Scripture Sketches

The prosperity of divine favor that rested on Israel in the wilderness did not please the king of Moab—there are few things that give universal satisfaction;—and so in order to effect a change, he sent an embassy 600 miles for Balaam, who was a most respectable man and evidently in great repute, to arrange the matter more to his wishes. Balaam's respectability was not merely that “gig-respectability,” which used to excite Carlyle's ire so much. To be sure Balaam kept his gig—or the saddle-ass which was the Oriental equivalent for it. He was an extremely “religious” man, his religion having moreover no desire to wed poverty like that of St. Francis. But besides this it is manifest that he was a man of the very highest order of mental and spiritual power and capacity,—of far-seeing prophetic vision, of vast and comprehensive knowledge, of lofty and splendid eloquence. But, like the centaur or satyr of the ancients, the upper part of him was like a demi-god and the lower part of him was like a beast. He was corrupt; and, as the Latin proverb says, the corruption of that which is best is the vilest thing of all. He had that cursed appetite for gold, auri sacra fames, which eats into the soul like a cancer.

There have been many who have followed in his footsteps—but afar off; for the race does not often produce men of his capacity. Solomon is an instance of a man who had god-like wisdom and at the same time a most animal libidinousness; but Solomon was incapable of the deliberate wickedness that Balaam perpetrated. The first Duke of Marlborough was an instance of a man of almost superhuman comprehension in war and diplomacy, who could yet sell his own sister, or his own country, for a little gold; who could rob the starving soldiers that were dying for his fame, and send information by which 800 of them were slain for a few guineas. But the only one who has at all completely resembled him was, I think, that lofty and wise philosopher, whose writings have scanned the whole province of knowledge and come home to “men's bosoms and businesses,” who spake as one who had inquired at the mouth of God, and took bribes to wrest justice and sold his friends and benefactors to imprisonment and death, and yet who almost compels us to love him notwithstanding his wickedness,— “the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,” Francis Bacon. It usually takes men a long time to learn that the Satyr is not a myth: it is reality; that there are those who have, what Montaigne calls, “Opinions super-celestes et moeurs souterraines,” who have the brow crowned with the light of heaven and the heel nailed in hell.

When the ambassadors came to Balaam, he told them they must wait till he consulted the Lord. But this was only a way he had, so as not to make himself too cheap. He never dreamed of doing anything of the sort. He went to bed, and the Lord then takes the initiative in the matter. “God came to Balaam and said, What men are these, with thee?” and commanded him not to go with them. This was very embarrassing to the prophet. He had meant to make a little money out of this business, and here he is hindered at the outset. He cannot go. They urge him. He says at last he cannot go even if they give him a house. full of gold and silver. There they have his price now. When a man like that says that he cannot do a bad action for so many pounds, that is about. the amount required. “Make it guineas, and it is a bargain.” He is given another chance. When the ambassadors come again, and Balaam is “wearying” to go with them, God tells him that he may go with them, “if the men come to call thee.” But Balaam does not wait for the test to work. We read that he “rose up in the morning and saddled his ass and notwithstanding the original command not to go, the failure of the test, and the warning of the angel and the dumb beast on the way, he beats down all opposition and goes on to his gold, his honors, and his damnation.

The worst of his conduct is that he saw and knew perfectly the will and judgment of God in the events. We are not dealing with a mere stupid atheist. A man with the highest order of intelligence is never an atheist, though his followers often profess to be so. The great Darwin was no atheist, but the little Darwins frequently are. Neither Voltaire nor Thos. Paine nor Bonaparte were atheists. As Bacon says, “A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.” It is not “knowledge,” but “a little knowledge” that is a dangerous thing. But the man that has intelligence to know that God lives and judges is more guilty in his wickedness than the man—if there really be one—who is stupid enough to believe in a creation without a creator.

His great reputation for sanctity and spiritual power he is prepared to put out to market to Moab. And truly what was the good of it to him if he could not turn an honest penny by it? When Jonas Hanway suggested to his coachman that he would like him to have family prayers, the man replied that he would willingly, and he hoped it would be considered in the wages;—and certainly it ought to be, because piety of this nature must be rewarded in this life, for it has not much to expect from the next. Balaam hoped to die the death of the righteous, but like many another who has the same desire, he prefers to live the life of the wicked, and this is not the way to attain to it. He goes up deliberately prepared for a little sordid gain to curse into misery and disaster a whole nation of people who never offended him; and when God turns his curse into a blessing, in the middle of pronouncing it he murmurs in the king's ear—doubtless in calm, unctuous, sanctimonious accents—a fiendish plot by which to destroy them. “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end [just the “last end” of it only] be like his,” he said; but he died the death of the wicked in the midst of the enemies of God and by the sword of judgment,—a man of noble and splendid endowments, with the “golden mouth” of a Chrysostom in his life, and the gold-filled mouth of the ghastly Crassus in death.

Scripture Sketches: 2. Balaam's Curse

The traveler on the Brocken sometimes sees upon the clouds over his head enormous shadows of what appear to be the gigantic demigods of the Norse period struggling over the destinies of the nations at their feet. The vision is a natural phenomenon, easy of explanation, though the spectator seems to be viewing such colossal conflicts as the poets of the old time recorded, of Thor grasping his huge hammer “till his knuckles were white,” or the Titanic brethren warring with Saturn, or Briareus and the Giants piling Ossa on Pelion to reach the heavens, and casting rocks and hills at the monarch of Olympus.

In such a way, over the head of Israel in the wilderness there was waged a great conflict. The learned and polished Balaam was a man who could sometimes put forth a fearful and mysterious power; and a terrible attack was being made upon them, which they were utterly powerless to avert in the slightest degree. The gates of hell were lifted up against them, but the arm of omnipotence was unexpectedly stretched forth for their protection. “All these thing happened unto them for examples.” The attack is commenced by the performance of an elaborate set of mystic rites and sacrifices on the part of the king and Balaam, who then regard the unconscious Israelites from the summit of the hills, and prepare to invoke the mysterious power and malignant craft of the devilish realms against them. But Balaam stood too near to the burnt sacrifice to be able to effect this. (?) The savor of that which represented the work of Christ ascended to the God Who never fails to honor that sacrifice, and the curse is changed into a blessing. This benediction is four-fold and discloses to us a marvelous affluence of divine favor:—

, I— From the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him.” [He is looking at them from above, from God's point of view] “Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” There, first of all, is the principle of sanctification, that is, a setting apart for God's purposes; a position of being specially separated and unique through divine consecration. Sanctification is not to be confounded with sanctity—much less with sanctimoniousness. It is not now a question of their behavior at all; it is God's act of secluding them, and regarding them as unique,—a peculiar people. Their consecration does not consist in any worth in themselves, but in the fact that God's favor rests upon them. Sanctification is usually thought of as the last thing to which men can attain, but in fact it is the first of all things conferred: “Elect,” writes Peter “...through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

II.— “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel.” It was there, but God would not see it. He looked on the Sacrifice and imputed to them righteousness. At this same moment Moses was standing down in the plain among the people and saying “Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you"! This is the second great principle — justification. The king had taken Balaam to another part of the hill whence he had a less advantageous view of the people; he only let him see “the utmost part of them,” the ragged edges, the riff-raff;—we have always a least favorable side that our critics love to look upon, complacently murmuring “Curse me them from thence.” But it makes no difference. The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. “Whom He called, them He also justified.”

III.— “And whom He justified, them He also glorified.” This was the next thing that Balaam had to pronounce, and, pray mark, in doing so “he set his face toward the wilderness." It is not what shall be true in the future Canaan that he is speaking of, but what is true of the people of God here and now, in the wilderness:— “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!” He says, What! with all their miserable sins, sorrows, and contentions? Yes, for God sees the things that are not, as He had already declined to see the things that were,—their iniquity and perverseness. Let him stumble at it who will: we glory in it!

Here is a mother holding her child and gazing upon it with an ineffable love. The child is a common enough lump of human flesh. We others can see plainly enough the vulgar features of a very ordinary child. But the mother cannot, will not, see anything of that sort. On the contrary her eyes invest it with the charm, the beauty, the radiance that Love alone can ever see. It is love that “throws its halo o'er the loved one's head,” and clothes with its own beauties the beloved object. The radiance on the beloved flow out on it from Love's own eyes.

There is an optical effect that is well-known. If we fix the eyes for a while on a certain arrangement of colors, and then look upon something else that is devoid of color, we see a radiance of complementary colors reproduced on the new object. In some such way God had looked upon the glorious personality of the Christ, and then looking upon His people, He has transferred the graces and beauties from One to the others. “As He is, so are we in this world.” No man would ever have been so audacious as to invent those words. I find them in the inspired Scriptures. And observe, it is “in this world” that all is true, however in the next. Balaam had this time set his face towards the wilderness, and yet he pours forth a rapture of admiration concerning them: “As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign-aloes which the Lord hath planted”...In all the blessings we have an affluence of figures given, each with its own distinct and beautiful meaning. In this third declamation we have figures indicating Israel's serviceableness to God and man, and his, humiliation and subsequent glory.

IV.—The culmination of all is the coming and rule of Christ. “I shall see Him but not now, I shall behold him but not nigh: there shall come a star out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.”

Scripture Sketches: 3. Phinehas

The suggestion which. Balaam had made for the ruin of Israel was worthy of his able and ingenious mind, and was very near being entirely successful. The proposal was apparently innocent enough,—simply a union of the worship of Jehovah with the worship of Baal-peor,—a comprehensive religion, at all times the most subtle danger for a charitable and liberal mind. The narrow and bigoted mind does not lie so much open to, seduction here: its tendencies are in another direction.

But let us see what this proposal means. To put Jehovah and Baal-peor on the throne together is to insult God and consecrate Satan, Happily it is not possible permanently to do this, and Balaam knew it full well; but he knew also that the very attempt would do more to destroy Israel than all his repertoire of cursings, which would affect them no more than that of the jackdaw of Rheims,—they would “not be a penny the worse.” Since his time these proposals for a comprehensive religion have been often renewed. The Samaritans worshipped the Lord and the gods of the country around. Tertullian says that Tiberias proposed to the Roman Senate to enroll Christ among the gods. It is the temptation to the large and capacious mind. Socrates who was of this type, like Solomon or Francis Bacon, advises his pupils not to be over particular in such matters; he himself only believed in the one God, but one must have regard to the neighborhood, and the little local deities. Solomon included his wives' gods in his religion, and Bacon's orthodox Christianity had room in its temple for the golden calf. As apostatized Christianity entered the heathen countries, it showed an exquisite dexterity in comprehending the heathen feasts, saints, and customs, in its scheme. In these times the proposal is renewed with all energy and from all sides. Ceaseless efforts are made to work in with popular Christianity the principles of Buddhism, spiritualism,—devilism of all sorts. Not long since a leading ecclesiastic proposed in a convocation of Christian teachers that Christianity should join hands with Mohammedanism to evangelize Africa,—since the latter religion was so far superior to Christianity for negroes. This kind of thing may be called euphemistically “a marriage of the creeds,” but it engenders monstrosities and is called not by an honorable but by a foul name in the scriptures.

When men speak of benevolent precepts of idolatrous creeds and imply that Christianity has been developed out of them, they say what is only partially true, and imply what is wholly false. There are indeed many charitable elements to be found even in the worst of them: else had they not survived. But it is too much to ask us to accept, because of these, religions, an integral part of whose worship is too foul to be described. The most refined of the ancient human religions, the Greek, celebrated its worship with rites too vile and debauched to be translated out of the dead languages in which they are recorded; and the modern traveler will whisper, in the ear things he has seen even amongst the refined and intelligent Hindus which are never Put in print and make one shudder with horror and loathing. These things are part of their worship.

Such abominations were already being brought into the camp of Israel, in the presence of the leaders and priests of Jehovah, when a man suddenly arose, and with one swift, strong, well-aimed blow, smote the iniquity into the hell whence it had arisen. This man was Phinehas.

He struck that one blow, just one blow, such an one as needed no second; and that is nearly all we know of him. But sometimes a whole life is, disclosed in a single act by a sudden revelation, as when the lightning illumes a darkened landscape, or when the clouds open and we see, for a moment never again to be forgotten, Melchizedek in his sacerdotal robes on Zion; or as when that fabled light flashed up from the Greek trenches as the great Achilles at length arrived.

All his life was a training for that one blow: all his character was revealed in it, zeal, discernment, boldness, promptitude. It was in ordinary circumstances entirely out of his province to interfere judicially thus; but these were no ordinary circumstances. Something more than the usual formal legal processes were required, or the nation would perish. The plague already raged amongst them. Many another would have seen that it was, the best thing to do a few seconds too late. He saw it, and at once he struck,—such a blow as Roland the paladin smote with his sword Durandal, or as when Wieland clove Amilias down to the ground; so Phinehas smote his Ithuriel's spear right through the iniquity of Baal-peor with all his strength, and saved a nation.

A second glance we have of him when the controversy arose with the two and half tribes which, stopped outside the Jordan. A difficulty had arisen concerning a pillar which they had built. Their brethren, thinking that it was a sectarian altar, were reasonably incensed, and sent Phinehas, who proves his fitness for the embassy by his just but considerate and conciliating language. A few kindly words explain the misunderstanding. Our brethren across the water have no business to be there at all, it is true; but they are not so bad as we sometimes are apt to think them—the cold mists of the river distort. What appeared to be a sectarian act was really only meant for an act of gratitude and worship. A frightful fratricidal war is averted instrumentally by Phinehas, and brotherly kindness is reaffirmed.

There is a burlesque of everything and everyone that is worth burlesquing. Uzzah is the caricature of Phinehas.

Scripture Sketches: 4. Zelophehad's Daughters

The difficulties of questions concerning “Women's Rights” are not quite of such recent origin as some think. The “movement” never reached any acute stage amongst the Hebrews, it is true; for the position of women there was one of honorable consideration and quite above the position they held in any of the contemporary nations. Amongst the most civilized of them, their condition was one of extreme oppression, Herodotus says that in Assyria they were sold by auction; amongst the Romans they were classed with the chattels, res domestica; and amongst the Greeks, Plato's advice was that the children should be always kept away from the mother. The Hebrew child, on the contrary, was commanded to honor his mother as well as his father; and the subjection of the wife enjoined in the New Testament is illustrated by reference to Abraham's wife, who was certainly his companion and not his serf.

Phæbe was servant of the church at Cenchrem: Priscilla was able to instruct Apollos; Timothy is reminded of what he owed to his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. If we are to remember that a woman first listened to the Tempter, we may also remember, that, “Not she with traitorous kiss her Savior stung, Not she denied Him with unholy tongue.... Last at His cross and earliest at His grave.” All this may be noticed without in any way entering into the controversy, respecting the relative merits of men and women, which seems like comparing the merits of a flute with a trumpet. One may harmonize with the other: but why contrast or compare them? We know that green is the complementary color to red; we do not think it necessary to dispute about their respective merits or prefer one to the other. Each is best for its purpose.

Zelophehad had died leaving no sons, and his daughters, seeing that the Promised Land would be allotted without their father's house receiving a portion, had approached Moses and requested their share in the name of the dead. This was before the Promised Land was even in sight. Therefore, beyond all other aspects, the passage stands out as expressive of the anticipating and appropriating power of a living FAITH.

The matter in itself was a small one, but the principle involved was so great and far-reaching that even Moses felt he could not take upon himself the responsibility of deciding it, and referred the subject to the judgment of God: so easy is it for the humblest to ask a question which the wisest cannot solve. If Moses had been as careful to maintain his reputation for knowing everything as rulers usually are, he would never have confessed his inability to solve so apparently simple a difficulty. But his action was another proof of the simplicity which formed part of the grandeur of his character. And, besides this, it is another proof of the consideration and justice with which women were treated even in those barbarous times by the people of God, and of the evident civilization—from whatever causes—of that nation; for there is no greater test of the advancement of a nation in civilization, than the position which its women occupy. Moses might have brusquely dismissed the matter as too trivial (and embarrassing) for his consideration; but he appeals to Jehovah by Whom he is commanded to grant the claim. A great principle of law was by this laid down for Israel's future guidance, and a great principle of grace was unveiled.

Thus a small matter may involve vast issues. Some seem to think that every small matter does, but happily that is not true. If it were, we should have to be fighting to the death over every scruple of mint, anise, and cummin, whilst neglecting the weightier matters of judgment, mercy, and faith. But it is true that some small-looking questions decide principles of immense magnitude. flow are we then to discern the really important questions? Ah, I grant that there is a margin for dispute. Nevertheless I think that with candor, grace, and discretion we may count on always finding a sure guidance. If we seek it as Moses did, we shall find it as he did—in the word of God. It is well to be not hasty to judge in disputes that seem trivial. For instance these two words that men fought over once, homoousian and homoiousian, seem nearly the same: in fact there is literally only an iota, a Greek ι, between them; yet they are as wide as the poles asunder; for one means a true Christ and the other a false. But on the other hand where it is a question of customs, prejudices, of “meats,” there is no question of principle at all involved, except indeed these principles, “Forbearing one another in love,” “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended or made weak:” “Let your moderation (ἐπιεικὲς) be known unto all men.”

But consider what a living and practical faith that was which enabled these women (concerning whom we have no reason to suppose that they were otherwise than modest and submissive) to come forth and stand before all the priests and princes, and the whole vast congregation, in order to claim a portion of a land not yet visible. How supremely ridiculous it was, or else how sublime!—according to the way one regards it, for the same action is often sublime towards God and ridiculous towards men. What presumption (ay, that is the term!) for one to believe he is entitled to a portion in the Promised Land, and to try and make a reality—a substance—of it! What presumption indeed, or what humility and faith Is it presumption to believe God's promises? When we think of the effect of faith toward God—moving the arm that moves the world—let us think also of its reactive effect within the possessors. It enables them to see the unseen. The youthful skeptic said he would not believe in what he had not seen. “Hast thou seen thy brains?” asked the Quaker. “Well, no,” said the youthful skeptic. “Then,” replied the other, “dost thou believe thou hast any?” It enables them to brave ridicule and persecution, to count a thing which God has promised as already tangibly and substantially their own.

For “Faith is the SUBSTANCE of things hoped for, THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN.” Contrast with this short, clear, explanation of the character of faith any of the theological descriptions that are so puzzling. Stay, I will give a specimen written by one of the most learned, capacious, and devout minds of the century:—

“Faith may he defined as fidelity to our own being, so far as such being is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear inference or implication to being generally, as far as the same is not the object of the senses; and again to whatever is affirmed or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same..... and so on for 13 pages of explanation, somewhat less distinct as it proceeds. The author of Religio Medici has however, written some beautiful thoughts about faith which may well be considered in a more skeptical day. He says he was greatly struck by Tertullian's expression, certum est quia impossibile est. He does not value very highly a faith which believes things which are inherently probable. It is a high faith that can see the absolutely unseen, and believe that which to the senses seems incredible and impossible.

But faith has its restraints as well as its possessions. The question arose shortly afterward in regard to these women as to what was to become of the land allotted to them if they married. The command is given that, if they take the land, “only to the family of the tribe of thy father shalt thou marry.” Some would have thought this to be an objectionable restraint; but it was of absolute necessity so as not to alienate the property; and every faculty and privilege carries a restraint with it. “Property also has its duties.” At any rate it is characteristic of Zelophehad's daughters, that they accept the condition imposed and observe it with loyalty and submission, though they had not as yet seen so much as a grain of the earth of their promised possession.

Scripture Sketches: 5. Death of Moses

From a merely “secular” point of view, Moses was by far the most successful man that ever lived. The victories of military conquest are mere animal triumphs compared with the achievements of a man who awakened and humanized a great nation of hopeless slaves, dragging them out of the gigantic power of ancient Egypt, then taking them a forty years' journey through one of the most horrible and desolate deserts in the world, in the torrid plains of which he organized them by a system of law, government, and religion, which has been the admiration, and to a great extent the model, of all civilized peoples for more than three thousand years. The “rationalist” —who is credulous enough to believe anything that suits him—believes that Moses did all this (which he cannot dispute) without special divine assistance; but it is much easier to me to believe in monks' miracles than in skeptics' “rationalism,” which requires credulity with a capacity for swallowing difficulties like that of a boa-constrictor. It is a thousand times easier for me to believe that Moses accomplished what he did by the special aid of God's power, wonderful as that is, than that he achieved such marvelous results by unaided human effort. But however he did these things, he is still before us as the most successful man that ever lived. All the Alexanders, Canars, and Napoleons were mere vulgar little sordid earth-robbers, by comparison with this stupendous constructive genius.

And yet when he came to die, his whole life and work seemed to be the most disastrous failures. The nation which he had sacrificed himself to rescue and benefit was in a position of imminent danger in the midst of a torrid desert, the promised land hardly yet in sight after forty years' wandering and suffering, during which nearly the whole of the persons composing the original expedition had perished, whilst their descendants and survivors attributed all their sufferings to his meddlesome interference and agitation in stirring up the discontent of their fathers at a time when they were luxuriating in the voluptuous delights of the flesh-pots, cucumbers, onions, and garlic—the veritable potage jardiniere, et ragout a la mode, Egyptienne—which everybody knew their affectionate masters used to dispense to them in those good old times. Exasperated at last, by the long course of unjust treatment he had received, so-far as for a moment to lose his habitually calm self-command, Moses falls under the worst cloud that has ever overshadowed hint—divine displeasure,—and dies under a sort of chastisement from God before entering the promised land, or seeing the fulfillment of any of their hopes. This was the only thing needed to fitly close a life of saintly sacrifice, sorrow, and disaster. There, one would think, the ironical course of events might have stopped. It seemed an overflowing of the cup that the spirits should struggle over his dead body, that “Saint” Bernard should justify his causing the loss of two million lives in the crusades by comparing himself with Moses, and that Thomas Paine should have called him a Well, never mind what he called him: I own that it would have been still worse if he or Mr. Buchanan had praised him.

So that while the life of Moses was essentially more fruitful than any (save one, of course) that ever existed, temporally and outwardly it was no more than a barren and gigantic failure. Let us in these times of universal struggle for the front places at all cost; when all things are being judged by their outward success; when the gospel of “getting on” in this life is the most popular creed; when the “fittest” always “survives “, with the blood of the unfittest on his hoof,—let us turn aside and behold in the death of that old man in the solitude of Pisgah's mount, the glorifying of Failure, the apotheosis of Disaster. Let us consider how many there have been whom their contemporaries have frantically, applauded for their present successes, whose work soon perished; and how there have been also those whose lives were persecuted, calumniated, and apparently unfruitful, but who nevertheless planted some seed that has since become a forest, or discovered some God-given treasury of resource for men. We think of the disastrous lives of some of those whom the world now acknowledges to have been its greatest benefactors; of Galileo and Columbus in their cells, of the poverty of Guttenberg, Fabricius, and Homer, of Milton in sickness, blindness, imprisonment, and penury; of More, Russell, Sidney, and Raleigh on the scaffold, of Huss and Ridley dying in the flames, Hampden in the battle, Regulus in the spiked barrel, Esop thrown over the precipice, the Founder of the Dutch liberties, with his work yet all unaccomplished, shot like a mad dog on the staircase and dying muttering, “God pity this poor people.” We think also of that cloud of divine witnesses, “who wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins: being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of whom the world was not worthy.” And we think of “Him whom man despiseth, whom the nation abhorreth,” Who said “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught and in vain; yet surely my judgment is with the Lord and my work with my God,” —the termination of whose work at one time seemed to be a few dismayed and horrified peasants standing around a cross.

When the end comes, and Moses is sentenced to die, leaving his work all unfinished, he receives the decree with characteristic dignity and submission. In nothing he says or does is there the slightest trace of bitterness or repining. The harsh imperious words which he had said to his brethren at Meribah were very few and never repeated. He now gives a last address and charge to them, in which he unfolds their high and glorious destinies, and concludes: “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, Who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms...Happy art thou, O Israel”! He bates no jot of heart or hope for them, though he knows he shall see none of their triumphs; and as to himself we know that those of the old covenant were not given the same definite hopes of happiness in a future life that Christians have now received. He then ascends the mountain alone. Death is always lonely: On mourra seul; but this is peculiar in its desolate surroundings. Mercy is however mingled with judgment and God grants him for the moment a transpiercing gaze that scans the whole of that. fair and glorious land which his people should ultimately attain. Then he dies and the devil, who never could make much use of him when he was alive, struggles hard to snatch his body in order to turn it to some use now that he is dead. Happily Michael the archangel defeats this purpose.

The people wept for him: of course,—when he was dead. If they had listened to him a little when he was living, or shown him a little loyal co-operation, and refrained from worrying him with every kind of unjust treatment when he was wearing out his great soul in their service, they need not perhaps have wept so soon nor so bitterly.

Scripture Sketches: 6. John the Baptist

Another great and glorious life that seemed at the time of its close to be a most disastrous failure was that of John the Baptist. Of the lofty devotion, consecration, and self-sacrifice of this life there were little need to speak: a life spent in a wilderness apart from every comfort of civilization, and every consolation of human companionship; a life that was indeed brightened by the consciousness of a great mission and warmed by the hope of seeing the advent of “the desire of all nations” —but still a life of lonely privation which was closed at thirty-three years of age, after long imprisonment, by public execution for the amusement of an infamous woman and her profligate daughter: and this before any of the events hoped for were attained. When monsters of cruelty and wickedness live to a gloriously successful old age, as did Attila, Zingis, Tamerlane,—who were probably the cruelest men that afflicted the earth—it seems to the natural mind a strange thing that God should allow the life of one of the greatest and most honorable of His servants to terminate thus.

Strange indeed if it really did terminate there; but the beheading of John only opened his existence, not closed it. It only closed the first stage of it, the overture to its oratorio.

Besides there was just then a conjuncture of events in which he could do nothing more here; so well had he done his work, and his Successor had taken it all out of his hand. When however a man can do no more for his cause, he can still generally suffer for it and, if need be, die for it. This the Baptist did. In Corneille, Horatius, lamenting the disgrace he supposes to have been brought on him by the flight of his son in the combat with the Curiatii, is asked what he could have done against three foes, and the old man passionately replies, “Qu'il mourût”!

He was a man of more than Spartan simplicity and abstemiousness, his food locusts and wild honey, his clothing camel's hair, his home the wilderness. Of the most absolute humility, he called himself merely a voice,—a thing of breath and sound, but still indeed of significance,—and said he was not worthy to loose the shoe-latchet of One Who came after him; that “He must increase, but I must decrease,” evidently meaning entirely what he said. Being thus utterly devoid of self-consciousness or self-importance, he was the fittest man living for the high honor of announcing and baptizing the Messiah.

Yet we also find that kind of courage and endurance which is so often associated with native humility and reserve; and that not merely as regards passive courage, but active and aggressive where duty requires. He does not talk vaguely to people about sin in the abstract, but directly and incisively about their own sins. He says to the publicans (whose special characteristic was extortion in collecting the taxes), “Exact no more than that which is appointed you “: to the soldiers, “Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages” (the Roman soldier's three tendencies, violence, reckless accusation, and looting, being here uncovered and rebuked in a dozen words). To Herod the king, who was doubtless accustomed to very different language, he addresses the rebuke brief and stern, “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife.” These last few words cost him his life. He came in the spirit and power of Elijah, but his departure was very different from the glorious rapture of the ancient prophet in flaming chariot. After lingering in prison until the infamous woman had arranged a plot for his death, he is beheaded at her daughter's request,—he, than whom there had lived no greater man, was put to death at the request of a profligate ballet-girl! They made a ghastly jest of it all too; his head struck off and dished up on a silver plate. Nor have we any ground for supposing that, when the glazed eyes of the dead prophet glared on that gay company, they produced any feeling of remorse or sorrow. Probably the guests were only highly amused at this espieglerie of their brilliant hostess and her attractive daughter. There were a few loving and reverent hands though, who took what remained of the great prophet when his head and his soul were gone, and buried it. Then, apparently with broken hearts, they “went and told Jesus.”

“When Jesus heard of it he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart.” May we not say though with guardedness and reverence, that this dreadful occurrence to the most honorable of His disciples was a very deep and personal sorrow to the Master? And this, though we know that the Master foresaw the event and could have prevented it, as we believe He would have done, and would prevent every ill that comes upon us, only that He sees some reason to let many of them take their course.

If the Baptist had been a spiritual automaton, he would no doubt have been an entirely consistent character to the end; but he was a man of like passions with ourselves, and at one time his faith failed. He is surprised to find himself left languishing in prison by the One Whom he understood to be the Messiah, Who was to right all wrongs, whilst the great work of the rescue and restoration of the nation is apparently as far off as ever, and the Lord seems to take no notice. He therefore sends to Christ a question framed in one of those brief direct sentences which he appears to have generally used, “Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?” We cannot for a moment think, however, that it was fear or anxiety as to his own fate that impelled him to act thus. It was that kind of doubt which a capacious mind feels at times of discouragement as to whether the course pursued has been absolutely right after all, and such a kind of depression as every just mind feels when God seems to take no notice of the things all going disastrously wrong, “when His eyelids try the children of men.”

This message brings out one of the most beautiful passages in the life of our Lord. He could not without loss of dignity give a direct answer to a question from His servant which, after what had occurred, was of an offending nature. Neither would He grieve that servant by leaving him unanswered, or sending a reply that the bearers would know to be a rebuke. Therefore He advises them to go and tell John the wonderful and miraculous things that they had themselves seen and to give him this message, “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me!” It is not “Cursed is he that is offended in me;” that would have been the same and yet so very different. He then turns round to the multitude after John's disciples were gone and pronounces the most glowing eulogy. At the time of failure, when others would be “improving the occasion” by throwing stones at the one who was down, the Lord defends and praises his old and tried servant, ending the panegyric. “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.”

All this is full of an infinite generosity and delicacy. Good is it that, when we fail, we have such an one for an Advocate. As the noble tree when wounded by the knife yields its healing balm; as from the ground when wounded by the spade the living streams well forth; so from the heart of the Master there flows out only a more fragrant and ineffable benediction, when it is wounded by the failures and distrust of His servants.

Scripture Sketches: 7. Miriam

Those angels who have desired to look into the progress of earthly dispensations could hardly have had a more interesting sight than they had when, three thousand years ago, they watched little Miriam “minding the baby” —if they only could have known who the baby that lay in that rude cradle was to become, and what stupendous work he was to accomplish. But poor little Miriam, the Hebrew slave-child, could have known nothing of all that. She probably only felt a horrible dread when the retinue of the princess of Egypt approached, and a suffocating affright when the crying baby was drawn forth from his hiding-place by the people who had decreed his death. The baby however was, it appears, a singularly attractive one. His parents, we read, considered him “a goodly child,” “a proper child,” “exceeding fair.” I am not aware that that view of their progeny is very exceptional to parents, and, though I have no evidence, am bold however to say that Miriam held the same opinion and was therefore less surprised than gratified to observe that the princess was evidently pleased with the child and amiably disposed toward it. This is the moment which Miriam seizes to run forward and ask whether she would like her to fetch a Hebrew woman to nurse it for her. Do so, says the. princess, and the girl hastens away to bring Jochebed—the babe's own mother. This was one of the finest pieces of finesse ever known. The courage and resource shown by Miriam, together with her devotion to a task at once monotonous and dangerous, gives an impression of her which enables us to read without surprise later on, that she is a prophetess and leads the choral worship of the entire redeemed nation on the banks of the Red Sea. It is gratifying to find that she has thrown in her lot with the oppressed and calumniated nation, the people of God. This was outwardly an extraordinary advance in occupation. She had been faithful in that which was least, that which appeared to be a humble and menial duty; and now she was set amongst those who led in the van of God's host. The dignity of the position is manifestly vastly different, but the dignity of the service itself does not differ so greatly as might be thought. We do not, it is true, usually rate the services of a nursemaid very high—in wages at least—but still she may be, like this one whom we are considering, doing work of enormous importance in guarding the beginning of some God-inspired life. We learn that, if we willingly and thoroughly perform the humble duty, whatever it is, that lies near at hand, we shall always be doing right and may possibly be carrying out some work of stupendous and eternal importance. “What! in minding a baby"? Yes, Miriam thought she was only “minding the baby,” when all the time she was watching over the destinies of the planet! When the fabled Norse hero, Thor, smote those three mighty blows with his hammer on the face of the sleeping Giant Skrymir, he was discouraged to see so little result. But afterward they found that Skrymir was the Earth, and that the blows had dented three great valleys into its surface. Who knows what vast work he may be doing when he fulfills the most ordinary duty? Does not Mr. Herbert Spencerprove the “persistence of force,” and that the impulse caused by the lifting of a hand vibrates to the farthest star? And as to whether one duty is menial and another honorable, there can be no honest work really menial, and all honest work is honorable. What is it “holy George Herbert” says in the Elixir:— “A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as for thy laws Makes that and the action fine.”

And I said “thoroughly” just now, because I think there is evidence of a thoroughness in the way in which Miriam acts that would have satisfied even Lord Strafford. When the princess had received the infant in so friendly a fashion, without doubt, most watchers, under all the circumstances, would have quietly slunk away home quite satisfied; but Miriam clinches the nail and makes it a rivet. Oh, it was very good! Again when that mighty burst of national worship rose at the Red Sea bank, it was Miriam who closed the great and glorious anthem with its final diapason. I think that had she been housemaid as well as nursemaid (which of course she was, for the poor slave Jochebed was not likely to have had other domestic servants), she would not “have swept the dust in under the mat,” but would have made “that and the action fine.” I pray you, do not consider any honest work mean or despicable. By doing it to God we can make that and the action fine. It cannot lower one to do humble duty in the poorest circumstances. Jeremy Taylor worked in a barber's shop, Copernicus in a baker's, Kepler in an innkeeper's. Bunyan was a tinker, and Carey was a cobbler, David was a shepherd, Amos a herdsman, the apostles mostly fishermen, and their Master was called “the carpenter.”

Miriam's familiarity with household duties did not incapacitate her for the highest spiritual and intellectual attainments: she became a prophetess. There is a way of speaking as if the two things were incompatible; of saying (if one gives proof of learning and devotion), that she must be neglecting her home; and that it is better to be expert at domestic cares than to be studying the “ologies.” As if one could not do both, or as if, other things being equal, the expert and thorough housekeeper would not usually be better also in everything else than the negligent one! But the superstition is too stupid to argue against. I like to think of Elihu Burritt hammering his horse-shoe, or Thomas Cooper wielding his awl, whilst they stored their minds with the love of many strange lands and languages. I like to think of Philip Melancthon holding the baby on his knee with his one hand, whilst he held his Hebrew manuscript with the other.

It may be doubted whether, to the one that loved and nursed it, “the baby” ever entirely ceases to be an object over which protection and authority (modified indeed) should be exercised. At least it was so with Miriam. When Moses had been many years arrived at maturity, he married an Ethiopian bride. Miriam did not at all approve and went about “saying things,” which Aaron encouraged. Was Moses the only one by whom the Lord had spoken? Had he not also spoken by them? The passage is very fine. Moses, “meek above all the men that were upon the face of the earth,” does nothing to resent this (and indeed we should, remembering that childish care by the Nile's bank long before, be distressed if we read that he had done so). But Jehovah intervenes with a sudden and terrible chastisement. Aaron, the weak-natured and misled one, is leniently dealt with; but Miriam is of a different character and greater responsibility. They are both sternly rebuked, and Miriam is smitten with leprosy!

Then there arises to her brother an opportunity for returning some of her ancient care. “Moses cried unto the LORD, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.” If she can no longer expect his submission to her will, the love of those early years is not dead. His prayer is heard.

Scripture Sketches: 8. Matthew the Publican

Tax-collectors are nowhere, I believe, very welcome visitors, and when, as in Matthew's time and country, they collected the taxes for a foreign, conquering power, and in addition to this, “farmed” the taxes, extorting from the oppressed people, as was believed, much more than was just or politic, they were as a class doubly disliked. The ancient Jew hated them and classed them generally with sinners— “publicans and sinners” as the common phrase went. So the modern Americans tarred and feathered them when they came claiming tribute for this country, what time they threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor.

These popular condemnations, however, are usually merely the outcome of ignorant bigotry. The tax-collecting class are probably no worse than their neighbors. Certainly there is no money we pay that is better laid out than that which we contribute to enable the governing power to protect us from anarchy or invasion. The Christian too has received a direct command that dignifies his payment of taxes in an especial way: “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things that are Caesar's;” “Tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom.” It is well for the Christian to avoid countenancing the vulgar class-hatreds and contempts that are so frequent in every part of the world. The Jew hated the Samaritan, the Greek called the Roman “barbarian,” to the Hindu all other people are contemptibly “Yavanna,” to the Chinese, “Tatse.” Every people have a part of the country which they make it their pleasure to abuse and sneer at: the Italians, Lombardy; the French, Gascony; the Germans, Saxony; the Austrians, the Magyar country; the English,—but I must not come too near home; let us keep at a distance. The Greeks scorned Bmotia, yet it produced Hesiod, Pindar, and Plutarch; the Syrians loathed Nazareth, but out of it came Christ.

In fact by coming from Nazareth, by being born of poor and obscure parents, and passing to His ministry through the curriculum of the workshop rather than the college, and by choosing His companions and apostles from the humblest and most despised classes, fishermen, and tax collectors, our Lord at every step traversed and discountenanced those vulgar prejudices that originate and nourish class-hatreds; and by the world-wide character of His gospel and the fraternal basis of the association of His disciples He opposed and condemned those international enmities which have been the chief causes of the greatest miseries that afflict the human race. It is well when we are characterized by the same spirit.

The principal fact therefore that we have concerning Matthew is that he was one of the hated tax-collectors. Though an apostle he seemed in no sense a prominent man; but, like some other quiet retiring persons we meet, he showed a hearty readiness in turning to Christ, and a thorough surrender of himself and all he possessed. When the Lord called him he was sitting with his heaps of custom's money before him; “and he left all, rose up, and followed him.” He evidently regarded the invitation as a most joyful event too, “and made him a great feast in his own house, and there was a great company of publicans and others that sat down with them,” Christ being in the midst.

And this is very fine. It is Luke and Mark that tell us all those pleasant things which were so creditable to Matthew; and there is no trace of envious feeling on their part to hinder his fellow apostles from chronicling them. But Matthew himself only gives the most curt and formal account. “He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him. And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house.” Pray mark: he does not even say that it was his (Matthew's) house they sat in, much less that it was “a great feast” which he was giving, to which he had invited all his old publican friends; for he is like Jacob, “a plain man,” and he is too honest and sterling a man to be ashamed either of his old friends or of his new master.

Of course whilst noticing the different statements of the writers of the Gospels, I fully believe in their plenary inspiration, yet this does not affect the truth (and the beauty of the truth) that the Holy Ghost so acted on the mind of each writer as to produce that which should only be in keeping with the most absolute propriety and modesty, but also in some wise that which retains something of the impress of the mind through which it is communicated. The oil that runs down through the golden pipes of necessity takes somewhat the shape of the pipe through which it flows. The wind moves forward with its single majestic force, but it swells out the different sails in a thousand different ways.

Alas! for those who are so foolish as to think variations in gospel narrations to be contradictions. Not only do they wrest them to their own destruction, but what delicate shades of beauty there are, that their blind eyes can never perceive! “Ah, but Luke differs from Matthew: that's a discrepancy, a discord.” No, it is a complement, a concord. “But there are four different accounts;” “there is a confusion.” No, a harmony. “But which is true?” Thou fool! they are all true.

Do not the four parts of music differ and yet are they not all true and harmonic,—soprano, alto, tenor, and bass? Would not four plans of the same building differ, one giving ground-plan, another the elevation, a third the eastern and a fourth the western sides? Are there not the four dimensions, length, breadth, thickness, and throughness in everything that exists from a pin-head to a planet? The accounts differ, do they? Thou fool! if they did not differ, we should only require one of them.

And that were melody without harmony. We prefer both. The beauty of the sound is increased exceedingly. Here is another instance: in enumerating the apostles, the other writers simply say “Matthew and Thomas,” putting Matthew before Thomas and saying nothing about his hated profession; whereas, when Matthew enumerates them, he puts himself after Thomas and mentions his own profession, “Thomas and Matthew the publican.” “You were originally a shoe-maker, Mr. Carey, I believe,” loftily said the great dignitary, to the man who translated the Bible for the Hindus. “No, my lord, only a cobbler,” he replied.

A plain, honest, Christian man, apparently without one spark of natural genius, but characterized by modesty, hospitality, and cheerful devotion. According to Papias, Irenæeus, Eusebius, and others, he wrote his Gospel originally in Hebrew for Jewish converts, though our Greek version of it was extant so early as the second century. There seems no reliable evidence of his having been martyred; he seems to have died a natural death.

Scripture Sketches: 9. Joshua

“One soweth and another reapeth.” He that does the first part of the work seems to be wasting his time and throwing away valuable seeds on the ground. They sink in and are covered with the black soil. They fall into the ground and die. Often the sower dies too in neglect and poverty; and he and his work are forgotten.

But the sower knew that Time would silently and invisibly carry on his work; and the day at last comes when the fields are ripe to harvest over the ground where the seed had been scattered and apparently wasted. Then comes some other man who enters into the labors of his predecessor. He has only to thrust in his sickle, or shake the richly laden boughs of the trees; and he possesses the whole accumulated fruits of his own and his predecessor's labors. We should therefore judge wrongly if we estimated that the reaper had done all the work because we see him bringing in the sheaves: we must not forget the pathetic endeavors of his dead colleague, then apparently fruitless and hopeless. One man finishes his course in blank failure; another is crowned with success: but if each works as he is called, the work is one, and one God overhead.

There are two appropriate phrases in the Jewish Talmud. The first is “The sun will set without thy assistance.” That fact is obvious enough, one would think; and yet what a world of fretful anxiety is removed from the breast when it is realized that, after all, things will get on somehow without us! “God removes His workmen, but carries on His work.” He can even take away Moses or John the Baptist, without the work collapsing; for to finish Moses' work there is Joshua; and to finish John's comes the Christ. But the other Talmudic precept is equally important: “Though it is not incumbent on thee to complete the work, thou must not therefore cease from pursuing it.” There is nothing better than to work while it is day in obedience to the great Lord of the harvest; as we are directed whether sowing or reaping, whether in discouragement or success. We want no Monthyon prize for virtue. If virtue were always rewarded, it would cease to be virtue and become policy. It would be “prosperous to be just.” Let us at least avoid the vulgar stupidity of judging of our own or others' labors by their outward and present success.

But it is no less true that we should not undervalue the reaper's work either. It is necessary that he should do it, and do it thoroughly, conscientiously, and in its season: otherwise he sacrifices or endangers the whole results. In this sense he has a larger responsibility than the sower. If the sower work amiss, he wastes his own labor; but if the reaper work amiss, he wastes his own labor and the labor of all his predecessors. From this point of view Joshua was a conspicuous and splendid workman, taking up the work when it came to his turn with his whole heart, and mind, and strength, and the whole faculties of his magnificent, God-given, genius and capacity.

He is from the first a thoroughly “consistent” character, one of the very few consistent men who have ever lived, uncompromising in loyalty, truth, and devotion, from the day (and doubtless before it) when he “discomfited” Amalek with the edge of the sword, till the day when, at the close of his long and eventful life, he says “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” In which brief sentence, with his life and personality emphasizing it, we seem to hear each word closing with a decisive snap like a steel spring. That is about all we know concerning his house, and it is entirely honorable to them and to him. Usually a conqueror makes pretty free with the spoils of victory and puts his relatives in good places. “Go to! Let us found our dynasty! Let us make our brother Joseph king of Naples, brother Louis king of Holland, Jerome of Westphalia, and so all round. To the victor the spoils!” But this man Joshua, “Serene, and resolute, and still, and calm, and self-possessed,” lives altogether in a higher plane. Neither he nor Gideon would found dynasties to aggrandize their own houses and put their partisans into good posts at the public expense. That lofty disregard for these things, which Fabricius and Curius Dentatus carried with them in their honorable poverty and Cincinnatus to his farm, was manifest here also. Now Caleb, though a good and great man, was not of this nature: forty-five years after the promise was made to him about that bit of property at Hebron, he went up to see after it, and took care he got it too.

Joshua had been trained and qualified for his office by many years of personal service to the great leader Moses, whom he accompanied up the holy mountain in the early days, under whose eyes he fought in the van of the warriors at Rephidim, and with whom he journeyed in the closest inter-communion for forty years. When he by divine command assumed the leadership and passed into Canaan, his course was a brilliantly triumphant one. Whether he would have borne defeats and disasters with the dignity and patient heroism which characterized his illustrious master, we cannot tell. Probably not: the only serious defeat he suffered was at Ai, and then he seemed utterly prostrated; though to be sure what unnerves him is that Israel should have turned their backs on their enemies. But then that is the kind of thing which most leaders have, to take account of, occasional panic and half-heartedness in their followers. He rends his clothes and throws himself on the ground, whence he is sternly commanded by the Lord to arise and deal with the evil which caused the defeat.

He promptly obeys, he does everything promptly and vigorously; and from that time he seems to regain, and regain permanently, his calm strength. When Achan is taken, and he sits in judgment on him, there proceeds no denunciation of the Judge Jefferies type from the bench. There is indeed a very courtesy and magnanimity of justice in the words of Joshua, “My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession.” A bystander might have thought from this calm unimpassioned demeanor that some weakness or spurious mercy would be shown; but he would be mistaken. Heat is not always a sign of strength: steel is cool enough, and so is adamant. Joshua could to some extent pity the man; but if there were no one else to do it, he would placidly and politely slay him with his own hands. “My son” found himself no better off in the face of that unimpassioned inflexible justice than the sons of Junius Brutus, or the son of that Galway sheriff, whose own father adjusted the rope round his neck.

One would think that it would be difficult to deceive a man of this cool deliberative wisdom and long experience. Yet the Gibeonites manage to do so by a neat little stratagem which makes him very angry when he discovers it, and causes him to upbraid them with their deceit; as if it was worse for the poor wretches to use strategy to save their lives than for himself to use strategy, which he constantly, did to destroy his enemies! We look in vain for that which is the conqueror's greatest glory, the magnanimity to fallen foes that David could grant from his heart, or Augustus Caesar could exercise for policy's sake. But then Joshua's case was entirely peculiar. He was sent by divine command to execute judgment on a people who had cursed and afflicted the earth by the most appalling wickedness—dimly disclosed in such passages as Gen. 19—which the world has ever known; and it was not within his option to show leniency.

Scripture Sketches: 10. the Herods

God had warned the Israelites against having a king; but of course they considered that they knew best, and as soon as possible they appointed one in order “to be like the other nations “: for the power of fashion over our minds is no new thing; nor is its baneful effect. However, owing to the safeguards with which they were provided through the prophetic ministry, they were not in general nearly so disastrously affected by the character of even their worst kings as the surrounding nations were. The Rehoboams, Manassehs, and Ahabs of the Hebrews were bad enough, but never were allowed to go to such terrible extremes of monstrous iniquity as the Caligulas and Neros of old, or the Theebaus, the kings of Dahomey, and Khans of Khelat in modern times. It must be allowed though, that the Herod family did much to counterbalance anything that had been in Israel's favor on this ground heretofore.

A glance at the ruling powers of the time when Christ came, and at the frightful condition of misery and oppression in which the mass of the people lived, makes us wonder at the calm audacity of those who assert that Christianity was a development of humanity, the result of a gradual improvement of the human race. The fact is too notorious that, whereas there had been hundreds of years previously such noble minds in Greece as the king Codrus and the sage Socrates, or in Rome such chiefs as Mettus Curtius and Cincinnatus, now the rulers of the civilized world were represented by Tiberius, Herod and Caiaphas, men who had “developed” to the penultimate stage, not of virtue, but of wickedness.

There are four Herods referred to in the New Testament. The first of these is called Herod the Great who was reigning as king (under the Romans) when our Lord was born. This was one of the most atrociously wicked rulers that ever lived. Augustus, at that time Emperor of Rome, said smilingly (and making a play upon the words in the language in which he was speaking), that “it was better to be Herod's swine than Herod's son “: and another thus describes him sans compliment, if not sans phrase, “A heathen at heart, a savage in character, a brute in passions, and a fawning slave to the Imperial Court, he made use of his position to betray his country to the Romans, by fostering immorality, cultivating alien customs, sapping religious faith, corrupting the priesthood and massacring the nobles.” He was an Idumean or descendant of Edom, that is Esau, who had struggled against Israel before he was born, had tried to kill him in his manhood, whose descendants had tried to stop the march of the Israelites through the wilderness, attacked them ceaselessly in the land, and now were making a last desperate effort to destroy the Messiah, the true Israel. This Herod was the man who ordered his own wives and sons to be murdered, prepared a general massacre of the nobles “to make the people mourn,” and slaughtered the poor little infants of Bethlehem, whilst he was advertising his piety and patriotism by making the people build the most gorgeous temple in the world. The subject is not inviting to continue. Only that when we are told that Christ was merely the efflorescence of a long-continued progress in mankind, it is well to remember of what kind the leading man was in the country to which He came.

It was the son of this man who ruled as Tetrarch in Galilee at the time of the crucifixion. He was called Herod Antipas. What religion the father had was of an architectural nature, but the son liked a good sermon: he “sat under” John the Baptist and “heard him gladly." “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things...” and that is more than everyone who “sits under” a popular preacher does. So that “he was not all bad.” No, but in a sense he was worse than if he had been. Notwithstanding all this he continued to live in the vilest debauchery, eventually murdered his religious teacher, and joined himself with the royal and priestly conspirators who put to death the Son of God. When men show a religious tendency and at the same time live bad lives, it is usual to speak of them as hypocrites, to impute to them deliberate deception; but this is often very incorrect. Such men as Herod Antipas are entirely and morbidly sincere in their religion. Their consciences are not conveniently hardened like those of men of the nature of Herod the Great, or Nero, who took a distinct pleasure in doing evil. A conscience at any time may be said to be an inconvenient and expensive thing to keep; but a conscience like that of Antipas, just strong and superstitious enough to worry and haunt him with his misdeeds, but not strong enough to keep him from perpetrating them, must be almost intolerable. It is difficult to understand how such a man could be an object of affection to any living creature; and yet Herodias, vile-natured as she was, going from one of her half-brothers to another, subtle instigator of murder and worse,—. Herodias left everything for him, first her husband and her honorable position, and finally followed him to Gaul into poverty and banishment when he was subsequently disgraced.

He was by no means a weak man. He would not have slain the Baptist at the direct desire of either Herodias or her daughter, but they entrapped him through his superstitious regard for his oath. The man is blessed who “keeps his oath to his own hurt;” but Herod kept it to the hurt of another. In the end it amounted however to the same thing as if he were weak: a woman and a wicked one, ruled the state, but the man, though a usurper, had taken the position and could not divest himself of his responsibility. When one like that rules, everything rests on an unstable and capricious basis. This was how at a certain time the Greeks said a child ruled the world, “because Europe ruled the world and of course Greece ruled Europe: of course also Athens ruled Greece, and Themistocles ruled Athens; then, of course, the wife of Themistocles ruled him; and naturally her little boy ruled her.” When things are arranged in this inverted manner, they cannot last long. It is like reversing a pyramid to balance it on its apex. The experiment is interesting, but the result hardly doubtful.

The next prominent ruler of this family is Herod Agrippa I. whom we meet in Acts 12 for a moment only. The moment is quite long enough: his passage is swift and devastating. “He stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.” And he “vexed” them to some purpose. He killed James and put Peter in prison, and would doubtless have continued “vexing” the Christians, as it pleased the Jews and did not cost so much as building temples, but that he had to go against Tire and Sidon where he decked himself out magnificently and made a great oration from the throne at which the people rapturously applauded. But vox popitli is not always vox Dei: God smote him and the worms ate him. Outside all glory and splendor: inside loathsome corruption.

He was the grandson of Herod the Great and left his power to his son Herod Agrippa II. whose life was a public scandal. But all the Herod were in their way capable men, having a good knowledge of what king James called “king-craft.” This Agrippa II. was a scholar of considerable repute, and Festus refers the difficult case of the apostle Paul's indictment to him for advice. He hears Paul's long defense with a scholar's impartiality and patience of detail, candidly acknowledging with a kind of friendly raillery to the apostle that he has nearly convinced him. He was very far however from being “almost a Christian.” He was too intelligent and learned a man to be a bigot, and he acknowledges that there was no reason why Paul should not be set free, only that [he adds to avoid committing himself] as he has appealed to Cæsar, he must go to Rome. And so having calmly and adroitly extricated himself and his friend Festus from an awkward position, he turns from the light of the apostolic gospel, charmed though with the eloquent discourse, back to his licentious life with that fair Sin that accompanied him to palace or judgment-seat, or wherever he went. At the end he fought against Jerusalem under Titus. He was the last of the Herods.

Scripture Sketches: 11. Achan

After their long and weary journey through the torrid desert the vast host of the Israelites had at length triumphantly crossed Jordan and taken the garrisoned and embattled city of Jericho. Their goal is at last attained. All their sorrows are over; all their troubles past!...All? No, not all.

The next town they must occupy, Ai, a mere village of a place, against which they felt it was only necessary to detach a mere handful of troops, stops them. The men of Ai were as valiant as they were wicked; for unfortunately the popular theory that bad men are cowardly is not always true. They resist desperately; “heroically,” we should say if they were on our side, but furiously” is the word generally used for the enemy; and the attacking Israelites are mown down or flee before them. The immediate cause was that the invaders underestimated their enemies and sent a small detachment to do work that the whole nation should have been engaged in; but the remote cause was something far more serious.

What an atrocious surprise it is to us, when we have overcome great difficulties, to find ourselves. suddenly stopped by some apparently trifling obstacle: to conquer the line of the Danube, and be stopped at the little fort of Plevna; to gain all Europe and find disaster at the small village of Waterloo. It is to climb over the great mountain, and then fall over the “ridiculous mouse.” Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall! It never ceases to be necessary to “walk circumspectly.” It is customary to despise the power of our foes too much, and to make a joke of the devil. It is a poor joke. At the gate of Utgard, says the Norse legend, they showed the great giant Thor a cat and asked him to move it. “Small as the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent up the creature's back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people: there is an old woman that will wrestle you! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard old woman; but could not throw her.”

But there was a reason, as for most things: the cat was the great world-serpent; the old woman was time; and who can wrestle with her? The men of Ai, so disastrous to attack, were invincible in all the panoply of the Almighty so long as Achan was amongst the people of Israel. For God had given a commandment that they were not to enrich themselves with the spoils of the wicked Canaanites upon whom their swords were executing judgment; and at the very first battle Achan had wantonly disobeyed and hidden away spoil for himself. At another time this would have been simply a case of petty larceny or looting; but now it was a flat defiance of God's authority; and if allowed to go without stern punishment, the evil would no doubt develop until the conquering Israelites, instead of having the character of a solemn mission of divine judgment, would become a horde of vile marauders, and all discipline being relaxed, would certainly be finally defeated with terrible disaster.

Achan's offense then checks the triumphant march of Israel, and throws the whole nation into calamity and confusion. Of so much importance is discipline and fellowship: of such far reaching malignant influence are the consequences of one sin. Time and circumstance make in these things so much difference: when a work is being done by a great collective force, every man cannot have liberty to do what he chooses. There is a general responsibility to a certain amount of restraint; and what inconvenience is felt in the restraint is more than compensated for by gain in solidity and power. Any musician can play C for D as often as he likes on his own instrument at home; but if he do so in the midst of a great orchestra, he spoils them al], and fills a thousand breasts with rage and indignation. Thus no man lives to himself, nor even dies to himself: everything he does affects more or less remotely those that surround him, for good or evil. How cautious the consideration of that should make us as to the allowance of innocent sins and white lies in our lives.

His sin was that which in most ages, certainly in this, has been regarded as of a most respectable type,—cupidity. It was entirely according to the gospel of gentility and getting on in life: “get money; honestly if you can, but get it.” Yet after all, the twenty or thirty pounds' worth of material which he took was a poor price to sell his conscience and happiness for. Some of these covetous natures that usually make such sharp bargains in buying and selling, make terribly bad bargains when they go to sell their own souls. There is no evidence of repentance; only of remorse. He is not sorry for the sin, but for being found out; he stood quietly concealing his guilt whilst the whole nation was blamed and punished; but when there was no further use in concealment, he confesses in a sort of way. There was no object in keeping silent any longer, and acknowledgment perhaps may mitigate the punishment, but it does not. The calm inexorable face of Joshua is turned toward him and condemns him to be stoned to death. But Midas perishing of his gold, Crassus wailing for Solon, and Crassus with his dead mouth stuffed with the molten metal, were amongst his spiritual descendants.

The event occurring immediately on their entrance to Canaan, the disasters and the fearful judgment resulting from such an apparently small sin seem to have made so strong an impression on the mind of the nation that hundreds of years afterward the prophets refer to it; but strange to say they refer to it not in the way of condemnation, but as a ground of hopefulness. The judgment of evil, where evil exists, is the only means through which anyone can enter into the forgiveness and favor of God. Therefore Hosea says, that the valley of Achan (Achor) shall be a “door of hope,” and she (Israel) shall sing there. And Isaiah says, “The valley of Achor shall be a place for the herds to lie down in “; for there is no place where hope shines so brightly as it shines on the spot where sin has been judged, nor is there any place for a sinner to rest, like the foot of the cross.

Scripture Sketches: 12. Simon Peter's Brother

The highest development in pictorial art is proved when the artist can with a few rapid lines represent some view or figure so as to give a good idea of its characteristic features. The three or four brief and casual references in the Gospels to Andrew reveal him to us with such graphic distinctness and power that we seem to have known him all our lives.

He was originally with John the Baptist and was one of the first two men who followed the Messiah. The Baptist was standing with these two of his disciples, “and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God.” The apostle who writes this tells us that one of these two was Andrew, but with characteristic modesty he omits to mention who the other was, because it was himself. These two men follow the Master, who presently turns to ask what they require: they only ask, “Rabbi, where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day.” All this was very characteristic of these two reticent, deep-natured, men; the silent, unquestioning, patient following, the one inquiry which at length falls from their lips, and the nature of that inquiry which divine love had awakened in their souls. It was neither doctrinal nor polemical; simply “Rabbi, where dwellest THOU?”

The other disciple is then modestly left out of the narrative, but of Andrew we are told that, “He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, we have found the Messias!...and he brought him to Jesus.” There Andrew's part is over for the time. Be it so: he had done a good day's work.

We see in a watch the hands doing their work out toward the world. They are revealed to all as they do their work—important work too—in public. So that when we look at the watch we hardly ever think of anything but the hands and what they indicate. But do they move themselves? No, round at the back, hidden away and difficult to discover, is the fusee, the cogs of which move them. It is a modest, curiously-shaped, wheel that does its work so quietly that you may have a watch for a life-time and not know even that it has a fusee. But the hands cannot move without it, and it is from its direct proximity to the hidden central spring that it has its power. Thus Simon Peter, like the hands of the watch did his work mainly in public, and Andrew his, like the fusee, in retirement. Simon Peter preached to the multitudes, and brought thousands to Christ; but Andrew it was who had given the first impulse by bringing Simon himself to Christ. It seemed a small individual service; but if we think of what Peter afterward accomplished, we see that it had a vast result.

And this kind of direct individual work is always needed. Priscilla's quiet words turn the stream of Apollos' eloquence into the right direction. Luther is instructed by von Staupitz; Farel by Lefevre; Calvin by his cousin Olivetan; John Wesley by Peter Boehler. Augustin's mother Monica it was who took him to hear Ambrose preaching; and when she had by this means turned him from his Manichmænism at Ostea, she said, “I am now satisfied, and have nothing further to wish for from this life.”

After this the two brothers were appointed to the service of the apostolate. As they were at their daily work, fishing, they were called from that and all else to be fishers of men. And they illustrate the different ways of fishing: Peter fished with a net and brought multitudes in with a sweep of the great waters, whilst Andrew fished with a line. He had already caught one fish, and this proved to be a very large one. Now the qualities needed for the two kinds of fishing are in many ways distinct. Patience and vigilance are needed in both cases; but whereas the net-fisherman has his attention on large things, the rise and fall of sea-tides, gales, and shoals, the line-fisherman has a careful watch for the little ripple, the slight depressions of the float, the faintest pressure on the line. This quality we see in Andrew. When the multitude stood starving around them, and the rest of the disciples were in despair, it was Andrew that saw the boy standing with the bread basket, and, with the practical eye of one accustomed to see small things and seize small opportunities, he said, “There is a lad here [another would not have noticed a lad at all!] which hath five barley loaves [he had not only counted them, but knew what they were made of!] and two small fishes.”

If he had only stopped there, what a glorious speech it had been! what audacity of faith it implied! But unfortunately he added on some reasoning of his own and produced a most ridiculous anti-climax; like that divinity student that, being asked who the first king of Israel was, hesitatingly answered “Saul “; and then, seeing he was correct, proceeded triumphantly...” afterward called Paul.” Ah, we often begin in the spirit and end in the flesh! The fact was, logic was not Andrew's gift: Paul, John, and others of them had that gift, but not he. So the sentence ends in the veritable bathos, “but what are they among so many?” What indeed!

But do not let the stupidity of the closing question make us forget that after all it was Andrew that saw the boy and the loaves, the small means which his faith in his Master's power led him to bring into notice. And if he had faith that would believe in a small miracle, but would not stretch to a big one, are we not reminded of many eminent theologians in the present day, who are exactly in the same condition? Excellent mathematicians and scientists they are too, and will spend years getting fish out of old rocks: but the fish are dead and the flesh gone. They call it paleontology, and they seem to like it.

But Andrew was evidently held in esteem by his companions and worthy of being referred to in difficult circumstances like that “Brother Jonathan” Trumbull, whom Washington always consulted. Men with little logic have sometimes much sagacity. Thus when the Greeks come up and go to Philip, he turns to Andrew for advice. By this time we are pretty certain what his advice is likely to be. He has a way of bringing, and referring people and things, direct to his divine Master: so we read, “and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.” He subsequently labored in Scythia and was put to death in Achaia on a transverse cross. He is the patron saint of the Russians and. Scots; but what he has done to deserve that his name and cross should be interwoven with the resentful thistle and the pugnacious motto Nemo me impune lacessit is not easy to say. J. C. B.

Scripture Sketches: 13. Andrew's Brother

THE first fish which Andrew took on his single line was his own brother Simon, whose conversion led to events which have largely influenced the whole world ever since. Of course, we know that, whilst by one large class of people Simon Peter is regarded as a demi-god, by another he is chiefly remembered for his numerous mistakes. But in some respects these mistakes were fortunate for us; they at least proved that he was no demi-god; and it is as possible to make too much of them as too little. It would be very foolish to ignore the ardent valor and devoted self-sacrifice of Peter's life because of his inconsistencies, however serious.

“Mistakes”! said a bank manager to us lately, “Why, we have a branch at W—, and they have never made a mistake there yet “... “But,” he continued meditatively, “we're going to close it. You see, they have never done a stroke of business.” And I think we may be sure that, if there are anywhere to be found those who have never made mistakes, then it is because they have never accomplished anything worth mentioning, and in that case their whole life is one vast mistake.

When Simon was brought to the Messiah, his new Master, considering it necessary to give him a surname, selected the last one probably that we should have thought of, Peter,' a stone; For He, Who sees the things that are not, could see that this man who was naturally impulsive, erratic, and inconsistent, would become by divine grace a solid and substantial rampart in the church against all kinds of evil and hostility. His high and burning devotion and love to his Master, carried him loyally through the most appalling difficulties and dangers, always inflexible and invincible, except on the one occasion when the man who could brave the most ghastly forms of death for his principles was frightened at the taunt of a servant girl. “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” Peter had not got his own example before his eyes to warn him; we have, and have no excuse. Yesterday's grace is not sufficient for today's trials and to-morrow's temptations. Yesterday Elijah stood calm and strong before raging multitudes on Carmel: to-day he flees for his life. And before a woman too, like Peter! But for all that we must not forget yesterday's services because of to-day's failures.

Certainly his Master did not. Though He knew all that was in man, and in this man too, failing and uncertain, He appointed him to the most honorable position in the Apostolate. He made him

“The pilot of the Galilean lake:

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,

The golden opes, the iron shuts amain.”

The keys were committed to him, not to build the church with of course (churches cannot be built with keys), but to open the gates of the “kingdom of heaven;” which we see him doing in Acts 2. when he was the first to let in the Jews to the realm of salvation; and afterward in Acts 10. when he admitted the Gentiles.

This choosing of Peter to admit the Gentiles was very wise, because, of all the apostles, he was the most intensely national in his sympathies. Like most men of strong impulsive enthusiasm, he was apt to be bigoted at times; and we find that at a subsequent period he allowed his bigoted nationality to mislead him into a gross and serious inconsistency on this point. He refused companionship and fellowship to the Gentile Christians. This was distinctly a schismatic action, and, if sanctioned, would in its ultimate tendency have soon broken the church to pieces; but no one even seems to have dreamed of such severity of discipline as to propose Peter's excommunication. His fellow-apostle Paul “withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” Happily we are not dealt with according to the ultimate tendency of every offense that we commit, but for the action itself and the motive accompanying it. There is no record of Peter's having been subjected to any ecclesiastical discipline at all, not even the formal public rebuke; and the only reference made to the incident is a seemingly casual but divinely wise mention to the Galatians when they were in danger of traveling on the same lines.

Peter however took Paul's opposition in a very gracious spirit; and we must remember that he was the senior apostle and Paul the youngest. He writes afterward of his “beloved brother Paul” and of “the wisdom given unto him.” He speaks highly of his Epistles, though he admits there are some things in them hard to be understood. But it were foolish and criminal to reject them on that account. Those who do so, are “unlearned and unstable.” There is no exposition of technical things which does not present difficulties even to the adepts. And this is quite as true in science as religion. I remember that Mr. Darwin says in his preface to “The Origin of Species,” that he cannot understand parts of Professor Owen's writings, and draws consolation from the fact that there are others who cannot understand nor reconcile them either.

We can see how wisely the choice was made of a man for the active leader of aggressive Christianity. Those virtues, most needed for such an enterprise, Peter undoubtedly possessed to a very high degree—ardor, courage, and hope. His life and Epistles are throughout characterized by these qualities, especially hope. The German Weiss names him the “Apostle of Hope.” His faults are such as we find in men of like nature called to like service, the faults which come from zeal and excessive impetuosity. Luther, who was of a very similar nature and mission, had very similar failings, which “Protestants” are content to ignore, as “Catholics,” ignore Peter's. An aggressive leader is usually impetuous. Luther had little sympathy with the balanced sobriety of mind which Erasmus or Melancthon possessed. “I like not such brains which can dispute on both sides, and yet conclude nothing certain,” he says. Thus too the Swiss champion, Wer gar zu viel bedenkt, wird wenig leisten. Peter rushes into the holy sepulcher itself, whilst John stands reverently at the threshold.

Luther was hurried into many a mistake—and injustice. Erasmus, he says, holds “ungodly false doctrine.” Melancthon is a sheep. “The pope and his crew are like great thieves.” In the Swiss and Saxon controversy over the sacraments, he was obstinately wrong-headed and violent against the learned courteous Zuinglius. “Bullinger, you err,” he storms, “you know neither yourself, nor what you hold. I mark well your tricks and fallacies. Zuinglius and CEcolampadius likewise proceeded too far in this your ungodly meaning,” &c., &c. His Tischreden is often very inconsequent, and his interpretations of some passages of scripture quite grotesque; but shall we because of these things forget his wondrous services to God and man, his valor and his devotion, his masculine strength and woman-like tenderness? In later times he felt his need of patience. “I must have patience with the pope; I must have patience with heretics and seducers; I must have patience with the roaring courtiers; I must have patience with my servants; I must have patience with Kate my wife.” (I fancy that, if “my Lord Kate,” as he used to call her, happened to read that part she would probably supply him with still further occasions for exercising his patience.)

Peter certainly closed his life in martyrdom and by crucifixion; but whether, as alleged, he was crucified at Rome with his head downwards, there is very little evidence. He was most probably never at Rome at all; and that story of his leaving the city at the approach of danger, and meeting his divine Master going toward it, to Whom he addressed the inquiry, Donrine, quo vadis? is neither true nor yet very well invented, albeit the words are written up on the Appian Way to this day.

Scripture Sketches: 14. John Mark

14.-JOHN MARK.

THERE was some controversy lately over a document purporting to be the “Gospel according to Peter.” I do not know of any tangible evidence whatever of its authenticity. The real Gospel of Peter is that which stands in our bibles entitled “Mark “: at least that view was generally accepted in the primitive church on the authority of such men as John the Presbyter (recorded by Papias), humus and others, who regarded the Gospel by Mark as having been dictated and accredited by Peter the apostle, which fact gave it its (external) claim to be regarded as inspired scripture. Apart from the historical evidences of this is the fact that where anything discreditable to Peter is referred to, as in the case of his denial of Christ, the particulars of his failures are given by Mark, with much detail and no excuse: but anything creditable to Peter is passed over, as for instance, in John it is said that Peter drew his sword in Gethsemane, in defense of his master and smote with it one of the attacking party. This (though perhaps little to the credit of Peter's discretion and spiritual perception) was certainly an evidence of courage and devotion in such a time of general dismay. Therefore in Mark where the event is recorded, Peter's name is not given; he simply says, “one of them that stood by"... I confess these “evidences” might be of little weight in regard to the generality of writers in an advertising age; but the apostles and primitive Christians were characterized by this kind of humility as to their own deeds no less than of gracious appreciation of the deeds of others. We have already noticed some instances of this, and such may be found throughout the New Testament.

Evidence which would be much too weak to establish a theory is often strong enough to support a conviction. Did not Democritus when he saw Protagoras binding up fagots (and “thrusting the small twigs inwards”) instantly judge him to be a scholar and philosopher? Could not the great Cuvier build up the whole form of an old-world animal from the mere sight of one of its teeth? Not to say but that the little Cuviers can build up a new-world cosmogony on even less evidence than that.

Here is another conviction of which there is even less proof, yet after holding it for many years, I find that others have also held it. It is that the young man who followed the Lord at a distance, on the night of His betrayal, was John Mark himself, The soldiers, seeing him, snatched at his linen cloth. the only garment he had on him. “He left the linen cloth and fled from them naked.” Only Mark records this, and I say that some think it was Mark himself who thus fled. But however that may be, I always think there is no other subordinate incident which gives such a graphic suggestion of the dismay and horror which fell upon the disciples of Christ on that terrible night.

The name Mark (Marcus) was merely a common Roman prænomen, like Caius or Publius; his Jewish name was John, and he was the nephew of Barnabas, and the son of that Mary at whose house the prayer-meetings were held—a house of such gracious Christian hospitality that it was thither Peter first turned his steps when escaped from prison. This seemed to promise well. “La pridestination de l'enfant,” says Lamartine, “c'est la maison oit it est MI..” Not quite so, perhaps, but still we read, “Hezekiah...his mother's name was Abi, the daughter of Zachariah. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord “; “Amaziah the son of Joash...his mother's name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem, and he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.” Of a truth John Mark started from a good home. He was converted through Peter who seemed to enjoy a special welcome in the house. I wonder who that damsel Rhoda was who could not open the gate for gladness when she heard Peter's voice without, possibly Mark's sister: and at the very outset of his Christian course, Barnabas and Paul took him with them on their missionary travels. He was Barnabas's relation and his cousin, the bishop, thought himself justified in bestowing his patronage on such a promising young “curate.” Thus early did nepotism enter the church: simony had already knocked at the door by the hand of Simon Magus, but had not yet been admitted.

This piece of patronage was not eminently successful. The “living” was poor; the income extremely precarious; probably they received more blows than shekels at any time. The two older men were more seasoned, and did not much mind; but the youth was discouraged. He anticipated the advice of the old French diplomatist who broke his own injunction against the use of “superlatives” that he might enforce this axiom, “Surtout, pas trop de zele.” John Mark had as yet only that light idea of the responsibility of Christian service which unfortunately is so common: he thought he could take up and put down God's work as he liked, and he left the two leaders to go on with the work by themselves whilst he went off home again.

Then we lose sight of him for six or seven years, which for all we know may have been so much lost time: and after that he becomes the passive cause of an exceedingly unfortunate dispute. Paul and Barnabas—Paul is now taking the lead—arrange a further mission and Barnabas “determines” to take his nephew again with them, whilst Paul “thought not good” to take one who had already deserted his post. This gave rise to “so sharp” “a contention” that the two veterans separate; and Paul goes on with his purposed work, whilst Barnabas takes Mark and goes to Cyprus (his home); and again years elapse before we hear anything further of him.

Here again, Mark was seriously to blame, for if he had said that he would not go under any circumstances when he saw the chief apostle objected to taking him, and saw that the matter caused strife, Barnabas could not have prolonged the dispute. However much we may be consoled by the thought that good was brought out of the evil, the quarrel between the two leaders remains an immense calamity.

Most of us would perhaps have thought it best to leave Mark alone after that; and it comes as quite a surprise that we subsequently find him doing important work in the assemblies, favorably mentioned in some scattered texts, and finally charged with the high honor of writing one of the four Gospels. Not only does Peter (who was his god-father, if I may use that term) take him in hand with that affectionate care which we should expect from one of his nature, but Paul, who had such a disparaging judgment of him in former times, is able to recognize and acknowledge the value of Mark's subsequent services. He mentions him as being one of his five fellow-workers, who were “a comfort to him “ in Rome about A.D. 64, and two years subsequently, in his last letter to Timothy, he tells him to “Take Mark, and bring him with thee, for he is profitable to one for the ministry.”

This is truly a most delightful verse: the strong-souled, magnanimous apostle accepting and requesting the services of this one whom he had formerly condemned, and going out of his way to acknowledge and praise him, lest anything which he had then said, and said justly, should attach a stigma to one who had now become a devoted and honorable fellow-servant. And on the other hand we see that Mark is so far from remembering Paul's hard words with any resentment, that he counts it a favor to minister to him and with him. And above all we see that ours is not a hard Master. He doth not cast off forever. If we, like Mark, have failed and failed grievously in the past, there may yet be opportunity in the present and future for us, like him, to hope, to dare, to accomplish great services, and to “Let the dead past bury its dead.”

Scripture Sketches: 15. Religio Medici

THE Gospel of Luke and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, are unique in this—that they are books of important historical events, in many of which the writer took part; yet the writer never once alludes to himself as having done or witnessed anything whatever—does not even mention his own name or existence; and the only way in which he allows us to hear of his presence is where he changes the pronoun occasionally from “they” to “we." This is a kind of modesty altogether unexampled in literature, and indeed is only to be accounted for on the ground of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. Of course, when we admit a writing to be inspired, we cannot very well either praise or blame the human writer for the nature of it. He is merely an instrument in the hand of the divine Author, Who is absolutely responsible. Yet it is very beautiful to see with what delicacy and propriety the inspired scriptures have been written by their human authors. Each has his different style too: that of Luke is admired by scholars for its “classic and flexible Greek.”

One sign of the essential brutality of the Roman rule was the low place they assigned to those who sought to cure, in contrast with the high honors paid to those whose mission was to slay. With the Greeks it was not so, but with all the western nations to the present time we observe the same principle. Earldoms, Dukedoms, Blenheims, Apsley Houses, and thousands on thousands a year are heaped upon successful naval and military men; whilst Harveys, Hunters, Simpsons, and Jenners, who have done more to alleviate human suffering than even those have done to inflict it, dieunnobled—sometimes in poverty and obscurity. But this anomaly was very much greater in ancient Rome, where anyone above the plebeians considered it beneath his dignity to be a physician and consequently had one of his slaves, often a Greek or Egyptian, trained to doctoring, and would sometimes set him free if his treatment were successful.

This however could not have been very often, except by accident, if we may judge by the prescriptions which have come down to us. Even in comparatively recent times (I quote a distinguished physician), “sick people were made to swallow burnt toads, and powdered earth-worms, and the expressed juice of wood-lice.” We read in history that, when Charles II. was dying, they dosed him with “a loathsome volatile salt extracted from human skulls. Hot irons were applied to his head. Fourteen doctors tortured him for some hours like an Indian at a stake.” Such considerations as these help us to understand the otherwise surprising fact that when Paul, speaking in the period of the iron Roman rule, mentions that Luke was a physician, “the beloved physician” scholars instantly surmise that he may have been a freed slave. Though he belonged to an honorable profession, it was then by no means an honored one. And here again, we find the dignity of Christianity which ignores and rises far above local prejudices, narrow caste-hatreds, and class antipathies. Matthew is a tax collector; Zenas a lawyer; Luke a physician; Philemon a “capitalist,” and Onesimus a slave.

Luke had been with the disciples from the very first, an eye-witness and minister of the Word; and he wrote two long important canonical scriptures. Yet had it not been that the apostle Paul in his Epistles makes honorable and affectionate mention of his services, we should not have known of his existence: so completely had he kept his own name and personality out of the record of a long series of the most important events in the world's history, in the whole of which events he had been more or less personally concerned. Let us consider this fact for a moment. Competent judges have said that the finest biography in the world was Boswell's Life of Johnson, and that it was so chiefly because the writer had so completely merged his own individuality in that of the sage whom he was so faithfully portraying that he never places himself but always his leader in a favorable light, and only makes himself a foil to reveal the wisdom and capacity of the subject of his biography. Boswell often stands in so humiliating an aspect that his son was ashamed of the book and would have prevented its being reprinted had he been able. Yet it is certain that Boswell had no thought that he had made any ridiculous appearance in the pages where his vanity urged him to obtrude himself so frequently.

Now contrast this with a memoir like that of Luke's Gospel and Acts, where the writer never suggests his own existence at all, except where he changes the pronoun. But contrast Luke's record especially with the records of writers belonging to his own time. Take for instance Josephus, who commences his Jewish histories by telling us what a highly respectable family he himself came from, and how exceedingly clever and good-looking he was when he was a boy. It is an essential of Paley's great argument on the evidences of Christianity that the first disciples were not fanatical men nor enthusiasts. And certainly their writings stand out as the most sober and modestly constructed that are in the world.

But the fact of chief interest concerning Luke is contained in the last letter which Paul wrote just before being put to death. He had written to the Colossians a short time previously an epistle in which he incidentally mentions that he is in prison at Rome and that “Luke, the beloved physician,” Demas, Aristarchus, and one or two others were with him. “These only are my fellow-workers, unto the kingdom of God,” he says, “which have been a comfort unto me.” These circumstances were terribly low for them, to be in the center of civilization after thirty years of incessant labors and sufferings to promulgate Christianity. But after a time even these last few fellow-workers were scattered. Some had been called away by duty or by death, and others like Demas had fallen away from the truth. The assemblies which still existed were getting either lukewarm like the Laodiceans, or legal and contentious like the Galatians, where they spent their time adjusting, in the method of angry theologians the respective rights of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Everything was discouraging to the last degree. It is nothing to be in a small minority at the beginning of a testimony: for every true principle “begins in a minority of one,” and carries with it hope, which is the birth-right of youth. But when a testimony has been proclaimed and in a measure accepted; next neglected, discredited, and deserted by its own advocates; then all is discouragement, dragged down by disappointment which is the weary burden of age.

In that day of disastrous failure, and horrible despondency, Luke in his quiet and modest obscurity, “true as the dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon,” still faithfully kept his ground, like that nameless sentinel of Pompeii who refused to leave his post when the ruins of his city were falling around him. Paul writes in his last lines, “only Luke is with me.” And these are indeed affecting words, bringing before our minds the two old scholars, in the center of the vast world-empire standing alone for the testimony of God and truth, with their bodies battered and withered by sufferings and labors, and their souls filled with the love of Christ.

We read of one who when the whole creation is collapsing shall lift up his head, and “the darkening universe defy to quench his immortality, or shake his trust in God.” After Varro's disastrous defeat, the Roman senate showed the mettle of their stern and resolute spirit, by voting to him (though he was their political enemy) their thanks, “because he had not despaired of the commonwealth.” And now there was one standing amongst them, whose nature they might have appreciated, had he not been too obscure for them to have known. Though we can think indeed of no defiant attitude in connection with Luke, we can see him there to the very last in his quiet, patient, dogged fidelity, “too kind for bitter word to grieve, too firm for clamor to dismay “—going on, as the French General Foy's men went to their great defeat, “with little hope, but with no fear.”

Scripture Sketches: 16. The Cloak That I Left at Troas

16.- THE CLOAK THAT I LEFT AT TROAS.”

Some years ago a notable opponent, who wrote a book in which he described the progress of his apostacy from Christianity, made mention of some conversation which he had had with one (well known to many who read this) whom he called the “Irish Clergyman.” The opponent was saying that he considered that parts of the New Testament were certainly merely of local and temporary meaning, and wished to know what we should have lost, for instance, if we had not got the verse where Paul says, “The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, especially the parchments.” He states that the “Irish Clergyman” instantly replied that he himself would have lost much, for it was only that verse which kept him from destroying his little library. To those who knew something of the Irish Clergyman's “little library” in later years—how many languages and subjects it embraced—the incident was not without interest.

The verse has always had a fascination for me, but (as I have never felt tempted to destroy books) it is the first part of it which has been of especial attraction. I speak soberly when I say that I have thought many thousands of times of that old cloak at Troas, and always my mind returns to it with a renewed sympathy as it hangs there, an object infinitely pathetic. No doubt it was dingy and shabby enough, but the warp and the woof of it are interwoven with truth and love; and it is embroidered with a fringe of celestial light.

For it brings before us in a vivid way the personality of the old infirm man, wasting in the foul Roman dungeon, and now nearing the time of his death by execution. He is a man of the most refined and sensitive nature, yet he has been hounded and battered from one end of the civilized world to the other. Habitually uncomplaining, he had some years ago, on one occasion, boasted with a sublime satire of his own sufferings, when he had seen amongst the Corinthians the sybarite and dilettante nature of the poor pleasure-loving creatures that were usurping authority amongst them, and disparaging his influence. Against these choppers of logic, who demanded the credentials of his apostleship, he gives only the kind of answer that Amynias gave to the lawyers at Athens. He draws aside for a moment his old cloak, and shows a body all scarred and mutilated with wounds received in the van of the battle, whilst the Sybarites were fretting over the crumpled rose-leaves which occasionally disturbed their repose. The signs of his being approved as a minister of God! Ah, yes, he will give them— “labors... stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides...” But there! no doubt these Greek school-theologians, logomachists and dilettantists, found such arguments irritating and irrelevant, They would have preferred to dispute with the negative dialectic of Zeno or the interrogative system of Socrates, or anything—anything whatever, except the flesh and blood, the sufferings and sacrifices, of the old man who passionately swept their sophistries aside and appealed to their hearts.

But the old man was a scholar himself too; he had long ago been trained by the learned, accomplished, broad-minded Gamaliel, who was as much in advance of his contemporaries in enlightenment and toleration as Milton and Locke were of theirs. For a man trained thus books are almost a necessity of life—food he can do without, but books, ah!” some little luxury there.” Some of us can, perhaps, feel a keen sympathy with the old scholar's love of his books, and interest in the fact that he sends for them all the way from Rome to Troas, when he knew he had only a few weeks to live.

Then again the mind turns to the cloak, which he had left with them in the keeping of Carpus. All the winter he has to be without it, shut up in the Tullianum—a damp underground cellar, into which he has been lowered through a hole in the ceiling like a sack of coals. Occasionally he is let out in custodiamilitaris chained to a Roman soldier, for he must do something to earn money to fee his jailors and pay for his board and lodging. They couldn't be expected to keep him for nothing! That was the system general in former times in prisons: it continued in this country until John Howard's time.

It was under such circumstances as these, when he is in such infirmity and poverty, that he has to send a thousand miles for his old cloak, that one of the most beautiful and touching events occurs. A young slave named Onesimus had robbed his master, a Christian named Philemon of Colosse, and had run away to Rome where he had met the aged apostle. Paul, with the keen instinct of a veteran evangelist, had marked him for a servant for his own Master. As a result of their intercourse, the young man is converted and, becoming devotedly attached to his instructor, wishes to remain with him and work for him. But the apostle's sense of honor is too high to admit of this. The young slave, he says, must return to his original owner. To smooth the way, however, he will give him a letter to the master who is well known to himself, and is, in fact, one of his own converts. And as to the defalcations, why the letter would contain these words, “If he hath wronged thee, or oweth aught, put that on mine account. I, Paul, have written it with mine own hand. I will repay it.” This is what he writes, and engages himself to do for a young man-servant, who was, till lately, quite a stranger to him; this, at a time when he is too poor to buy a new cloak to protect his aged and infirm body from the penetrating vapors that arise from the marshy ground of the malarial Campagna.

Above all, consider the uncomplaining tone of these last letters. (As to the verse concerning Alexander the coppersmith, it should apparently read as a prophecy, not as a curse— “The Lord will judge... “, not “The Lord judge!” It is in the future, not the optative;. With the calm and serene strength of a Christian and a philosopher, he speaks of his approaching death without a trace of any resentment against the unjust judges who had condemned him. He would like to see his beloved books if possible for a time before he dies, and the cloak would be a protection from the bitter cold; for there is not a trace in him of that ascetic feeling of the Flagellants and hermits who voluntarily put themselves to suffering for suffering's sake. The old man's mind is too sound for any such ideas. For the rest, however, if suffering comes, he has learned “how divine a thing it is to suffer and be strong.” “A Gallityeri, Signora, never complains,” said the Italian to his tormentors. “Learn” said the noblest and most afflicted of the German princes to his son, “learn to suffer without complaining.”

Scripture Sketches: 17. Caleb

IF ever a hopeful disposition were needed, it was when Israel fell into wailings of despair on hearing from the spies such an “evil report” of the dangers before them in Canaan, of the gigantic sons of Anak, and the cities walled up to heaven. But two or three men were undismayed. Caleb strode forward, for “he had another spirit in him,” and had “wholly followed the Lord;” and he vehemently urged an immediate advance. “Let us go up at once and possess it,” he said, “for we are well able to overcome it.” Had the people taken his advice instead of trying to stone him, they would not have had to wander in the wilderness for forty years and leave their carcasses there in the end.

Caleb was distinguished by a high, intrepid courage, which, like that of the great Macedonian, desired an empire of wars and difficulties for its sphere. When such a man is consecrated to the service of God, what can he not do? We then lose sight of the mere vulgar successes of earthly conquerors, and survey, in a far higher realm, conflicts more daring and victories infinitely more enduring. Horatius on the Tiber Bridge, defying the sixty thousand Tuscans, shows not a more audacious valor than that shown in the attempt to capture for God the millions of China by the missionary Morrison, or Japan by Xavier, or the Eskimos by Stachs, or the “inarticulate” Terra del Fuegians, in their dense and dreadful abasement, by Gardiner. Such victories may perhaps still be achieved by men, who, like Caleb, “wholly follow the Lord,” and who have the impetuous courage of faith and hope.

Whilst, as a warrior, he bore a great resemblance to men like Clive, who with the three thousand, dashes against seventy thousand at Plassey, or Cortes wrecking his ships and marching against a whole nation with a handful of men; he bears most resemblance to Alexander the Great, who continually did such feats as these, but who, above all other men of his time, showed that temper of sanguine and princely generosity which is so often allied to a high and dashing valor. “What will you have left for yourself,” said Perdiccas to him, “if you give everything away thus?” “Hope,” he replied, and, with such as he, hope is more than all beside.

The pessimism of unbelief is one of the deadliest of evils. If it were not for the Calebs who keep up faith and courage in spite of a whole nation's wailing and despairing, what enterprise would ever have been undertaken? In this way the early missionaries, midst universal discouragement, prepared their ventures to attack the citadels of evil: and we have seen with what marvelous result, when even men who reject Christianity, acknowledge with admiration, as Dr. Darwin did, the effects of the holy lives and teachings of the soldiers of the cross on people of the very lowest types. But those who supposed that the day for discouraging such work was past have of late been roughly undeceived, when we have a “Parliament of religions” convened to assist a played-out Christianity, and when in a concourse of ecclesiastical dignitaries it is announced that Christianity in Africa is a failure, and that Mohammedanism is better adapted to raise men in the low condition of the negroes! Mohammedanism, that debases and enslaves its womankind, that says the sword is the key of heaven, that sets the poor negro tribes slaughtering one another in order to carry off the survivors in chain-gangs for slaves! What would Vanderkemp, Moffatt, and Livingstone have thought of that? What would the missionary Shaw's wife have said? When they used to tell her how dangerous and far beneath any hope of Christian influence the Kaffirs were, she replied, “If these people are so bad as to be guilty of such atrocities, there is all the more need that we should go forward and teach them better.”

It is fit that such discouraging statements should be accompanied by calculations as to how much money it costs for each conversion. Go to, now; let us see then what it does cost to convert a soul! But set down first the labors, sufferings, tears and blood of the great Protomartyr and His disciples; and when that is done, let whoever has a heart capable of it, add on the sordid shillings and pence. Let him next bring the factors to a common denominator—if he can.

When the poor pilgrim got in the Slough of Despond, says the Dreamer, there came one to him who showed him certain stones on which to step, by which he was kept from sinking, and safely reached

the solid ground. The Dreamer's sole and sufficient comment on this graphic figure is contained in the two words in the margin, “The promises.” This was the reason that he did not sink into the mire of unbelief like the others. He rested on God's promises. Five and forty years after Caleb had been promised the personal possession of Kirjath-Arba, he lodged his claim for it, and got it—giants, walls, and all.

A man like this will retain his youthful heart and sanguine energy to the last—unless it is broken down by some crushing disaster (which a more phlegmatic nature would perhaps better endure). When he is eighty-five years old, he asks to be given the work of capturing the most difficult fortress in the country, which he straightway storms with his usual dashing prowess, scaling the heaven-high walls, and overthrowing the giant sons of Anak. When too old, twenty years later, to lead an assault himself, he throws his heart into the fray, as Douglas threw the Bruce's heart amongst the Moors: he promises to give his daughter to the man who will capture Kirjath-sepber. In his later years we can detect a suggestion of that garrulity which we are so ready to excuse, and even to encourage, in a veteran with such a record, reminding us of old Nestor in the Iliad. His last recorded action is one of characteristic generosity. Achsah asked him for watersprings, and he instantly gave her the upper springs and the nether springs, twice as much as she desired.

Scripture Sketches: 18. Othniel

THERE are three phases of public spirit. That, firstly, which is like some of the Swiss toybarometers—the little man comes out boldly in fine weather and retires carefully in foul. These fair-weather friends are to be welcomed but not trusted. Then, there are those who are never heard of at all but when there is trouble, at which times they will appear, like the “Mother Carey's chickens” flapping round the heads of the wearied and embarrassed sailors, and greatly enjoying the commotion. But there are also those noble and devoted spirits that prefer to be unnoticed so long as there is calm and prosperity, yet who are ever ready in the crucial hour of danger to come forward to labor, endure, or die for the common weal. When a great storm bursts on the coast, we presently see a few stalwart men, with rough stern faces, strong frames, and stout hearts, hastening out into the blinding tempest to rescue the doomed crew of some wreck. We wonder who they are and whence they came. To-morrow we shall look for them in vain. They will have returned quietly to their fishing nets, with that same quality of magnanimous serenity with which Cincinnatus returned to his plow, or Hampden to his estate, or Washington to his farm.

To this last class belonged Othniel, of whom we read but very little, yet that little conveys suggestions of one of the finest characters which the world has known, one who combined (with military ability and heroism of the highest order) the wisdom and capacity of the most competent statesmanship—a union of qualities so rare that history contains very few (perhaps not a dozen) parallels. Like some men of this type, Othniel is obscure and unknown until some great national emergency arises or some exceptionally arduous public service has to be attempted. Then in a few words we are told that he does the work; the brief, absolute manner of the narration conveying the idea that he has gone forward quietly and accomplished all that was required by a few swift strong blows, and then retired silently to his ordinary daily duties as though nothing particular had occurred. In this way, when the capture of Kirjath-Sepher proves too difficult for anyone else, Othniel storms and carries it; and later on when Israel is crushed by the foreign yoke of Chusan-rishathaim, God's Holy Spirit arouses this puissant warrior again to come forth and, with a mighty overthrow, to cast off His people's bonds. Then comes a most significant statement. Othniel is appointed a judge of Israel, and during his rule, “the land had rest—forty years.”

Happy is the country that has no “history “that is, in the vulgar sense of the word, a record of wars, treaties, and conflicting dynasties. Happy is the country when a ruler's long reign can be written in two or three clauses thus: An arduous and heroic enterprise; a mighty and effectual salvation; a wise and tranquil reign. The curse of an earthly deliverer usually is that, when he has saved his nation, and finds himself with a great military force in his power, his ardor of battle and lust of conquest is so great that he then goes about carrying fire and sword into other nations; he likes a spirited foreign policy, until either he inflicts every horror of war wherever his foot treads, or else the people in a frenzy of hatred and despair combine to cast him off the face of the earth. They hurl him at last from Moscow to St. Helena. But Othniel had evidently no more lust of conquest than a Hampden or a Washington. To one like this, “the next dreadful thing to a battle lost is a battle won.” He now shows himself as wise and strong to govern his own people and keep them in peaceful development, as he has already been to conquer their oppressors.

Through the stern and somber records of these events there twice passes an interlude of idyllic brightness. Caleb had given his daughter as bride to Othniel, on his capturing Kirjath-Sepher, and he had given her a field, which however lacked water-springs in order to make it properly fruitful. We have then a sunlit vision of the bride alighting from her beast, approaching the old warrior, and presenting her request with all filial reverence and confidence; and we see the war-scarred face of the veteran softened into a loving complacency, as he replies that she shall have springs in abundance, the upper springs and the lower ones too. From the position and repetition of this apparently slight episode, I consider it to be typically designed, thus: Othniel, (“Lion of God,” of Judah, Christ the Deliverer) captures Kirjath-Sepher “the city of the book,” and wins Achsah, the Bride, who receives from the Father those hidden spiritual blessings, both heavenly and earthly, Upper and Nether, without which all providential gifts are barren and worthless.

Scripture Sketches: 19. Ehud

WHEN Israel had been eighteen years oppressed under the tyranny of Eglon, king of Moab, God raised them up a deliverer from the tribe of Benjamin—a strong, brave, capable man, whose work however is discredited by the unscrupulous way in which he did it. This was Ehud, the left-handed chief, who was (lit.) “shut—maimed—of his right hand.” Having only one serviceable arm, he had the choice before him of sitting down and mourning for the other, as many would do, or of making the best use he could of the one remaining. He chose the latter alternative and delivered God's nation.

If the deliverance wrought by the Judges be typical of the work of Christ for His people, the seven prominent Judges whose lives are given in detail would represent so many distinct aspects of that work. Thus Othniel is seen in relationship with the bride, Gideon with the overthrow of idolatry, whilst Ehud represents the conquest of a malignant power by one who was wounded and weakened. There is a very distinct line of thought, most pathetic and affecting thought, relating to our salvation by a wounded Savior, beginning with the very first promise where God had said that the woman's Seed should bruise the Serpent's head, but should itself be bruised in the heel; that is, the part which comes in direct contact with the earth—the humanity of our Lord. “He was wounded for our transgressions.” After His resurrection He shows the marks of His wounds to His disciples. The prophet Zechariah says, “One shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.” His conflict had a terrible reality. It was in no sense of a nature perfunctory or sinecure. The Emperor Commodus used to fight in the arena against a man armed only with a leaden sword, whom he of course easily and invariably conquered; but the wounds of Christ show that the weapons which assailed Him were real and fearful. And these wounds are the signs of the true Christ.

In delivering Israel, Ehud was doing God's work and receiving His approval; but we are not to suppose in such cases, that everything which is done, especially as to the manner of its doing, was divinely sanctioned or approved. Thus the manner of his approach to Eglon was characterized by extreme treachery, though it was certain that if Ehud, being divinely empowered for the work, had taken an open course, the result would have been equally successful and his success untarnished. On the other hand it would be absurd for us to judge a man of such times and circumstances by the standard of the nineteenth century! nay, the light of Christianity. The great matter is that he did his work; if not in the best way—somehow: are his critics doing theirs?

He approaches the king with a present, having under his clothing a dagger, long and keen as that which Harmodius concealed with myrtle when he slew the Athenian tyrant. The fat sensual monarch is in a good humor, and invites him into the “summer parlor.” “I have a secret errand for thee, O king,” says Ehud. The king, doubtless, thinks to hear of fresh ways to plunder and oppress the Israelites: an obsequious parasite of their own nation is just the person to tell him, so he sends the servants and courtiers out. Imprudent to be sure; but what can an unarmed—and one-armed—man do to him?—and the man looks so innocent! The king wants to hear now what it is. The left-hand man is certainly very gauche—or is it sinister? He is stooping, groping under his clothes. The king rises, alarmed. “A message from God to thee”! says the Benjamite, and, with the dagger in his left hand, smites him an awful blow, like the kick of a horse, driving the blade, nearly two feet long, right into the fat king's body and out at the back so that the haft goes in after the blade. Well, there is nothing like being thorough after all. Then the Benjamite walks out unconcernedly, locking the door after him. Once outside the palace, he hastens to the mountain of Ephraim, and blows such a rέveil on his war trumpet as awakens Israel from their troubled nightmare, and puts ten thousand Moabites to sleep forever.

And the courtiers are outside the “summer parlor” waiting—waiting—fearing to disturb their monarch, wondering at his long silence; whilst the gross body of their lord inside lies sprawled in the coagulating blood, announcing from the mute ghastly lips of its dreadful wound that—sooner or later, in time or in eternity—the enemies of God and His people shall grovel helpless in the dust.

The doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest has little thought of hope or comfort for any of those whose fangs are not strong, whose claws are not sharp, whose faculties are not entire, and whose hearts are not pitiless. Even Professor Huxley lately admits that in itself it is not sufficient to produce the highest forms of human character, and Mr. Wallace, Darwin's twin—discoverer (of Lamarck's obsolete theory) never considered that it was sufficient to produce human character at all. Is He the God of the Fit only? is He not also the God of the Unfit? Is not His strength made perfect in weakness? His greatest victories accomplished in defeat? Many of the most glorious and enduring achievements have been done by the Unfit whom He has fitted. To all those who are conscious of being maimed and limited in function or faculty of body or mind, the words of that great leader of men, who bore about in his body the “stigmas” of Christ, come as an inspiration and a hope— “when I am weak, then am I strong.” “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” The maimed Ehud struck such a blow with his left hand that it still reverberates through history, what time he laid prostrate the colossal iniquity of Moab.

Scripture Sketches: 20. Joseph of Nazareth

WHEN Verelst painted a portrait of King James, he surrounded the likeness with so many flowers in prominent positions that the beholders often mistook the picture for a mere floral study. Obviously there should be some sense of proportion and relative prominence in all pictures. Perhaps it would be better if there had, never been any attempt to represent pictorially the most sacred themes and persons at all, but there can be no doubt that if the attempt be made the most important figure should be given the most prominent place. And this is usually done by accomplished artists. In the great painting, for instance, of “Christ leaving the Pretorium” there is every form of sorrow and passion depicted, yet the central Figure, white-robed, thorn-crowned, divine in suffering and silent dignity, at once absorbs the chief—almost the whole—attention. Still every part of the picture is thronged with figures that are perfect in artistic beauty and interest. Amongst these is a group of the Virgin Mother and some of the disciples that—as has been said—would immortalize itself as a separate painting.

It is in this way that the New Testament has been written. The wisdom, with which all the groups and individuals have been subordinated so as to raise into prominence the Central Figure, is an incidental evidence of the unity and inspiration of the Book, for it would need the credulity of a learned skeptic to believe that a company of unlearned artisans and fishermen had of themselves the exquisite skill to design and indite so marvelous a memoir of their Leader, and thus to present to the world as perfect a portrait of Him as it lay in the power of language to produce.

When, however, we come to look at the subordinate figures in the memoir, we find that often a group of characters is depicted with the same superhuman skill, a few incidental lines, delicately or powerfully graphic, disclosing to us every feature of each till we get to know them as intimate acquaintances. Amongst the first of these groups we naturally see Joseph and Mary.

They were of royal lineage—a lineage so ancient and resplendent with the glories of ancestral prophets, bards, sages, monarchs, and warriors that in comparison with it the most antique family-tree of our times is a mere record of parvenus; yet we find them acting in the circumstances of humble peasants with a patient simplicity, that is the best sign of the highest natural dignity. It is only the true noble-man and noble-woman that can afford to come down in this way. Paul “learned” it— “how to be abased,” without loss of self-respect or true dignity. Dr. Smiles tells us of the descendant of an ancient earldom who was recently earning his living as a bricklayer's laborer. The bricklayers would call to him, “Earl of Crawford, bring another hod of lime.” There was far more dignity in his carrying that lime up the ladder for his living than there would have been in clinging to the skirts of his wealthy relatives, petitioning parliament, and wailing in the newspapers. Plato said that Aristippus was the only man he knew who could wear velvet or rags with equal grace. This dignity in abasement is a goodly sight, unless indeed it be in any way an affectation, as in the case of that one concerning whom Socrates said, “one can see his pride through the holes in his coat.”

“Canst thou not remember Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus? For I esteem those names of men so poor, Who could do mighty things and could contemn riches, though offered from the hand of kings.” That the family of Nazareth was poor is evident from their purification offering: they brought the two young pigeons which were appointed as the sacrifice for such as were “not able” to bring a lamb. Yet nothing abject in their honest and decent poverty: Joseph was “the carpenter “; there was a still cheaper sacrifice that they might have availed themselves of which was appointed for those in extreme poverty (even for a sin-offering)—a handful of flour. They did not offer this, and we may be sure that it was not lack of will that hindered them from offering the lamb, for they went five miles from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to dedicate the Babe, and they came all the way from Nazareth every year to the passover.

When at first it was thought that a great sin had been committed, Joseph (because he was a man of honorable principles, as the scripture explains) determined to dissociate himself from it at all cost to his personal feelings; yet privily, to avoid the infliction of unnecessary pain and scandal on one whom he loved; but when God reveals to him the truth, he acts in direct and implicit obedience, purity, and simplicity. Again when he is warned of danger to the holy Child, he directly takes the Child and mother to Egypt and shelters and protects them through the long, dangerous journeys subordinating all his own interests to their care and safety. It was a manly and honorable charge to protect a woman and child—quite as truly so, when it involved great and unceasing danger, as to lead in the van of an army, though it may receive neither notice nor applause. An upright, devout, gracious, simple laboring man, with royal blood in his veins and royal faith in his heart, Joseph was, by divine grace, in every way qualified for such an important trust. Again, we cannot help thinking of that illustrious chief whose integrity was so great that the people of the hostile countries through which his army passed would bring their goods to him to protect them from the marauding of their own soldiers; and who when his Queen gave him the Kohinoor diamond to get polished, never once let it go out of his sight, but would sit an hour every day whilst the jeweler worked at it, and then wrap it up in his silk handkerchief to take it home. The heart of his Sovereign could safely trust him. From various passages it is concluded that Joseph had died before our Lord's public ministry commenced.

Scripture Sketches: 21. Shamgar

THE Philistines had a way of disarming their conquered foes and cutting off all their supplies of weapons which was peculiar and effective. In Saul's time, when they once got the upper hand, they did not allow the Israelites to have a blacksmith in all their country, lest they should have the means of making swords; the conquered had to go to the conqueror's smithies if they wanted an ax or a coulter ground. This was not at all a bad policy for a conqueror to adopt, and not more cruel than was customary in those times; but it was highly inconvenient to Shamgar, who wanted to deliver his people from their bondage. In his day there was not so much as a single spear or shield amongst forty thousand Israelites. Shamgar had only an ox-goad himself. With this, however, he rose, slew six hundred Philistine warriors, and emancipated the people of God: perhaps as remarkable a feat in its way as when the one-eyed Ziska and his thirty thousand farm-laborers rose up from that vast celebration of the Lord's supper on the hills near Prague, and, armed only with scythes and flails, defeated two hundred thousand of the bravest and best armed troops in Europe. This event forms a suitable pendant to the story of Ehud. Ehud had done great work with crippled faculties; Shamgar does great work with a poor instrument.

When Christian was in the Palace Beautiful, we are told, the three maidens took him into a mansion in which he saw, amongst other relics, Shamgar's ox-goad. Happily the Dreamer had too sound a mind to give the relics themselves more than a passing mention; and perhaps it is as well that nobody else ever saw them. For there is such an inveterate tendency to worship the mere instrument that the whole significance of the event is distorted; and, instead of our learning from it the wholesome stimulating lesson of how great things may be done with small means and giving God the glory, we assume that there is something to be venerated in the instrument itself and burn incense to it, as the Israelites did to the brazen serpent until Hezekiah wisely dashed it to pieces and derisively called it “Nehushtan” —a bit of brass. Thus we perversely attribute all the credit of the work to the ox-goad, instead of to the strong arm and stout heart behind it and to God overhead; as the Rabbis say that the rod of Moses was a magic wand brought by Adam out of Eden and inherited through Seth, &c., &c. Any puerile story will do so long as it takes the glory from God and gives it to the instrument.

Mighty works have been often accomplished by the faith and energy of those who have possessed only small and apparently inadequate or contemptible means. If we take this lesson to heart, we shall not sit down waiting for swords or scepters before we commence to work; we shall hear the voice of God saying to us, What is that in thine hand? A stick? Moses broke the power of Egypt with such a one. What has not David or the woman of Thebez accomplished with a stone? or Gideon with candles and pitchers? or Samson (and perhaps many another) with the jawbone of an ass? I have no doubt that if men could get hold of the stick, stone, and so forth, they would preserve and adore them like the blood of St. Januarius or the shinbone of some other defunct old saint; and we may therefore be grateful that they are not extant. I am sufficiently iconoclastic in such matters to be glad to see them destroyed, and “Nehushtan” pronounced by Hezekiah's contemptuous voice over every mere instrument that we are disposed to burn incense to. “This holy candle,” said the monk, “has not been extinguished for five hundred years.” “Then it is time it was”! said the American tourist as he blew it out. Although it was not courteous to blow out the poor monk's treasured candle, and the action is not cited as an example, yet it requires a very abnormal condition of mind to be able to regret that the wretched rush-light, which gave so much occasion of labor and lying to grown people, was at last extinguished.

It is no particular credit to do great things with appropriate means; but it is creditable and glorious when great achievements are wrought by those who have only poor and unworthy instrumentalities to work with. It is just here that the true genius manifests itself. The bad workman lays the blame of failure on his tools. The able workman can produce the most exquisite results with almost any tools, though none knows the value of a fine tool so well as he does; none treats it so carefully, keeps it so long, fondles it so affectionately. He can make a cross-grained piece of wood into a beautiful ornament and turn every knot in it to some special advantage. When even Da Vinci could do nothing with that awkward piece of stone, Michael Angelo took it and sculptured such a David out of it as had never till then been seen.

Above all this is one of the noblest attributes of the Most High. He takes up “the devil's castaways,” and, when His work is finished in them, they are taken to Paradise; or He uses men of like passions to ourselves, feeble and frail, to do work on the earth that holy angels and flaming seraphs might be proud to be used in. He creates a world by a word and regenerates it by “the foolishness of preaching.” With a small brown seed He can make a forest; with a few coral polypi He raises a barrier of rocks a thousand miles long in the Pacific, or with the little encrinites paves the vast basin of the Atlantic. Yea, the ocean itself He constructs from drops of water, the mountains from grains of dust, the whole universe from microscopic atoms, spores, and cells.

And this is what I found written on Shamgar's ox-goad: a common bit of stick enough it was too, with nothing but a rough iron spike at the end of it.

Scripture Sketches: 22. Deborah

THE sins of Israel had brought them once more into the bondage of the Canaanites, who treated them with exceptional severity—contrasted with the comparatively mild and wise rule of their previous conquerors, the Philistines. The highways, Deborah says, were deserted: the inhabitants cowered and slunk through the by-ways to hide themselves from the brutal Sisera and his troops, who seem from Judg. 5:30, &c., to have been of the type of “Kirke's lambs” or the infamous Merode's brigade of the original “marauders.” In this extremity God raised up Deborah as a prophetess who, assisted by Barak, a cool, steady, able soldier, took up His people's cause.

When a woman becomes prominent in public affairs our sense of “the proprieties” is apt to be shocked. We do not greatly admire “the longhaired men and the short-haired women.” The phrase is Dr. Holmes' (and a very good one), but the idea is as old at least as the Epistle to the Corinthians. The excellent lady whose voice is so weighty in “society” informs her friends that she never could do such a thing (which is, indeed, true), and that this woman is “simply seeking notoriety” (which is often very untrue); for women like Deborah are mostly forced—called by God or by urgent providential circumstances—into the position which they take, and are often glad to retire from it when their work is done. There was no man in France that could do what Joan of Arc did to regain the independence of that country; and when her mission was accomplished, she apparently wished to retire into privacy: that an exacting popularity prevented her, and a cruel bigotry destroyed her, was not her fault. It was when there was no one else to lead the ancient Britons that Queen Boadicea led them against their Roman oppressors. Of course that is not always the case. But if there be times such as those we are considering of national convulsion and universal crisis, we must not be surprised to see strange and abnormal things occur. God will in providence or in grace take up whatsoever instrument He chooses—the younger son Jacob instead of Esau, the wife Priscilla instead of Aquila—and in this His sovereign power is made known. We are reminded that none of us have any claim to the posts of honor in His service; and we do well when we abstain from in any way discouraging, but, on the contrary, recognize, countenance, and so far as we consistently can, assist those, whosoever they may be, whom He raises to any important work.

Deborah had that insight in selecting men for important posts which characterized the English Elizabeth so highly. She sends for Barak, a brave, able, prudent chief who was precisely the man for an emergency. It is true that he had not much faith, but his lack of faith was compensated (so far as that is possible) by increase of caution: for though these two qualities may very well exist together, yet if a man have little faith, he urgently needs much caution. Thus when Deborah, in a characteristically vigorous and peremptory way, requires him to lead the army against Sisera, he says that he will go if she go with him—not unless. He does not mind imperiling his life at her proposal, but she must come too and commit herself to the enterprise. She replies that she will go, but that he will lose the chief honor by making such a request. Very good. That consideration would not weigh much with a man like Barak: so far from feeling any jealousy, he voluntarily joins in Deborah's eulogy of Jael when the battle is over. Sometimes a man gets the more honor by surrendering the glory of an achievement to another, as Outram did, when in a chivalrous courtesy he surrendered the command of the army of relief to Havelock and served as a volunteer under him at Lucknow.

Barak leads forth the gallant men of the north country—men of Zebulon, “expert in war, which could keep rank, not of a double heart;” and of Naphtali, of the hind's feet and “goodly words.” The Canaanitish host is enormous, nine hundred war-chariots in front, Sisera, cruel as the Austrian Wallenstein, in the van; but, as Alaric said to the Romans, “The thicker the grass, the easier it is mown.” God was not “on the side of the big battalions” that day. The stars in their courses fight against Sisera. The hosts join battle. The 'phalanx of iron chariots is broken by the valiant warriors of Zebulon and Naphtali. Sisera leaps down and flies. The Canaanites are mightily overthrown. “The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river of Kishon...!”

We should not expect to find the more delicate feminine instincts developed much in Deborah's position and circumstances. The times called for the more masculine ones; and whether possessed by a man or a woman, they were equally valuable to the nation. In some few women of this type, however, the softer and gentler features of character were highly developed—as in her of Orleans. In Elizabeth there seem to have been none at all. In Deborah the sense of them was present, but peculiarly inverted by the horrible circumstances through which the nation had been passing, if we may judge from Judg. 5:8.

Scripture Sketches: 23. Deborah's Song

THE splendid triumphal song of Deborah “stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet.” In the vehemence, and high ardent fire of its enthusiasm, it is entirely characteristic of the woman. It has all the martial clank of, Anne Askew's “Like as an armied knight.” But none of the forgiving Christian spirit which characterizes the closing lines of the modern martyr's poem is to be found in Deborah's—quite the reverse. All the fierce wrath of the Marseillaise and the Ca ira pales before it. How she extols Zebulon and Naphtali and the princes and tribes who came to the struggle! With what a scathing and withering satire does she depict the ever vacillating Reuben sitting on the fence with his “heart-searchings” by the “watercourses!” Then with what a solemn and awful denunciation does she rise and curse Meroz: “Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of Jehovah—to the help of “Jehovah against the mighty”!

This is very important: Meroz had done nothing, and yet they were bitterly cursed. They are cursed because they had done nothing; nothing while their brethren were grappling in death-struggle on the high places of the field to save the testimony of God from destruction. She will not curse Reuben, for he does take some concern in the conflict; he had his “heart-searchings “; and, doubtless, only that it always took him so long to come to a conclusion, he would have been in the battle; for his sympathies were usually in the right direction, and he was no coward. (But that was always the way with poor Reuben; just when he made his mind up what to do, and got down from the fence to start, he would meet the other people coming back from the fight; and then they would have the ill-breeding to laugh at him—it was really very annoying!)

But Meroz was in the center of the seat of a war which was being waged on behalf of God's work, and in which its own existence was involved. There was some palliation of the inaction of Gilead and others—though they are rebuked—for they were not locally implicated; but none whatever for Meroz which was in the thick of the responsibility, yet with a base and selfish cowardice left the labor and the danger to others, whilst content to benefit by the results. Meroz was as much worse than Reuben as the callous Pilate was worse than the timid Nicodemus.

People who take this neutral attitude in a great crisis get a reputation with shallow-minded persons for sagacity and impartiality; but Solon knew them: he ordered them to be put to death. And Deborah, who knew them through and through—that their sagacity is cowardice and their impartiality is heartless indifference—curses them with the fierce and scornful hatred that such a nature as hers feels toward all that is vile and despicable.

It is not intended to suggest that Christians must take sides in every controversy which arises. Ninety-nine out of every hundred disputes are best left alone, when they will quietly die out. But in a case like this, where the issue is directly between God and Satan, between Christ and Belial, if they hold aloof from identifying themselves with the right cause—whether actively or passively, prominently or subordinately—they adopt the course of Meroz. If, for instance, we live in a time when all the fundamental doctrines of Christianity are being assailed, those who stand indifferently by are traitors to their Lord.

The difficulties which are so often found in regard to Deborah's song disappear when we observe that the inspired author expressly states that it is Deborah's song— “then sang Deborah” —and gives no hint that the song itself was inspired, though of course the record of it is. Those who believe in the verbal and literal inspiration of Scripture, whilst believing that the whole book is authentic and inspired by God, yet recognize that many of the persons whose words are there (divinely) recorded were untruthful speakers, and of course what they said was often false and in no way sanctioned by the Holy Ghost who recorded their utterances. Or they may have been good men who said things, wise or unwise, to which however we must be careful not to give the same place of authority as we give to the inspired Scripture in which it is contained. This is no “new” doctrine. It is what, I suppose, all hold who keep the “orthodox” views of inspiration, but who have sufficient thought to remember that when we have, for instance, Judas Iscariot or Satan speaking, we are not to take what they say as inspired, though the record of the fact that they thus spoke is inspired.

All this would seem obvious enough, yet it seems necessary to argue it; for advantage is given to opponents continually by its being loosely said that the Scripture says this or that, when really it only says that such a person said it. How often do we hear people assert that the Bible says, “Stolen waters are sweet,” when the fact is that so far from that, the Scripture says that a wicked woman said it! Mr. Jay preached from Job 2:4, “All that a man hath will he give for his life.” When the sermon was printed, by a mistake of one letter, the word “life” was changed to “wife.” Jay wrote in the margin that that depended upon circumstances. It however depends no more upon circumstances than the original statement does; for it was the devil who was speaking, and this was one of those half-truths which are worse than whole lies. Millions of men have refused to give up their principles to save their lives; and Job, himself, proved the falsity of so cynical a statement.

But Deborah was a prophetess: would not then whatever is recorded of her sayings be inspired? Not necessarily: Moses was a prophet; yet we are told when he said, “Hear now, ye rebels,” that he spake unadvisedly with his lips. Paul was a prophet, yet he had to recall his language when he learned that it was the High priest whom he was speaking to. We have generally some indication when the servants of God claimed to speak by inspiration; and there is no such indication in regard to Judg. 5. The Holy Ghost records that Deborah and Barak sang these things, but in no way puts sanction on all that they say—such as the very natural, but somewhat savage, way in which they eulogize all the details of Jael's heroic treachery, and rejoice over the anticipated horror of Sisera's mother, watching for his home coming whilst he was lying dead in Jael's tent with a tent pin nailing his head to the floor.

Jael did a great service to Israel no doubt—the precise reverse of Meroz, for she was not locally implicated. But if her action is praised, this does not necessarily imply that the manner of carrying out that action is approved. It was wholly treacherous, and the excuses of those who say that any deception is fair in war do not apply; for Jael's people were not at war with Sisera—unless she identified herself with Israel. Had she taken a more straightforward course with faith in God, she would have been equally successful. She took her own course, however, and rid the earth of as great a monster as Charlotte Corday did. When King George praised and welcomed Warren Hastings for his great success in India, nobody ever accused him of approving of all Hastings' actions, such as his prompting As-ul-Dowlah to rob his own mother; nor when the English parliament passed a resolution of eulogy on Clive for his meritorious services in the east, did anyone suggest that it put its sanction on his forgery of Watson's name to the treaty with Omichund. This principle may be applied in a dangerous way, I am aware; but it is none the less true and important in understanding such passages as that which has been before us.

Scripture Sketches: 24. Joash of Abiezer

IF we could only make up our minds to follow the opinions of those around us in regard to matters of religion, what trouble it would prevent, to be sure! But then it might in possible cases lead us, as it led Joash, into building an altar to Baal, and worshipping a god with an ass' head and a fiend's heart. That would be hardly a safe principle then. Let us try again:

Suppose the governmental ruler of the country—king, kaiser, president or parliament—would appoint a national religion and all submit, how much inconvenience that would save! If all would only submit, there would be no schisms, no contentions nor persecutions, no stakes nor racks nor torture-boots, nor other appliances of that sort, with which men have sought to modify the religious convictions of their neighbors. We should not require these Wycliffes and Luthers either. We could even—in a way—get on without such men as Paul and his coadjutors.

Yet somehow when this method has been tried, it has not turned out to be such a complete success as might have been expected. Some rulers take to promulgating such very peculiar doctrines—Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Fettichism even—and sometimes a new ruler, by “divine right” or “infallible,” comes forth and upsets all that his divine right and infallible predecessor taught, without even giving us the little time to turn round that decency requires to prevent an appearance of inconsistency. Sometimes even the same ruler will change about in such a most inconvenient and embarrassing way that one can hardly keep pace with him; and that for reasons, too, which do not always seem adequate to the ordinary mind. John III of Sweden would change his religion when he wanted a new wife; Henry VIII. of England when he wanted to get rid of an old one. Even Henry of Navarre would travel from Geneva to Rome in his creeds when he thought public policy required it. To be sure, if one be not particular, such difficulties are not insurmountable. Fuller says that when the notable Symon Symonds was “first a papist [under Henry VIM], then a protestant [under Edward VI.], then a papist again [in Mary's reign], then a protestant again [in Elizabeth's]—when he was taunted with lack of principle, he replied that it was not so; for he always kept to his principle, which was to retain his own position secure and undisturbed.

Joash evidently reasoned in this way. He had, as was customary in his time and neighborhood, an altar to Baal on his estate. It was fashionable and general, and saved him from being the object of invidious comparisons on the part of his neighbors; but there is nothing to show that he had the slightest belief in Baal or any other god. He was a latitudinarian, and, being surrounded by bigots, he for the sake of ease fell in with their methods. Why should he trouble himself and subject himself to persecutions simply to protest against a false system that may after all have some elements of truth in it? He would be only one against the multitude.

His son Gideon also was only one; but he broke down the idolatrous altar and destroyed the whole system one night in a most effective way; and when the people saw the ruins next day, there was considerable excitement. All the bigots were there with that deliberate and deadly animosity which still characterizes their descendants. They said to Joash, “Bring out thy son that he may die “; and they meant it too. But the old man seems to have loved his son passing well, and moreover found him very useful about the farm, so that he views matters in a different light, though doubtless extremely annoyed about the altar, or rather the commotion which has been caused. He replies with cynical bluntness to the effect that, if his son had done Baal any injury and if Baal be a god, let him avenge it himself. He, Joash, would not; and if any of them touched his son, it would be the worse for them. “Let Baal plead for himself,” he roughly concludes. He was evidently a man of such position and with such assistance at his command as to be able to overawe the bigots; and the affair passed off for the time. It was probably from this passage that the story of the boy Abram's smashing his father's idols found its way into the Talmud, for some of the circumstances are very similar.

The Latitudinarian is very “good natured” and honest (negatively); he is a much more agreeable neighbor than the bigot at any time. Occasionally he is a Nothingarian and does not profess to care anything for or against any phase of religion, like Gallio or Meroz; and occasionally he is an Everythingarian—generally an Arian of some sort, whether avowed or not, in these times; and then he can see so much to be said for all sides of a question, that like Chunder Sen he can construct a brand new religion from selected parts of all the others; or still more probably, like Reuben he will sit on the fence with” heartsearching” introspection, and leave the others to do the fighting. Why should he fight? He sees with calm and comprehensive sight that Black is not all Black, nor White so very White. Thus he sits impartially until the contending parties decide which theory is by survival the fittest for popular acceptance, when he gets down quietly and joins the victorious party; but he maintains his reputation for sagacity and impartiality by representing their opponents' side of the contention in the role of a “candid friend.” He has often a large and capacious intellect and makes an excellent judge to sum up the evidence pro and con, like Francis Bacon: but a bribe or a threat may lead him, as it led Bacon, to pervert judgment. He is not deliberately wicked, for he neither hates nor loves any one strongly enough for that; yet his selfishness and weakness may wreck the best cause and betray his dearest friend, as Bacon's led Essex to the scaffold. He lacks one thing needful; he is heartless, and consequently weak of purpose and afraid to be in a minority: like those lukewarm Laodiceans who, because they were neither cold nor hot, were cast out of the mouth of One Who had stood alone thorn-crowned and ridiculed against the whole world.

Scripture Sketches: 25. Gideon

No one who saw the young man at Ophrah, at work for his father, threshing wheat behind the winepress to bide it from the marauding Midianites, would think that he was “a mighty man of valor"; and was to be a great leader of insurgents—a revolutionist as thorough and vigorous as Judas Maccabees, as brave and able as Cromwell, as calm and magnanimous as Washington. He was to become an iconoclast:

All grim, and soiled, and brown with tan,

I saw a Strong One in his wrath,

Smiting the godless shrines of man

Along his path!

Spare,' Art implores, You holy pile,

That grand, old, time—wot n turret spare! '

Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,

Cried out, Forbear'.!

“ Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,

Groped for his old-accustomed stone,

Leaned on his staff and wept to find

His seat o'erthrown.

"'Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes

O’erhung with ply locks of gold;

Why smite,' he asked in sad surprise,

The fair—the old?'

.” Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke,

Yet nearer flashed his ax's gleam” —

The popular idea of the iconoclast is often strangely incorrect—that he is a fierce, impetuous being life Jehu, who delights in pulling down, slaying; and. destroying. The greatest of them have been the very reverse of all this. Moses had to be forced into his work. Paul, sought “to turn the world upside down” by the Most peaceable means available. Erasmus they still accuse of timidity. That other great iconoclast of Holland, who broke the Spanish power, Was worn out with checking the excesses of his own followers. Cromwell and Hampden tried to get out of England and were already embarked: so far was their idea from heading any insurrection till forced into doing so. All true reformers have a large sense of the evils which failure will bring on their already afflicted people, and that even the road to success will for a time but increase their sufferings. And this sensibility is quite unsuspected by Meek Reverence, Gray-bearded Use, Young Romance and other anti-reformers, who consider that they know Gideon through and through, and that he is nothing but a sordid agitator, having no motive but to get possession and influence for himself at the cost of the poor people whom he is leading to destruction.

Gideon had nothing of that kind of courage which Aristotle contemned, such as is based upon ignorance of the danger in front. This is not the courage of wise men who estimate the danger, but the recklessness or “fools” who “rush in where angels fear to tread.” Such may do the work of iconoclasts, but not that of reformers. A quiet and modest disposition was perhaps Gideon's distinguishing feature; so that when the angel appears to him and calls him “a mighty man of valor,” he replies with surprise, “I am the least in my father's house.” When, after he had gained a conquest that might have inflated a Caesar or Hannibal, the Ephraimites think themselves aggrieved, he gives an answer of grace and courtesy that turned away their wrath. “Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim [i.e., their capture of the princes Oreb and Zeeb] better than the vintage of Abiezer? What have I done now in comparison of you”? When the Israelites, with that tendency to make fools of themselves which nations that have been brought through a great deliverance frequently display, entreat him to be their king, he declines. Even when Zebah and Zalthunna tell him that they had just killed his own brothers, and in his wrath he had told his youthful son to slay them, on their appeal that he would spare them that indignity and kill them himself, he complies with their request: rather a grim courtesy, it is true; but it must be recollected that he would have saved their lives had they not slain his brothers (whom they described as splendid and majestic-looking men like Gideon himself). The two captive kings' recognize the unreasonableness of their expecting to live, and he recognizes their claim to the death of brave foemen. We must allow for the times.

He is cautious to the verge of timidity until God has given him the three signs to confirm his faith; but, once assured that God is with them, he does not hesitate. “Erst witgen, dann waaen” only a comma between, to take breath. He is swift, strong and thorough in action; he breaks down the altars of Baal, defeats and scatters the countless hosts of the Midianites with great slaughter, follows them to Jordan “faint yet pursuing,” and captures and slays their rulers. The army he had collected is reduced from 32,000 to 300 men. It must have been deeply discouraging to see 22,000 of them walk off in avowed hopelessness and fear; but even the bulk of the 10,000 remaining, who must have been thorough heroes to have stood their ground in such general desertion, had to be set aside by a test which disclosed from amongst them 300 men too proud and too brave to lose their habitual self-command even at a time of such excitement and danger. These men stood erect and temperately allayed their fierce thirst by lapping a little water front their hands, whilst the others threw themselves down and with excusable abandonment plunged their faces into the stream. With those 300 valiant and devoted men Gideon did a more extraordinary work even than Leonidas with 300 at Thermopylae. But the victory itself is of course no especial credit to Gideon: it is the Lord's doing and marvelous in our eyes. The strategy, however, of the sudden crashing of the breaking pitchers, the sudden blaze of 300 lights, and the sudden blare of 300 trumpets was Gideon's devising; and very astute and well-designed it was.

With all his caution and courtesy, he could be very fierce sometimes; he slew the half-hearted temporizers of Penuel, and “taught” those of Succoth by flogging their bare backs with brambles; a system of tuition of considerable mnemonic value, at any rate. It was like that blaze of fury from the calm Washington when he flung the inkstand at the officer who told him he was afraid to cross the river, crying, “Begone, and send me a man"!

The matter concerning the earrings was, however, a mistake, and a serious one on Gideon's part. The fact is that the paradox of La Rochefoucauld is true, “Il faut de plus grandes vertus pour soutenir la bonne fortune que la mauvaise,” though we all think there would be an exception in our case and we would at least like to test it by having a little more prosperity and a little less adversity to sustain. Gideon took the trinkets with no sordid or ambitious purpose, but with a kind of parochial patriotism to make an ephod for his native Ophrah: with as innocent a purpose, no doubt, as when Helena commenced collecting relics for the church, and with the same unfortunate result. But during his long rule as chief magistrate he brought no dishonor on his name that disqualified him from having a place amongst the Legion of Honor in the Epistle to the Hebrews. He proved too that he had great constructive ability. He was not merely an iconoclast:

“I looked: aside the dust cloud rolled,

The Waster seemed the Builder too;

Up-springing from the ruined Old

I saw the New.”

J. C. B.

Scripture Sketches: 26. Simeon of the Temple

We sometimes hear commercial men boasting that they have done good business on a “falling market:” anyone can do well on a rising market, but it needs much more capacity and acumen to prosper when prices are adverse. In like manner some say that they have made fortunes out of bad accounts; that is, with persons no one else would trust; but by nursing them and exercising patience, vigilance, and dexterity, they have made these bad accounts profitable. It is well with us when we can do this kind of thing in a higher sense—bring profit to the soul and glory to God out of declining times and decaying faiths.

It was in such a period that Simeon lived. We find him shining in the night of the Jewish age like Cogia Hassan's diamond in the dark room, or perhaps more like the humble glow-worm as the night shadows fall. There are some things which are most in season when they are out of season. It is when the other birds have flown southwards that we most appreciate the robin's cheerful notes over the winter's snow: it is when the convolvulus has closed its petals in the evening gloom and the sunflower droops its head that the nictanthes yields its most fragrant odor. Notwithstanding the prevailing cold-heartedness and wickedness, Simeon continued “a just man, and devout, and waited for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Ghost was upon him.” There were evidently a few others of this spirit the aged Anna was amongst them—too few, feeble, and poor to form a sect, whom God maintained for a witness even then in Israel awaiting the advent of His Son. Their testimony was ultimately vindicated and their hopes fulfilled, though perhaps few of them lived to see even the dawn of that fulfillment, and none of them its noontide: but doubtless they were regarded as the merest visionaries and fanatics by the few persons who took any notice of them at all. They were hardly worth the trouble of persecuting; a little cheap contempt is usually thought sufficient for such people.

Yet this is the way in which not only the Christ comes into the world, but also the way in which every great movement for the welfare of the race is ushered into the world. Those who attend and support it are persecuted, for they are considered dangerous to the existing order and vested interests; but those who precede and foretell its advent are usually only ridiculed. In both cases the friends of Truth are considered the enemies of mankind and fair game for Bigotry to attack; but until Truth is visibly present, its advocates are not generally worth the trouble of persecuting. In both cases the servants of the Truth are looked on as the scum of the earth, whilst they are in reality the salt of the earth; they are spoken of as the “offscouring of all things,” but they are the efflorescence of the age. “Then to side with truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just.”

In this way have come about most of those movements which have benefited the human race and delivered men in spite of themselves from the bondage of Ignorance, Superstition, and Tyranny. The Hebrews of old, by whom came to the world the testimony of the true God, were counted as a set of wretched slaves. The founders of Christianity were a few peasants and fishermen, “not many, [the Countess of Huntingdon was not the only one, however, who thanked God for the letter M in that word], not Many rich, not Many noble.” The emancipators of Holland were called the “beggars;” and for many years the cry of vivent les gueux excited derision, before the time at length arrived when it fired men's blood with thoughts of liberty and righteousness. In course of time though, the beggars' doctrines spread and become popular; and then their persecutors quietly adopt them and advance them as their own new-born fledgling truths. The course of things drags onward: “Where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands!”

If these considerations be correct, there is something heroic in standing thus on Truth's side before “'tis prosperous to be just;” and in general it requires strength of purpose and courage to maintain so invidious a position, especially when others are falling away. But somehow, in regard to such as Simeon and Anna, we do not think in this way. Their characters do not impress us with the sense of heroism at all, but merely with the sense of simplicity and obedience. They were indeed in a heroic position; but probably neither themselves nor anyone else ever thought so. We are told that he was led by the Holy Ghost, and he submitted to that leading implicitly as a horse to the bridle; so, though his life had all the effect of heroism, his only thoughts were doubtless of devotion and obedience to God. And thus, though he may not even have been of any particular strength of character in himself at all, he was able to cling to the principles of truth and the divine word, in the presence and frown of the falsehood, organized, enthroned, almost omnipotent that menaced them.

The Holy Ghost is typified in both Testaments by the wind; and amongst the numerous effects of the wind, nothing is more strange than the way in which it transforms weak and fragile things into missiles of immense power. I have sometimes seen photographs of straws and feathers, deeply imbedded into hard wood by the power of the wind during a tropical tornado. It seems physically impossible for a straw to be driven into oak like a nail; but the wind does it and nothing else can. Nor can any other power than the Holy Ghost make men and women of common-place character and attainments to become instruments of irresistible strength. Ziesberger the missionary used to say that he was naturally “as timid as a dove;” yet he passed his life continuously in the most appalling dangers.

It is well when we see a man getting old like Simeon without losing the brightness and strength of hope, and to see one so filled with satisfaction when his arms clasp the Infant promise of the coming Salvation as to feel that he has nothing further to live for: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.... for mine eyes have seen thy Salvation!” He must needs prophesy too when he holds the Holy Babe in his arms—for who can hold Christ to his bosom and not prophesy? And he speaks of strange events to come; that this Child, Who was to be the coronal glory of Israel, should be the Great Light to illumine the darkness of the Gentile world. And the old man, whose outward eyes are dim, can see down through the veil of future time sorrow, and disaster. Aye, and here, where we would least expect it, he turns his compassionate gaze on the gentle and patient mother, saying, “'Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also!”

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