THERE exists a kind of “Heavenly Alchemy” which “gilds the pale streams,” “kisses with golden face the meadows green,” and “flatters the mountain-tops with sovereign eye.” As it touches everything beneath, it adorns all that it touches, and invests objects even humble and repulsive with a new and celestial light. Even so did the divine life of our Lord, in illumining all, shine upon many things which had seemed gloomy and repugnant to us, and touched their sadness with a fringe of iridescent beauty, as when the sun throws the rainbows athwart the weeping clouds. By contact with them He glorified poverty and labor; He ennobled defeat and dishonor; He consecrated suffering and persecution, and He crowned even the ghastly brow of Death itself with a halo of immortal hope.
In the presence of that august humiliation and voluntary poverty the greedy ambitions of men shrivel and wither into despicable insignificance: and the hearts of myriads who suffer the manifold miseries of privations and necessity are comforted by the knowledge that for their sakes He became poor that they through His poverty might be rich. He was called the carpenter’s son, the carpenter and his wife being too poor to offer the customary lamb in the purification ordinance, — not being able to afford more than the two young pigeons (albeit both Joseph and Mary came of ancient and royal lineage). He frequently hungered and had not where to lay His head, His clothing was not worth dividing amongst the executioners, and when He was required to pay taxes He had to perform a miracle to obtain the money needed. The little community which labored with Him was so poor that their treasurer, who had unlimited opportunities of robbing them, sold his Master and sacrificed his post for a few pieces of silver. After His resurrection He was mistaken for a gardener. His chief apostle had no money to give a beggar: he said, “Silver and gold have I none.”
Thus has He cast in His lot with the poor and lowly of the earth and proved that poverty need be no insurmountable barrier either to happiness or to achievement. — “Canst thou not remember Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus? For I esteem these names of men so poor Who could do mighty deeds and could contemn Riches, though offered from the hands of kings.”
The following is new to me and, I think, well worth quoting. (I saw it in an Italian paper into which it had been translated from the English of an American preacher. Not knowing where to find the original, I translate it back into English. That will account for any slight verbal differences which may be observed between the original and this reproduction).
‘And they had the likeness of the hands of a man under their wings.’ This Ezekiel (10:21) said of the Cherubim. What is the significance of coining in this way these two symbols: a hand and a wing? The wing suggests thoughts of the heavens, the hand of the earth; the two symbols united signify that often the celestial and the terrestrial come together, that frequently that abyss which yawns between the natural and the supernatural is bridged and that the one and the other are mysteriously combined in a single individual, in a single deed. There is such a union in the scriptures. The wing of Inspiration is in every chapter: Isaiah and John are two eagles that fly in regions never explored by the human mind. Moses the legislator is distinct from Luke the physician, and Amos the herdman from Peter the fisherman. At the side of the prophet you see the man; under the wing again you find the hand. Such union as in the scripture should be in every believer. O Christian, who prays and who in the rapture of adoration soars even to the throne of the Father, thou hast the wing! May it carry thee higher and ever higher! But under the wing hast thou the hand? Dost thou, having descended from that ethereal sphere, hold out the succoring hand to the lost who suffer and cry for aid? The wing alone is not sufficient: if thou hast not the hand the day will reveal it.
“Such union culminated in Jesus above all others. It was the wing that carried Him to the summits of Tabor and Olivet, where for long hours He abode in the presence of the Father, and then returned and touched with His sympathetic hand the blind, the sick, the leprous, the paralytic, sending them away cured. Christian, fold again thy wings; go and do likewise.”
The seraphim touched Isaiah’s lips with fire from the altar, declaring him clean, — and, being messengers of Mercy, they had six wings; whereas the cherubim, being symbols of judgment, have only four; for mercy is swifter, thank God, than judgment. In Revelation 4 the two symbols are combined in the four living beings which have the six wings of the seraphim and the four faces of the cherubim. That is symbolic of the two great attributes of divine government, the two bases of God’s throne, the two pillars of the universe, — Justice and Mercy. And combined they proclaim the glory of the Most Hight day and night Forever and ever.
J.C.B.