Discipline

I PROPOSE to consider the nature and effect of discipline as taught in the histories of the early witnesses. Not that I deem them connected, but my limits will not allow me to make longer comments than either one or two would afford. I take them separately.

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE WITNESS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.

Abel as the first in faith, on whom by birth was entailed the penalty of sin, is one whose history we might expect to furnish us with outlines of that discipline which a life emnient for faith would require.

It is a mistake, and one which causes no little trial to the soul at times, to conclude, because a train of truth or grace is strong in me, that therefore nature must be less assuming. The fact is the contrary, and it is well to understand the reason of this. If our nature had been of a lower order before the fall, the fall would not have put it lower than it is now; but then its aspirations and assumptions to escape the effects of the fall would not be so violent and daring. It could not aspire to more than it lost. The fact then of our being made in the likeness of God and not anything lower, gives ground for assumption now that we are fallen from it. A great man reduced naturally reverts to what he was once. If he be a fool, he assumes it without the ability to sustain it. And this is just what our nature does. The more conscious of, or rather the more it is pressed to feel, its fall from a once high estate, the more it struggles for recognition and assumes importance wherever it can. The less its assumption is canvassed and desired, the more it labors to make it good; and here it is that souls who are in earnest to deny its position are opposed by it at every step, and learn practically that they alone who have suffered in the flesh have ceased from sin—that death alone morally in the cross of Christ frees me from the power and thralldom of nature, and that the process of death in discipline physically gives effect to the moral truth of it through God's grace. That is, we are dead through Christ, and as such freed from the law and before God in Him. Consequently the Father by discipline leads us into the practical advantage of our position in Christ, so that we are not only dead in Him, but we are dead in ourselves—the practical effect of. our knowing that we are dead in Him, for which discipline is the instrument. The soul that learns fully its acceptance before God as righteous before Him is taught that it must not be dependent on the nature from the effect of which it is delivered; and that its existence is outside. The apostle could say that he died daily, carrying about the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. If the acceptance is veritable—if it be truly a deliverance from our natural state—ought we not to evidence morally and practically the effect of it? And it must be so, for acceptance in righteousness is above and beyond our natural condition, and the more it is enjoyed and maintained, the more must the other be lost sight of. It would be only a worthy acknowledgment of the service. Would you maintain your natural condition and yet rejoice in deliverance from it? If you rejoiced in deliverance, would you not show it by your renunciation of that from which you were delivered?

If Abel be the first witness of acceptance in righteousness, we shall find that he was the first witness that surrendered his natural existence—a witness in one as well as in the other: of acceptance, to the joy and rest of his own heart; by death, how true and glorious it was—-so that he being dead yet speaketh. This is the first and proper order of discipline. Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. Mortify your members which are upon the earth. We have this position of death, because of our life in Christ; for if living in Him, we are dead. in ourselves; and discipline in its simplest and primary lessons instructs us in this. No saint but learns what death is, either in the slow process of a continual dropping of constant small trials, or through a last illness or one overwhelming calamity. Death must be learned to make good in our souls the deliverance from it; for testimony it is also necessary. Abel's history is very scanty in details; but it comprises the two grand points of a saint's life in a vividness and -vigor not to be surpassed-namely, acceptance with God, and death to every natural tie and sense; the former the easy action of faith, the latter declared, not willingly, but consequent on an altered condition in an evil world, through violence from which death gave relief. God allows the persecution of Cain to afford an opportunity to declare His grace and the giver of it; and suffering for righteousness sake, while it is discipline to ourselves, is the highest place of service in the gospel.

Let it be granted that if I know acceptance well, death is my portion here, and that discipline will never overlook this; for this makes it sure to me and witnesses to others also that the acceptance is true. Thus we shall derive much benefit from Abel's history. Abel started, as we say, in life, not according to the rule and direction given to Adam, “to till the ground from-whence he was taken.” Abel, on the contrary, is a keeper of sheep. This discloses at the outset that Abel had no intention of improving the scene around him, or of deriving by his own efforts anything from earth which could mediate between him and God. The sense of death was before his soul, and to be delivered from this could alone satisfy him. He was a keeper of sheep. Not listless and unoccupied, he tended his flock, passing from pasture to pasture as their need required. As He expected nothing to spring from the earth to relieve him, so no one place on it was his permanent abode. He was a laborer, a wanderer, and, suffering from the curse, he felt there was one on everything around him, and himself under the penalty of death in such a scene. Tending a living flock brought him into association with life-the very thing his own spirit needed. He therefore took of the firstlings of his flock, what was the “beginning” and the “strength,” and he offered it to God. It was God's own, typifying the life of Christ. This he presented to God, and it met his own sense of death; but he had still more to meet before he could encounter the presence of God. There was the needed acceptance also. This was met and answered by presenting the “fat,” which is the excellency of the animal only obtainable through death-the result in resurrection of the death of Christ, which now satisfies the conscience as to its full acceptance with God. Thus Abel entered into the mind of God as to his own state before Him, and thus he obtained witness that he was righteous, not merely as to what he did, but how he stood. Happy as accepted of God, he has to learn the place and suffering of one so blessed down here. If he were accepted of God, he must be dissociated from a scene which was under God's curse. If he were delivered from the sentence of death, death could be no penalty to him; but he must expect it where everything is contrary to the life in which he was accepted; consequently he is called to give unequivocal proof that acceptance with God and deliverance from judgment are such real blessings that actual death cannot deprive him of them. This is his testimony and this is his discipline. As it was with Stephen, the first martyr of resurrection, so it was with Abel, the first martyr of acceptance. Stephen gave better evidence in his death than in his life of the virtue of Christ's resurrection, and his own soul advanced more into its realities in the moment of his death than it could during his lifetime. His last testimony was the brightest. While they, the agents of the world's evil, were stoning Stephen, he was only responding to their fatal blows by consigning his spirit to the One they denied and disowned, and to prove then how perfect and assured he was in Christ's care and charge of him, he knelt down to expend all the strength their malignity still spared him in their behalf!

The witness of acceptance or the witness of resurrection has no part in this evil world. Everything must be death to him, and in discipline he learns this in order to actualize to himself the greatness of the gift of God, which is eternal life outside and beyond it. Try to walk in it any way you will and you must learn this—the Father will have it so. He must have His own life true to its proper instincts. Make a fire of sticks and the viper will remind a Paul that this is a scene of death. It is only from one tomb to another. In a shipwreck yesterday, afflicted by a viper to-day! We need this discipline. We think we can pass on like other men, enjoying the new and blessed portion we have received; but the contrary is the case. And it is well to understand this, that the Father will have us to appreciate our portion in His Son, in contrast to everything here. We shall try in vain to combine both. A great deal of our time is spent in learning that there is nothing here to meet the requirements of our new affections. There is a wandering in the wilderness in a solitary way, and yet no city is found to dwell in. But God does allow this in order that His children may find that their desires can only be satisfied by Him. We must learn that we are not of the world. We cannot trust it. Christ would commit himself to no man If you had the face of an angel, they would stone you. And though Cain “talks” with Abel, and they are “in the field” apparently in happy unity, Abel soon learns that he cannot trust him, for in that very social moment Cain rose up against him and slew him.

Our profession declares that we have done with earth. God's discipline will always lead us practically into this, as will also faithful testimony. In our discipline we may give a testimony; but it is better, like Stephen, to be disciplined in our testimony. God makes true in either way His blessing to our souls, and our history closes.

Discipline: 2. Abraham

The discipline which is necessary and suited to the life of faith is what we shall find pre-eminently exemplified in Abraham's history.

Man, at Babel, had disclosed the secret purpose of his heart. He built a city and a tower, whose top was to reach to heaven; he felt he must escape coming judgment, but he determined to escape it by his own works, and independently of God. God confounded him in his attempt, and the whole human family is made to feel that it is debarred from intelligent combination by the loss of a common medium of communication, so that man became estranged from his fellowman; whatever might be his sense of common kindred with him, his thoughts were checked or became incommunicable. When God had thus confounded the independence of man, He, ever true to the purpose of His love, as soon as the evil is checked, unfolds (and by a man too) how that desire which man had aimed at, in independence of God, can be attained, in a supreme degree, by dependence on God. And this, I may remark in passing, is always His manner with us; we feel our need and attempt to supply it by our own means; the Lord must confound us in the attempt, but, having done so, He leads our souls to find and acquire an inconceivably greater answer to our -wishes than even that which we had described for ourselves. The prodigal only sought “sustenance” from the citizen in the “far country,” but in the father's house he found not bread merely, but abounding welcome and a fatted calf.

But to resume. The confusion of tongues being executed, God now enters the scene and calls out from it a man-even Abram-to be the witness of faith and of dependence on Him, and to look, not for a “Babel,” but “for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” And we are graciously given the history of this witness and servant of God, in order to, instruct us as to what is our nature in its action under the call of God, and how God deals with it under its many phases of self-will and independence, how He corrects, subdues, and leads it into His own ways, which is for our blessing.

The word of God to Abram is, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land which I will show thee,” and the word becomes the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. We never know the real intent of our own wills until we demand them to submit implicitly to the expressed will of God, which His Word unfolds. We may not see any very great divergence in our course from the mind of God, until we measure it with the exact requirements of the Word of God: and, mark not the requirements of a part of that Word, but of the whole of it. In fulfilling it partially, we alter or qualify His mind as revealed; in departing from the spirit of it, we lose the instruction; but it is in adopting it, and adhering to it as a whole, that the soul is delivered from self-will, and led into the blessing which its instruction proposes; but then it is here that comes in all the trial and exercise, for exercise and conflict there must be from the continual effort of the natural mind to evade or qualify the Word of God, and the inflexibility of God's purpose (because of His love) to confine us strictly to His own mind; and this conflict necessitates discipline, and thus explains incidents in our history which would otherwise be inexplicable to us. The call of Abram was very clear and definite. It required him to relinquish locality and all kindred associations, and to enter on a scene prepared of God. The accuracy of his obedience tests the measure of his strength; he begins to obey the call; he went forth from -Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan; he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt at Charran. He received the Word and undertook to obey it, and yet we find he did so imperfectly; he only relinquished his country, and not his kindred associations; he remained at Charran till his father was dead. Nature had come in to check full obedience to the call of God, and this is a great warning to us. We approve of and adopt the call, but it is only as we walk in accordance with it that we discover the demands it makes on our nature. Nothing so proves our want of true energy as inability to accomplish what we readily undertake. How many enter on the life of faith eagerly and cheerfully, who find ere long that they cannot “let the dead bury their dead,” and though they are ready in heart to seek “another country,” are detained and turned aside by some link to nature. Nothing is so difficult to man as to relinquish the ties of nature without compensation, because such relinquishment must produce isolation, unless he has found some other absolute association; and this is first what the Lord proposed, when He added, “follow thou me.” But if a relinquishment of these ties be an isolation and a denuding of the nearest communication with natural existence; so much the maintenance of them be the maintenance of all the most direct avenues to the human heart, and hence it is written, a “man's foes shall be they of his own household.” There is no escaping nature outside grace. When Barnabas chose his nephew Mark, he also chose Cyprus, his native country. His failure was not only in nature, but unto nature.

Abram, then, failed at first in performing the second part of God's call; he did not leave his “father's house,” and consequently is detained till his father is dead. This is the first stage in the life of faith, and though he entered on it readily and heartily, as it is written, “he went out, not knowing whither he went,” he found that he could not perform it until death had severed the bond, which still attached or connected him with nature. Faith is dependence on God, and independent of everything human to sustain it. The path proposed to Abram accordingly demanded the distinctest expression of dependence on God alone. It could not be without sacrifice, neither was it meant to be; and besides the exercises which his own heart must have passed through in treading this path of faith, he is taught that death must practically sever the tie which detains him on their way. This first stage is not traversed without the heart tasting of sorrow through death, but death which brings its own deliverance. If Abram had not been detained by his father, but had pursued the unknown path without halting till he reached the place to which God had called him, he would have escaped the sorrow which death entailed; but having allowed himself to be detained, nothing could relieve him but death; and therefore under that discipline he passes. Thus it is in mercy with many of us; our dependence on God is not simple and distinct; we halt in the path of faith and are detained by some link to nature, until it dies, for die it must, if we are to pursue our course with God, unless we die to it.

Death then having dissolved Abraham's tie to nature and freed him from it, he must renew his course, disciplined, no doubt, by that which has removed the weight which impeded him, a discipline which he might have escaped, had he walked in more energy of life, but by which he was nevertheless a learner; (and how wholesome the lesson!) that faith does not sway the natural will in the recesses of the heart, that, though the blessing is great, if it submits to the dictation of God without exposure, yet it rarely does, and even if it does, for a while it is ever contending for an open expression of itself; and, if openly acting, it must be openly subdued.

To young believers, to all, it is important how we undertake and accomplish this first stage of the life of faith, for failure and vacillation here may entail sorrow and indecision throughout our course; for we never diverge from the path of faith without picking up “a thorn” from that nature which we are called on to repudiate. It will be either nature gratified, or nature exhausted, or nature bereaved; and though we may be freed, as was Abram, by the death of his father, the failure, though amended, may not be eradicated in its effect, and if so, the discipline which it demanded must be continued. Lot went with Abram, but not only was he ever a trial to him personally, but his descendants were the great scourge to the descendants of Abraham; and their malignant enticements at the instigation of Balaam are set down in Scripture as a type of the worst machinations against the Church of God. (Rev. 2:14.) Wherever we fail once, like a horse that stumbles, we are likely to fail again, consequently there must be, through God's care of us, a continual reminder to warn us of our tendency. Thus Abram, not having “let the dead bury their dead” in the first instance, must bear with him a constant thorn in his brother Lot, as a needed discipline for the detention from which death alone had freed him.

Abram now enters on the second stage of the life of faith, and is a stranger in a strange land, depending on God: and he builds an altar for the strangership into which faith leads us, fixes our souls on God, and worship follows. But when the consequences or circumstances of our strangership occupy us, we lose the rest which faith supplies, and seek relief elsewhere. Thus Abram, when he found that there was a famine in the land, turned aside from the path of faith in which he had before halted, and went down into Egypt.

How humbling is it to find how vacillating we are in that path; and however happily and firmly we seem to be walking in it, how needful to say, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall!” Although Abram is graciously restored to the path from which he had departed, and even returns to the place where he had the altar at the beginning, we find that the thorns which he picked up in his wanderings pierce him in his restoration. The cattle, the fruit of Egypt, provoke a collision between the herdsmen of Abram and Lot; but restorations always advance us in moral power, for true restoration sets us above that from which we are restored; and Abram, now truly restored, looks not to consequences or contingencies, but, depending on God, maintains the path of faith in high moral power. My first difficulty in a walk of faith is to get clear of nature, (place and kindred,) and, being delivered therefrom and in felt strangership, my next is the tendency to advance or exalt myself, or find rest in this new position, even as an emigrant to a wild and distant land seeks to make a home for himself as speedily as possible. This desire to advance, so strong a passion in the human soul and the moving principle of all the great efforts of Babylon, may be designated ambition, but must be subdued by the man of faith, as God's witness in this evil world. Thus Abram's ambition is tested by the cattle, the fruit of his own failure; but discipline has done its work, and his restoration is now complete. Does he seek any acknowledgment or advancement in this new country? No! he is walking by faith and resigns all present superiority to Lot, who, gratifying his ambition, chooses the well-watered plain, while Abram is blessed with a fuller revelation as a reward for his faith. But even this is not to be enjoyed without suffering, for the moment I am on the path with Christ, I am on the path of one sent of God to minister to His people down here; and Abram, the dependent man, pursuing his unseen and separate path, has now come forward and renders the very service which Christ fulfilled, and rescue his brother Lot, who, on the contrary, had gratified the ambition of his nature by mixing himself with the course of this world and had been consequently embroiled in its sorrows. And if, in the dangers and exercises of this service, Abram was made to feel what he had to suffer from this natural tie which he had brought from Ur of the Chaldees, his soul was at the same confirmed in the path of dependence on God, and, as his faith had on the former occasion been rewarded by a fuller revelation of the promised inheritance, his conflict and service are now rewarded by the refreshment and blessing of Melchisedec in the name of the Lord God, possessor of heaven and earth; surely more than enough to compensate for the renouncement, of the ambition of mere nature!

Here let me add, that though we separate from home and kindred, and still further take heavenly standing, yet if the tendencies of our nature be unsubdued and we seek in any wise to distinguish or advance ourselves in our new position, we shall be as Lot; while on the other hand, though we may often need discipline and be taught to renew our course after failure, yet if we really seek to maintain the path of dependence and separation, our faith will be strengthened by increased revelations, and our service will be invigorated by association with Him who is the forerunner within the veil, even Jesus, an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.

We now enter on the third stage of Abram's history in the path of faith and one in which he is brought under an entirely new line of instruction, even in the exercise of his affections. The ambition of his nature had been tested before; now his affections are to be put under discipline, and this is brought about in the first instance by the promise of a son, which is the subject of chap. xv. Let me say, in passing, that in tracing the history of this servant of God, I confine myself, to the one subject, even discipline. I pass over many episodes on which others have dwelt largely, such as his communion with God, intercession, &c., most interesting as it all is, but which has already been entered into fully.

It appears to me that the true state of Abram's heart is exposed in his reply to God's most gracious appeal to him in the commencement of this chapter. True, it was quite right for him to wish for a son; it was a wish responding to the counsels of God respecting him and the lack of which would not have been according to the mind of God. But still his reply, “What wilt thou give me?” does not arise to the elevation in which God sought to establish him, even in perfect contentment and satisfaction with Himself, for what could He “give” Abram greater than the assurance of being Himself his “exceeding great reward?'“ Nevertheless, God in His grace meets Abram on his own level and promises that which He had before counseled to give; but a long course of discipline lies between him and the fulfillment of the promise, and as Abram must learn in his own home a preparation for that trial to his affections which awaited him so many years afterward, and which it was necessary for him to pass through in order to perfect him in the life of faith. It was not at all that he undervalued the fullness and nearness in which God had revealed Himself to him, but he disclosed the secret feebleness of the human soul to rest in God apart from any human link. God knows this and offers graciously to supply it; but if he promises and gives Isaac, Abram must hold him from God, not as his link to God, but God's link to him, foreshadowing that perfect Antitype who would forever link us to God and God to us.

Abram believed God, but his heart needed preparation and discipline, as we see by the impatience of nature which he evinces while waiting for the fulfillment of the promise, and this he is subjected to in his own private circle. Perhaps there is no greater cause of delay to what the accomplishment of what God purposes to confer on us than the natural mind (if I may so say) getting a hint of it; for as it is with Satan to spoil what he cannot defeat, so is it with the willfulness of our nature, which would fain adopt and accomplish what originated entirely outside itself and with God; just as Eve, interpreting a spiritual truth by a natural mind, lakes Cain for the promised seed. In everything it is beyond the heart of man to conceive the extent and nature of what God prepares for them that love Him. An Ishmael was Abram's measure, an Isaac was God's. In the meantime Abraham must learn, through contention, strife and sorrow what is the fruit of his impatience, and in the end do what was very “grievous in his sight,” even to banish his son. Thus our inventions do but postpone our real blessings, for it is necessary that we should see the end of them. It must have been a period of nearly twenty years from the time of the promise to the birth of Isaac, and many were the exercises Abraham had to pass through during that time, as well as many and great communications made to him by the Lord.

But we are now come to the fourth stage of Abraham's path of discipline. (Chap. xxi.) His cup seems to be full—Isaac is given—the bondwoman and her son cast out—the Gentile powers typified by Abimelech come forward to acknowledge that God is with him in all that he does, and he plants a grove and calls on the name of the everlasting God. But more discipline was necessary to ensure to his soul that the filling of that cup was entirely from God, that He could fill, empty, and fill it again, and that He alone was the filler of it. Abraham had given up expectation from the world—can he now surrender the object of his affections and hopes? and not only so, but will he be the actual perpetrator of the wrench himself? It was “very grievous in his sight” to cast out Ishmael; what must it be now to hear the word, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of!” The surrender is not like Jephthah's, viz., of his own proposing, but is distinctly required of him by God; and required not only that he should assent to it, but that he should execute it himself! Abraham obeyed. He treads the path of dependence on God, high and elevated, above every influence either of ambition or affection. But what discipline! what denial of long-cherished hopes and affections? The object to be surrendered was not like Jonah's gourd which grew up in a night and withered in a night, but the fruit of many years of patience, trial and interest, and now he was to be himself the agent in dashing the full cup from his lips. Where was nature?—where its demands? Was he like Jephthah, “very low” that day; or like Jonah, “very angry?” No! the man of faith, in that moment terrible to mere nature, rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him and. Isaac his son, and slave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went to the place of which God had told him. What a continuance of calmness and dignity does faith impart! There was nothing sudden or hurried here: the period for reflection was lengthened, for after the third day the place was still “afar” off. Who can traverse in the spirit of his mind such exercises as those of a soul which faith held true in obedience to the Word of God and not wonder at the transcendent vigor which that faith confers? The surrender is complete! Abraham with his own hand takes the knife to slay his son, but he reckons on God, “accounting that He was able to raise him up, even from the dead.” Dependence on God has triumphed over the demands of nature, and now follows the reward. “The ram caught in the thicket” —Christ, the true burnt-offering, who places us in an excellency before God, which none of our own offerings ever could—He is the compensation to us after all surrender, and also the true, real, and entire satisfaction of our hearts. And thus the place is called Jehovah-Jireh, it is the “mount of the Lord,” because there the Lord provides what fully meets our need, and in addition, there also Abraham receives the largest and fullest revelation of blessing ever communicated to him. Nature was so silenced, and dependence on God so true and practical that the Lord can unfold to him the deepest counsels of His love. He was so perfect and full-grown that he has an ear to hear, and a heart to understand wisdom. God's discipline had effected all this; and this, according to the measure of His grace, is what He is leading each of us into. May we indeed have grace and wisdom to discern the path of faith, and so abide in it that our walk may be to the praise and glory of Him who, in all His education of our souls, seeks our blessing and joy.

Discipline: 3. Isaac and Jacob

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were distinctively the “fathers of Israel,” the heads of a people called of God, to walk in the earth, as happily dependent on Him. Abraham leads the way; and while most exemplary for the faith which characterized him, he had also to contend with peculiarities of natural character and conflicts, unknown to Isaac and Jacob. if the path was higher, the difficulties were greater; if the faith was more vigorous, the resistance and denial of nature were more obstinate and severe; but in leadership, this became him The mighty agencies of divine faith engaged in fatal conflict each daring opposition, which willful nature, struggling for existence, raised against it. The combat was a close one:—dependence on God, wresting the creature from the government of his own will in order to subject it to God's will, must have evoked nature's bitterest antagonism. Abraham properly presents the leadership in this momentous engagement. Isaac follows: a leader, to be sure, but in a subordinate degree. Abraham, as it were conquers the country; Isaac is required to retain it. Abraham storms the fortress, endures all the contingencies of a protracted siege, effects an entrance, and possesses it; Isaac must hold the position against the common foe. Abraham suffers while contending for possession; Isaac, while keeping it. Abraham's hindrances are generally from the force of circumstances outside him; Isaac's, almost always from personal weakness. Isaac presents to us the inability of nature, in its best and fairest condition, to hold the path of faith, on which, through grace, man is set. His failures are not so much the strength of the enemy turning him aside, as the mere weakness of humanity. The disciples slept when the Lord asked them to watch, not from evil, for “the spirit was willing,” but because “the flesh was weak,” and it could not demonstrate the very feelings it commended. Isaac teaches us how weak and rickety the best part of our nature is in the path of faith, how it fails therein, and hence the discipline necessary for it.

Isaac enters on the scene as the child of promise; and, as his name indicates, under the happiest moral auspices. No wonder that we should be prepared to see in him a pleasing sample of fallen humanity, obedient, affectionate, and domestic. Our first notice of his opening manhood being the ascension of Mount Moriah, a scene so wonderful, that we hardly know which may most rivet our solemn gaze, the elevated and self-possessed action of Abraham, or the lamb-like acquiescence of Isaac. Though it may be said, that he did not know beforehand that it so fatally affected himself; but, even when he did know, by being laid on the wood of the altar, and the knife in his father's outstretched hand to slay him, we do not find that he in the least resisted its accomplishment. To obey in ignorance evinces unlimited confidence in the one to whom I yield such unsuspecting submission, and, still more, proves that I can bend and set aside my own will, in subjection to the one who has claim on me. Obedience must stand at the head of the list of all the activities which would conduce to order and blessing. The demand (even as it was in the first instance with Adam) is to surrender the will to one rightly invested with a claim to it. Subjects, servants, wives, children, come under it; and the first commandment with promise is such, because the surrender of the will to one having a just claim to it, is an activity contrary to the very genius of our nature; and this activity, God owns and blesses. The path of the Lord Jesus was one of unqualified obedience, but He had always vividly before Him what the consequences of that obedience would be; so that He submitted because of the service He should render, and the joy He should contribute to His Father, and not as did His type, Isaac, because He was ignorant of the issue, or only sustained in his obedience by confidence in the one who required it. This obedience of Isaac in the opening of his history, however, warrants our estimate of him.; but if (like the young man in the gospel, whom the Lord loved) it proceeded only from natural character, it must be (even as was his) subjected to an unequivocal test.

The more lovely the character, the more unmistakable must be the evidence that such an one has renounced all of himself. He is required to sell all that he has and give to the poor whence it could not be recalled; and thus, bereft, and denuded, to follow the Lord. Isaac then, the gentlest of natures must in figure pass through death! Death! That end of all nature, the only true goal for it, to which unreserved submission to the divine mind unfailingly leads; a discipline, so necessary and blessed for him, in the very opening of his history. It is not, as with Abraham, separation and self-mortification; but it is nothing short of death, moral death. The more refined and perfect the nature, the more complete must be its negation; where there is nothing very manifestly to be denied, all must be denied. Where there is something manifest, the denial of it will always break the will, because the will is expressed in the palpable passion, and breaking the will is really moral death to nature, which all must pass through, only with some it is accomplished directly through the crushing of some prominent feature or evil; while with others, of a more even nature, such as Isaac's, where nothing stands out prominently to be broken; the whole thing must be negatived (I mean, of course, practically).

The next notice we get of Isaac is also one of death; but death of a different description, and which prepared him for a new order of life. The gift of Rebekah, is connected with the removal of Sarah, his mother, as if to repair the blank of one who had suited his gentle nature, and he emerges from the gloom and sorrow of death to enter as it were, on the consolation which the Lord has provided for him; but even then, so true and faithful are the dealings of our God with His people, Isaac, the promised seed, has no heir; nor has he, until cast on God, he is taught to look to Him instead of to nature. He must learn that God's blessings, whatever they be, will not yield desired results apart from Him. But, when this lesson is learned, the preordained purpose may be accomplished, and thus to Isaac children were given. At their birth is vouchsafed a revelation of their destinies, sufficient to guide an ear open to God's mind and counsels, as to what the divine mind respecting them was, and what should be their respective place. Isaac should have understood this, and acted towards them accordingly; but he does not appear to have clone so, or else his habitual nature swamped the counsel of God in his mind, for he does not seem to have discerned in Jacob the heir to the promises, and “he loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison.” The divine intimation is overlooked, because the father's heart is gratified in the attentions of the son, and is more influenced by the dictates of nature than by the counsel of God. Natural and paternal as this feeling was, it was man's will, opposed to God's will, and therefore Isaac must be taught to relinquish it,—for the word of the Lord, that shall stand!

But this does not happen in a moment. He appears to have enjoyed his preference for Esau for a long time. In the course of discipline to which God subjects His people, we often find that there is a manifest reluctance on His part to deprive us of simple natural enjoyments. Nay, we are often allowed to share in them, until we attempt, in the presumption of nature, to give them a place contrary to God; until, like King Uzziah, we seek to give that which has only a place in nature, a place with God; and accordingly invest it with dignities only applicable to another. This almost necessarily occurs where there is disposition to follow the Lord, and even where pleasing God is the approved motive of the soul; in fact, where the conscience is in exercise, but the will is not subject. Hence, the Lord's demand may be acknowledged in the soul, without the will being really subject to God's will; and, when this is the case, there will be an effort (and often a momentarily successful effort) to appropriate for the creature that dignity and province which the divinely-appointed alone should occupy. In Christendom we see remarkable examples of this, right names attached to the most unfit exponents of them. For instance, “the church,” as used in common parlance, no more represents the true thing than the golden calf did the God who brought Israel out of Egypt; and yet the majority of consciences are satisfied because the true and scriptural name is retained. Alas! we may all fall into this in our way and practice. We may calm our conscience, while we gratify our will, by offering to what is but its own offspring, a divine characteristic. Where this tendency is at work there must be discipline; but for some discipline we are not prepared, until we pass through that of another order. And mark, while Esau, by his hunting, is ingratiating himself with his father, and so far annulling the word of God in his mind, the effects of that very hunting oblige him to sell his birthright to the one whom God had designed it for: thus, at the same time, preparing the needed discipline for Isaac, and the fulfillment of the Lord's own purposes. Satan’s most apparent success always contains the seed of his own ruin. As in the death of Christ, his power was at once concentrated and lost; as in every minor assault of his, we should find, if we had but patience to wait for the issue, that his direst plot against us eventuates in our sweet deliverance. “Out of the eater comes forth meat.”

The next notice we have of Isaac, is of a different order. There was a famine in the land; and Gen. 26 gives us a detailed account of the exercises which he passed through, from the time he departed from the land until he returned to it again. This famine is expressly distinguished from the “first famine,” in the days of Abraham. The first tried Abraham, the leader; the second tried Isaac, the occupier. Abraham had turned aside through it, and gone down to Egypt. Isaac takes the same direction, and goes to Abimelech, king of the Philistines; but God there warns him not to go further, but to sojourn in Gerar. He allows him to sojourn there, in order to test the possibility of it; but adds, “Dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of.” Isaac not only sojourns in Gerar, but dwells there, and, as a consequence, his troubles commence. He has another lesson to learn here: even that however prosperous he may be in the land of the Philistines, he can never enjoy the peace and calm which his soul desired, while he is mixed up in association with them. He attempts, at first, to secure an undisturbed residence among them. by false representations, which falsity, being discovered, humbles him before them; as one not able to trust God in the circumstances in which he had placed himself. Still he does not leave the place. We often strive to remain where we have been unfaithful, as if we could regain what we had lost; but if our position be one of unbelief, no course of conduct there will ever alter its character. The Lord teaches Isaac the unprofitableness of gain in Gerar. He may be blessed, his corn yielding a hundred fold, until he becomes very great. But what of it all? The Philistines envied him! The position of stranger would be happier for him, for he might then eat his bread in quietness, and drink from his own fountain in peace; but with all his greatness and possessions these mercies are denied him in Gerar.

Isaac, by a slow and painful process, is taught that he must abandon the land of the Philistines in toto: each successive well which he had to dig, marking the stages of this process. First, “contention;” then “hatred;” next “room;” but having found “room,” and being debarred from the association which hampered him, he advances to Beersheba, which is on the confines of the land. He again takes the place of a stranger and pilgrim, depending on God; and the moment he does so, he gets his reward. “The Lord appeared unto him the same night,” and blessed him. The discipline had produced sanctification, and he builds an altar and worships. It had taught him that it is better to have a little with God, than great possessions in a position outside his calling; and now he enjoys his mercies and his well in peace. It is the same lesson, only in a milder form, which Abraham had to learn; even to crucify his ambition and desire for eminence in this evil world. Ambition seeks to be an object of consideration to others; affection seeks an object of consideration peculiar to itself. Abraham had to pass through the trial and crucifixion of both; Isaac also, only, as we have said, in a milder form. He is brought to the end of the mm, even ambition, in a way very common to the people of God, by finding that no acquisition with evil association can be enjoyed, and by being driven, after various struggles, to abandon the wrong position, for the untroubled waters of Sheba, and the presence of the Lord.

But the greater discipline, that of affection, awaits him; one for which he was being prepared, as it were, for a long time; indeed it was the grand discipline and lesson of his life. It was commenced when, on Mount Modal, his whole nature, the good as well as the bad, was negatived by passing, in a figure, through death; and is never lost sight of throughout his course. For all that we hear of him, in connection with his favorite son, Esau, bears the same character, and seems to be a preparation for the trial of his affections, which he was to undergo respecting him at the close, for having unduly indulged nature in preference to the counsel of God. The weakness of the flesh was Isaac's lesson, often a more humbling one than its evils. It caused the beloved disciple to sleep in Gethsemane, and allowed Peter to curse and to swear that he knew not the One whom he loved best on earth!

But, to resume:—Esau not only had disposed of his birthright, but he had socially disentitled himself to heirship by marrying a Canaanite. This being known to Isaac, is, as we read, a “grief of mind” to him. Yet even this did not displace Esau from that place in his father's affections which he had held for so many years. Esau was forty years old when this marriage took place. Years after this, as we may suppose, when “Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see,” he calls Esau to him, and says, “My son,.... Behold now I am old, I know not the day of my death; now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out into the field, and take me some venison, and make me savory meat, such as I love, that I may eat; and that my soul may bless thee before I die.” Thus, to the last, does Isaac cling to the son he loved, overlooking, in the strength of his natural affection, every divine intimation, and every act of his, which should have influenced him to a different course; and he here comes before us in a truly humbling point of view, as the saint always does, when uncontrolled nature rules the day.

But God will subdue nature, unjudged nature, and in Isaac too! And not only this (so perfect and complete are God's ways), but He will use that very gratification, the indulgence of which had served to pervert Isaac's mind and judgment, as the direct instrument wherewith to discipline him. He is allowed to be deceived. Through means of the “savory meat,” his mind was diverted from sound judgment; and through the “savory meat” he is compelled, unconsciously, to act according to the will of God; not as in the elevated and intelligent action of Jacob, who, in pronouncing his blessing, did so in full accordance of spirit with the mind of God, but as failing, humbled, deceived —-carrying out the will of God, almost in spite of himself; and without any intelligent communion with Him —the sad effects of nature unjudged, and unmortified.

However human counsels are frustrated. Jacob, the rightful heir, the appointed of God, receives the blessing, and Isaac must bear it. And now the conflict between the natural will and the word of God takes place in his soul. What is the result? Nature surrenders. “Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who I where is he that path taken venison, and brought it to me, and I have eaten of all before thou earnest, and I have blessed yea (the word of the Lord is triumphant), and he shall be, blessed.” We should note here a fact of great moment, viz., that the walking after our own will may not, as it cannot, vitiate truth in our souls, yet, if our spirit is not in subjection to God, we shall attempt to apply truth very erroneously. It is only when nature is subjected that we can happily accord with the only true and right application of the word of God.

In conclusion, note how the discipline of the Lord works. Isaac has now submitted to the counsel of God; but what a scene of sorrow surrounds him! His affection for Esau wrenched; and the now rightful heir, the hope of his house an exile! All this the bitter fruit of natural affection indulged, contrary to the of God!

Yet we hear no expression of impatience from Isaac, he blesses Jacob, and sends him to Padan-aram, in the vigor and faith of his best days. And his history closes with the account of how his last days were cheered by the presence of Jacob. Thus we see what is the “END of the Lord,” even very pitiful and of tender mercy,” restoring to the bereaved one, when discipline has clone its work, all, and even more than it lost. May this comfort all who mourn in Zion!

Discipline: 4. Jacob

The history of Jacob is peculiarly interesting to us, for in it are developed the activities of the natural will, not so much in contravention of the expressed counsel of God, but rather in an attempt to secure, by its own instrumentality, what was pre-ordained of God. The more intelligent and impressed the mind of man is with the purpose of God, the more does it need subjection to God; for otherwise, it will seek to accomplish, by natural means, what ought to be left to the ordering of God; and this produces restlessness.

The mind, thus active, has great need for self judgment; for its error is not refusing or misapprehending the will of God, but in attempting to promote and secure it, by its own unaided efforts. Now, when this is the case, the Lord allows His servant to find, by sorrowful experience, the fruits of his own plans. And though the purposes of His love remain the same, they must be reached by the intelligently willful, in circumstances which declare, that He who blesses, and addeth no sorrow to it, has not been the undisturbed agent in the scene. “The fear of the Lord is wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy, that is understanding.” If I have not God before my eyes, I never can, with a natural mind and in a world of evil, walk wisely: for God is the fountain of wisdom. Therefore mere knowledge in itself is nothing; that is, it never leads a man to walk with God.

Faith comes before knowledge: the link to knowledge is lost, if faith does not precede it. If I am depending on God, all true knowledge must increase that dependence; for, if I learn correctly, I find out that there is none so worthy of dependence as HE. If I love God, I know Him, but my love supplies my knowledge: otherwise, “Knowledge puffeth up.”

Jacob is a remarkable example of one appreciating blessing, but ever and anon intercepting and anticipating the ways of God by his own plans. The heart was right, we might say; but the mind was unsubdued, and the natural mind cannot act, but according to its own perversity.

Thus, in the first act of his life presented to us, he evinces a greater regard for the blessing, and the position which the birthright would confer, than for the means by which he should secure them. He takes advantage of his brother's destitution to seize the valued, the justly valued, prize, which Esau ought not to have surrendered for any gain. Yet the possession of the birthright failed to give Jacob that assurance of the blessing which it represented; for if it had, he would not afterward have so readily complied with his mother's unworthy expedient to secure it for him And why? The desired mercy had been grasped by him in a natural way; and he derived none of the satisfaction from it which he would have experienced, had it reached him in a divine way; for a divine way always connects the soul with the Lord. If a mercy is not connected with the Lord, it may often make me more miserable; but if it is, if I know that it flows from His love, the heart receives it in tranquility and peace; for I know that though I may lose the proof of His love, I cannot lose the love itself, and that the love cannot exist without declaring itself.

Moses was soon discouraged in his effort to rescue Israel from the bondage of Egypt. He appreciated the service, but, by not connecting it with God, he soon lost assurance in its success. The Lord in His grace will bring us sooner or later to connect all our mercies or services with Himself; because He knows that without this we cannot reckon on His strength in supporting us. Thus Moses is forty years in the land of Midian, being prepared for the tidings of the burning bush. Paul in prison, at Rome, is confirmed in the reality of truths, which had been communicated to him long before. And Jacob, when he wrestled and obtained through grace the name of Israel, was confirmed in the assurance of blessings, which he became entitled to, many years previously. The possession of the birthright, his father's blessing, the vision at Bethel, the dream at Padan-aram—all failed to assure Jacob's soul of the reality of the portion which he so prized and needed. The wrestling at Mahanaim, where he was brought into personal nearness and subjection to God, alone established him in the assurance of it.

The dream at Bethel was the divine communication of the blessing; but not until Jacob is made to feel the bitter fruits of his own willfulness, during a period of twenty years in Padan-aram, is he brought into that closeness of exercise with the Lord, which, though successful, results in personal disparagement.

What a course of discipline to subdue a willful soul! Jacob is blessed in everything that he desires, although often thwarted, and always in what he most prizes. His elder brother surrenders him the birthright; his father blesses him with the best of blessings; the Lord reveals the purpose of His love towards him, when a wanderer from his father's house; in Padanaram everything succeeds, but through hard labor and a series of thwartings, and, when he returns to enjoy the accumulated blessings in the land of promise, he is met at the very entrance by his brother Esau, and the question must be decided whether he is really possessor of the blessing after all. What a moment of agony and suspense this must have been to his willful spirit! Still unable to trust God, he fears that the cup, which God Himself has filled, is about to be dashed from his lips, and all his blessings annihilated. The issue was now at stake. All the previous education of his life was in reference to this moment. He was the blessed one; but was he self-renounced enough to be invested with full and satisfactory possession? Has he come to such an end of himself that he rests on God, and God only, for the security of those blessings?

This the wrestling determines. From that struggle he emerges as an Israel, but with the deep sense of personal weakness, the marks of which he bears in himself. The sinew of his thigh shrank. A loser personally, he is a gainer positionally; or rather, he loses in a natural way, but gains in a divine way. Jacob had sought to appropriate to himself the blessings of the land in the strength and resources of nature; and after twenty years of discipline, when about really to enter it, he is brought to such straits and exercises of soul, that God is his only resource. He is cast upon Him and cannot proceed after all, unless God not only blesses but subdues him. But this being attained, Jacob enters the land, by faith, and as Israel; blessed, humbled, and having the mark of personal weakness.

And in this character, as the Israel, though halting, can he meet Esau, or any one who may dispute his title. All the toil and success of twenty years are lost, as to their bearing on that title; for it is God's blessing, not the proof of it, that really establishes his soul and sends him forth as the humbled Israel, the indisputable possessor of the, land! A history all this of ourselves! Seeking for blessings, but too unsubdued to confide the ordering of them to the Lord alone: apprehending the loss of them, and finding our own insufficiency when the demand is made on us. But the God of Jacob is our God, and He will not only discipline but bless us.

This properly closes the first stage in the life of Jacob. He now takes the place of faith, the only true link to blessing, and is a pattern to us of the honor set on one who surrenders his own will and comes out of the conflict prevailing with God and man We then find that, worthless as the will is in itself, the breaking of it is what God distinguishes with the greatest eminence, even giving such an one power to prevail with Himself and man.

We have now to consider Jacob in the land. Though the will must be broken, in order to facilitate our entrance into a sphere of blessing, we seldom abide in that sphere, without exhibiting a recurrence of the same willfulness which delayed and obstructed our entrance. The path, to be a true one and suited to us, must ensure that suppression of nature which would exert a counter-influence; and hence the sphere of blessing which. I have entered on, through the denial of my will, must be retained and enjoyed in the same spirit. If I think or act otherwise I must suffer, and learn, by God's discipline, that the subjection, which fitted me for entering, I must not relax one whit, because I have entered and am in possession.

How often do we observe, and know, too, the very contrary to this, in ourselves! How often, after using great watchfulness, treading softly, and really humbly seeking to enter, do we, when we obtain and enjoy what we have sought, forget the mode and spirit by which we have obtained it, and thus, fresh discipline becomes necessary for us! Israel fought and suffered in order to reach the blessings of the land, but when those blessings were obtained, and enjoyed, Israel waxed fat and kicked, and forgot the God who had exalted him. It is more difficult to nature to walk with God in the fullness of mercies, than in the dearth of them. The water was a greater test to Gideon's army than any of the sufferings consequent on the undertaking.

Jacob now, in peaceful enjoyment of all the blessings with which God had surrounded him, and in that land with which every blessing was connected, ought to have repaired to Bethel, according to his pledge. But, instead of this considers for his own immediate necessities, and builds a house at Succoth. It might be asserted that his necessities required this; but still it was a departure from the principle of faith by which he had entered on possession. It was a divergence, however small, from the path of a pilgrim, and moreover, a halt on the way, which should have been steadily pursued onward until Bethel was reached. And as one shortcoming always leads to another, the next thing that we read of Him is, that he bought a parcel of a field, of the children of Hamor. He requires some other guarantee for his possession than the will and arm of the Almighty. It is a repetition of that willfulness which so characterized him; always seeking to secure by his own means the blessing which were derived from, God, and which he, doubtless, owned as such. This is a very common tendency, and much more difficult of exposure and correction than that which seeks what is simply of the world. God Himself is not the first object of the soul. His gifts, alas! too often shut out God Himself; and where he is not paramount, will must be somewhere at work, and we are in reality thinking of enjoying ourselves with the gifts instead of with Him.

So with Jacob at Shalem. Having yielded to nature, and departed in willfulness from the path of simple dependence on God, he now erects an altar, and calls it, “El-elohe-Israel;” not surely forgetting that he was Israel, the blessed one; but magnifying this fact more than the grace of God that made him so. The true state of our souls is revealed by the title of our altar, if I may so express it; or, in other words, the character of our worship, and nearness to God. When the soul is occupied with itself; that is when its own condition is more before it than the greatness and excellency of the Lord, it is evident that the latter cannot be fully apprehended, or its superiority would necessarily supplant the other. Then we are in the presence of God, we cannot be occupied with our own state, save as to the exaltation we have received by being admitted to such a place. When really with God, we are lost in God, and in His interests: but when we are occupied with our own blessings or necessities, it is an occupation, right in its place, but lower than that which makes Him the supreme object; than that which Paul knew when his aim was to “win Christ.”

Jacob is here not only occupied with his blessings, but indulging his willfulness, and for this discipline is needed. The weight must be removed. He must learn that his own plans only produce sorrow and discomfiture. Thus, his residence at Shalem entails shame and sorrow on his family, and the only relief from it is to obey the word of the Lord.

Jacob is made to feel the shame and humiliation of the position which he had himself chosen, and then, the word of the Lord falls freely on his soul, and the discipline has prepared him to respond to it. “Arise,” says the Lord, “Go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee, when thou fleddest from the face of Esau, thy brother.” In pursuing “the race set before us,” all goes right! Jacob, on departing from Shechem for Bethel, leaves all his defilements behind him. The idols must be left at Shechem; they cannot he taken to Bethel. The moment we take God's path—the way to God's house, we must be clean; “holiness becometh his house forever.” Now the title of Jacob's altar is “El-Bethel.” He has become enlarged in the purposes of God, and sees himself merely as an agent in expressing and unfolding them on earth. His thoughts now dwell less on Jacob, the blessed of God, than on God, the blesser of Jacob. Another step on the path of faith has been taken.

But now, although he has apprehended the Lord's teaching, he is not subdued into accurate adherence to His word. The Lord had told him to dwell at Bethel; instead of which we find that, after a little, he journeyed from thence; and, consequently, fresh discipline awaits him. The trials in his circumstances, up to this, had been many and various; but now it is the trial of his affections which he is called upon to suffer. Death created a blank that can never be supplied, for his bereavement, in the loss of Rachel, was not forgotten for the remainder of his course. Compare Gen. 35:16, with 48. 7. In the latter passage Jacob alludes to his sorrow as if it had closed his own hopes as to earth. “As for me,” he says, “when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan, when yet there was but a little way to come to Ephrath, and I buried her there, on the way to Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem.” He buried the object of his affections, where Christ, the real balm for every bereaved heart, was to be born. If he leaves Bethel, the house of God, the place where God had appeared unto him, and told him to dwell, he is taught that there must be nothing but a desolate path outside. The clouds gather round his path. The immorality of his first-born, and the death of his father quickly follow. How deeply the former affected him, we learn from chap. xlix. 3, 4, where the bitterness of his heart, unnoticed here, finds a vent in reviewing all in the light of God's counsels.

The next notice we get of Jacob, is in chap. xxxvii. where we read that “he dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger.” This was his proper position, the one to which faith had called him, but nevertheless, the discipline, after a respite, is continued. It was still necessary that he should be weaned from dependence on any object whatever. Though Rachel be gone, her two sons remain; and, through them, Jacob undergoes a continued process of crucifixion to his affections.

If we were more careful to observe the manner and links of God's dealings with us, we should find, that though there may be a suspension in the sorrow, and often a long interval of repose, yet, that the trials are continued very much in the same line, until the desired effect is produced.

We might have thought that Jacob's spirit was so broken, so shaken out of his interests and affections, that his path would, henceforth, be one of easy subjection to God. But no! when the strong will is the man of natural might, there is not complete surrender while any link of nature remains; and all the sorrow of heart which we read of in chaps. xxxvii. and xliii. touching Joseph and Benjamin, is necessary to bring Jacob's heart and will into entire submission. That the discipline produced this effect we cannot doubt, if we compare his expressions in chap. xxxvii. 34, 35, and in chap. xliii. 14. In the first instance he rent his clothes, put sackcloth upon his loins, and refused to be comforted. “For,” said he, “I will go down into the grave with my son mourning” But in the last he says, “If I am bereaved, I am bereaved;” in other words, “1 submit.” What a difference! what a desolation, when the heart is wrenched and there is no resource in God, but what a contrast, when the Almighty God is a refuge, and the bereaved one can say, “If I am bereaved, I am bereaved!” “I take that place.” It is simple submission to the will of God, and effects, for us, what God so much desires—even, that we should find our resources in Him; and the soul, brought to this, is never unsatisfied. The happiness of His people is the great purpose of God; and we often find that, when a trial has effected the necessary discipline, the tried one is given back the objects, the loss of which had occasioned its sorrow, and which it is now prepared to use and enjoy in dependence on God.

Jacob receives both Joseph and Benjamin again. But so unprepared is the heart of man for the tender mercy of our God, that the very announcement of it caused Jacob's heart to faint. So great had been the depth of his sorrow, that the unaccredited attempt to relieve it, for a moment almost annihilated him. Much discipline had been needed to break his strong will and unsubdued nature, but it had amply done its work. How broken is he now! To bind up the broken heart is one of the special services of Christ; but many a Jacob cannot believe it possible that such tender mercy awaits him, and even when known, it often causes more fainting of the heart than did the very discipline itself.

But the Lord always makes sure of His work. He stoops to our weakness and gives us evidences. The nobleman (John 4) was assured by evidences, that it was at the very hour that Jesus said to him, “Thy son liveth,” that he was made whole. And so here: Jacob is first convinced by evidences of the reality of the mercy, and then, after recovering Joseph again, the relief is so complete, that he utters sentiments similar to those of the aged Simeon, when he held the infant Jesus in his arms: “Now let me die,” he says, “since I have seen thy face,” &c. The cup is full! The heart, already so broken and subdued, is now satisfied, having received back what it had lost, directly from God, and with increased honor and glory to Him. Discipline having done its work, we find that fullness of joy is the great desire of the heart of God for us.

Jacob's life in Egypt is, properly, the third stage of his checkered pilgrimage, and a bright stage it is. His last moments are the great event noticed by the apostle as the highest evidence of faith: “By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph, leaning on the top his staff.” He there appears before us as the witness for God, intelligent as to his counsels, broken in will, holy and elevated in utterance. What a bright and tranquil close to his distracted, self-willed and disciplined life! How much we have to learn from his history! Valuing blessings, but ever resorting to his own means and modes in order to secure them; learning, by sorrowful experience, the folly of his own plans, and that in whatever measure a man metes, it will be measured to him again. But on the other hand, he learns also, that God is the only true rest and resource in sorrow; and this priceless lesson he reaches, to the satisfying of his heart, before his course ends.

Oh! how sweet and instructive it is, to retrace all the ways and dealings of God with us, when we are at last “settled in Him” as our sure resource.

Discipline: 5. Joseph

The history of Joseph unfolds to us the trials and duties of a servant of God. The evils and failure of human nature, are not brought before us in his course, as in that of some we have already studied. Joseph is regarded, primarily, as a servant and instrument for God's work; and, consequently, we have to trace the exercises and purgation to which he must be subjected, in order to fit him for that work.

The first notice we have of him is respecting his position in his father's house. “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors.” Thus loved and signalized by his father, his heart was enlarged. Tasting the sweetness of affection its own was drawn out; for nothing generates affection in us so much as the assurance of its existence for us; as it is written, “We loved him because he first loved us.” When love asserts its claim, every other claim as acknowledged and valued as only opportunities for its expression. So Joseph's heart in tender age expanded in the genial atmosphere of his father's love; but this, at the same time, exposed him to the envy of those who had proved themselves unworthy of it. “His brethren hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him” While on the one side he learned the tenderness and resources of his father's affection, on the other he suffered reproach and persecution for being so favored. If the one attracted him to his father, the other painfully warned him that he must be dependent on his affection, for, outside it, and on account of it, he was a sufferer.

Thus, early in life, and in the domestic circle, did Joseph learn (as indeed of all God's servants) the elementary principles of that truth which must sustain him, in the highest services by and by; even that as the loved of God, he is the hated of man. The love of the father, conspicuously indicated by the coat of many colors, must compensate him for the hatred of the brethren; must nerve and prepare him for all their opposition and envy, and this is the first and greatest lesson which the servant of God has to learn on entering his course, that which Christ (of whom Joseph is the, type) so fully and perfectly apprehended; He who, ever dwelling in the full consciousness of the Father's love, was thereby enabled to meet unmoved all the hatred and malice of man. And still further, the one who best knows the father's love must be the best exponent of that love—the best qualified servant for the father to send on a mission of interest to those who were ignorant of it. “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” Joseph, still bearing out his character of type and servant, is deputed by his father to see how his brethren fared; but before this event there are two intimations given him of the position which he must occupy by and by with respect to these communications. He receives no support from his father, who rebukes him, and this, with the concomitant and increased opposition of his brethren, laid the groundwork of that dependence on God and dependence of man which so distinguished his after course. The prospects which divinely occupy my soul may be ill received by all around me, even by valued friends and guides; but they are mercifully given in order to confirm the soul, and still more to convince me, when the realization supervenes, how true and constant has been God's care of me.

How little we notice or value the small circumstances of our early life and the large effect they exercise on us! From infancy we are forming for the place destined for us of God; and our whole history is but a succession of processes preparing us for the end, the very first of them, in all material points, bearing strict analogy to the one which closes our course. Thus was it with David. The first notice we have of him is, feeding sheep in the wilderness; from whence he was taken, after an intervening process of discipline, “to feed Israel his people, and Jacob his inheritance,” a position which he held, in many a varying circle, to the end. So also with Moses. Alone for God, with God, and under God, in the ark of bulrushes, every era of his life is of the same order, whether in Midian, in the Mount, or on Pisgah at last.

Joseph then starts on his mission, assured of his father's love, aware of the hatred of his brethren, and secretly impressed with an unknown, and as yet incomprehensible, idea of future greatness. Responding to the will of the father, he did not shrink from the post of danger which the father did not apprehend for him. If the One greater than we are, in love and in wisdom, appoint us a path of service, which would be grateful to Himself, and He, knowing all, apprehends no danger for us; we may surely enter on it in simple confidence. It is the only true and happy spirit for any path of service. Emerging from the private home—known expression of our Father's love—to launch into the tumultuous ocean of unreasonable and unloving brethren, and be messengers of the Father's interest respecting them. Thus Christ came and thus must every true servant of His be sustained or be useful. Joseph pursuing this path of service, bearer of his father's message, and exponent of his father's interest, came to Shechem, but is checked in the execution of his mission by finding his brethren not there. Such checks often occur in order to test our reality as to whether the Father's will is wholly our desire. Joseph's heart was evidently set on its accomplishment, for instead of returning when he could not find them, he lingers at his post until he gets tidings of them, and then follows them to Dothan, unprepared for the murderous and malicious reception. which awaited him.

After various modifications of these evil purposes, (for wicked counsels must always be multifarious, whereas there is but one fixed way for doing right) Joseph is sold to the Ishmaelites” and again sold by them into Egypt, unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, and captain of the guard. What a change for him, from the glow of a parent's love, uppermost and chief, to be first murderously assailed by his own brethren, and now a bondsman in Egypt! Had the divine communications vouchsafed to him in his dreams made him independent of everything from man, (be it love or hatred,) and dependent only on God! If they had, he needed it at this juncture,; and, undoubtedly, that was the value of the discipline he was now undergoing. Truth is communicated to us first, and we may greatly value the acquisition of it: but the winter can alone season the succulent growths of spring and summer. The great reality of the truth must be learned by us; Joseph must be cast on God.

But the winter is seldom without some gleam of sunshine; and often before its depths, as well as before its conclusion, a bright season intervenes. Before the sternest part of the discipline befalls us, we are often cheered by an unexpected reprisal. Thus Joseph is a prosperous man in the captain's house. But from this he is soon driven—a snare being then prepared for him by the adversary of souls, which he has integrity and dignity to fly from; for it only addressed the depravity of his nature, and offered no alleviation to his condition as a slave. We may regard Potiphar’s wife as a type of the world, the allurements of which she symbolizes; and, failing to attract the prosperous servant of God, she becomes his direst and most unscrupulous foe. Evil association too often accompanies prosperity; but prosperity in evil association cannot remain for the God-fearing soul. The latter will extinguish the former if there be faithfulness. But how great is the compensation for the loss of both! God remains—unto whom, and before whom, Joseph now so distinctly acted. How checkered is the life of this future witness for God! First sold as a bondsman for being the messenger of his father's love unto his brethren; and now cast into prison by his master because he was the righteous guardian of his master's property.

He learned that neither love nor righteousness could be comprehended by man. To God alone he must look, and on God alone be cast. And God did not disappoint him “The Lord Was with Joseph, and chewed him mercy, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.” The one who is really cast on God improves the circumstances of trial in which he is, whether they be temporary or permanent. No adverse circumstances can crush the true living energy; they may limit and determine it. The scene may be changed, but not the spirit of it. Moses in Midian helps the woman and waters their flocks, when no longer allowed to help and serve the Hebrews. He is a savior in Midian, as well as in Egypt to the nation of Israel: and the Lord becomes a sanctuary to him and provides alleviation for him in his bondage and sorrow. And Joseph also is found ere long to be as useful in prison, as he was in the house of the captain of the guard. “The keeper of the prison looked not to anything that was under his hand, because the Lord was with him, and that which he did the Lord made it to prosper.” In every trial, however gloomy, there are gleams of light and relief; but full deliverance is often delayed by our anxiety to obtain it. God is to be the satisfaction of His servant, and not the deliverance; consequently, the latter is often postponed until we are without prospect or expectation of it: and then, it may be accorded in a manner so transcendently beyond our perception, that we must see and understand the love and interest which surrounded us during the whole period of our trial. Thus was it with Peter in Acts 12, with Paul and Silas in Acts 16, and with Joseph in the sequel of what we are considering. His abilities as God's servant, and as the one acquainted with His mind, are first in the most distinct manner displayed in the prison. Trials, the effect of man's enmity, do not obstruct the truth of God. Opportunity for its development will occur, in apparently the most disastrous circumstances. Paul, in jail, is blessed to the jailer: Joseph, in prison, reveals to the chief-butler the purposes of God; but he probably errs in soliciting the latter to negotiate for his release; and two full years longer must he remain a captive. He is again taught that no confidence can be placed in man. The prolonged incarceration must have deeply tried one who was conscious of having done nothing to merit it. It must have almost seemed as if God had forgotten him; and nothing is so painful as the sense that one from whom you expect much knows of your need, and does not come forward to your help. This was Job's great trial—that God did not manifest care for him, and John the Baptist's, when he heard in prison of the works of Jesus. Whether Joseph felt thus we are not told; but we know that God had a purpose in his prolonged imprisonment: and when that purpose was answered, “the time came, and the word of the Lord tried him; the king sent and delivered him, even the ruler of the people, and let him go free.” How little we understand the exercises and purgation to which the fruitful branch must be subjected that it may be fit for God's work! Chastening is needed, to take out of the way that which we do not seek to remove; and purging, to rid us of what we desire and seek to be rid. Joseph underwent a deep process of purgation, from the day he left his father's house, clad in the coat of many colors, as a distinguishing mark of love. He had to learn, through a remarkable series of sorrow and discipline, that in order to be fit for God's service he must find the favor of man is deceitful: he is allowed to taste of it from time to time, in order to show him how little it can avail him in any moment of need; and slowly, but surely, he learns what it is to be from God, and to God. But deliverance comes in the end; and Joseph appears before Pharaoh, in the highest sense, as a servant and witness of God. He declares things to come, and receives the distinction and position to which righteously he is entitled, and which the world even is compelled to accord him. All this time, probably, he knew little of the service which he was to render to his brethren, or how fully that which he once attempted to render to them, and which was so cruelly rejected and requited, would now be offered and so humbly appreciated. God all the time was working for his people, and preparing for them; and in process of time, Joseph knew this and admitted it.

In his several interviews with his brethren, he presents to us the loveliest portraiture of the man of divine wisdom and judgment, struggling against the finest emotions of his heart; restraining the expression of his affection until he was assured that the right and safe time for the denouement had arrived. How touching the anxiety and distress which he inflicts on his brethren, in order to secure to them the ways and doings which his heart craved! His love for them prompted it all; and, in surveying his behavior, we cannot but see how self-possessed and controlled he had become, and how fitted for the service he was called to render and maintain. What a moment it must have been to this long-suffering and humbled, but now exalted and disciplined man, to present himself to his father, fall on his neck and weep! What a course of preparation he had passed through, before this great climax of his life and service was obtained! But attained it was. He had, through mercy, accomplished and provided for every need of his brethren, evincing, at the same time, how equal he was to the mission he first entered on, at the commencement of his course: namely, to convey to them a just idea of their father's love.

In conclusion, we have only to observe the faith for which he was distinguished. After all the eminence he had attained in Egypt, and all the service he had performed, by faith he sees a better and a greater inheritance beyond it. When about to die, he makes mention of the departure of Israel, and gives commandment concerning his bones. Thus, as a faithful servant, he closes his course, testifying the proper object of hope; serving the people of God to the full, and according to their need, while he lived; and, when dying, leading them to the only true prospect and hope of their souls; even the inheritance of the promised land. No present advantages must cloud or intercept this. Faith overlooks the brilliancy of present things, and faithfully serving his people to the end, he enjoins on them with his latest breath, their proper hope, and future course.

And thus determinated the career of one of the most disciplined and honored of servants; after great trials, but greater successes; great sorrows, but greater joys; great humiliation, but greater exaltation; and a grateful study it is, for every suffering servant of our God—to whom be praise forever and ever.

Discipline: 6. Moses

MOSES.

MOSES being in a special sense the type of Him who is the servant of all, we should be prepared to find in his history the most peculiar discipline, in order to suppress his nature, and. make room for the expression of that grace and service, which was exemplified in perfection in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Born at the period when Pharaoh's interdict against the male children of Israel is raging, no exception is made in favor of him: he enters on the earth to find that earthly place is denied him. There was no room for the Lord of glory in the inn, and Egypt's king enacts that his type, Moses., should die the moment he is born! By faith only his parents rescued him. “They saw he was a goodly child, and were not afraid of the king's commandment.” They knew by the deep and peculiar conviction which the Holy Ghost effects, that God was to be trusted for this child. Faith in God thus bears him into life. How must he in riper years have derived strength from this godly acting of his parents and have been indebted to them for this their first training him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord! The commencement of our course gives a color to the whole of it; and the earliest tuition we receive in the divine school gives a mold and a tone to our characters, which after years can never obliterate. Moses' first breath on earth was secured to him only through the faith of his parents. He was hid three months. Sorely must their faith have been exercised during these ninety days, but they endured; and then, in the ark of bulrushes, they consign him to the waters. All place on earth being denied him, the older he grew, the more difficult it became to screen him from the ruthless edict.

When we act in faith, and have endured sufficiently so as to establish our souls in the assurance that it is faith, then the Spirit which gives us the faith gives us also wisdom how to act. In this wisdom the parents of Moses now act. Faith is no hindrance to the affections; but it loves to sustain those affections, which, acting alone, would be too anxious and distracted; it supports the heart in quiet, unfailing persistence of the conviction and purpose which it inculcates.

From his perilous position in the ark of bulrushes, Moses, the weeping babe, is taken by no less a person than the daughter of him who would have been its destroyer, but not before the impression of the coldness and desolation of this world had been made upon his tender spirit. We read, “the babe wept.” Thus, in earliest age, before the mind could be intelligently impressed, is he made to taste of that sorrow and pressure to which he must be no stranger throughout his course. The mind of the babe could not recall it, but the soul, nevertheless, consciously entered on that line in which it was afterward to be so exercised, and his tears were no doubt the firstfruits of a sorrow with which, in after life, he was so deeply conversant. But the answer to this is the Lord's tender care and consideration for him; and this we see exemplified in the most touching and interesting way. Not only is the daughter of his enemy made the instrument of his deliverance, but he is consigned to the care of his own mother and then installed in Pharaoh's house in ease and honor. The desolation of the world and the unfailing compassions of God are the first lessons of discipline traced on his unconscious mind, and which are never to be erased; for God teaches early, decidedly, and enduringly.

The interval which intervenes between this first notice and the next, when Moses is “full forty years,” is briefly but significantly summed up as the time during which he was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in word and in deed. He was introduced into all the attractions of Egypt, that in relinquishing them, he might have sympathy with any extent of surrender which the people of God might be called to. Many might have much to surrender, but not so much as he had and did. If the people felt it hard to relinquish the leeks and the onions, how much more should Moses, who had moved in all the luxuries and honors of Pharaoh's court! In God's discipline and education he was being prepared for the leadership he was to be invested with by and by. The great magnitude of his own surrender qualified him to ask others to follow him; the renunciation of all Egypt's attractions entitled him to take the lead out of Egypt; for if he “chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin,” he did so, after having participated in their greatest magnificence. And more than this—by this education, he was made conversant with everything that was delectable in nature, and had experiences of what nature could yield, in a way which none of the previous characters which we have been considering could have known. Neither Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or even Joseph, had such a training as this, and justly so, for none of them was intended for such a mission as Moses; and God's education and discipline with His people is always suitable and preparative to its peculiar end. Solomon tested the vanity of everything on earth; the Lord Jesus at once felt it in His own moral perfection; Moses is surrounded by it to mature age, and then refuses it.

And now it comes into his heart to visit his brethren. A right impulse moves him in a right direction; but we are not always morally prepared for the expression of our impulses, even though they be right ones. Our humanity being the vessel through which they must be expressed, it is often unequal to the trials which the impulse may expose us to. But, if the impulse be right, we may rest assured that the vessel will be prepared for its expression, sooner or later. It may he postponed, and necessarily so, while the vessel is preparing; but this being done, the right and true desire will be owned and gratified.

When Peter first proposed to the Lord to follow Him (John 13.), the Lord warned him that he could not do so then; and, on the contrary, that he would deny Him. But when Peter was fully restored, and had his soul strengthened in the love of Christ, the Lord lets him know that he is to follow Him; and that the desire which he once so fearlessly and ignorantly avowed, he should yet distinctly substantiate. Thus with Moses here. He has got the right idea and desire, but he has not learned from God the right way of sustaining and establishing it. He knows not the trials which beset his path; and, consequently he has no provision to meet them when they occur. His attempt only proves how insufficient are his resources for the work he had entered on; and he has at last to abandon it, and relinquish that on which his heart was set: the inevitable consequence of attempting to carry out a right purpose in our own resources. I think a servant of God is generally acting in his own resources when he engages opponents on a level with himself; he thus aims at the tail instead of the head. Moses now directs his vengeance against an Egyptian, but when he returns in the power of the Lord, it is leveled against Pharaoh; even as Christ, who, in accomplishing eternal deliverance for us, first encountered Satan.

Moses fails, as he might he expected; and not only so, but his own life is in jeopardy, and for very personal safety he must fly. “Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well.” What an accumulation of distressful feelings must have oppressed this zealous servant of God! What anguish to a faithful heart to be thus baffled in its sincere attempts to serve his brethren! May not all his sacrifices and surrender of the glories of Egypt have appeared to him now as useless to others and unprofitable to himself as he sat there, a wanderer and exile, like a blighted, fruitless tree in the desert. But if such were Moses' thoughts, they were not God's. The mission was not forfeited, but only postponed. The vessel was not yet “meet for the Master's rise.” Nature was not sufficiently purged from it. On the other hand, God's time to deliver His people had not come; neither were the people themselves prepared for the deliverance. But one subject is Moses himself; and he, as God's instrument and servant for the work, need forty years' more preparation ere he can be thus used. And already, sitting by the well in the land of Midian, is he under that discipline which will form for the great service designed for him in the counsel of God.

(To be continued.)

Discipline: 7. Moses

MOSES.

(Continued.)

FORTY years of exiledom are appointed for Moses; but whether those years should be one uninterrupted season of sorrow and gloom, or whether they should be mitigated by sources of solace and cheer, depends on the manner in which the disciplined one receives the discipline.

Will he bow himself and accept the will of the Lord? Will he prove himself hem a deliverer of the distressed, in principle and heart, as well as for his own people? If he will, he accepts God's discipline; and, therefore, his lot may be less trying and oppressive. The moment subjection is established discipline becomes effective, and may be relaxed. Though not removed, the scene may be brightened. And thus was it with Moses. He acts the part of a deliverer to the women at the well, who were driven away by the shepherds. Although he has been denied to declare himself as such in a large circle, he does not refuse it in a very insignificant one; he does not brood in listless sorrow over his own reverses, like the fool eating his own flesh, but he submits to his circumstances, and rises above his own feelings, in his interest to serve others. Until I am superior to a trial I must be under it; and, while under it, not free to serve with whole-heartedness, or cheerfulness of spirit, which latter is always the mainspring of service. Nothing proves more the divinity of our mission than ease and readiness to accord it in the most retired and unknown quarters, as well as the most attractive and congenial. And when we fully surrender ourselves to the position the Lord has ordered for us, serving Him therein, He makes the desert land (the place of discipline), to brighten up, and provides rest and solace in that on which we entered in sorrow and desolation of heart.

At first Moses' service to those Midianitish women meets no requital, even as Joseph's to the chief butler; but it must not remain so. Reuel, their father, sends for him in virtue of his service to his daughters, provides a home for him, and gives him his daughter Zipporah to wife: and we read, “she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershon; for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.”

This name reveals to us the secret sorrow of Moses. Though provided with a home, he still felt himself a stranger in a strange land; therefore, his son, who linked him to the scene, must bear a name which will perpetuate before him his exiled condition, which no present mercies could exclude. They could not obliterate the deep and earnest purpose of his soul, to deliver his people. Nor SHOULD they; for, as we have said before, the purpose was right, yea, divine; but the vessel was denied its expression until further preparation. Paul does not adequately express what he receives and exults in for more than fourteen years afterward; and thus, in prison at Rome, he was peculiarly prepared and fitted for doing so.

For forty years, then, does Moses fulfill his daily toil, perfecting subjection to the will of God. Useful and exemplary in the common duties of life, the qualifications which he demonstrated as a servant were a sure indication of those of a master, for which he was being educated; for none can rule well who have not learned to serve. His occupation was evidently a toilsome one—seeking pasturage for the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.

In the natural routine of it, he leads the flock to the back-side of the desert, and comes to the mountain of God, even to Horeb, little thinking, no doubt, that the days of his exile were about to close. The moment had come when God could use him, according to the desire which had induced him so many years previously to attempt the deliverance of his brethren from the yoke of Egypt; and now we have to consider the closing scene of that long period of preparation, which the Lord in His wisdom saw fit to order for His servant, and which He is now about to insure by the revelation of Himself. “The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” Moses' attention is arrested. Though occupied with his natural duties, they did not incapacitate him from recognizing the manifestations of the Lord. Nor need they ever. On the contrary, if rightly entered on, they guarantee assiduity to higher duties. The shepherds, watching their flocks by night, are the witnesses, chosen of God, for recording the greatest manifestation ever made to earth. It is one of the greatest proofs of subjection to God, to fulfill our daily toil patiently and perfectly; and yet to have the eye ever ready to observe the ways of God; which I apprehend is the force of that exhortation connected with prayer— “Watching thereunto with all perseverance,” &c. And this is the effect of a single eye, one that has the Lord's glory simply and wholly as its object.

“And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight; and when the Lord saw that he turned,” when it was evident that he desired to know the meaning of the Divine doings, “God called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.” The revelation of the Lord here is in grace; in a flame of fire, but consuming nothing; the glory of God coming near to man, and man finding nothing but mercy and loving kindness flowing from it. And yet, it was holy ground; and only unshod worshippers could draw near to it. It was, moreover, an expression of God drawing near to man, and not of man drawing near to God. It was to unfold, that from God's side there was nothing to perpetuate the distance and alienation which existed between man and God. And this was a great and precious and needed lesson for Moses. He must, in his own experience, learn God in His love for His people; and also, how man can be brought nigh to Him.

Thus the Lord presents Himself in a flame of fire in a bush, and reveals His tender feelings and interest for Israel. How grateful must such communications have been to Moses. After the long and dreary interval in winch it seemed that God had forgotten His people, he is instructed of the infinite love and interest with which He had regarded them all through, and of His gracious purpose of delivering them. And now, Moses is conscious of his own inability for such a service. He sees that it is not his own feelings that he is to act on and to gratify, but Jehovah's; the One who, though before him in a flame of fire, will consume nothing; and the immensity of whose eternal love and mercy must have contrasted strongly with the impulsive and erring impetuosity with which be demonstrated his own, forty years before. He is now deeply sensible of his incompetency, and says, “Who am I to go before Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” God will reassure, instruct, and prepare him; and we read in the following verses how this is done. He first communicates His intention and purpose to His servant. This must reassure him; not only in the proof of confidence which it evinces; but the soul, entering into the mind of God, is more ready and eager to undertake when the process and issue are before it. But more than this (for the teaching of God is perfect), Moses is taught to feel in himself the power of God; and this is grace and life. The link must be established between his own soul and God before he can fully enter into that between the people and God; and this soul-assuring lesson he is taught in three different ways. First, He is made to feel his possession of power, superior to that before which his nature would succumb. His rod having turned into a serpent (the symbolical form of Satan), Moses flees from it; but the Lord causes him to grasp it, and it again becomes the rod of power in his hand. Secondly, He learns that if his hand be leprous God can present it sound again; and, thirdly, he is instructed that the water of the river (the great source of blessing) if poured on the dry land by him should become blood; showing that God had the power of life. In all these three points he is taught in order that he might be qualified for the mission entrusted to him, and also feel himself equal to it. Moses still demurs. Though strengthened in soul he is deficient in utterance; but God is gracious and considerate in preparing his servants for the work in small things as well as great. He will relieve whatever embarrasses them. Aaron is provided as a mouthpiece, and all being arranged, “he took his wife and his sons and set them upon an ass and returned to the land of Egypt, with the rod of God in his hand.” How different from the manner in which he had left it, and how indicative is the contrast of what those 40 years of discipline must have wrought in and for him. Instead of an ignominious flight, fearing for his own life, the result of previous self-confidence and acting FOR God and independently of God, he now comes, small and weak in his own eyes, but invested with the power of God, in the calm easy dignity of one who feels that his only strength is in dependence on the Lord whose work he is about to enter on.

But ere this is entered on fully, there is one more question which must be settled between the Lord and Moses. And this gives us a remarkable instance of the exactitude of God's discipline. Either compromising to the habits of the Midianites, or despairing of ever again associating with his own nation, Moses had neglected to circumcise his son; and now, without repairing his error, which was a great one (considering his wife was a Gentile), he proceeds to enter on the Lord's service as if it were a matter of indifference. But, no; he must learn that nothing will be overlooked in one appointed to so high a post. His responsibilities must be equal to his calling. The Lord seeks to kill him: so inflexible is His holiness, and so strict is He in demanding obedience to His laws from one who fills the post of a servant, more than in any other. His wife repairs the inconsistency, but she does so reproachfully, and returns into her own country, while Moses pursues his way in company with Aaron.

What a finishing lesson this was just on the very scene of his long wished-for service. What an impression it must have made upon his soul, as the long desired morning, with all its interests, was breaking in upon him. No eminence in service, no amount of knowledge in the deepest things of God, will excuse his overlooking any of God's commandments. Nay, he must feel that, as to him much had been committed, of him much would be required. Implicit obedience to the word must mark the life and ways of the most eminent, and best instructed of servants. And with this, Moses' last lesson in this stage of his history, (one, moreover, which had been severely instilled into him), he passes on to the field of his labors. Emerging from the solitudes of Midian, he is to stand as God's witness before Pharaoh. Being prepared and made ready in a private school, as it were, he is now to demonstrate in a large and honorable sphere the result of his tuition. We shall here leave him for the present, as the varied activities of his service, fully considered, would lead us beyond the limits of this paper.

(To be continued.)

Discipline: 8. Moses

WE shall now look at the varied exercises which Moses passes through in fulfilling his service. We have looked at those which qualified him for service; but the servant of God needs a continuance of discipline to keep him ever and anon in dependence on God. With Moses this new order of discipline commences very early, indeed, we may say immediately on his entrance into the path of service.

Accompanied by Aaron he presents himself to Pharaoh, and announces God's summons to let His people go; but not only does Pharaoh refuse to comply, but he increases the burdens of the people in consequence of the demand. Here, then, was a disheartening commencement to a servant in his novitiate, after making a just appeal, and conscious that his message was from God. All it seems to effect is an open disavowal of God's rights, and an augmentation of the people's sorrows. Nor was this all. The people themselves do not hesitate to reproach him, as the cause of their increased troubles; the more sad and severe to him, doubtless, were these upbraidings, because they came from the very people whom he desired to serve. What can he do in such a strait? He returns to the Lord, and in bitterness or spirit refers the difficulty and discouragement to Him, the consequence of which is, that another page of instruction is opened to him. This was a moment for that peculiar discipline in a servant's life which, when effective, enables him to pursue his service independent of results. The general tendency is to judge service efficient if the results are satisfactory, and vice versa; but the real servant must keep his eye only on his Master's word and leave the result to Him. Our Lord, when He felt that his word and works were in vain, so that He reproached the cities where most of His mighty works were done, turns to the Father and says, “Father, I thank Thee, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.”

Moses must learn this self-same spirit, or his service will be characteristic of his own state, i.e., weak and unstable. A man without faith is double-minded, and a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

The Lord's instructions to him on this point are detailed in Ex. 6. He is there brought into an enlarged knowledge of God, as a preliminary to all further instructions. The more we know of God the easier is it to depend on Him. “Acquaint thyself with God and be at peace;” and the deeper our acquaintance with him, the greater is our calm and steady dependence on Him.

God, as Jehovah, the covenant God, here reveals Himself to Moses, a revelation not made to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, for none of them were called into the same line of service, or conflict with adverse powers. With them God had established his covenant to give Israel the land of Canaan, &c.; and this covenant He now brings forward in addition to the fresh revelation of Himself, in order to confirm the soul of Moses and enable him to bear up against casual reverses, assured that the result would be satisfactory, because it rested on God's word and covenant.

In a measure reassured, Moses presents himself to the children of Israel, but they hearken not to him for anguish of spirit and cruel bondage; and, still unequal to the service, he replies, when the Lord tells him to go again to Pharaoh, “Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me, and how shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips.” He had suffered so much from his own attempts to deliver in the energy of nature forty years before, that he is now more prone to despond, and the further he enters upon service the more does he find out its difficulties, and his own lack of qualifications for it. But the Lord will make His servant perfect and happy in His work; and accordingly He now gives Moses and Aaron a “CHARGE unto the people of Israel, and unto Pharaoh, King of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.” The CHARGE is the first thing to service. No certainty of character or purpose will do without it. “That which is committed unto thee,” (as Paul wrote to Timothy), is that which gives distinctiveness and point to our service. A man who knows not what his line of service is can never expect to fulfill it, or adequately to pursue it; but when he knows that he has received from the Lord a distinct charge or line of work, there is a sense of trust as well as the responsibility of trust. This charge is now given to Moses, verse 13, but still he feels his own insufficiency; and, mark! according as he is made to feel it, is he supplied from God with that which will counteract it.

First, He is made to rely on Jehovah, the covenant God, who had bound himself to bring this people unto the land of Canaan.

Second, a distinct charge is given to him, and if he believes that he is acting for Jehovah, he has now the prescribed result and effect of his mission, his appointed work marked out for him; and, Third, To silence every hesitation, and sense of unfitness, he is invested with power. The Lord says to him, “See, I have made thee a god unto Pharaoh;” and still more, he is commanded to repeat unto Pharaoh the miracle which had before re-assured his own soul at the burning bush—that of transforming his rod into a serpent. There, however, (i.e., at the burning bush,) he was made to take the serpent in his hand in order that his own individual faith might be established; here, the object is more to exhibit Moses before Pharaoh as invested with the power of God, so that this part of the miracle is not repeated.

This gracious instruction of the Lord perfects the discipline necessary for Moses' soul, in order to enter on his service so fully and fixedly that nothing can divert him from it, or make him doubt as to the result according to God; and after this he fulfills it with faithful and unflinching labor, strong in the power of God before Pharaoh, and without reproach from his brethren, until he reaches the grand result of this first stage of his service—viz., the deliverance of the people out of Egypt. From the time that his soul was thus really established in service until the night of the Passover, when he, with the people, marched out of the land of their captivity, was an interval highly honorable to Moses. But we don't dwell on it, as he was then acting uninterruptedly as God's instrument, the effect of the previous discipline which we have noticed, but no fresh phases of individual exercise are brought out.

Behold, then, the Israelites, having left Egypt with a high hand, encamped between Migdol and the sea; but what a testing there awaits them. What a crisis for Moses, at the moment of the successful issue of all his toil and anxiety! Success was all but attained when apparently insurmountable obstacles present themselves: Pharaoh and his host at one side, the sea with its raging waters on the other; and once more he is challenged by the unbelieving multitude for having brought them there to die because there were no graves in Egypt. But how calm and strong in faith is Moses at this critical moment. How different from the timorous notices we have had of him before! “Fear not,” says he, “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.” This was what he himself had learned during his forty years of discipline. Nature was to “stand still,” and faith to wait for God's salvation. He first calms the people, and then cries unto God himself. This scene describes one of the most important exercises in which a faithful guide to God's people is schooled—viz., to maintain unswerving confidence in God's succor in moments of embarrassment, and at the same time to receive from God the power and mode by which this succor can be successfully directed. He does both; he calms the people and honors the Lord by expressing the fullest confidence in Him; and then, looking to Him to realize his faith, he is directed by Him as to how the succor is to be afforded. How fully and blessedly is this direction given. “Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward; but lift thou up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea,” &c. What a strength and elevation this event must have afforded Moses; and how must such an extremity have taught him afresh the wisdom and magnitude of God's resources; and what a result! We read, “the people believed the Lord and his servant Moses.”

In chap. 15: 23-26, we see him passing through another exercise, and of a different order. Scarcely had the last echoes of the song of triumph died away, when the people murmur against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” The servant of God must be prepared for every shade of trial and disappointment. No matter what the amount of his services, he must expect no appreciation of them from the congregation, or at best be prepared to do without it, and look to the Lord alone. Moses must have felt this deeply, after the song of praise that had just passed their lips; but by such means and discipline the faithful servant is led into fellowship in spirit and in power, too, with man's best and greatest servant. He cries unto the Lord, and again is he instructed in the amplitude and perfection of God's resources for every variety of man's need. What a distinguished place, to be the medium through, which all these mercies flow! The exercise and the pressure may be very great for a moment. It may be Marah; sowing indeed with tears, but it is only “to reap with joy.” If the servant finds that there is not a moment in which he may rest from service on account of the need of the people of God, he is, on the other hand, made acquainted, in the deepest and truest way, with the resources of God; and is also made the channel of those resources himself. Thus was it with Moses here; he is told to cast the tree into the waters and they are made sweet.

In chap. 16 we are presented with another order of service which this well-tried servant learns and records. The trials of the people become a school to him for learning and attaining that service which was to meet their need, and while so doing his own soul was necessarily enlarged in the wisdom of which he was the minister. It is interesting and important for us to see, that for each need and trial Moses is taught a distinct and suited lesson, so that his own soul is growing in God while his service is affording the needed relief to the people.

In this chapter they felt the dearth of the wilderness so intensely (and this we must bear in mind was on the second month after leaving Egypt) that they murmured against Moses and against Aaron, and said, “Would to God that we had died in the land of Egypt where we did eat bread to the full.” Moses was the one who, under God, had led them into these circumstances; and must he not have felt how critical was the position? Yes, truly; for human help there was none. But so much the more must his soul have depended upon God, who thus exercised him, to cast him upon Himself and His own resources. And again the Lord communicates to him instruction suited to the occasion. “Behold I will rain down bread from heaven for you,” &c. This is the revelation to Moses. But the way in which he evangelizes it (if I may say so) is also recorded, and worthy of notice, in connection with our subject, as showing the nearness to God, and consequent searching and humbling of heart, which revelations of God's mercy effect. He desires the people to “come near” before the Lord who had heard their murmurings. He had known the effect in himself; and, as a wise master-builder, he would lead his brethren into the same, though it be by a different path. The glory of the Lord, and the resources of the Lord, had already instructed him; and now he seeks that the people may receive the same blessed instruction, though it be drawn forth by their discontent and murmurings. “And they looked toward the wilderness, and behold the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud,” &c. And they then hear His gracious provision for their need.

Let us note that a servant's discipline must always be in advance of the service required of him. He cannot lead beyond that point to which he himself has been led. But when the depth and reality of the truth has been established in his own soul, he is made the channel of it by various modes; sometimes by an unexpected revelation sometimes as an answer to his own prayer—sometimes, as we shall see in subsequent instances, by the manifestation of gift. Of the two latter we find a record in chap. 17.

At Rephidim he again suffers from the congregation, who are ready to stone him; but the Lord, even a very present help to him in time of trouble, invests him with peculiar power to effect relief for the rebellious people. Since he has been personally assailed, he must be personally honored—and by those, too, who had reproached and threatened him. The elders of Israel are called to see the water gush forth from the rock as Moses strikes it. Thus the Lord approves His servant before the heads of the people: and the servant's own soul is confirmed and enlarged in apprehension and appreciation of the power which God had given him for service.

At Rephidim, too, was it that the children of Israel first encountered mortal strife with any of the human family. Amalek comes against them. Moses is now placed in new and untried difficulties; and he determines that Joshua must encounter man, but he, in spirit, must be engaged with God. He will betake himself to the top of the hill, with the rod of God in his hand.

What a season of blessing to him, thus separated unto God—storing his heart and filling his soul with the assurances and evidences of God's might and mercy for His people. But at this very moment the sense of his own feebleness is made more convincing than ever. If he held up his hand, (an expression of dependence on God,) victory was secured to Israel; but if he let it fall, Amalek prevailed. A place of eminent service this, without doubt. But how humbling to Moses to know and to feel that he was too weak in nature to accomplish what the spirit of his mind so desired. His hands were heavy, and would have dropped but for the help and intervention of others. In the primary sense, we learn by this, as has often been before remarked, that the priesthood is necessary to sustain any service, however devoted; but in a secondary sense, and regarding the scene in its individual relation to Moses, we are taught that, when contending with man, the greater the eminence with regard to God, the more must our own insufficiency in nature be made to appear. No wonder Moses should have built an altar there, and called it, “Jehovah-nissi.” The conflict was with man—an unnatural contest. “Love not the world, because of offenses: and woe unto that man by whom the offense cometh.” But when it does come, there is no banner to shield against it but Jehovah. And at that stage of the soul's experience, Jehovah-nissi is its altar, or, in other words, the character of its worship.

The next incident recorded in Moses' history brings him before us in a lower point of view. He is influenced, and, in a measure, perverted by man. He had reached great eminence in service; he had just erected an altar in record of what God had been to him in his conflict with hostile man; but now he has to encounter the voice of nature, in the well-intentioned but pernicious advice of his father-in-law; and yielding to it, he morally sinks. In converse with Jethro, he seems to forget the lesson just taught him by the conflict with Amalek! and surrenders the service to which he was called, or part of it, without any counsel or even sanction from God. The assistance which he sought here from the heads of the people was of a very different order to that which he rightly accepted from Aaron and Hur in the conflict with Amalek. The latter was a help to himself personally; whereas the former was a transference of the duties imposed by the Lord on himself to others. Jethro had heard of all that the Lord had done for Moses and for Israel; and he comes to re-engage Moses with his wife and children, who it appears he had sent back. Jethro, I think, here morally represents the association amongst men which a servant of God may be enticed into by relationship; and who, while owning in common with him the work of the Lord, assumes an undue importance; for it was an assumption for an uncircumcised Gentile to arrogate to himself leadership of the people of God, by inducing Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel to join in fellowship with him. When the soul gets into a clouded position before God, it is comparatively easy to divert it from its responsibilities on the plea of inability. Moses is here induced to consider himself unequal to what God did not consider him unequal for. And though the arrangement is permitted, it must have been with loss to him. He is now at the mount of God, experiencing the fulfillment of God's promises to him at the burning bush, after having traversed a strange and wondrous path. But here, now at the end of it, after all the Lord's dealings and communications to him, he appears before us as susceptible of the influence of nature, even as other men—proving how little, in any position, is man to be accounted of.

Now, however, on the Mount of God, Moses is to enter on a new office, and fulfill a different mission.

Up to this he had been a deliverer and a ruler; now, he is to be a lawgiver and a prophet—one who, as revealing the mind of God to the people, is thus, in a sense, a mediator between God and them. Moses, as a highly favored servant, must be instructed in this blessed line. God had met His people in their need and delivered them, but as yet, like many a delivered one, they do not apprehend the nature of God. The pressure of impending ruin had been removed, but they have yet to learn God, and how utterly ruined they are in His sight, and Moses, the instructed of God, is now to instruct them in this.

He is, therefore, called up into the mount, and brought into a nearness to the Lord, and given a revelation of Him different from what he had previously seen in the burning bush. There it was all grace. Though “holy ground,” the aspect of the Lord was one of grace and compassion; here, it is God's terrible majesty, the claims of a holy God on man, and how great must His distance be from a man. Both these lessons were necessary for Moses in order to fit him for the place assigned him towards the people of God; and it is always that manner of God's discipline to make His servants practically pass through and learn in a fuller and more vivid way that particular line of truth of which He designs them to be the channel. Stephen saw the Glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, before he made his announcement that heaven was open, and that he saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God—that is, he saw a greater and a fuller truth than he communicated; but the greater only qualified him the more for communicating the lesser, which last was the suited measure for his audience. So Moses, now in the mount, divinely instructed in the nature and mind of God, is thus qualified for revealing Him to the people. He sees Him in His righteousness making a demand on man on earth and still in the flesh.

Having pronounced the law, and in type and figure sprinkled the blood of purgation, he is called (Ex. 24) to receive not only the law, engraven on stones, but also a much fuller revelation of God's interest for His people; the provision of grace based on the Lord's foreknowledge of their inability to keep the law. In these interesting scenes it is not the subject of them which must engage us here, but the blessed way in which Moses is prepared and qualified for the fulfillment of the task entrusted to him. He is called up into the mount, on which the glory of God rested. Six days the cloud covered the mount, and on the seventh day God called unto Moses out of the midst of that glory which was like devouring fire in the eyes of the children of Israel; and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

A fit preparation, truly, for one who is to be commissioned to set forth on earth a pattern of the things which he saw. Thoroughly detached from earth, and enwrapped in the cloud which surrounded the glory of God, his soul was impressed with the wondrous subject and detail of his commission. Then it was that the Lord said unto him, “Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them, according to all that I show thee.” Thus we have an insight into God's manner of educating His servant for His own purposes; and let us here especially note two things; First, That Moses is near God while learning the truth, and knows in himself the effect of being near Him; and, second, he learns the truth consciously from God; he is not only near Him while learning it, but he knows that he has learned it from Himself. If we be not near God while we are learning our knowledge will be profitless; and if it be not from Him that we learn we may rejoice in the truth for a moment, but, like the disciples, it will require to be recalled to our remembrance by the Holy Ghost, which we know is very commonly the case.

But before Moses has entered on this new mission, the people of Israel have made an idolatrous calf, and he is summoned from his exalted position in the mount to witness the departure of the people from the covenant just made; and here he gives expression to sentiments which testify to us how deeply he had learned to care for the glory of God. (Ex. 32:11-13.) In this point of view, it is an utterance hardly equaled in the whole of Scripture; but the previous forty days and forty nights enabled him thus to appreciate it, and every step he takes in this trying moment declares how fully he had entered into the mind of God.

He breaks the tables of the covenant, for they had already been broken on man's side, and this is no time to publish them. Then he took the idol which they had made and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it on the water, and made the people drink of it. Their sin must not only be put away, but they must taste in themselves the reality of it. Then, he insists on separation from evil, and requires every one who is on the Lord's side to slay the recreants. In a day of universal failure, the witnesses of repentance and returning allegiance cannot too strongly enunciate their severance from their former associations, annihilating every trace of them, even unto death, and Moses, the well-prepared vessel, leads the way in this.

Thus having, so to speak, prepared them for God, as repentant and separate, he returns to God for them to make an atonement. The Lord refuses to go up with them, and desires them to strip themselves of their ornaments, that He may know what to do with them. In this moment of great suspense, while the people are waiting under the hand of God, Moses, learned in the holiness of the mind of God, knows what to do for the people, and how to restore relations.

He pitches the tabernacle afar off from the guilty camp, in order that every one who, humbled under a sense of sin, desires to seek the Lord, may seek Him there, apart from the defilement. This act met the mind of the Lord, and restored His presence to Israel; the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord speaks to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend, and not only promises that His presence shall go with him, but also accedes to his request that He will resume His place in the midst of Israel. How blessedly Moses is enlarged in the mind of God! Difficulties the most serious, are only unfolding to him the more the resources of God; but he only reaches those resources by first responding to the holiness of God.

At this conjuncture, he learns both God and man; the latter as unreliable and failing in every circumstance, and the Lord, as the resource of his heart and his portion forever. And hence, when God had acceded to all his desires, he breaks forth in the earnest entreaty, “I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory.” “I have seen enough of humanity to recoil from it. I have seen enough of the blessed God to desire to see Him in consummated glory.” This desire was partially answered here; but still more distinctly when, on the Mount of Transfiguration, he, with Elijah, talked with the Lord about his decease, for, and on account of, this very stiff-necked Israel, as well as for all the redeemed.

We have now followed Moses in his ascent to the highest point, which was ever accorded to man. To the Apostle Paul, a man in Christ, greater, and clearer, and peculiar glories were revealed, but “there arose not a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” Paul (though unconscious of being in the body) must needs have a thorn in the flesh, lest he should be puffed up. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find Moses ere long demonstrating that he is not able, through a sense of his own infirmity, to maintain the great position assigned him.

He who had seen so much of God's power, forgets and ignores it, when pressed by the evil and unbelief of the people, (Num. 11) and exclaims, “I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.” Man cannot sustain the high position God calls him to, without notices now and then of his own weakness. If we have not the sentence of death in ourselves, we shall trust in ourselves. Had Moses, who had been in the glory, known this, he would not have looked to himself either in strength or weakness, but to “God who raiseth the dead.”

He is now humbled before the seventy elders of Israel, before who in he had previously been exalted. The spirit which was upon him is put upon them. We have seen that at the suggestion of his father-in-law he had before allowed this leaven to enter in a milder form, but now, as is ever the case when yielded to, it has worked to a fuller development. This is a time of humbling for Moses, but no less interesting to us than the time of his exaltation, as illustrating the nature of the divine school in which he is. His submission and acknowledgment of the hand of the Lord is very instructive, and his interest in the work nothing abated by being in a measure supplanted. He rebukes Joshua for envying for his sake. But though the Lord had thus dealt with the unbelief of His servant, He will not allow man to undervalue or slight him. The cause of reproach appeared just, for he had married an Ethiopian woman, and it appears that Aaron and Miriam were encouraged by the late humbling which Moses had undergone; but the Lord in a most signal and terrific manner avenges him and makes him the intercessor for the guilty parties. The Lord may rebuke him Himself, but man must not; and the way in which Moses bore these taunts evinces how deeply learned he was in God's interest for himself and how humbled in spirit. We have seen his righteous anger burst forth when the glory of God was at stake; but when personally assailed, he is silent.

Another instance of this we find in the case of Korah. (Num. 16.) Instead of vindicating himself and his office, Moses refers the decision to the Lord, who pronounces it by terrible judgment on the offenders, and then instructed in the mind of God, he knows what will stay the plague among the people, and he makes use of the priesthood here, as before in the case of the golden calf and the unbelief at Kadeshbarnea. He had himself mediated on their behalf before God.

We now come to the last scene which we shall notice in the history of Moses, and that is his forfeiture of his right to enter Canaan, because he failed to sanctify the Lord in the eyes of the people. This occurred in the thirty-ninth year of their wanderings, just as he was about to see the happy termination of all his labors and the fulfillment of God's promises. Moses seems here to have failed in those very points in which he has before appeared most eminent. He speaks “unadvisedly with his lips” and fails to sanctify the Lord in the eyes of the people, (that Lord whose glory was so dear to his heart,) and thus disqualifies himself from planting the people in the land of their inheritance, when on its very borders. When the congregation murmured for water, God tells him “to take the rod and gather the assembly together, thou and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes, and it shall give forth his water.” But instead of this, Moses, carried away by his irritation, first upbraids the people, and says, “Must WE fetch you water out of this rock?” and then he lifts up his hand and smites the rock twice. The Lord was now acting in grace, and through the priesthood towards the people. The rock was not to be smitten again, Moses is not at this moment in fellowship with the mind and ways of the Lord—he has failed in his mission and he must forfeit his leadership. Such is the manner of God's discipline! No amount of faithful service will mitigate or divert the penalty of assumption in that service. Paul, contrary to the warning of the Spirit, would go to Jerusalem, and a prison was his penalty for many a day afterward.

God may and will, no doubt, use His servants in the place which their own failure has entailed on them: (Paul was thus used in a new and special service—as his Epistles were to him, Deuteronomy was to Moses:) but He must subdue the willfulness of their nature which has led them to act independently of Him. Moses began his course by attempting a right work in his own strength, and endured many a day of exile on account of it; and now he lays himself down on Pisgah, after beholding the glorious land, from which he is excluded because in acting for the Lord he acted independently of the Lord, whose servant he was. His first failure bears a close analogy to his last. But though thus chastened as to his service and mission, he loses nothing of his personal nearness to the Lord, and, indeed, gains in this way, for the Lord Himself shows him the land. So was it with Paul; while suffering the penalty of his failure in prison, he found more than ever that Christ was everything to him, and more than service; and, no doubt, Moses on Pisgah must have felt that God was greater to him than even the promised land, or than leadership thereto. At any rate, his submission to the Lord's will is very beautiful, and his transference of his own dignity and office to Joshua.

But, nevertheless, this transference WAS a chastisement to Moses as a servant, and while his very eye feeds on the inheritance, he is suffering crucifixion in his vile body. But, for that body Satan may contend in vain. Michael rescues it from his grasp, for the Lord claims all of him. The body is the Lord's, to whom be honor and glory now and forever. Amen.

Discipline: 9. Joshua

JOSHUA.

THE first notice which we get of Joshua is in Ex. 17:9, where he is introduced to us as appointed by Moses to lead the choice men of Israel against Amalek. From the appointment we must conclude that he was the best qualified for the post; but what interests us most in studying the history of any of God's servants, is the peculiar aspect or condition in which they are first presented to us; for in these first presentations we may behold the grand characteristics which will distinguish their course.

So with Joshua-type, as well as servant, of Christ, he is presented to us on the outset as a warrior chief, prepared to encounter the adversaries of Israel, a fitting expression for one so eminently typical of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Captain of our salvation. His first recorded engagement is against Amalek, who represents to us the flesh or the natural man in active opposition to the progress of the people of God. Egypt is more properly the world, Amalek is the flesh personated, Assyria is nature in its attractions and influences. The conflict with Amalek was the first intuition of warfare to Israel and characteristically Joshua, for the first time, appears on the scene as leader. He discomfits the enemy by the edge of the sword; but while thus victorious he is made to know on what his success depends, even on Moses who is on the hill top with the rod of God in his hand. He learns to lead the people to victory by being himself subject to the vicissitudes of conflict while depending on an unseen agency for success. Success wanes, not uncertainly, but still wanes; and in the very alternations of the conflict he learns to depend on God, and succeeds because he depends. This illustrates to us very pointedly the true manner of conflict, and how needful it is for us to be disciplined in order to ensure success. It exemplifies to us practically that word, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worked in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” The conflict is a real one, literally a hand-to-hand engagement, and success oscillates alternately in favor of each of the combatants. God is the energizer in us both to will and to do. Faith sustains Joshua. He knows that Moses is on the hill-top with the rod of God in his hand, and thus is he taught at the outset of his history to endure the vicissitudes of actual warfare in dependence and to be wondrously victorious. It gives great vigor to the soul to have grappled with the actual difficulties of our onward march, and in the strength of the Lord to have conquered: to be able to say, “I know how to be abased and how to abound.... I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

This Joshua learns and expresses in this his first essay as captain-general of Israel; and as it was his first achievement and indicative of all which should follow, even as David in slaying Goliath, the Lord directs that it should not only be written in a book, but rehearsed in the ears of Joshua, “for the Lord will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” What an encouragement such a memorial must have been to him in his many subsequent engagements! Well might he fall back upon it, if tempted to be discouraged. If the Lord had sworn to annihilate this his first enemy, would He not be equally faithful as to the rest?

We next hear of Joshua in Ex. 24, and he there appears before us as minister to Moses, when the latter is called to the Mount to receive the tables of testimony. This notice, though scanty, is very important, for it shows us that the man of action down here was no stranger to the solemn and wondrous manifestation of the invisible God. He not only learned how to war against the enemies of God's people, but he learned also the realities of God's glory, for which in His people he continued down here. In secret he was (even as was the Lord Jesus more perfectly) in communion with God's glory, but outwardly a warrior from his youth; and in both aspects was God forming him for subsequent service. Communion with glory on the Mount was as necessary as the uncertainties of conflict on the battle-field. There are what we may call circles, or distinct forms in the school of God. The warfare with Amalek was one circle, or one class of service already passed by Joshua; and in the Mount he is in another, that of communion with God, an enlarging of his acquaintance with the mind of God—a most blessed season of instruction; but even in this high association, Joshua retains his peculiar characteristic. When Moses turned and went down from the Mount, and the sound of Israel's apostasy reaches their ears, Joshua's comment on it is, “there is a noise of war in the camp.” His mind, evidently imbued with warlike scenes, interprets the shootings of idolatry, according to its leading impression. But when the idolatrous scene is unfolded before him, and Moses pitched the tabernacle outside the camp, Joshua evinces the value that the blessed season of instruction in the Mount had been to him, by taking the place of separation and refusing to mix himself with the defiled camp. We read, “Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.” He had learned what it was to abide in the secret of the Almighty, and though the service of Moses might call him to go to and fro, this young man whom God was instructing, knew it better for him to remain with God in the separated tabernacle. Service did not call him to the camp, and therefore he remained entirely set apart unto God from it. If there be not a distinct call for service, it is better not to associate with the defiled thing at all. Moses has a service to render, and he can enter and tarry in the camp without damage; but if we go like Peter “to see the end,” we are sure to suffer loss, because we thus gratify a true desire, in a human way. As a rule, if there be no room for service, let us be as separate as possible, for the separation will prepare us for good and effectual service by and by; and even if we be not introduced into this, our souls have drunk in more deeply of the mind of God.

Mere expressible knowledge of God's will and counsel is not the full effect of nearness to Him; but rather the sense of what suits Him and meets His mind: in fact, holiness, the highest attainment, and the great end of the Father's discipline.

But Joshua is still a learner. The next notice that we get of him (Num. 11) is in the self-same tabernacle; but here he openly exhibits a misapprehension of the mind of God. That very truth which had before saved him from defiled association, and preserved him in unison with God's mind, here contracts his spiritual vision when he makes use of it to circumscribe God, instead of regarding it as only in part a revelation of His mind. This is a very important connection, for it is God Himself, and not any single line of His truth which is to counsel me, or determine my walk and judgment. To remain in the separated tabernacle was plainly the truth and way of blessing, when Israel was in apostasy; but when Eldad and Medad prophesy in the camp, God's Spirit must be acknowledged, though they do not come to the separated tabernacle.

Hence Moses rebukes Joshua, as really caring for the things of men, and not for the things of God. But a rebuke of this kind is not intended to dishearten, for mistakes, in personal attachment, never bebar us from the highest and closest confidence the very next moment. The heart is right, but it has taken counsel from the flesh and must be rebuked; but this being done, it is set free for God. Peter expressed the mind of Satan as to the Lord's death and was sharply rebuked for his misapprehension, but he is not disqualified from accompanying the Lord to the holy mount, nor is Joshua here disqualified for the special service of a spy. Error is dealt with very much according to what it springs from. It may be from natural, and therefore unacceptable, affection, or from indifference or from malice. The ignorance of Mary Magdalene is met and counteracted with a tenderness very different to that which the seven apostles who went d fishing, are corrected and enlightened.

Joshua, then, in spite of his late error, is appointed to go and search the land, and Moses distinguishes him by the name Jehoshua instead of Oshea. This intimates to us that he was now, according to his new name, entering on a new lime of service. He had hitherto been only Moses' minister or servant, to carry out his instructions. Now, he with eleven other heads of the people, is sent on a special mission to inspect the land, and report accordingly. Caleb and Joshua alone report favorably, and bear witness for God and for the goodness of that which He had sworn to give them, in the midst of the unbelief of their associates. What a trial they had to pass through, and how deeply they felt the sin of the people is evinced by their action. They rent their clothes, and while beautifully bearing witness to the good land, they declare that their entrance therein depended not on their own strength, but on the Lord's delight in His people. But all the congregation bade stone them with stones, when the glory of the Lord, bursting on the tabernacle, “in sight of all Israel,” arrests their evil intention. Let us state here, the peculiarity of the education to which Joshua was subjected. He had already been associated with God as the Deliverer, but this was his first acquaintance with the place which God had promised His people, and to which he himself was eventually to lead them.

Moses and Joshua, as servants, had a different mission. Moses was to lead the people out of the world—out of Egypt; Joshua, to lead them into Canaan. Moses, typifies the Lord combating the devil down here; Joshua, as leading us into all the blessed results of life and rest: and to fit him for the high mission Joshua must be disciplined. He must simultaneously see the land and see and feel the nature of the people he has to lead thither. And not only so, but having seen the land, proved in his soul, and confessed with his mouth, his faith in God's purpose and power to bring them in, and endured the opposition and persecution of this very people on account of it, he must wait the lapse of 40 years before he can behold and realize the works which his faith reckoned on.

What a trial of faith! what a prolonged education must this have been! A break seems now to occur in his history a break in the narrative, but surely not in the moral of it. Failing to animate the people to a sense of their calling, he retires, as it were, from public life; but only to resume his place and function there the moment it would be acceptable, and consequently we do not hear of him again till he is commissioned to lead the people into Canaan.

These forty years must have been a time of great deepening of his faith. As he saw the unbelievers, one after another, die off, until he with Caleb was left alone of the former generation; each death must have confirmed to him how blessed is faith, and how fatal to all blessing and service is unbelief. Like Moses in Midian, but far more honorably, he had to be by for forty years, waiting to be the champion of a faith which the people would not receive, though nothing else could bless them.

He would not be employed on any lower occasion, and therefore he remains for this lengthened period waiting until the time should come when an opportunity would be afforded him for proving, that “holding fast the beginning of our confidence” has great recompense of reward. No number of years can wear out faith. The wilderness had to be traversed all that time, not that faith should lose its origin, but that it should sustain him until the moment came for its fulfillment.

There never was a faith without a corresponding work, sooner or later, and this explains that passage in James, “the scripture was justified when it said Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.” The faith must not be surrendered until the work declares it. It sustains the soul in the interval, in the blessing of the work, according to the strength and vividness of it.

The thread of Joshua's history is resumed where it broke off. he had assured Israel that they were well able to go up and possess the land; and at the end of the wilderness journey, when Moses is disqualified for leading them into it, Joshua appears on the scene again; the time is come; he is ordained for this special service. (Num. 27:18- 22.) He might often have wondered to what end was the faith which forty years before had lighted up his soul, and enabled him to proclaim the glories of the inheritance, but every germ of the Spirit produces its fruit. Faith must always verify itself. The less prospect there is of a declaration, the more is the soul thrown back on the convictions which faith produces; and this action necessarily increases faith, because it confirms its reality unsupported by anything outward. If held at all, it must be held from God. The visions presented to one's soul by the Holy Ghost, are not dreams, merely affecting us for the moment, but if of the Spirit they must be realized sooner or later.

Very fully was Joshua's faith realized; and now, “full of the spirit of wisdom,” and prepared by all these years of discipline, he is not only ordained by Moses, who laid hands on him, but personally commissioned and encouraged by the Lord for this high and honorable mission. “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread on, that have I given you,” was now the Lord's word to Joshua.

Traverse any of the endless domains of glory, and that will be yours forever; traverse it, and the verity and value of it will be ensured in testimony down here, even as the sight of Jesus and the glory was to Stephen.

We must remember that Joshua, properly speaking, is the continuation of Moses, both typifying the Lord Jesus in different aspects. Moses conducts me unto the death of Christ; Joshua conducts me victoriously out of it, carrying his spoils with him; and therefore when the Lord commissions Joshua, the son of Nun, “Moses' minister,” He says, “Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give them.... Be strong and of good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them.” According to the terms of this commission, he was not only to lead them into possession, but, by dividing the inheritance, to invest them with assured occupation; and this typified the closing act of our Lord, which He intimated on earth when He said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Joshua's service is not consummated until this is accomplished, and therefore we should be prepared to find in the second part of his history the trials and difficulties which occur to hinder this settlement; and how interesting to us to have these hindrances. He encounters and overcomes them, and herein instructs us; for though we encounter them, it is often very slowly that we overcome them.

Joshua, years before, had believed that God could and would bring them in. This was his foundation, for “,without faith it is impossible to please God.” But he is now realizing that faith which he had so long enjoyed, and he is not indolent therein. He announces to the officers, “Within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in and possess the land.” There is neither dilatoriness or imprudent haste in entering on what God had called him to. “Prepare you victuals,” he says; the onward path was to be entered on calmly, preparedly, but heartily, and we may add, “Sanctify yourselves, (says Joshua) for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders for you.” I pass over the wondrous scene of the passage of Jordan as to its import, which has been fully dwelt on elsewhere; the relation to Joshua is what we have to do with here. The Lord's object in it with regard to him may be seen in chap. 3:7; 4:14. “This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel,” &c. Almost singly had he forty years before stood firm for God's purpose and power amid the opposition and unbelief of the people. Now he was to be magnified before all Israel, and the Lord's presence with him proved to be as veritable as it was with Moses. It was a glorious passage in his history, and corresponding to the strong and elevated character of his faith. Joshua, while typifying the Lord Jesus in his success, is, on the other hand, a sample for us in the struggles and conflicts which he passes through ere he arrives at success. The difficulties, our difficulties, are there; but our Joshua has surmounted them for us; and, blessed be God, the practical success may be ours too, for “it is he that worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

I do not undertake to write the life of Joshua, and must therefore confine myself (after first merely enumerating his great achievements) to the exercises which his soul passes through.

His first rehearsement in leadership is passing the Jordan; 2nd, the rolling off of Egypt's reproach at Gilgal; 3rd, the fall of Jericho, or taking possession of the land; 4th, chap. 15, dividing the inheritance. These comprise his great successes. His exercises we shall now consider in detail. Foremost of these is the discomfiture at Ai. This was the first check in his bright career. Jordan passed—the reproach of Egypt rolled off—the walls of Jericho fallen to the earth, through faith—the possession of the land entered on in the most distinguished way,—what must have been his distress and disappointment when he saw Israel flee before the men of Ai! Joshua is little prepared for any reverse. Blessing and success had followed him like a swelling tide; and he is now in agony. He rends his clothes and falls to the earth. He must now learn for the first time how much man may fail in scenes of the fullest blessing. He had seen their failure in the wilderness; but here is failure and discomfiture in Canaan. And this brings strange and peculiar distress on the soul. How well can the heart understand the cry, “O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turneth their back before their enemies?” The greater the blessing and truth known and enjoyed, the greater the dismay does discomfiture cause to the heart most true to the glory of God. But Joshua, like many of ourselves, had to learn an important lesson in this stage of his history. It was this—that no amount of previous acquisition or enjoyment can secure us against defeat and overthrow, if in spirit we have connived at, or become associated with, principles or practices contrary to God. In ignorance of the cause, he prays, mourns, and even remonstrates with the Lord. His faith wavers in the intensity of his distress. But it appears from the Lord's rebuke to him that he lacked spiritual wisdom in so doing; for such would have concluded from a previous knowledge of God that he would not have permitted defeat to have overtaken His people, had there not been some grievous departure from Him. He ought thus to have searched for the concealed evil, instead of upbraiding the Lord. Prayer will never compensate for neglected action; it leads to action—seeks light and strength for action. But if I use not the light I already possess, no amount of prayer will obtain more for me; for if I believe not the lesser revelation, I am not prepared to receive the greater.

The Lord chides Joshua for lying before Him in ignorant, inactive mourning. He says, “Get thee up. Wherefore liest thou before me? Israel had sinned,” &c. And goes on to announce what must be done in order to retain His presence among them, and consequent success.

Let us note here that Israel was now entering on the inheritance—representing to us God's kingdom and the heavenly portion of His saints. They were as one people. The sin of one affected the whole; not spiritually, but nationally. With us it is spiritually; and we should be warned, that if such manifest disaster was occasioned on account of the sin of one man, among those who were only united nationally and in the flesh, how much more is it so in the Church, where each one is a member of the one body in Christ, and united in spirit, and not merely in nature.

It was new to Joshua to hear that the secret departure from God of one man in the army could so disastrously interrupt the progress and blessing of all Israel. And he is crushed by it, and almost loses hold for the moment of the faith that so characterized him. But in his deepest distress mark how true to his sense of God's greatness, and how anxiously God's glory is before him! “What wilt thou do with thy great name?” is his first anxiety.

The first line of action prescribed by the Lord is inquiry. There must be a full presentation of all the congregation before God. Great scrutiny, patient and anxious investigation, is necessary. The lot is cast; but the whole decision is of the Lord. And the guilty party, being convicted and exposed, confesses—after Joshua's touching appeal to give glory to that Lord whose glory was so dear to his own heart, confesses how and when and where he had taken of the accursed thing.

Joshua, after his deep exercise, has proved himself equal to the emergency. Having “risen up early” to discover the cause, he is prompt and decided in judging and executing judgment on the transgressor. Summary and unrelenting must it be! Not an article belonging to the originator escaped the flame of extirpation. Joshua now expounds and witnesses to the principle, that the nearer a man is to God, the more he is within the circle of His greatest blessings, the more distinctly and entirely must he denounce everyone and everything derogatory to His glory. The Joshua who fears not the external foe—who has seen all creation bow to His conquering tread, is the same as he who is valiant and faithful and effective in subduing and purging out the internal evil. The two are inseparable. Power is power, in whatever form it may be exercised. Power over the Canaanite—the opponent to our realization of our heavenly inheritance—insures power over internal evil. If Joshua had learned the one gloriously, and with a high hand, he now learns the other deeply and sorrowfully, in secret counsel with God, and no less wondrous intervention of His power. Let us remember that the greater victors we are as to the inheritance, the stricter separatists shall we be from everything unsuited to the mind of God, which pervades and reigns in those holy places.

The sin of Achan was no common sin. It had a two-fold enormity. It was a double transgression against God, and of a character which, when successful, insures the fall of the heavenly warrior.

Achan had taken a garment accursed of God, and gold and silver, which were devoted to God's treasury; thus, in symbol and essence, disclosing the corruption of the heart, which, while advancing into the fairest displays of grace, has the treachery to seek its own gratification at God's expense. It was the selfsame spirit of those who “serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies;” and, at the same time, by fair speeches (by a respectable outward walk) deceive the hearts of the simple: thus embarrassing the congregation of God by departing from the truth declared to them for their own private ends.

Joshua, having graduated through this great exercise and its results, is now taught how he is to succeed against Ai: no longer in an open and distinguished way, as at Jericho, for failure entails results even after the breach is healed. The conquest, however, is no less effective, and faith can discern the same amount of spiritual power, although the army is less distinguished. But Joshua had yet more to learn; and chap. ix. unfolds another, and a difficult, order of trial, which harasses and besets him. And one brought on, too, by a temporary lack of dependence on and reference to God on his part and that of the princes. The snare is not now from inside, from false allegiance or unfaithfulness, but from outside. The Gibeonites “did work wilily,” and Joshua deceived by them made peace with them, neglecting to ask counsel of the Lord. Here was the real cause of the snare proving efficacious, for whenever dependence on God is lost sight of for a single moment, even in the very flush of victory, failure must ensue. This was Joshua's first lesson, as we have seen in his past conflict with Amalek; and even now, after so many years of discipline and victory, it causes a flaw in his onward course.

Achan's sin was against God; that of the Gibeonites more against Israel. Man assuming before man to be what he is not, in order to be accepted. The sin being different the punishment is different; the former was total and unsparing condemnation; the latter perpetual and public infliction. The deceiving party are the most severely dealt with; they are made subservient to the interests of Israel; but the deceived, i.e., Israel, also suffer, for had they followed the Lord's way and mind, the subjugation would have been much more perfect.

No doubt, Joshua learned much of God's mind in all these peculiar trials, and immediately after he enters on a glorious and unbroken career of victory, in which no check occurs to the remainder of his course. Highly honored and owned of God, foe after foe is subdued, and the Lord even stops the course of creation (the sun and moon stand still) “at the voice of a man.” What a moment that must have been, when, after treading on the necks of all their enemies, Joshua and his host smote and utterly destroyed them from Kadeshbarnea to Gaza—Kadesh, the scene of the people's former unbelief, and of Joshua's firm and enduring faith!

The next important era in this history is the allotment of the inheritance to each, chap. 13.—19., according to the special commandment of the Lord; and this being done by Joshua, he himself is given a personal inheritance, (verse 50,) in which he builds a city and dwells therein. It was in perfect keeping, the possessions being marked out and plans prepared, the leader properly rests; even as did the Lord Jesus Christ, who, having perfected His work, sat down until His enemies be made His footstool. The heavens received Him, though earth rejected Him, and He now rests until the whole universe shall how to His own.

Joshua, in practical achievement, presents to us four distinct blessings connected with this new and heavenly inheritance:-1St, the triumph of the waters of Jordan; 2nd, the rolling off the reproach of Egypt consequent on which was eating of the old corn of the land, the produce of the heavenlies; 3rd, taking possession from Jericho onward; 4th, dividing the inheritance to each tribe, and assuring each of his own; which exemplifies to us that acquaintance with the inheritance which God only reveals by His Spirit, “for it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God has prepared for them that love Him.”

On the other hand, he had three great conflicts and painful pages of instruction in connection with his leadership into Canaan.

He had to learn how the whole army could be enfeebled and shorn of strength by the defilement of one man.

How he himself could be deceived and ensnared by neglect of asking counsel of the Lord.

3. (And this is his last). How little he could depend on the congregation of Israel, adhering to the place and path of blessing to which they had been called. This trial is presented to us (chap. 23., 24.) as the closing scene of his service. He had, through God's goodness, led them to wondrous blessing. God had been faithful, but they will not be faithful or a witness to His mercy to them. What a sorrow to Joshua after all had been accomplished according to God's promise and his own faith fully answered, to know of a certainty that no reliance can be placed on the congregation! Its conviction must have been early and deeply instilled into him from the time that he had heard the idolatrous sounds emanating from the camp as he descended the holy Mount with Moses; so that, as we often see, the trials of the commencement and end of his course closely correspond to one another. How afflicting to the spirit after being used largely to make known the blessing of God, and after seeing souls in the enjoyment of them, to forsee that ere long there will be few or none to appreciate them! This trial the Apostle Paul was enduring when he laments that all Asia had turned from him, and the same now awaited Joshua.

But what was his resource? He took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord, and said unto all the people, “Behold this stone shall be a witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words which he spoke unto us; it shall therefore be a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God.” This stone typified Christ, and looking to Him as the only sure Witness, “the faithful and true,” Joshua closes his career. His heart earnest to maintain the works and truth of God, hopeless as to man, but assured and at rest because of the one great and chief Corner-stone the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, to whom be glory forever and ever.

John 1:17. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” The law told man what he ought to be. It did not tell him what he was. It told him of life if he obeyed, of a curse if he disobeyed; but it did not tell him that God was love. It spoke of responsibility; it said, “Do this, and live.” All this was perfect in its place; but it told neither what man was nor what God was: that remained concealed, but that is the truth. The truth is not what ought to be, but what is—the reality of all relationships as they are, and the revelation of Him who, if there are any, must be the center of them. Now that could not be told without grace; for man was a ruined sinner, and God is love. And how tell, moreover, that all relationship was gone, morally? For judgment is not a relationship, but the consequence of the breach of one. Hence, Christ is the truth. For sin, grace, God Himself, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, even, are revealed as they are; what man is in perfection in relationship with God; what man's alienation from God; what obedience, what disobedience; what sin, what God, what man, what heaven, what earth—nothing but finds itself placed where it is in reference to God, and with the fullest revelation of Himself—while His counsels even are brought out, of which Christ is the center,.

Discipline: 10. Gideon

In order to understand and appreciate Gideon's history and line of service, we must survey the condition of God's people when he was called out to be a witness and a servant among them.

Israel had been under the oppressive rule of Midian for seven years. For a perfect period they were ruled over by their enemies, because they had rebelled against the rule of God, and are thus taught in the land of blessing and privilege the contrast between the rule of God and that of man. We are always ruled by some one or some thing; and, if not by God, by that power which is inimical to God and his people; and to this power we are often brought into subjection, in order that we may learn how much better is the sway of God where our passions are controlled, than that under which our very nature is worn out and harassed. This is a discipline to which all the people of God are liable, and of which the Church has had bitter experience; for instead of enjoying her privileges and blessings, she has brought herself under the power of the world, to be harassed and disquieted, searching here and there in the dens of the mountains and the caves and strongholds, how to enjoy a momentary respite from the grinding oppression which has judicially been inflicted, because of her rejection of the Lordship of Christ.

The servant and the witness must always be equal to the state of things on which he is to act. He must have suffered with the people from the circumstances of trial; he must have known the depths of misery to winch they have been reduced; he must know what he is to emerge from, and reach unto, or he cannot witness or serve the people according to their need. He must have endured himself, and know the sorrow of the judgment, or he could not appreciate the deliverance which he is appointed to conduct. Paul was the most bigoted Pharisee, and of all. men knew most of the evil effect of their prejudices. Hence he was able, when taught of God, most effectually and accurately to expose and confute them. In nature he had gone into the depths of prejudices, that in grace he might leave none of them uncorrected or undisclosed; for the very evil our own nature has led us into, the Lord will use to make His servants skillful in denouncing and repudiating it. “When thou are converted, strengthen thy brethren.”

Gideon was thus prepared; not, as yet, by a knowledge of his own evil nature, but by a practical identification, in the circumstances in which the people of Israel were plunged through their own failure. He suffered with them, and no doubt had joined in their cry to the Lord on account of the Midianites. But before he, as the deliverer, is introduced on the scene, the Lord answers that cry by exposing to the people (by the mouth of a prophet) how they had departed from Him. (Judg. 6:8-10.) The first great dealing of the Lord with the soul is to show it its dereliction and failure. The word of God pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Its great action is to reveal to the soul its condition, and in the former dispensation the prophets acted the part which the word does now. By them the secrets of hearts were made known and convicted. So when the Lord has disclosed to the woman of Samaria her moral condition, she immediately pronounced Him a prophet.

Here, then, we find the people prepared for approaching deliverance by the conviction of their consciences; and this being done, the angel of the Lord immediately opens communications with the appointed deliverer, whose fitness for the work is evidenced by the position and occupation in which he is found. Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.” This was characteristic of the man. The iron had entered into his soul, but his strength had not failed him in the day of adversity, and real strength is that which is equal to the demand for it, and the emergency tests an otherwise dormant ability. Gideon's energy eats equal to the emergency; he was strengthening the things that remain that were ready to die, and while evincing his faithfulness in that which is least, the angel of the Lord, after silently watching him, reveals Himself and addresses him thus, “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.” A strange address apparently to a poor thresher of wheat! But the Lord estimates not as man; He knows the vessel which He can use, and what it is able to perform, as the apostle says, “He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry.” He designates Gideon “a mighty man of valor,” because He appreciated the efforts which Gideon used to maintain the residue of blessing's; and while thus employed, calls him to enter on a higher mission and a greater service.

Gideon was evidently a man who had pondered over the ways of the Lord, for his reply is, “Oh, my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why is all this befallen us, and where be all His miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us out of Egypt, but now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites?” In this rejoinder we see that he not only knew how the Lord had dealt with Israel. in time past, but also the judicial position in which they now were. He saw God alone on either side. Consequently the angel “looked upon him,” or was turned towards him, and commissioned him to “go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites; have not I sent thee!” The servant of God must know and believe that God is the power winch alone can set up or pull down; it is the foundation-stone in the soul for any deliverance. “Twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God.”

Gideon knew this; but there is a great difference between owning all power as belonging to God, and seeing it acting on our behalf; and often the consequence of the former conviction is to make us feel our own powerlessness the more; which, unless we can rest on God's acting for and through us, will produce despondency. Gideon cannot see how the link can be established between God and man, so that man can be made the administrator of God's power and will, and pleads his own insignificance and insufficiency. And the Lord, in order to establish this link in his soul, gives a promise: “Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man.”

Great as was this promise, Gideon could not yet appropriate it; however wonderful and suited, he could not embrace it, until he feels in his own soul the link between himself and God, and is assured of his own acceptance, and therefore he exclaims, “If now I have found grace in thy sight, show me a sign that thou talkest with me.” And then having brought his offering and set it forth according to the angel's directions, as we read in verses 18-22, the Lord accepts the offering, causes it to be consumed by miracle and disappears from Gideon's sight, thus giving him an unquestionable proof not only of His own presence and power, but of His servant's acceptance with Him. he had sought a sign to enable his soul to trust in the promised succor of God; in a word, in order that he ought to depend on Him in the great service appointed to him. For as a fallen man estranged from God, he could see no ground for dependence, and the acceptance of the sign is almost too much for him. The Lord's manifestation of Himself convinces Gideon of His nearness to him which naturally must be death to him, and of which he has the sense; so that he exclaims, “Alas, O Lord God! for because I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face.” The word of the Lord now calms and settles his soul. “Peace be unto thee, thou shalt not die;” and thereon Gideon builds an altar, which denotes the relation in which he now stands with God, and which is the groundwork of his soul before he enters on his service. The altar or place of access is Jehovah-Shalom.

Thus is Gideon prepared for the work unto which he had been called, and it is profitable for every servant, in moral power to ascertain how far he has been prepared in like manner for service. I have dwelt thus minutely on the preparation, because, if the soul has not found an assured acceptance and rest with God, it cannot be free, because unembarrassed by its own interests, to engage in the interests of the service unto which it is called.

Many attempt to serve the Lord, hoping thereby to acquire rest and peace for their own souls. Consequently they continue, and value the service, according as it contributes the desired relief; for it is true that every true soul, acting for God, must establish the sense of relationship with Him; but when. this is the object, the service is diverted from its true aim, and the proper spring of it is lost. Service must be undertaken by one happy in God, and therefore happy to be a fellow-worker with Him; and it must be pursued and executed quite independently of its effects on myself, and entirely with respect to the will of God. Again, others do not attempt to serve, because they allege they have no ability, and their minds when engaged in divine things are invariably engaged about themselves. They either do not know where to find rest and peace, or having found it, they do not believe in it; that is, they do not walk in the power of it—that power which faith confers.

Gideon having learned to worship God at Jehovah Shalom, (for the name of the altar indicates the worship,) he is directed as to his line of action “the same night.” Mark, blessing is never deferred when we are ready for it. Night is not the time for action; and man might say, “To-morrow thou shalt have it;” but with God the very moment we are ready for it, that moment we receive it. As with Isaac, as soon as ever he had reached Beersheba, the true place of separation, the Lord appeared to him “that same night;” or as with Jacob, when he went on his way from Padanaram, “the angels of God met him.” The moment we get on God's line, that moment we find ourselves in the light and strength of God. “In the same night” Gideon is directed to be a witness of the grace he had learned, and after this manner:— “Take thy father's young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it.” His own home is the first circle in which the true servant will testify the great realities of his heart and service, and the power and distinctness with which this is done defines and prefigures his future course and ability. The Lord Jesus opened the divine record of His mission in “Nazareth, where he was brought up.” Barnabas brought Saul from Tarsus. So here now, Gideon in a bold, determined manner is to declare to his father's house, and through it to all his city, the light which had dawned in his soul, at once demanding from him, and empowering him to bear the testimony. The false worship in his father's house he was utterly to abrogate and abolish.

Gideon obeys; but he does it by night, fearing to do it by day. Here is an inroad of nature. His faith was as yet not such as to enable him to testify openly and boldly; but what his faith did enable him to do, that he did.

Even where the word of God is received and obeyed, there is often a deficiency in the testimony. Many a true soul is not prepared to testify as openly as he might. It is better when obedience and testimony go together; but though the flesh may hinder testimony, it cannot prevent, obedience, if there be faith. Paul was both a minister and a witness. It is the highest privilege for a servant, not only to obey, or minister, but to be able to testify of his identity with the ministry. If flesh works—if our own nature is allowed a voice—our testimony is compromised; we have lost our self-possession, and the personal control which is necessary for a witness. But faith insists on obedience; even in secret. In our patience we must possess our souls. Practically, our hearts and minds must be kept in peace, or we cannot, without loss of testimony, perform the very acts of faith. The emotions of the flesh are no excuse for not obeying what we have faith to do. We may submit, on account of them, to lose the higher place of testimony, but nothing must hinder obedience to God's word. Moreover, if we are faithful, without affection, our acts will declare themselves, and thus testimony will follow, though it did not accompany them. Thus was it with Gideon. And, on the outset, he learns the hostility of his own people to faithfulness for the truth. But how little the world knows that its evil opposition always evokes from God's witness an amount of power more than sufficient to suppress it! The cry of the populace for the execution of Gideon is met by the challenge of Joash to let Baal plead for himself, if he be a god; and Gideon is surnamed Jerubbabel, in consequence of this challenge.

How graciously and wisely the Lord was preparing His servant for the work in His counsel assigned to him! And how identical are his dealings with ourselves! His purpose is to assure the soul that, as surely as Christ hath triumphed over every power of evil, so surely may we conclude that every expression or manifestation of evil is properly only a guarantee to us that there is a power at hand for us more than superior to it. And, furthermore, the greater the amount of the evil opposition, the more marked and manifest will be the power which will overcome and silence it. We should comfort ourselves in every circumstance of life, that “when the enemy cometh in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord raiseth up a standard against him” —a branch of truth most important to the faithful servant in times of difficulty, and, therefore, implanted by the divine hand in the soul of Gideon, and now to be declared when all the Midianites and the children of the east were gathered together, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel. “Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, and Eliezer was gathered unto him.” He had already passed through the two great experiences of soul which qualified and prepared him for his work—the first his own relation to God established at the altar, Jehovah-Shalom; and the other in his faithfulness to the truth of God, in the utter annihilation of all false worship. Thus qualified, he enters his public service. But here again, although he has gathered by divine energy the men of Abiezer, Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali around him, and prepares for acting in sight of the foe, he has to learn that, unless he be assured of God's support, he cannot proceed.

How vacillating and humbling is the secret history of the soul, so graciously detailed for us with reference to this faithful servant; though, outwardly, naught can be discerned but boldness and energy, as is true often with ourselves! And well it is for us that we have to do with a God as gracious and considerate of our weakness as had Gideon. By peculiar signs and intimatious the gracious Lord confirms His servant's mind in the verity of those promises which he ought to have rested in at once, in mercy giving and repeating every proof or evidence required. It is a very different thing to seek for a sign to establish belief in God, and to seek for one to confirm us in the rightness of the path on which we have entered, and of God's support in it. The former the Lord will not grant or allow.” There shall no sign be given you,” He says to the Jews, when they asked for a sign as a ground of belief. The divine path must be begun and entered on in faith, and without signs; bat the Lord continually vouchsafes evidences to confirm the soul that is in the right path, and that it will succeed therein. The soul, when really depending on God, and entering on any signal work, seeks not to be conscious of its own ability, but of God’s—God's, if I may so say, in the abstract, i.e., that it has to do with One whose power, and ability to apply that power, is equal to any demand. This is the discipline which establishes the soul, and fully places it in the line appointed. In different ways it is granted to every servant; but the sense communicated to the soul is this—that God's power is versatile according to the requirement of it, and able and ready to interrupt any established order of things to manifest His will. This, I repeat is learned in many ways—sometimes practically, sometimes didactically. It may be learned by a soul realizing the wonders of prophecy. One walking in faith, and following out in spirit the great actions there foretold, roust be impressed with the majesty and disposability of the power of God; and when thus impressed and confirmed, as by a light shining in a dark place, it will be prepared to confront the hostilities in the path. Or it may be learned in a humbler way, and through the weakness of our faith, as, no doubt, it was with Gideon. Flaws in our faith become more apparent as the strain on us is greater. And how many break down in their course, because they have not learned the universality and ready applicability of God's power.

Gideon finds what we shall all find—that God is gracious enough to instruct him in this point, in any way that he may suggest, or which will establish it most clearly to his own satisfaction. Whether it be dew on the fleece only, and dry on all the earth beside, or dry on the fleece only, and dew on all the earth, God vouchsafes it, and Gideon is confirmed.

Thus ready, “he rose up early, and all the people that were with him, and pitched beside the well of Harod.” Here the Lord interposes, in order to declare the work as His own. Israel must have no room to vaunt against God, and say, “Mine own hand hath saved me.” Consequently Gideon must proclaim in the ears of the people, “Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount Gilead.” It must have been a trial to Gideon's faith to see 22,000 of the people retire from his standard: but this is ever the demand where there is faith. If he have believed, he must not be confounded because he sees the means, which he had expected to secure the desired end, almost entirely melt away, But Gideon is now strong in God, and through God's gracious dealing and education, and he is not discouraged; nor need he be, for it is better for a man of faith to be in company with a few faithful, than with many who are weak and wavering. But though less than a third of the original number remained, even that number the Lord pronounces “too many;” and He orders that the whole remaining company be put to the test, in order to sift it, and prove who was really fit to war and testify for Himself. This test is a simple and unimportant one to man's eye, but searching in its spiritual application. Like all the arrows in the divine bow, which by one cast made sure aim, and effect what all man's efforts and discernment could not, it discerned the thoughts and intents of the heart. It proved whether they were wholly set on the one object—the one mission; or whether they could be distracted from it for a moment in order to take natural refreshment. This was the meaning of the test of the water. And what a result! 9070 were found not whole-hearted: they went on their knees to drink. Though doubtless most anxious for success, that purpose and anxiety did not entirely overrule the desire for personal refreshment. And 300 only are found so single-hearted, that they will but take what is necessary to sustain them, and hurry on! Alas! if such a test were put to us, how few of us would be numbered in Gideon's band! Many of us might rank with the 32,000 who set out with him, or even the 10,000 who have stood the first sifting; but how few have that abnegation of nature which would enable us, regardless of personal need and refreshment, to hurry on, and fight the good fight of faith. It may be but taking a little more of nature than what is necessary for us. There was but a little difference in those who lapped and those who went on their knees to drink. And surely water was a necessary refreshment for thirsty warriors. But the manner of taking it laid bare the condition of the heart; and it teaches us this great lesson, that unless we make the Lord and the Lord's glory our sole object and aim, He cannot use us as deliverers, though He may graciously allow us to share in, and benefit by, the deliverance which He has wrought by more faithful hearts.

To Gideon also, as well as his followers, must this sifting have been a test of faith, for the decrease of numbers must have cast him still more in dependence on God; and many would be confounded by such searching education: but the untaught one is never equal to the trials of warfare. “The same night,” (for now that the company is prepared, there must be no delay,) the Lord tells him, “Get thee down into the host,” &c., but with peculiar graciousness and willingness to meet and invigorate any wavering in Gideon's faith, he adds, “If thou fear to go down, go thou with Phurah, thy servant, and thou shalt hear what they say,” &c. How manifold are the ways of the Lord on behalf of His servants! In the enemy's camp the interpretation of a dream announces Gideon's success, and he hears how they already reckon on their own overthrow. And, surely, with ourselves these evidences of coming confusion in our daily foes might often be gathered if we would but hearken to them. If we did, we should perceive that these intimations are afforded us not without an object, and that object is to encourage us in a bolder perseverance. Gideon was greatly encouraged by this. The God of the dew was again brought nigh to him, and he worshipped, and returned in full assurance of victory ere the conflict had begun. The details of that conflict (or rather conquest, for it was a pursuit rather than a fight) I need not dwell on, except to say, that it. was truly strength made perfect in weakness. Lamps within the pitchers—treasures in earthen vessels, and trumpets to announce that their cause was the Lord's—were the only weapons of the little band until the enemy's swords were all turned against themselves. Gideon's success was complete, and he was proved a ready instrument in God's hand to effect deliverance for His people. But what varied discipline he required before he was so! How little does one know of the antagonism of our nature to the will of God, who thinks that service can be undertaken without that self renunciation, which can only be learned by experimental knowledge of the superiority of God's ways and counsels! We never surrender what we value until we find a better; and man is so full of himself and his own will, that until he finds the superiority of God's, and this, through slow, painful and varied processes, he can be neither an obedient nor a suitable servant; i.e., one who carries out the mind and intentions of his Master. Jonah was taught obedience in the whale's belly, because he learned there to be reliant on God solely: but the gourd taught him the mind and nature of God. The true and disciplined servant always finds a way to do his work, however difficult it may appear. The greater the difficulties, the greater must be the evidence that our resources are of a different order and character from those arrayed against us, and this will be found true in very small matters as well as great ones.

The Midianites being overcome, Gideon was to meet with another difficulty and one of a different order; i.e., to encounter the opposition of those who rank as his friends, an order of opposition which it requires more wisdom to surmount than even that of acknowledged foes. The manner in which he deals with the two classes of his contending brethren is instructive to us to notice. With the men of Ephraim, (chap. viii.,) who chide him for not calling them to the battle, he takes the lower place—that of grace, the true, wise and godly position to hold towards those who seek to be conspicuous. Gideon might have replied that himself and the 300 were specially called and chosen of God; but he does not, and leaves the Ephraimites to the satisfaction of that measure of honor which God had put upon them. But towards the men of Succoth and Penuel, who refused to supply bread to the “faint yet pursuing,” he acts very differently. They must receive no quarter. Their conduct in refusing sustenance to the 300, when contending with the enemy, was antagonistic to the cause of God and taking the part of traitors to His name and glory. The principle is the same in both dispensations. There are cases which we must meet and deal with in grace; but we are, on the other hand, earnestly to contend for the faith. “I would, (says the apostle) they were even cut off who trouble you.” “If any man bring not this doctrine, (i.e., of Christ,) receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed.”

In chap. viii. 22, once more and for the last time, Gideon is presented to us in a new and peculiar line of discipline. Great services often engender self satisfaction and desire for an exaltation which the unspiritual are too ready to accord to us. The multitude solicit Gideon to rule over them, but he replies, “will not rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you.” How could he take the place of that God who had so blessed and honored him.” So far he spoke in the wisdom of the Spirit, but his request for the errings of his prey evinces a covert desire to commemorate his services, though he had refused the place of power and dignity. What could such a desire produce but a snare, whether in the form of an ephod or anything else? And such it was to Gideon and to his house.

What a lesson and warning for us to see a servant of God after such protracted teaching and forming for the work, in a moment as it were, lose himself; and after attaining so high and distinguished a place through service, sink from human gaze behind a cloud; It teaches us that, though we may refuse a public place of exaltation, still we may not be proof against the most subtle and more dangerous snare of supposing that the memorials of our service can in any way contribute to the worship of God; for this is using service as a medium for self-exaltation, which thing must “become a snare to us and to our house.”

Discipline: 11. Samson

Samson was the last of the judges; the last of that dynasty, as we say, during which the Lord was proving Israel as to their ability to trust in Him for government without the intervention of any established order.

They had continually failed, and in consequence had become tributaries to those who ought to have been tributary to them. There is no neutral place for the people of God. They must either be above the world, testifying against it for God's glory, or they must be servants to it. If Israel be not sustained by God above the nations, they are led away captive by the nations: they can never exist as equals; they must be either masters or slaves. Slavery was their chastening for not retaining their rights, as masters, which could only be done by having the Lord on their side. When they departed from the Lord, they were weaker than the nations. A Christian is always weaker than the world, if he be out of communion, simply because he has lost his strength, that strength which his conscience approves of; and therefore he is easily baffled by that of the world, which assails him with all its reckless violence.

Judges were raised up by the Lord to deliver the people from their enemies, when they felt their sin in departing from Him, according as he required them to feel it.

The people of Israel, at the time of the birth of Samson, had been under the hand of the Philistines for forty years, the longest term of captivity which they endured during the time of the Judges. To deliver them from this protracted captivity, Samson is raised up; and because it was the last and the severest during this eventful period, (this period of testing the national faith and conscience, as to how far God's people would accept the government of God, as Lord and King, without the intervention of any one, whose power could be only derivative like the nations around,) it is necessary to introduce to us (as the word here does) not only the manner of the birth of the deliverer, but the mind and expectations of his parents previous to his birth.

Samson must be a “Nazarite to God from the womb.” In order to be the deliverer of the people of God from the unholy subjugation in which they are involved, he must be entirely separate from all enjoyments among them. His mother is taught this, and trains him in accordance thereto. Our early training. has a peculiar and continuous effect on us in after life, i.e., the associations which surround us. Samson was a Nazarite, but he grew up in intimacy and acquaintance with the Philistines; consequently, he never seems to be aware of the great moral contrast which should exist between a Nazarite and a Philistine. Much of this sort of ignorance or non-perception we see among Christians in our own day. There is an admission for individual Nazariteship, while there is habitual intercourse and association with the world.

Thus Samson's first act recorded is an attempt to establish a union where there could be no union. His father and mother cannot understand how, nor that this proposition “was of the Lord,” that he sought an occasion against the Philistine.

Mark! it was not the union that was of the Lord, but the intended antagonism to the Philistines—not the means, but the end. Union there could have been none. On the contrary, in any attempted union where the elements are positively antagonistic, the revulsion and intrinsic differences are the more manifestly evinced. The means Samson proposed was no divine way for the neutralization of evil forces; but the intention was divine while the means were manifestly human; and consequently the marriage never takes place; while the intention and divine desire is perfectly declared and answered. It is a great thing to start with a right intention; for if it be of God, sooner or later it must be accomplished, though necessarily at the expense of all that self which we have mixed up with it.

Moses desired to deliver his people from Egypt, but when he first attempted to ratify it, he trusted to resources of his own, and he failed, though eventually he gloriously succeeded, through the help of God. In like manner Peter was ready to die for the Lord, which he did eventually; but how much humbling and cowardice had he to pass through before he reached the realization of his desire!

The Lord teaches in such a way, and after such a manner, that the human element is eliminated and ills own power fully vindicated in us. This truth is beautifully exemplified in the page of Samson's history, which we are about to consider. “Samson went down to Timnath and came to the vineyards of Timnath, and behold a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand.” Here the Lord teaches him that it is not by an unholy alliance with evil, but by downright opposition to it that he must overcome; and to this at length he practically comes in the long run.

The truth which grows out of this lesson (a “riddle” to the world) breaks up the union and sends Samson forth in open and violent hostility against the Philistines. Let us consider this discipline a little more minutely. Samson, as we have seen, starts with a right intention; but, in consequence of natural association with the Philistines, from which he judicially suffered, he attempts to marry a daughter of these uncircumcised people; but just as he reaches the place where he is to consummate his plan, a young lion roars against him. And God in this way appears to teach him that God's Spirit can enable him to overcome the direct foe, without any intervention, for he had “nothing in his hand,” much more without any human plan of unsanctified union. Unaided, Samson confronts this terrible foe and succeeds so completely, that through God he “rent him as he would have rent a kid.” What a moment that was! A moment when the soul is in the balance—in the struggle for life or death! How necessary for the heart to be educated in the power of the life-giving God in the dark valley of death to know His power in delivering us from the jaws of the lion! Such a scene and such education ought to have been to Samson a vision of the character and nature of his mission, as the vision of Damascus was to Paul all his life long; fir he was to be a minister and a witness of the things which he had seen. The nature of our first acquaintance with God properly indicates the line He desires to sustain us in, in our course down here; therefore it is well worthy of consideration.

But Samson was slow to learn; and untaught by this marvelous instruction, he pursues his own plan, enters into a contract, and in due time returns for the purpose of ratifying it. But in doing so, he must re-pass the spot where he had known such signal deliverance, and which was to yield still further instruction for him, if he would but give heed to it. Turning aside to contemplate his conquered foe, he finds honey in the carcass of the lion and shares it with his parents who knew not from whence it came. This gives rise to the riddle which Samson knew, but could not apply to his own circumstances. Alas! how often is this the case with us, and how much sorrow and willfulness do we entail on ourselves because we do not receive it in faith, so as to grasp it in its entire adaptability to ourselves; for it is evident that we never adopt any truth we know practically, unless we are convinced of its suitability to our own circumstances; nor, I believe, does the Lord intend us to use it until we are thus convinced. And this explains why we are so often permitted to persist in our own plans, after we have learned truth which, if properly applied, would supersede dim altogether by casting us more consciously and distinctly on God. The secret of our strength with God must ever be a riddle to nature, for it is in a state of hostility to the new nature, as much as the Philistine was to Israel, or to Samson, as representative of that people.

Samson propounding his riddle, showed that there was a great interval and uncongeniality of mind between the Philistine and himself, and his intended wife is in the same moral distance. A union attempted under such circumstances must issue, as it does here, in the cause of the Philistine being preferred to her acknowledged lord. Her devotion to him dissolves before the fear of her own people, who threaten her with ruin unless she betrays him. Had she but clung to him as she ought to have done in true devotion, he would inevitably have saved her from the catastrophe she dreaded; but failing to do this, she betrays and compromises the one she ought to have suffered for. A sad and true picture of Christendom, and with a moral voice to each of us! Samson is betrayed by the one whom he most trusted, and where he naturally expected least treachery; but the Lord turns it into blessing, and the projected union is broken off. He must relinquish it in order to pay the penalty to which he had subjected himself by revealing his secret to the Philistine. Thus the conflict with the lion in the way had at last worked out what God had purposed it should, with regard to Samson, who had been so slow to learn it, when he ought to have done so. The riddle of the eater producing meat—i.e., the truth revealed to Samson through that conflict—was the eventual cause of his unholy alliance being broken off, while the divine intention which he had thereby proposed to himself was ratified, the rupture of the union becoming an occasion for its exercise. The Philistines now use the knowledge they have acquired through Samson's betrayal of God's secret, in contravention to all that is sacred between man and man. And their violent injustice authorizes him, as invested with the Spirit of the Lord, to render a righteous recompense to them. Before grace came, righteousness was God's rule of action for His people toward man in general; though He Himself was ever in grace toward any soul that owned His righteousness in blood-shedding. But the Philistines were no subjects for grace; and he wreaks on them a double vengeance. First, he goes down to Ashkelon, slays thirty of them, takes the spoil, and gives the promised change of garments to those who had expounded the riddle. And afterward, in consequence of their unjust disposal of his wife, he lets loose three hundred foxes with firebrands in their tails, and burns up all the standing corn, the vineyards, and the olives. The first of these exploits unfolds gracious discipline on God's part to Samson. His mistakes are mercifully counteracted, and true service vouchsafed to him. The debt, which the Philistines had made him liable to by unrighteous means, is paid by retribution on themselves. So should it be now with the servant of Christ. If Christendom has unrighteously acquired his divine secret, and asserts a claim on him therefrom, he should avenge, in true, spiritual, uncompromising conflict, all false acquisitions in position or doctrine which the worldly mind seeks to make use of in a carnal sense. I feel that this is very peculiar and mysterious discipline. The servant finds himself in association with Christendom outwardly, but in possession of God's truth and power, which, to the natural man, is a riddle, but sought by him for carnal purposes, and used as a claim on those who possess the reality. But by means of this very truth, the true servant not only discharges his debt to his oppressors, but works a way of deliverance out of them, and involves them in signal confusion.

The second exploit, occasioned by Samson's wife being given to his friend, excites the Philistines to greater violence, and they wreak their vengeance, not on Samson, but on the one who had betrayed him and her father's house, which they burn with fire—the very fate which she had so feared, and the threat of which had caused her to act unfaithfully to Samson; teaching us that whatever we seek to escape from, through unbelief and unrighteousness, is sure to be our eventual doom. We may escape from it for a moment, but our escape is, after all, the sure road to it. This act, however, increases Samson's right of vengeance, and we read, he “smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam.”

Samson had now, after varied exercises and trying services, risen to such eminence as a determined foe to the Philistines, that they muster their forces and demand his life. When the servant of God will give no quarter to the world, and they can in nowise circumvent him, then their open hostility will burst forth. The same spirit that in all its malignity cried against the Lord, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” now in the Philistines seeks the life of Samson: and Judah, that tribe from which Shiloh should come, manifests toward him the same feebleness of godly principle which afterward characterized them when they delivered the Lord Jesus to Pilate. Three thousand men of Judah went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, “Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us, and what is this thou hast done unto us?” “And they said unto him, we are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines.” What a trying moment to Samson I His purposes and acts so little appreciated by his own people on whose behalf he had fought. How similar (only in untold moral distance) to Him of whom it is said, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not!” What peculiar sorrow must the true servant endure from those he is serving in the most earnest and perfect manner! To be disowned and condemned as useless after having wrought the most distinguished service, is a bitter trial; but Samson is equal to it. And still further, in the power of the strength and the gentleness of God, he will not touch his own people, however ungracious to him, and therefore he engages them solemnly that they will not fall upon him themselves. Notwithstanding this, they bind him and bring him down from the rock. And the Philistines shouted against him, and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and he took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.

Now, mark! Samson had been delivered from both association with, and subjection to, the Philistines, and had retreated to the rock Etam in Judah, as at once Israel's deliverer, and the Philistines' terror; but Judah is unbelieving, and delivers him over to the enemy. This leads to the manifestation of Samson's power, and his right or title to judge Israel, which is noted in the last verse of this chapter. He has now reached the position which he was appointed to fill, and which the Spirit in him was leading him through many exercises to occupy. We must not omit to notice the conclusion of the above manifestation and victory. After he had, by means of a jawbone, laid heaps upon heaps, and sung in ecstasy of soul after his work, he threw away the jawbone, and then his own personal wants afflict him. “He was sore athirst.” Great services for others will not supply the soul's necessities, which can only be supplied from the Lord. However brilliant our services, our own souls will famish unless directly sustained by the Lord, for mere service never sustains. On the contrary, the fresher the service, the more shall we be conscious of our own necessity and dependence on God for personal support. No great deliverance vouchsafed will supply one drop of relief to the weary soul. From God alone must that come. And thus, in answer to Samson's cry, God relieves him, and he calls the name of the place En-hakkore, “the well of him that called.” He commemorates, not his service, but his dependence on God; and established now in this dependence, as well as practical ability, it is recorded that Samson judged Israel twenty years.

We may now pause in the narrative to review this early stage of Samson's history in the double light which it appears to me to bear. We have said that his projected union with a Philistine was an unholy alliance, and that God had to discipline him, in order to teach him its unsuitability; and we have traced the discipline. This is true regarding him as a Israelite and a Nazarite; but I think the action also bears another aspect, which appears in the words “they knew not that it was of the Lord,” that is, that it was almost a necessary consequence of the judicial position to which he was born liable, even that of subjection to, and association with, the uncircumcised. Though a Nazarite, and a separate man, he was, on account of the condition of the nation, exposed to this corrupt association, and was responsible for it; and while, on the one hand, he is taught to deliver himself therefrom, on the other, he is allowed to propose a union which was an admission of the liability entailed on him, but which he personally had no manner of part in creating. This union was not allowed to be consummated, because in itself unholy; but the proposition answers the double purpose in the instruction of God, on the one hand, being an admission of the consequences of the nation's sin, and on the other, an opportunity for Samson, through God's power and training, to extricate himself therefrom, and to become the deliverer of His people. In the same sense, a man is born into the world liable to the penalty of Adam's sin before he has committed any act of sin. So in Israel. So in the church. A unit of each, in entering into membership, was necessarily liable to all the forfeitures and penalties as well as the privileges attaching thereto, and he cannot assume the privileges without discharging the liabilities which are the real impediments to the enjoyment of the privileges. Cain is an example of this, assuming by a meat offering the position of a man acceptable to God, before he had answered to the penalties due to him because of sin. So in the church. We must own its ruin before we can assume its privileges and dignities. But the man of strength must not he under these consequences without an effort to retrieve his position and extricate himself, his kindred, and his people. He repudiates nothing to which he is justly liable, but neither does he increase the embarrassments by contributing personally to the moral debts of his people. Consequently, Samson was a Nazarite from his birth, and for that very reason was the only one suited to undertake the place of liquidator and deliverer. In a word, while personally separate, he admitted the pernicious and judicial alliance between Israel and the Philistines, by proposing affinity with one of their nation. Incongruous it was, but so much is first allowed in order that Samson, the man of strength, might avow Israel's humiliated position, and no more is necessary or sanctioned in the counsels of God. A righteous ground is soon found for preventing the alliance and emancipating the people from the bondage of their oppressors. By fair conflict he reaches the rock Etam, and there established as deliverer of the people, he judges them twenty years.

This is the first point or epoch in Samson's history. The second is, how he again became mixed up with the Philistines on a lower level, and how he suffered for it. In the first, we have seen how he sought an alliance only for an occasion, and how wondrously he was helped, and raised up to be judge of the people; but now, seeking for association from mere natural desire, although his strength acts when he repents, yet he never afterward resumes his position at Etam, as judge of Israel; and this has a distinct voice to us. If we own the ruin of the Church, in order to set ourselves to the discharge of the liabilities thereby saddled on us, we shall be helped righteously to exonerate ourselves from them; but if we return to the association of “the great house,” for which we have felt irresponsible, and for which we have answered, we are sure to be involved therein, and however we may do individual acts of valor, yet we never again shall be able to resume the position of witness for God or deliverer of His people.

Samson went down to Gaza, (chap. xvi.) and saw there a harlot, and went in unto her. Here he renews his unholy association, and yet he is made aware of the Philistines' machinations against him, and is enabled, in a marvelous way, to defeat them, for “he arose at midnight, and took the doors and gate of the city, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the hill which is before Hebron.” Surely this was a warning to Samson, though with a marked deliverance. How often does the soul recover from the first step backwards in a very remarkable manner, with great evidence of strength, though it be only a midnight; this is, there may not be so much testimony as manifest power and a glorious deliverance. Paul's going to Jerusalem, is an example of such a retrograde step; and at midnight, too, escorted by Roman soldiers, he outwits and escapes his enemies. Blessed indeed when such discipline leads the soul (as it did with Paul) to avoid such association again! But Samson refused to learn; and we next read, “he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, and her name was Delilah.” This introduces us to the most pitiable and humiliating incident in the life of any of God's servants. No amount of treachery on the part of Delilah (who is the world in type—a combination of allurement and malice) can awaken Samson to the real character of her to whom he has allied himself. Where must have been his sensibilities when he could keep up the closest intimacy with one who plied his confidence in order to work his ruin? At first he does not confide in her, and while he retains his reserve and keeps his divine secret, he is safe; however humbling his position as a mighty man, to be in the hands of a false woman. Truly, when we thus see how the strongest may be deceived, and so far that the most palpable proofs will not disabuse their minds of the fearful spell, we may say, “let no man glory in his strength.” Great is the mercy of our God, who, even in a downward course, guards us to the furthest possible point. Samson is always victorious until he communicates the secret of his strength—the mark of his Nazariteship and separation to God; but the moment he betrays this he has relinquished the source of his strength, he has lost his mark as God's servant—one that it was not for uncircumcised ears to know of. If he loses this, this owning of God demonstratively, there is no outward evidence of any distinction between him and other men. As long as this mark remained, God succored and honored him. Often do we find that God supports his servant who retains the mark of separation. Even though he, in the spirit of his mind, engrossed by natural attractions, may have very grievously departed from Him; but when the mark is relinquished, He can succor no longer. There is but a small step between the allurements of the world and its deadly wrong. And so was it with Samson. Yielding first to allurement, he next surrenders the mark of separation, and is finally delivered into the hands of the Philistines, and his eyes put out. What a picture of every servant of God who pursues a like course, and thus becomes a “withered branch,” and a prey to the ungodly world! What bitter, painful discipline Samson must now undergo! Bound in fetters of brass, he “grinds in the prison house” —the effects of his own self will, and surrender of his true place of dignity. In the prison his hair begins to grow again; the mark of separation is renewed, but his eyes are gone! Morally, the sight is never restored, when the light once given is lost. A solemn truth for us! The mark is restored and strength is active, but only in death is its power seen.

Even as practically by the death of Christ, all foes of every shade were overcome, so the death-scene alone remains as a place of testimony for a strong servant who has taken the high place of Nazariteship like Samson, but who has sunk with eyes open, as we may say, into the unholy association which he, once in the zenith of his history, so much opposed and renounced. Samson died with the wicked, but in the last fearful struggle that terrible judgment laid on man because of sin—Samson glorified God, for he “slew more in his death than in his life.” A true epitome this of every soul which has learned the power of Christ's death; for the one who conquers therein overcomes every foe, even him who has the power of death, to the praise and glory of God; and teaches us that death alone can deliver the strongest man from the place of temptation and failure.

Such is the end of Samson. A man unequaled in strength and most valiant in using it: an end, humbling indeed to the flesh, but glorifying to God as vindicating His unerring wisdom and discipline with His servants. May we all learn to walk more separate; to preserve our Nazariteship, if we would be witnesses for our Lord, and preserved from the oppression of the world! And may we learn from Samson's history, on the one hand, how easily we are led to surrender it when we once fall into moral declension and association with the world; and, on the other, how, though our testimony may be marred, we may yet glorify God in the calmness and assurance by which we rise above every tie here, and plainly avow, “to depart and be with Christ is far better!” Amen.

Discipline: 12. Ruth

To trace the history by which a woman is fitted to fill a place of testimony for God on earth must be a study both interesting and important to us, and one specially needed in these days, whether as applied to the individual or the church.

Woman was first formed to be a “help suited to man.” (Βοηθον,. LXX.) At the fall she seems to have forfeited this high position, and after it, to be regarded more in the place of subjection and inferiority than of equality and help. Grace is the great manifestation of God's love, and the principle of grace is, “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” When failure and weakness have most appeared, there the grace of God acting and declares the more exalted restoration. But this exalted restoration is never without a sense of the failure and weakness which it triumphs over; and our blessed Lord God, in leading a soul into the blessings of His grace, must necessarily educate it in the righteousness of His actings, as well as in the goodness of them. According as we learn the Lord Jesus Christ do we in perfection and conscience comprehend both, and the means and stages of this acquirement detail to us the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He leads us to see, step by step, how we need His grace, and He prepares us for it by that peculiar self-renunciation which will make room for His gift. Flesh and spirit cannot dwell together. God in His discipline teaches us the flesh which hinders-teaches us what it is, and treats it so that it may be suppressed; and on its suppression we find that which thus presses it, in order to supplant it, is no less than the energy of the life of Christ.

How gracious of the Lord, then, to instruct us as He does, by presenting to us in His word examples of the principles of the discipline which adapts us, according to His own purpose, for service and glory!

This is what we find in Ruth, and herein consists the interest of her history, in which we learn how God led and enabled a woman, who was a member of the most despised family—a Moabite, to fill the most honored position in the legal tribe of Israel; nay, to concentrate in herself the blessings of Rachel and of Leah. We cannot too carefully note the manner and spirit by which this fine result was attained.

Elimelech, Naomi, and their two sons had emigrated from Bethlehem-Judah into the land of Moab, because of the famine in their own land. It was an evidence of decline and judicial suffering when a man of Israel had to desert his own country, because it lacked those natural blessings which were granted to the land of a Gentile; and the necessary consequence of this decline and association is, that Elimelech's two sons took them wives of the women of Moab. A son of the promised seed, by marrying a woman of Moab, raised her from her low moral position, though, in doing so, he concluded his own, i. e., he comprised it by his sojourn in the land of Moab. So that Ruth, who was one of these wives, was raised by her marriage from her low national position into one of the tribes of Israel; and on the death of her husband, she, a widow with only a widowed mother-in-law, must either, like Orpah, fall back into her former low estate, or she must seek to maintain that position to which she had been raised. This could only be done by holding fast her link with Israel, and that even at personal cost; in other words, by cleaving to Naomi, though all natural expectation in connection with her is gone. This latter is Ruth's course, not intelligently, indeed, as to the positional gain such adherence would bring to her, but animated with the still finer motive of personal devotion to the one through whom she had been already raised so far from her low estate. How she acted and succeeded in this course is detailed to us in this interesting book, and is recorded with great minuteness, as a subject of deep importance to ourselves; for, whether we regard Ruth as a type of the church, or of any Gentile believer, or of a believing woman in particular, her history supplies a link in God's dealings which is very instructive to us.

The first characteristic of either must be simple devotion to know truth; and this characteristic is finely developed in Ruth. She sacrifices all hope of natural alteration of her widowhood, for the sake of adhering to Naomi, come what will, for she says, “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go, and whither thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.” What an utterance is this! That of one steadfastly devoted to one object. What an expression of a soul firmly resolved to abide by all the truth of God, the link with all His purposes and blessings! Even as the first great part of the armor of God (Eph. 6) is to be “girt about with truth;” so the first great requisite of a servant of Christ, above all when in the unobtrusive sphere of a woman, be it intelligently or unintelligently, is to be simply and unequivocally devoted to the truth of God.

Naomi, as we have seen, was the link to Israel. Ruth may not have known much about it, but that only makes her devotion the more admirable, for had she known more, she must have had more reason and incentive for it, instead of the pure affection and appreciation with which she was thus animated.

When the soul lays hold of truth, even though it knows not why, with that inflexible tenacity which will buy it and sell it not, we may rest assured the communication will be enlarged, and “to him that hath shall more be given.” Devotion to a true object ennobles the woman and suits her. If she has it not, she is destitute of the first quality of her condition; when she fails in it, and thinks of herself as Eve did towards Adam, or the church towards Christ, then every disorder will ensue; and strength in a wrong line is more damaging that weakness. Devotion to truth, to what is known by us as the really true and good, is the first great characteristic of a soul prepared and qualified for service and testimony. If we have not this quality, how imperfect must be all our movements and expression, for we can have no definite center! To be God's witness among men who have believed a lie of Him and have walked in it, glorifying themselves while they walked in hostility to Him, we must, first and foremost, be valiant for the truth. If we be deficient in this quality, it is evident our ability for testimony is deficient; nay, more: in attempting to be a witness, we are compromising the very name we assume to serve. We have not a heart thoroughly set on maintaining the first requisite of service. We may have a certain amount of affection, like that expressed by Orpah's kiss, but, like her, our affection rests not on that which is alone true, and we shall soon turn aside to our own ways. We cannot too earnestly press on our souls the importance of this simple devotion to truth. Affection will not stand unless it be based on appreciation, or something known to be estimable; and therefore a faithful soul not only loves the Lord, but so appreciates Him that it must adhere inflexibly to Him, as identified with Him, and nothing else will satisfy a truly devoted soul. What is true of Him can on no account be relinquished, and anything false is abhorrently shrunk from. I dwell on this point because so much of the character of a true servant of the church, and a woman in particular, depends on the place and strength which it holds in the soul. Ruth, we see, was simple and unwavering in her purpose of heart, and she presents to us an imposing type of this essential and ennobling quality, which we shall find meets its full reward.

But before we trace this reward, we may note another characteristic prominently presented, and fully exemplified, in Ruth's history, and that is, simple obedience, in the most servile and inconspicuous toil.

She enters the land of Israel, inseparable from the once Naomi (pleasant) now reduced to Mara (bitter); but resigned to her circumstances, nay, content in them, she addresses herself to the smallest opening which is presented to her, which is always an evidence of a healthy and vigorous soul, and without hesitation or demur embraces it. She says, “Let me now go to the field and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace.”

It is the most unequivocal proof of the energy of soul when, in any strait, we are not only resigned, but ready to embrace any little opening offered to us, able to humble ourselves thereto, and testify to every one, even to our own souls, that God has not forgotten us, and that what is directly before us is quite sufficient to meet our necessities. We only require to be humbled to find it so. If we were to say or feel otherwise, we should impugn His care and interest on our behalf. Ruth sees that there is no opening for her but in gleaning, and to gleaning she addresses herself; and this was the Lord's opening for her. Very humble, inconspicuous labor, no doubt, but He sees not as man seeth, and He led her by the right way; for “the meek shall He teach His way,” and therefore “her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.” “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” When we are docile we are led to fullness of blessing. Unless we embrace the humble opening presented to us, we shall never reach the domain of satisfaction. Ruth was the humble, laborious servant, and as such, she receives her reward for her devotedness to Naomi. Mark! it is for her devotion she is rewarded, more than for her service. Boaz said to her, “It hath fully been shown me all that thou hast done unto thy mother-in-law since the death of thy husband, and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore: the Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.”

Boaz blessed her—a blessing which he afterward (like all blessers) shared in himself—and he also commanded his young men, saying, “Let her glean among the sheaves, and reproach her not; and let fall some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and leave them that she may glean them, and rebuke her not.” Thus we see Ruth receives more on account of her devotion to Naomi, than she obtains by her honest and continual toil; and this is always the case morally. However great the recompense for faithful service, that of devotion, when superadded to it, immeasurably exceeds it. The fruit is only commensurate to the actual labor expended, unless the labor has sprung from a true devotion. Had Ruth gone to the field to glean as did the other handmaidens, she would have obtained her due, what her labor merited, but no more. But it was far otherwise with her: devotedness to one object was the spring of all her action, and the result was to her, as we shall find it to ourselves when animated with a like spirit the ingathering is swollen with ample acknowledgments. And not only so, the devoted one is led on step by step until she attains full rest, honor, and, finally, relationship with what should be the consummation of all her rewards and blessings. The sequel of her history shows us this. She ultimately becomes the wife of Boaz, the true kinsman, who redeems the inheritance; and according to the blessing pronounced on her, she builds up the royal house of David, even as Rachel and Leah built up the house of Israel. The poor Moabitess is brought into close proximity to the throne of Judah, and she makes the name of her kinsman-redeemer “famous” in Bethlehem-Ephratah, the place of death and resurrection! A wondrous result this from so humble a beginning: but one in full moral order and keeping with God's ways, discipline, and training.

And now that we have reached this result in Ruth's history, let us pause, for our soul's profit, to mark the discipline by which the Lord led her, (in fact, that by which He leads every soul who attains the same end,) to this place of rest and honor; for well it is for us to note how He empties before He fills—how He humbles before He exalts. First, she is a widow. Deprived of all human hope in that life which was most honorable to her, and which her alliance with a son of Israel had elevated her to. She next surrenders country, kindred, and the natural expectations which she might have had, by falling back on her former low estate as a Moabitess, for the company of one linked with her condition of widowhood, but who had been reduced from pleasantness to bitterness, and this association entailing on her constant, humble, unremitting toil. Refusing or despising no opening, however humble, she pursues her lowly, toilsome, unobtrusive course from day to day, and daily finds how gracious and merciful the Lord is to her; so much so that it fills her with wonder and amazement, for on the first day of it, she says to Boaz, falling on her face, and bowing herself to the ground, “Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger.” The soul is little prepared for God's unexpected mercies; yet what were those to what followed? What was her former condition previous to widowhood, in comparison to that so full of honor and dignity in which the Lord now places her! Blessed widowhood, to have prepared her for such a place! Blessed process, which led her on to it in the paths of single-eyed devotedness and humility! Blessed God, to have thus dealt with her!

It will be remembered that Ruth came to Bethlehem in the beginning of the barley harvest, which commenced immediately after the feast of the Passover, and continues her services during the seven weeks of harvest, (a perfect period according to the symbolical numeration of Scripture,) to the end of the wheat harvest, i.e., unto Pentecost; and after Pentecost it is that Boaz claims her as his own. I mention this as significant, whether we regard Ruth as typifying the Church in a practical or in a positional aspect; for Pentecost typified that full fruition of blessing which the Church realized when, after the seven weeks which elapsed between the Lord's death and Acts 2, that great day of Pentecost, to which all other days had pointed, “had fully come,” and which installed her in the place of privilege and bride-ship to the true Boaz. On the other hand, though the Church be now in the blessings of Pentecost, yet if she walks not in faithfulness to the truth committed to her, and in patient dutiful service, she cannot realize the high privileges conferred on her, the reason of which is very simple. If I am not true to the Lord, as far as I know, I am not led by His Spirit; and if I am not walking in the Spirit, I cannot by any possibility realize the privileges of nearness and bride-ship into which the Holy Ghost is commissioned to lead us. Again, what is true of the Church as a whole is true of every individual member. The woman is here given in type, because, as a unit, she ought to represent the Church, the Bride of the Second Adam, as redeemed from the ruin and shame into which the first woman plunged her. But, whether man or woman, if we walk not in devotion to the truth, and in patient, humble, inconspicuous service as strangers, and non-expectants on the earth, we cannot enter into the relationship and place of rest which our Boaz vouchsafes to each of his faithful Ruths even in spirit now. And the more we comprehend His ways with us, the better shall we understand how He is teaching each of us after this manner: teaching us, as faithful to our light, to walk therein, to the full fruition of His love; as widows in this world, devoted to Him, and serving patiently and obscurely, but satisfied if we realize what is already ours even here—even our union with Him in all that His love can share with us.

May we learn, O Lord, to follow thee!

Discipline: 13. Samuel

If we comprehend the state and condition of God's people at any one period, we shall then be able to understand why the servant who is most used to serve them should be found in his own life and circumstances to be fitted for the service. An unsuited servant, however willing, must always render inadequate service. His discipline and education, we shall find, are always with reference to the place that he is appointed to hold, and, as we see in Scripture, for the one he holds. Israel, up to Samuel's time, had no king, and “every one did that which was right in his own eyes,” and, consequently, must have learned by experience that “he that trusteth his own heart is a fool” —and that only through God's intervention were they ever delivered from those who ruled over them. And not only this, but they themselves as a people were in every way departing gradually more and more from all acknowledgment of God.

It is in the progress of this state of things that Samuel is born; but he does not take his place as God's servant till Eli (the martyr of a condition of things which he deprecated, but had not power to reform) is dead.

Samuel's mother is a type of the godly remnant in Israel at that time, and Samuel a type of the blessing vouchsafed to that remnant. Hannah, because of her distress and reproach from the adversary, prayed to the Lord in the bitterness of her soul. Forms and demonstrations were dispensed with. It was with the unexpressed breathing of her soul that she pleaded with the Lord; so that the holy priest under the law did not understand.

It was evidently out of due time; something entirely novel and unprecedented; a mere spiritual pleading with the Lord. The sorrowing one of Israel is wiser, because of her felt sorrow and condition, than the high priest; and she actually corrects him, which he has grace to accept and admit.

Hannah's prayer was for Samuel. What will suit a true, holy, sorrowing individual will suit the whole family of God's people. The answer to Hannah's prayer was the answer to every sorrowing cry in Israel. Samuel will suit each and all: he is the answer to the prayer of sorrow, and, as such, is dedicated to the Lord and remains there as a witness to the answer of the prayer of Hannah.

Now let us turn and look at Samuel himself. The more his understanding opens, the more he is aware that he is called, as being the answer to prayer; and as being so, he has been dedicated to the Lord, to be ever before Him; so that very early he must have had an idea of his mission: at all events, it is evident that he is receiving the best education for it. If the sorrowing, oppressed Hannah has received him in answer to prayer, and has returned him to the Lord as the Lord's gift, must not Samuel be continually reminded of the efficacy of prayer—himself the living witness or monument of its effectiveness? So that we should be prepared to find him most peculiarly and entirely combating and surmounting the troubles of God's people by prayer, of which, from being the offspring, he is the witness.

In Samson, the last of the judges, we saw that power committed to man, though performing great exploits now and again, yet accomplished more in the death of the witness than in his life. In Samuel, a new state of things is called into existence. The afflicted one, calling on God, is heard, and the answer, even Samuel, becomes the channel of deliverance through prayer. The very power which brought himself into existence he is now to exercise on behalf of his suffering people. Not as the man of physical strength, as was Samson; but as the man of prayer. Moreover, a true principle is enunciated in Hannah—the blessing which God sends us for ourselves becomes large enough for all His people.

In prayer there is not only a sense of dependence, but also the soul when truly praying expects an answer or communication from God. But often before we have learned the deep reality of what prayer is, we may be in the place of the praying one, the Samuel, and yet not understand the Lord's voice. And thus we find in the first recorded account of Samuel's practical life (chap. iii.) these words, “Samuel was ministering before the Lord, and he had laid himself down to sleep ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord.” The whole scene declares the moral condition of the nation at the time. “The word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision.” “Eli was laid down in his place, and his eyes waxed dim that he could not see.” Samuel had lain down “ere the lamp went out.” This implies that it was allowed to go out habitually, which was contrary to the commandment. Everything indicated feebleness and inanition. Samuel is given in answer to Hannah's prayer—Hannah the type of the sorrowing remnant. Therefore Samuel enters the temple as the exponent, the apostle, of the power and value of prayer—as we read of him in Psa. 99, “Samuel among them that call upon his name.”

But in order to render such a service, or fill the place appointed for him, he must first learn to understand the voice of the Lord. One may take the place of nearness to the Lord, and yet know not the living blessings connected with that place. Samuel is marked out for us as one who, by waiting on God, can repair the disasters which Samson, by his great strength, could not. Samuel is the witness of the superiority of prayer to personal might. But if he be the witness of the efficacy of prayer, he must be disciplined for his service. And the first great learning after drawing near—after giving oneself to the Lord as Samuel had done, is to be able to determine in the soul the communication of the Lord, to know His revelation. What is the use of seeking of the Lord, or of drawing nigh unto Him, if one never receives any distinct light or communication from Him touching matters of moment around one, touching His own interest in His people? I believe it to be the greatest and most blessed attainment for the soul, and withal most necessary for the one who draws near, to acquire a clear knowledge of the Lord's mode of communicating His mind. I think many draw near, and are too like Samuel in the beginning of the scene, in the place of nearness, but not knowing the Lord so as to be able to recognize and distinguish His communications. I hope I do not go too far when I say that: I am ready to admit that in drawing near to the Lord in the place of nearness which typifies the Lord Jesus Christ, that one is in the sure way of being taught the mind of the Lord. But what I seek to impress is this—that many are, so to speak, praying in the temple, or engaged in temple service, who have not learned the word of the Lord as distinctly addressed to themselves. How many pray, and pray again, who, though pacified and consoled by their prayers, yet have not had, nor have sought, any distinct assured instruction from the Lord touching the subject of their prayers. Now, the praying of such an one will never afford the strength and joy which a soul receives who knows in faith from the Lord what His mind is. I do not say that the Lord will tell a soul exactly what He will do, though even that I should expect in particular cases, when there was simple waiting on Him. What I press now, and what I see in the opening of Samuel's life is, that the Lord makes him to recognize and distinguish His own voice, and reveals unto him His word at the same time; and this was the sure basis of the testimony which his life expressed, namely, to seek the Lord in every exigence, and to be known among His prophets as he that called upon His name. Samuel has now learned not only the voice of the Lord, but also the word of the Lord, i.e., His purposes. When we learn the voice of the Lord, we shall readily comprehend His mind as conveyed in His word. Samuel now knows what are God's thoughts about the state of things, and His word came to all Israel. We have power to testify when we are taught of God. A man who would prove and testify of his resources in God, must not expect a smooth easy course. Elijah could order the trenches to be filled with water, because he would magnify the power of God in which he trusted.

Now, Samuel, in the beginning of his testimony or service, sees Israel reduced to the lowest condition, discomfited before the Philistines, the ark of God taken, the priests slain, and Eli dead. Disasters do not daunt the man of prayer; yet it must have exercised Samuel's soul to see such a crash just as he had entered on his service. All seemed lost, but the soul that has learned to distinguish the Lord's voice and to understand His word, will not be disheartened, though all the bulwarks and marks of God's government be forfeited and lost. Samuel was such an one, and he could count on God; and he says, “gather all Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the Lord.” It is worthy of remark that previous to this he warned and led the people to renounce the strange gods and to serve the Lord only, and that they had done so. “Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth and served the Lord only.” If I understand God, I understand His nature, and I cannot draw nigh to Him in prayer without feeling that I must simply and distinctly own Him as the one Lord, and His name one. If there be misapprehension of the true God or any intervention of man's ordering, there must always be a barrier and a delay to me finding Him. Samuel called on the people to serve the Lord only, and to put away all strange gods. This is all that is essential in seeking deliverance from the Lord. And to this can be traced all our want of success in prayer. The Lord is not simply and entirely our God. Covetousness is idolatry, that is, the heart is seeking something else which it passionately desires besides God. Such an one could not say that he served the Lord only, and consequently he ought not to expect to receive a deliverance from the Lord which, if vouchsafed to him, would not attach him more to the Lord, but possibly, by affording him relief from a momentary pressure, enable him to pursue the desires of his heart more uninterruptedly. Samuel led the people to that state of soul in which they ought to seek the Lord. It was a new and wondrous way he was about to disclose to them, how God would deliver them from their enemies.

We read, “And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day, and said, We have sinned.” (1 Sam. 7:6.) Such is always the true way to have the soul restored with God before we enter into conflict with any especial enemies. Samuel leads God's congregation to this, and now they are prepared and waiting for the Lord's intervention; but the moment a soul or congregation prepares for the enemy by waiting on God, that moment Satan urges on his emissaries (the Philistines) to oppose and renew the strife, “When the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were gathered together to Mizpeh, the Lords of the Philistines went up against Israel.” Israel, though contrite and restored in the presence of God, are not yet experienced enough in God's power, as exercised on their behalf, to be undisturbed by fear of the violence of man. A soul may be quite assured before God, and resting in His acceptance, who yet may greatly fear the violence of the wicked and the power of darkness. Nothing can relieve the soul of this terror but (if I may so say) experience. I mean by experience, the soul making use of the power of God which it enjoys in its acceptance. Like Peter, after his rescue by the angel, said, “Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent his angel and delivered me out of the hand of Herod,” &c.

The fear of man remains though the soul be at peace with God, and therefore it ought to say (and this would be experience), “The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man can do unto me.” It is therefore not to be wondered at that the children of Israel, when they heard of the coming up of the lords of the Philistines, were afraid, but they had learned the value of prayer for themselves in the sight of God; and the soul that has not, must be confounded and helpless when afraid of man. We read, “The children of Israel said unto Samuel, Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us that He will save us out of the hand of the Philistines.” They knew wherein Samuel's great strength lay; “and Samuel took a sucking lamb and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord. And Samuel cried into the Lord for Israel: and the Lord heard him. And as Samuel was offering up the burnt-offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great thunder that day and discomfited the Philistines, and they were smitten before Israel.” The Lord always vouchsafes to the praying soul depending on Himself a deliverance beyond our utmost conception. It is no ordinary or human way. As Paul's in the jail at Philippi, so here the Lord acts in quite an unexpected way, a way not wished for, because it was beyond human conception. The thunder of God is the answer to the prayer, and the Philistines are discomfited; Israel follows up the rout, and “smote them until they came under Bethcar.” When we see our enemies routed, if we have valor at all, we can easily pursue and follow it up; but in our feebleness we have little power to act until the Lord's intervention assures our heart that we may do so. When God is felt to be on our side we are strengthening ourselves in the sense of “who can be against us.” Samuel must commemorate this signal mercy of the Lord: for any deliverance we have known in connection with our waiting on God is always an Ebenezer. It is a refresher to us of our Lord and Savior, the chief corner stone. He always is the exponent to us of the tender love of our God, and when mercy is vouchsafed to us the heart is revived in remembrance of Him. Then is renewed the sense, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me;” and I know in a new and distinct way His virtues. I have the exhilarating consciousness that He is my stone of help. What happy service for Samuel, after the anguish he must have passed through on account of the grievous desolations around. The mercy was a permanent one—every Ebenezer is! The Philistines were subdued, and they “came no more into the coast of Israel; and the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel” —the man of prayer.

Samuel had now established his title to judge Israel. By dependence on God he had enlisted and received of the resources of God, and now he takes his place as judge of a delivered people. He went in circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh; the latter must not be forgotten, for there he had proved his commission. Samuel dwelt at Ramah, and at home he cultivated what he proved abroad, for “there he built an altar unto the Lord.”

We have now traced how Samuel learned by prayer and dependence on God to deliver His people out of the greatest degradation and impotency, and how, in consequence, he could take his seat among them as their judge. And here (as I may so say), one era of his life, or the life of dependence closes; but another begins—for that is the peculiarity and blessing, too, of the life of dependence, that no sooner have you reached one goal, perhaps at the end of a long, laborious exercise, but you have to enter on another, consequent on the very position which, through the Lord's mercy, you have attained. Samuel, by dependence on God, has been vouchsafed signal deliveries from outside enemies. The Philistines are subdued, and he himself judges Israel. But, alas! it is with him as with us all; when nature comes in and works, he is at fault, and disaster is the result. It was clearly nature in Samuel to perpetuate his rule through his own sons, whom we read he “made judges in the land,” when he was old.

He had enjoyed for a long period of his life the fruits of his first great and deep exercises of dependence; but now, when he is old, he seems to lapse into worldly arrangements, in making his sons judges. It is not dependence on God now, but carnal policy, and it is unsuccessful: “his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes and prevented judgment.” We read in 1 Sam. 8:4, 5, “Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel unto Ramah; and said unto him, Behold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways, now make us a king to judge us, like all the nations.” This, a trying moment for Samuel, but one of great instruction for him, and for us through him. When the soul who has known the blessing of dependence on God, has been drawn aside into thinking and acting for itself, no greater mercy can be vouchsafed to it than that it should be involved in such straits that nothing but the resumption of dependence on God can offer any relief. There were two painful truths in the petition of the elders which must have greatly affected Samuel. 1St. The failure of his policy through his own sons: where every man, and the better the man, would feel it most. 2ndly. The willfulness and ungodliness of the nation in asking for a king. Poor Samuel, his family had disappointed him, and his nation had grievously requited all his labors and service. It is not now the Philistines: it is their own inward corruption. What a moment! What could the aged Samuel do? We read, “And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.” The astounding, perplexing strait has been effective in restoring his soul into the old and well-known channel of dependence; and, as ever, to the really dependent one seeking His glory, God answered him in a most gracious soothing way, entering into all his servant's feelings, as follows: “they have not rejected thee; but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.” Samuel was the link between the judges and the kingdom, or the type of the faithful in the interval between the manifested failure of Israel, as a people governed by God, and the setting up of the kingdom. Samson properly closed that period, which mainly was characterized by power through human agency, of which he was personally the greatest example. Samuel presents to us quite another order of power, more successful than any preceding it, and that was, as a man of prayer depending on God. He is the link between Samson and the king. Samuel illustrates to us how blessed dependence on God is, and how great are the deliverances which flow from it; but he also must connect us with the kingdom, and suffer himself to be superseded by God's anointed king, even David. But even before then, he must give place to Saul; for the witness of dependence on God, the man of prayer must be prepared to encounter in patience all the antagonism, however protracted, which arises to counterfoil his faith. Saul was the representative of Israel's thoughts about a king, and therefore God sanctioned his appointment. As Ishmael was to Isaac, so was Saul to David—the natural and the spiritual; but the natural is always before the spiritual. Man's king is first tried before the Lord sets up His king. The aged Samuel, the man of prayer and dependence on God, is called on to appoint and anoint Saul. God approved of the man who was truly the impersonation of Israel's real mind. And more than this, “the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he prophesied.” As the law exposes to a soul, seeking God through it, how really guilty it is, and yet the law was good, so Saul exposed how incompetent Israel were to help themselves by a king of their own choosing, even when sanctioned of God. Samuel is now educated in dependence on God, in a very different line from that in which his public history opened. Now, an old man, and at the close of his life, and of his testimony to the blessedness of dependence on God, he must endure with patience, and co-operate, as long as he can. While this experiment is being worked out, he must suppress all the bitter and vexed feelings which crowd on him at every moment—he must wait on God, and wait for the end, until God brings it to an end. And his manner and spirit in this sad and dreary work is very encouraging to us. It is easier to rise up and repose in God, reckoning in His deliverance from open enemies like the Philistines, and quite another thing than to acknowledge and co-operate in all that professes well around you, though you feel it has sprung from an unsound principle, and you are bearing and forbearing, protesting and warning, oppressed by the instinctive sense of the unsoundness of it all, but patiently enduring until God shall, in His own time, manifest how weak and incompetent are all human devisings. Samuel, in obedience to the Lord, submits to the dispensational trial of man's king, accepting him and owning him as acknowledged of God, until the contrary was manifested; but, at the same time, observing two lines of action, namely, faithfulness to the people, the human element, as to their apostasy, and retribution, and also faithfulness to God, disallowing and disowning the king of the people, the moment he evinced any relinquishment of the principles ordained of God. We must remember that Samuel had led Israel by dependence on God into security and deliverance from their enemies—that he erred in supposing that his sons could sustain his own position. He is rebuked and afflicted by their incompetency and evil. And now the people, by their elders, renounce the position of dependence on God, which, in the person of Samuel, ensured such blessings to them. They will return to personal valor, not now in instruments raised up of God, but in a king like the nations. The difference between the judges and the kings was this—the former led because of a direct commission from God, the latter by popular acceptance. Samuel is now in something of the same position as Moses was. When the people with acclamation proposed to keep all the words of the law, and to do them, he had to stand aside and let them try; and when they failed, as assuredly they must, to be able to come forward and apply and establish God's remedy. Samuel fully and explicitly expounds to the people their apostasy and its consequences; but, at the same time he equally commends himself to us by his ready help and continuance to Saul, so long as it is morally possible. What education this was! Can we at all follow him in the season when the value of dependence on God is more proved and needed than ever How it fructifies in his soul! His sons a failure and reproach, the nation renouncing dependence on God, seeking a king who should supersede himself, and yet Samuel moves on through it all.

Samuel is directed by the Lord to protest solemnly unto the people, and show the manner of the king that shall reign over them. And he fully and explicitly does so. The man of faith is told to expose and denounce every step contrary to it; but yet he can, having done so, endure patiently whilst man's independence is on its trial; nay, he will sanction and acknowledge, so far as he may have divine authority. Samuel's manner to Saul is very beautiful. He not only receives him as an honored guest, he announces to him that in him is all the desire of Israel. And not only this, but he made him sit in the chiefest place among them that were bidden. And to distinguish him still more, the shoulder is set before him. While Samuel said, “Behold that which is reserved.” And, finally, he “took a vial of oil, and poured it on his head, and kissed him, and said, Is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance? What a discipline for Samuel to act after this manner! He illustrates to us the graceful action and calm submission of one practicing dependence on God, and of one, too, who had practiced it; for it is ever grateful and satisfactory to such an one. He is only the really dependent one, who will not anticipate events, but submits patiently to an order of things which, though ending in failure, are not yet manifested as such.

We next find Samuel calling all the people together unto the Lord to Mizpeh. (1 Sam. 10:17.) There was an association connected with Mizpeh, for there they had turned to the Lord, and under Samuel had learned the blessing of trusting in God. (1 Sam. 7:5, 6.) Here Samuel presents Saul to them. And Samuel said unto all the people, “See ye whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like unto him among all the people.” Samuel can see himself, and the principle of truth of which he was the witness, set aside, with dignity, grace, and even cheerfulness, because it was the will of the Lord. It is only the meek, dependent servant who will understand the will of the Lord as new and diverse circumstances arise. Continually you find an inclination to press an ascertained principle of right under every conceivable circumstance. The principle, doubtless, remains true, and its truth will be vindicated. But God often confounds the opposer before He brings forth His judgment, and the really dependent soul like Samuel will accord with His mind, and move on righteously and charitably. We next find Samuel (chap. xi. 14) saying to the people, “Come, and let us go to Gilgal, and renew the kingdom there.” There is nothing grudging nor of necessity in Samuel's actings. When Saul by his prowess had proved himself worthy of the kingdom, Samuel comes forward and proposes to the people to take the highest ground—to renew the kingdom at Gilgal—to crown Saul in the spot sacred to all the great energies of truth and power which marked the brightest hour of their history, Abraham did not give place to Lot in more dignity and self-surrender than Samuel to Saul; nay, Samuel exceeded, for he honored and guarded and counseled Saul, while it was of any use. And from that time he retired to his own house, leaving the issue to God. But though Samuel is full of charity, he is also righteous: and if you have one without the other, you will have little moral weight: and therefore Samuel at length proclaims to the people that their wickedness is great in asking for a king. And at the same time, he called unto the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain.

Samuel does not shrink from declaring to the people their great wickedness, though he has shown every readiness to bear with them, and now assures them he will not cease to pray for them. Who but one depending on God could combine both so freely and perfectly? How marvelous the ability one gets to be both charitable and righteous at the same time, if really walking in dependence on God Charity will suffer and sanction all it can—it hides a multitude of sins; but the moment there is any dishonor done to God, or there be any infraction of His laws, then righteousness asserts its inflexible claim, and the delinquent, be he who he may, meets his desert. Thus it was with Saul. Though Samuel had honored and supported him while he was walking amiably as a man among men, yet the moment he infringed on the ordinances of God (when Saul offered the burnt offering), Samuel spared him not, but said, when Saul went to meet him to salute him, “What hast thou done?” and then added, “Thou hast done foolishly, thou has not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God which he commanded thee; for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue; the Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.” Thus in faithfulness did he pronounce the Lord's sentence on that failure which already began to develop itself; and we do well to mark how the Lord leads Samuel to realize the value of depending on Him. When we walk in full charity, and at the same time are truly faithful to God, we may be assured that the Lord will, when He has proved us, expose the concealed evil which we had treated charitably only because it was not disclosed. It is a charity to bear with any one's professions or pretensions so long as they are permitted by God's word, as Saul clearly was; but charity for man stops when any inroad is made on God's commandment; then every feeling for man gives way in order to vindicate and advocate the decrees of God. And the one who, like Samuel, has learned to walk in forbearance and charity toward a Saul, but at the same time protesting against the principle of the people's acting, will at length be afforded full opportunity of denouncing this representative of independence, on account of some expressions of it, in which he will be openly convicted of profane assumptions and ungodly precipitancy.

Samuel has seen how Saul exposes and condemns himself in trenching on the priestly service; always (we may note in passing) the ripened expression of human independence, a Cain is consummated in a Korah. (See Jude 11.) And therefore, though Samuel knows the kingdom cannot be established in Saul, he proves him, or rather once more tests him, by sending him against the Amalekites. Saul fails again; and Samuel is greatly distressed; he cried unto the Lord all night, like Jeremiah. He did not wish for the evil day, though he had predicted it; and he is so grieved at this break down, that he cries unto the Lord all night; and, in consequence, when the time comes for action, how timely and faithfully he acts! He “hews Agag in pieces,” and reads to Saul a censure, not only most pointed, but fraught with divine principles far beyond the light and revelation of the dispensation in which he served. How elevating and instructive it is to us to watch and imbibe the spirit of Samuel in this scene! He had adhered to Saul as expecting that help to God's people would accrue through him; but now convinced that there was no hope, Samuel went to his house at Ramah. And Samuel came no more to see Saul unto the day of his death, not that he was indifferent about him, for it is said, “Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul.” Samuel had reckoned, more than one would have supposed, on help flowing to Israel through Saul; and he, too, had to be taught that the representative of the people must be a failure. He is graciously conducted to know this, as every soul will be who is truly faithful to God. Samuel's faithfulness and his single eye, insured that he should be “full of light;” and if he acknowledged for a moment, what God allowed to be put on trial, he learned that in charity to men and in faithfulness to God, his vision would be cleared of every uncertainty, and at last he was fully justified in abandoning entirely and forever man's king; a great and fine lesson for the servant of God. No doubt, Samuel mourned for Saul, and so did the Lord for Jerusalem; he was distressed at the ruin, to all human calculations and hopes. But the blessed God who had led His servant into his present sorrowful retirement, overwhelmed with the failure in the throne, will now complete His mercy to him by introducing to Him his own king, and by appointing him to anoint him. How it must have relieved and rejoiced the heart of Samuel to find himself, at last, in the presence of God's own king, the man after God's heart. And not only this, but that when David was persecuted by Saul, his companion in exile was Samuel: “He (David) and Samuel went and dwelt in Naioth.” (Chap. 19:18)

What a close! How blessed and suited for such a history! Samuel is lost in David. After dwelling with him (ç֗éæðÈ dwellings) during the season of his rejection, Samuel, the man of prayer and dependence, passes away (chap. 25:1) from the scene of his former ministry, of his exercises, and discipline, ere the rightful king—God's anointed, whom Samuel had owned—takes the scepter. May we have, like him, the blessing of dependence on God, and understand the discipline, which, however searching and sifting, is but leading us to Naioth, to dwell with our Lord and King; and, finally, to be lost in Him, who will yet take the place in which our hearts have set Him now, even the throne!

Discipline: 14. David

In order to understand the discipline to which David was subjected, we need to bear in mind the great elements of character which he typified, and which, through divine teaching, and the mortification of his nature, were expressed and foreshadowed by him. He was, as to his position, constantly a type of the Lord Jesus Christ; but, being a man of like passions as we are, the higher his calling, the more he required to be self-mortified, in order that he might be in a state of soul corresponding and suited to his elevated position: and therefore we shall see that the great aim of all the discipline which he undergoes is to fit him for the place to which God in His grace appoints him.

And is it not thus with us all? Do we not need to be disciplined and prepared for any place which grace confers on us? The higher we are raised through the same grace into the apprehension of the grace itself, the more do we require to be subdued and purged: and how this is done, our own private histories, if faithfully recorded, would detail. In order, therefore, that we may learn to note and observe this His discipline with ourselves carefully and accurately, our blessed God presents to us a recorded history of His ways with others who have gone before us; and that of David is a striking exemplification of that wondrous nurture and admonition by which He educates—subduing and mortifying in order to suppress what runs counter to His grace and purpose.

The first notice we have of David is where Samuel is sent of God to anoint him king instead of Saul. (1 Sam. 16) Here, in the first circle of his life which is presented to us, we trace the elements of the character and position of one who was so largely to engage our attention afterward. We find him, the youngest son of Jesse, absent from home, caring for his father's sheep in the wilderness; and his countenance, that true index of the innermost being, announcing what manner of man he is— “ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to.” “And when Samuel anointed him, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him from that day forward.”

Typically, David as anointed represents our Lord after the baptism of John, when the Holy Ghost descended from heaven and abode upon Him. And as the Lord entered on His public ministry, consequent on this anointing of the Holy Ghost, so also does David, the type, enter on his. As to our Lord, the concentrated goodness in Him exposed the evil around: or, rather, the perfection of the witness supplanted all shadows and figures of it. So now, as soon as the Spirit of God comes upon David, “the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.” David, doubtless, little knew, when the Spirit came upon him, that his first essay as God's man would be to assuage the violence, the spiritual violence, of the head of the kingdom. Saul had been advised to seek out a man who was a cunning player on the harp to chase the evil spirit from him; and the very man recommended to render this service is David, who is fitly described as one “cunning in playing, a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him.” “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.” What an apparently humble service for God's anointed king, one might be ready to say! But what moral pre-eminence! It seems but a small thing to play on a harp; but small services done under the power of God's Spirit effect the most remarkable result. The Lord, while on earth, filled this place with reference to the evil and violence of all power that surrounded him; but to David it was also discipline. Whether he understood what the anointing in its full bearing indicated, we are not told; but coupling this with the fact of the Spirit of God coming upon him, he must have felt that he had abilities for a higher office. But here the genuineness of true power and subjection to God are proved. It was God's appointment that he should fill the place; the king required his services, and he rendered them without gainsaying; nay, rather, he discharged it with consummate ability. Faithfulness in the least proves competency for the greatest; and David is taught in his first public start to use the great abilities which God had given him to promote the greatest good required at the time. And what can be more noble or kingly!

Though David was greatly beloved by Saul, and became his armor-bearer, it appears that he was only occasionally with him, and that he had not surrendered the care of his father's sheep in the wilderness; for when Saul gives battle to the Philistines in the valley of Elah (chap. 17.) David is not with him, and we are expressly told that he had returned to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem, and that it was from thence that he, by his father's instructions, came to the scene of the battle—I suppose about forty days after the commencement of it. I note this, because it shows us the alterations so useful and necessary for divine discipline. David had been an inmate of the palace, the king's armor-bearer, greatly loved by him, and, moreover, had rendered him the most signal services; but he passes from this to the humble place of caring for his father's sheep in the wilderness, and in obscurity serves with as much zeal and satisfaction as in the highest sphere; thus proving, by the facile way in which he passes from one to the other, the true metal of his soul, and the singleness of his purpose, as a faithful servant, in whatever he is called unto.

A more signal and glorious service is, however, now in store for him; but it is brought about in a very humble way; for he emerges from the wilderness and the care of the flock by order of his father on a very simple mission, viz., to take supplies to his brethren and see how they fare. But while diligently executing this order, an opening or demand on him arises for testifying for the glory of God. And for this demand the man of God is ever ready. David, having just discharged the object of his mission, is arrested by hearing the Philistine defy the armies of the living God, and his spirit stirred within him—like Paul. He immediately determines to encounter him. How prompt and self-possessing is the power of God! Though commissioned for so simple an errand, he is ready at a moment's notice to enter on the most notable, with the utmost zeal and prowess, though at the same time with the greatest simplicity. Refusing Saul's armor, which he had “not proved,” he takes what is most natural to him—five smooth stones from the brook; thus indicating that he need not be invested with any greater circumstances than those in which God had placed him, or with any greater means than those which came within the range of his calling. So, with the simple equipment of a shepherd he is content and fearless, and can face the terrible foe with a staff, a shepherd's bag, a sling and five stones—smooth ones, too! What a grasp divine power must have had on him! And how full was his possession of it, to be able to apply it with such quietness and composure! David meets Goliath as calmly as he might have met a child, and returns his challenge with all the dignity which invests a soul which knows that the divine power, which it implicitly rests on, will thereby be a weapon in its grasp. And dependence on that God, whose deliverance it has proved in its own private wilderness-conflicts with the lion and the bear, renders it fearless and calm in facing a more terrible adversary, before whom the whole host of Israel quailed. One stone sufficed, and the giant fell! David, still equal to the moment, though he had rejected Saul's armor as means of vanquishing, is now rightful possessor of that which he had vanquished; so he took Goliath's sword, stood upon him, and “cut off his head therewith” —in all of which action we notice the adroitness and wisdom of divine power. He must have had a glowing sense of what God had wrought by him; and it must have been an immense gratification to have to be the means of so great a deliverance; yet, like the greater than David, no popular honors are decreed him. And it must have been discipline to him to find, after all that had passed, he was unknown to Saul; and though taken into his house, it is without any promise of favor. True, Saul had set David over his men of war, and the women celebrated his exploits in songs; but none of these in any way expressed a due sense of the services rendered or the deliverance wrought by him—none, save one, and that one God had prepared as a solace for David's heart, amid all the ingratitude and violence which was to be displayed in the very scene of his service and victory. The love and devotion of Jonathan is as yet his only compensation. Like the Lord Himself, he must find his greatest services unacknowledged, save by the little remnant attached to His person; and who, like the poor woman (Luke 7), felt that He was everything to her, while the Pharisee and the great ones were hollow and irresponsive to Him. The Lord surely valued the love of His disciples, and it cheered Him in His course here, while so slighted and unknown of men. David was allowed still more solace, in the wonderful and touching attachment and devotion of Jonathan, who ever remained faithful to him; but he had also to learn that this is all he must reckon on, let his services be ever so great. He must not depend on those whom he has served, but only on the one whose affections he has won. It must be heart-allegiance, not popular or royal favor—a blessed lesson for any servant, a fine and holy line for the soul to be led into!

But ingratitude soon gives place to enmity. Saul now envies David, and “eyed him from that day forward.” “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house.” He seeks David's life with the javelin in his hand. Saul, I apprehend, is a type of the world, assuming a religious title, just as Christendom is sustained by the world: and the more faithful we are to it, the more do we provoke its enmity. But how useful is this enmity to the man of God! It eventually, if he continues faithful, drives him away from all association with it; for, however he may serve, he can never win. I do not say that David had no right to go to Saul's house—he, typifying the Lord, was there as the deliverer; but that, in the end, he is compelled to abandon it: as every faithful servant will find ere long that he must either fall or abandon all association with the world.

Various are the methods which Saul resorts to for David's destruction. And such bitter and undeserved hatred may surprise us; but it only discloses to us the malice of the worldly professor, which no amount of goodness or service will disarm. While David presents to us the picture of one who likes to serve in the midst of his people—a noble desire, and most fully exemplified in the true David, who served the most, and was the most social of men.

Saul now tries to entrap David by offering him his eldest daughter, on condition that he should fight the Lord's battles; for he is not yet so hardened in iniquity that he would publicly lay hands on him: but he said, “Let the hands of the Philistines be upon him.” David never gets Merab, though he evidently would have regarded it as a most unexpected honor; but it was not to be realized. “It is the continual dropping which weareth the stone,” and this was always the character of schooling necessary for David. How he must have winced under each vacillation and deceit for which he was so little prepared, when he entered the royal circle! And the noble and strong can ill brook the meanness of envy; but David was being taught thereby the deceitfulness of this present evil world. Saul, contrary to all probity and honor, bestows Merab on Adriel; but still intent on David's destruction, he offers him Michal as a snare, on condition that he should obtain for dowry “an hundred foreskins of the Philistines.” David readily acceded; and not abiding by the limit of the contract, he, according to the greatness of his nature (for he will be no man's debtor), exceeds the condition, and “slew two hundred men.” But the more we are above the spirit of the world, the more it will hate us; and Saul now “becomes David's enemy continually.” And this faithful servant must now have learned that all the goodness and service in the court was for naught; for increase of nominal honor only brought more deadly and inveterate hatred. He must have experienced, at a distance, the feelings of Him who said, “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin.” “They hated me without a cause.” There is now no longer any cloak to this hatred; for “Saul spoke to Jonathan and all his servants that they should kill David;” and the latter is warned of this intention by Jonathan, “who delighted much in David.” Touching and gracious are God's ways with His people! If He sees it needful to teach His servant by a bitter process the evil of association with the world, and that he must needs separate from it, He, at the same time, provides for him a devoted heart, in which He could entirely confide. David had one green spot, one fond enclosure, which, like a guardian angel, preserved him from the machinations of malice and all uncharitableness—a resource which David's antitype knew but little of on earth, though none appreciated it more than He. Jonathan warns David, mediates with his father, and Saul relents, and “he was in his presence as in times past.” All these alternations of discipline are necessary. When we are brought so low as to “hide in a secret place,” the reality of our resource in God is not only proved, but ascertained for ourselves; but when prosperity is again renewed, the soul can contrast the quality of its rest, when apparently resourceless, with that which it experiences when natural resources are abundant: and this produces, I doubt not, if we are faithful, a growing depreciation of the natural, in comparison to the divine; for, however we may try, we can never find in the lower resource that rest which we have in the higher.

David, restored to favor, serves with diligence, but is soon assailed again, and only escapes by a stratagem of Michal, of her whom Saul had provided as a snare for him. And now, convinced that he cannot abide in the royal house any longer, he flies, renouncing his position, and everything dear to him as a man except his life. And whether does he flee? Where does the break with Saul naturally drive him? To Samuel at Ramah. Samuel, after undergoing another line of discipline, had also, from godly sentiment, retired from association with Saul. And now the true king, after every effort to serve and win the existing power, being forced to retire also, he cannot fail, as he walks in the divine path, to meet the one who had already traversed it. David and Samuel, the servant and the prophet, are congenial—the one just entering into, the other emerging from, the School of God: for David was as yet a youthful, while Samuel was an aged and well-trained, learner in that school; but being of kindred spirit and aim, they meet and dwell together. And this is the true, holy, and divine way to attain association with the godly. If you have traversed the divine path, and I enter thereon, we must meet and walk together, for though man's paths are many, God's is but one.

But what had David learned in all this? When obliged to flee for his life, he seeks shelter and sympathy with the separated prophet? He had learned by experience what it was to endeavor to maintain his place in the world which professedly owned God; and now convinced of the futility of his attempt, and still more of the wickedness which opposed him, he enters on a new line, even to learn what it is to walk under God's hand alone, and separated from all whom he was ready to serve, as he had tasted of the world's acceptance, so dangerous and uncertain in its nature; so now he must be disciplined in the sorrows of rejection. We must remember that David was God's own selection for the throne of Israel; and not only so, but that in the very commencement of his course he had been anointed for this high post; but in order that he should occupy it according to God, he must be educated in the qualities which become God's king. It is always God's way to appoint first, and then to qualify. With man it is the reverse: he requires qualification before appointment; but we may rest assured that God will fit us for whatever office He has destined us, after he appoints us thereto. This is the divine principle, as one has so fitly expressed it: “First wears the laurel, then begins the fight.” Thus God's first action towards David was to appoint him king, and from thence date all his experiences, exploits, and difficulties; for I fully believe that it was after this that he killed the lion and the bear; but how long a process of probation did he require before he was fit to enter on the high place for which he was destined! At the stage of process which we are now considering he had passed through two courses of education; one at home, feeding his father's sheep in the wilderness, in which he had proved himself most valiant and successful; and the other in the highest position in the world, and withal the religious world—loved by some, the people's delight, but envied by the king, the object alternately of favor, deceit, and enmity, and at length compelled to surrender his position and escape for his life. The first circle in cur histories will always be found to embrace and disclose the chief qualities which will distinguish every subsequent circle of our lives; consequently nothing is more important to a Christian than how and under what guidance he commences and describes his first circle. David's was of a fine order and contained all the elements of moral beauty which the succeeding circles so amply developed, as we shall see. He now entered on his third course, which extends unto the death of Saul, and may be designated the period of his rejection, when the ruler of Israel thirsted for his life; a time of peculiar suffering, but of ample, manifold, and blessed experience of the goodness of God, and at the same time of the weakness of his own nature.

( To be continued.)

Discipline: 15. David

We have seen that David fled to Ramah and dwelt with the prophet who had retired in sorrowing faithfulness from the scene and associations from which David was now driven, and surely Ramah must have been a scene of mourning then, as in later times “a voice was heard at Ramah, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning.” David and Samuel doubtless mourned together deeply and sorely over the misrule of Saul, who, relentless as Herod, pursues David even here. But when he attempts to intrude on their retreat, the spirit of God subdues him, and David, apparently unprotected, is taught at the opening of this new and sorrowful path how distinctly God can shield him. But he is not yet prepared to relinquish his former position without a struggle, and he leaves Naioth to seek Jonathan and ascertain from him whether it is irretrievable. (Chap. 20.) They meet—a signal is agreed upon, which confirming Saul's implacability, David's fate is sealed, and he, emerging from his retreat and one with Jonathan, gives vent to the agonizing sorrow of a full heart. Still self-possessed and courteous on approaching Jonathan, he “fell on his face to the ground and bowed himself three times, and they kissed one another and wept with one another until David exceeded.” What a scene was this! what a wrench! The last link which bound David to the useful and once glorious scene in which he lately moved, is broken. Bereft in a moment of all he valued and loved, honor, position, service recede from his view, and even the companionship of the heart that remained faithful to him. He must henceforth give up his public career, his relationship to the king, his valiant service to the people against their enemies, the love and sympathy of Jonathan. He must retire to obscurity and, as it seemed, uselessness; and we all know what it is to human nature to relinquish what it has expected or possessed—how difficult to return with any contentment to its former condition. And for what cause was all this? None, but the unjust and deadly hate of the ruler of Israel; and unless David discerned, as we do, that there was another cause, that God himself was setting the springs to work in order to educate and qualify him for future greatness, he must have been overwhelmed; for the conflict with the lion and the bear, with Goliath and the Philistines, were as nothing to this. Great must have been the desolation of that hour; and when the blessed Jesus wept over Jerusalem, surely sorrows of the same order, though surpassingly deeper and holier, harrowed his tender heart. David and Jonathan part with an oath and undisturbed attachment between them; but their lives diverge. David, the rejected king, must suffer awhile, and find other companions for his sufferings and rejection; while Jonathan must “return to the city,” his father's house, with which he cannot break the link. Then the whole scene has also its typical aspect—the true David in his rejection, and the Jewish remnant, which neither suffer nor reign with him.

Chapter 21.—David was now cast in complete reliance on God, and his first act after the wrench which we have been considering is to go to the high priest; for the soul, taking the place of dependence, turns ever without distinct consciousness as to its motive to God's recognized testimony on earth for continuance and help. I believe that whenever we take the place of exile in the world for the Lord's sake, however ignorantly, that we instinctively seek the Church as God's established witness on earth. Thus David in principle does the same, though we may justly censure his untruthfulness to Abimelech; but seldom does the new man act that the old man in its effort to co-operate does not betray weakness and moral degradation. He receives from Abimelech both bread and a sword (the very sword of Goliath, a remembrance of his first public victory), and he at the moment typified the place the Lord occupied in Israel, when His disciples were driven to appease their hunger by rubbing the ears of the standing corn as they passed through it. But how the mere human type breaks down when the strain is too great, and thus displays in fuller distinctness the perfection of the divine yet human antitype. He supplies the broken and lost link, and at the same time disciplines the mere human vessel in its failure into association and sympathy with His own path. And now David fails still further. So great is his fear of Saul, though with the trophy of his victory over the giant in his hand, that he deserts the land, abandons the place of privilege, and flees to Achish, king of Gath! But just fed and armed from God's sanctuary, he yields to unbelief and leaves the Lord's inheritance! But unbelief always leads us into the sorrow which we peek to avoid, and from which we learn eventually that faith would have preserved us.

The servants of king Achish soon recognize him, and David's next expedient is to feign himself mad! How humiliating! But now it is that his soul becomes solely occupied with God and all the previous discipline bears fruit. It is necessary for him not only to see all he prized in the world fade away before him, but he must also feel that he himself is personally humiliated, and then it is that the full nature and value of the resources of God are appropriated. It is at this moment that the spirit of God passes though David's soul the sweet, confiding notes recorded in Psa. 34, “He will bless the Lord at all times.” He exclaims, “I sought the Lord, and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.” Through bitter trials he had reached this blessed utterance, and in the same spot, so to speak, does the spirit of God still utter it for every one who will pass that way. Driven out of the world, humiliated in himself before men and in his own eyes, denouncing his own “guile,” he can now say, “The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants, and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.”

Chapter 22.—David leaves Achish chanting the thirty-fourth Psalm, and escapes to Adullam. He is once more in the land, though it be but a cave; and there not only his own house, but all that were in distress, or in debt, &c., congregate to him. Having learned the place of dependence for himself, he can become a center and guide for the poor of the flock, whose hearts did not own the rule of Saul; and they can follow his faith, considering the end of his conversation. Why David placed his parents with the King of Moab I cannot say, unless he desired to escape from their influence and fears. (We know how our Lord had to rise above his parent's counsels.) While in this cave he utters three psalms—cxlii., hi., and lvii.—the latter, I think, after he was joined by the prophet and priest. He expresses full confidence in God “until these calamities be overpast,” though at the same time sensible of the dangers with which he is surrounded. His “heart is prepared,” therefore he will “sing and give praise.” We naturally shrink from trials and sorrows, but when we find ourselves like David, enjoying the resources that are in God, which our trials have caused us to have recourse to, we remember no more the path of affliction which led us thereto.

Psa. 52 is David's utterance when he hears of Doeg's conduct. He sees God's discipline in all his sorrow: “I will praise thee forever, because thou hast done it.” How the Spirit of God was converting every trial into an occasion for engaging his soul with the deep chords of spiritual song and the day of glory! If Paul in Arabia was caught up to heaven, surely in the cave and the wilderness the outcast David was hearing in his soul the sublime strains of God's victory over every foe. He not only heard the harpers harping with their harps, but his own heart was attuned of God; and the divine music cheered the spirit of the rejected king.

Keilah is the next page in this interesting history, chapter 23. Whatever be the pressure or trial of our own position, if we are in the spirit and condition of soul answering to Psa. 57, we could not hear of the distress of any of God's people, which we could alleviate, without being ready to aid them. Consequently, when it was told David, “Behold the Philistines fight against Keilah, and rob the threshing floors,” he inquired of the Lord, saying, “Shall I go and smite these Philistines?” And the Lord says “Go smite the Philistines and save Keilah.” The man of real might and experience in God's succor, appeals to God before he embarks in anything. David's men try to discourage him from it, and, after he had mastered his own heart and its sorrows, he must learn to be superior to the unbelief of his associates. He inquires yet again; and a further assurance being given him from the Lord, he goes down to Keilah with his men, and is completely successful; he saves the inhabitants. But this was only to bring about another order of trial and exercise of heart for him. Once more his services are unrequited. Saul goes down to besige Keilah, and David inquires of the Lord as to whether the men whom he had just delivered from the Philistines, will deliver him up; and the divine answer is, that they will. And here let us mark the difference in David's mode of inquiry in this and in the first instance. (Ver. 1-4.) It does not appear that he made use of the priest when seeking counsel as to relieving Keilah; but here, when “he knew that Saul secretly practiced mischief against him,” and he wanted to know what should be his own line of action with reference to it, he says to the priest, “Bring hither the ephod;” and thus he makes the inquiry. This difference is interesting. In the first instance, it was a simple question as whether he should or should not serve others; and, without questioning his motives, he has only to turn to the Lord for direction; but when our own interests are concerned, we are much more likely to be led by our own will, and to lack singleness of heart and purpose. We never are outside Christ, but in serving others we are directly acting with Him; whereas, when it is in any wise a question of self, we need to realize our full acceptance and to sift our motives; and here the priesthood comes in. But in either case the answer is prompt and distinct; and it is most instructive to note the manner of the intercourse between David and the Lord; what confidence and simplicity there was between them. David asks his plain simple questions, and the Lord answers as plainly and distinctly. He had no resource but in God; and this condition he was learning more and more in each stage of his life. Any soul in the Lord's presence, and truly reliant on Him, would experience the same. The simpler such a soul is, the more is it qualified for great and exalted service. The one great with God is he who can devote all his energies according to God's counsel to aid and serve others, but whose dependence is entirely on God, proving that his resources place him above recompense from those whom he serves. It is plain that we are not told all the services which David rendered, or the experiences which he passed through. I suppose a specimen of each particular line is recorded for us. That of Keilah I should designate, as “how the rejected king serves this people without requital;” and this is necessary discipline for him, nay, for any one who will walk with the true David through this evil world.

David now goes “whithersoever he could go” (verse 13), and eventually remains in a mountain in the wilderness of Ziph. Here Jonathan comes to him, and “strengthens his hand in God,” fulfilling that vision of faith which he had expressed in Psa. 142, “The righteous shall compass me about.” How graciously the Lord cheers us by human sympathy when we have entered the wilderness only depending on Him! How sweet to the soul to realize these instances of His compassion for us! But the cheer and encouragement of Jonathan's visit is soon checkered by the uncalled-for hostility of the Ziphites, who, in order to please Saul, inform him of David's retreat. Whether it was on this occasion, when the treachery of the Ziphites was first known to him, that he uttered Psa. 54, or subsequently, it is immaterial to inquire: what is interesting for us to know is the state of his mind at the time, and this the psalm discloses. “Strangers had risen up against him;” but he can add, “Behold God is mine helper.” Fully was this realized. Just as Saul and his men had succeeded in compassing him about to take him, a messenger comes, saying, “Haste thee and come, for the Philistines have invaded the land.” David is delivered, and the spot is commemorated by the name of “the rock of divisions.”

We may continually remark, that it is after this manner that the power of man is rendered ineffectual. Man can never contend with two distinct enemies, and he is obliged to let one escape in order to encounter the other. David has been taught in this strait, when all hope was well nigh gone, how easily and simply the Lord can deliver him. It is very important for high spiritual attainment to be led experimentally in these various expositions of God's care of His servant, so that, “strong in the power of His might,” he may be able to say, “I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me.” This is another distinct lesson for David during the period of his rejection. At Adullam and the wood, he is provided with companions and sympathy; at Keilah, he is permitted signally to serve, and baffles Saul by not depending on the recipients of his service; in the wilderness of Maon, when almost in the hand of the enemy, he escapes through the Lord's interposition. Thus variously and wonderfully was he learning the ways of God in an evil and hostile world; and according as he learned, was the better qualified to lead and rule God's people in such a scene.

His antitype—the blessed Lord Jesus—needed not such instructions. He knew what was in man, and He alone is truly Lord and King. But David is a fine specimen of the human vessel, with large capacities and ready mind, to receive the divine mind and ways. His circumstances vary very much, but whenever he was true to his lesson, dependent on God, he is in the right path.

After a short respite in the strongholds of Engedi, David is again sought after by Saul, who now goes out against him with 3000 of the chosen men of Israel. No longer content to pursue after him singly, he, with an organized force and deadly purpose, persists in his design. David must endure this pressure, but in the end he shall know that the greater the violence urged against him, the simpler and more effectual are the means used of God to deliver him. Saul was defeated at Keilah by its being abandoned by David; he was foiled at the Rock of Division by the invasion of the Philistines; and Most ingloriously is he defeated at Engedi by the moderation and loyalty of David, to whom he owes his life. Little did he know, in the malice of his heart, how, by entering the cave, he thrust himself into the grasp of his desired victim; or how deeply he was to be humbled, morally, by the contrast between them which this scene evinces; the generous elevation of one in its superiority to evil and enmity blazing forth in such vivid colors as to draw forth the acknowledgment of it from the lips of the persecutor, who is made so conscious of his own comparative abasement, that he for the moment sues favor from, and acknowledges the title of, the fugitive, whom, with all his royal power and chosen army, he had come forth to destroy. As for David, by acting in grace instead of vengeance, he maintained God's principle of action toward the world, which now lies under the sin of having rejected its rightful King.

Chap. 25. presents us with another line of experience. And here we shall find that David for a moment forgets the lesson of the power of grace which he had just so remarkably acted on and illustrated—a warning to us of the treachery of our nature, and how it may betray us into a very contrary line of action to that which we have only a moment before displayed. And still further, it teaches us that we are more likely to fail in grace toward one whose friendship and gratitude we have a title to reckon on than to an open enemy. David is so irritated by Nabal's ruthless conduct, that he prepares to take summary vengeance on him, but is diverted from this avengeful course by the most interesting event and association which is ever known to God's servants in this Christ-rejecting world. Abigail is in type the Church; and regarding David in his typical relation to the Lord, she is his compensation in the day of his rejection for all he had lost in the kingdom. She is with him where even Jonathan cannot follow him; and after becoming his wife and companion in suffering, she shares his throne and glory. But we have also considered David as the faithful servant, not perfect like the Lord, but under God's discipline and training; and in this aspect the influence of Abigail on him typifies that of the Church, whose position and sentiments, when made known, suppress all notions of vengeance. Nabal is the old Adam, spare or Abigail's sake; but when Nabal dies, David owns Abigail in the closest relationship; she who not only on first acquaintance provoked and confirmed in his soul the blessed and dignified path of grace which became him in his rejection, but who also gladly shared with him his toil and sorrow. Thus the wilderness of Maon was an eventful scene for David; just as it is a great day in our lives as Christians when the Church, as to her calling and nature, is first made known to us. For many a servant of God who feels the usurpation of professed religion as David did in the person of Saul has not found the Abigail—has not so learned what the Church is in the mind of Christ, as to find therein an interest, sympathy, and companionship, as well as a support in the path of grace in passing through this world. As Abigail was a green spot in the wilderness to David, so the Church is the only green spot for the heart of Christ or His servants now on earth, the center and object of His interest.

It is very necessary, while studying the lines of instruction in which God educates His servant, to keep in mind that these lines are always in relation to the place for which the servant is destined. David is now only preparing for his great sphere of service; and previous to entering on it, it is necessary that he should know the ways and grace of the Lord in several distinct lines.

We have just seen how the Lord helped and cheered him in the wilderness in a manner most unexpected to him, the whole circumstances unfolding in a remarkable way the Lord's tender and abounding love. If Adam required the company and help of Eve in the garden of Eden, how much more did David an Abigail in the desert! But “the greater the need, the greater the boon;” and this David's soul must have acknowledged. But after this bright moment, the waters of persecution again encompass him. (Chap. 26.) Saul, instigated by the Ziphites, again pursues him into the wilderness; which plainly intimated to David that the desperate issue was at hand. To the spiritual man oppressed by the world there is always given a very clear perception of the state and condition of the power brought against him. This grace is now given to David. He reconnoiters Saul and his army, understands what his own course should be, and having sought a companion, forthwith entered on it. And for what object? Simply to show that though his enemy was in his power he would not injure him. “Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster,” &c., when David and Abishai approach. The latter would have killed the sleeping king, in the power of nature, but David interposed, alleging very distinctly and solemnly his confidence that God would be his avenger. The only trophies which he takes are the spear and the cruse of water, which indicate the true nature of the exploit. The spear (the implement of war) was returned, but we do not hear that the cruse was. Saul a second time acknowledges David's victory of grace, and in reply to his expostulation says, “I have sinned; return, my son David; for I will no more do thee harm, because my soul was precious in thine eyes this day.” What evidence had been accorded to David in this transaction of the mighty power of God! What authority for that sentiment which he uttered after his final deliverance: “He sent from above; he took me; he drew me out of many waters.”

But, alas! when our greatest deliverances take place, we are often least sensible of the mercy vouchsafed. The very ingratitude for it provokes a reaction, unless we are so humbled and broken as to be occupied in magnifying the Lord, instead of dwelling on ourselves and our own insufficiency. Having been in the Lord's hand, unless we abide there, subject to Him in praise, we are the more sensible of our own powerlessness. Now, powerlessness with faith binds us the more to God, as the sure rock of our strength and the fountain of supply; but powerlessness without faith always drives us to seek human succor: and after great deliverances we often make a false step, partly because we have got out of the energy of that faith which the pressure required, and partly because our nature would escape from the restraint which faith entails—it wishes to get into circumstances where faith will not be required. Thus David, after this great moral victory over Saul, becomes a prey to his own feelings and fears (chap. xxvii.), and says in his heart, “I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines,” &c. This idea was in positive contradiction to the language he had so lately uttered to Saul. But how soon one forgets the convictions of faith when one confers with nature! Just before he had said, “So let my life be much set by in the eyes of the Lord, and let him deliver me out of all tribulation.” But now he is so desponding, that he expatriates himself from the Lord's inheritance. “And David arose, and the six hundred men that were with him and passed over unto Achish, the son of Maoch, king of Gath.” We have seen that once before he had sought refuge with Achish, and was glad to retire from it in humiliation. Why does he go there again'? He now practically exemplifies the most peculiar and necessary discipline that any one can be subjected to. Whatever be the first cause of our failure at our start, even though surmounted at the time, it is sure to beset us again, and, if we be not effectually delivered from it, in a more bitter and desperate form. This is necessary; for if that particular line of my nature still flourishes, surely divine discipline must be directed to the subjection of it, for nature, though summarily expelled, is sure to betray itself again and again, until it be worn out: and therefore when an exposure recurs again (necessary because it has not been thoroughly mortified), it is always met by a severe chastening. David ingratiates himself with Achish, and obtains Ziklag from him. It is wonderful how the Lord allows his servants to work out their own devisings; but after they had been corrected and have seen the end of them, he advances them to greater and higher service, provided they have been in principle true to Him. Deep as was David's failure here, I believe this was the case with him. We never hear that he worshipped false gods or forgot that Israel was God's people. He deceived Achish, and thus morally degraded himself; but he was true in principle to God, and when his nature was subdued, he was delivered from his humiliating position into open and active service. Ziklag was the last touch of the master-hand that was preparing him for the throne, and must therefore be especially interesting to us. He goes there in unbelief, tarries for more than a year, ingratiates himself with Achish by false representations, and even essays to join him in battle against Israel, which act we must from his former course consider that the lords of the Philistines rightly interpreted! for however he could deceive, he never would have taken the sword against his own people, except with the intention to aid them eventually. This they forsee, and Achish is reluctantly obliged to decline his services and lead him away. And now being delivered from this false and painful position by the Lord's indirect interpositions, discipline follows. While this duplicity had been going on, judgment falls on Ziklag, and David and his company return to find it burned with fire, and their wives, sons, and daughters taken captive? We now know what David did not know at this distressing moment, that the same God who was then so sorely chastening him was preparing the kingdom for him, for the very same hour Saul was being slain on Mount Gilboa; but David was not fit for the throne or any such tidings, until he was chastened and brought into real dependence on God. The first and last step to the throne is dependence, and the only title for it which God owns; consequently, at Ziklag, David is more humbled and deserted than at any other period of his life; for not only was his own sorrow poignant on account of his great loss, but (as is the case in all great sorrows) the whole of his past history must have intensified his misery; and, in addition to this, the greatest blow of any, his old and attached followers speak of stoning him. Such a moment he had never known before, and never knew again. His enemies (the Amalekites) had baffled him and were beyond his reach; and what is more fretting to the man of might than to be circumvented without opportunity of avenging oneself Truly he was under the arrows of the Almighty, and made to feel the chastening rod for having committed himself to so false a position as that outside the land or place of privilege. Human help or support there was none? on the contrary, danger and conspiracy surrounded him: God chastening him, his friends incensed against him, his enemy unreachable. But what was the result? “David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” It is deeply interesting now and again to turn to the Psalms and listen to the breathings of his heart in the varied circumstances, the narrative of which is given in the history of his life. We find that Psa. 56 was uttered in the distress of his soul, entailed by his wrong and humiliating sojourn in Gath; and whether or not it was at the period we are considering, it is an utterance fully expressive of what he must have passed through. Bereft of all human trust, he turns to God, though in the full consciousness of his own failures. “In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me. Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling?” It is a blessed thing to have received at any time a right knowledge of God; for if we have, when our failure is paramount, we shall then best know that God is our only resource, although His chastening be very sore, and we be forsaken and helpless. There is no fear for David now; he has “awaked,” and he shall “have light.” (See Eph. 5:14.) “Bring hither the ephod,” he says to Abiathar, the priest; for when the soul re-enters the path of faith, it is specially conscious of the necessity for acceptance; and now he has got into his old line of confidence, and doubtless with renewed energy. As at Keilah, he inquires of the Lord, “Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them?” And He answered him with peculiar assurance and encouragement, “Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake, and without fail recover all.” Thus in a moment has the earnest soul recovered itself with God. “So David went, and the 600 men that were with him;” but 200 remained behind at the brook Besor, from faintness. The path of faith always tests our strength, and every embarrassment only presents an opportunity for some greater display of the grace which is sustaining us. This contretemps gives rise to a “statute for Israel unto this day,” and one fully characteristic of the grace which at the moment was blessing the pursuers.

David fails not: wise and gracious as well as strong (as the man walking according to God's counsel ever is), he can turn every incident to account. The almost famished Egyptian commands his attention; on any ground he ought not to have neglected him, as we in our haste are too ready to do; and had he done so, he would have lost the proper clue to the desired end. The recruited Egyptian guides David to the camp of his enemies, and he smote the whole troop, recovered all they had carried away, rescued his two wives and all; “there was nothing lacking, David recovered all.” And now, returning to the brook Besor, he exemplifies how a soul in the enjoyment of grace, flushed with its glorious exploits, will know how to testify of that grace to others. He overrules the selfishness of the natural mind, and proclaims that divine principle: “As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part alike. And it was so from that day forward, that he made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel unto this day.” What a monument! What a commemoration of the last hours of David's rejection! and what a herald, morally, of the reign about to open! This ordinance has a momentous meaning; it embodies the principle by which the Church is now, by its members, morally affected; it is the offspring of the victorious but uncrowned David; the place which our Lord now holds towards His people here. And this ordinance conveys to us the principle on which each member in the body is dependent on the other for loss or for gain, It is new and wonderful, but worthy of the hour in which it was enacted. It is the Holy Ghost and not merely life who unites in one body the members of the absent Lord, and makes them dependent and inseparably one from the other. May we apply our hearts unto wisdom, that we may understand the deep things of God.

We have now reached the completion of the third course or circle of David's eventful life; and the close of that wonderful process of moral preparation which was necessary to qualify him for that high and glorious position for which he was so early destined and anointed. His entrance thereon we must defer considering for the present.

(Continued from page 109.)

Discipline: 16. David

We now enter on another chapter in David's history. The period of his rejection is over, and the new and glorious position which he is to occupy is being prepared for him. That course of education which belonged to him as a fugitive and a sufferer, though rightful heir to the throne, closed at Ziklag, the scene to him of bitter sorrow and retribution, but of wondrous deliverance and restoration; and it is there, after having returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, and having sent presents of the spoil of the “enemies of the Lord” to all places where he and his men were wont to haunt, that the momentous tidings of the death of him whose throne he was to fill reaches him! What a remarkable coincidence! The charred ruins of Ziklag testified of the chastening which he had so deeply tasted and needed, while the presents which he was sending hither and thither, proclaimed the compensation and victory which had been vouchsafed to him. The contrast between the two testimonies is striking, the one notifying his own failure; the other still more generally and positively the goodness and favor of the Lord.

Right royally he was acting before he knew that he was actually king, or that the one who had barred his way to the throne had fallen on Mount Gilboa. It is in keeping with God's ways that we should be in the spirit of our position when the time arrives for us to be owned in it, for the condition indicates the position; may, the condition is ever unsatisfied until it reaches the position which suits it. The preparation of his heart is from the Lord, and we may rest assured that unless we are acting in the spirit of any desired position, we are not fit for it, and if we were set in it, we should be found in an element unsuited to us. It is true we do not, and need not know how to act in the promised position until we are actually set therein, for faith's activities are for the present; but we may and should act in the spirit of the better position, and if our tastes for it are not gratified, the divine life is not matured; for it seeks its own region, and the tastes are only the claims of its vitality.

David was two days at Ziklag after his return from conquest before he heard of the death of Saul; for it was on the “third day” that the event, and the manner of it is related to him by an Amalekite, who says, “I stood upon him and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen, and I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was upon his arm, and have brought them hither to my lord.” But how does David receive these tidings and trophies? “He took hold of his clothes and rent them, and mourned, and wept, and fasted until even;” and as for the bearer of them, he ordered his immediate execution. When judgment from God falls on His people, however deserved by them and predicted by the faithful, yet to the godly it is always solemn and affecting; and at such a moment no true David could remember the benefit that might accrue to himself from the event. The soul enters rather into the cause of the divine interposition; and the sense that God is acting silences self. How many and great were the revolutions which had exercised David's spirit those three days! He had not only known the Lord's peculiar mercy to himself, but now he is made cognizant of this singular judgment, which occupies him so much in its connection with Israel, that for the moment he overlooks its importance to himself. Moreover, he could not suffer the Amalekite, who had reported the news, to live; for he was proving his title to the throne in his unflinching war with the Amalekites, in contradistinction to Saul, who had morally lost the kingdom by sparing Amalek (1 Sam. 15), and who now, by God's unerring retribution, is slain and stripped of his kingly ornaments by an Amalekite! It was consistent therefore with God's way and will that David should establish his title by relentless vengeance on Amalek, and doubtless the Lord in His mercy exasperated him thus ere he reached the throne against the enemy of. Israel by allowing the Amalekites to wound him where he was most sensitive. Blessed God! this is often thy gracious way!

To the godly soul there is a fresh demand for counsel from God as each difficulty or opposition disappears, because he requires to ascertain how he may use the advantage aright, and there is often much lost for want of judgment. David now “inquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah? And the Lord said unto him, go up. And David said, Whither shall I go up? And he said, Unto Hebron.” (2 Sam. 2:1.) What simple, happy, and interesting dependence! In what a different spirit he leaves Ziklag to that in which he entered it! What blessed fruition of God's discipline does he now enjoy going up into Hebron, led and sustained by the plain word of God! What power and simplicity characterize the walk of the man upheld thereby! David goes to Hebron, and “his men that were with him, every man with his household.” When faith in God is undistracted by nature, it embraces all that concerns me. I learn that God's interest in me must embrace my interests, or it would not be perfect consideration for me.

If a hair of my head cannot fall to the ground without Him, it is plain to faith that everything which concerns me is now within the circle of His hand. David therefore, acting in this mind, brought up all his men, and every man his household. Nothing less would suit but faith in the word of God which had said to him, “Go up unto Hebron.” When we begin in faith and dependence, every circumstance will establish not only the faith but the wisdom of our course; hence we find, in verse 4, that the “men of Judah came and anointed David king over the house of Judah.” But though now set up in royal dignity, it was a position very far short of that for which he was destined and anointed by Samuel. Seven years and six months must still elapse before the whole nation acknowledge him as king. (Ver. 11.) And there was still to be “long war between the house of Saul and the house of David,” though the latter should wax stronger and stronger. By what slow and measured steps the Lord leads his servants to their appointed place; doubtless, never attained in this world. Even though a Paul can say, “This one thing I do,” yet he must own that he has not attained that distinct place which he will occupy in glory; though the more he presses thereto, the more he fulfills his suited service. How often is God's servant, like David, set in Hebron for a season, i.e., only in partial possession of his appointed service; and how necessary this is in order to develop in him the suitable qualities. We may shrink from antagonism, but if there were none we should never feel the emanations of grace, elicited from us by the Holy Ghost in order to rebut them. Many opportunities are now afforded to David for proving his qualifications for the office he desired, which he never would have had, or probably never availed himself of, if he had been at once enthroned king of all Israel.

His first act is to send a message of approval and encouragement to the men of Jabesh-Gilead, who had owned Saul. This was great grace, and the true dignity of a man of might, capacitated to lead and rule. The throne is established by righteousness, and the one who cannot render impartial justice is not a God-made ruler. A Christian walks in righteousness and charity, rendering to every claim fairly and fully; and supplying to the impotent and suffering what they require. Even to an enemy David is able to render deserved praise, and this establishes his moral weight; and though he has also his disappointments and mistakes, he waxes stronger and stronger, and is all the while learning his true course before God.

Abner, in anger, deserts the house of Saul (chap. 3:9, &c.), and espouses David, who consents to make a league with him on condition that he should deliver to him his wife, Michal, Saul's daughter. It is difficult to understand his motive for this demand. It may have been regard for Michal, for he owed his life to her, or it may have been mixed with policy, as evidencing his alliance with Saul; but whatever it was, the act was not attended with honor to either of them. If the surrender of Michal was gratifying to David's nature, the base assassination of Abner by Joab must have been a bitter reverse. Just as he might have reckoned on this man of valor as the appointed instrument to bring about the desired consummation, he is cut down. Deep discipline was there in this sad occurrence. No wonder he should mourn for Abner. In the mourning he realized his own dependent state, and must have felt what a terrible blot it was on his government that the sword of his own captain should thus frustrate his hopes and gainsay his righteous rule. But he must learn not to build his hopes on any; and even this, the Lord in the end turned to his advantage; for the people took note of his great grief, and it pleased them. What man would pronounce a great misfortune, God can convert into the opposite for His servant. David might justly say, “I am this day weak, though anointed king.” But this humbling is only preparatory to exaltation. We must feel and know our need of God before He can openly help us. This event, which seemed to human vision so great a misfortune, eventually weakened the hands of Saul's son in a remarkable way (chap. iv. 1), for Ishbosheth is slain by two of his captains, and David's rival removed without any reflection on David, which he could not have escaped had it been brought about by the sword of Abner. Oh! if we could but trust the Lord, we should find that what we, in our feeble judgment regard as against us, He has ordered as entirely for us. David humbled before God, and waiting on Him, deals with this treachery as became him; righteously visiting with death the perpetrators of the murder, and accepting the result as from the Lord, for the last obstacle to his acknowledgment as king of Israel was now gone; for we read (chap. v. 1), “Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron and king David made a league with them in Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel.” In 1 Chron. 12:38, it is detailed to us the character and quality of the multitude of Israel, who gathered to Hebron to acknowledge him as king: “All these men of war that could keep rank came with a perfect heart to Hebron, to make David king over all Israel; and all the rest of Israel were of one heart to make David king.”

Thus, after an interval of about twenty-one years, has this much-disciplined servant attained his appointed place. Slow had been the steps by which he had reached it; varied and deep the education which had prepared him for it, not the least part of which was the last seven years and a half, during which he was only in partial possession; and now, having attained it, we have to trace how he fills it, always remembering that the instruction still goes on, though in a different line.

The first recorded act of David after his elevation to the throne, is his attempt to bring back the ark of God; a true and godly desire—for to render unto the Lord the first fruits. of our increase is the natural action of the soul which is consciously receiving from Him; but how often we mar in execution our best intentions, on account of the influence of our associations, for associations are always in keeping with our practical state. David, in his spirit, desires to see the ark of God restored, “for it had not been inquired at in the days of Saul.” But he, doubtless, much engrossed at this time with the heads of the army, as the means by which he had reached the throne, consults with them about bringing back the ark, instead of with the Lord; the consequence of which is, as is ever the case, a human devised plan is decided on; a cart drawn by kine is appointed to carry it, instead of the hands of the Levites, which was the divine way. What could result from such an arrangement but chastening in the display of God's holiness? Uzzah is slain; a great check to David, and reminding him that the Lord was near, and that if he would do the works of God he must do them to the mind of God. But he does not seem to have apprehended this at once. We read he was displeased and was afraid of the Lord, and said, “How shall the ark of the Lord come to me?” And, moreover, he kept it in the house of Obededom, the Gittite, for three months.

Now, in 1 Chron. 13-14, we read of two conflicts with the Philistines engaged in by David, between his first essay as to bringing up the ark and the final accomplishment of it. Whether they actually took place at that period, or as related in Samuel, may be a question; but the Spirit of God always gives us the moral order of events in Chronicles, and I fully believe that it is thus related in the latter, with the intent to show us that the lesson which David needed to be taught then, and for the need of which he failed the first time, was that so far from borrowing any of the devices of the Philistines, he was to have nothing to do with them, except to overcome them. If he had truly and deeply apprehended the nature and extent of the power of God, as at Baal-perazim (the master of breaches), where God “broke in upon his enemies like the breaking forth of waters,” in answer to the simple and blessed dependence with which he inquired of God, and waited on Him, step by step, he would have been saved from the sorrow and humiliation of Perez-uzzah. We obtain signal victories over the world in dealing with itself; but how often, alas! do we introduce some worldly element into our worship, and thus neutralize the leadings of an honest purpose. Be I a Martha with the Lord at the tomb of Lazarus, or a Mary Magdalene at the sepulcher of Christ, or a Peter in the holy mount, if I do not realize the entire setting aside of the world and my affinities with it, I am sure to introduce, in the most unseemly way, some idea borrowed from it, which contravenes the truth and grace of God. In the first of these conflicts David is taught what personal victory the Lord vouchsafes to His servant when he trusts Him; for here he had inquired of the Lord in as full dependence as when a refugee in the wilderness of Maon; and dependence yields all the more savor when our position is such that might seem, humanly speaking, to place us above it. God had promised that He would deliver the Philistines into his hand; and so great was their defeat that he burst forth, “God hath broken in upon mine enemies by mine hand like the breaking forth of waters: therefore he called the name of the place Baal-perazim.”

Now it is one thing for me to feel and know that I am personally victorious over the world (I can have no rest until I do); but quite another thing to know that it is God that setteth me on my high places; i.e., that He is subduing my enemies for me; and still further, that it is when the sound of God is heard that I bestir myself and go forth to conflict (1 Chron. 14:15); for then I know that He has “gone forth before me, to smite the host of the Philistines.”

These were the blessed experiences through which the Lord was leading His servant, enough surely to prevent him from stooping to adopt the modes and plans of the Philistines, without consulting the Lord and His word!

At the end of three months, however, David having been warned, chastened, and most graciously instructed, and hearing of the blessing vouchsafed to the house of Obededom from the presence of Him whose holiness had so lately broken forth to wither up the presumption of nature, prepares to bring up the ark of God to the city of David with gladness, and now makes an announcement which virtually is a confession of his own mistake, even that “None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites, for them hath God chosen to carry the ark of God and to minister unto him forever.” The details of this interesting event are given to us in 1 Chron. 15; 16, and we shall do well to note the spirit of David on the occasion. The priest is merged in the king, who orders and appoints everything, and is, moreover, himself clothed with an ephod and robe of fine linen, and dances before the Lord with all his might. In fact, his whole course and way is a practical expression of Psa. 132, which was the utterance of his heart at the moment. How different to his first essay as to the ark was this, in power, testimony, and joy of heart! How imposingly expressive is the gladness of the heart when engaged with the Lord, and how indifferent to all carnal judgment! This must have been the happiest moment in David's life, as also the most honored one, when he said, “Arise, O Lord, into thy rest, thou and the ark of thy strength.” And then it was that he “first delivered a psalm to thank the Lord,” &c. (Chap. xvi. 7-36.) What a bright and blessed moment, after all his sorrows and discipline! What fullness of joy does his engagement with the Lord give him, and with what divine skill does he direct all the details of the Levitical service? There is no jar in the scene, save that of the daughter of Saul, whose spirit, antipathetic to the whole scene, can have no sympathy with him, nor can she understand it, but despises David in her heart. Thus in this bright hour, he suffers from unsuited association. And how often is this the case! Many a one who passes acceptably in the muddy light of profession soon betrays himself, if placed in the bright light produced by God's nearness. But if this was a cloud in the fair sky which now favored David, it bore a blessing and deliverance for him too; for this unequal association was to fetter him no more. The line of separation is from henceforth drawn between them forever. In the wilderness God had given him an Abigail, a kindred spirit to share his rejection; and now, as he conducts the ark of God to its rest in Mount Zion, in the boundless joy of a soul rejoicing in the Lord's exaltation, he breaks the last link of his alliance with the world. His holy joy alienates the heart of her whose deadly worldliness of spirit is hereby discovered, so that morally they can no more be united.

It seems likely that it was when David returned to bless his house (1 Chron. 16:43) that he uttered Psa. 30 He could then say, “Thou host turned for me my mourning into dancing; thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.” He had now risen to the height of prosperity and could say, “I shall never be moved.” His soul was simply enjoying all at the hands of the Lord; and here he exclaims, “I will extol thee, O Lord, for thou host lifted me up and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me.”

In this spirit it was that David sat in his house (1 Chron. 17) and said to Nathan the prophet, “Lo I dwell in a house of cedars, but the ark of the covenant of the Lord remaineth under curtains.” This was a very natural and godly feeling, while enjoying a vivid sense of the Lord's loving-kindness, and as such, Nathan commends it. Nevertheless, it was not the Lord's mind, and we are thus taught that the truest and most apparently spiritual desire and intention is not to be trusted or acted on without seeking direct counsel of the Lord.

“That same night the word of the Lord came unto Nathan, saying, Go tell David my servant, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not build me a house to dwell in,” &c.; and he goes on to say how the Lord will build him a house! When our cup is filled, we are liable, in the elation which the sense of God's favor has secured for us, to propose services and assume with an honest purpose a place and a power of devotedness for which we may be unqualified. The word of God will always define our proper place to us, as it here does to David so blessedly accompanied by an enlarged and wonderful unfolding of the Lord's interest in Him personally. It is well to have great ambition for His glory, but the word which corrects us in our inopportune designs is sure to unfold to us the measureless nature of His own interest in us. This David learns here, and he can now go and sit before the Lord in full communion with His mind, and in that self-abasement which His presence alone ever produces. However we may praise Him for His gifts and receive them from Him, yet shall we sit in the “house of cedars.” We may mistake our due calling and place; but when we “sit before the Lord,” listening to the unfoldings of His mind and interest for us, all things fall into their right place, and we exclaim, “Who am I that thou host brought me hitherto?”

After this (chap. 18.) David subdued the Philistines, smites Moab, and the king of Zobah unto Hamath, as he went to stablish his dominion by the river Euphrates. The Lord preserves him wherever he goes: he puts garrisons into Edom, and the Edomites become his servants; the Syrians flee before Israel, neither would they help the children of Ammon any more. In short, the Lord vouchsafes David in an unexampled way the full tide of prosperity. How does he bear it? It was a double prosperity that he had been blessed with—spiritual and temporal; spiritual when he was led into communion with the mind and purposes of God, when, entering into God's infinite interest in himself; his imperfect ideas were lost in the boundlessness of God's promises and purpose, and temporal in the magnitude of God's ways and gifts to him. Is he able to stand all this? Adversity tests the character, being a demand on the resources in ourselves. Prosperity tests the nature and our power of self-control. In adversity we ply all our strength, and prove it, too, in order to emerge from the difficulty. In prosperity there is opportunity for the action and rule of our natural propensities, and, if not controlled, it is sure to show itself.

God having shown to David in a remarkable way how full and unsparingly He could open His hand to bless him, his prosperity was boundless; and in it an opportunity is offered to his nature, and he falls! (1 Sam. 11)

How eagerly the poor heart runs after prosperity and mercies, never remembering that, to such as we are, there is no new mercy without a new order of trial to our flesh; and the more we are at case in natural things, the greater the opportunity for our nature to expose itself. The Lord knows that the spring of the evil is there; and though we are so much more humbled when the evil is exposed, yet the exposure being needed, in order to lay bare the spring to ourselves, we are really no worse in God's judgment, because He already knew what we were capable of.

David truly convicted of his sin, is now, as we learn from Psa. 51, bowed unto a “humble and contrite spirit,” in the sense of his own corruption. He had before shown the humble and contrite spirit, resulting from the exposure of the weakness of his nature: now he feels it in the depth of degradation, through the wickedness of his nature; and in this utterance he gives expression to the heart of Israel in the latter day, when they shall look on Him whom they have pierced, and be humbled before Him in the sense of their “blood-guiltiness.” Painful as is the moment both to David and to Israel, yet it is that in which God's salvation is most fully revealed to both. For the lower I am sunk, the better I can appreciate what it is to be delivered.

David, through God's wondrous grace, enters from this on a deeper knowledge of salvation. He learns what God is for the sinner, while also learning that sin against our neighbor must meet with temporal judgment. God is just, ruling among men; and the man who sins against others must be judged openly. Many sin only against God, and then their flesh is judged, as between themselves and God; but when the sin affects other men, then the judgment must be public.

David's child dies. (2 Sam. 12:18.) But soon the blessed fruits of discipline reappear in his soul; he is again the dependent and subject one. While the child lived, he besought the Lord for it; and so far from despising the chastening of the Lord, he evidently felt it most intensely; but when it is dead, he accepts God's will in perfect submission. “He arose from the earth, and washed and anointed himself.” It had been a moment of thickest darkness to him, for there had been no communication from the Lord to alleviate the sorrow of his heart. And I believe this is generally the case when we are suffering judicially; it is necessary that we should feel the righteous government of God. And while passing under it for our sin, we are not conscious of either light or converse; but nevertheless, we may emerge from it with renewed strength and power, as did David; for we next find him warring against Rabbah (ver. 29) in the full fide of victory. He resumes the right path, and honor and blessing are again vouchsafed to him; and God shows him that, however inflexible He be in righteousness, His love and interest in him are unchanged.

But, nevertheless, the word of the Lord spoken by Nathan (chap. 12:10, 11) had passed: “The sword shall never depart from thy house.” And though David's soul had been so far chastened in the proximate fruit of his sin, because he had not judged himself, and also so far restored, he must further suffer judicially from God's righteous government to humble him among men.

This brings us to that period in his history when he was afflicted and humbled by the evil of his own children. In whatsoever way could a man be made to feel the evil of his nature and publicly humbled? David as king ought to have been the example of righteousness, for by righteousness was the throne to have been established; and if the head fail, the leaven must spread, and increase throughout the system. Defects in a parent's self-government will be extravagantly betrayed in his children; and from their infancy he is taught in a painful way what needs repression and crucifixion in his own nature, though he may never have committed sins actually similar to those of his children; but children are his continuation on earth, and portray his nature to him.

According to the law, I judge that Amnon ought to have suffered death for his sin. (Chap. 13:4.) David fails to be “just, ruling in the fear of God.” And judgment overtakes Amnon by the hand of his brother Absalom; who thus guilty of murder, flies the kingdom; but David, yielding to the stratagem of Joab, is weak enough, not only to allow him to return, but after a time to reinstate him in favor. (Chap. xiv.) This weakness and injustice before very long bears the bitterest fruits; for, when we unrighteously spare another in order to indulge our own feelings, we always expose ourselves to the evil of the nature which we should have controlled and condemned. The very next verse to the one which tells us of Absalom's reception by his father announces to us Absalom's parricidal rebellion. (Chap. 15:1.)

David must now flee. Sad and humiliating is it to see him, after being raised to such honors and high estate, descending from the throne and retreating from Jerusalem before the wave of tumult and rebellion evoked and fomented by his own son. He had passed through another moment similar, yet different to this. The suffering of Ziklag was retributive also, but it was more from man on every side. Here it is the loss of Jerusalem, the Mount Zion that he loved, his position and everything, and by the hand, not of the Amalekite, but of his own son.

But he surrenders it all, leaving it to the issue, “If I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again, and show me both it and his habitation,” &e. “And David went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot.” How the discipline of that hour entered into his soul! Psa. 3 tells us, “Many there be that say of my soul, There is no help for him in God.” But what then? “I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill.” The true value of sorrow and trial is to lead the soul into simple and felt reliance on God. David had failed in this; and as he had neglected his appointed work, and thus exposed himself to temptation and sin (chap. xi. 1), so now he is subjected to a war with his own son. When we shrink from the services we are called to, not only does trouble befall us, but, like Jonah, we show that we need to be subjected to deeper exercise of soul in order to render us fit for our calling. But in this unnatural and bitter war, the suffering servant renews his confidence in God; and from the moment when he “laid him down and slept” (which I am induced to place where it is said, “And King David, and all the people that were with him, came weary, and refreshed themselves there,” 2 Sam. 16:14), all things went favorably. He says, “I awaked, for the Lord sustained me.” “I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about.” There is no fear of man, however great or near us, when we are able to sleep because of reliance on God. Ahithophel's counsel is despised, and David returns to Jerusalem. But Absalom must fall!

David has other sorrows; his history pre-eminently teaches us how continually the exercise of his soul must be kept up. When delivered from Sheba (chap. xx.), there is a famine in the land for three successive years (chap. xxi.), which again leads him to the Lord in inquiry, and He tells him that it is for Saul and his bloody house, the last of whom is thus extirpated. After this (ver. 15), David had one more war with the Philistines. In the end of his course, even as at the beginning, he encounters a giant—not the same giant; for what we once really conquer, we have no need to reconquer. But other giants arise which test our strength, and we are made to feel that what is easy to faith is critical to one walking without its exercise; and that if our dependence on God be less, our ability is less, whatever may be the extent of our experience and attainment. David here “waxed faint;” and when the giant “thought to have slain him,” Abishai succored him and smote the Philistine. “Then the men of David sware unto him, saying, Thou shalt no more go out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel.”

But another and peculiar discipline is necessary for this already much-disciplined servant, and that at the close of his life. Years before he had desired to build a house for the Lord—a desire good in itself, but which he was unprepared to carry out; therefore the Lord, while at the same time greatly blessing David in his own soul by the revelation of his personal interest in him, refused to sanction the execution of it. But it is only at the end of his life that he is shown how ill prepared he was to build it, for he did not even know where it was to be built; and this he must learn through his own failure, as the fruit of God's discipline. The site of the temple is revealed to him in its moral value and suitability; so that, his own soul having learned the nature of that grace which was the basis of it, his last hours might be spent in preparing for the erection of it.

When David had rest from all his enemies, and naturally felt his exalted position, Satan takes advantage of him, and tempts him to number the people, in order to exult in the greatness of his resources. (Chap. xxiv.) It was God who had raised him to his present position, but the heart of man will count up God's gifts, in order to be independent of the giver. He owed everything that he had to God in so distinct and wonderful a way, that it betrayed the working of nature in a very open and shameless manner, that he should, at the end of his course so publicly show his desire to be accounted great because of the number of the people, rather than because of the help of God who had so supported him. For this the Lord visits him, but permits him to choose one of three afflictions. When we err, there is need of discipline to correct the flesh; but if our error be a private one, then the chastening is private, though none the less painful; but if public, the chastening must be public, for God shows His justice to all his creatures. David is restored in soul, for he chooses the affliction which is most immediately from the hand of the Lord, thereby showing that his dependence was revived.

And now a new and wondrous field of blessing opens to him. The most touching evidence of how God's grace flows from His love is, that when restoration is established it is always with a fuller revelation of how fully and happily we are accepted by Him. When the sword of the Lord was stretched over Jerusalem, and David was cast on God in a true sense of his evil, God declares His mercy; and the prophet Gad is directed to toll David to go up and set up an altar in the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite. “And the Lord answered David there, and the plague was stayed.” But still more. Having found at this altar acceptance with God, while afraid to go to the altar of burnt-offering in the high place of Gibeon, which belonged to the first tabernacle under the law, he learns for the first time the site of the temple. Long before he had essayed to erect this temple—this type of the Lord Jesus Christ; but never till now was he humbled enough to be taught of God the right place for it; nor did he, like many of us, know those exercises of soul and lessons of grace which he should submit to ere he knew the most preliminary part of the work which he had conceived himself equal for. It is good to desire high and great services, but we must be prepared to reach them in God's way. If James and John desire to sit the one on the right hand, and the other on the left in Christ's kingdom, are they prepared to drink of the cup He drank of, and be baptized with the baptism with which He was baptized? David has now acquired a sense of God's grace unknown to him before, and which qualified him for determining the site of that building which would illustrate the Lord Jesus Christ as the One who had in Himself declared, that mercy rejoiceth over judgment; and therefore David said, “This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt-offering for Israel;” and there the temple was erected.

It now only remains for us to notice the close of David's life. It appears that after the discipline and instruction of Mount Moriah, he applied himself assiduously to prepare the materials for the temple. (1 Chron. 22) And more than this (chap. having made Solomon, his son, king over Israel, he gathered together all the princes of Israel, with the priests and Levites, and divided them into their courses. (Chap. 23.—28.) Beautiful and blessed conclusion to his eventful and remarkable life, which his address to all the chiefs of Israel properly terminates as to testimony! Here is the end of his public course; but what were his private musings? His “last words” (2 Sam. 23) give utterance to them. There we learn his own practical feelings and judgment about everything:—God's grace to him; his own imperfect condition: the hope of his soul and the object it rested on; and, finally, his estimate of the world—in its antagonism to God, expressed by the “men of Belial.”

With the remembrance of these deeply interesting and experimental “last words” on our souls, and amid the circle of faithful and valiant ones who had accompanied him, and who are not to be forgotten (ver. 8, he.), we may close the history of this “man after God's own heart;” while we sing aloud, “Great and wonderful are thy works, O Lord, and that my soul knoweth right well.”

(Continued from page 126)

Discipline: 17. Elijah

The place which Elijah occupied in God's dealing with His people lends a peculiar interest to his character and history. The nature of the services required of him during that remarkable time necessarily developed the quality of the grace that was in him, and at the same time subjected him to the discipline which would mold and fashion him for those services. God, in every stage of His counsel, appoints the servant suited to sustain His will; but though that servant be endowed by Him with power to do so, yet, unless he be controlled and disciplined directly by the hand of God, he will be continually rushing into devisings of his nature, no matter how godly and divine may be his intent. For we greatly err if we think that to have the divine thought is all that is necessary as to our service; our bodies and minds must truly and efficiently become instrumental in expressing the thought; and this subjects us, as servants of God, to discipline which we often cannot understand. Discipline for known faults or shortcomings we can easily comprehend; but when it is that peculiar order of training which fits a man to be God's instrument for witnessing His name, we can no more understand it than the plants of the earth can understand why they must pass through all the vicissitudes of winter in order to bring forth a more abundant harvest.

The first notice we have of Elijah is in 1 Kings 17, when he appears as a herald of judgment to Ahab. But though his public career commenced here, it was by no means the beginning of his private exercises, for we learn from James 5:17 that the judgment here so confidently announced was granted in direct answer to his own prayer. “As the Lord liveth,” says Elijah, “before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” And why had he prayed for this? Ahab's wickedness had, in the sight of the Lord, surpassed all who had preceded him. He had married Jezebel, the daughter of the King of the Zidonians, and had reared up an altar to Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. Elijah, “a man of like passions with us,” but a righteous man, and one whose dependence was on God, could not witness these abominations in the midst of God's people with indifference; and he earnestly entreats that God would thus speak to the nation in judgment, and vindicate His own name. His trust was in God, and he looked to Him to correct His people, and lead them to understand that dependence which he himself had learned. Suspension of usual mercies was the way of all others to effect this: the loss of dew and rain for three years and a half was fitted to make them feel and remember the source from which their blessings flowed. The deprivation of natural mercies by superhuman means has always the effect of impressing man with a sense that he must look to the Creator. The course of nature has been suspended by a power unknown to him; and though, while he enjoyed the usual blessings, he little thought of God, the moment they are suspended, he is made to feel that he has no remedy but in appealing to Him whom heretofore he had abandoned and disobeyed. Elijah, grieved and oppressed by the apostasy of Israel, finds relief for his heart in prayer, and thus obtains from God the remedy for recalling His people, and Ahab their king, to a sense of how they owed every mercy they had to the will of God, What a striking and interesting light is this in which his history opens to our view! Having prayed in secret, he comes forth for the first time to declare the result of it, and is thus a blessed and prepared witness for such evil and disastrous times, and a witness, too (as the Holy Ghost, ages afterward, testified), that every soul thus disciplined to wait on God in any emergency will obtain the same result. “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” What peculiar dignity and assured power does the man taught of God stand forth to testify against the corruption of his day! Witness his first meeting with Ahab. (Chap. xvii. 1.) How instructive to see a lone and hitherto obscure man rise up in the power of God, and tell the king of Israel, “Thus saith the Lord, There shall not be rain or dew these years, but according to my word!” Elijah takes the supreme place which Ahab had forfeited; for Israel's king ought to have been God's most distinguished servant; but having so grievously departed from God's way, the Lord now sends His own servant, disciplined in secret, to deliver a message and testimony which asserted His supreme control of everything. The rain, on which depended the fruits of the earth, should not fall but according to His servant's word.

And now, having delivered this message on behalf of God, this same servant is to be dealt with individually. “Get thee hence,” says the Lord, “and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.” He is not to be outside the afflictions and judgments with which God visits His people; but he is, through dependence on God, to be above them. So is it with every true servant; so was it with Elijah. The period, which is one of unmitigated affliction to the willful, becomes a peculiarly profitable season to the man of faith. If his prayer has been signally answered, he must learn that for that very reason he must live more in dependence than ever; and also, that the afflictions which he had prayed for must fall on him too, unless he adheres strictly to the path of faith. Very often when our petitions are graciously answered, we are less careful to retain the place of dependence, whereas the very benefit we have reaped therefrom should make us the more so. It is faith in God which sets His servant above the afflictions of God's people, and not any ordinary set of circumstances especially preserved for him. Elijah must “hide;” but, like the blessed One whom he foreshadowed, he is to linger in Israel to the very last, though hidden and unknown, for it is within the precincts of the land that God first provides for him. With His own hand, as it were, He feeds and nourishes him; the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and evening; birds, so voracious that they neglect to feed their own offspring, are transformed by God into ministers for His servant's need; “and he drank of the brook Cherith.”

But after a while, he is made to feel still more keenly the drought and parching dearth of Israel; the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land;” he was sensibly to feel the sufferings of God's people even though they had not been incurred by his own willfulness, but at the same time to reckon on God and say, “The Lord is my helper.” This was our blessed Lord's experience, only in the perfection, which always characterized Him; and to this very scene He refers when, in Luke 4, He felt the rejection of Israel, and how dried up and parched were their hearts towards Himself, and makes use of it to illustrate to His audience, that He was not without resource. If acceptance failed in Israel as water had in time past, the same blessed God who had provided a Gentile widow to be the hostess of Elijah, would provide hospitality and reception for the Lord of the earth in the hearts of the desolate Gentiles outside Israel.

Elijah there, having been taught to wait on the Lord for daily support in the land of promise, is now to hear the word, “Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there; behold, I have commanded a widow woman to sustain thee.” This was a hard line of discipline, and service is therein opened to him. He, an Israelite, has to leave the land of promise, dwell with a Gentile widow and be supported by her; just as the Lord during His rejection by Israel, is now dwelling with the Gentile widow; and blessed it is to see that every subordinate is to be led by a path in one way similar to His. Elijah obeys; and, like Him, there serves in the wondrous history of God's grace to man. At the gate he met the widow. When faith is simple (and it is always simple when generated exclusively by the Word of God), we find the right thing in the right place. He might have passed by the widow who was to support him, because she was poor, and have sought one better off; but his eye was fixed on God, and nothing daunted by the extremity of her poverty (for faith is always confirmed by its own activities), he without embarrassment or questioning, says to her, “Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” A soul led of God, always, I may say, feels its nay; it does not doubt its way, but at first only asks for the least; and by the way that compliance is rendered, it is emboldened to pursue its full requirement. So here with Elijah, when he found that she willingly discontinued her own work, forgetting the claims her necessity had on her, he is emboldened to ask more, and becomes assured too, that this is the widow to whom God has sent him. She was willing to share with him all she could, but when the prophet solicits from her what she had not, she is compelled to disclose the full tale of her poverty; and then it is that Elijah rises up in all the greatness of Him whose servant he was. How bright is that moment to the soul which has been carefully and stealthily threading its way, following the ray of divine light, clear to itself but as yet shedding no light beyond, when it is suddenly launched into full consciousness of God's purpose by the demonstration of His power! Thus it was with Elijah. The Word of the Lord had now reached him, and he declares it to the widow, and forthwith takes up his abode in her house; and for a full year was supported in this remarkable way by the Lord. We often fail to receive the Word of God, because we do not advance where it can reach us, i.e., we do not come to the point where the Lord can use us to set forth His name; but when we do, we are able to declare it in full power; and not only so, but we are sustained in the enjoyment of the blessing into which it has introduced us. Must it not have been enjoyment to Elijah to learn day by day how God could sustain him in that poor, desolate home? Must not the bread and oil, which he ate there day by day, have been sweet, while his soul realized that it came directly from the hand of God? for I do not believe that there was one grain of flour more in the barrel at the end than there was at the beginning.

But he was not to leave that roof without entering on another line of discipline. The widow's son dies, and Elijah, though not without resource, passes through deep exercises of soul before he appropriates the grace that is in God to meet the need. (Ver. 17-24.) But how fully is that need met! What blessed and momentous revelations were vouchsafed to the soul of Elijah in that widow's house! He was there carried experimentally into the full range of God's blessing to man; he had communion, though at a distance, with the scope and circle of the achievements of the Son of God. Be learned how God could preserve from death, how He could meet the distress in averting the evil on the earth; in a word, he learned the range of all temporal blessing known or enjoyed on the earth. And more than this, he is now conducted into the deepest of all mysteries, even that of resurrection from among the dead; he had seen death arrested and its terrors assuaged; but now being brought in contact with the depth of sorrow (for a widow losing her only son, her last link to earth, is the most penetrating illustration of human sorrow and bereavement), he is used of God to display His power and grace in overcoming death and introducing life anew: and thus in a pre-eminent way is educated in the mightiest work of God. The exercises of his soul at this time, because of death charged on himself by the sorrowing widow (ver. 18), and the experiences of his soul because of the power of God in giving life from the dead, must have been peculiar and wonderful, and very grateful must have been the testimony of the widow after the resurrection of her son. “Now by this I know that thou art a man of God and that the word of the Lord in thy month is truth.” God was honored and His servant vindicated in the great work of resurrection. Elijah having learned these deep lessons of the grace and power of God in the house of the Gentile-all of them foreshadowing the glorious disclosures of that same grace and power which have been made in the Gentile home here on earth, during the dry day of blessing to Israel, is now directed to go and show himself to Ahab and testify that “the Lord will send rain upon the earth.” (Chap. 18:1.) He had been hid to Israel, and Ahab had sought him in every nation and kingdom but in vain; but now at this juncture, when the king had arranged with Obadiah to divide the land in search of grass, he comes forth to present himself. His first meeting is with Obadiah.

The faithful remnant is ever the foremost to recognize the prophet of God; and though the faith of the remnant may waver, it is finally reassured and able to announce to the ungodly one the approach of him in whose hand was the blessing. Ahab on encountering Elijah charges him thus, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel,” on which Elijah denounces the king and his father's house as the guilty cause. The man who has learned grace, and comes before the ungodly as the witness and minister of it, gives a strength and point to his denunciations which the man of law never could give. The one comes to rectify and repair every defect which he may expose, the other exposes with the feeling that he has no remedy for what he deprecates. The prophets of Baal are now challenged to open competition with the Lord of hosts, and the most glorious moment in any servant's life is Elijah's, when he stands forth alone to maintain the truth of God against all the assumptions of pretenders. He proposes a test and God answers by fire. (Ver. 21-39.) Let me say in passing that the highest evidence of our God and of His truth is accorded by the acceptance which He certifies to each soul who knows Him in atonement; that is to say, who has been received by Him. God answers by fire. Now in this mode of answer, figuratively expressed by fire, the accepted soul has the sense that while God receives, He does so in all the strength and terribleness of holiness; so that the reception is not, so to speak, a matter of impulse, but established in the stern holiness of His nature, which assures that soul, that while he receives it as a sinner, he has pure and holy ground for doing so; and thus not only is the divinity of the acceptance authenticated, but the perpetuity and perfectness of it is incontrovertibly assured. God always testifies of His acceptance by the holiness of His presence-by fire. The soul who knows acceptance has a sense of the holiness of Him who accepts, and this is the best evidence of divinity.

What a season of strength and education was this when, confounding and confuting the pretenders of his day by one simple test, a test well understood by the people of God, he stood forth alone, valiant for God and waiting on Him! How his soul must have been enlarged while he held counsel with God, confronting the king and all the people of Israel! What calmness the sense of competence gives! He can patiently allow the pretenders to make full trial of all their powers, and when they have exhausted themselves and proved their powerlessness, he comes forward to repair the altar of the Lord, after the divine order. He is acting for God and with God. He will not only repair the altar, but he will show how bountifully God can display His power to His forgetful people. What deep and happy conceptions of God Elijah must have had when he ministered thus for Him! He had so learned God at Cherith and Sarepta that he is prepared for those public demonstrations, and can enter on them with calmness and dignity.

But now the people having acknowledged their evil and again turned to the Lord, and Elijah having vindicated the truth by the execution of the pretenders, the judgment will be removed. The people were afflicted with drought in order that they might learn that the God whom they slighted was alone the source and fountain of all their blessings. Having learned this, in God's gracious way, the affliction will cease, for God always removes chastisement when it has accomplished the purpose for which it was sent; and the servant who has been faithful in maintaining the truth in the face of the opponents, is proportionately used as a channel of God's mercies to His people. Elijah can now say to Ahab, “Get thee up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of abundance of rain.” But what does he do himself He goes to the top of Carmel, casts himself down upon the earth, and puts his face between his knees. The strength and power with which God furnishes His servant for public testimony never supplies the place of the deep exercise which the soul must pass through when made a channel of His grace. After a day's work in supreme, mighty power, the Lord spent His night in prayer, in order, if I may so say, to commune with His Father touching the result. Active demonstrations of power hence supersede that close engrossing communion with God which the real servant seeks and values all the more for having acted publicly for God, in order to know His mind and follow out His purpose. Elijah is waiting on God; and very instructive it is to us to note how a man, who a moment before could use so much power as to call fire down from heaven, must with intense earnestness, wait on God for the manifestation of His mercies. Seven times does Elijah send his servant to see whether there was any indication of the coming and promised blessing. At length there was the very smallest token, “a little cloud like a man's hand.” It is enough for faith. The prophet not only announces to Ahab that this insignificant token was the very blessing prayed and waited for, “but the hand of the Lord being upon him, he girded his loins,” and sees Ahab safe to the very gate of his city.

What a height of success had Elijah now reached through his faith and labor! Could anything, we might ask, henceforth move him after such signal honor and power being vouchsafed to him by God? One who knows little of the human heart might say, it could not; but, alas! it is no rare page in the history of God's servants for discouragement and withering to set in, from the very point of their greatest success. So was it with David. After a marked deliverance from Saul, he exclaims, “I shall one day perish at the hands of Saul,” and he retreats to Achish. So was it with Jonah. When his preaching produced such an effect that God's judgment was averted, he was so angry that he would do nothing more. So is it with Elijah. After the signal instances and proofs he had known of that God's power and present help, when he heard of Jezebel's intentions against him, “he went for his life, and came to Beersheba, and left his servant there, but he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper-tree, and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.” (Chap. xix. 4.) What a contrast between a man of faith and a man of unbelief! Who would have thought that Elijah under the juniper-tree was the Elijah of Cannel but a day or two before! How feeble and weak is the most notable of God's servants without faith! But such reverses and hours of darkness are necessary for such a servant; aye, as necessary in God's discipline as are his brightest moments, for then it is that he learns for himself the power of the Invisible. This was the secret of Moses' strength. He endured as seeing Him who is invisible. And when a soul has been much engaged with the external marks and evidences of God's workings, it needs all the more that education which will establish it in that which faith pre-eminently seeks and rests on, even the peculiar, private, unseen education of God to itself.

Elijah leaves the land and wanders alone into the wilderness, seeking isolation apart from his fellow men. What a journey! trusting in none, attended by none. What living death, when a man feels only safe when entirely separated from his kind! Our blessed Lord could not “commit Himself to man,” because He knew what was in man; but Elijah shunned the company of men in fear and bitterness of soul, and sought his death at the hand of God. Blessed God! thy compassion fails not; thou wilt save the afflicted soul. “He remembereth our frame.” The first relief which his weary spirit has is in unconsciousness: “he lay and slept under the juniper-tree.” And there the angel touched him and said, “Arise and eat.” “And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again.” This was a deeper and a closer token of God's interest and care for him than the supply of the ravens or the widow's barrel. The cake baker on the coals and the cruise of water at his head, intimate to him how God provides for him; but the presence of the angel to point out and urge him to partake of them, displays the Lord's own personal interest in him. Solitary as he was, he was not left alone or unattended. An angel is sent as his companion and servant; and a second time he touches him, after watching him doubtless as he slept, and with increasing solicitude for him, says, “Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee.” Whither was that journey to be? To Horeb, the Mount of God.

I have no doubt that this twofold eating had a deeply mystical meaning, and illustrates to us the peculiar supplies which the Lord vouchsafes to our souls as preparatory to a season of deep exercise. Such a time forty days in the wilderness typify, when the sensible connection between all things of human interest and support are palpably suspended. Moses and our Lord went through this experience, but without the previous preparation accorded to Elijah; but the latter represents to us the way common to man. At the outset, supplied and strengthened, he went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights. These forty days in the wilderness without food or human sustenance is the path that must be traversed by the soul that would learn God in His great reality to ourselves and His purposes on earth. At Horeb, the Mount of God, all things are naked and open; and the soul of Elijah has to do with God, and God alone. These individual communications are opened on the part of the Lord by the searching question, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” He was then instructed to “go forth” from the cave where he had retreated, and “stand on the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by.” Elijah's own true state is now brought out. The Lord is not in the whirlwind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire. These were the demonstrations of God; but for Elijah there was something deeper, holier, more personal; he learns the superiority of the still small voice of God to all the outward demonstrations; a lesson which he needed much, for doubtless the wondrous scene at Carmel had unduly filled his vision at the expense of that personal link which would have sustained him under subsequent disappointment. To re-establish this link was the interesting scene under the juniper tree and the ministry of the angel; and to lay bare his soul, was the forty days' journey to Horeb, apart from the region of humanity, terminating in this blessed instruction, which brought God Himself so very nigh to his soul. Well might he wrap his face in his mantle and listen. And if he could not satisfactorily reply, to the question, again repeated, “What doest thou here?” he is instructed to “go, return,” and execute his Lord's counsels. Willful as he had been, now, brought to Horeb, the still small voice of God will unfold to him His purposes on earth: the wicked king was to be replaced, and the sword was to be drawn in Israel; but seven thousand souls, a faithful remnant, were still left to testify for God. This was to silence all Elijah's self-consequence: he had said, “I, only I, am left.” But the Lord now shows him that He had seven thousand more witnesses, and, still further, another prophet was to be anointed in his room. Great as had been his services, God's truth and power did not depend on him; but though his earthly testimony was to close, God was purposing a higher and more blessed portion for His servant, which, however, is not disclosed to him here, as far as we see. What wonderful education was all this! With what different ideas of God towards himself and towards man must he have departed from that sacred mount! Truly humbled he was, truly interested for God, truly linked to Him in his secret soul, and esteeming others better than himself.

The first fruits of this instruction at Horeb are seen in his first act, being the call of Elisha; and to him, it appears, he committed the anointing of both Hazael and Jam. (See 2 Kings 8; 9) That he had profited by the discipline, his whole subsequent course evidences. In chap. xxi. 17, &c., he encounters Ahab at Naboth's vineyard, and fearlessly denouncing him, declares the judgment of God against him and against Jezebel also. He is used by the blessed God to pronounce how grievous it is in His sight for any one, much more the eminent, to deprive any of His people of their divine portion and inheritance, and how such an act will draw down the severest judgment: a fine service for one who had hitherto but partially comprehended the heart of God towards His people. Elijah now fears not to be the exponent of this Magna Charta, viz., that God will not suffer any one to deprive or divert His gift from any of his own, without terrible and summary judgments. “He that defiles the temple of God, him will God defile.” “I would that they were cut off who trouble you.” “Woe unto him by whom the offense cometh.” All these Scriptures breathe the same principle. Ahab humbles himself, and God in His never-failing grace intimates to His servant a respite of the sentence he had pronounced on the king. Unlike Jonah, whose education being less complete, had rebelled against the goodness of God, thwarting his own predictions; Elijah is content, and fully accords with God's mind. He who has learned grace for himself can understand the ways of grace for others.

We now come to Elijah's last act of public testimony, (2 Kings 1,) when he comes forth to rebuke the king of Israel for sending to Baal-zebub to inquire about his sickness, as if there were no God in Israel. The apostasy had become so fearful and abandoned that the existence of Jehovah is ignored, and, in the very center of it, Elijah is to stand up to declare that death must vindicate the truth and existence of God when unbelief disowns and disallows all other evidence. “Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up: thou shalt surely die.” If we do not believe that God is, what awaits us but death? The mission of an Elijah is to announce this deeply solemn truth, and then to depart from the guilty scene. Thus did this honored servant, and retired and sat on the top of an hill, unassailable and in the conscious power of moral separation and elevation. Is this the same man who had fled for his life into the wilderness? Captains and their hosts are as nothing to him now. The fire of God (though, as he learned at Horeb, it contained not the voice to his individual soul) is now at his disposal for the destruction of his enemies. Twice God thus miraculously certifies the authority of His servant, and then tells him to go down and complete his mission. Apparently his life would be at their mercy, but in the power of God he was as unassailable in the king's court as on the top of the hill. Elijah obeys, and in the presence of the king reiterates God's solemn judgment, fearlessly vindicating the name of God in the very center of the apostasy, where its power and evil were most dominant: a fit finale this to his blessed and honorable career of public service. When we transport ourselves into such a scene, while we must be filled with admiration of the man and of his work, we are still more compelled to lay our hands on our hearts and say to our God, “How dost thou fashion thy servants for thine own glory and purposes!” But though Elijah's public career is now over, his personal history as to earth has yet to close, and that in a flood of glory, far beyond anything that had been vouchsafed to him in his earthly service. “The Lord would now take him into heaven,” to Himself, and in a way above and beyond the common lot of mall. Like Enoch, he was to be “translated that he should not see death.” Doubtless he knew what was about to happen; for the way in which he spends his last hours on earth is deeply significant and blessedly instructive, when we think what a prospect was before him in his exit from earth, and the nature of that exit. In these his last hours he connects himself personally, and by personal toil with all those places in Israel most commemorative of God's ways with his people. Gilgal was where the reproach of Egypt was rolled off; Bethel where Jacob saw the ladder of God reaching from earth to heaven; Jericho where God would make His grace rise above all man's rebellion and evil; and lastly, Jordan, which was his point of exit, the crossing of which, while it recalled Israel's glorious entry into the land, told of death the end of man in the flesh. In prospect of being conveyed by a chariot of glory far away from those scenes of slighted mercy and apostasy, Elijah's heart, like that of his great prototype, is still true to God's interests on earth, and he must visit them once more, though at great personal costs (for he must have traveled many miles to do so). The fact of his own personal lot being so glorious does not detach his heart from the interests and glory as to earthly testimony of that Lord for whom he had been so faithful a witness. As to himself, it was at that spot where in type the waters of death had closed over the old man in his corrupt and fallen nature, that the chariot of fire awaited him to bear him away to the glory in which he has since appeared in close converse with his Lord upon the Holy Mount, and in which he shall again appear when He comes for the deliverance of the faithful remnant which are morally identified with that seven thousand of whom Elijah was told in the days of his discouragement, and who after purging the land of its defilement and apostasy, will share with all His redeemed ones the joy of His kingdom.

What a course was thine, Elijah!—fraught with trials and death-struggles, but still more fraught with instruction in the heart of Him whom to serve was thy joy and glory; a course entered on in secret prayer and waiting on God, and ended in a chariot of fire to bear thee to Himself !

Discipline: 18. Elisha

THE first notice we have of Elisha is 1 Kings 19:16, when the Lord, rebuking Elijah for his despondency and self-importance in thinking that all testimony had failed, and that he himself was God's solitary witness on earth, directs him to anoint Elisha, the son of Shaphat, in his room.

Elijah being set aside because he was despondent and discouraged, we may conclude that the prophet in his stead, will be one gifted with a character and purpose quite the contrary—even bold and enduring. We constantly find in Scripture that the notice of a man's secular employment conveys to us an idea of the man's adaptability for future service, and an intimation of the nature of his course. Elisha is found plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and “he was with the twelfth;” and doubtless a vigorous and a patient husbandman. Elijah passes by and casts his mantle on him, thus intimating, I should suppose, that he was to take the place and calling of the owner of it. Elisha evidently so understood it, but, yielding for a moment to his natural affection, he craves permission to return and kiss his father and mother. The prophet's reply is one fitted to throw him on his own responsibility. “Go back again, for what have I done to thee?” It was for him to judge whether Elijah's action towards him had been a divine call or not. That it was divine, Elisha's spiritual instincts told him; and though his response to it did not rise to the height it might, and which immediate following would have indicated, still his faith, so far as it rose, is followed up by true and suited action. His return to his home is not to remain in it, but to celebrate his surrender of it. “He took a yoke of oxen and slew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen. and gave unto the people, and they did eat.” He converts the instruments of his occupation into a repast for his neighbors; he disposes of his possessions for the benefit of others; at one and the same moment declaring his readiness to surrender for the Lord, and his benevolence for his people; he, in a measure, sold what he had and gave to the poor, and “then he arose, went after Elijah and ministered to him.” The first answer to God's call in the soul is very indicative of the order and character of that life throughout its course, and we shall find it thus with Elisha. Though he hesitates at first, he eventually determines and follows Elijah, and that not grudgingly or of necessity, but as one who celebrates his deed with a hearty good will. And thus it is that he enters on a course where he is to be a minister and a witness of the most remarkable of God's ways and works.

The word of the Lord had been that he was to be prophet in Elijah's room; i.e., to fill up Elijah's ministry, and the two ministries were not to co-exist at the same time; so that it is quite fitting that we should not hear of him again till Elijah was about to quit the scene, and then he is presented to us in the high character of the companion of Elijah and the witness of his rapture. As the one retires, the other is brought prominently before us, and therefore deeply significant is the education accorded to him on this the last day of the one, and (in respect to his ministry) the first day of the other; for on this day is he installed into office. The sons of the prophets with one accord tell him that this is the last day for his master, and as he walked with Elijah throughout this his last day, he is taught the zeal and duties proper to God's servant, as well as God's glorious way of removing His servant from the scene of his labors. The scene which closed Elijah's service inaugurated Elisha's. If Elisha was naturally strong and qualified for robust work here on earth, he derives from the rapture of Elijah a strength and an idea of God's ways and grace which must remain with him through all his course, because his course dates from it, and his mind is endowed, and his conceptions of God formed there from. His ministry must be characterized by the communications and admonitions of his installation. In all his course Elisha could not forget that the power he had received was in consequence of that union of spirit with Elijah which concentrated his attention on him, as he was carried up into heaven. “If thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so,” was Elijah's reply to his request for a double portion of his spirit. “And Elisha saw it,” we read lower down. Here was the spring and source of all his subsequent power. “The spirit of Elijah cloth rest upon Elisha” was the immediate testimony of the sons of the prophets, and according as the Spirit of God acted in him, must be ever afterward have been carried back to this fine beginning, just as Paul was. No doubt the dawn of God's grace on our souls and its effects on us indicate the best traits of it which shall characterize us subsequently, and we all find that the manner in which the gospel is presented to and received by any soul at first, presages the manner and character of its course.

Elijah having disappeared, Elisha's career is begun; and the first opportunity for the test of the grace conferred on him is Jordan, the type of actual death, not of the power of death, but the last barrier between the wilderness and Canaan. A very suited test was this to be encountered by one endowed like Elisha; and the first because he must know at the outset his ability to enter God's inheritance, and that Jordan is the portal to it. Unless we pass Jordan we are not in the land; and unless we pass it, we have not learned how God would sustain us there, and how He will drive out before us all our adversaries. Elijah had crossed Jordan, leaving the land in testimony against its evil, heaven being then open to him as his own personal portion. Elisha re-crosses it, and re-enters the land in grace, and in the power of God's Spirit, which was to bear down every difficulty. Very blessed are the exercises to which he is subjected. Even as the Spirit in double power descended on the Church in consequence and in virtue of her union with her ascended Lord, so is it with Elisha; as his eye traced the glory of God's grace in removing His servant unto Himself, and witnessed the same power on earth in opening the waters of Jordan as a commencement of his course, thereby learning as he enters his appointed service, that through God every barrier would be broken down. Like Stephen, he had seen how God raised man to His own glory, and like him, be proved that he himself was, through the power of God, victor over death. This Jordan expressed.

Elisha's first sphere is Jericho, and the first opposition he has to encounter is that of those who, by their very calling, ought to have co-operated with him. The sons of the prophets, though they had seen and owned the power which slave the waters of Jordan, refuse to believe in the rapture of Elijah, and raise questions prompted by unbelief, until Elisha suffers them to do as they would, merely to expose their own folly; for when people will not heed the warnings of the Spirit, they must be left to learn by their own mistakes. Elisha learns on the other hand that no help or cooperation is to be expected from the sons of the prophets—the ordained ministry of the day—and that he must be prepared to encounter their ignorance and inapprehensiveness of the mind of God; a very necessary discovery for the servant of God in an evil day and in the times of declension, such as Elisha was called to serve in.

His first sphere we have said was Jericho. Having learned the range of God's grace, its bright blessedness in the rapture of Elijah into heaven, and its power on earth in making a way for him through Jordan; he must, like Saul of Tarsus, be a minister of it in the place judicially at the greatest distance from God in the land of Israel—the place of the curse. The men of the place ask him to tarry, but in their invitation they sum up, in a few words, the history of the whole world. “The situation is pleasant, as my lord seeth, but the water is naught and the ground barren.” What a picture! Fair to look upon, but unproductive of anything to meet the necessities of man! Elisha is enabled to respond to their prayer, and meet their need. It is a fine moment, and one of deep edification to his soul, when be is thus allowed to be the instrument of God's grace. A new cruise and salt with the word of the Lord, “I have healed these waters,” effect the desired cure, and the “waters were healed unto this day.” Now this service, which in must have established the heart of Elisha in the very grace which he ministered was brought about by very simple though deeply effective education. He who had learned for himself the grace and power of Jehovah in heaven above and on earth beneath, knows how to act for God in Jericho, in scenes morally most distant from God; and thus was it that our Lord acted so pre-eminently on the earth. But if Elisha be the minister of mercy, he must experience what it is to be rejected, and that in the place most distinguished by the favor of God and the revelation of His goodness. Bethel, the house of God, furnishes youths to mock the ascension of Elijah, crying out as they do to Elisha, “Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.” But the truth of God must be vindicated, and Elisha, though he be the minister of mercy, is the one to invoke judgment on the gainsayer of it. “He turned and cursed them in the name of the Lord, and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood and tare forty and two of them.” Thus in Jericho and at Bethel be learns two very different lessons. In the one, the mercy of God meeting the pressing need of man; and in the other, the recklessness of man (when God had shown most favor) and the consequent and terrible judgment inflicted on them.

Elisha goes from thence to Carmel for retirement, I should suppose, but ere long returns to Samaria, the scene of service. We must remember that be is properly filling up Elijah's mission, which began with prayer (necessity on the earth looking to God) and closed in the rapture. And from this (the manifestation of the power of God in opening heaven for the reception of man) Elisha began; and therefore in studying his history we should expect to learn how the Lord conducts and uses one who thus begins from above and is not of the earth. In Samaria he is introduced into a scene which discloses to him the political and moral state of all Israel. (Chap. 3.) Moab has rebelled, and the king of Judah is found in unholy league with the kings of Israel and Edom; and the destruction of all three is threatened, not from the power of the enemy but the failure of water. What a condition and association for Jehoshaphat, the Lord's anointed, and one who was usually a godly man, to be in! It is he, however, who at this juncture institutes the inquiry; always that of a heart knowing the Lord but wandering. “Is there not here a prophet of the Lord?” And this brings Elisha on the scene. An important moment is it to him: important as to the testimony of God which he bore, and as to the personal instruction with which it was fraught to himself. Standing in the midst of the moral ruin of Israel, of which the scene before him was the witness, he, like the blessed One in later times, on the one hand, denounces its apostasy; and on the other, links himself with the little that remained for God. “What have I to do with thee?” he says to the king of Israel; “were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee.”

But though he can both feel the desolation of Israel, and recognize the remnant, he finds that he is not in a moment ready to enter into the mind of God concerning a state of things so discordant to the spiritual mind. He must pause and send for a minstrel. And it came to pass when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.” That is to say, his mind must be diverted and separated from the confusion and despair around him, before it could be duly in tone to be used of the Lord. His ministry was from above, and therefore, whenever there was danger of his falling into the current of things down here, it was necessary that he should be not only diverted from it, but so guided in the midst as to be free to receive and convey God's mind and purpose. Music is used to accomplish this in the soul of Elisha; and the effect produced typifies that calm, unperturbed state of mind in which one must be to receive the mind of God above and beyond all that is passing around. If I would know that which is above, even the counsel and mind of God, I must in myself be calm as to the circumstances around me; otherwise I shall not be able to see and act on it. In prayer we learn it, and know what practical and necessary discipline it effects for us. Elisha had now properly commenced his public ministry amid the apostasy. Hitherto be had been the minister of grace and judgment in a more private way; but now, the widespread moral desolation of Israel is before him, and he learns to be calm in the midst of it, ere he announces the signal interposition of God on behalf of His people. This is education of the utmost importance. A great moment is it to the soul when it can stand still and see the salvation of the Lord; and especially so with Elisha; for we must again remember that he comes in contact with the ruin and destitution of Israel, after having started from the glorious manifestation of God's grace. He had seen first what God is, and now be is learning down here how ruined and necessitous are the people of the same God, because of their apostasy and unbelief. And it is in meeting these varied distresses of God's people, and being exercised in his own soul as to the way God would meet each, that he himself is enlarged in the power and resources of God.

The next scene in which we find Elisha (chap. 4:1) is as appealed to by a certain woman of the wives of the prophets who cries to him, “Thy servant, my husband is dead and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord, and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.” Here what is noticeable is not so much the nature of the distress; but that a widow of one of the Lord's prophets in His own land should be reduced to such straits reveals to us how entirely the nation must have forgotten and neglected the care of God, when such a case could be found there unrelieved. Elisha is here from God to be a witness of this misery, and at first he is quite unprepared for such a case and says, “What shall I do for thee?” The extremity of it doubtless astonished him. Here was he, knowing the greatness and power of God toward His people, yet cognizant of the existence of distress peculiar and unprecedented, and it would seem at first as if it were beyond him. He had never before encountered such a scene of misery, but it is in such scenes that the true servant is taught to trust in God, and so trusting, to know what to do. Now the first thing for the heart that is simply resting in God, is to take into account every provision of God personally possessed; and this is what Elisha does. “Hast thou anything in the house?” is his next question, and when he hears that she has a pot of oil, he directs her to borrow of her neighbors empty vessels, to be indebted to them only for empty vessels; for these were to contain God's abundant supplies; and Elisha is vouchsafed the privilege of knowing that there was enough oil, not only to satisfy the creditor, but that from the largeness of the supply there was a provision for the widow and her sons. So ample and generous are God's mercies when they flow; and this is the most interesting and invigorating knowledge which can be communicated to any servant of God.

And not only was Elisha to witness these things, but he was to experience them himself; not only was he to see things here in striking contrast to that manifestation of glory from which he started, but he must feel the contrast; and if he ministers to God's people in their necessities out of His fullness, he must feel the necessity and suffer himself as without place or association in God's inheritance; in spirit with Him who had not where to lay His head on earth. He, the Lord, on His own earth, was indebted to a few women who “ministered to Him of their substance,” and Elisha is here found in somewhat the same circumstances. (Ver. 8.) A woman, a Shunamite, provides bread and lodging for him, and in this association he is to pass through the history of the hopes and sorrows of God's people. God often leads His servant into a small circle of service, wherein the principles of the circle of His purpose are practically made known to us. It was so with Noah in the ark; so with Abraham on Mount Moriah; so with Paul, with regard to the Church; so with Elisha here. Israel at this time was like the Shunamite, her husband was old, and there was no child for a continuation of their name. The nation was growing old and ready to pass away, and there was no heir to carry it into new life and hopes. Gehazi, who, I suppose, represents Israel after the flesh, sees and tells the prophet this state of things. Elisha promises a son, and a son is born. But before the harvest, before the feast of ingathering, the child dies, the hope of the family is no more, and the mother flies to the prophet in her distress. He is in Carmel, in retirement, and the depth to which Israel is reduced, as typified in this woman, is as yet unrevealed to him by the Lord. (Ver. 27.) But now he was not only to learn it, but the wondrous way and manner of God's deliverance of His people from this, their low estate, was to pass through his soul. This is quite new experience to Elisha, and only step by step is he brought into it.

He must be taught that Gehazi and the prophet's own staff will not do; that no intervention will repair the disaster in a case of death; that nothing but life can meet death, and this Elisha learns in his own person. It is he who is, through the power of God, made to communicate life to the dead child; a simple and distinct type of Him who brought down eternal life from the Father into the world; but a wondrous place for a man to be set in, and a wondrous display of God's grace to him, ignorant and unacquainted as he was with the sorrow that he is now empowered to relieve. In all the exercises which Elisha here passed through, as he walked to and from the house and went up again and stretched himself upon the child and prayed, he is taught, though in a comparatively feeble way, what our Lord passed through so fully; on the one hand, the terribleness of death; and on the other, the blessedness of life.

We next find Elisha at Gilgal; and here he has to meet the dearth of the land; the sons of the prophets sitting before him. The one who has learned the power and grace of God, as the life-giving God, can easily, trusting in Him in the face of all professors, direct the casual distresses which afflict us in passing through this evil scene. He says to his servant, “Set on the great pot and seethe pottage for the sons of the prophets;” but what Elisha as the servant of God is preparing, is spoiled by the intermeddling of the unbelieving. The wild gourds, though supposed by the one who gathered them to be an acquisition, only added death to the pottage; and in the same way, morally, do all additions to faith and God's way bring death. Elisha, still trusting in the life-giving God, is equal to the emergency. He casts in meal, and the deadly element is destroyed. A soul that is simply trusting in God, will ever be able to carry out its purpose; for it is of faith, though it may meet with interruptions and hindrances when it least expects them. Faith always increases by exercise, and its sphere or work is enlarged when used; consequently, we next find Elisha feeding the people (an hundred men) with only “twenty loaves and full ears of corn in the husk thereof,” and notwithstanding the objections of the unbelieving servitor, he replies, “Give the people that they may eat, for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat and leave thereof.”

We have come to chapter 5. of 2 Kings, where Elisha is to act as the prophet of God outside the limits of Israel. He has been practically educated in the power of God, and therefore is prepared now to say to Naaman the Syrian, “Let him come now to me and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.” And when Naaman obeys the summons, Elisha only sends a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again unto thee, and thou shalt be clean.” Although quite ready to succor the Syrian leper, he is no respecter of persons, and preserves the dignity of sod's servant. He is there to send him forth for his salvation and cure, but he makes no account of him as captain of the host of Syria. And hence, when Naaman is healed, Elisha refuses to take anything from him, in the true independence of the servant of God. He would help the Gentile, but not receive from him. And in principle we learn by the judgment passed on Gehazi that if we grasp at and acquire the goods of the world, we shall inevitably involve ourselves in its leprosy.

We should note, that in the history of Elisha there is less apparent need for discipline than in other servants. He is before us as endowed from above, and when we follow him, we see how aptly and beautifully the grace of God flows from the vessel according to the need it encounters; and though we do not see the discipline through which he learned to yield himself to God, so as fully to display his mind, yet we know that it must have been so; and also that the best evidence of true effective discipline is the meekness and simplicity of heart with which I act according to the mind of God in the various and distinct cases occurring to me. In this light no history is more interesting than Elisha's; the easy and divine way with which he meets every variety of difficulty. It is instructive to us to follow him and see how the servant acts in each varied circumstance, and how the Lord used him to expound that grace which should be so supremely set forth in eternal power by the great man of God—the Son of His love. To be ready as God's vessels for every emergency that arises is the result of all discipline.

Chapter 6. Here we have a circle of wondrous action reaching from a personal to a national calamity; embracing, I may say, in principle, every shade of human sorrow. First, the sons of the prophets feeling the straitness of the place, they propose to Elisha to go unto Jordan, and dwell there. He goes with them; and as one was felling a beam, the ax head fell into the water, and he cried, “Alas! master, for it was borrowed.” Elisha immediately enters into his sorrow and distress, which was not merely the loss, but the man's credit was at stake, because it was borrowed, and the prophet's tender consideration for his distress is very touching; there is in him both tenderness and power to meet anxious human sensibilities. “And the man of God said, Where fell it? and he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither, and the iron did swim; therefore said he, Take it to thee; and he put forth his hand and took it.”

We next find Elisha bringing about the defeat of the king of Syria, by warning the king of Israel of his approach. (Chap. 6:9.) And the king of Syria, being apprised of this, and consequently exasperated against Elisha, sends spies to find out his abode; and, having discovered it to be Dothan, he sends thither horses and chariots, and a great host, and compassed the city: all this warlike array being thought necessary to secure the person of one poor unarmed man. A striking evidence (even as it was in a later day, when a company with swords and staves was sent out to take the blessed One) that the ungodly instinctively feel their own helplessness in the presence of the power of God, even when only acting on their fellow-man. The magnitude of this Syrian host was such, that Elisha's servant is terrified, and says, “Alas! master, what shall we do?” And Elisha, in the power of that faith which had quieted his own soul, replies, “Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” “If God be for us, who can be against us,” was the experience of his soul; and every anxiety of his own being disposed of, he can intercede for others; he prays that his servant may be assured by that vision of faith which his own eye rested on. “Lord, I pray thee open his eyes that he may see.” It is not enough for me to rest myself by faith on God's succor, or to ask others to do so, but I must seek to establish them in the power of it. Readily the Lord grants his request. The eyes of the young man are opened, and he sees the mountain full of horses and chariots about Elisha. And now he prays again with a different request. When this host had terrified his servant, he had prayed that his eves might be opened in a remarkable way, and was heard. Now he prays that the eyes of his enemies may be closed, and he is heard again. “The Lord smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.” And now, completely in his power, he leads them away from the city into the midst of Samaria; and then, with touching and instructive kindness and mercy, he will allow no revenge to be taken of these captives, but says, “Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master.” How simple and wonderful for a man to be thus led into the mind and resources of God, meeting every contingency in the mind and strength of God; treating the servant with all the attention and interest that he does the king; attaching as much importance to the loss of the borrowed ax-head, as to a city compassed about by armies; thus proving that the circle of God's power and grace embraces the smallest as well as the greatest contingency!

Verse 24. We next find the king of Israel reduced to great straits, (there is a famine in Samaria,) and, imputing it to Elisha, vows vengeance against him. Now this proves that no amount of mercy conferred can be remembered or appreciated by the human heart if the fear of death be still impending. Elisha had been the witness and minister of God's grace and power in averting from the nation manifold calamities, and instead of there being respect or favor for him from the king for the past, his life is threatened unless he continues to succor them. At this juncture the prophet sat in the house and the elders sat with him, I conclude, waiting on God; and he gets intimation from the Lord of the king's evil intention. When the messenger enters, he says, “Behold, this evil is of the Lord; what should I wait for the Lord any longer?” The time was now come to announce the word of the Lord, and he does so. “Thus saith the Lord, To-morrow, about this time, shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.” And so it came to pass.

This, the greatest is the last recorded public service of Elisha to Israel. He had been used of God to show forth His power and grace, from the smallest to the greatest, in the whole circle of human necessity. And now it is over; though with him, a with his great Antitype, it might truly be said, he had “labored in vain, he had spent his strength for naught.” He now sends to anoint Jehu to be king over Israel, (chap. 9.,) and be is to smite the house of Ahab, and avenge the blood of all the servants of the Lord.

The last recorded event of his life is his interview with Hazael at Damascus. (Chap 8:7.) The Lord had spewed him that Ben-hadad, king of Syria, was to die, and Hazael to reign in his stead; and as he looked on Hazael, he wept, knowing all the evil that be would do to the children of Israel. And with this last public act, we lose sight of our prophet on the earth. He had started as the witness of God's supreme power over death, and glory beyond it, and be had pursued his course down here, showing forth how, according to the revealed power of God, would be the manner and fullness of His mercy and succor to man. He now passes from our view, mourning for what he foresaw should befall God's people, though it was but the consequence of their own sin and folly. In the same way did the greater than Elisha wind up the history of His association with, and unrequited service to, Israel. He wept over the city which had refused to know the things that belonged unto her peace, and which was to pass under the judgment of God, because she knew not the time of her visitation. And from thence He passes from that perfect lifework of grace which Elisha had feebly foreshadowed to that work of death, in which Elisha could not follow him.

Yet when Elisha was “fallen sick of the sickness whereof he died;” (2 Kings 13:14;) when no longer able to be a public witness; when Joash the king of Israel came down unto him and wept over his face, applying to him the very words which Elisha had used to Elijah at his rapture, “O my father, my father; the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof,” because the sun of Israel was setting in the person of this great prophet; even then, in this moment, when sinking into death, be is strong and mighty in the power and the grace of God. He tells Joash to take bow and arrow; and when at his direction the king had put his hand on the bow, Elisha put his hands on the king's hands and said, “Open the window eastward and shoot; and he shot and he said, The arrow of the Lord's deliverance.” The Lord's grace towards His people was not yet exhausted. It was not only the arrow of His deliverance from Syria, but the direction to shoot eastward toward the sun-rising told of coming glory. Elisha was passing away from the scene, going westward as it were; but glory and power would come as the bright shining of the sun after rain. And in the confidence of this he directs the king of Israel to take the arrow and smite upon the ground. And the king smote thrice and stayed, and the man of God was wroth with him and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then thou hadst smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it; whereas now thou shalt smite Syria, but thrice.” In his very last moments the dying prophet has to meet with disappointment from the people whom he served, for they were unable to embrace in its full extent, the grace offered to them. The king had no energy to be an instrument of that grace. True energy always shews itself in cheerful abounding obedience, and the heart, sensible of its possession, indicates its consciousness of it. Where there is faith, and according as there is, so is there the manifest expression of it, for the outer acts are always in correspondence with the inward power. How blessed and how in keeping with his life does our prophet pass away! In his death, full of coming glory and deliverance, and only protracted by the feeble faith of those he served.

Elisha dies, but so great is the power of life by which his whole history is characterized, that mere contact with his bones restores to life a corpse which was thrown into his sepulcher. Grace, in the power of God, and resurrection-life, were connected with him; and not only is he here a voice from the dead, but a pledge of that power which will yet restore Israel to life.

The Lord give us to understand and learn of Him how we may be so meek and lowly of heart, doing His will, that He can use us for any expression He chooses of His grace, be it little difficulties or great exigencies, to the praise of His name. Amen.

Discipline: 19. Job

The allusion which is made to Job in James 5:11., viz., “ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy,” is enough to draw the attention of any earnest soul to the study of a history so fully recorded for us

Job is at first presented to us as a pattern man, happy in his own condition, faithful and true in his relations toward God. We see in him a man who had on every side risen above the evil and sorrow which is the lot of man; a remarkable instance and exemplar among men of how God could distinguish from the rest of men—one strong and superior to them; at once for God on earth, and blessed abundantly by God. He was perfect and upright; one that feared God and eschewed evil, and as to possessions and earthly things they were so abundant that this man was the greatest of all the men of the East.

It is important to see that Job was walking on the earth well pleasing to God” and owned by Him as such, when Satan first called in question his fidelity and imputed to him the unworthy motive which was couched in the question “Doth Job serve God for naught?” It affords us the clue to a true apprehension of the nature of the discipline to which he was subjected, when we see that it was not primarily on account of personal failure; but the rather for the purpose of exemplifying to Satan the truth of God's estimate of His servant. It will be seen that much personal failure was betrayed by Job, while under the divine discipline; for though the trials which he suffered were inflicted by Satan, and with the intent to verify his calumny on him, yet they were used of God to accomplish in Job that self-renunciation and faith in God, which did eventually enable him to establish in full blessedness, the truth of the estimate which God had in His goodness given of him. It is wonderful and most interesting to trace the way and manner in which the blessed God at once confound', Satan, vindicates His own judgment, and educates His servant up to the standing he had ascribed to him, and having brought him to it, rebukes Satan by bestowing on Job twice as much as he had before.

We must seek to realize in our minds what it must have been for one in the circumstances in which Job was, to be suddenly plunged into such reverses. We see him but a moment before enjoying the full circle of God's mercies, and at the same time maintaining a scrupulous conscientiousness with God; in the jealousy of his zeal rising up early in the morning, after the feasting of his sons, to offer up burnt-offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “It may be my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts; and this he did continually.” When every known point of the circle was thus carefully and with jealousy of heart toward God watched over, we might have expected, and doubtless Job had reckoned, that there would have been no disturbance of the rest in which through mercy he was set. Doubtless whatever might be the fears, which, like clouds coursing the sky on the brightest day, beset him, he had no idea of the malignant spirit who, by aspersing him before God, only moves the blessed God to surrender him into Satan's bands, in order that He might in the most unequivocal manner prove his integrity and unshaken fidelity to God. We must also bear in mind that while it is God's purpose in His dealings with Job to vindicate His own estimate of His servant, it is at the same time shown us how He educates or disciplines that servant so as to render him worthy of this estimate.

It was at a moment when Job could little have expected it that the crush came. No doubt he often had his fears; for he says “that which I feared greatly has come upon me;” and this must ever be the case when the soul has no better security for the love than the evidence and presence of its gifts. The gifts are thus a snare to us, and Satan's imputation against us is often in a measure true; our ground for rest and quietness of spirit before God being His kindness and mercies to us, and not simply the knowledge of His love. This is very evident from the violent grief and despair many of His people fall into when they are deprived of any particular mercy. They had rested in the gift more than in God, and the gift was to them the evidence of His love—the love itself not the rest of the heart. Satan knows man's tendency and therefore hesitates not to accuse Job of it, asserting that he had no link with God, or reverence for Him, but on account of His abundant mercies to him. God in His grace had challenged Satan as to His servant that there was none like him in all the earth. Satan retorts, imputing to Job a sordid motive for his allegiance; and asserting that if he were deprived of all which now attached him to God, he would curse Him to His face. The Lord on this, in order to verify His own estimate, and to render Job in himself worthy of this estimate, permits Satan to deprive him of all he has.

In one day, in quick succession, Job loses property, children, everything. Never was a catastrophe so rapid and so complete. “Then Job arose and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground and worshipped.” He bears these first great waves of adversity in a most exemplary manner, and says, “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither; the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

It is to be noted that at first a great accumulation of afflictions are better borne than afterward. The strength that is in the heart, the confidence in God, is the resource where the crash is sudden and terrific; and in the rapidity with which Satan used his power, it appears to me he outwitted himself, for certainly sufferings with an interval between them are more trying. Satan, however, hoped that the crash would be so overwhelming, that Job could not but reproach God for the calamity. But extreme difficulty always calls out the latent strength, as with a drowning man; where a lesser difficulty would not. The trial is not sufficient at times to rouse one to effort. It is when the effort has been drawn out by extreme difficulty and has proved unavailing, that real helplessness is felt, and the cloud of despair invests the soul. Job had borne his troubles so well that the gracious God is able again to challenge Satan as to his estimate of His servant. Satan retorts, “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life, but put forth thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.” Of course, it fills the cup of misery, if besides being deprived of everything my heart clings to, and the whole scene once so lovely and pleasing to me now a waste—with but tombs of my former enjoyments; if besides this, I have become by bodily infliction a burden to myself! Surely bodily suffering and disease would in such a case be the bitterest way of reminding me of my utter desolation without heart or power to retrieve my condition. God permits Satan to afflict Job with the most grievous bodily suffering; he is smitten with sore boils from the crown of his bead to the sole of his foot. How complete his misery! his wife is overwhelmed, and in her distress falls into Satan's snare, and counsels her husband to curse God and die. Thus everything is against Job. What a moment of exercise to his soul! How he must have wrought within himself as to hope in God! But every exercise, though the sufferer at the time little knows it, is strengthening the soul in God. The deeper the distress, the deeper the sense of His grace in relieving it; the one only makes a good rooting ground for the other.

Job bears up wonderfully at first. He rebukes his wife, saying, “What, shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” But he is further tested. His friends come to mourn with and comfort him. If I am passing through discipline from God, which my most intimate friends or relatives do not understand, their intimacy and offers of help and comfort disturb and injure me rather than the reverse. This Job had to encounter from his wife, on one side, and his three friends, on the other; one on the ground of nature, the other on the ground of superior intelligence. What a scene it was! “When the friends lifted up their eyes afar off and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him, for they saw that his grief was very great.”

“After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.” Under the weight of a terrible blow there is such utter exclusion from everything all round, that there is no attempt to complain or to express oneself. And if the soul has confidence in God it is more shut up unto it, while the sufferer is unable to look at himself in relation to things here, and as he was among them. But the moment he awakes to the reality of his relation to everything here, himself must occupy him, unless he is done with himself. The discipline is administered in order to set aside self, and introduce the heart into its true relation apart from self with God. Hence, the effect of the discipline is to expose the secret workings and feelings of self, which otherwise would not have been detected or known, and, if not known, not renounced. Job felt himself now a hapless one, with misery all around him, having outlived every enjoyment on earth, and be cursed his day. What had he lived for, and what should he live for? Little he knew the place he was occupying before God, or how God was preparing him, through terrible sufferings, to vindicate His own estimate of him to Satan. We have now to examine how God effects this His blessed purpose; noting the course which a soul under discipline from God necessarily takes in order to arrive at simple dependence and rest in Him.

The first thought, and the most bitter one, after awaking to a full sense of one's misery, is to curse one's day; a terrible impression, and the one which leads to suicide, when God is not known. But when God is known, as in Job's case, it is the beginning of healthy action; not in the discontent and wretchedness which it discloses, but because the sense of death, utter extermination from everything, is known and felt. I may give way to rebellion and discontent in learning the utter wretchedness of man on earth, but the sense of this is necessary to full self-renunciation. I ought not to blame God for it, but I need to realize it as man's true place. Death, because of such present misery, is preferred. To live in it has no attraction for the heart. This Job feels. He knows not that God seeks to make him a witness of dependence on Himself against Satan. But this is God's way. Discipline may have the effect of making us feel that death is preferable to life, but it is working out God's purpose.

To this experience Job receives a check in the reply of Eliphaz the Temanite. I think we should regard these three friends as representing to us the various exercises which engage our consciences when under this order of discipline. Eliphaz intimates to Job that he deserved these afflictions; “even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity and sow wickedness reap the same,” and still more (chap. 5:17), that it is not even chastening; for if it were, “He that maketh sore bindeth up:” thus insinuating that as He had not bound up, it was something more than chastening. In consequence of this, Job is now (chap. 6:7) not so much occupied with his misery, as with his right to complain and endeavor to retort the suggestions of his friend. He gives us a history of his calamities, disappointment in his friends being added to the list—occupied with self-vindication, though at the same time only the more convinced that his days are vanity, saying, “My soul chooseth strangling and death rather than life.” What lessons of anguish one has to learn before one sees the wisdom of renouncing self! What has not the soul to pass through in discipline in order that it may be brought to this! How tormented it is with one suggestion and another; which never could reach or trouble it only for the amount of self which exists. It is the possibility of the truth of a charge which makes it painful and irritating.

Bildad replies. This is another exercise to Job. It is well for us to have recorded in God's word an account of the often unexplainable exercises through which we pass when learning the nothingness of man in himself—suggestions claiming to be friends, afflicting us still more sorely. Bildad here severely reproves Job; telling him that the words of his mouth are like a strong wind, and that if he were pure and upright God would awake for him; thus throwing him still more on himself and implying, that his trials are judicial requitals for sin, and not, as really was the case, the discipline of God leading him to the full end of himself. He is now no longer so much overwhelmed with his misery, as occupied with righting himself in the sight of his friends. Painful and cruel work is it to the spirit to repel charges made by friends, of deserving irretrievable misery. Job knew that he had done nothing to deserve it; but what he had to learn was that he was entitled to nothing, and this his friends knew no more than he; they stood entirely on righteousness.

Job now owns the greatness of God. He is turned God ward; yet while he owns the greatness of God and His power, he uses it only to show the distance that is between himself and God; even that they cannot meet on equal terms; but that if they could, he should not fear. It is evident his soul has a link with God, but his friends have occupied him with God as a judge, intimating that the deprivation of temporal mercies is a punishment for sin, which implies of course that the gift of them is the contrary. In this new exercise, he sees God's greatness and does not see God's care for himself: as under His hand, what (he argues) can he avail? He sees no reason in it, regards it as arbitrary, and implies that if he had a daysman who could place them on a common footing, he could make good his case; but as it is, there is no hope. “Oh (he cries) that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!”

Zophar replies, endeavoring to convict him, pressing on him that God “exacteth less of thee than thine iniquity deserveth;” and if there were no iniquity, there would be present mercies. “Thou shouldest lift thy face without spot and take thy rest in safety.” Zophar makes man's acts the measure of God's dealings. He does not see the evil of man in himself, and his consequent distance from God, as without title to any blessing. Job replies. What little way a soul makes when occupied with self-justification! The friends had stung him with reproaches, that his afflictions must be on account of sin. Job, unconscious of any evil that would warrant such suffering, denies it. The reproaches which the Lord bore without reply, though unjustly heaped upon Him, Job rebuts because he has not seen himself as he is before God. He is only judging himself as a man would, and as his friends ought, who really were on no higher ground than himself. God's sovereignty accounts to him for everything. He sees no purpose of grace in God's ways with him, and yet it is evident his soul is gaining ground, for he exclaims, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,” and a gleam of hope bursts in on his path; for he adds, “Thou shalt call and I will answer thee, thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.” What a season when the soul passes through all this exercise and anguish in order to emerge from self-satisfaction and rest only in God! yet God's way is perfect, as the end always proves.

Eliphaz replies. (Chap. 15) He waxes severe and unmeasured in his efforts to convince Job that he and his companions have wisdom, and therefore that they are right in their statements that God is now dealing with men according to their merits, that the wicked man travaileth with pain all his days; and he adds, “a dreadful sound is in my ears: in prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him.”

Unless we study the exercises of our own hearts we can hardly estimate the heart-rending which these censures must have caused Job. They turned him in the wrong direction; they engaged him with himself. He could not deny that he was afflicted; he did not see, measuring himself with man, that he had done any act to subject himself to so great affliction; and his friends harassed him, directing and confining his mind to this one point, that God's doings were all according to man's acts, and therefore, as he suffered so much, he must have been wicked in an extraordinary degree. Job resists (chap. 16), and pronounces his friends “miserable comforters;” and so they were. “Though I speak,” he cries, “my grief is not assuaged; and though I forbear, what am I eased?” He has now the bitterest of feelings; even that God had delivered him to the ungodly. He tastes of our Lord's sufferings as a man. Who can comprehend the bitterness of the sorrow that now devours the soul of Job! “My friends scorn me,” he exclaims, “but mine eye poureth out tears to God.” In all his sense of the terribleness of his affliction and suffering, there drops out now and again the link, that, as a regenerate soul, he has with God. He has not yet seen himself in the sight of God; and therefore he maintains (ver. 17), “Not for any injustice in my hands, also my prayer is pure;” and therefore he looks to plead with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbor. He has a partial sense of God's greatness; but he has not the sense of His holiness; and the reason of this is, that he has never been near enough to God; for it is nearness to Him that produces the sense of His holiness. Therefore he concludes that if he could plead with Him, he must be acquitted. We see thus what terrible distress of soul arises from estimating sufferings from God's band according to man; i.e., looking man-ward in respect of them. How much of Job's self is before his mind! He feels that be is a “by-word of the people.” “Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.” To such thoughts as these death can be time only release. “If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.”

(To be continued.)

Discipline: 20. Job

Bildad replies (chap. 18) in angry and reproachful terms; and in a pointed way traces step by step the course of the wicked; first “taken in a snare, because his own counsel hath cast him down, until he shall have neither son nor nephew among his people. Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him that knoweth not God.” Well might Job reply—thus goaded with the assertion that he knew not God— “How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?” What a wonderful time for the soul, when with conscience and faith in God, it seeks to justify itself, amid all the affliction and sorrow which here judicially and righteously is the common lot of all, and still more when they are for discipline. Job repels the accusation of having been taken in his own snare, saying, “Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net.” He ascribes it to God, but cannot see any reason for it. But with all this probing of the wound in the increased sense of being unduly afflicted by God, his spirit is nevertheless strengthening in hope, as we may discover in his words. “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

Chapter 20- Zophar now in the most emphatic manner presents to Job the utter and overwhelming ruin of the wicked. He denounces him without pity. Heaven shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him. Job replies (chap. 21) detailing the prosperity of the wicked in order to skew that Zophar must be in error, and yet, though he knows that the reproaches of his friends are unfounded, he has no clear idea of God's will or of any order or purpose in His dealings. Knowing nothing more than that He is omnipotent, and can do as He likes, without being able to see that He always has a distinct end before Him for every one of His ways. “Known to God are all his works from the foundation of the world.” “How then,” he retorts, “comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood.”

Chapter 22- Eliphaz, now for the last time addresses him, and endeavors to make an impression upon him by the enormity of his charges. “Is not thy wickedness great, and thine iniquity infinite?” reiterating again that false principle, so ready to the carnal mind with reference to God's dealings, that He gives the gold and the silver to them who return to Him. “If thou return to the Almighty thou shalt be built up, thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles. Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks.” (Ver. 23.)

Now in chapters 23 and 24 there are two points which come out: the first, that Job is sensible of his distance from God, and while sensible of it, desires to be brought near. It is the true exercise of a quickened soul—groping as it were in darkness for what it yearns after. “Behold,” he says, “I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him.” With this there is a sense of the unchangeableness of God's purpose. “He is in one mind, and who can turn him?” And yet the true fear, the solemn effect of His presence is not unknown, for he says, “I am troubled at his presence; when I consider, I am afraid of him.” The second point is that Job turns his eyes on men; he has not found rest or acceptance for himself with God, and now he looks at men; and he sees that the wicked prosper in the world; yet they have their secret sorrows, and death checks their career. But at this stage of his experience, he is not so much magnifying himself; he seeks to be near God, but fears His presence, because not at rest or in acceptance. Varied indeed are the exercises which a soul must be put through while refusing to see the completeness of its ruin in the sight of God.

Chapter 25- Bildad concludes his strictures, reiterating the greatness of God and uncleanness of man; as if there could be no ground of reparation between them. Bitter words to a worn one seeking for standing ground with God, whom in his spirit, he knew and believed in. Chapters 27-31—Job now gives a summary of his state, &c., as he is in himself and also as to his apprehension of God. The greatness of God creationally comes before him; but this never makes the soul conscious of the character of its distance from God; hence, in the next chapter we have Job maintaining his integrity. If not in the light I must maintain my integrity, unless I have broken some law—done some overt act; so here Job thus seeks to relieve himself from the reproach of being stricken of God. In chapter 28, where he finely describes wisdom, it is interesting to mark how, under all the pressure, his soul is advancing in true light and knowledge; and that thus the discipline is effective. The more I see the wisdom of God and His way (as one does sometimes when under pressure) the more depressed I shall become, if not able to connect myself acceptably with God; and as a consequence, I turn back on my own history, and become occupied with myself. Thus Job in chapter 29 dwells on the past, and this is always an evidence of the soul not being right with God; for if it were going on with him it would have greater things than the past to recount. This is especially the case when what it has to recall is self-amiability and God's gifts and goodness, which made up the sum of the young ruler's possessions. If I have a sense of sin from having been a transgressor, then retrospection is necessarily shorn of its charms; but when in misery the Lord can recall a time of uninterrupted blamelessness of life and conduct; the light of God's favor in His gifts shed around it; such a retrospect is attractive and engrossing to the heart. Job's time was before the land was given; and hence as a Gentile he is learning the evil of himself, not by law but in the presence of God and having lived in all good conscience, he found it no easy matter to count all as dung and dross. He is allowed to dwell on it in order to show us how the righteousness which is of ourselves may engage and hinder us; and yet on the other hand how utterly futile the course Job's friends adopted to help him to a true estimate of himself before God, and according to God Himself. Thus still occupied with himself, Job in chapter 29 dwells on his former prosperity, while in chapter 31 he goes seriatim over the goodness of his whole course and ways, judging himself according to man's judgment; and after it all he sums up thus: “My desire is that the Almighty would answer me.” Such are the exercises of a soul which, without having done anything to offend the natural conscience, has not seen itself in the light of God's presence, and therefore knows not the corruption of its nature. If the natural conscience could have formed wherewithal to convict, its action might have been easy and summary; but where the moral sense is not offended, a lengthened process is required for the soul ere it can reach a spiritual sense; i.e., an estimate of itself formed in the light of God's presence.

We now come to another epoch in this interesting history. We have traced briefly and inadequately the patient, searching process by which God leads a soul to discover its utter ruin in His sight. The example before us is one against whom no one could bring any charge. As far as works went, God Himself could challenge Satan and assert that there will none like Job in all the earth; an upright man and one that escheweth evil. But while either to man's eye or to Satan's eye there was nothing to blame or censure in Job, God would have Job know that in His sight he was utterly corrupt and lost. To learn this is most painful and bitter work to nature. Nature must die. Job begins by feeling that death would be preferable to life, all being misery here. He then, both from his own “mens conscia recti,” and also his knowledge of God's ways (while tortured by the unjust reproaches and surmising of his friends as to his concealed guilt) rebuts the doctrine which they uphold, even that God rules and determines things for man, according to man's works here; that He has no other principles of government; and that man's acts suggest to God a course of action; thus placing God without a purpose, and only like an ordinary sovereign legislating according to the vicissitude of circumstances. Job by all this exercise is strengthened in two points, which only add the more to his perplexity. He is the more deeply convinced of the sovereignty of God, and that all power is from Him; and, secondly, as his friends have failed to touch his conscience, he is bolder in self-justification.

Chapter 32- At this juncture Elihu comes in. This servant of God comes, as we shall see, from God's side, and supplies now to Job the teaching he so much needed. We are not aware often of the severe process of soul which we must pass through before we are prepared to hear of God from His own side. We may have to weary ourselves in very darkness before we are ready to hear the word of light; for light comes from God only; He (Christ) is the “light which lighteth every man which cometh into the world.” All reasoning from man's side, as Job's friends had done, only occupied him the more with himself, and provoked his self-vindication, while it necessarily made him more sensible of the distance between himself and God, and therefore deepened in his soul the need of God. Elihu now shows that it is not true what Job had asserted; that God acts arbitrarily; that “he findeth occasions against me.” His first argument is, that God is stronger than man. “Why dost thou strive against him?” “He giveth not account of his matters.” The first great thing for a soul is to humble itself under the mighty hand of God. This Job has not yet done. But furthermore, adds Elihu, God in dreams deals with man “that he may withdraw man from his purpose.” How gracious, that when all is in the stillness of sleep. God should show His wakeful interest for man, and warn him in dreams! God is full of mercy, as we see. (Ver. 23-28.) When there is confession on the ground of God's righteousness, there is mercy and salvation from God. All these things worketh God oftentimes with man. We get in the case of Isaac an example of the convulsion that occurs when the truth of God regains its power and rule in the soul. He trembled with an exceeding great trembling. Job must now learn this; he had allowed his own mind to judge God, instead of submitting himself to God, and waiting for instruction from Him.

Chapter 34- The next point with Elihu is that God must be righteous. Job had said that he himself was righteous, and that God had taken away his judgment. If God were not righteous, yea, the fountain of righteousness, how could He govern? “Shall even he that hateth right govern? surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgment.” “Who hath given him a charge over the earth?” Elihu exhorts Job to understand that God is righteous and in His righteousness He can act as He will. “He will not lay upon men more than is right, that he should enter into judgment with God.” Seeing this to be so, the true place for Job was that of confession. “Surely it is meet to be said unto God I have borne chastisement—I will not offend any more.” Though these varied lessons, these progressive steps in the history of a soul are presented to us as one continued unbroken tale, we must bear in mind, that there are often long and suffering intervals while each step is being learned. It is the order of their succession that is presented to us here; rather than the suffering which the soul goes through in learning them.

In chapter 35 Elihu touches on a new point; namely, that God is infinitely above man; that man's works can in no wise affect Him. Job must learn that “If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand?” “If Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.” There ought to be perception of the goodness that cometh from God; but on the contrary “none saith where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night,” —when all around is darkness. Job had dwelt on what he was to God, not on what God was to him. And then, “surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty regard it.”

In chapter 36 another point is pressed on Job, even that if he looks at things from God's side, he must see His righteousness. Job ought to understand that “He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous “He openeth also their ear to discipline” — “He delivereth the poor in his affliction.” Here it was that Job had failed; he had been occupied in justifying himself, instead of having his ear opened to discipline. “Behold God is great.” There is an immense advance in the soul when it comes to this; and regards things distinctly as from God's side. When I have a true sense of what He is, the effect must be to humble myself under His mighty hand, and to wait on Him.

In chapter 37- Elihu leads Job into further contemplation of what God is in His greatness and His works; just as the Lord said “Believe me for the very works' sake.” And this is the introduction, if I may so say, for what we shall find in the next chapter; when God Himself addresses Job apart from any recognized instrumentality, instructing him in His own greatness and power. Job has listened to Elihu, and now prepared for God's voice, God in His mercy, deals directly and closely with his soul. How deep and solemn the exercise; when the soul, alone with God is in His wondrous grace and mercy taught by Him the majesty and goodness of Himself.

In chapter 38 we read “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.” And calls on him to ponder and consider. “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” “Through faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God.” This is the beginning of faith, as also, that he that cometh to God must believe that He is. Job did believe in God as existing, but his faith was not simple and fixed in the might of God; in His greatness. He is now called to consider whether he could explain or know the origin of any of God's works. Could he reach or comprehend them? God challenges him, “Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts, or who hath given understanding to the heart?” In the material world God proves Job to be ignorant of the origin of any of His works; and now in chapter 39, he is required to ponder how unable he is to rule over the animal world. Be it the unicorn, the horse, or the eagle; each and all are superior to Job in strength. How much more He who created and gave them their qualities, ought not He to command supremely Job's reverence and fear! “Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him?” (Chap. 40) Now it is that Job feels the force of the divine word. Then Job answered the Lord and said, “Behold I am vile, what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken; but I will not answer; yea, twice, but I will proceed no further.” He is now brought to a sense of his vileness; but only so far as this, that he will be silent; for he knows not how to answer. He feels condemned, but has not yet reached simple self-renunciation. One may have a sense of vileness, and inability to answer, and yet hope to improve. It may be only a pause to recover from the conviction which the word of God must effect in the soul stunned but not subdued. If the sense of ruin and vileness were complete, there would be no promise of improvement, or expression that one was doing something better now than heretofore. Hence the voice of God still addresses Job; and he is subjected to the divine challenge again. Chapters 40, 41. This time God presses upon him, that Behemoth, the Leviathan, is a greater creature by many degrees than he; “upon earth there is not his like who is made without fear;” and for this purpose, the variety and order of God's ways with regard to this strange and mighty being, is brought before the soul of Job, who feels himself in the presence of God, and is confounded.

Now it is that he arrives at the end, desired of God, in all the discipline to which He has been subjecting him. Job now seeing God, forms a true estimate of himself, and repents in dust and ashes. The blameless man, in nature good, and as a man upright, when brought into the presence of God abhors himself. As a man, he has whereof he may boast; he may justify himself to his fellows, but not before God. Before, and in the presence of God, he can claim nothing, expect nothing, and feel himself entitled to nothing. In the sight of God's holy eye, his only consciousness of self is to abhor himself and repent in dust and ashes.

Job has now done with himself. Happy fruit and consummation of all discipline! And so completely is he freed from himself that, before there is any relief from the circumstances and trial which had been the proximate cause of all his misery and soul exercise and which Satan had brought upon him to prove his hollowness, he can pray for his friends. Superior to his own sufferings, he thinks of his friends before God, and then it is that the Lord turns the captivity of Job, proving (and how deeply we may lay it to heart!) that “the end of the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.” Amen.

Discipline: 21. Hezekiah

Nothing is more interesting or helpful to us than to be taught the ways of God by a living example; one like ourselves in nature and feeling, used of God and empowered by Him to do His will. We see where the grace of God works and where it is hindered; and not only this, but in the vessel we get an apprehension of the way man under similar circumstances would act, as well as a clear perception of what the mind of God is and how it addresses itself to man, and how man is formed and controlled by it. The nature of any great divine working is explained to us through the medium of the human servant; and we see, on the one hand, how God would use the man, and, on the other, how the man failed, as well as how he acted when simply led of God. We require to know both, because unless we do, we cannot get a clear idea of the divine working. In scripture we generally get through an individual the nature and character of the event through which God's servant and chief human agent is passing; and as we study and observe God's instructions to the individual, we arrive at an understanding of God's mind at the time.

Hezekiah comes before us at a very critical period in Israel's history, and the way he is prepared of God and taught of Him for such an eventful time is necessarily very instructive. There is often a great similarity in leading points, between the position which we are called to occupy ourselves, and that occupied by distinguished servants of God. The points of resemblance between the great and the small in God's household are very marked, and the study of His way with a leading servant often helps and assists another servant who is unknown beyond his immediate circle. And yet the ways of God are as truly learned by him, and he is as thoroughly disciplined under His band as the most prominent and distinguished servant.

Hezekiah, in his history, presents to us two things: the first, how he is strengthened and succeeds in renewing the testimony of the Lord in a very exemplary way, at a time when everything had sunk to the lowest state, and was to all appearance in irretrievable ruin; secondly, how he was taught to rest in God through suffering and a conviction of the end and desolation of everything here. It is very engaging and instructive to dwell on a history like this, to observe how God leads on His servant, uses him to do His will and to walk in His ways, and yet teaches him that, however he has succeeded or been a channel of success, still if he turns aside and depends on man, all is forfeited.

Hezekiah's life, in deep broad lines, is a checkered one and deeply instructive. The first notice we get of him is that he “removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it, and he called it Nehushtan.” (2 Kings 18:4.) This was a bold and decisive act wherewith to open his public career as God's servant, for the high places had existed before and throughout the days of Solomon and until now. (See 1 Kings 3:3.) What manner of discipline Hezekiah had already passed through in order to qualify him for such prompt and decided action we are not told. From the record of his father's ways, and the state of things connected with the testimony of the Lord, we should not be prepared to see a young man of twenty-five, immediately on ascending the throne, acting with so much vigor and decision. He emerges out of all the waste and debris of former greatness, as if he had no contact with it; as if he had been taught to separate from and denounce all that surrounded him. He takes his place in the scene like another David visiting his brethren in the valley of Elah. Apart from, and yet among them, he addresses himself to remove everything dishonoring to God. The work he does indicates the school he has learned in, the association in which he has obtained his ideas. The roughness and wildness of a mountain home may have unsurpassable charms to one in early youth, until the halls of the learned and the scenes of other climes arrest the attention. The well-ordered mind, the more it sees, the higher the scenes presented to it, the more does it require and seek to conform all within its power and province to its own improved convictions. This is the end of education, and the expected fruit of extended knowledge; the better thing being accepted, the inferior is discovered and refused. The way in which we act, when the opportunity for acting comes, discloses the manner and nature of the principles which we have imbibed. The action and the reformation wrought by the young king Hezekiah testified surely that he had been educated in the divine school in no ordinary way. David's discipline in the wilderness prepared him for his valiant engagement with Goliath; and Hezekiah must have been in some other way prepared and exercised, or he could not have met in so masterly a manner the disorder which surrounded him. The disorders themselves thus discipline and test the servant of God. One submits to them, another groans over them, a third addresses himself to them with feeble and inadequate remedies, with the view to an improvement; but he who has obtained from God in his own mind and spirit what is the true and divine order, can propose or accept nothing less. He makes no compromise—the right thing and the right thing only, according to God in his measure—and this he acts on and enforces, whatever it may sweep away. It is sometimes an apparently very little thing and a thing long overlooked by other servants of God which peculiarly indicates the elevated purpose of the faithful servant. Hezekiah's extermination of the serpent of brass at once establishes him as one whose soul was well disciplined by God for His service; for though we may not always see the discipline, we see fruits which nothing but holy discipline could have fostered and developed. God's honor is first maintained, and Hezekiah is confirmed in strength and asserts on all sides the rights of his calling, and his true dignity as king of Judah. “And the Lord was with him, and he prospered whithersoever he went, and he rebelled against the king of Assyria and served him not.” But not only did Hezekiah assert and maintain his true place as God's king; he also in a very full and complete way maintained the testimony for God. It is not enough to oppose and resist our enemies, to check or compel them to surrender encroachments; we must also set forth what is the truth of God. Hezekiah not only proves himself stronger than his enemies, but he also devotes himself to the re-establishment of the testimony of God.

In the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened he the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. So largely and fully did he effect restoration and procure blessing that it is said, “So there was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there was not the like in Jerusalem.” (2 Chron. 30:26.) And in chapter 31:20 it is summed up: “And thus did Hezekiah throughout all Judah, and wrought that which was good and right and truth before the Lord his God.” To resist evil and introduce good declares the possession of divine power; it is not one-sided. Where there is conviction or persuasion only, and not divine power, there will always be marked imperfection. “The legs of the lame are not equal.” There may be a great effort to resist the enemy, but there will not be commensurate effort to recover the truth; while on the other hand there may be an avowed desire to recover the truth with a tampering with what is hostile to it, a cry for the suppression of vice without paying any regard to the testimony of God; or a connivance with that which is really opposed to Christ with a profession of His name. Hezekiah is not of this order; be is not lame; he resists evil and seeks and supports the truth of God in its true force and excellence. He has reached a point which we all admire, and above all seek to attain to.

What I have hastily sketched occurred within the first fourteen years of Hezekiah's reign, a prosperous useful time; but the more useful anyone is, the more he requires to be brought to an end of himself, and find that his all is in God. Hence we find some of His servants are deeply chastened at first, in order to prepare them for a useful course; and some, after a useful period, are brought low and afflicted in order that they may learn bow truly and fully God, in His own blessed self, is paramount to everything. This fourteenth year was an eventful one with Hezekiah, for we read, “Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them.” (2 Kings 18:13.) And again, “After these things (i.e., those which I have glanced at above) and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up and entered Judah;” also in those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. (2 Chron. 32:1.)

Trial from without and from within is upon him. His sickness must have occurred in the fourteenth year of his reign, for from his sickness there was added unto his life fifteen years; and as he reigned only twenty-nine years, his sickness therefore must have occurred in the fourteenth year. Its being related as subsequent to the second invasion by Sennacherib is, I conclude, on account of its having a typical import; for Hezekiah's exercises during this sickness set forth what Israel will go through before their final deliverance, and not any other favor, however great, which may be vouchsafed to them. It is a beautiful and interesting sight to behold Hezekiah for fourteen years (twice seven, a doubly perfect period) walking on the earth before God in dignity and faithfulness. But now we are invited to observe him and to learn from him in far different circumstances, even as oppressed and intimidated by the king of Assyria; and in his own soul before God, deeply and sorely exercised. He appears to have lost himself in the first invasion of Sennacherib, because we can hardly imagine that Sennacherib persisted in his first invasion after receiving the fine which he had imposed. The history is simply this: In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, Sennacherib came up and laid siege to certain cities of Judah. At that time Hezekiah bought him off and stipulated to pay him a certain sum or ransom. Subsequent to this Sennacherib came up again (possibly on his return from Egypt), and then he threatened Jerusalem; and it was between these two invasions that Hezekiah was led by a great sickness into deep exercise with God. For fourteen years he had walked with God and prospered. Then, for the first time, failure appears in his course. Instead of repelling the invasion of the king of Assyria, as he would at one time have done, he essays to buy it off. At the beginning of his reign, without any apparent resources, he had freed himself from the king of Assyria and served him not. Whereas now, after being established in success, and invested with power on every side, there is inability and confessed powerlessness to maintain the position which was taken when nothing but faith favored or authorized him to assume it. What a commentary is this on the oft failure of God's servants! But it is easily accounted for. When I am serving God in dependence on Him, and see His way for me, I am bold in it, even though I may see no means at all by which I can be maintained in it; but when I begin to rest in the fruits of my faithfulness, the possessions and resources given to me of God, I may fear to imperil them, if not holding them from Him and with Him. Thus was it with Hezekiah. He who had so fearlessly assumed his true place, and the divine rights vested in him, cannot maintain it or them without stooping to the unworthy expedient of buying off him whom he had set at defiance when his faith was in vigor. What a contrast between the confidence which faith in God gives, and that which is derived from the largest amount of human resources! Hezekiah with nothing but God can refuse to serve the king of Assyria: Hezekiah surrounded with great power and prosperity sinks into the place of a vassal.

It was at this juncture I assume that his sickness was inflicted. And surely there was a needs-be for it. In this sickness God will teach him death, and the terribleness of it to man as man. What more touching than Hezekiah's own account of the exercises of his soul when he contemplates death. The Lord intimates to him through the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 38) “Set thine house in order for thou shalt die and not live.” “Thee Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed unto the Lord and said, Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.” This is an exercise and a discipline which every saint one way or another must enter into and endure. This dreadful moment to nature must be learned and felt. What a moment! when all that man cares for, all that connects him with his own works and will, sinks into dissolution. Man as he is himself no longer exists. The greater his place here, the more extended his occupation, the more pleasing his associations, the more engaged his affections, the more terrible the wrench to which he is subjected in death. Yet it is appointed unto men once to die, and the better a man is localized here, the more poignant and terrific it must be to be severed from it; nay, the better the man is as man and the more useful, the more grievous and insupportable it seems to him. But it is the judgment on humanity; and every believer, in his soul as a man, suffers and goes through this death just as bitterly as Hezekiah did (if he be brought to the end of himself). He was an excellent and an eminently useful man, one who had walked before God in truth and with a perfect heart. His suffering in view of death was not because of a doubt of his final salvation, but it was the contemplation of death as that which must sever him from all that interested and engaged him here. Could any man who felt himself the center of usefulness and power here, independently of other considerations, take it lightly that he should be deprived of all this position and sphere of interest by the stern power of death? Can any one realize what it is to be severed from all he loves and cares for as a man, from all who care for him, and consider him a link to their existence, and not sympathize with Hezekiah instead of condemning him? The experience of Hezekiah tells us how a man of God, a regenerate soul, feels the wrench. Of course we are not taking into account how a Christian, knowing that he has life in Christ at the other side of the grave, apart from and above the flesh, would pass through this ordeal. Yet he too must pass through it. And that he does so victoriously is not because it is anything less than it was to Hezekiah, but because he has received through grace life in the risen Son of God—he does not suffer less but he enjoys infinitely more than Hezekiah. Still the ordeal is necessary for us in order that we should understand that the giving up of our existence as man is a thing that must be now learned morally in the cross of Christ; and that this giving up (that is, death) is no light thing; nay, that it is an exceeding bitter thing, but yet, a thing that must be; and that a man's goodness and usefulness here, instead of mitigating the desperateness of the blow, aggravates it, and imparts a deeper agony to it. The actual surrender of my existence as a man is not the mere pain of dying as a lower animal suffers; it is the termination of my connection with all that interests and attracts me and makes life valuable and great. The bitterness of death is past when one is so worn by sorrow or sickness that he longs for dissolution; but to be severed from everything here without a heavenly hope, to be no more here for God or for man—this is its bitterness; and this Hezekiah expresses when he says, “In the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave, I am deprived of the residue of my years. I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living, I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. Mine age is departed and removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward.” This writing of Hezekiah, it will be seen, is the Spirit's account of the exercise which took place in him during this desperate discipline. But when he comes to the words, “O Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me,” there is evidently a new light in his soul; he enters into resurrection, in hope. He can now say, “O Lord by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit. So wilt thou recover me and make me to live. . . Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption (there is also the sense of the Lord's forgiveness), for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back..... The living, the living he shall praise thee, as I do this day.” The discipline has effected its blessed purpose. A terrible ordeal it was, but none other can lead the soul to rest entirely in God as the spring and fountain of life. If I am alive with God, death to man, and man's things become small to me; but then, to realize the actual blessedness of living by the Son of God, and unto God in a life pleasing and suited to Him, I must needs know and realize my death as a man. This is no light thing; for it is the summing up and END of all discipline. If we were simply dead, and allowed the Spirit to maintain Christ in us in everything, there would be no need of the discipline, and there would be nothing in us to die. But the less there is in us to die, the more must death—moral death—have taken place in us; and a very real and a very bitter thing it is. With some it takes place at once, with others by slow processes; but death as death must supervene, and it is in proportion as we realize that life which is in Christ taking its place that we endure the process and are able to say, “The living, the living, he shall praise thee as I do this day.”

Hezekiah has now passed through wonderful experience. He has known what it is to be in the valley of the shadow of death; he has seen the lights here go out one by one, felt the silver cord loosening, and has known the mighty power of God in raising him up again. He has been well disciplined by the tender hand of God: will he now walk as thus taught and renewed in knowledge? The remainder of the history of Hezekiah sets before us the trials to which one, educated as he has been, is exposed; How he is ensnared, and yet how he gives evidence of the benefit of the discipline through which he has passed. It seems a paradox, that one should exhibit special weakness and special strength, after a season of deep and blessed discipline; but so it is. The weakness of the nature is exposed, and the strength of the grace conferred is declared also. It is a mistake which is sometimes made, that grace in a way cloaks the flesh and screens it from discovery. It is quite true, that grace would suppress and subdue the flesh; but it never imparts to it a false color and appearance. On the contrary, where there is most grace, there the hideousness of flesh is most exposed, if it be not judged and subdued. Thus it is not uncommon to see an outbreak of the flesh, or its tendency in nature exposed, where there is a true, deep vein of grace. Peter denies the Lord: his flesh is exposed, while the deep vein of grace in his soul leads him to repentance. Paul is enriched in his soul with the treasures of glory, and, consequent thereon, there is a need for a check on the flesh, which otherwise would not have betrayed itself. The bad in me, in fact; is brought to light through grace, while also I am more distinctly led on by grace. The bad ought to be discovered before it works, and if I am walking near the Lord it will; but if not, being in grace does not prevent the disclosure of it. If seen and judged before God, it is put away without being publicly seen or betrayed in acts; but if not, grace will not screen it; it will be brought to light, and will there receive judgment from God as it had not received judgment from oneself: for if we judged ourselves we should not be judged. The more we have advanced in grace the more the exposure will be, if the flesh be not subdued by the grace conferred on us; that is, if we are not walking in dependence on God from whom we have received the grace. Hezekiah, in the matter of the ambassadors from Babylon, betrays his nature; he who in deep exercise of soul had vowed, “I will go softly all my days,” is still not proof against the flattery of the world. “Hezekiah [we read] was glad of them and sheaved them the house of his precious things, the silver and the gold, and the spices and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armor, and all that was found in his treasures; there was nothing in his house nor in all his dominion that Hezekiah showed them not.” The man who, through discipline, has learned resurrection, is still not proof against being recognized here and made much of by Babylon. God's servant ought to have refused any such recognition; but he gave way, and consequently brought judgment on his house. Thus he has only survived to entail judgment on his house, and is a striking evidence of how man in his nature is irretrievable; and that when man is acknowledged and made much of, then it is that he is tested. “As the refining-pot to silver, so is man to his praise.” The simple fact of the gratification which it affords to our flesh to be recognized and exalted, is proof positive of the danger attendant on it to us. Hezekiah falls beneath it! What a fall for a man who, in exercise of soul, had learned death and resurrection! Babylon embodies in principle all the selfish independent advancement of this world. To be acknowledged by it is too much for Hezekiah, and the acknowledgment which he in his unbelief and vanity accepts entails judgment on his family; for the favor of the world is deceitful. Hezekiah's susceptible part is exposed, while judgment is inflicted not only on himself but on his nature: for in his family his own nature is judged, and not merely the offense which was the fruit of the nature.

But while in this matter we see the sad exposure of Hezekiah's nature; in another, he is a bright example to us of how a man should act when under apparently overwhelming trials. If the flattery of Babylon disclose the weakness and vanity of his nature, as is always the tendency of worldly prosperity; the invasion and fearful threatening of the Assyrian (2 Kings 18:17) only bring to light the strength of his reliance on God. The great discipline which he has passed through has not been ineffectual. To man he preserves a calm imperturbable dignity. “The king's commandment” with reference to the messengers sent by the king of Assyria was, “Answer him not a word,” but to the Lord he unburdens his heart, and spreads out before Him all his distress. He had before in weakness essayed to buy off the invader; but now he rent his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord. His position and bearing now is the very opposite to what it was with the Babylonish ambassadors; and truly comforting with one who had been raised out of death—who had learned what death really is. He is here as nothing in himself but his hope is in God.

When the Lord promised Hezekiah recovery from his sickness, He also promised him deliverance from the Assyrian. (2 Kings 20:6.) The victory of the Lord is a complete one, over oneself, and over every other oppressor; but the heart has to learn how, as having passed through death, it can endure better when there is death and pressure before it than when there is acknowledgment and flattering recognition.

Hezekiah understands death, and what God is in death, and therefore under the pressure of the Assyrian he turns to God; whereas when he is courted and flattered by the ambassadors of Babylon, he falls under the fatal influence of that system which they personate, and his children and nation in God's government must suffer accordingly. Hezekiah's marvelous deliverance from the Assyrians by the interposition of God is the last event of his life which is recorded in Scripture, and it not inaptly closes the history of his discipline. He has learned that all flesh is grass, and God is made all in all before his soul. When we have come to this, the purpose of all discipline has been effected. May we learn and walk in patience, that we may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing!

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Discipline

Table of Contents

Discipline: 1. Abel and Enoch

Discipline: 2. Abraham

Discipline: 3. Isaac and Jacob

Discipline: 4. Jacob

Discipline: 5. Joseph

Discipline: 6. Moses

Discipline: 7. Moses

Discipline: 8. Moses

Discipline: 9. Joshua

Discipline: 10. Gideon

Discipline: 11. Samson

Discipline: 12. Ruth

Discipline: 13. Samuel

Discipline: 14. David

Discipline: 15. David

Discipline: 16. David

Discipline: 17. Elijah

Discipline: 18. Elisha

Discipline: 19. Job

Discipline: 20. Job

Discipline: 21. Hezekiah