sacrifice. Else why did He create earth
and man ? He is sufficient to Himself Our goodness ex-
tendeth not to Him. Dwelling in the perfect ineffable de
lights of his single yet manifold being. He had no need of
us or of anything that we can do— no need except the need
of infinite love. To surround Himself with creatures to
whom He could give of his own life, whom He could train
through sun and shadow, sorrow and joy, to enter into his
rest ; by labours and sacrifices which transcend our thought
to make them partakers of his Divine nature and eternal
peace ; to give, and give, and always give ; to crowd earth
and time, heaven and eternity, with his good gffts ; and, all

GIVING AND TAKING. 397
gifts in one, to bestow Himself upon us — this has been the
work of God, this his commentary on the words, " It is more
blessed to give than to receive."
This blessedness He invites us to share. The Gospels
convey his invitation in many forms. They tell us of Him
who causes his sun to shine and his rain to fall on the evil
and unthankful, as well as on the good and ju^t ; and they
bid us be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect.
As the main object which the Gospels set- before us is the
cross on which the Son of God sacrificed Himself for us men
and our salvation, so their chief and most urgent command
is, " Deny thyself; take up thy cross, and foUowme." The
man bending beneath the cross, and finding in his burden
a joy which transcends all sensuous delights — this is the
symbol at once of the life of Christ and of the .Christian
life. The symbol is true to experience. All who have borne the
cross are forced to avow that they have never known a joy
so divine, a peace so quick with energy and hope, as when
they have denied themselves to do good to men. It does
not matter at what stage of experience we take them ; in
every stage they find that self-sacrifice is the road to
blessedness. Whether they have only subdued the crav
ings of fleshly appetite in order to walk after the spirit, or
have also put away opportunities of wealth and distinction
in order to serve God with tongue or pen : whether they
have run counter to their natural bent, giving up pursuits in
which they took delight, to devote themselves to studies
which would render them better able to serve their genera
tion according to the wUl of God ; or whether they have
denied the purest affections of the heart, gi-ring up the
sacred dehghts of home that they might be more efficient
ministers of the Word : whether the cross has been laid on
sense or ambition, on inteUect- or affection, they have with

398 GIVING AND TAKING.
one voice confessed that " it is more blessed to give than
to receive ; " that, repugnant as it is to flesh and blood,
self sacrifice is after all the true, the supreme, law of life, the
law in obedience to which alone man is made one with
God. Who hasjiot found that the cross, patientiy borne, sheds
sweet and healthful balms into the soul ? Did you ever
give half your meal to a starving beggar ; or sit up, when
you sorely needed rest, with a sick neighbour ; or subdue
the repugnance of a delicate nature and culture to go into
some vile haunt with help for body and soul ; did you ever
really strain your purse-strings till they well-nigh snapped in
order to render efficient aid to some good enterprise : in
short, have you ever really denied yourself in 'order to do
any good, without having your heart suffused with a glow
of satisfaction such as your daintiest pleasure never yielded
you, without feeHng that for the time you had risen into
both a manlier and a diviner Hfe than that you commonly
lead ? At other times, indeed, you may close your eyes on
the trath ; in your longing for pleasures sweet to physical or
social appetite, you may live by another law ; but in your
hearts you k7iow, and know beyond all doubt, that " it is
more blessed to give than to receive."
There is yet another meaning in this saying. "It is
more blessed to give than to receive '' — that is, Gi-ring
carries the greater blessing vrith it " To give to the poor,"
whether the gift be of money or thought, sympathy or help,
truth or life, " is to lend to the Lord." And God is a good
paymaster. He is never much or long in our debt ; He
repays all sacrifices made for Him " a hundredfold, now
in this present time." Giving, we get, and spending, thrive.
But let us distinguish between things which differ, lest
we indulge a false hope or sink into a false despair. If we
give up sensual enjoyments for God, God wUl not repay us

GIVING AND TAKING. 399
with sensual enjoyments, but with greater independence of
them. If we give away money in his service, He may not
pay us back in money, nor in money's worth. If we give
up a night's rest to comfort a sick neighbour, God will not
miraculously impart the rest we have lost, and make us feel
as strong as though we had kept our bed, though He will
repay us with a sweeter and profounder rest
It is very difficult, I admit, for those who have not
entered into these experiences to accredit them. The
sacrifices God asks them to make seem substantial enough,
and the rewards He offers not a little shadowy and uncer
tain. Yet surely even these may see, if they will, that
appearances are very illusory and misleading. Which do
you call substantial, that which lasts for a few hours or a
few years, or that which endures for ever ? Which is doubt
ful and evanescent, the pleasures that tickle the senses
which perish, or the joy and peace which sweeten and
enlarge the immortal soul ? Nay, even though we shut out
the future from our thoughts and look only to the present,
we shall still find that the gifts of God are better than the
pleasures' of the world, if only we keep the whole man in
mind and his true nature. The radical mistake made by
those who live to the flesh is, that they conceive of man as
an animal rather than as an intelligent spirit, and therefore
suppose that the whole round of his rewards and punish
ments may be summed up under the terms " pleasure " and
" pain." But the fact is that in the complex being of man
the spiritual is far more and higher than the animal, and
the terms " pleasure " and " pain " are very far from cover
ing his motives to this course of action or that For the
trae man, " pleasure " is not by any means the best thing,
nor "pain" the worst and most dreadful. "Duty," and
the satisfactions which wait on duty, are infinitely before
either. Many a man, to discharge his duty or advance his

400 GIVING AND TAKING.
cause, has cheerfully encountered the most terrible forms of
pain, or foregone the most alluring incentives of pleasure.
And these are precisely the men whom we aU acclaim,
whUe the p&ltroon who shrinks from duty, because it is
difficult or perilous, is every man's scorn. The fact is, as
we all feel, that the satisfaction which comes cf doing right
in scom of consequence is infinitely sweeter and profounder
than any mere pleasure ; and that the shame and degrada
tion which spring from doing what we know to be wrong are
infinitely more dreadful than pain, though they include
pain. And, therefore, God the Giver rewards us when we
suffer pain for Him, not with a corresponding pleasure, but
with that inward peace and blessedness which, as we have
seen, are of so much greater and more enduring worth.
We have " the hundredfold," even though we never regain
the money, or the pleasure, or the social position, or the
scholastic fame, or the domestic happiness which we have
given up for Him ; for to be is infinitely better than to have,
to be good, than to have good things ; and every sacrifice
we heartily make for Him makes us more like the AU-Good.
We have "the hundredfold," though and because the
earthly coin we expend in his service be repaid in heavenly
coin, and for any pleasure resigned we have the peace
which passeth all understanding, and for any sacrifice
endured the blessedness of being " satisfied with his Hke-
ness." Only thus, indeed, does our hope of reward become un
selfish. For to sacrifice present good in hope of getting a
corresponding but larger and more abiding good some day,
although it may be very prudent, is not self-sacrificing. It
is simply to seek the largest amount of self-indulgence which
is open to us. But to sacrifice a present good in order that
we may become like God, what is that but to sacrifice a
present good in order that we may gain a larger power of

GIVING AND TAKING., 401
self sacrifice, and find a deeper joy in using it? To have all
our faculties developed, aU our affections raised and purified,
and to employ them aU in His service whom we love — this,
after all, is the truest reward, the loftiest and most complete.
And this is the reward that comes to us, not when we are
seeking gain or craving reward, but when we are content to
do good, hoping for nothing again.
The River of Peace rans hard by the Path of Duty ; but
we shall never find the sweet cool waters while we look for
them alone ; we shaU come on them when we least expect it,
and while all our care is to keep the path. But then, when
once we walk beside the stiU waters, beneath a bright and
open heaven, then, most of all, we shall enter into the pro
found satisfactions of a di-rine ser-rice, and feel through every
fibre of the soul that, as the Lord Jesus used to say, " It is
more blessed to give than to receive."

86

XXIX.
f rrto m % Mavam's f fab htm%t ot i^t
^viQds,
I Corinthians xi. id.
HARDLY anything is more obvious and notable in St
Paul than his impatience of mere maxims and rales
of conduct. He can never rest in them tUl he has based
them on large general principles which cover a multitude ofi
facts, and which may be freely applied under all changes of
circumstance and condition. 'When, therefore, we find him
laying dovm rales about dress, about the dress becoming ii
men and women, and especiaUy on the modes of dress
proper for worship, we might at first think we had caught;
him departing from one of his most constant habits of
thought, busying himself about mere maxims of conduct in
stead of handling principles and general laws. As, however,
we study what he has to say on this theme, we soon dis
cover that his rules are based on principles broad as human
life and history, that he gives rales only to establish and
illustrate principles which he held to be of imperative and
universal obligation.
The Corinthians, and especially those who said, " We are
of Paul " — the advanced and progressive party in the
Church — boasted that they " remembered him in aU things,",,
and held fast to " the traditions '' which he had received of
the Lord and handed down to them. The Apostle, whUe

POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAD. 403
he praises them for their general fidelity, points out that at
least in some respects they did not make good their boast,
that they had either misconceived or abused the rales and
principles which he had laid dovra. In the eleventh Chapter
of his first Epistle he takes exception (i) to the way in
which the Corinthian women sinned against the honour and
decorum of their sex in asserting their Christian freedom ;
and (2) to the abuse of the Lord's Supper on the part of
both men and women, especially, one hopes, on that of the
men. For the present we have only to consider the first of these
charges. The offence of the women was this. Paul had
taught them that in Christ Jesus all national, social, sexual
distinctions disappeared : " In Him is neither Jew nor
Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female.''
Certain Christian women laid eager hands on this principle,
and so mishandled it as to occasion a public scandal. Paul
had taught the spiritual equality of man and woman ; he
had also tatight the social subordination of the woman to
the man. But these eager converts had not minds large
enough to hold and reconcUe both these great principles :
they seized impetuously on that which fell in with their
-wishes, and let the other go — a fault in reasoning of which
women are said to be guilty to this very day. And indeed
I suppose there are men as well as women who find it
difficult to reconcUe St. Paul's two principles, who are dis
posed to object, " If in spiritual nature, relation, responsi
bility, women are on an equality with men, how can they be
subordinate to them?" To any such objectors it might be
enough to reply : " Christ is the co-equal Son of the Father,
the ' feUow ' of the Lord of Hosts ; yet in the complex mys
terious relations of the Blessed Trinity Christ is the subor
dinate and dependent Son : '' for here is an admitted case
in which equajity of nature and subordinate positioUj co-

404 POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAD
exist But the fuUer and more satisfactory reply would be :
" In spiritual nature and relation women are the equals of
men : but in the divine economy of social life they are sub
ordinate and dependent." What then? in a subordinate
position they may shew an equal, even a superior, abUity.
A designer in a factory, or a governess in a famUy, or a
manager in a bank, or a cook in a kitchen, may have a
wider capacity and display higher gifts than their social or
official superiors. But how do they prove their equality or
their superiority ? Not by rebeUing agamst their position,
but by accepting it and exceUing in it So with woman.
She proves her equality with man, not by rebeUing against
her subordinate position in the social order, but by cheer
fully accepting it as God's ordinance for her, and by dis
charging its duties vrith an abUity equal or superior to that
shewn by her husband in his different sphere.
The Corinthian women, or some of them, did not see
that They thought to assert the equality of the sexes by
thrasting themselves into the habits and duties of the mas
culine sex to the neglect of their o-wn, by praying and
prophesying in church instead of ruling their households.
As a sign of their enfranchisement from the degrading bonds
of heathenism, as a proof that they were the equals of men,
they appeared in public unveUed, and so violated the de-
coram of their sex as then understood : in short, they became
bad as women that they might prove themselves as good as
men. The honour of the Christian community was at
stake. Only women convicted of adultery had their hair
shorn ; only women of notoriously abandoned life dispensed
with a veU. The Greek women, the honourable women,
invariably put on a veU, or drew tiieir peplum or shawl over
head and face when they left their homes. The heathen
were quick to misconceive any departure from custom, any
innovation on rule on the part of the Church. For many

BECAUSE OF THE ANGELS. . 405
years they believed the most horrible misrepresentations of
the simple innocent " love-feasts " of the primitive Church, —
talked of infants murdered to supply the tables, and of
vicious indulgences resembling those of the Corinthian
temples or the sacred groves. And had the Christian
women gone unveUed, when the absence of the veU was
the open stamp of harlotry, we can easily conceive what
their neighbours would have thought of them, what a fatal
Obstacle would have been thrown in the path of the infant
Church. It was no mere question of maxims and rules, therefore,
with which St. Paul had to deal ; it was a question of prin
ciple — of principles vital and profound. And hence it is
that he argues so gravely and weightily on what might seem
a matter of small moment Hence he appeals to Nature,
to Scripture, to Christian Doctrine, for argunients on points
which seem so tri-rial as whether a man should or should
not have his hair cut, whether a woman should or should
not wear a veil. His reasoning is here and there very diffi
cult to foUow, partly because it is so close and compressed,
and partly no doubt because it contains allusions familiar to
his readers, but which we can hardly catch.
I. Take the simplest of his arguments — his appeal to
Natare. " Judge for yourselves. Is it seemly that a woman
pray to God uncovered ? Doth not even Nature itself teach
you that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame to him ; but
that, if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her ? for her
hair is given her for a covering" (vers. 13-15). That is
to say, man is by Nature unveUed, has short hair ; woman
is veUed with her long hair The Divine intention is thus
revealed. In handling and attiring the body we are to take
the suggestions of Nature as ordinances of God ; we are to
carry out the Divine intentions indicated by our physical

4o6 ' POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAD
Stractare : man is to go unveiled ; woman is to use, or to
imitate, the natural veil which God has given her. The
Greeks and Romans did thus interpret and obey the voice
of Nature. Among them, as we leam from their satirists,
it was the climax of profligate effeminacy for a young man
to wear long hair, to bind up his thick tresses with a golden
fiUet T^d to this day nothing is more conspicuous in the
busts of ancient classical art than the close-cropped skuUs of
the Greek athletes and the Roman emperors ; in the case of
the emperors, indeed, one is often tempted to wish that
they had worn more hair, if only to soften the square, mas
sive, ¦ bratal features they often display. But while theu
noblest men cut their hair close and short, in common with
men of all ages, they held long flowing tresses as among the
most potent charms of women — as a real " power " on their
heads. Nature did not speak to them in vaii. And there
fore the Apostie, writing to the Greeks and Romans of Corinth,
might well appeal to what " Nature itself" had taught them.
The fact that St Paul appeals to Natare as an authority
deserves more than a passing remark, though we cannot
give it more now. From how many evUs would the Church
have been saved had his example been followed ? She has
too commonly demanded that we should break -with the
fair nataral world around us, and crush down the native
instincts of the heart. And hence have sprung at least half
the errors of dogma and practice which have impeded her
progress. Nature does not teach asceticism, celibacy, or
gloomy views whether of the present or the future life. She
does not say, " Touch not, taste not, handle not." Had we
Hstened to her, had we asked with St Paul, " What does
Natare itself teach ? " we should have had more of his free,
generous, cathoHc spirit
II. St Paul appeals to the Scriptures. His appeal is to

BECAUSE OF THE ANGELS. 407

the verses in Genesis* which describe the creation of man
and woman, and the relation in ,which they were appointed
to stand. " A man ought not to cover his head, forasmuch
as he is an image and glory of God, but the woman is the
glory of the man^ For man is not of woman,, but woman of
man : and man was not created for the woman, but woman
for the man" (vers. 7-9). Man, said Moses, was made
"in the image of God;" therefore, adds St Paul, man is a
"glory" of God. Hence he ought not to veU the head
which bears an impress so divine, the face which reflects so
excellent a glory. But "the woman is the glory of the
man;" she was taken out of his side — not from the rade
clay, but from clay already attempered by human life and
heat ; not from any remote or uncomely member of man's
body, but from his very heart, from the very seat of life.
Therefore she is his " gloiy ; " she represents what is finest
in him and most exquisite, what is highest and best Never
theless, the Apostle insists (ver. 8) she was taken from man,
not man from woman ; she was (ver. 9) created for man, not
he for her. And this derived origin indicates her dependent
condition. Although she is his glory, because she is his
glory, she is to defer and minister to him from whom she
sprang, just as the highest spirits are those who. serve most
and best
" And therefore" continues the Apostle (ver. 10),
"ought the woman to have power on her head, because of
the angels." No verse in the New Testament is, I suppose,
more perplexing than this. Volumes have been written on
it I need not dwell on the various interpretations put
upon it The ablest Commentators understand it thus :
" Because woman is subordinate and dependent on man,
she ought to wear a veU on her head to denote her subjec
tion to man." That is to say, when the Apostle affirmed,
* Gen. i. 26 ; ii. 18, 21.

4o8 POWER ON THE WOMAN S HEAD
" The woman ought to have power on her head," he meant
she ought to have subjection — ought to have not a power of
her own, but a symbol of her husband's power over her !
By such a method of interpretation we may make the
Apostie say anything, even the opposite of what he means.
We can accept neither the method nor its results. But, if
we reject this interpretation, where shall we find another?
If this method is not good, what method shall we adopt?
Let me offer a suggestion on that point When we are
puzzled by a word or phrase in the Apostle's writings, we
are too apt, I fear, to make it a mere question of words — to
forget how habitually he had great fixed thoughts in his
mind, and alluded to them even when he did not give them
clear expression. Now one of his great fixed thoughts is,
- that we rale by serving, that to become great we must make
ourselves of the least, that to rise we must stoop, that the
lord of all is the servant and minister of all. You instantly
recognise that as one of St. Paul's habitaal thoughts. Pos
sibly he aUudes to it here. He has been describing the
subordinate position of woman. She is the dependent help
meet, or minister, of man. But if she is to serve, she must
be strong. The minister of man must have " power " on
her head. To the Hebrews unshorn hair, like that of Sam
son, was the sign of strength or power. And the unshorn
hair of the woman is " the power," or the symbol of the
power, which her service requires. This I take to be the
Apostle's thought. And does not Natare itself confirm his
thought? Is not a woman's hair a strength to her as well
as a glory ? How often has a thread of golden hair drawn
strong men across the world ! How often have soft locks
and bright meshes proved stronger bonds than bars of steel !
Who does not remember the little packet, all blotted with
tears, which they found in a corner of poor Swift's desk, vrith
these words on it, "Only a woman's hair?" — words than.

BECAUSE OF THE ANGELS. 409

which few. are more pathetic, words hea-vy with the sadness
of a fierce passipn, and a fierce conflict with passion, long
since past. This, then, I think, is " the power " which the
woman has, and ought to have, on her head, — the power of
unshorn' hair, the power of the soft flo-wing tresses with
which Natare has veiled and adorned her head.
But what are we to make of " the angels," for whose sake
woman is not to put off this power ? The received opinion
is, "that angels attend our Christian assemblies, and that,
as they love to see all things done decentiy and in order,
men and women should scrupulously observe the decorams
of their sex" Let those who can be content with this ex
planation, take it ; they are very welcome to it But who
can be content vrith it? What thoughtful man does not
pronounce it tame, inappHcable, inadmissible ? St Paul has
taught us to look for deeper meanings than this in his
mysterious words. And if we stady his words, and the con
nections of his thought, we soon get a clue to a meaning
very Oriental and mystical in its tone, and therefore all the
more likely to be his.
If you examine verses 7-9, you wiU see that St. Paul
quotes or refers to three passages* in the Book of Genesis,
in which the original relation of the sexes is set forth.
Closely foUovring the passages he cites, there is, in the Book
of Genesis, a curious story of the first infraction of the trae
relation of the sexes. " It came to pass, when men began
to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were
born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of
men that they were fair, and they took them vrives of aU
whose beauty charmed them."t We know, or think we
know, what that story means; that it means the inter
marriage of the pious race with the impious, of the sons of
Seth with the daughters of Cain ; and the introduction of
• Gen. i. 20 ; ii. 18, 23 ; and iii. 16. -j- Gen. vi. I — 4.

4IO POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAD
polygamy, since the men of Seth's line now first took as
maiy women as charmed them for their wives. But on this
simple historical basis the Rabbis built up a great pUe of
fables. With them " the sons of God " were the angels, not
the sons of pious Seth. The daughters of men, departing
from their primitive simplicity and decoram, laid aside their
veUs, and tricked out their hair and faces with ornaments.
The angels saw them, and grew enamoured of their beauty,
and fell from their pure unimpassioned blessedness. This
according to Hebrew legend, is " the fall of the angels ; "
and to this fall both St Peter and St. Jude refer in then
Epistles, adopting the legend which no man then doubted.
Possibly, probably, St Paul also aUudes to it here. The
Corinthian women, hidden by their veils of hair, or going
a,broad with covered heads, could bring no such evil to the
angels as, according to the Hebrew legend, had been
brought to them by the unveiled faces of the women before
the flood. If only " because of the angels," therefore, they
sUould carry this veil, this power, this strength of flowing
tresses on their heads.
While this legend is at all strange to us, we may find it
hard to believe that St. Paul here alludes to it. But we have
to remember that it was part of the national faith, that every
Jew beheved it; we have to remember that two other
Apostles refer to it -without branding it as untrae, rather imply
ing, indeed, that they accepted it as trae ; we have to re
member that St Paul is quoting in the previous verses from
the Book of Genesis, quoting God's institute of marriage, and
his ordinance on the original and trae relation of the sexes.
When once we remember these things, we shall at least admit
it to be likely that he had this story of the first violation of
the sexual relation in his mind, and the Jewish legend
which grew out of it. Indeed, the more we dwell on it, the
more probable it appears, that he had this legend in view

BECAUSE OE THE ANGELS. 411
when he bade women cover their heads because of the angels.
For St Paul was a Rabbi as weU as an Apostle. And the
Rabbis were so possessed by this legend that they were con
stantly making proverbs about it Thus, for example. Rabbi
Simeon used to say, " If a woman's head be uncovered, evil
angels come and sit upon it." Nay, the legend passed cur
rent through the whole East The " fathers" of the Church
believed it The Arabs and Turks beHeve it to this day.
They teU us this story about Mahommedand his wife Khadijah
at the time when he began to see visions and dream dreams :
— " Khadijah said to Mahommed after his first vision, 'If the
angel appear again, let me know.' Gabriel appeared to him
again. He said to her, ' I see him.' His vrife placed his
head first on her left, then on her right shoulder, and asked,
' Seest thou him stUl ? ' He answered, ' Yea.' Then she
said, ' Turn, and lie on my bosom ; ' which when he had done,
she asked again, ' Seest thou him ? ' He answered, ' Yea.'
Then she took her veil from her head, and asked, ' Seest
thou him still ? ' And this time he answered, ' Nay.' Then
she said, ' By heaven, it is trae, it is true ! It was an angel,
and not a devil ! ' " Having told this story, the Arabian
historian remarks and explains, " Khadijah knew that a good
angel must fly before the face of an unveiled woman, whilst a
devil would bear the sight very weU."
So that, at least in Oriental thought, there is a power on
the head of a woman to which even angels are susceptible ;
and it may very well be that St Paul availed himself of this
antique tradition, this universal belief, when he bade women
observe the decoram of their sex, and keep the power on
their heads because of the angels.
III. St Paul appeals to Christian Doctrine. " The head
of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the
man, and the head of Christ is God " ( ver. 3). Here is a

412 POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAD
recognized Christian principle — Christ the head of man, as
God is the head of Christ ; and from this principle St. Paul
draws the inference that just as Christ is the head of man, so
man is the head of the woman. Is the inference a sound in
ference ? Is not Christ just as truly the head of the woman
as of the man ? Is there any pretext even for supposing
women to be farther from Christ than men ? Assuredly not
In their personal relation to Him, viewed simply as separate
souls, as distinct human beings, there is no~ difference between
them ; women are as near Christ as men ; He is their Head,
since He is the Head of the whole Church, the whole human
race. In Him is neither male nor female. He is not of an
age, but for aU time ; not for a race or a sex, but for aU ; aU
womanly as weU as aU manly exceUences combine in Him.
Viewed simply as human beings, the relation of women to
Christ is as direct, vital, immediate as that of men.
But, now, look at them not simply as human beings, as in
dividual souls, but as souls incarnated in flesh, as forming a
distinct sex, as members of the social order. In that order
there must be grades, degrees, subordinations, or there can
be no whole, no unity. In an empire there must be a ruling
race, or class, or person : there must be governing mqpabers
in a society : and in a household there must be a^superior
or ruling sex. When we ask, 'Which sex is to rale'? the Bible
replies, " Man is first in creation, first in dignity. Woman
was made for him, not he for her." And ^"^ith this natiual
order and subordination, the equal spiritual relation to Christ
is not to interfere. Christ did not come to thwart or to re
verse, but to perfect, human natare and human society.
In Him indeed is neithenAceK nor Jew, neither male nor
female : you cannot §gyiiSH as conceive of Him as asking,
" Is that the prav^'fan Erighshman or a German, of a man
or a woman?" J^^e He wilj Hsten to it In Him all these
national and^axual distinctions are nothing. But, out of

BECAUSE OF THE ANGELS. 413
Him, in their relation not to Him but to each other, there
are stUl different races and sexes : all may be Christian, but
the Englishman remains an Englishman, the German a Ger
man, the man a man, the woman a woman. The social order
and the prosperity .of the world hang on our recognition
of these distinctions, on the fair discharge of the special
duties they involve.
¦What grade we hold in this social order, and what part
we play, is not by any means the main question ; but how
we fill it, how we play it The woman, for instance, though
equal in nature, holds the subordinate social grade ; but if
she play her part well, shew herseff perfect in it, become
'' pure womanly," is she not nobler than an unmanly man ?
and as noble, as high in the favour of God and Christ, as the
manliest of men ? She becomes perfect as a woman when she
cheerfuUy accepts her position, her part ; when she ministers to
man, not only from love to him, but also from love to Christ
Suppose a woman, a -wife, to rebel agairist her social posi
tion and the divine ordinance which assigned it to her. If
she push her mutiny to the extreme, what happens ? One of
two things. Either, casting off all restraint, she breaks the
tie which bound her to her husband, - divorces herself from
him rather than obey him ; or she openly rales where she
ought to obey, and is condemned by her own instincts and
her own sex even more severely than by men. But suppose
she cheerfuUy accepts her part, fills it in the trae womanly
spirit — ^what then ? Why then she has her own approval,
and in the judgment of men as well as of women her func
tion is every whit as high and noble as that of her husband.
Suppose, again, she takes and fills her part in a Christian
spirit, does all for Christ's sake ; and then every act of
womanly duty and wifely service becomes religious? her
happiness rises into blessedness, her freedom into a holy
and royal freedom.

414 POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAD
To these general principles St. Paul gives a peculiarly
Oriental and symbolic expression. His main principle is,
that in the social order man's is the higher, woman's the
subordinate, position. This principle he sets forth under
the symbol of headship. Woman looks up to man as the
next highest, man looks up to Christ ; man is woman's head ;
Christ is man's head. Thus the human head becomes the
symbol of Christian verities. Because it is a symbol of
sacred verities, a certain sanctity attaches to it ; because it is
a tjrpe or emblem, it is to be treated vrith a certain reverence,
the reverence we shew to aU other emblems and symbols of
Christian truth. For a man to dishonour his head is to
dishonour Christ, since his head is a symbol of Christ : for a ,
woman to dishonour her head is to dishonour man, because
her head is the symbol of man.
This is St. Paul's argument To us it may seem fancifiil
and far-fetched. But we have to remember that it was not
addressed to us, but to a church in which these fanciful
Orientalisms had great power Yet even we may feel the
force of it, if we think how much the value of our Christian
Sacraments depends on our preser-ring the simplicity of their
emblems. The water, bread, vrine of these Sacraments have
a certain holiness in our thoughts. Did it ever strike you
that, merely by corrupting their simplicity, we might almost
destroy the power of the ordinances? If, for example, some
wealthy and luxurious church, instead of plain bread and
wine, were to put rich plum-cake and a wine highly spiced or
mulled on the table, of the Lord, do you not instinctively
feel that, with the simplicity of the symbols, much of the
sacredness and force of the Sacrament would be lost ? Some
persons, again, find it pleasant and refreshing to put a little
eau-de-cologne in the water with which they wash their face
and hands ; but if some squeamish person were to have a few
flasks emptied into Font or Baptistery, would you not in-

BECAUSE OP THE ANGELS. 415
stinctively feel that thus to tamper with the . simplicity of the
synibol was to impair the value of the ordinance ? And it
is thus that St Paul argues about the human head. " The
head of the man is the symbol of Christ's headship ; the head
of the woman is the sjmibol of man's headship. So long
as they are left in their nataral simplicity, there is a sacra
mental holiness in these symbols : so soon as that simpHcity
is corrupted, so soon as men and women begin to play
fantastic tricks vrith their hair, the value of the symbol de
clines. If you would honour God, leave them as He made
them. He has given men short hair ; to women He has
given the tresses which in part conceal the head they adom.
Do not tamper with the simplicity of Nature, nor obscure the
Divine intention indicated by your physical stractare. Let
the women worship vrith covered heads, the men with open
uncovered face. God meant the woman's head to be veUed,
or why did He veil it -with hair ? God meant the man's head
to be uncovered, or why did He vrithhold that natural veil
from him ? "
This is St Paul's argument, but not quite the whole of it
There is still one point to be noted. Before we can fully
reach his sense of the sacredness of " the head," we must re
member why the Jews and most Oriental nations, covered
the head when they worshipped. Then, as now, the pious
Hebrew not only retained hat or turban when he entered the
sanctuary, but also drew over it the tallith, a sacred veil,
kept exclusively for public worship. By veUing his head
during worship, he meant to express reverence for the Divine
Presence — that he was not worthy to stand in it, that he
could not look on God and live. If pure angels cover their
faces with their -wings, how much more should sinful man
cover his head with a veil ?
From the Jev/s point of view, therefore, the assumption of
the tallith was a reverential and religious act But not from

4i6 POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAD
St Paul's. In his scheme of thought, Christ was the head of
man. For a man to cover his head in worship was there
fore to veU Christ ; it was to imply that He was not worthy
to stand in the Divine Presence, or to gaze on the Divine
Holiness. Man must not dishonour Christ, his head : let
him therefore pray or prophesy with head uncovered, if only
to denote that Christ need not veU his face, that He could
¦ look on God and live. But the very reason which made it
right for man, made it wrong for woman, to worship un
veiled. For, according to St Paul, her head was the man.
And to uncover her head in worship was to imply that man
needed no veU when he came before God, that he could
stand unabashed before the Di-vine Presence and HoHness !
Let her worship, therefore, with head stadiously veUed, and
thus bear witness to the fact that sinful man was unworthy so
much as to lift up his eyes unto heaven.
We have now, I beHeve, the whole of St Paul's arguinent
before us. Is it not curious, wonderful? Does it not quicken
a new sense of admiration in us that he should handle even
so slight a matter as the use of the veU so largely, vrith so wide
a sweep of argument? If it be a trae mark of greataess that
it handles aU things greatiy, how great must he be who, in
teaching women to worship vrith covered heads, appeals to
the laws of Nature, to the revelations of Holy Writ, to the
verities and mysteries of tiie Christian Faith ?
Let us imitate Paul as well as admire him. The great
lesson he teaches in this passage, the great example he sets,
is that we should apply the laws and principles which God
has revealed in Nature, in Scripture, in Christ, to every
phase and department of our life, to every detaU of conduct,
even the most tri-rial and common. A man asks, " Shall I
have my hair cut ?" " Yes," replies St Paul, " for Nature it
self teaches you that it is a shame for a man to have long
hair : Scripture teaches you that man is an image and gloiy

BECAUSE OF THE ANGELS. 417

of God : Christ teaches you that He is the head of man, and
neither God nor Christ requires a veU." " Shall I wear a
veU ?" asks a woman. And Paul replies, " Yes, for Natare
itself teaches you that it is- the glory of woman to have long
hair : Scripture teaches you that the woman was made for the
man : Christ teaches you man is the head of the woman, and
man needs a veU so often as he enters the Di-rine Presence."
If the large laws of Nature and God are to be applied to
questions so small as these, to what questions are they
inapplicable? If we ask, ShaU I eat? shaU I drink?
shaU I take daily exercise ? shaU I attend public worship ?
shall I take a cordial part in the work and serrice of the
Church? shall L wear a kind face, and speak kind words
to my neighbour, and help him in his need? — if we
ask any such questions as these, are not Nature, Scrip
ture, Christ ready with a reply ? If we are sincere, and
bent on knowing what the will of God is, have we any great
difficulty in discovering their reply ? Do we not know
and feel both that God does respond to every such question
we ask, and that the true happiness, the true blessedness of
life consists in thus bringing all we do under law to God ?
Let us leam from St Paul to apply the largest and deepest
principles to the smallest detaUs of conduct and duty; but
let us also leam to apply them -with his freedom. Nothing
would be more fatal to our spiritaal health than to stereotype
the rales he inferred from the laws of Nature and God, to
tarn his principles, or his applications of them, into binding
and universal maxims of conduct To the Greek and Roman
men and women of Corinth he said, "Let the men cut
their hair and worship vrith uncovered face ; let the women
veil their faces and not speak in church." Are we invariably
to adopt and enforce these rales ? Is a woman never to
speak in public, and always to wear a veil ? Is it wrong
for a man in India, or at an outdoor service, to worship with
27

4i8 POWER ON THE WOMAN'S HEAD, ETC.
covered head, to keep on his hat or tarban ? To make St
Paul's rules inflexible and universal would be to sin against
his spirit. On Greeks and Romans he enforced attention
to the customs and decorams of their race and time, and
gave them perfectly good reasons for adhering to them.
Had he been -writing to the free women of Germany or of
the West, who did not wear a veU, or to Jews who worshipped
vrith covered heads, no doubt he would have urged them to
observe their honourable customs, and have found reasons
for it equally cogent and excellent. Principles abide, but
customs change. And we then act most in the spirit of Paul
when we freely apply his principles to our changed customs.
Always and everywhere he would have the woman honour
and obey the man, the man love and cherish the woman, for
Christ's sake, and not merely from natural affection. Always
and everywhere he would have aU men honour Christ as
the Head of humanity, and grow up into Him in all things.
But he would also have us apply these principles for our
selves, and walk by them in our several conditions accord
ing to the national and social customs of our age and race.
¦Whether we worship God with naked feet or uncovered head
does not matter a jot ; save that we should choose the
posture or action which our age deems most reverential:
what is of supreme importance is that, in whatever forms,
we should worship Him, and worship Him in spirit and in
trath. Whether the woman honour the man by veiling her
face, and the man honour Christ by baring his head, must be
determined by the customs of the time : what is of supreme
importance is that we should love each other, and that we
all, in all we do, should seek to serve and honour Him whf
loved us and gave Himself for us.

XXX.
St. Iral a Waxlrn^ Haw m'is m MM,
2 Corinthians xi. 9.
WHEN St Paul was at Corinth, about the very time
that he found employment in the workshop of
Aquila and PriscUla, a picturesque scene transpired in Rome,
which StiU lives in history, which has a special interest for
Englishmen, and to which I may be permitted to refer as it
vrill help to fix the date of my subject in our minds.
A Httie more than forty years after the birth of Christ, the
Roman legions, led by the Emperor Claudius, had effected a
landing on the eastern coast of Britain, and gained a decisive
victory over our fathers. For nearly ten years, however, Carac-
tacus, our first great hero, maintained a stubborn and gallant
conflict against the victorious legions. Driven gradually to
the west and north, he made his last stand among the hiUs
of Wales. Here, after a terrible and bloody contest, he was
defeated. He fled as far as to Yorkshire, hoping stiU to renew
the war. His hope was turned to shame by the treachery
of the Queen of the Brigantes, who put him in chains,
and betrayed him into the hands of his enemies. He, with
his wife, his daughter, his brothers, and many other of his
attached followers, was carried captive to Rome. His fame
had preceded him. AU Italy was eager to see the brave
chieftain who had so long defied the imperial armies. A grand
military spectacle was prepared. The Emperor Claudius,

420 ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.
with his consort Agrippina by his side, appeared seated on a
lofty tribunal before the gates of the Pr^torian camp. The
Roman standards waved over his head. The imperial guards
stood under arms round the royal seat. The people of
Rome hemmed in the pageant with a dense living mass. The
slaves and followers of the British chief were first paraded,
with the trophies taken in the war. Then followed his
wife, and daughter, and brothers, bewailing their hard fate
with tears and cries that won no pity. Last of all came
Caractacus himself, "pride in his port, defiance in his eye;''
his bearing so worthy of his cause and fame as to compel
universal admiration. As he passed the throne, he paused,
and appealed to the emperor. " Had my moderation," he
said, " been equal to my success, I had appeared here as a
frie d, not as a captive. . . . My present lot redounds as
much to your glory as to my shame. I had horses, men,
arms, treasures. What wonder if I was bent on keeping
them ? If you would lord it over all, it does not follow that
all would be lorded over by you. Had I yielded without a
blow, neither had I won a name, nor you your laurels. Wreak
your vengeance on me, and the deed wiU soon pass into
oblivion. Spare my life, and the memorial of your clemency
vrill live for ever." *
The proud appeal was heard with favour : the iUustrious
captive was spared. He remained in Rome in honourable
custody for many years ; he was still there when St. Paul
visited Rome and became a prisoner in the Prsetorian
camp. The two men, each of whom had perilled his life in a
great cause, may possibly have met. Some writers are even
sanguine enough to believe that they did meet, and that,
under Paul's teaching, Caractacus became a disciple of the
Lord Jesus Christ However that may have been, it is very
• Tacitus, "Annals."' xii. 36 — 38.

ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 421

certain that while Caractacus was asking for life at Rome,
St. Paul was asking for work at Corinth.
Another event had recently transpired at Rome, in which
we have some concern. It was mainly by the help of Herod
Agrippa that Claudius, the conqueror of Britain, had been
raised to the imperial throne. The emperor retained a
grateful recognition of the service the Jewish prince had
rendered him. In proof of his gratitude, Claudius confirmed
Agrippa in his authority as raler of Galilee, and added to
his domain the provinces of Samaria and Judea. He also,
for Agrippa's sake, shewed great favour to the Jews, who
crowded to Rome and rose to no small influence in the
State. For thirteen years his favour knew no change. Then, how
ever, two causes conspired to alienate him from the Hebrew
people. First, the Jews of Judea broke out into revolt against
the Roman yoke. Fierce and bloody conflicts occurred be
tween the Jewish zealots and the Roman legions. It was
not deemed safe, to permit many thousands of a disaffected
and hostile race to remain in the imperial city. Hence, as
we read in Acts xvui. 2, an edict was passed in which
" Claudius commanded aU Jews to depart from Rome."
The political disaffection of the Jews was not, however, the
only reason for this edict We get new light upon it from
a very unexpected source. Suetonius, the Latin historian,
wrote a life of the Emperor Claudius, and in that life there
occurs this remarkable phrase : "The Jews who, instigated
by Chrestas, were in constant commotion, he (Claidius)
banished from Rome."*
Two things are remarkable in this passage. It is not re
markable that a heathen historian should call the Lord Jesus
Chrestus, instead of Christus, for Chrestus, or " Good," was
• " Judseos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit."
—Suet., " Claud.," xxv.

422 ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.
a common name with the Romans, while Christus, or
" Anointed," was wholly unknown to them ; and Suetonius
might well make a mistake in a single letter. -* And again,
he, in common with all Romans of culture, despised the
superstitions of the Jews too much to give them a careful ex
amination. The Christians to him were simply a Jewish sect
He gives us his opinion of them.t They were in his eyes
" a race of men" who pestered the world " vrith a novel and
malignant superstition ; " and therefore we could not expect
him to give us an exact account of them. But, nevertheless,
it is remarkable that, twenty years after Christ had been put
to death by a Roman statesman, a leamed Roman historian
should suppose Him to be alive and causing commotions
in Rome, a city in which He had never set his foot
It is also remarkable that thus early there should be a
vigorous Christian Church in Rome. ^Vhen Suetonius says
that " the Jews were banished from Rome because, moved
by Christ, they were in constant commotion," he, no doubt,
means that the dissensions between Jews and Christians had
already risen to such a height as to attract pubHc attention,
and appear to threaten the pubHc peace. Yet when the
Jews were expelled from Rome scarcely twenty years had
elapsed since the death of Christ St. Paul did not arrive
in Rome tiU ten years after this date. No other apostle had
been here. The good seed had sprung up of itself The
great Roman Church was founded we know not how. But
for the casual phrase of a heathen historian we should not
have known that it was a strong zealous church in the days-
of the Emperor Claudius — so strong that the rage of the
* Yet it was singu lar, perhaps, that Suetonius should have fallen into
this error, since in his life of Nero he gives the Christian name accurately.
See the next note.
t " Christian!, genus hominum superstitionis nov^ ac malificEe." —
Suet., "Ner.,"xvi.

ST. PA UL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 423

Jews against it bred commotions which were thought to be
dangerous to the pubHc weal.
This edict, then, which banished the Jews from Rome,
was occasioned both by their political disaffection and their
rehgious disputes. Among the Jews whom it expelled were
Aquila and Priscilla, the tent-makers. Banished from Rome,
they took refuge in Corinth, where they set up their factory
and resumed their traffic. And one day there stood at
their door a little man, with weak eyes and of a feeble pre
sence, who said that he too was a Jew and a tent-maker
and asked for work.
Now, how came St Paul to want work at a handicraft ?
Hov/ came he to be able to do it ? He was of a good
famUy ; he had fiUed high positions in Church and State.
His father, although a CiHcian, was a Roman citizen, for
Paul was " free bom ;" and a provincial could become a
Roman citizen only by public services, or by purchasing
" this freedom vrith a great sum of money." St. Paul had
been to college — sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the most famous
teacher of his time. He himself was an ordained and recog
nised rabbi The Sanhedrin had employed him in the service
o the State. Even when he passed from the Temple to the
Church, from persecuting to serving Christ, he was at once
raised to the ministry and apostleship, and came not a whit
behind the chiefest of the apostles. How should such an one
have learned to work with his hands ? how should he need to
work with them?
The answer to that question reminds us of a great distinc
tion between the Oriental and Western races. We of Europe
hold that no man can be a gentleman, that no man can take a
respectable, and much less a high, position m society, unless he
is rich, or, at least, rich enough to be above the necessity of
manual labour. We think it no smaU degradation if a man of
rank is reduced to work vrith his hands. We think it absurd

424 ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.
that a working man should try to enter Parliament, or to
take his place among gentlemen, untU he has made a fortane ;
though then he is good enough for any society or any position.
If we ourselves have attained any social standing, or made
a little money, we shrink from apprenticing our sons to any
handicraft We would rather send them to starve in an over
crowded profession, or to earn a scanty pittance as clerks,
than let them " sink" into working men, although as carpen
ters or coopers, buUders or engine-makers, they might soon
eam three times as much as a clerk, and hope, by industry
and economy, to become masters and employers. They
may work as hard as they like at their sports — at cricket,
at boating, at gymnastics; but directly hard muscular
work earns bread or wages, it is voted low, ungenteel,
degrading. This absurd prejudice has never yet found a congenial soU
in the East. To this day, for instance, among the Turks, a
handicraftsman often rises to offices of state, and now and then
to the very highest offices, .^nd even in the Sultan's seraglio,
I believe, all the young princes are taught some handi
craft, in order that, if misfortunes should befaU them, they
may have the means of earning their own bread. Among
the ancient Eastern races this sensible manly custom was
even more prevalent than it is in modem times ; and in no
nation was it more strictly observed, or more honoured in
the observance, than among the Jews. It was their rale
that every young man, whatever his rank or wealth, and
though bred for one of the learned professions, should also
be taught some handicraft To teach their sons a craft of
this kind was held to be a religious duty. Their rabbis ob
served and enforced it ; and, so far as we can leam, it was
the common and more laborious crafts which they chose.
Thus, Rabbi Jose was a tanner; Rabbi Judas, a baker;
Rabbi Johanan, a shoemaker ; and Maimonides assures us

ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 425
that some of their wisest and greatest rabbis, the leading
statesmen as well as the leading teachers of their time, were
" hewers of wood and drawers of water." The Talmud
is full of injunctions on this point. It affirms* that one
of the first duties of a father to his son is " to teach him a
trade" — it even ranks it on a level with " teaching him the
law.'' Rabbi Juda, too, is very bold, and says : " He
that teaches not his son a trade, does as though he taught
him to be a thief" And the wise Gamaliel used to say
— probably St. Paul heard him say : " He that has a
craft in his hands, to what is he like ? — He is like to a vine
yard that \s fenced :" by which he meant, I suppose, that the
man's life was defended against the incursions of indolence,
sickness, want.
And Rabbi Saul had his trade. Mechanical and yet not
base, he wrought with his hands at the "art and craft" of
tent-making. No doubt, as some of the Commentators,
jealous with a Western jealousy for Paul's honour, have
pointed out, there were branches of this craft which implied
no mean artistic skill. As war was then the main business of
life, as the wealthiest and most distinguished men passed
their days in "the tented field," tents were often palaces.
Julius Ceesar, for instance, fravelled with a chest of mosaics,
which were laid down to form the pavement of his tent
whenever he halted. Many such tesselated pavements are
dug up on the sites of ancient Roman camps ; and we may
be sure that, when the pavements were so costly, the cano
pies were of a correspondmg magnificence. We may be
sure too, from the character of the man, that, whatever Paul
did, he did well ; that, if the chance came in his way, he was
quite capable of weaving a sumptuous beautiful tent, fit for
the most superb of emperors or the daintiest of princesses.
* "-What is commanded of a father towards his son?— To circumcise
hm, to teach him the law, to teach him a txsAs." —Talmud.

426 ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.
But such chances were not very likely to come to any man
who worked for Aquila, a fugitive Jew, now at Rome, now at
Corinth, now at Ephesus. And stUl less were they likely to
come to a workman like St. Paul, always on the move,
always giving even more time and energy to his labours as
rabbi and apostle than to the tasks and niceties of his craft
The probabUity is that, though he could never be quite a
common working man, and though he would always do his
work weU, he -wrought at the most common branches of his
trade, and made the small rude tents which were sold to
ordinary travellers — to merchants, pedlars, freebooters, and
pilgrims. The hills of Cilicia, his native country, were
famous ¦ for a breed of goats, which yielded a long tenacious
hair very fit for wea-ring into a stout impervious cloth. This
cloth, called " cilicium " from CUicia, the province in which
it was produced, was on sale in all the markets of Asia, and
Greece, and Rome. Wherever they went, tent-makers would
find a supply of it ; and it was this cloth which Paul had to
cut and sew into tents, or the outside covering of tents.
Hard disagreeable work it was, I make no doubt, and
badly paid; for, as we shall see, even so good a workman as
Paul, working for so good and friendly a master as Aquila,
could not always eam enough to live on.
But why did Paul, now that he was an apostle and had a
right to live by the Gospel, waste on mechanical toUs time
which he was capable of employing to so much better pur
pose? WeU, he did not think the time was wasted ; he held
his very work to be a preaching and a commendation of the
Gospel. Then, as now, the Greeks, and especially the Greeks
of the seaboard, were the keenest traders of the time, the
most set on gain by all means and at all hazards. And St
Paul feared that if he " lived by the Gospel," they might
suspect him of selfish motives in preachmg the Gospel.
With what heart could he teach them to love God and their

ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 427
neighbour, while they suspected that he loved himself more
than his neighbours or his God, — that he was trading on his
office, — that, instead of seeking their good, he was making
gain of them ? He would give these keen unscrupulous
¦ traders no ground for such a suspicion as that. He would
earn his bread with his own hands, and so prove his disin
terested love for them, and preach with his hands the very
Gospel he spoke with his lips. Hence, no sooner does ha
leave inland Philippi, and come to Thessalonica, on the sea-
coast, than he takes up his old craft, and goes to work as a
tent-maker. In after months, in his Epistles to the Thessa-
lonians, he reminds them of his toUs, and states the motive of
them. In his First Epistle* he says : " We were wiUing to
have imparted unto you, not the Gospel of God only, but
also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. For ye
remember, brethren,, our labour and travaU : for labouring
night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto
any of you, we preached unto you the Gospel of God." In
his Second Epistle t he recurs to the theme, and says : "When
we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would
not work, neither should he eat ; " and puts them in remem
brance of the example by which he had Ulustrated the pre
cept : "Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought ; but
wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we mig'.it
not be chargeable to any of you." From Thessalonica Paul
came down to Corinth, "the city of the two seas."i Here
he abode one year and six months. But the very first thing
recorded of him§ is, that he "found a certain Jew named
Aquila, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla (be
cause that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart
from Rome), and came tuito them. And because ha wis
of the craft, he abode with them and wrought: for by theu-
. I Thess. ii. 8, 9. + ^ '^"^^^^ '"• '°' ^•
: " Bimaris Cormth'as." § Acts xvui. 1-3.

42$ ST. PAUL A WORKING -MAN AND IN WANT.
occupation they were tent-makers." In the Epistles he after
wards wrote to the Church at Corinth, he makes perpetaal
allusion to his labours as a handicraftsman. Unless we have
read these Epistles with this feature of St Paul's life in our
minds, we cannot fail to be surprised as we find how large a
space it occupies. I need not refer to passing or indirect
allusions. It will be enough to take the three passages in
which he elaborates the point In the First Epistle he devotes
as much as a whole Chapter to it (the ninth Chapter). He
argues that as an apostle he has as great a right to a mainte-
ance "as the other apostles, even the brethren of the Lord and
Cephas." He is a soldier : and no soldier is expected to go
to a warfare at his own charges. He is a vine-planter : and no
man plants a -rineyard without eating of the fmit thereof
He is a shepherd : and no man feeds a flock, who does not
live on the sale of its mUk. He treads out the com of heaven :
is his mouth to be muzzled ? He is a ploughman, a sower, a
thresher : is he not to " partake" of the grain ? He is a
minister of the altar : is he not to live by the altar ? He is
a preacher of the Gospel : and the Lord Himself has ordained
that they who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel.
This was his " right," this his " power." Nevertheless, he
had foregone this right ; he had not used this power. Rather
than use -it, he had borne all kinds of toU and privation, lest
the Gospel should be " hindered " by any suspicion of his
disinterestedness and integrity. What was the reward at
which he aimed ? Nothing but this : that "when he preached
the Gospel, he might make it vrithout charge " to any ; that
he might be "free from aU men, in order to become," of his
own wiU, " the slave of all."
This was the reward he sought. The reward he gained was,
that his very disinterestedness became a ground of suspicion.
Because he did not use that right to live by the Gospel which
the other apostles dki use, there were some at Corinth who

ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 429

denied is claim to be an apostle ; who did not scruple to
affirm that he himself doubted his claim, or he would never
have foregone his right to a maintenance. It is this argu
ment which he meets in two agitated and pathetic passages of
his Second Epistie. He affirms * that he is no whit behind
those "overmuch apostles" who were seeking to supplant
him. With some touch of humorous scom he apologises for
his sii in abasing t himself to the labours of his craft, that
he might exalt his hearers and disciples by preaching to them
the Gospel of God freely; for robbing other churches, that he
might serve them without wage. He reminds them that when
he was with them, he was at times in want; and that, even
then, he was not chargeable to them. He affirms that at
least in the region of Achaia, of which province Corinth was
the capital, no man shall ever rob him of the boast, that in
everything he has kept and will keep himself from being bur
densome to them. "Wherefore?" he cries; "because I love
you not ? God knows it is not that But because I wiU never
give an occasion to those who boast that they are apostles
because they let you support them, — about the only proof
of apostleship they can produce. My boast shaU be that,
though I am an apostie, I have taken nothing from you. O
foolish Corinthians ! if a man bring you into bondage, if he
devour you, if he take from you, if he exalt himself over you,
ye honour these false aposties as the very servants of Christ.
Will ye not honour one who has abased himself for you, who
has given to you, who has wanted rather than take from you,
who has been free of you only that he might the better serve
vou.?" From Corinth St. Paul passed over to Ephesus, on the
opposite coast of the ^gean Sea ; and here, save for a
flying visit to Judea, he remamed three years, " disputmg
• 2 Cor. xi. S-iS-
t Compare 2 Cor. xi. 7, with PhU. iv. 12.

430 .S-r. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.
and persuading" with the Ephesians "the things concem-
ing the kingdom of God." Here also he toUed at his craft.
Writing from Ephesus to the Corinthians, he says : " Even
unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are
naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dweUing-
place; and labour, working with our own hands!'* Nay,
more : it is during his sojourn at Ephesus that we get our
first glimpse of a fact, which was no doubt one of the con
stant facts of his Hfe — that he supported others as weU as
himself by his manual toils. When he took leave of the
Ephesian elders,* when they could hardly catch his farewell
for weeping that they should "see his face no more," he
bade them remember " that by the space of three years he
had wamed them day and night with tears, keeping back
nothing that was profitable to them, coveting no man's
sUver or gold, always acting on the maxim of the Lord
Jesus, ' It is more blessed to give than to receive.' " " Yea,"
he says, " ye yourselves know that these hands have minis
tered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me."
It is one of the most touching and impressive scenes in
a life rich above most in tragic adventares. It is often in
our thoughts. As we see the apostle lift those thin sfrong
hands, worn and scarred with constant toil, even we are moved
by the appeal. We do not wonder that the elders, who
"knew after what manner he had been with them at aU sea
sons," " wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him."
Those toil-worn hands speak to us -with a stUl more pathetic
eloquence when we know how constant and unremitting
were the labours in which they had been occupied ; when
we know how proud Paul was of those labours, how he
boasted of them as the crowning proof of his freedom,
his devotion, his love. This eloquence grows even more
commanding, as we learn that the labour of his hands was
* I Cor. iv. II, 12. f Acts XX. 17—38.

ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 431

both excessive and ill-paid, for though the apostie worked
night and day, he often " wanted," suffering " both hunger
and thirst;" and that even the scanty pittance he earned
was often given to this friend or that, to help Luke in a
difficulty, perhaps, or to equip Timothy for a journey. And
I thmk it lends the crowning grace to St Paul's labours, if
we may read the sentence, " These hands have ministered
to my necessities, and to them that were with me," as some
of our best scholars do read it. They say that the very
constraction of the Greek sentence shews — the very fact
that Paul says, not " to my necessities, and the necessities
of my companions," but "to my necessities, and to my
companions," — that he meant to imply that his friends were
among his necessities, that he could not live without them,
that in ministermg to them he was ministering to himself
¦What a royal heart this poor working man must have had !
In want, he gives ; and gives vrith a grace which makes his
friends feel that, in accepting, they confer a favour Traly
St Paul, more than any other man, realized to the fuU, that
" it is more blessed to give than to receive."
Now we have all been familiar vrith the fact that St Paul
was a tent-maker, and that at times he earned his subsistence
by the toils of his craft But it may be that we have not
hitherto noticed how often he aUudes to his manual labours,
how much of his time and thoughts they engrossed. The
passages I have cited teach us that he was a working man
in a far stricter sense than is commonly supposed. They
teach us that he was engaged in the more common and
toilsome branches of a toilsome craft ; that his labours were
protracted and exhausting; that he "toiled and travaUed"
in them, " working night and day ; " and that his labours
were ill-paid, since despite his industy, and the long hours
he bent over the " ciHcium," he often " wanted " the common

432 ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.

necessaries of life. "Suffering both hunger and thirst,"
it was not often, I am afraid, that he could minister to
" them that were with him."
And now that we have ascertained him to be a working
man who often felt the pinch of want, let us learn a lesson
or two from this conception of him.
One lesson — the dignity of labour — ^lies on the very surface
of it Among those bom of women none is greater than
St. Paul. He vnrought hard at his craft ; and, therefore, hard
manual labour cannot be inconsistent with trae greataess.
Than St. Paul no man has ever been more worthy of " the
grand old name of gentleman ;" and therefore mechanical
toUs are not necessarily degrading. It is not inevitable that
working men should be rade, rough, coarse ; that they
should be lacking in refinement and courtesy. Few sights
are more painful than such a group of skilled artisans — •
bricklayers, carpenters, coopers, painters, smiths — as may
be seen any day. Their loud harsh tones, their coarse jests
and uncouth manners, sometimes too their insolence to
inoffensive passers-by, their brutal treatment of each other,
their greedy improvidence and their drunken waste degrade
them to a point at which they become well-nigh insufferable.
They might be gentlemen, in the best sense of that much-
abused word ; and they are hardly men. And they cannot
fairly, as unfairly they often do, attribute these faults to the
nature of their work. St Paul worked as hard as any of
them. His work was as coarse, and rough, and exhausting
as theirs. The thick haircloth he had to handle was tough
and intractable as leather : and hence one of the Greek
Fathers calls St. Paul crKSrord/ws, or " leather-cutter,'' and one
of the Latin Fathers caUs him sutor, or " shoemaker" Yet
with this rough dirty work to do, St Paul was the truest
gentleman of his time — the most courteous, generous, con
stant, kind. This mechanic, this toil-wom " leather-cutter,'

ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 433
had the manners of a prince, and far finer manners than
most of the princes of this world. If our workmen, or many
of them, are so degraded that to be mechanical is to be base,
if their manners are as rough as their work, the degradation
is voluntary.A skUled artisan is in some respects the most fortunate
of men. If he is sober, industrious, trustworthy, obliging,
as well as skilful, what master will part with him? what
master is not glad to have and to retain him? He is
as sure of employment and a comfortable subsistence as, in
this uncertain world, any man can be. He is useful and
welcome anywhere. Drop him down in any city in the world,
and there is work waiting for him. And in many cases he
has this immense advantage over those who do not work vrith
their hands, that the very labour by which he earns his
bread yields him the exercise by which he is kept in health.
The great difficulty -with those who work only or mainly
with their brains is, how to secure the time and means for
the physical exertion indispensable to a healthy condition of
mind and body. It is a difficulty before which they daily
succumb. There is no need therefore to pity St. Paul because
he had to work with his hands. I make no doubt that
his handicraft labours were very wholesome for hin,—
wholesome, for the sense of independence and security
which they engendered ; wholesome, for the tax they laid
on his physical energies and his dexterity of hand ; whole
some, for the new turn they gave his thoughts. If they
helped instead of degrading him, why should they embrate
and degrade the working man of to-day? I know of only
one reason why they should degrade us : it is because we
think them degradmg. In St Paul's day, when rabbis,
and statesmen, and princes worked with theu hands, or had
worked with them, or were capable of working with them, no
28

434 ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.

man was degraded by manual toUs. As yet, on this point,
we are not so highly civiHzed as the Jews of nineteen cen
turies ago. The barbarous prejudices of feudal times stUl
cling to us. We talk much and eloquently of the dignity of
labour ; but it is a dignity we do not much covet for ourselves.
Can we wonder that a class which is radely treated should
be rude? that those who are thought to be low, -vulgar,
boorish, should become what they are thought to be ? Of
what use is it for us to speak of " the dignity of labour,"
when we should hold ourselves to be degraded if that dignity
were conferred upon us ? To what avail do we sing hymns
of praise to the working man through all our newspaper
throats, while we shrink from more contact vrith him than we
can help, whUe our whole bearing shews that we value any
•man who can live -without work more than the man who
earns his bread by the sweat of his brow ?
There can be no doubt, then, that our mechanics and
artisans stand at one great disadvantage as compared -with
St. Paul "the tent-maker." With us, men who live by
manual toil cease to be called " men ;" they are only " hands.''
Mechanical labours are not respected as they were. They
are held to be impossible to a gentleman, inconsistent with
habits of courtesy, refinement, and culture. To the working
men who resent that unworthy estimate of their vocation,
could my voice reach them, I would say, — Shut your ears
to merely eloquent laudations. " Who would be free, him
self must strike the blow." Rely on yourselves. Every
class has to work out its own social redemption. Lavpyers,
doctors, clergymen, authors, artists, were once littie more
than the serfs of princes and the great You did not do
much to emancipate them. They had to win their o-wn way
to public esteem. The nobles had to take from the king
the power they have long wielded. The middle classes had
to take the political power which the aristocracy withheld

ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 435
from them so long as they dared. And you must prove
your vocation an honourable one before it will be honoured.
Honour it yourselves. Shew that a man may labour with
his hands, and labour for a wage, without being coarse, rude,
improvident, uncultivated ; that a mechanic is not necessarily
a rough insolent fellow at war with all other classes ; that an
artisan may have a wise head, and a warm heart, and gentle,
courteous manners ; that he may be faithful, reliable, gene
rous, considerate, kind. Take St. Paul for your model. His
life, like yoms, was a life of toil and travail. He worked
night and day at a craft no more, and no less, honourable
than yours. And he was simply — always sa-ring Him who
was more than man — the noblest man and the most courteous
gentieman the world has ever seen.
Again. The facts of St Paul's life as a working man yield
us some valuable hints on certain possibilities of Christian
service. He was a mechanic. He wrought at hard, rough,
ill-paid work. Through we know not what fluctuations of
circumstance — partly too, no doubt, through the distractions
of his apostleship— he could not at times get enough of this
work to do, or could not earn enough for his support
We aU know that St Paul endured a great fight of afflic
tions. We have been accustomed to think of his Hfe as full
of pains, toUs, dangers, . calamities ; but we have also been
accustomed to attribute his perils and sufferings to the per
secutions which befeU him as an apostle of Christ. It is
pathetic, it touches us close home, to learn that some of
these sufferings came upon him as a workiig man, from
tiie fact that he was out of work, or that work was slack,
or that wages were low; that he knew what it was to
have an empty purse and a bare cupboard. The labours
and trials of an apostie are not for us, any more than his
honours and rewards ; but the trials and endurances of the
mechanic touch and affect us all. We know what it is, or

436 ST. PA UL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.
we think we know what it must be, to long for work and get
none, to mark the gradual approaches of want, to fold in
compulsory idleness hands used to labour and willing to
labour ; and it brings Paul very near to us to learn that these
trials were his as well as our o-wn.
How did he bear himself under these trials ? He held his
peace. He says to the Corinthians, " When I was present
with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man.'' Even
in that strait he would not ask help of those who were so
forward to suspect his motives. I do not suppose that they
so much as knew of his want tiU it was past And St. Paul
was too proud to tell them of a need which they should never
have suffered to exist ; though he was not too proud to
accept the help which the kind thoughtful PhUippians sent
him by " the brethren who came from Macedonia : " he re
membered them, and how they had supplied his necessities to
the very end of his life.
St. Paul knew the blessedness of receiving ; he also knew
the higher blessedness of giving. As we have seen, one
reason that he was always poor, and sometimes in want, was,
that he counted his friends among his necessities, that he
worked " for them that were with him " as weU as for himself,
that he never let them want if he could supply their want.
It lends the cro-wning charm to his labours and necessities
that, whUe working night and day at his craft, he wasnot only
spending his substance on others, but also "squandering
himself," exhausting brain and nerve and heart, in the en
deavour to give the Gospel to men whom he loved, even
though they did not love him. If ever any man might
have thought himself excused from serving the Church, it
was this hard-pressed mechanic, whose nightly and daUy
toU left him in want Yet St. Paul' was not a whit behind
the chiefest apostles ; nay, in labours for Christ and the Chinch
he was " more abundant than them all. " Weary with his

..ST". PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT. 437

rough work, starving on his scanty gains, knowing that he
must come back to labours that would extend far into the
night, he dragged himself evening by evening to the syna
gogue, or to the house of Justus, that he might teach and
argue of the things of Christ Never, I apprehend, was he
more constant or more ardent in the ministry of his apostle
ship than during the eighteen months* he spent at Corinth;
yet it was in these very months that he " wanted," that he
lacked even bread and wine.
And here lies our lesson. For St. Paul was in the very
circumstances which we often plead as an excuse, as a sound
and valid reason, for our neglects of duty. He was worn out
with work, and yet he served ; he was destitute, and yet he
gave. Think of him, dropping awl and thread and shears
after a heavy day's toil, and hastening to the house of wor
ship, to reason with Jews and Greeks and persuade them
that Jesus was the Christ, although he knew that, the service
over, he must retam to sit up half or all the night at an occu
pation which barely furnished him vrith bread ' Think of
him as deHghting thus to spend himself in the service of
God and man ; and compare our conduct with his, our love
with his! '
We do not dream of leaving our work for the House of
Worship, though we should have only to Hsten instead of to
speak. Nay, even on the one day of the week on which we
are released from our customary toUs, we often find ourselves
"not weU enough" or "too tired" to attend pubHc worship, and
much too exhausted even to think of reasoning with the hea
then about us, and persuadiig them to think of Christ. We
may not have to work so hard as Paul worked, and indeed
very few of us have to " toU and travaU night and day;" we
may not be in want, or in fear of it ; we may not be of a feeble
body much marred by disease : but, nevertheless, we cannot
do a tithe of what he did for the Church and for the Lord of

438 ST. PAUL A WORKING MAN AND IN WANT.
the Church. So far from delighting to squander and exhaust
ourselves in the service of Christ, most of us do not so much
as entertain the thought of sacrificing any of our gains, or our
health, or our ease, that we may testify to Him.
St. Paul's utter devotion to his Master is a rebuke to us aU;
but it is the very gravest of rebukes to those who, professing
and caUing themselves Christians, can encounter any toUs of
business or pleasure, but are always too weary or too occu
pied to serve the Church ; who usually find the means for
schemes of recreation and gain, but are as generally too poor
to contribute to the wants of their neighbours. For here was
a man, sometimes starving, often in want, yet forward to
help and to give. Here was a man worn with handicraft toils,
yet always fresh and vigorous for the ministration of trath
and charity, always delighted to lavish his energies in any
endeavour to teach men wisdom or to do them good 'Why
«hould that have been possible to him, an old feeble me
chanic, which is impossible to us ? It was possible simply
because " the labour we delight in physics pain ; " because
he loved Christ more than we do, and cared less for his own
comfort and ease. Let us, then, seek more of his spirit ; for
it is the very spirit of Him who came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister, and give his life a ransom for the many.

XXXI
St. '$ml as u gxxmk
2 Timothy iv. h.
THE craving for sympathy, for friendship, for love, of
which we are all conscious, springs from that in us
which is likest God : "for God is love, and love is of God."
Even the happy and almighty Lord, dweUing in the solitades
of etemity, knew this craving ; or why did He create the
myriads of intelligent beings who people the universe, and
ask them to love Him ? Even He who was perfect Man, no
less than perfect God, knew this craving, and that in the
supreme crisis of his earthly life ; for when He was in an
agony, and lus soul was exceeding sorrowful. He begged his
friends to watch with Him ; nay, came to them again and
again with the same request, as though to be alone in his
agony was more than even He could bear. As for St John,
who of all men perhaps was most like Christ, his days were
a mere round of love in the still contemplative life to which
he seems for long years, and of necessity, to have devoted
himself; while his ministry was a mere homily on the text,
" Little children, love one another." No perfection of friend
ship would surprise us in him ; it would seem only the natural
expression of a soul wholly possessed by the Di-rine charity.
But there are men, men too of a very high order, of whom
we do not expect the delicate refinements of a devoted per
sonal friendship. A great statesman, for instance, often gives

44° ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND.
himself to large public ends vrith a singleness of purpose
which swaUows up aU care for his private affairs, aU cra-ving
for private personal affections. Hardened by the toils and
conflicts of public life, we hardly expect such men to prove
model friends, to keep their hearts tremblingly sensitive to*
every breath of passion, to the purest and most delicate
impact of private regard. If by any chance we learn that
amid the strenuous labours of their ministry, their unceasing
absorbing care for vast public interests, they have kept their
hearts fresh, tender, open ; or that in the solitade which they,
lifted so high above their feUows, were compeUed to walk,
they craved the responses of love and fiiendship, — such a
chance strikes us vrith pathetic surprise.
It is a kindred surprise which awaits every stadent of
St. Paul's life and ministry. Here is a man to all appearance
absorbed in labours, endurances, conflicts, sorrows so nume
rous and vast as to be weU-nigh incredible. The whole
Church, the whole world, hes on his heart. He devotes
himself to the largest pubHc interests with an ardour that
, never abates. Incessant and exhausting demands are made
on a constitation natarally infirm. It is a miiacle that he
does not sink under his enormous burden of toU and care.
With that crashing weight upon him, how shall he be free to
move with quick deHcate step through the complexities of
private affection ? With the whole world in his heart, how
shall he keep an inner shrine sacred to the feet of personal
friends ? The multitade throng him ; how then shall he be
sensitive to the gentie hesitating touch of a friendship which
ventures only to lay a finger on the hem of his garment ? As
we contemplate him in his pubHc aspects, he rises and towers
before us like one of the lofty ragged mountams which up
hold the earth, turnmg mighty currents of heaHng air, and
pouring dovm a vast fertUizing stream on the plains below.
But we do not expect the rapid and voluminous stream to

ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND. 441
single out one flower that grows on its banks for a special
caress, or the mighty breeze to visit this or that cheek with
a peculiar gentleness. The tiny brooklet, which has but few
flowers to cherish, may linger over each of them, or tae gentle
zephyr which springs up on its bosom only to die in the
moment of its birth ; but not the mountain stream, not the
mountaui air-current. How can St. Paul, who preaches to
nations and loves all men, single out this person or that for
special affection, or yield himself to the anxieties and fears of
a profound personal love ? The man must be sunk, lost, in the
apostle, private friendship in the service of the world.
So,' at least, we should naturaUy conclude. And therefore
it is -with an ever-deepening sense of wonder we find, as we
study his life, that the man lives in the apostle, — ^that none of
the most refiuned fears, cares, joys,, cravings, tendernesses of
the most passionate human friendship are unkno-wn to bin.
Nothing, indeed, in the whole range of his vnritings is more
striking or more pathetic than the friendly phrases which
constantly recur, and which breathe the very spirit of tender
yearning and desire. As we accumulate such phrases as,
" Only Luke is with me," " No man stood by me," " I thought
it good to be left at Athens alone," and " I have no man
likeminded with him" we feel that we are permitted to look
mto one of the most sensitive of human hearts, a heart ever
craving sympathy and love. Such phrases, and the scenes
to which they refer us, reveal the man to us and make him
dear to us. 'Were we to analyse our feeling for St. Paul, I
believe we should find that we love and admire him as we
do even more on account of the passion and tendemess
which we share with him, than for the apostolic gifts and
achievements which Ifft him so far above us. Let us briefly
glance at a few of these phrases, and acquaint ourselves a
littie more exactly witii the Friend they disclose.
"Only Luke is with me /" What a sigh there is m the

442 ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND.
words ! Only Luke, when the apostle yeams to have so
many of his friends daUy -with hun. St Paul is in prison, or
rather in the little hut or cabin he had hired for himseff in
the prsetorium of Rome, and is chained night and day to one
of the praetorian guards. Despite his chain, he has been
very busy and very happy in his confinement He has written
Epistles to many of the Churches. Friends and feUow-
labourers to the number of at least a score or two, have been
constantly coming and going, to teU him how the Churches
fare. As a rale, his hut must have been fuU of friends ; and
in his intercourse -with them he has tasted a pleasure so pure
and high that his bonds have been forgotten. But when he
writes to Timothy, it happens that aU have left him save his
physician, Luke. Now Luke was a friend after St Paul's o-wn
heart,- — an accomplished scholar vrith a pen always at the
apostie's service, a fellow-labomer in the Lord of the most
approved vrisdom and devotion. Yet St. Paul is not con
tent. There is a vein of profound sadness in the verses * in
which he enumerates the friends who had left him. " Demas,"
he says, not without a touch of indignation and resentment,
" has deserted rae, having loved this present world. Crescens
has gone to Galatia ; Titus to Dalmatia. Tychicus have I
sent to Ephesus ; Erastus stayed at Corinth ; Trophimus I
left at Miletas sick. And here I sit, a prisoner, vrith only
Luke to comfort me." And so he prays Timothy to do his
best to come to him at once, and, if possible, to bring Mark
with him.
It is impossible to read these verses vrithout feeling how
deep and constant was St. Paul's craving for human fellow
ship and intercourse. God is vrith him. Work presses oil
him beyond measure. StiU he longs for friends. A friend,
than whom none loved him better or served him more faith
fully, is at his side ; stiU he craves to have with him other
* 2 Tim. iv. 10-12.

ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND. 443
friends no less dear. His heart is large enough for them
all. He is conscious of a vacancy, " an aching void," when
any one of them is absent.
The same feeHng comes out, in another form, in subse
quent verses of this Chapter. He had been called to answer
to the first count of the accusation laid against him (it was
Nero's practice to take each count on separate occasions *)
before the tyrant Nero ; as he conceived it, to beard the lion
in his very den.t And he complains, J " At my first defence
no man stood forward with me, but all abandoned me ; I
pray that it be not laid to their charge. Nevertheless the
Lord stood by me, and strengthened me, and I was delivered
out of the lion's mouth." Had, then, Luke, and Tychicus,
and Titus, as well as Demas, deserted the apostle in this
critical strait? We do not know; we cannot tell. From
certain technical words here employed by the apostle, we
may infer him to mean only that, it being so perilous a task
even to seem on his side, no advocate would plead his cause,
no procurator aid him in arranging his evidence, no patron
intercede on his behalf It is certain that in the Roman, as
in the Greek courts, the friends of a prisoner were allowed
to appeal to the judge for mercy, and seek to move him by
their cries and tears. Probably, St Paul expected that the
Roman Church would thus manifest its sympathy with him,
and was grieved and wounded by their absence or their
sUence. Possibly, even his personal friends, through mistake
or through fear, faUed to speak for him. But, whatever tiie
special allusion of his words, we can see that they express grief
and resentment ; they teU us that at least some of whom he
had expected succour and sympathy had faUed him at the
time of need. He is hurt by their lack of fidelity. He can
not endure to be thus left alone when other frials are awaiting

Suet. "Nero," 15. + Ibid.

+ 2 Tim. iv. ir. + I'''"!- i^- ^^' '7-

444 ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND.
him; and therefore he once more* begs Timothy, as the
dearest and most attached of his friends, to do his utmost
to come to him, and, if it be any way possible, to come
" before the winter,'' which was close at hand.
We have another illustration of his craving for friendship,
his dependence on human intercourse and sympathy, in the
narrative of that journey which terminated in the Roman
prison. The Christians of Rome had long desired to see
Paul. When they heard that he was coming, that he had
arrived in Italy, a prisoner, and hardly escaped from ship-
yn"eck, they went out to meet him. One company of them
encountered him at Appii Forum, a town where travellers
stopped to unload their mules, and whose streets were full
of low tavern-keepers and bargemen. A second company
welcomed him ten miles farther on, at a cross-road known,
for obvious reasons, as the Three Taverns. "And ¦what
Paul saw the brethreti " t who had come to meet him, and
who, no doubt, were full of eager sympathy and good-will,
" he thanked God, arid took courage." Old friends whom he
had met in Asia were among these brethren, and friends
whom he had never seen before, but whose hearts were full
of love and admiration for the great apostle, " the ambassador
in bonds ; " but all are glad to see him, and make much of
him, and his heart grows light and strong within him. As he
glances at their wistful eager faces, and clasps their warm
friendly hands, he thanks God arid takes courage.
How can we help being touched by such incidents as this ?
They set this great hero and champion of the Faith before us
as a man of like passions with ourselves. He feels as we
should have felt. He is dejected and inspirited by the very
causes which tell on us. Like us, he sees all things ia " hues
borrowed from the heart." God is not nearer to him, nor
more truly with him, now that he has reached Appii Forum,
* 2 Tim. iv. 21. f Acts xxviii. 15.

ST, PAUL AS A FRIEND. 445
or the Three Taverns, than He was before ; his chains are not
removed ; the soldiers still surround and watch him : but he
has met attached and pitying friends, and his chains grow
lighter, and their \ov& deepens the sense of God's love within
his souL
Of the innumerable other illustrations which suggest
themselves, we select only two, and these more special and
personal in their tone. St. Paul, I think, loved Timothy before
¦any other of his friends ; and that not simply because he had
won him to the faith and service of Christ — he had many
other friends who owed even their own souls to him ; but of
Timothy he always speaks with peculiar tenderness, and
once* he expressly affirms that he knew no man " of an equal
soul " with him. Timothy was with the apostle at Athens.
While he sojourned and laboured in that city, St. Paul heard
that his recent converts at Thessalonica had been called to
endure a great fight of afflictions, that they were troubled
and persecuted on every side; and that some ofthem, if not
falling away from the Faith, were slipping into errors both
of doctrine and practice.
Now we know enough of the apostle, and of his fatherly
anxiety for the Churches he had planted, to be sure that such
tidings would fill him with care and grief, that he would be
willing to lay down his life to save the Thessalonians from
their peril. Yet, though he would not have counted his life
dear unto him if, by losing it, he might save them, there was
one thing— as we should think, a much lesser thing— which
he found it very hard to do. It was to send the only friend
he then had with. him to Thessalonica with instruction and
advice. We could hardly have beUeved that the apostle
would have hesitated to do anything which the service of
Christ and the cure of souls demanded of him, had he not
told us with his own mouth that he did hesitate. But he has
* Phil. ii. 20.

446 ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND.
told us. If we turn to i Thess. iii. i — 8, we find his own
account of the conflict he had with himself before he could
determine to send Timothy to Thessalonica and be left alone
at Athens. He has already told the Thessalonians how
grieved he was to hear such sorrowful news of them, that he
-ivould have come to them if he could, that he had desired to
see their face with great desire, that he had tried to come again
and again, but had always been hindered. He goes on to
say that now at last when he could no longer forbear, only, as
the words imply, when the imperative sense of duty had over
mastered the exigencies of personal feeling, he had sent
Timothy — ^had determined " to be left alone at Athens " —
that his friend might estabhsh and comfort them in the Faith.
How long and sharp the conflict was before he could consent
to let Timothy leave him, we may infer from the fact that
twice in a few sentences, once in verse i, and again in verse
5, he repeats the phrase, " when I could no longer forbear."
In his dread of losing the only friend he had with him, he had
forborne as long as he could, had put off parting with him,
had tried to hope that there would be no need to part with
him. That throws new light on the character of the apostle, does
it not ? To me it seems to set him closer to us, and make
him dearer to us ; for it shews that even the heroic Paul found
duty hard, even as we find it hard. He did it, but he hesi
tated about doing it ; he had to compel himself to do it : it
pained and grieved his heart to do it. Nothing, indeed,
would be more base than to take pleasure in pulling a great
man down to our own low level. But, on the other hand,
nothing can well be better or more animating for us than to
feel that, great as he is, he is nevertheless a man. Nor do
we degrade St. Paul to any low level by saying — rather, by
acknowledging, for it is he who says it — that he found it hard
to do his duty, if only we remember what it was that made

ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND. 447
it hard, and that, however hard it was, he did it. It was
nothing but his pure deep love for Timothy, nothing but
his profound craving for the human sympathy which
made the Divine sympathy real and present to him, that
led him to demur and hesitate before he could determine
to send his "son" away and to be left alone. The apostle
does not suffer in our thoughts, for he discharges the ministry
of his apostleship at the very greatest cost and loss ; and if the
apostle does not suffer, how much does the man gain, and the
friend! Who would have thought, if he had not told us, that
St. Paul was so tender and devoted in his personal attach
ments, that to sacrifice these, or the temporary enjoyment
of them, was the sacrifice which he found it most difficult
to make ? Instead of lowering, it elevates our conception
of Paul to learn that he, who had " left " all else, also left
love, the profoundest and most sensitive human love, for
Christ's sake and the Gospel's.
We have an almost parallel instance in 2 Cor. vii. From
that Epistle we know into what a tumult of grief and anxiety
the apostle was thrown when tidings came that his converts
at Corinth )vere departing from the Faith. Some of them
had fallen into gross and notorious immorality ; others were
denying the very incarnation and resurrection of Christ.
Some were abusing their freedom; others were striving to
impose the yoke of the law on their brethren : and a few
were suspecting and ridiculing the apostle himself, insinu
ating that he was actuated by sinister motives, sneering at
his rhetoric as contemptible, and at the meanness of his
"presence." He writes his First Epistle to them, arguing,
reproving, beseeching, — exhausting himself in appeals to their
reason and conscience and heart. No sooner is the letter
dispatched than he grows restless with apprehension; he
fears that it will do harm rather than good. His fears so goad
and prick him that he cannot stay at Ephesus, or indeed in

448 ST, PAUL AS A FRIEND.
any other city. He sends Titus to Corinth, to ascertain and
report how his letter has been received. He bids Titus
meet him, as quickly as he can, in Macedonia. He wanders
from city to city, finding no rest. At times he " repents "
that he had written a letter which could not fail to cause
much grief. He is overwhelmed with disappointment when
in city after city he inquires for Titus in vain. And at
length, when Titus reaches him with happy tidings, he breaks
into a passion of love and grief, ruth and thankfulness, which
we may trace in every paragraph, and almost every sentence,
of his Second Epistle.
But the point we have to mark is that which comes out
in the seventh Chapter. As we read it, it is really almost
impossible to tell whether his friend Titus, or his converts at
Corinth, are most in his mind and heart. It is one of the
most impassioned utterances in all literature. Now he glo
ries in the Corinthians. They fill him with comfort to over
flowing, with joy to painful excess. And, again, he grieves that
he should ever have grieved them, and can only console him
self with the happy effects of their grief — that it was a sorrow
to repentance and life. In one verse he begs them to for
give and receive him ; in another, he is lost in admiration of
the virtues they have displayed. In short, he lays bare his
whole heart to us, and we see in what a tumult of fervid
passionate excitement it was. Yet, beneath all this grief and
joy, this intense sympathy with the Corinthians, there runs
and heaves an undercurrent of feeling for Titus hardly less
passionate and intense. The mere coming of Titus had been
a great comfort to him ; and not only his coming, but the as
surance that the Corinthians had been kind to Titus, and had
comforted him. " I was comforted in your comfort : yea, and
exceedingly the more I rejoiced for the joy of Titus, because
his spirit was refireshed by you all.'' In the frankness ot
confidential talk, Paul had often boasted to Titus of the

ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND. ^9
Corinthians, — how good they were, how gifted, how kind ;
and now it is an inexpressible happiness to him that his
boasts have been verified — " if I have boasted to hitn of you
' I am not ashamed;" and that Titus has learned to love them
"with a deep inward affection." And thus throughout the
Chapter he makes much of the Corinthians and much of
Titus, till we cannot say whether we more admire the apostle
or love the friend.
It would be easy to adduce many other passages in which
St. Paul's friendship, his deep constant craving for human
sympathy, and his quick ardent responses to every touch of
personal affection, find utterancp in forms quite as striking and
beautiful as those at which we have glanced. But, perhaps,
these will suffice. Taken from different periods of his life they
all breathe a most tender, loving, passionate spirit, and prove
that he was not less excellent as a friend than as a servant
and minister of the truth.
Such a view of St. Paul's character shews in what spirit
we should fill the human relation into which love enters.
No austere eremite of the woods, no recluse bent only on
saving his own soul, could possibly have spoken the words
we have heard St. Paul speak. For Simon Stylites to have ut
tered them would have been more difficult than to have gro
velled in his filth on the pillar's top for thirty years. To hate
men to shrink from them, to break away from any natural
human ties on plea of serving God, is alien to the spirit of
the Gospel. St. Paul, the greatest exponent of the Gospel,
teaches us to seek perfection by loving men and serving them.
From him we leam to open our hearts to all affection, to
prove that we are good Christians by shewing that we are
good friends.
This however, is a common and famihar truth. Let us
touch a lesson more special and germane. Youth is the
29

450 ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND.
season of friendship. Then we most easily yield ourselves to
the attractions of whatever is admirable, or seems admirable
to us, and are most easily moved to love whatever seems
great or good or fair. But when we have grown harder with
years, we are a little apt to look down on the feelings natural
to that period as romantic iri the bad sense — as vain, illusory,
dangerous. Parents, for example, will often, not simply try
to save their children from injurious friendships and attach
ments, but will distrust the sincerity of their feelings, and
sneer at friendship and love as things of no account. And
thus they often wound sensitive hearts with a pain of the in
tensity of which they have no conception, or breed a selfish
.scepticism and hardness with which they are afterward
shocked ; meaning kindness, they are often most unkind.
We cannot for a moment suppose that St. Paul would have
taken that tone. Himself as keen and sensitive and faithful
a friend as ever man had, all human friendship and love were
sacred to him. He could not have spoken of them with a
sneer. He would have respected them even when they were
excessive or wrongly placed. He would have said, " This
pure holy feeling is given to be the spring and blessing of
your life. It is too precious to be lavished on unworthy
objects, or to be too hastily bestowed."
But if parents and guardians are sometimes to blame,
young persons, in the fervent period when attachments are
most natural and most graceful, often take up what are
really romantic and impracticable notions. They admire,
let us say, some person of their own sex — their own sex,
since that may save us from dubious ' interpretations. They
hear and read and talk much of loyalty and devotion. Their
friend is, and ought to be, everything to them. To love any
one else as they do him or her, would be a sin against love, a
sort of infidelity. And, indeed, there are vain and selfish
persons of all ages who fall into this or a similar mistake.

ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND. 451

They must have their friend all to themselves. They may
have more friends than one, but none of their friends must
have any friend but themselves. They even think jealousy
a part of love, instead of its death, or a proof that their love
has been love of self and not of some one else.
All these fancies and their kin — and they play a large and
tragical part in many lives — are rebuked by the example of
St. Paul. If he shrank from being left alone, he also shrank
from being left with only one friend. " Only Luke is with
me ! " he sighs to Timothy : " do your best to come to me,
that I may at least have two friends with me ; and bring
Mark, if you can, that I may have three." His heart was
large enough to hold many friends. And, as we have seen,
while he loved them, and that most tenderly, for their own
sakes, he loved them most of all because their friendship
made God's friendship more real to him, because their love
brought home to him the love of God.
Only the love of good men could do that. And hence,
in the whole circle of his personal friends, we find none but ¦
good men — ^none of his Hebrew or Greek fellow-students
who had rejected the Gospel, for example, but only men and
women who, if not eminent in capacities and gifts, loved
Christ and gave thernselves to the service of man. Hence,
too, it was that, when human love failed him, he could rest
in the love of Christ ; when no man stood by him as he con
fronted the lion, he could feel that the Lord stood by hira,
and strengthened hirq, and delivered him out of the lion's
mouth. If therefore we take this most true and tender friend for our
example, we shall learn from him how to choose our friends :
that only those who are good, who love God and man, will
be able to fulfil the highest offices of friendship for us ; that
so soon as anything wrong or base creeps into our relations
with others, our friendship with them becomes a snare and a

452 ST. PAUL AS A FRIEND.
peril. We shall also leam that, strong as our craving for
human sympathy and affection may be, and right as it is for
us to make friends of men, the tme Friend, the best Friend,
is He who will stand by us when men desert us, who can
go with us when men cannot accompany us, if they would.
The great Friend — the Friend who sticketh closer than a
brother, closer even than " Brother Paul," is He who will
be with us in life, and death, and after death ; and all other
friendships are valuable to us in proportion as they lead us
to Him and keep us with Him.

THE END.

Watson ajid Hazell, Printers, London and Aylesbury.

3 9002 08844 1986

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