← catalogue

Expositions of Holy Scripture

by Alexander Maclaren · English · Gutenberg #15836 · 1,408,660 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Expositions of Holy Scripture
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture

Author: Alexander Maclaren


        
Release date: May 16, 2005 [eBook #15836]
                Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15836

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks, Don Kretz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***




Produced by Charles Franks, Don Kretz and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.









EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., Litt.D.


EZEKIEL, DANIEL, AND THE MINOR PROPHETS

ST. MATTHEW
CHAPTERS I to VIII

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

        *        *        *        *        *

EZEKIEL, DANIEL, AND THE MINOR PROPHETS

CONTENTS


        THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL

    CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY (Ezekiel viii. 12)
    A COMMON MISTAKE AND LAME EXCUSE (Ezekiel xii. 27)
    THE HOLY NATION (Ezekiel xxxvi. 25-38)
    THE DRY BONES AND THE SPIRIT OF LIFE (Ezekiel xxxvii. 1-14)
    THE RIVER OF LIFE (Ezekiel xlvii. 1)


        THE BOOK OF DANIEL

    YOUTHFUL CONFESSORS (Daniel i. 8-21)
    THE IMAGE AND THE STONE (Daniel ii. 36-49)
    HARMLESS FIRES (Daniel iii. 13-25)
    MENE, TEKEL, PERES (Daniel v. 17-31)
    A TRIBUTE FROM ENEMIES (Daniel vi. 5)
    FAITH STOPPING THE MOUTHS OF LIONS (Daniel vi. 16-28)
    A NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE (Daniel xii. 13)


        HOSEA

    THE VALLEY OF ACHOR (Hosea ii. 15)
    'LET HIM ALONE' (Hosea iv. 17)
    'PHYSICIANS OF NO VALUE' (Hosea v. 13, R.V.)
    'FRUIT WHICH IS DEATH' (Hosea x. 1-15)
    DESTRUCTION AND HELP (Hosea xiii. 9)
    ISRAEL RETURNING (Hosea xiv. 1-9)
    THE DEW AND THE PLANTS (Hosea xiv. 5, 6)


        AMOS

    A PAIR OF FRIENDS (Amos iii. 3)
    SMITTEN IN VAIN (Amos iv. 4-13)
    THE SINS OF SOCIETY (Amos v. 4-15)
    THE CARCASS AND THE EAGLES (Amos vi. 1-8)
    RIPE FOR GATHERING (Amos viii. 1-14)


        JONAH

    GUILTY SILENCE AND ITS REWARD (Jonah i. 1-17)
    'LYING VANITIES' (Jonah ii. 8)
    THREEFOLD REPENTANCE (Jonah iii. 1-10)


        MICAH

    IS THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD STRAITENED? (Micah ii. 7)
    CHRIST THE BREAKER (Micah ii. 13)
    AS GOD, SO WORSHIPPER (Micah iv. 5, R.V.)
    'A DEW FROM THE LORD' (Micah v. 7)
    GOD'S REQUIREMENTS AND GOD'S GIFT (Micah vi. 8)


        HABAKKUK

    THE IDEAL DEVOUT LIFE (Habakkuk iii. 19)


        ZEPHANIAH

    ZION'S JOY AND GOD'S (Zephaniah iii. 14, 17)


        HAGGAI

    VAIN TOIL (Haggai i. 6)
    BRAVE ENCOURAGEMENTS (Haggai ii. 1-9)


        ZECHARIAH

    DYING MEN AND THE UNDYING WORD (Zechariah i. 5, 6)
    THE CITY WITHOUT WALLS (Zechariah ii. 4, 5)
    A VISION OF JUDGMENT AND CLEANSING (Zechariah iii. 1-10)
    THE RIGHT OF ENTRY (Zechariah iii. 7)
    THE SOURCE OF POWER (Zechariah iv. 1-10)
    THE FOUNDER AND FINISHER OF THE TEMPLE (Zechariah iv. 9)
    THE PRIEST OF THE WORLD AND KING OF MEN (Zechariah vi. 13)


        MALACHI

    A DIALOGUE WITH GOD (Malachi i. 6, 7)
    BLEMISHED OFFERINGS (Malachi i. 8)
    A DIALOGUE WITH GOD (Malachi ii. 12, 14, R.V.)
    THE LAST WORD OF PROPHECY (Malachi iii. 1-12)
    THE UNCHANGING LORD (Malachi iii. 6)
    A DIALOGUE WITH GOD (Malachi iii. 7, R.V.)
    'STOUT WORDS,' AND THEIR CONFUTATION
        (Malachi iii. 13-18; iv. 1-6)
    THE LAST WORDS OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS
        (Malachi iv. 6; Revelation xxii. 21)

        *        *        *        *        *




THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL


CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY

     'Then said He unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients
     of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of
     his imagery!'--EZEKIEL viii. 12.

This is part of a vision which came to the prophet in his captivity. He
is carried away in imagination from his home amongst the exiles in the
East to the Temple of Jerusalem. There he sees in one dreadful series
representations of all the forms of idolatry to which the handful that
were left in the land were cleaving. There meets him on the threshold of
the court 'the image of jealousy,' the generalised expression for the
aggregate of idolatries which had stirred the anger of the divine
husband of the nation. Then he sees within the Temple three groups
representing the idolatries of three different lands. First, those with
whom my text is concerned, who, in some underground room, vaulted and
windowless, were bowing down before painted animal forms upon the walls.
Probably they were the representatives of Egyptian worship, for the
description of their temple might have been taken out of any book of
travels in Egypt in the present day. It is only an ideal picture that
is represented to Ezekiel, and not a real fact. It is not at all
probable that all these various forms of idolatry were found at any
time within the Temple itself. And the whole cast of the vision
suggests that it is an ideal picture, and not reality, with which
we have to do. Hence the number of these idolaters was seventy--the
successors of the seventy whom Moses led up to Sinai to see the God
of Israel! And now here they are grovelling before brute forms painted
on the walls in a hole in the dark. Their leader bears a name which
might have startled them in their apostasy, and choked their prayers
in their throats, for Jaazan-iah means 'the Lord hears.' Each man has
a censer in his hand--self-consecrated priests of self-chosen deities.
Shrouded in obscurity, they pleased themselves with the ancient lie,
'The Lord sees not; He hath forsaken the earth.' And then, into that
Sanhedrim of apostates there comes, all unknown to them, the light of
God's presence; and the eye of the prophet marks their evil.

I have nothing to do here with the other groups which Ezekiel saw in his
vision. The next set were the representatives of the women of Israel,
who, false at once to their womanhood and to their God, were taking part
in the nameless obscenities and abominations of the worship of the
Syrian Adonis. And the next, who from their numbers seem to be intended
to stand for the representatives of the priesthood, as the former were
of the whole people, represent the worshippers who had fallen under the
fascinations of a widespread Eastern idolatry, and with their backs to
the house of the Lord were bowing before the rising sun.

All these false faiths got on very well together. Their worshippers had
no quarrel with each other. Polytheism, by its very nature and the
necessity of its being, is tolerant. All its rabble of gods have a
mutual understanding, and are banded together against the only One that
says, 'Thou shalt have none other gods beside Me.'

But now, I take this vision in a meaning which the prophet had no
intention to put on it. I do not often do that with my texts, and when I
do I like to confess frankly that I am doing it. So I take the words now
as a kind of symbol which may help to put into a picturesque and more
striking form some very familiar and homely truths. Look at that
dark-painted chamber that we have all of us got in our hearts; at the
idolatries that go on there, and at the flashing of the sudden light of
God who marks, into the midst of the idolatry, 'Hast thou seen what the
ancients of the children of Israel do in the dark, each man in the
chambers of his imagery?'

I. Think of the dark and painted chamber which we all of us carry in our
hearts.

Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. With reverence, we
may say of each other as we say of God--'Clouds and darkness are round
about Him.' After all the manifestations of a life, we remain enigmas to
one another and mysteries to ourselves. For every man is no fixed
somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant possibilities of good
and evil lying in him, which up to the very last moment of his life may
flame up into altogether unexpected and astonishing developments.
Therefore we have all to feel that after all self-examination there lie
awful depths within us which we have not fathomed; and after all our
knowledge of one another we yet do see but the surface, and each soul
dwells alone.

There is in every heart a dark chamber. Oh, brethren! there are very,
very few of us that dare tell all our thoughts and show our inmost
selves to our dearest ones. The most silvery lake that lies sleeping
amidst beauty, itself the very fairest spot of all, when drained off
shows ugly ooze and filthy mud, and all manner of creeping abominations
in the slime. I wonder what we should see if our hearts were, so to
speak, drained off, and the very bottom layer of every thing brought
into the light. Do you think you could stand it? Well, then, go to God
and ask Him to keep you from unconscious sins. Go to Him and ask Him to
root out of you the mischiefs that you do not know are there, and live
humbly and self-distrustfuliy, and feel that your only strength is:
'Hold Thou me up, and I shall be saved.' 'Hast thou seen what they do in
the _dark_?'

Still further, we may take another part of this description with
possibly permissible violence as a symbol of another characteristic of
our inward nature. The walls of that chamber were all painted with
animal forms, to which these men were bowing down. By our memory, and by
that marvellous faculty that people call the imagination, and by our
desires, we are for ever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of
our hearts with such pictures. That is an awful power which we possess,
and, alas! too often use for foul idolatries.

I do not dwell upon that, but I wish to drop one very earnest caution
and beseeching entreaty, especially to the younger members of my
congregation now. You, young men and women, especially you young men,
mind what you paint upon those mystic walls! Foul things, as my text
says, 'creeping things and abominable beasts,' only too many of you are
tracing there. Take care, for these figures are ineffaceable. No
repentance will obliterate them. I do not know whether even Heaven can
blot them out. What you love, what you desire, what you think about, you
are photographing on the walls of your immortal soul. And just as
to-day, thousands of years after the artists have been gathered to the
dust, we may go into Egyptian temples and see the figures on their
walls, in all the freshness of their first colouring, as if the painter
had but laid down his pencil a moment ago; so, on your hearts, youthful
evils, the sins of your boyhood, the pruriences of your earliest days,
may live in ugly shapes, that no tears and no repentance will ever wipe
out. Nothing can do away with 'the marks of that which once hath been.'
What are you painting on the chambers of imagery in your hearts?
Obscenity, foul things, mean things, low things? Is that mystic shrine
within you painted with such figures as were laid bare in some chambers
in Pompeii, where the excavators had to cover up the pictures because
they were so foul? Or, is it like the cells in the convent of San Marco
at Florence, where Fra Angelico's holy and sweet genius has left on the
bare walls, to be looked at, as he fancied, only by one devout brother
in each cell, angel imaginings, and noble, pure celestial faces that
calm and hallow those who gaze upon them? What are you doing, my
brother, in the dark, in your chambers of imagery?

II. Now look with me briefly at the second thought that I draw from this
symbol,--the idolatries of the dark chamber.

All these seventy grey-bearded elders that were bowing there before the
bestial gods which they had portrayed, had, no doubt, often stood in the
courts of the Temple and there made prayers to the God of Israel, with
broad phylacteries, to be seen of men. Their true worship was their
worship in the dark. The other was conscious or unconscious hypocrisy.
And the very chamber in which they were gathered, according to the ideal
representation of our text, was a chamber in, and therefore partaking of
the consecration of, the Temple. So their worship was doubly criminal,
in that it was sacrilege as well as idolatry. Both things are true about
us.

A man's true worship is not the worship which he performs in the public
temple, but that which he offers down in that little private chapel,
where nobody goes but himself. Worship is the attribution of supreme
excellence to, and the entire dependence of the heart upon, a certain
person. And the people or the things to which a man attributes the
highest excellence, and on which he hangs his happiness and well-being,
these be his gods, no matter what his outward profession is. You can
find out what these are for you, if you will ask yourself, and honestly
answer, one or two questions. What is that I want most? What is it which
makes my ideal of happiness? What is that which I feel that I should be
desperate without? What do I think about most naturally and
spontaneously, when the spring is taken off, and my thoughts are allowed
to go as they will? And if the answer to none of these questions is
'God!' then I do not know why you should call yourself a worshipper of
God. It is of no avail that we pray in the temple, if we have a dark
underground shrine where our true adoration is rendered.

Oh, dear brethren! I am afraid there are a great many of us nominal
Christians, connected with Christian Churches, posing before men as
orthodox religionists, who keep this private chapel where we do our
devotion to an idol and not to God. If our real gods could be made
visible, what a pantheon they would make! All the foul forms painted on
that cell of this vision would be paralleled in the creeping things,
which crawl along the low earth and never soar nor even stand erect, and
in the vile, bestial forms of passion to which some of us really bow
down. Honour, wealth, literary or other distinction, the sweet
sanctities of human love dishonoured and profaned by being exalted to
the place which divine love should hold, ease, family, animal appetites,
lust, drink--these are the gods of some of us. Bear with my poor words
and ask yourselves, not whom do you worship before the eye of men, but
who is the God to whom in your inmost heart you bow down? What do you do
in the dark? That is the question. Whom do you worship there? Your other
worship is not worship at all.

Do not forget that all such diversion of supreme love and dependence
from God alone is like the sin of these men in our text, in that it is
sacrilege. They had taken a chamber in the very Temple, and turned it
into a temple of the false gods. Whom is your heart made to enshrine?
Why! every stone, if I may so say, of the fabric of our being bears
marked upon it that it was laid in order to make a dwelling-place for
God. Whom are you meant to worship, by the witness of the very
constitution of your nature and make of your spirits? Is there anybody
but One who is worthy to receive the priceless gift of human love
absolute and entire? Is there any but One to whom it is aught but
degradation and blasphemy for a man to bow down? Is there any being but
One that can still the tumult of my spirit, and satisfy the immortal
yearnings of my soul? We were made for God, and whensoever we turn the
hopes, the desires, the affections, the obedience, and that which is
the root of them all, the confidence that ought to fix and fasten upon
Him, to other creatures, we are guilty not only of idolatry but of
sacrilege. We commit the sin of which that wild reveller in Babylon was
guilty, when, at his great feast, in the very madness of his presumption
he bade them bring forth the sacred vessels from the Temple at
Jerusalem; 'and the king and his princes and his concubines drank in
them and praised the gods.' So we take the sacred chalice of the human
heart, on which there is marked the sign manual of Heaven, claiming it
for God's, and fill it with the spiced and drugged draught of our own
sensualities and evils, and pour out libations to vain and false gods.
Brethren! Render unto Him that which is His; and see even upon the walls
scrabbled all over with the deformities that we have painted there,
lingering traces, like those of some dropping fresco in a roofless
Italian church, which suggest the serene and perfect beauty of the image
of the One whose likeness was originally traced there, and for whose
worship it was all built.

III. And now, lastly, look at the sudden crashing in upon the cowering
worshippers of the revealing light.

Apparently the picture of my text suggests that these elders knew not
the eyes that were looking upon them. They were hugging themselves in
the conceit, 'the Lord seeth not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth.' And
all the while, all unknown, God and His prophet stand in the doorway and
see it all. Not a finger is lifted, not a sign to the foolish
worshippers of His presence and inspection, but in stern silence He
records and remembers.

And does that need much bending to make it an impressive form of
putting a solemn truth? There are plenty of us--alas! alas! that it
should be so--to whom it is the least welcome of all thoughts that there
in the doorway stand God and His Word. Why should it be, my brother,
that the properly blessed thought of a divine eye resting upon you
should be to you like the thought of a policeman's bull's-eye to a
thief? Why should it not be rather the sweetest and the most calming and
strength-giving of all convictions--'Thou God seest me'? The little
child runs about the lawn perfectly happy as long as she knows that her
mother is watching her from the window. And it ought to be sweet and
blessed to each of us to know that there is no darkness where a Father's
eye comes not. But oh! to the men that stand before bestial idols and
have turned their backs on the beauty of the one true God, the only
possibility of composure is that they shall hug themselves in the vain
delusion:--'The Lord seeth not.'

I beseech you, dear friends, do not think of His eye as the prisoner in
a cell thinks of the pin-hole somewhere in the wall, through which a
jailer's jealous inspection may at any moment be glaring in upon him,
but think of Him your Brother, who 'knew what was in man,' and who knows
each man, and see in Christ the all-knowing Godhood that loves yet
better than it knows, and beholds the hidden evils of men's hearts, in
order that it may cleanse and forgive all which it beholds.

One day a light will flash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be
manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ. Do you like that thought?
Can you stand it? Are you ready for it? My friend! let Jesus Christ
come to you with His light. Let Him come into the dark corners of your
hearts. Cast all your sinfulness, known and unknown, upon Him that died
on the Cross for every soul of man, and He will come; and His light,
streaming into your hearts, like the sunbeam upon foul garments, will
cleanse and bleach them white by its shining upon them. Let Him come
into your hearts by your lowly penitence, by your humble faith, and all
these vile shapes that you have painted on its walls will, like
phosphorescent pictures in the daytime, pale and disappear when the 'Sun
of Righteousness, with healing in His beams, floods your soul, leaving
no part dark, and turning all into a temple of the living God.'


A COMMON MISTAKE AND LAME EXCUSE

'... He prophesieth of the times that are far off.'--EZEKIEL xii. 27.

Human nature was very much the same in the exiles that listened to
Ezekiel on the banks of the Chebar and in Manchester to-day. The same
neglect of God's message was grounded then on the same misapprehension
of its bearings which profoundly operates in the case of many people
now. Ezekiel had been proclaiming the fall of Jerusalem to the exiles
whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the
incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it,
and so it generalised God's long-suffering delay in sending the
threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, 'The days are
prolonged, and every vision faileth.' To translate it into plain
English, the prophets had cried 'Wolf! wolf!' so long that their alarms
were disbelieved altogether.

Even the people that did not go the length of utter unbelief in the
prophetic threatening took the comfortable conclusion that these
threatenings had reference to a future date, and they need not trouble
themselves about them. And so they said, according to my text, 'They of
the house of Israel say, The vision that he sees is for many days to
come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off.' 'It may be all
quite true, but it lies away in the distant future there; and things
will last our time, so we do not need to bother ourselves about what he
says.'

So the imagined distance of fulfilment turned the edge of the plainest
denunciations, and was like wool stuffed in the people's ears to deaden
the reverberations of the thunder.

I wonder if there is anybody here now whom that fits, who meets the
preaching of the gospel with a shrug, and with this saying, 'He
prophesies of the times that are far off.' I fancy that there are a few;
and I wish to say a word or two about this ground on which the
widespread disregard of the divine message is based.

I. First, then, notice that the saying of my text--in the application
which I now seek to make of it--is a truth, but it is only half a truth.

Of course, Ezekiel was speaking simply about the destruction of
Jerusalem. If it had been true, as his hearers assumed, that that was
not going to happen for a good many years yet, the chances were that it
had no bearing upon them, and they were right enough in neglecting the
teaching. And, of course, when I apply such a word as this in the
direction in which I wish to do now, we do bring in a different set of
thoughts; but the main idea remains the same. The neglect of God's
solemn message by a great many people is based, more or less
consciously, upon the notion that the message of Christianity--or, if
you like to call it so, of the gospel; or, if you like to call it more
vaguely, religion--has to do mainly with blessings and woes beyond the
grave, and that there is plenty of time to attend to it when we get
nearer the end.

Now is it true that 'he prophesies of times that are far off'? Yes! and
No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity that it
shifts the centre of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient,
contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and
infinite future. It brings to us not only knowledge of the future, but
certitude, and takes the conception of another life out of the region of
perhapses, possibilities, dreads, or hopes, as the case may be, and sets
it in the sunlight of certainty. There is no more mist. Other faiths,
even when they have risen to the height of some contemplation of a
future, have always seen it wrapped in nebulous clouds of possibilities,
but Christianity sets it clear, definite, solid, as certain as
yesterday, as certain as to-day.

It not only gives us the knowledge and the certitude of the times that
are afar off, and that are not times but eternities, but it gives us, as
the all-important element in that future, that its ruling characteristic
is retribution. It 'brings life and immortality to light,' and just
because it does, it brings the dark orb which, like some of the double
stars in the heavens, is knit to the radiant sphere by a necessary
band. It brings to light, with life and immortality, death and woe. It
is true--'he prophesies of times that are far off' and it is the glory
of the gospel of Christ's revelation, and of the religion that is based
thereon, that its centre is beyond the grave, and that its eye is so
often turned to the clearly discerned facts that lie there.

But is that all that we have to say about Christianity? Many
representations of it, I am free to confess, from pulpits and books and
elsewhere, do talk as if that was all, as if it was a magnificent thing
to have when you came to die. As the play has it, 'I said to him that I
hoped there was no need that he should think about God yet,' because he
was not going to die. But I urge you to remember, dear brethren, that
all that prophesying of times that are far off has the closest bearing
upon this transient, throbbing moment, because, for one thing, one
solemn part of the Christian revelation about the future is that Time is
the parent of Eternity, and that, in like manner as in our earthly
course 'the child is father of the man,' so the man as he has made
himself is the author of himself as he will be through the infinite
spaces that lie beyond the grave. Therefore, when a Christian preacher
prophesies of times that are afar off, he is prophesying of present
time, between which and the most distant eternity there is an iron
nexus--a band which cannot be broken.

Nor is that all. Not only is the truth in my text but a half truth, if
it is supposed that the main business of the gospel is to talk to us
about heaven and hell, and not about the earth on which we secure and
procure the one or the other; but also it is a half truth because, large
and transcendent, eternal in their duration, and blessed beyond all
thought in their sweetness as are the possibilities, the certainties
that are opened by the risen and ascended Christ, and tremendous beyond
all words that men can speak as are the alternative possibilities, yet
these are not all the contents of the gospel message; but those
blessings and penalties, joys and miseries, exaltations and
degradations, which attend upon righteousness and sin, godliness and
irreligion to-day are a large part of its theme and of its effects.
Therefore, whilst on the one hand it is true, blessed be Christ's name!
that 'he prophesies of times that are far off'; on the other hand it is
an altogether inadequate description of the gospel message and of the
Christian body of truth to say that the future is its realm, and not the
present.

II. So, then, in the second place, my text gives a very good reason for
prizing and attending to the prophecy.

If it is true that God, speaking through the facts of Christ's death and
Resurrection and Ascension, has given to us the sure and certain hope of
immortality, and has declared to us plainly the conditions upon which
that immortality may be ours, and the woful loss and eclipse into the
shadow of which we shall stumble darkling if it is not ours, then surely
that is a reason for prizing and laying to heart, and living by the
revelation so mercifully made. People do not usually kick over their
telescopes, and neglect to look through them, because they are so
powerful that they show them the craters in the moon and turn faint
specks into blazing suns. People do not usually neglect a word of
warning or guidance in reference to the ordering of their earthly lives
because it is so comprehensive, and covers so large a ground, and is so
certain and absolutely true. Surely there can be no greater sign of
divine loving-kindness, of a Saviour's tenderness and care for us, than
that He should come to each of us, as He does come, and say to each of
us, 'Thou art to live for ever; and if thou wilt take Me for thy Life,
thou shalt live for ever, blessed, calm, and pure.' And we listen, and
say, 'He prophesies of times that are far off!' Oh! is that not rather a
reason for coming very close to, and for grappling to our hearts and
living always by the power of, that great revelation? Surely to announce
the consequences of evil, and to announce them so long beforehand that
there is plenty of time to avoid them and to falsify the prediction, is
the token of love.

Now I wish to lay it on the hearts of you people who call yourselves
Christians, and who are so in some imperfect degree, whether we do at
all adequately regard, remember, and live by this great mercy of God,
that He _should_ have prophesied to us 'of the times that are far off.'
Perhaps I am wrong, but I cannot help feeling that, for this generation,
the glories of the future rest with God have been somewhat paled, and
the terrors of the future unrest away from God have been somewhat
lightened. I hope I am wrong, but I do not think that the modern average
Christian thinks as much about heaven as his father did. And I believe
that his religion has lost something of its buoyancy, of its power, of
its restraining and stimulating energy, because, from a variety of
reasons, the bias of this generation is rather to dwell upon, and to
realise, the present social blessings of Christianity than to project
itself into that august future. The reaction may be good. I have no
doubt it was needed, but I think it has gone rather too far, and I would
beseech Christian men and women to try and deserve more the sarcasm that
is flung at us that we live for another world. Would God it were
true--truer than it is! We should see better work done in this world if
it were. So I say, that 'he prophesieth of times that are far off' is a
good reason for prizing and obeying the prophet.

III. Lastly, this is a very common and a very bad reason for neglecting
the prophecy.

It does operate as a reason for giving little heed to the prophet, as I
have been saying. In the old men-of-war, when an engagement was
impending, they used to bring up the hammocks from the bunks and pile
them into the nettings at the side of the ship, to defend it from
boarders and bullets. And then, after these had served their purpose of
repelling, they were taken down again and the crew went to sleep upon
them. That is exactly what some of my friends do with that misconception
of the genius of Christianity which supposes that it is concerned mainly
with another world. They put it up as a screen between them and God,
between them and what they know to be their duty--viz., the acceptance
of Christ as their Saviour. It is their hammock that they put between
the bullets and themselves; and many a good sleep they get upon it!

Now, that strange capacity that men have of ignoring a certain future is
seen at work all round about us in every region of life. I wonder how
many young men there are in Manchester to-day that have begun to put
their foot upon the wrong road, and who know just as well as I do that
the end of it is disease, blasted reputation, ruined prospects, perhaps
an early death. Why! there is not a drunkard in the city that does not
know that. Every man that takes opium knows it. Every unclean, unchaste
liver knows it; and yet he can hide the thought from himself, and go
straight on as if there was nothing at all of the sort within the
horizon of possibility. It is one of the most marvellous things that men
have that power; only beaten by the marvel that, having it, they should
be such fools as to choose to exercise it. The peasants on the slopes of
Vesuvius live very careless lives, and they have their little vineyards
and their olives. Yes, and every morning when they come out, they can
look up and see the thin wreath of smoke going up in the dazzling blue,
and they know that some time or other there will be a roar and a rush,
and down will come the lava. But 'a short life and a merry one' is the
creed of a good many of us, though we do not like to confess it. Some of
you will remember the strange way in which ordinary habits survived in
prisons in the dreadful times of the French Revolution, and how ladies
and gentlemen, who were going to have their heads chopped off next
morning, danced and flirted, and sat at entertainments, just as if there
was no such thing in the world as the public prosecutor and the tumbril,
and the gaoler going about with a bit of chalk to mark each door where
were the condemned for next day.

That same strange power of ignoring a known future, which works so
widely and so disastrously round about us, is especially manifested in
regard to religion. The great bulk of English men and women who are not
Christians, and the little sample of such that I have in my audience
now, as a rule believe as fully as we do the truths which they agree to
neglect. Let me speak to them individually. You believe that death will
introduce you into a world of two halves--that if you have been a good,
religious man, you will dwell in blessedness; that if you have not, you
will not--yet you never did a single thing, nor refrained from a single
thing, because of that belief. And when I, and men of my profession,
come and plead with you and try to get through that strange web of
insensibility that you have spun round you, you listen, and then you
say, with a shrug, 'He prophesies of things that are far off.' and you
turn with relief to the trivialities of the day. Need I ask you whether
that is a wise thing or not?

Surely it is not wise for a man to ignore a future that is certain
simply because it is distant. So long as it is certain, what in the name
of common-sense has the time when it begins to be a present to do with
our wisdom in regard to it? It is the uncertainty in future
anticipations which makes it unwise to regulate life largely by them,
and if you can eliminate that element of uncertainty--which you can do
if you believe in Jesus Christ--then the question is not when is the
prophecy going to be fulfilled, but is it true and trustworthy? The man
is a fool who, because it is far off, thinks he can neglect it.

Surely it is not wise to ignore a future which is so incomparably
greater than this present, and which also is so connected with this
present as that life here is only intelligible as the vestibule and
preparation for that great world beyond.

Surely it is not wise to ignore a future because you fancy it is far
away, when it may burst upon you at any time. These exiles to whom
Ezekiel spoke hugged themselves in the idea that his words were not to
be fulfilled for many days to come; but they were mistaken, and the
crash of the fall of Jerusalem stunned them before many months had
passed by. We have to look forward to a future which must be very near
to some of us, which may be nearer to others than they think, which at
the remotest is but a little way from us, and which must come to us all.
Oh, dear friends, surely it is not wise to ignore as far off that which
for some of us may be here before this day closes, which will probably
be ours in some cases before the fresh young leaves now upon the trees
have dropped yellow in the autumn frosts, which at the most distant must
be very near us, and which waits for us all.

What would you think of the crew and passengers of some ship lying in
harbour, waiting for its sailing orders, who had got leave on shore, and
did not know but that at any moment the blue-peter might be flying at
the fore--the signal to weigh anchor--if they behaved themselves in the
port as if they were never going to embark, and made no preparations for
the voyage? Let me beseech you to rid yourselves of that most
unreasonable of all reasons for neglecting the gospel, that its most
solemn revelations refer to the eternity beyond the grave.

There are many proofs that man on the whole is a very foolish creature,
but there is not one more tragical than the fact that believing, as many
of you do, that 'the wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is
eternal life through Jesus Christ,' you stand aloof from accepting the
gift, and risk the death.

The 'times far off' have long since come near enough to those scoffers.
The most distant future will be present to you before you are ready for
it, unless you accept Jesus Christ as your All, for time and for
eternity. If you do, the time that is near will be pure and calm, and
the times that are far off will be radiant with unfading bliss.


THE HOLY NATION

     'Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be
     clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols,
     will I cleanse you. 26. A new heart also will I give you, and
     a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the
     stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart
     of flesh. 27. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause
     you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments,
     and do them. 28. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave
     to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be
     your God. 29. I will also save you from all your
     uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will
     increase it, and lay no famine upon you. 30. And I will
     multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the
     field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among
     the heathen. 31. Then shall ye remember your own evil ways,
     and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe
     yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your
     abominations. 32. Not for your sakes do I this, saith the
     Lord God, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for
     your own ways, O house of Israel. 33. Thus saith the Lord
     God; In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your
     iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and
     the wastes shall be builded. 34. And the desolate land shall
     be tilled, whereat; it lay desolate in the sight of all that
     passed by. 35. And they shall say, This land that was
     desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and
     desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are
     inhabited. 36. Then the heathen that are left round about you
     shall know that I the Lord build the ruined places, and plant
     that that was desolate: I the Lord have spoken it, and I will
     do it. 37. Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be
     enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will
     increase them with men like a flock. 38. As the holy flock,
     as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the
     waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall
     know that I am the Lord.'--EZEKIEL xxxvi. 25-38.

This great prophecy had but a partial fulfilment, though a real one, in
the restored Israel. The land was given back, the nation _was_
multiplied, fertility again blessed the smiling fields and vineyards,
and, best of all, the people _were_ cleansed 'from all their idols' by
the furnace of affliction. Nothing is more remarkable than the
transformation effected by the captivity, in regard to the idolatrous
propensities of the people. Whereas before it they were always hankering
after the gods of the nations, they came back from Babylon the resolute
champions of monotheism, and never thereafter showed the smallest
inclination for what had before been so irresistible.

But the fulness of Ezekiel's prophecy is not realised until Jeremiah's
prophecy of the new covenant is brought to pass. Nor does the state of
the militant church on earth exhaust it. Future glories gleam through
the words. They have a 'springing accomplishment' in the Israel of the
restoration, a fuller in the New Testament church, and their ultimate
realisation in the New Jerusalem, which shall yet descend to be the
bride, the Lamb's wife. The principles involved in the prophecy belong
to the region of purely spiritual religion, and are worth pondering,
apart from any question of the place and manner of fulfilment.

First comes the great truth that the foundation, so far as concerns the
history of a soul or of a community, of all other good is divine
forgiveness (v. 25). Ezekiel, the priest, casts the promise into
ceremonial form, and points to the sprinklings of the polluted under the
law, or to the ritual of consecration to the priesthood. That cleansing
is the removal of already contracted defilement, especially of the guilt
of idolatry. It is clearly distinguished from the operation on the
inward nature which follows; that is to say, it is the promise of
forgiveness, or of justification, not of sanctification.

From what deep fountains in the divine nature that 'clean water' was to
flow, Ezekiel does not know; but we have learned that a more precious
fluid than water is needed, and have to think of Him 'who came not by
water only, but by water and blood,' in whom we have redemption through
His blood, even the forgiveness of our sins. But the central idea of
this first promise is that it must be God's hand which sprinkles from an
evil conscience. Forgiveness is a divine prerogative. He only can, and
He will, cleanse from all filthiness. His pardon is universal. The most
ingrained sins cannot be too black to melt away from the soul. The
dye-stuffs of sin are very strong, but there is one solvent which they
cannot resist. There are no 'fast colours' which God's 'clean water'
cannot move. This cleansing of pardon underlies all the rest of the
blessings. It is ever the first thing needful when a soul returns to
God.

Then follows an equally exclusively divine act, the impartation of a new
nature, which shall secure future obedience (vs. 26, 27). Who can thrust
his hand into the depths of man's being, and withdraw one
life-principle and enshrine another, while yet the individuality of the
man remains untouched? God only. How profound the consciousness of
universal obstinacy and insensibility which regards human nature, apart
from such renewal, as possessing but a 'heart of stone'! There are no
sentimental illusions about the grim facts of humanity here. Superficial
views of sin and rose-tinted fancies about human nature will not admit
the truth of the Scripture doctrine of sinfulness, alienation from God.
They diagnose the disease superficially, and therefore do not know how
to cure it. The Bible can venture to give full weight to the gravity of
the sickness, because it knows the remedy. No surgery but God's can
perform that operation of extracting the stony heart and inserting a
heart of flesh. No system which cannot do that can do what men want. The
gospel alone deals thoroughly with man's ills.

And how does it effect that great miracle? 'I will put My Spirit within
you.' The new life-principle is the effluence of the Spirit of God. The
promise does not merely offer the influence of a divine spirit, working
on men as from without, or coming down upon them as an afflatus, but the
actual planting of God's Spirit in the deep places of theirs. We fail to
apprehend the most characteristic blessing of the gospel if we do not
give full prominence to that great gift of an indwelling Spirit, the
life of our lives. Cleansing is much, but is incomplete without a new
life-principle which shall keep us clean; and that can only be God's
Spirit, enshrined and operative within us; for only thus shall we 'walk
in His statutes, and keep His judgments.' When the Lawgiver dwells in
our hearts, the law will be our delight; and keeping it will be the
natural outcome and expression of our life, which is His life.

Then follows the picture of the blessed effects of obedience (vs.
28-30). These are cast into the form appropriate to the immediate
purpose of the prophecy, and received fulfilment in the actual
restoration to the land, which fulfilment, however, was imperfect,
inasmuch as the obedience and renewal of the people's hearts were
incomplete. These can only be complete under the gospel, and, in the
fullest sense, only in another order than the present. When men fully
keep God's judgments, they shall dwell permanently in a good land.
Israel's hold on its country was its obedience, not its prowess. Our
real hold on even earthly good is the choosing of God for our supreme
good. In the measure in which we can say 'Thy law is within my heart,'
all things are ours; and we may possess all things while having nothing
in the vulgar world's sense of having. Similarly that obedience, which
is the fruit of the new life of God's Spirit in our spirits, is the
condition of close mutual possession in the blessed reciprocity of trust
and faithfulness, love bestowing and love receiving, by which the quiet
heart knows that God is its, and it is God's. If stains and
interruptions still sometimes break the perfectness of obedience and
continuity of reciprocal ownership, there will be a further cleansing
for such sins. 'If we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanseth us from all sin' (v. 29).

The lovely picture of the blessed dwellers in their good land is closed
by the promise of abundant harvests from corn and fruit-tree; that is,
all that nourishes or delights. The deepest truth taught thereby is that
he who lives in God has no unsatisfied desires, but finds in Him all
that can sustain, strengthen, and minister to growth, and all that can
give gladness and delight. If we make God our heritage, we dwell secure
in a good land; and 'the dust of that land is gold,' and its harvests
ever plenteous.

Very profoundly and beautifully does Ezekiel put as the last trait in
his picture, and as the upshot of all this cornucopia of blessings, the
penitent remembrance of past evils. Undeserved mercies steal into the
heart like the breath of the south wind, and melt the ice. The more we
advance in holiness and consequent blessed communion with God, the more
clearly shall we see the evil of our past. Forgiven sin looks far
blacker because it is forgiven. When we are not afraid of sin's
consequences, we see more plainly its sinfulness. When we have tasted
God's sweetness, we think with more shame of our ingratitude and folly.
If God forgets, the more reason for us to remember our transgressions.
The man who 'has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins' is in
danger of finding out that he is not purged from them. There is no
gnawing of conscience, nor any fearful looking for of judgment in such
remembrance, but a wholesome humility passing into thankful wonder that
such sin is pardoned, and such a sinner made God's friend.

The deep foundation of all the blessedness is finally laid bare (v. 32)
as being God's undeserved mercy. 'For Mine holy name' (v. 22) is God's
reason. He is His own motive, and He wills that the world should know
His name,--that is, His manifested character,--and understand how loving
and long-suffering He is. So He wills, not because such knowledge adds
to His glory, but because it satisfies His love, since it will make the
men who know His name blessed. The truth that God's motive is His own
name's sake may be so put as to be hideous and repellent; but it really
proclaims that He is love, and that His motive is His poor creatures'
blessing.

To this great outline of the blessings of the restored nations are
appended two subsidiary prophecies, marked by the recurring 'Thus saith
the Lord.' The former of these (vs. 33-36) deals principally with the
new beauty that was to clothe the land. The day in which the inhabitants
were cleansed from their sins was to be the day in which the land was to
be raised from its ruin. Cities are to be rebuilt, the ground that had
lain fallow and tangled with briers and thorns is to be tilled, and to
bloom like Eden, a restored paradise. How far the fulfilment has halted
behind the promise, the melancholy condition of Palestine to-day may
remind us. Whether the literal fulfilment is to be anticipated or no
seems less important than to note that the experience of forgiveness
(and of the consequent blessings described above) is the precursor of
this fair picture. Therefore, the Church's condition of growth and
prosperity is its realisation in the persons of its individual members,
of pardon, the renewal of the inner man by the indwelling Spirit,
faithful obedience, communion with God, and lowly remembrance of past
sins. Where churches are marked by such characteristics, they will grow.
If they are not, all their 'evangelistic efforts' will be as sounding
brass and a tinkling cymbal.

The second appended prophecy (vs. 37, 38) is that of increase of
population. The picture of the flocks of sheep for sacrifice, which
thronged Jerusalem at the feasts, is given as a likeness of the swarms
of inhabitants in the 'waste cities.' The point of comparison is chiefly
the number. One knows how closely a flock huddles and seems to fill the
road in endless procession. But the destination as well as the number
comes into view. All these patient creatures, crowding the ways, are
meant for sacrifices. So the inhabitants of the land then shall all
yield themselves to God, living sacrifices. The first words of our text
point to the priesthood of all believers; the last words point to the
sacrifice of themselves which they have to offer.

'For this moreover will I be inquired of by the house of Israel.' The
blessings promised do not depend on our merits, as we have heard, but
yet they will not be given without our co-operation in prayer. God
promises, and that promise is not a reason for our not asking the gifts
from Him, but for our asking. Faith keeps within the lines of God's
promise, and prayers which do not foot themselves on a promise are the
offspring of presumption, not of faith. God 'lets Himself be inquired
of' for that which is in accordance with His will; and, accordant with
His will though it be, He will not 'do it for them,' unless His flock
ask of Him the accomplishment of His own word.


THE DRY BONES AND THE SPIRIT OF LIFE

     1. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the
     spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley
     which was full of bones, 2. And caused me to pass by them round
     about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and,
     lo, they were very dry. 3. And He said unto me, Son of man, can
     these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, Thou knowest. 4.
     Again He said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto
     them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5. Thus saith the
     Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter
     into you, and ye shall live: 6. And I will lay sinews upon you, and
     will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put
     breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I _am_ the
     Lord. 7. So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied,
     there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came
     together, bone to his bone. 8. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews
     and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above:
     but there was no breath in them. 9. Then said He unto me, Prophesy
     unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus
     saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
     upon these slain, that they may live. 10. So I prophesied as He
     commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and
     stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. 11. Then He said
     unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel:
     behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are
     cut off for our parts. 12. Therefore prophesy and say unto them,
     Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O My people, I will open your
     graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you
     into the land of Israel. 13. And ye shall know that I am the Lord,
     when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up out
     of your graves. 14. And shall put My spirit in you, and ye shall
     live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know
     that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the
     Lord.'--EZEKIEL xxxvii. 1-14.

This great vision apparently took its form from a despairing saying,
which had become a proverb among the exiles, 'Our bones are dried up,
and our hope is lost: we are clean cut off' (v. 11). Ezekiel lays hold
of the metaphor, which had been taken to express the hopeless
destruction of Israel's national existence, and even from it wrings a
message of hope. Faith has the prerogative of seeing possibilities of
life in what looks to sense hopeless death. We may look at the vision
from three points of view, considering its bearing on Israel, on the
world, and on the resurrection of the body.

I. The saying, already referred to, puts the hopelessness of the mass of
the exiles in a forcible fashion. The only sense in which living men
could say that their bones were dried up, and they cut off, is a
figurative one, and obviously it is the national existence which they
regarded as irretrievably ended. The saying gives us a glimpse into the
despair which had settled down on the exiles, and against which Ezekiel
had to contend, as he had also to contend against its apparently
opposite and yet kindred feeling of presumptuous, misplaced hope. We
observe that he begins by accepting fully the facts which bred despair,
and even accentuating them. The true prophet never makes light of the
miseries of which he knows the cure, and does not try to comfort by
minimising the gravity of the evil. The bones _are_ very many, and they
_are_ very dry. As far as outward resources are concerned, despair was
rational, and hope as absurd as it would have been to expect that men,
dead so long that their bones had been bleached by years of exposure to
the weather, should live again.

But while Ezekiel saw the facts of Israel's powerlessness as plainly as
the most despondent, he did not therefore despair. The question which
rose in his mind was God's question, and the very raising it let a gleam
of hope in. So he answered with that noble utterance of faith and
submission, 'O Lord God, Thou knowest.' 'With God all things are
possible.' Presumption would have said 'Yes'; Unbelief would have said
'No'; Faith says, 'Thou knowest.'

The grand description of the process of resurrection follows the analogy
of the order in the creation of man, giving, first, the shaping of the
body, and afterwards the breathing into it of the breath which is life.
Both stages are wholly God's work. The prophet's part was to prophesy to
the bones first; and his word, in a sense, brought about the effect
which it foretold, since his ministry was the most potent means of
rekindling dying hopes, and bringing the _disjecta membra_ of the nation
together again. The vivid and gigantic imagination of the prophet gives
a picture of the rushing together of the bones, which has no superior in
any literature. He hears a noise, and sees a 'shaking' (by which is
meant the motion of the bones to each other, rather than an
'earthquake,' as the Revised Version has it, which inserts a quite
irrelevant detail), and the result of all is that the skeletons are
complete. Then follows the gradual clothing with flesh. There they lie,
a host of corpses.

The second stage is the quickening of these bodies with life, and here
again Ezekiel, as God's messenger, has power to bring about what he
announces; for, at his command, the breath, or wind, or spirit, comes,
and the stiff corpses spring to their feet, a mighty army. The
explanation in the last verses of the text somewhat departs from the
tenor of the vision by speaking of Israel as buried, but keeps to its
substance, and point the despairing exiles to God as the source of
national resurrection. But we must not force deeper meaning on Ezekiel's
words than they properly bear. The spirit promised in them is simply the
source of life,--literally, of physical life; metaphorically, of
national life. However that national restoration was connected with
holiness, that does not enter into the prophet's vision. Israel's
restoration to its land is all that Ezekiel meant by it. True, that
restoration was to lead to clearer recognition by Israel of the name of
Jehovah, and of all that it implied in him and demanded from them. But
the proper scope of the vision is to assure despairing Israelites that
God would quicken the apparently slain national life, and replace them
in the land.

II. We may extend the application of the vision to the condition of
humanity and the divine intervention which communicates life to a dead
world, but must remember that no such meaning was in Ezekiel's thoughts.
The valley full of dry bones is but too correct a description of the
aspect which a world 'dead in trespasses and sins' bears, when seen from
the mountain-top by pure and heavenly eyes. The activities of godless
lives mask the real spiritual death, which is the condition of every
soul that is separate from God. Galvanised corpses may have muscular
movements, but they are dead, notwithstanding their twitching. They that
live without God are dead while they live.

Again, we may learn from the vision the preparation needful for the
prophet, who is to be the instrument of imparting divine life to a dead
world. The sorrowful sense of the widespread deadness must enter into a
man's spirit, and be ever present to him, in order to fit him for his
work. A dead world is not to be quickened on easy terms. We must see
mankind in some measure as God sees them if we are to do God's work
among them. So-called Christian teachers, who do not believe that the
race is dead in sin, or who, believing it, do not feel the tragedy of
the fact, and the power lodged in their hands to bring the true life,
may prophesy to the dry bones for ever, and there will be no shaking
among them.

The great work of the gospel is to communicate divine life. The details
of the process in the vision are not applicable in this respect. As we
have pointed out, they are shaped after the pattern of the creation of
Adam, but the essential point is that what the world needs is the
impartation from God of His Spirit. We know more than Ezekiel did as to
the way by which that Spirit is given to men, and as to the kind of life
which it imparts, and as to the connection between that life and
holiness. It is a diviner voice than Ezekiel's which speaks to us in the
name of God, and says to us with deeper meaning than the prophet of the
Exile dreamed of, 'I will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live.'

But we may note that it is possible to have the outward form of a living
body, and yet to have no life. Churches and individuals may be perfectly
organised and perfectly dead. Creeds may be articulated most correctly,
every bone in its place, and yet have no vitality in them. Forms of
worship may be punctiliously proper, and have no breath of life in them.
Religion must have a body, but often the body is not so much the organ
as the sepulchre of the spirit. We have to take heed that the externals
do not kill the inward life.

Again, we note that this great act of life-giving is God's revelation of
His name,--that is, of His character so far as men can know it. 'Ye
shall know that I am the Lord' (vs. 13, 14). God makes Himself known in
His divinest glory when He quickens dead souls. The world may learn what
He is therefrom, but they who have experienced the change, and have, as
it were, been raised from the grave to new life, have personal
experience of His power and faithfulness so sure and sweet that
henceforward they cannot doubt Him nor forget His grace.

III. As to the bearing of the vision on the doctrine of the resurrection
little need be said. It does not necessarily presuppose the people's
acquaintance with that doctrine, for it would be quite conceivable that
the vision had revealed to the prophet the thought of a resurrection,
which had not been in his beliefs before. The vision is so entirely
figurative, that it cannot be employed as evidence that the idea of the
resurrection of the dead was part of the Jewish beliefs at this date. It
does, however, seem most natural to suppose that the exiles were
familiar with the idea, though the vision cannot be taken as a
revelation of a literal resurrection of dead men. For clear expectations
of such a resurrection we must turn to such scriptures as Daniel xii. 2,
13.


THE RIVER OF LIFE

     Waters issued out from under the threshold of the house ... EZEKIEL
     xlvii. 1.

Unlike most great cities, Jerusalem was not situated on a great river.
True, the inconsiderable waters of Siloam--'which flow softly' because
they were so inconsiderable--rose from a crevice in the Temple rock, and
beneath that rock stretched the valley of the Kedron, dry and bleached
in the summer, and a rainy torrent during the rainy seasons; but that
was all. So, many of the prophets, who looked forward to the better
times to come, laid their finger upon that one defect, and prophesied
that it should be cured. Thus we read in a psalm: 'There is a river,
the divisions whereof make glad the City of our God.' Faith saw what
sense saw not. Again, Isaiah says: 'There'--that is to say, in the new
Jerusalem--'the glorious Lord shall be unto us a place of broad rivers
and streams.' And so, this prophet casts his anticipations of the
abundant outpouring of blessing that shall come when God in very deed
dwells among men, into this figure of a river pouring out from beneath
the Temple-door, and spreading life and fertility wherever its waters
come. I need not remind you how our Lord Himself uses the same figure,
and modifies it, by saying that whosoever believeth on Him, 'out of him
shall flow rivers of living waters'; or how, in the very last words of
the Apocalyptic seer, we hear again the music of the ripples of the
great stream, 'the river of the water of life proceeding out of the
Throne of God and of the Lamb.' So then, all through Scripture, we may
say that we hear the murmur of the stream, and can catch the line of
verdure upon its banks. My object now is not only to deal with the words
that I have read as a starting-point, but rather to seek to draw out the
wonderful significance of this great prophetic parable.

I. I notice, first, the source from which the river comes.

I have already anticipated that in pointing out that it flows from the
very Temple itself. The Prophet sees it coming out of the house--that is
to say, the Sanctuary. It flows across the outer court of the house,
passes the altar, comes out under the threshold, and then pours itself
down on to the plain beneath. This is the symbolical dress of the
thought that all spiritual blessings, and every conceivable form of
human good, take their rise in the fact of God's dwelling with men. From
beneath the Temple threshold comes the water of life; and wherever it
is true that in any heart--or in any community--God dwells, there will
be heard the tinkling of its ripples, and freshness and fertility will
come from the stream. The dwelling of God with a man, like the dwelling
of God in humanity in the Incarnation of His own dear Son, is, as it
were, the opening of the fountain that it may pour out into the world.
So, if we desire to have the blessings that are possible for us, we must
comply with the conditions, and let God dwell in our hearts, and make
them His temples; and then from beneath the threshold of that temple,
too, will pour out, according to Christ's own promise, rivers of living
water which will be first for ourselves to drink of and be blessed by,
and then will refresh and gladden others.

Another thought connected with this source of the river of life is that
all the blessings which, massed together, are included in that one word
'salvation'--which is a kind of nebula made up of many unresolved
stars--take their rise from nothing else than the deep heart of God
Himself. This river rose in the House of the Lord, and amidst the
mysteries of the Divine Presence; it took its rise, one might say, from
beneath the Mercy-seat where the brooding Cherubim sat in silence and
poured itself into a world that had not asked for it, that did not
expect it, that in many of its members did not desire it and would not
have it. The river that rose in the secret place of God symbolises for
us the great thought which is put into plainer words by the last of the
apostles when he says, 'We love Him because He first loved us.' All the
blessings of salvation rise from the unmotived, self-impelled, self-fed
divine love and purpose. Nothing moves Him to communicate Himself but
His own delight in giving Himself to His poor creatures; and it is all
of grace that it might be all through faith.

Still further, another thought that may be suggested in connection with
the source of this river is, that that which is to bless the world must
necessarily take its rise above the world. Ezekiel has sketched, in the
last portion of his prophecy, an entirely ideal topography of the Holy
Land. He has swept away mountains and valleys, and levelled all out into
a great plain, in the midst of which rises the mountain of the Lord's
House, far higher than the Temple hill. In reality, opposite it rose the
Mount of Olives, and between the two there was the deep gorge of the
Valley of the Kedron. The Prophet smooths it all out into one great
plain, and high above all towers the Temple-mount, and from it there
rushes down on to the low levels the fertilising, life-giving flood.

That imaginary geography tells us this, that what is to bless the world
must come from above the world. There needs a waterfall to generate
electricity; the power which is to come into humanity and deal with its
miseries must have its source high above the objects of its energy and
its compassion, and in proportion to the height from which it falls will
be the force of its impact and its power to generate the quickening
impulse. All merely human efforts at social reform, rivers that do not
rise in the Temple, are like the rivers in Mongolia, that run for a few
miles and then get sucked up by the hot sands and are lost and nobody
sees them any more. Only the perennial stream, that comes out from
beneath the Temple threshold, can sustain itself in the desert, to say
nothing of transforming the desert into a Garden of Eden. So moral and
social and intellectual and political reformers may well go to Ezekiel,
and learn that the 'river of the water of life,' which is to heal the
barren and refresh the thirsty land, must come from below the Temple
threshold.

II. Note the rapid increase of the stream.

The Prophet describes how his companion, the interpreter, measured down
the stream a thousand cubits--about a quarter of a mile--and the waters
were ankle-deep another thousand, making half a mile from the start, and
the water was knee-deep. Another thousand--or three-quarters of a
mile--and the water was waist-deep; another thousand--about a mile in
all--and the water was unfordable, 'waters to swim in, a river that
could not be passed over.' Where did the increase come from? There were
no tributaries. We do not hear of any side-stream flowing into the main
body. Where did the increase come from? It came from the abundant
welling-up in the sanctuary. The fountain was the mother of the
river--that is to say, God's ideal for the world, for the Church, for
the individual Christian, is rapid increase in their experience of the
depth and the force of the stream of blessings which together make up
salvation. So we come to a very sharp testing question. Will anybody
tell me that the rate at which Christianity has grown for these nineteen
centuries corresponds with Ezekiel's vision--which is God's ideal? Will
any Christian man say, 'My own growth in grace, and increase in the
depth and fulness of the flow of the river through my spirit and my life
correspond to that ideal'? A mile from the source the river is
unfordable. How many miles from the source of _our_ first experience do
we stand? How many of us, instead of having 'a river that could not be
passed over, waters to swim in,' have but a poor and all but stagnant
feeble trickle, as shallow as or shallower than it was at first?

I was speaking a minute ago about Mongolian rivers. Australian rivers
are more like some men's lives. A chain of ponds in the dry season--nay!
not even a chain, but a series, with no connecting channel of water
between them. That is like a great many Christian people; they have
isolated times when they feel the voice of Christ's love, and yield
themselves to the powers of the world to come, and then there are long
intervals, when they feel neither the one nor the other. But the picture
that ought to be realised by each of us is God's ideal, which there is
power in the gospel to make real in the case of every one of us, the
rapid and continuous increase in the depth and in the scour of 'the
river of the water of life,' that flows through our lives. Luther used
to say, 'If you want to clean out a dunghill, turn the Elbe into it.' If
you desire to have your hearts cleansed of all their foulness, turn the
river into it. But it needs to be a progressively deepening river, or
there will be no scour in the feeble trickle, and we shall not be a bit
the holier or the purer for our potential and imperfect Christianity.

III. Lastly, note the effects of the stream.

These are threefold: fertility, healing, life. Fertility. In the East
one condition of fertility is water. Irrigate the desert, and you make
it a garden. Break down the aqueduct, and you make the granary of the
world into a waste. The traveller as he goes along can tell where there
is a stream of water, by the verdure along its banks. You travel along a
plateau, and it is all baked and barren. You plunge into a wâdy, and
immediately the ground is clothed with under-growth and shrubs, and the
birds of the air sing among the branches. And so, says Ezekiel, wherever
the river comes there springs up, as if by magic, fair trees 'on the
banks thereof, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit
thereof be consumed.'

Fertility comes second, the reception of the fertilising agent comes
first. It is wasted time to tinker at our characters unless we have
begun with getting into our hearts the grace of God, and the new spirit
that will be wrought out by diligent effort into all beauty of life and
character. Ezekiel seems to be copying the first psalm, or vice versa,
the Psalmist is copying Ezekiel. At any rate, there is a verbal
similarity between them, in that both dwell upon the unfading leaf of
the tree that grows planted by rivers of water. And our text goes
further, and speaks about perennial fruitfulness month by month, all the
year round. In some tropical countries you will find blossoms, buds in
their earliest stage, and ripened fruit all hanging upon one laden
branch. Such ought to be the Christian life--continuously fruitful
because dependent upon continual drawing into itself, by means of its
roots and suckers, of the water of life by which we are fructified.

There is yet another effect of the waters--healing. As we said, Ezekiel
takes great liberties with the geography of the Holy Land, levelling it
all, so his stream makes nothing of the Mount of Olives, but flows due
east until it comes to the smitten gorge of the Jordan, and then turns
south, down into the dull, leaden waters of the Dead Sea, which it
heals. We all know how these are charged with poison. Dip up a glassful
anywhere, and you find it full of deleterious matter. They are the
symbol of humanity, with the sin that is in solution all through it. No
chemist can eliminate it, but there is One who can. 'He hath made Him to
be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him.' The pure river of the water of life will cast out from
humanity the malignant components that are there, and will sweeten it
all. Ay, all, and yet not all, for very solemnly the Prophet's optimism
pauses, and he says that the salt marshes by the side of the sea are not
healed. They are by the side of it. The healing is perfectly available
for them, but they are not healed. It is possible for men to reject the
influences that make for the destruction of sin and the establishment of
righteousness. And although the waters are healed, there still remain
the obstinate marshes with the white crystals efflorescing on their
surface, and bringing salt and barrenness. You can put away the healing
and remain tainted with the poison.

And then the last thought is the life-giving influence of the river.
Everything lived whithersoever it went. Contrast Christendom with
heathendom. Admit all the hollowness and mere nominal Christianity of
large tracts of life in so-called Christian countries, and yet why is it
that on the one side you find stagnation and death, and on the other
side mental and manifold activity and progressiveness? I believe that
the difference between 'the people that _sit_ in darkness' and 'the
people that _walk_ in the light is that one has the light and the other
has not, and activity befits the light as torpor befits the darkness.

But there is a far deeper truth than that in the figure, a truth that I
would fain lay upon the hearts of all my hearers, that unless we our own
selves have this water of life which comes from the Sanctuary and is
brought to us by Jesus Christ, 'we are dead in trespasses and sins.' The
only true life is in Christ. 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me,
and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of
his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'

        *        *        *        *        *


THE BOOK OF DANIEL


YOUTHFUL CONFESSORS

     'But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself
     with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he
     drank; therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he
     might not defile himself. 9. Now God had brought Daniel into favour
     and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. 10. And the prince
     of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who hath
     appointed your meat and your drink; for why should he see your
     faces worse liking than the children which are of your sort? then
     shall ye make me endanger my head to the king. 11. Then said Daniel
     to Melzar, whom the prince of the eunuchs had set over Daniel,
     Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, 12. Prove thy servants, I beseech
     thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to
     drink. 13. Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee,
     and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the
     king's meat; and as thou seest, deal with thy servants. 14. So he
     consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days. 15. And
     at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and
     fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of
     the king's meat. 16. Thus Melzar took away the portion of their
     meat, and the wine that they should drink; and gave them pulse. 17.
     As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in
     all learning and wisdom; and Daniel had understanding in all
     visions and dreams. 18. Now at the end of the days that the king
     had said he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs
     brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. 19. And the king communed
     with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah,
     Mishael, and Azariah; therefore stood they before the king. 20. And
     in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king enquired
     of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and
     astrologers that were in all his realm. 21. And Daniel continued
     even unto the first year of king Cyrus.'--DANIEL i. 8-21.

Daniel was but a boy at the date of the Captivity, and little more at
the time of the attempt to make a Chaldean of him. The last verse says
that he 'continued even unto the first year of king Cyrus,' the date
given elsewhere as the close of the Captivity (2 Chron. xxxvi. 22; Ezra
i. 1; vi. 3). From Daniel x. 1 we learn that he lived on till Cyrus's
third year, if not later; but the date in i. 21 is probably given in
order to suggest that Daniel's career covered the whole period of the
Captivity, and burned like a star of hope for the exiles. The incident
in our passage is a noble example of religious principle applied to
small details of daily life, and shows how God crowns such conscientious
self-restraint with success. The lessons which it contains are best
gathered by following the narrative.

I. The heroic determination of the boyish confessor is first set forth.
The plan of taking leading young men from the newly captured nation and
turning them into Babylonians was a stroke of policy as heartless and
high-handed as might be expected from a great conqueror. In some
measure, the same thing has been done by all nations who have built up a
world-wide dominion. The new names given to the youths, the attaching of
them to the court, their education in Babylonish fashion, all were meant
for the same purpose,--to denationalise them, and strip them of their
religion, and thus to make them tools for more easily governing their
countrymen.

Most men would yield to the influences, and be so lapped in the
comforts of their new position as to become pliable as wax in the
conqueror's hands; but here and there he would come across a bit of
stiffer stuff, which would break rather than bend. Such an obstinate
piece of humanity was found in the Hebrew youth, of some fifteen years,
whose Hebrew name ('God is my judge') expressed a truth that ruled him,
when the name was exchanged for one that invoked Bel. It took some
firmness for a captive lad, without friends or influence, to take
Daniel's stand; for the motive of his desire to be excused from taking
the fare provided can only have been religious. He was determined, in
his brave young heart, not to 'defile' himself with the king's meat. The
phrase points to the pollution incurred by eating things offered to
idols, and does not imply scrupulousness like that of Pharisaic times,
nor necessarily suggest a late date for the book. Probably there had
been some kind of religious consecration of the food to Babylonian gods,
and Daniel, in his solitary faithfulness, was carrying out the same
principles which Paul afterwards laid down for Corinthian Christians as
to partaking of things offered to idols. Similar difficulties are sure
to emerge in analogous cases, and do so, on many mission fields.

The motive here, then, is distinctly religious. Common life was so woven
in with idolatrous worship that every meal was in some sense a
sacrifice. Therefore 'Touch not, taste not, handle not,' was the
inevitable dictate for a devout heart. Daniel seems to have been the
moving spirit; but as is generally the case, he was able to infuse his
own strong convictions into his companions, and the four of them held
together in their protest. The great lesson from the incident is that
religion should regulate the smallest details of life, and that it is
not narrow over-scrupulousness, but fidelity to the highest duty, when a
man sets his foot down about any small matter, and says, 'No, I dare not
do it, little as it is, and pleasant as it might be to sense, because I
should thereby be mixed up in a practical denial of my God.' 'So did not
I, because of the fear of God' (Neh. v. 15), is a motto which will
require from many a young man abstinence from many things which it would
be much easier to accept.

II. This young confessor was as prudent as he was brave; and the story
goes on to show how wisely he played his part, and how willing he was to
accept all working compromises which might smooth his way. He did not at
all want to pose as a martyr, and had no pleasure in making a noise. The
favour which he had won with the high officer who looked after the lads
before their formal examination (graduation we might call it), is set
down in the narrative to the divine favour; but that favour worked by
means, and no doubt the lad had done his part to win the important good
opinion of his superior. The more firm is our determination to take no
step beyond the line of duty, the more conciliatory we should be. But
many people seem to think that heroism is shown by rudeness, and that if
we are afraid that we shall some time have to say 'No' very
emphatically, we should prepare for it by a great many preliminary and
unnecessary negatives. The very stern need for parting company, when
conscience points one way and companions another, is a reason for
keeping cordially together whenever we can.

'The prince of the eunuchs' made a very reasonable objection. He had
been appointed to see after the health of the lads, and had ample means
at his disposal; and if they lost their health in this chase after what
he could only think a superstitious fad, the despot whom he served would
think nothing of making him answer with his head. His fear gives a
striking side-light as to the conditions of service in such a court,
where no man's head was firm between his shoulders. Why should the
prince of the eunuchs have supposed that the diet asked for would not
nourish the lads? It was that of the bulk of men everywhere, and he had
only to go out into the streets or the nearest barrack in Babylon to see
what thews and muscles could be nurtured on vegetable diet and water.
But whatever the want of ground in his objection, it was enough that he
made it. Note that he puts it entirely on possible harmful results to
himself, and that silences Daniel, who had no right to ask another to
run his head into the noose, into which he was ready to put his own, if
necessary. Martyrs by proxy, who have such strong convictions that they
think it somebody else's duty to run risk for them, are by no means
unknown.

This boy was made of other metal. So, apparently he gives up the prince
of the eunuchs, and turns to another of the friends whom he had made in
his short captivity--the person in whose more immediate charge he and
his three friends were. He is named Melzar in the Authorised Version;
but the Revised Version more accurately takes that to be a name of
office, and translates it as 'steward.' He did the catering for them,
and was sufficiently friendly to listen to Daniel's reasonable proposal
to try the vegetable diet for 'ten days'--probably meaning an indefinite
period, sufficiently long to test results, which a literal ten days
would perhaps scarcely be. So the good-natured steward let the lads have
their way, much wondering in his soul, no doubt, why they should take as
much trouble to avoid good living as most youths would have taken to get
it.

III. The success of the experiment comes next. We do not need to suppose
a miracle as either wrought or suggested by the narrative. The issue
might have taught the steward a wholesome lesson in dietetics, which he
and a great many of us much need. 'A man's life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things which he possesseth,' and his bodily life
consisteth not in the abundance and variety of the things that he
eateth. The teaching of this lesson is, not that vegetarianism or total
abstinence is obligatory, for diet is here regarded only as part of
idolatrous worship; but certainly a secondary conclusion, fairly drawn
from the story, is that vigorous health is best kept up on very simple
fare. Many dinner-tables, over which God's blessing is formally asked,
are spread in such a fashion as it is hard to suppose deserves His
blessing. The simpler the fare, the fewer the wants: the fewer the
wants, the greater the riches; the freer the life, the more leisure for
higher pursuits, and the more sound the bodily health.

But the rosy faces and vigorous health of Daniel and his friends may
illustrate, by a picturesque example, a large truth--that God suffers no
man to be a loser by faithfulness, and more than makes up all that is
surrendered for His sake. The blessing of God on small means makes them
fountains of truer joy than large ones unblessed. No man hath left
anything for Christ's sake but he receives a hundred-fold in this life,
if not in the actual blessings surrendered, at all events in the peace
and joy of heart of which they were supposed to be bearers. God fills
places emptied by Himself, and those emptied by us for His sake.

IV. The conscientious abstinence of Daniel had limits. The learning of
the 'Chaldeans' was largely ritualistic, and magic, incantations,
divination, and mythology constituted a most important part of it. Did
not the conscience, which could not swallow idolatrous food, resent
being forced to assimilate idolatrous learning? No; for all that
learning could be acquired by a faithful monotheist, and could be used
against the system which gave it birth. Like Moses, or like the young
Pharisee Saul, these Jewish boys nurtured their faith by knowledge of
their enemies' belief, and used their childhood's lessons as weapons in
fighting for God's truth. It is not every man's duty to become familiar
with error, or to master anti-Christian systems. But if it become ours,
we are not to turn away from the task, nor to doubt that God will keep
His own truth alight in our minds, if we realise the danger of the
position, and seek to cling to Him.

V. So we have the last scene in the youths' appearance before
Nebuchadnezzar. A three years' curriculum was considered necessary to
turn a Jewish boy into a Chaldean expert, fit to be a traitor to his
nation, an apostate from his God, and a tool of the tyrant. So far as
knowledge of the priestly and astronomical science went, the four
Hebrews came out at the top of the lists. The great king himself, with
that personal interference in all departments which makes a despot's
life so burdensome, put them through their paces, and was satisfied. His
object had been to get instruments with which he could work on the
Captivity, and, no doubt, also to secure servants who had no links with
anybody in Babylon. Foreigners, 'kinless loons,' are favourites with
despots, for plain reasons. But Nebuchadnezzar could not fathom the
hearts of the lads. An incarnation of unbridled will would find it
difficult to understand a life guided by conscience, and religious
scruples would have sounded as an unknown tongue to him. But yet, as he
and they stood face to face, who was stronger, the conqueror or the
youths who feared God, and none besides? They were in their right place
at the head of the examination lists. They had not said, 'We do not
believe in all this rubbish, and we are not going to trouble ourselves
to master it,' but they had set themselves determinedly to work, and
been all the more persevering because of their objection to the diet. If
a young man has to be singular by reason of his religion, let him be
singularly diligent in his work, and seek to be first, not merely for
his own glory, but for the sake of the religion which he professes.

'Plain living and high thinking' ought to go together. England and
America have many names carved high on their annals, and written deep on
their citizens' hearts, who have nourished a sublime, studious youth in
poverty, 'cultivating literature on a little oatmeal,' and who all their
lives have 'scorned delights and lived laborious days.' It is the temper
which is most likely to succeed, but which, whether it succeeds or not,
brings the best blessings to those who cultivate it. Such a youth will
generally be followed by an honoured manhood like Daniel's, but will, at
all events, be its own reward, and have God's blessing.

'Daniel continued unto the first year of king Cyrus.' These simple words
contain volumes. During all the troubles of the nation, from the king's
insanity, and the murders of his successors, amidst whirling intrigues,
envies, plots, and persecutions, this one man stood firm, like a pillar
amid blowing sands. So God keeps the steadfast soul which is fixed on
Him; and while the world passeth away, and the fashion thereof, he that
doeth the will of God abideth for ever.


THE IMAGE AND THE STONE

     'This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof
     before the king. 37. Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God
     of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and
     glory. 38. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of
     the field and the fowls of the heaven hath He given into thine
     hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of
     gold. 39. And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to
     thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule
     over all the earth. 40. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as
     iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all
     things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in
     pieces and bruise. 41. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes,
     part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be
     divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron,
     forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42. And as
     the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the
     kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43. And whereas
     thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves
     with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another,
     even as iron is not mixed with clay. 44. And in the days of these
     kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never
     be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people,
     but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it
     shall stand for ever. 45. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone
     was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in
     pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the
     great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass
     hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof
     sure. 46. Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and
     worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation
     and sweet odours unto him. 47. The king answered unto Daniel, and
     said, Of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord
     of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal
     this secret. 48. Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave
     him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of
     Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of
     Babylon. 49. Then Daniel requested of the king, and he set
     Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, over the affairs of the province
     of Babylon: but Daniel sat in the gate of the king.'--DANIEL ii.
     36-49.

The colossal image, seen by Nebuchadnezzar in his dream, was a
reproduction of those which met his waking eyes, and still remain for
our wonder in our museums. The mingled materials are paralleled in
ancient art. The substance of the dream is no less natural than its
form. The one is suggested by familiar sights; the other, by pressing
anxieties. What more likely than that, 'in the second year of his reign'
(v. 1), waking thoughts of the future of his monarchy should trouble the
warrior-king, scarcely yet firm on his throne, and should repeat
themselves in nightly visions? God spoke through the dream, and He is
not wont to answer questions before they are asked, nor to give
revelations to men on points which they have not sought to solve. We may
be sure that Nebuchadnezzar's dream met his need.

The unreasonable demand that the 'Chaldeans' should show the dream as
well as interpret it, fits the character of the king, as an imperious
despot, intolerant of obstacles to his will, and holding human life very
cheap. Daniel's knowledge of the dream and of its meaning is given to
him in a vision by night, which is the method of divine illumination
throughout the book, and may be regarded as a lower stage thereof than
the communications to prophets of 'the word of the Lord.'

The passage falls into two parts: the image and the stone.

I. The Image.

It was a human form of strangely mingled materials, of giant size no
doubt, and of majestic aspect. Barbarous enough it would have looked
beside the marble lovelinesses of Greece, but it was quite like the
coarser art which sought for impressiveness through size and costliness.
Other people than Babylonian sculptors think that bigness is greatness,
and dearness preciousness.

This image embodied what is now called a philosophy of history. It set
forth the fruitful idea of a succession and unity in the rise and fall
of conquerors and kingdoms. The four empires represented by it are
diverse, and yet parts of a whole, and each following on the other. So
the truth is taught that history is an organic whole, however unrelated
its events may appear to a superficial eye. The writer of this book had
learned lessons far in advance of his age, and not yet fully grasped by
many so-called historians.

But, further, the human figure of the image sets forth all these
kingdoms as being purely the work of men. Not that the overruling divine
providence is ignored, but that the play of human passions, the lust of
conquest and the like, and the use of human means, such as armies, are
emphasised.

Again, the kingdoms are seen in their brilliancy, as they would
naturally appear to the thoughts of a conqueror, whose highest notion of
glory was earthly dominion, and who was indifferent to the suffering and
blood through which he waded to a throne. When the same kingdoms are
shown to Daniel in chapter vii. they are represented by beasts. Their
cruelty and the destruction of life which they caused were uppermost in
a prophet's view; their vulgar splendour dazzled a king's sleeping eyes,
because it had intoxicated his waking thoughts. Much worldly glory and
many of its aims appear as precious metal to dreamers, but are seen by
an illuminated sight to be bestial and destructive.

Once more there is a steady process of deterioration in the four
kingdoms. Gold is followed by silver, and that by brass, and that by the
strange combination of iron and clay. This may simply refer to the
diminution of worldly glory, but it may also mean deterioration, morally
and otherwise. Is it not the teaching of Scripture that, unless God
interpose, society will steadily slide downwards? And has not the fact
been so, wherever the brake and lever of revelation have not arrested
the decline and effected elevation? We are told nowadays of evolution,
as if the progress of humanity were upwards; but if you withdraw the
influence of supernatural revelation, the evidence of power in manhood
to work itself clear of limitations and lower forms is very ambiguous at
the best--in reference to morals, at all events. Evil is capable of
development, as well as good; and perhaps Nebuchadnezzar's colossus is a
truer representation of the course of humanity than the dreams of modern
thinkers who see manhood becoming steadily better by its own effort, and
think that the clay and iron have inherent power to pass into fine gold.

The question of the identification of these successive monarchies does
not fall to be discussed here. But I may observe that the definite
statement of verse 44 ('in the days of these kings') seems to date the
rise of the everlasting kingdom of God in the period of the last of the
four, and therefore that the old interpretation of the fourth kingdom as
the Roman seems the most natural. The force of that remark may, no
doubt, be weakened by the consideration that the Old Testament prophets'
perspective of the future brought the coming of Messiah into immediate
juxtaposition with the limits of their own vision; but still it has
force.

The allocation of each part of the symbol is of less importance for us
than the lessons to be drawn from it as a whole. But the singular
amalgam of iron and clay in the fourth kingdom is worth notice. No
sculptor or metallurgist could make a strong unity out of such
materials, of which the combination could only be apparent and
superficial. The fact to which it points is the artificial unity into
which the great conquering empires of old crushed their unfortunate
subject peoples, who were hammered, not fused, together. 'They shall
mingle themselves with the seed of men' (ver. 43), may either refer to
the attempts to bring about unity by marriages among different races, or
to other vain efforts to the same end. To obliterate nationalities has
always been the conquering despot's effort, from Nebuchadnezzar to the
Czar of Russia, and it always fails. This is the weakness of these huge
empires of antiquity, which have no internal cohesion, and tumble to
pieces as soon as some external bond is loosened. There is only one
kingdom which has no disintegrating forces lodged in it, because it
unites men individually to its king, and so binds them to one another;
and that is the kingdom which Nebuchadnezzar saw in its destructive
aspect.

II. So we have now to think of the stone cut out without hands.

Three things are specified with regard to it: its origin, its duration,
and its destructive energy. The origin is heavenly, in sharp contrast to
the human origin of the kingdoms symbolised in the colossal man. That
idea is twice expressed: once in plain words, 'the God of heaven shall
set up a kingdom'; and once figuratively as being cut out of the
mountain without hands. By the mountain we are probably to understand
Zion, from which, according to many a prophecy, the Messiah King was to
rule the earth (Ps. ii.; Isa. ii. 3).

The fulfilment of this prediction is found, not only in the supernatural
birth of Jesus Christ, but in the spread of the gospel without any of
the weapons and aids of human power. Twelve poor men spoke, and the
world was shaken and the kingdoms remoulded. The seer had learned the
omnipotence of ideas and the weakness of outward force. A thought from
God is stronger than all armies, and outconquers conquerors. By the
mystery of Christ's Incarnation, by the power of weakness in the
preachers of the Cross, by the energies of the transforming Spirit, the
God of heaven has set up the kingdom. 'It shall never be destroyed.' Its
divine origin guarantees its perpetual duration. The kingdoms of man's
founding, whether they be in the realm of thought or of outward
dominion, 'have their day, and cease to be,' but the kingdom of Christ
lasts as long as the eternal life of its King. He cannot die any more,
and He cannot live discrowned. Other forms of human association perish,
as new conditions come into play which antiquate them; but the kingdom
of Jesus is as flexible as it is firm, and has power to adapt to itself
all conditions in which men can live. It will outlast earth, it will
fill eternity; for when He 'shall have delivered up the kingdom to His
Father,' the kingdom, which the God of heaven set up, will still
continue.

It 'shall not be left to other people.' By that, seems to be meant that
this kingdom will not be like those of human origin, in which dominion
passes from one race to another, but that Israel shall ever be the happy
subjects and the dominant race. We must interpret the words of the
spiritual Israel, and remember how to be Christ's subject is to belong
to a nation who are kings and priests.

The destructive power is graphically represented. The stone, detached
from the mountain, and apparently self-moved, dashes against the
heterogeneous mass of iron and clay on which the colossus insecurely
stands, and down it comes with a crash, breaking into a thousand
fragments as it falls. 'Like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors'
(Daniel ii. 35) is the débris, which is whirled out of sight by the
wind. Christ and His kingdom have reshaped the world. These ancient,
hideous kingdoms of blood and misery are impossible now. Christ and His
gospel shattered the Roman empire, and cast Europe into another mould.
They have destructive work to do yet, and as surely as the sun rises
daily, will do it. The things that can be shaken will be shaken till
they fall, and human society will never obtain its stable form till it
is moulded throughout after the pattern of the kingdom of Christ.

The vision of our passage has no reference to the quickening power of
the kingdom; but the best way in which it destroys is by transformation.
It slays the old and lower forms of society by substituting the purer
which flow from possession of the one Spirit. That highest glory of the
work of Christ is but partially represented here, but there is a hint in
Daniel ii. 35, which tells that the stone has a strange vitality, and
can grow, and does grow, till it becomes an earth-filling mountain.

That issue is not reached yet; but 'the dream is certain.' The kingdom
is concentrated in its King, and the life of Jesus, diffused through His
servants, works to the increase of the empire, and will not cease till
the kingdoms of the world are the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.
That stone has vital power, and if we build on it we receive, by
wonderful impartation, a kindred derived life, and become 'living
stones.' It is laid for a sure foundation. If a man stumble over it
while it lies there to be built upon, he will lame and maim himself. But
it will one day have motion given to it, and, falling from the height of
heaven, when He comes to judge the world which He rules and has
redeemed, it will grind to powder all who reject the rule of the
everlasting King of men.


HARMLESS FIRES

     'Then Nebuchadnezzar in his rage and fury commanded to bring
     Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. Then they brought these men
     before the king. 14. Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it
     true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, do not ye serve my gods,
     nor worship the golden image which I have set up? 15. Now if ye be
     ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute,
     harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye
     fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye
     worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a
     burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you
     out of my hands? 16. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, answered and
     said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer
     thee in this matter. 17. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able
     to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver
     us out of thine hand, O king. 18. But if not, be it known unto
     thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the
     golden image which thou hast set up. 19. Then was Nebuchadnezzar
     full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against
     Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego: therefore he spake, and commanded
     that they should heat the furnace one seven times more than it was
     wont to be heated. 20. And he commanded the most mighty men that
     were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and to
     cast them into the burning fiery furnace. 21. Then these men were
     bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other
     garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery
     furnace. 22. Therefore because the king's commandment was urgent,
     and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew those men
     that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. 23. And these three
     men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, fell down bound into the
     midst of the burning fiery furnace. 24. Then Nebuchadnezzar the
     king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto
     his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of
     the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. 25.
     He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the
     midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the
     fourth is like the Son of God.'--DANIEL iii. 13-25.

The way in which the 'Chaldeans' describe the three recusants, betrays
their motive in accusing them. 'Certain Jews whom thou hast set over the
affairs of the province of Babylon' could not but be envied and hated,
since their promotion wounded both national pride and professional
jealousy. The form of the accusation was skilfully calculated to rouse a
despot's rage. 'They have not regarded thee' is the head and front of
their offending. The inflammable temper of the king blazed up according
to expectation, as is the way with tyrants. His passion of rage is twice
mentioned (vs. 13, 19), and in one of the instances, is noted as
distorting his features. What a picture of ungoverned fury as of one who
had never been thwarted! It is the true portrait of an Eastern despot.

Where was Daniel in this hour of danger? His absence is not accounted
for, and conjecture is useless; but the fact that he has no share in the
incident seems to raise a presumption in favour of the disputed
historical character of the Book, which, if it had been fiction, could
scarcely have left its hero out of so brilliant an instance of
faithfulness to Jehovah.

Nebuchadnezzar's vehement address to the three culprits is very
characteristic and instructive. Fixed determination to enforce his
mandate, anger which breaks into threats that were by no means idle, and
a certain wish to build a bridge for the escape of servants who had done
their work well, are curiously mingled in it. His question, best
rendered as in the Revised Version, 'Is it of purpose ... that ye' do so
and so? seems meant to suggest that they may repair their fault by
pleading inadvertence, accident, or the like, and that He will accept
the transparent excuse. The renewed offer of an opportunity of worship
does not say what will happen should they obey; and the omission makes
the clause more emphatic, as insisting on the act, and slurring over the
self-evident result.

On the other hand, in the next clause the act is slightly touched ('if
ye worship not'); and all the stress comes on the grim description of
the consequence. This monarch, who has been accustomed to bend men's
wills like reeds, tries to shake these three obstinate rebels by terror,
and opens the door of the furnace, as it were, to let them hear it roar.
He finishes with a flash of insolence which, if not blasphemy, at least
betrays his belief that he was stronger than any god of his conquered
subject peoples.

But the main point to notice in this speech is the unconscious
revelation of his real motive in demanding the act of worship. The
crime of the three was not that they worshipped wrongly, but that they
disobeyed Nebuchadnezzar. He speaks of 'my gods', and of the 'image
which I have set up.' Probably it was an image of the god of the
Babylonian pantheon whom he took for his special patron, and was erected
in commemoration of some victorious campaign.

At all events, the worship required was an act of obedience to him, and
to refuse it was rebellion. Idolatry is tolerant of any private opinions
about gods, and intolerant of any refusal to obey authority in worship.
So the early Christians were thrown to the lions, not because they
worshipped Jesus, but because they would not sacrifice at the Emperor's
command. It is not only heathen rulers who have confounded the spheres
of civil and religious obedience. Nonconformity in England was long
identified with disloyalty; and in many so-called Christian countries
to-day a man may think what he likes, and worship as he pleases in his
chamber, if only he will decently comply with authority and pretend to
unite in religious ceremonies, which those who appoint and practise them
observe with tongue in cheek.

But we may draw another lesson from this truculent apostle of his god.
He is not the only instance of apparent religious zeal which is at
bottom nothing but masterfulness. 'You shall worship my god, not because
he is God, but because he is mine.' That is the real meaning of a great
deal which calls itself 'zeal for the Lord.' The zealot's own will,
opinions, fancies, are crammed down other people's throats, and the
insult in not thinking or worshipping as he does, is worse in his eyes
than the offence against God.

The kind of furnace in which recusants are roasted has changed since
Nebuchadnezzar's time, and what is called persecution for religion is
out of fashion now. But every advance in the application of Christian
principle to social and civil life brings a real martyrdom on its
advocates. Every audacious refusal to bow to the habits or opinions of
the majority, is visited by consequences which only the martyr spirit
will endure. Despots have no monopoly of imperious intolerance. A
democracy is more cruel and more impatient of singularity, and
especially of religious singularity, than any despot.

England and America have no need to fear the old forms of religious
persecution. In both, a man may profess and proclaim any kind of
religion or of no religion. But in both, the advance guard of the
Christian Church, which seeks to apply Christ's teachings more rigidly
to individual and social life, has to face obloquy, ostracism,
misrepresentation, from the world and the fossil church, for not serving
their gods, nor worshipping the golden image which they have set up.
Martyrs will be needed and persecutors will exist till the world is
Christian.

How did the three confessors meet this rumble of thunder about their
ears? The quiet determination of their reply is very striking and
beautiful. It is perfectly loyal, and perfectly unshaken. 'We have no
need to answer thee' (Revised Version). 'It is ill sitting at Rome and
striving with the Pope.' Nebuchadnezzar's palace was not precisely the
place to dispute with Nebuchadnezzar; and as his logic was only 'Do as I
bid you, or burn,' the sole reply possible was, 'We will not do as you
bid, and we will burn.' The 'If' which is immediately spoken is already
in the minds of the speakers, when they say that _they_ do not need to
answer. They think that God will take up the taunt which ended the
king's tirade. Beautifully they are silent, and refer the blusterer to
God, whose voice they believe that He will hear in His deed. 'But Thou
shalt answer, Lord, for me,' is the true temper of humble faith, dumb
before power as a sheep before her shearers, and yet confident that the
meek will not be left unvindicated. Let us leave ourselves in God's
hands; and when conscience accuses, or the world maligns or threatens,
let us be still, and feel that we have One to speak for us, and so we
may hold our peace.

The rendering of verse 17 is doubtful, but the general meaning is clear.
The brave speakers have hope that God will rebuke the king's taunt, and
will prove Himself to be able to deliver out of his hand. So they repeat
his very words with singular boldness, and contradict him to his face.
They have no absolute certainty of deliverance, but whether it comes or
not will make no manner of difference to them. They have absolute
certainty as to duty; and so they look the furious tyrant right in the
eyes, and quietly say, 'We will not serve thy gods.' Nothing like that
had ever been heard in those halls.

Duty is sovereign. The obligation to resist all temptations to go
against conscience is unaffected by consequences. There may be hope that
God will not suffer us to be harmed, but whether He does or not should
make no difference to our fixed resolve. That temper of lowly faith and
inflexible faithfulness which these Hebrews showed in the supreme
moment, when they took their lives in their hands, may be as nobly
illustrated in the small difficulties of our peaceful lives. The same
laws shape the curves of the tiny ripples in a basin and of the Atlantic
rollers. No man who cannot say 'I will not' in the face of frowns and
dangers, be they what they may, and stick to it, will do his part, He
who has conquered regard for personal consequences, and does not let
them deflect his course a hairsbreadth, is lord of the world.

How small Nebuchadnezzar was by the side of his three victims! How empty
his threats to men who cared nothing whether they burned or not, so long
as they did not apostatise! What can the world do against a man who
says, 'It is all one to me whether I live or die; I will not worship at
your shrines?' The fire of the furnace is but painted flames to such an
one.

The savage punishment intended for the audacious rebels is abundantly
confirmed as common in Babylon by the inscriptions, which may be seen
quoted by many commentators. The narrative is exceedingly graphic. We
see the furious king, with features inflamed with passion. We hear his
hoarse, angry orders to heat the furnace seven times hotter, which he
forgot would be a mercy, as shortening the victims' agonies. We see the
swift execution of the commands, and the unresisting martyrs bound as
they stood, and dragged away by the soldiers to the near furnace, the
king following. Its shape is a matter of doubt. Probably the three were
thrown in from above, and so the soldiers were caught by the flames.

'And these three men ... fell down bound into the midst of the burning
fiery furnace' Their helplessness and desperate condition are
pathetically suggested by that picture, which might well be supposed to
be the last of them that mortal eyes would see. Down into the glowing
mass, like chips of wood into Vesuvius, they sank. The king sitting
watching, to glut his fury by the sight of their end, had some way of
looking into the core of the flames.

The story shifts its point of view with very picturesque abruptness
after verse 23. The vaunting king shall tell what he saw, and thereby
convict himself of insolent folly in challenging 'any god' to deliver
out of his hand. He alone seems to have seen the sight, which he tells
to his courtiers. The bonds were gone, and the men walking free in the
fire, as if it had been their element. Three went in bound, four walk
there at large; and the fourth is 'like a son of the gods,' by which
expression Nebuchadnezzar can have meant nothing more than he had
learned from his religion; namely, that the gods had offspring of
superhuman dignity. He calls the same person an angel in Daniel iii. 28.
He speaks there as the three would have spoken, and here as Babylonian
mythology spoke.

But the great lesson to be gathered from this miracle of deliverance is
simply that men who sacrifice themselves for God find in the sacrifice
abundant blessing. They may, or may not, be delivered from the external
danger. Peter was brought out of prison the night before his intended
martyrdom; James, the brother of John, was slain with the sword, but God
was equally near to both, and both were equally delivered from 'Herod
and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.' The disposal of
the outward event is in His hands, and is a comparatively small matter.
But no furnace into which a man goes because he will be true to God, and
will not yield up his conscience, is a tenth part so hot as it seems,
and it will do no real harm. The fire burns bonds, but not Christ's
servants, consuming many things that entangled, and setting them free.
'I will walk at liberty: for I seek Thy precepts'--even if we have to
walk in the furnace. No trials faced in obedience to God will be borne
alone. 'When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; ...
when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.'

The form which Nebuchadnezzar saw amid the flame, as invested with more
than human majesty, may have been but one of the ministering spirits
sent forth to minister to the martyrs--the embodiment of the divine
power which kept the flames from kindling upon them. But we have Jesus
for our Companion in all trials, and His presence makes it possible for
us to pass over hot ploughshares with unblistered feet; to bathe our
hands in fire and not feel the pain; to accept the sorest consequences
of fidelity to Him, and count them as 'not worthy to be compared with
the glory which shall be revealed,' and is made more glorious through
these light afflictions. A present Christ will never fail His servants,
and will make the furnace cool even when its fire is fiercest.


MENE, TEKEL, PERES

     'Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be to
     thyself, and give thy rewards to another: yet I will read the
     writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation.
     18. O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a
     kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour: 19. And for the
     majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages,
     trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he
     would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would
     he put down. 20. But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind
     hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they
     took his glory from him: 21. And he was driven from the sons of
     men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was
     with the wild asses: they fed him with grass like oxen, and his
     body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most
     high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over
     it whomsoever he will. 22. And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not
     humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this: 23. But hast
     lifted up thyself against the Lord of Heaven: and they have brought
     the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy
     wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast
     praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and
     stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand
     thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified:
     24. Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing
     was written. 25. And this is the writing that was written, 'MENE,
     MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.' 26. This is the interpretation of the
     thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. 27.
     TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. 28.
     PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
     29. Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with
     scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a
     proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in
     the kingdom. 30. In that night was Belshazzar the king of the
     Chaldeans slain. 31. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being
     about threescore and two years old.'--DANIEL v. 17-31.

Belshazzar is now conceded to have been a historical personage, the son
of the last monarch of Babylon, and the other name in the narrative
which has been treated as erroneous--namely, Darius--has not been found
to be mentioned elsewhere, but is not thereby proved to be a blunder.
For why should it not be possible for Scripture to preserve a name that
secular history has not yet been ascertained to record, and why must it
always be assumed that, if Scripture and cuneiform or other documents
differ, it is Scripture that must go to the wall?

We do not deal with the grim picture of the drunken orgy, turned into
abject terror as 'the fingers of a man's hand' came forth out of empty
air, and in the full blaze of 'the candlestick' wrote the illegible
signs. There is something blood-curdling in the visibility of but a
part of the hand and its busy writing. Whose was the body, and where was
it? No wonder if the riotous mirth was frozen into awe, and the wine
lost flavour. Nor need we do more than note the craven-hearted flattery
addressed to Daniel by the king, who apparently had never heard of him
till the queen spoke of him just before. We have to deal with the
indictment, the sentence, and the execution.

I. The indictment. Daniel's tone is noticeably stern. He has no
reverential preface, no softening of his message. His words are as if
cut with steel on the rock. He brushes aside the promises of vulgar
decorations and honours with undisguised contempt, and goes straight to
his work of rousing a torpid conscience.

Babylon was the embodiment and type of the godless world-power, and
Belshazzar was the incarnation of the spirit which made Babylon. So
Daniel's indictment gathers together the main forms of sin, which cleave
to every godless national or individual life. And he begins with that
feather-brained frivolity which will learn nothing by example.
Nebuchadnezzar's fate might have taught his successors what came of
God-forgetting arrogance, and attributing success to oneself; and his
restoration might have been an object-lesson to teach that devout
recognition of the Most High as sovereign was the beginning of a king's
prosperity and sanity. But Belshazzar knew all this, and ignored it all.
Was he singular in that? Is not the world full of instances of the ruin
that attends godlessness, which yet do not check one godless man in his
career? The wrecks lie thick on the shore, but their broken sides and
gaunt skeletons are not warnings sufficient to keep a thousand other
ships from steering right on to the shoals. Of these godless lives it
is true, 'This their way is their folly; yet their posterity approve
their sayings,' and their doings, and say and do them over again.
Incapacity to learn by example is a mark of godless lives.

Further, Belshazzar 'lifted up' himself 'against the Lord of heaven,'
and 'glorified not Him in whose hand was his breath and whose were all
his ways.' The very essence of all sin is that assertion of self as
Lord, as sufficient, as the director of one's path. To make myself my
centre, to depend on myself, to enthrone my own will as sovereign, is to
fly in the face of nature and fact, and is the mother of all sin. To
live to self is to die while we live; to live to God is to live even
while we die. Nations and individuals are ever tempted thus to ignore
God, and rebelliously to say, 'Who is Lord over us?' or presumptuously
to think themselves architects of their own fortunes, and sufficient for
their own defence. Whoever yields to that temptation has let the 'prince
of the devils' in, and the inferior evil spirits will follow. Positive
acts are not needed; the negative omission to 'glorify' the God of our
life binds sin on us.

Further, Belshazzar, the type of godlessness, had desecrated the
sacrificial vessels by using them for his drunken carouse, and therein
had done just what we do when we take the powers of heart and mind and
will, which are meant to be filled with affections, thoughts, and
purposes, that are 'an odour of a sweet smell, well-pleasing to God,'
and desecrate them by pouring from them libations before creatures. Is
not love profaned when it is lavished on men or women without one
reference to God? Is not the intellect desecrated when its force is
spent on finite objects of thought, and never a glance towards God? Is
not the will prostituted from its high vocation when it is used to drive
the wheels of a God-ignoring life?

The coin bears the image and superscription of the true king. It is
treason to God to render it to any paltry 'Cæsar' of our own coronation.
Belshazzar was an avowed idolater, but many of us are worshipping gods
'which see not, nor hear, nor know' as really as he did. We cannot but
do so, if we are not worshipping God; for men must have some person or
thing which they regard as their supreme good, to which the current of
their being sets, which, possessed, makes them blessed; and that is our
god, whether we call it so or not.

Further, Belshazzar was carousing while the Medes and Persians were
ringing Babylon round, and his hand should have been grasping a sword,
not a wine-cup. Drunkenness and lust, which sap manhood, are notoriously
stimulated by peril, as many a shipwreck tells when desperate men break
open the spirit casks, and go down to their death intoxicated, and as
many an epidemic shows when morality is flung aside, and mad vice rules
and reels in the streets before it sinks down to die. A nation or a man
that has shaken off God will not long keep sobriety or purity.

II. After the stern catalogue of sins comes the tremendous sentence.
Daniel speaks like an embodied conscience, or like an avenging angel,
with no word of pity, and no effort to soften or dilute the awful truth.
The day for wrapping up grim facts in muffled words was past. Now the
only thing to be done was to bare the sword, and let its sharp edge cut.
The inscription, as given in verse 25, is simply 'Numbered, numbered,
weighed and breakings.' The variation in verse 28 (Peres) is the
singular of the noun used in the plural in verse 25, with the omission
of 'U,' which is merely the copulative 'and.' The disjointed brevity
adds to the force of the words. Apparently, they were not written in a
character which 'the king's wise men' could read, and probably were in
Aramaic letters as well as language, which would be familiar to Daniel.
Of course, a play on the word 'Peres' suggests the _Persian_ as the
agent of the _breaking_. Daniel simply supplied the personal application
of the oracular writing. He fits the cap on the king's head. 'God hath
numbered _thy_ kingdom ... _thou_ art weighed ... _thy_ kingdom is
divided' (broken).

These three fatal words carry in them the summing up of all divine
judgment, and will be rung in the ears of all who bring it on
themselves. Belshazzar is a type of the end of every godless world-power
and of every such individual life. 'Numbered'--for God allows to each
his definite time, and when its sum is complete, down falls the knife
that cuts the threads. 'Weighed'--for 'after death the judgment,' and a
godless life, when laid in the balance which His hand holds, is
'altogether lighter than vanity.' 'Breakings'--for not only will the
godless life be torn away from its possessions with much laceration of
heart and spirit, but the man himself will be broken like some earthen
vessel coming into sharp collision with an express engine. Belshazzar
saw the handwriting on the same night in which it was carried out in
act; we see it long before, and we can read it. But some of us are mad
enough to sit unconcerned at the table, and go on with the orgy, though
the legible letters are gleaming plain on the wall.

III. The execution of the sentence need not occupy us long. Belshazzar
so little realised the facts, that he issued his order to deck out
Daniel in the tawdry pomp he had promised him, as if a man with such a
message would be delighted with purple robes and gold chains, and made
him third ruler of the kingdom which he had just declared was numbered
and ended by God. The force of folly could no further go. No wonder
that the hardy invaders swept such an Imbecile from his throne without a
struggle! His blood was red among the lees of the wine-cups, and the
ominous writing could scarcely have faded from the wall when the shouts
of the assailants were heard, the palace gates forced, and the
half-drunken king, alarmed too late, put to the sword. 'He that, being
often reproved, hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed, and that
without remedy.'


A TRIBUTE FROM ENEMIES

     Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this
     Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his
     God.'--DANIEL vi. 5.

Daniel was somewhere about ninety years old when he was cast to the
lions. He had been for many years the real governor of the whole empire;
and, of course, in such a position had incurred much hatred and
jealousy. He was a foreigner and a worshipper of another God, and
therefore was all the more unpopular, as a Brahmin would be in England
if he were a Cabinet Minister. He was capable and honest, and therefore
all the incompetent and all the knavish officials would recognise in him
their natural enemy. So, hostile intrigues, which grow quickly in
courts, especially in Eastern courts, sprung up round him, and his
subordinates laid their heads together in order to ruin him. They say,
in the words of my text, 'We cannot find any holes to pick. There is
only one way to put him into antagonism to the law, and that is by
making a law which shall be in antagonism to God's law.' And so they
scheme to have the mad regulation enacted, which, in the sequel of the
story, we find was enforced.

These intriguers say, 'We shall not find any occasion against this
Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.'

Now, then, if we look at that confession, wrung from the lips of
malicious observers, we may, I think, get two or three lessons.

I. First, note the very unfavourable soil in which a character of
singular beauty and devout consecration may be rooted and grow.

What sort of a place was that court where Daniel was? Half shambles and
half pigsty. Luxury, sensuality, lust, self-seeking, idolatry, ruthless
cruelty, and the like were the environment of this man. And in the
middle of these there grew up that fair flower of a character, pure and
stainless, by the acknowledgment of enemies, and in which not even
accusers could find a speck or a spot. There are no circumstances in
which a man must have his garments spotted by the world. However deep
the filth through which he has to wade, if God sent him there, and if he
keeps hold of God's hand, his purity will be more stainless by reason of
the impurity round him. There were saints in Cæsar's household, and
depend upon it, they were more saintly saints just because they were in
Cæsar's household. You will always find that people who have any
goodness in them, and who live in conditions unusually opposed to
goodness, have a clearer faith, and a firmer grasp of their Master, and
a higher ideal of Christian life, just because of the foulness in which
they have to live. It may sound a paradox, but it is a deep truth that
unfavourable circumstances are the most favourable for the development
of Christian character. For that development comes, not by what we draw
from the things around, but by what we draw from the soil in which we
are rooted, even God Himself, in whom the roots find both anchorage and
nutriment. And the more we are thrown back upon Him, and the less we
find food for our best selves in the things about us, the more likely is
our religion to be robust and thorough-going, and conscious ever of His
presence. Resistance strengthens muscles, and the more there is need for
that in our Christian lives, the manlier and the stronger and the better
shall we probably be. Let no man or woman say, 'If only circumstances
were more favourable, oh, what a saint I could be; but how can I be one,
with all these unfavourable conditions? How can a man keep the purity of
his Christian life and the fervour of his Christian communion amidst the
tricks and chicanery and small things of Manchester business? How can a
woman find time to hold fellowship with God, when all day long she is
distracted in her nursery with all these children hanging on her to look
after? How can we, in our actual circumstances, reach the ideal of
Christian character?'

Ah, brother, if the ideal's being realised depends on circumstances, it
is a poor affair. It depends on you, and he that has vitality enough
within him to keep hold of Jesus Christ, has thereby power enough within
him to turn enemies into friends, and unfavourable circumstances into
helps instead of hindrances. Your ship can sail wonderfully near to the
wind if you trim the sails rightly, and keep a good, strong grip on the
helm, and the blasts that blow all but in your face, may be made to
carry you triumphantly into the haven of your desire. Remember Daniel,
in that godless court reeking with lust and cruelty, and learn that
purity and holiness and communion with God do not depend on environment,
but upon the inmost will of the man.

II. Notice the keen critics that all good men have to face.

In this man's case, of course, their eyesight was mended by the
microscope of envy and malice. That is no doubt the case with some of us
too. But whether that be so or no, however unobtrusive and quiet a
Christian person's life may be, there will be some people standing
close by who, if not actually watching for his fall, are at least by no
means indisposed to make the worst of a slip, and to rejoice over an
inconsistency.

We do not need to complain of that. It is perfectly reasonable and
perfectly right. There will always be a tendency to judge men, who by
any means profess that they are living by the highest law, with a
judgment that has very little charity in it. And it is perfectly right
that it should be so. Christian people need to be trained to be
indifferent to men's opinions, but they also need to be reminded that
they are bound, as the Apostle says, to 'provide things honest in the
sight of all men.' It is a reasonable and right requirement that they
should 'have a good report of them that are without.' Be content to be
tried by a high standard, and do not wonder, and do not forget that
there are keen eyes watching your conduct, in your home, in your
relations to your friends, in your business, in your public life, which
would weep no tears, but might gleam with malicious satisfaction, if
they saw inconsistencies in you. Remember it, and shape your lives so
that they may be disappointed.

If a minister falls into any kind of inconsistency or sin, if a
professing Christian makes a bad failure in Manchester, what a talk
there is, and what a pointing of fingers! We sometimes think it is hard;
it is all right. It is just what should be meted out to us. Let us
remember that unslumbering tribunal which sits in judgment upon all our
professions, and is very ready to condemn, and very slow to acquit.

III. Notice, again, the unblemished record.

These men could find no fault, 'forasmuch as Daniel was faithful.'
Neither was there any error'--of judgment, that is,--'or
fault'--dereliction of duty, that is,--'found in him.' They were very
poor judges of his religion, and they did not try to judge that; but
they were very good judges of his conduct as prime minister, and they
did judge that. The world is a very poor critic of my Christianity, but
it is a very sufficient one of my conduct. It may not know much about
the inward emotions of the Christian life, and the experiences in which
the Christian heart expatiates and loves to dwell, but it knows what
short lengths, and light weights, and bad tempers, and dishonesty, and
selfishness are. And it is by our conduct, in the things that they and
we do together, that worldly men judge what we are in the solitary
depths where we dwell in communion with God. It is useless for
Christians to be talking, as so many of them are fond of doing, about
their spiritual experiences and their religious joy, and all the other
sweet and sacred things which belong to the silent life of the spirit in
God, unless, side by side with these, there is the doing of the common
deeds which the world is actually able to appraise in such a fashion as
to extort, even from them, the confession, 'We find no occasion against
this man.'

You remember the pregnant, quaint old saying, 'If a Christian man is a
shoeblack, he ought to be the best shoeblack in the parish.' If we call
ourselves Christians, we are bound, by the very name, to live in such a
fashion as that men shall have no doubt of the reality of our profession
and of the depth of our fellowship with Christ. It is by our common
conduct that they judge us. And the 'Christian Endeavourer' needs to
remember, whether he or she be old or young, that the best sign of the
reality of the endeavour is the doing of common things with absolute
rightness, because they are done wholly for Christ's sake.

It is a sharp test, and I wonder how many of us would like to go out
into the world, and say to all the irreligious people who know us, 'Now
come and tell me what the faults are that you have seen in me.' There
would be a considerable response to the invitation, and perhaps some of
us would learn to know ourselves rather better than we have been able to
do. 'We shall not find any occasion in _this_ Daniel'--I wonder if
they would find it in _that_ Daniel--'except we find it concerning
the law of his God.' There is a record for a man!

IV. Lastly, note obedient disobedience.

The plot goes on the calculation that, whatever happens, this man may be
trusted to do what his God tells him, no matter who tells him not to do
it. And so on that calculation the law, surely as mad a one as any
Eastern despot ever hatched, is passed that, for a given space of time,
nobody within the dominions of this king, Darius, is to make any
petition or request of any man or god, save of the king only. It was one
of the long series of laws that have been passed in order to be broken,
and being broken, might be an instrument to destroy the men that broke
it. It was passed with no intention of getting obedience, but only with
the intention of slaying one faithful man, and the plot worked according
to calculation.

What did it matter to Daniel what was forbidden or commanded? He needed
to pray to God, and nothing shall hinder him from doing that. And so,
obediently disobedient, he brushes the preposterous law of the poor,
shadowy Darius on one side, in order that he may keep the law of his
God.

Now I do not need to remind you how obedience to God has in the past
often had to be maintained by disobedience to law. I need not speak of
martyrs, nor of the great principle laid down so clearly by the apostle
Peter, 'We ought to obey God rather than man.' Nor need I remind you
that if a man, for conscience sake, refuses to render active obedience
to an unrighteous law, and unresistingly accepts the appointed penalty,
he is not properly regarded as a law-breaker.

If earthly authorities command what is clearly contrary to God's law, a
Christian is absolved from obedience, and cannot be loyal unless he is a
rebel. That is how our forefathers read constitutional obligations. That
is how the noble men on the other side of the Atlantic, fifty years ago,
read their constitutional obligations in reference to that devilish
institution of slavery. And in the last resort--God forbid that we
should need to act on the principle--Christian men are set free from
allegiance when the authority over them commands what is contrary to the
will and the law of God.

But all that does not touch us. But I will tell you what does touch us.
Obedience to God needs always to be sustained--in some cases more
markedly, in some cases less so--but always in some measure, by
disobedience to the maxims and habits of most men round about us. If
they say 'Do this,' and Jesus Christ says 'Don't,' then they may talk as
much as they like, but we are bound to turn a deaf ear to their
exhortations and threats.

    'He is a slave that dare not be
     In the right with two or three,'

as that peaceful Quaker poet of America sings.

And for us, in our little lives, the motto, 'This did not I, because of
the fear of the Lord,' is absolutely essential to all noble Christian
conduct. Unless you are prepared to be in the minority, and now and
then to be called 'narrow,' 'fanatic,' and to be laughed at by men
because you will not do what they do, but abstain and resist, then there
is little chance of your ever making much of your Christian profession.

These people calculated upon Daniel, and they had a right to calculate
upon him. Could the world calculate upon us, that we would rather go to
the lions' den than conform to what God and our consciences told us to
be a sin? If not, we have not yet learned what it means to be a
disciple. The commandment comes to us absolutely, as it came to the
servants in the first miracle, 'Whatsoever He saith unto you'--that, and
that only--'whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.'


FAITH STOPPING THE MOUTHS OF LIONS

     'Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him
     into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy
     God whom thou servest continually, He will deliver thee. 17. And a
     stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king
     sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords;
     that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel. 18. Then
     the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting: neither
     were instruments of musick brought before him: and his sleep went
     from him. 19. Then the king arose very early in the morning, and
     went in haste unto the den of lions. 20. And when he came to the
     den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king
     spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is
     thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from
     the lions? 21. Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for
     ever. 22. My God hath sent His angel, and hath shut the lions'
     mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before Him
     innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I
     done no hurt, 23. Then was the king exceeding glad for him, and
     commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So
     Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found
     upon him, because he believed in his God. 24. And the king
     commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and
     they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and
     their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all
     their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.
     25. Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages,
     that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. 26. I
     make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and
     fear before the God of Daniel: for He is the living God, and
     stedfast for ever, and His kingdom that which shall not be
     destroyed, and His dominion shall be even unto the end. 27. He
     delivereth and rescueth, and He worketh signs and wonders in heaven
     and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the
     lions. 28. So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in
     the reign of Cyrus the Persian.'--DANIEL vi. 16-28.

Daniel was verging on ninety when this great test of his faithfulness
was presented to him. He had been honoured and trusted through all the
changes in the kingdom, and, when the Medo-Persian conquest came, the
new monarch naturally found in him, as a foreigner, a more reliable
minister than in native officials. 'Envy doth merit as its shade
pursue,' and the crafty trick by which his subordinates tried to procure
his fall, was their answer to Darius's scheme of making him prime
minister. Our passage begins in the middle of the story, but the earlier
part will come into consideration in the course of our remarks.

I. We note, first, the steadfast, silent confessor and the weak king.
Darius is a great deal more conspicuous in the narrative than Daniel.
The victim of injustice is silent. He does not seem to have been called
on to deny or defend the indictment. His deed was patent, and the breach
of the law flagrant. He, too, was 'like a sheep before the shearers,'
dumb. His silence meant, among other things, a quiet, patient, fixed
resolve to bear all, and not to deny his God. Weak men bluster. Heroic
endurance has generally little to say. Without resistance, or a word,
the old man, an hour ago the foremost in the realm, is hauled off and
flung into the pit or den. It is useless and needless to ask its form.
The entrance was sealed with two seals, one the king's, one the
conspirators', that neither party might steal a march on the other.
Fellows in iniquity do not trust each other. So, down in the dark there,
with the glittering eyeballs of the brutes round him, and their growls
in his ears, the old man sits all night long, with peace in his heart,
and looking up trustfully, through the hole in the roof, to his
Protector's stars, shining their silent message of cheer.

The passage dwells on the pitiable weakness and consequent unrest of the
king. He had not yielded Daniel to his fate without a struggle, which
the previous narrative describes in strong language. 'Sore displeased,'
he 'set his heart' on delivering him, and 'laboured' to do so. The
curious obstacle, limiting even his power, is a rare specimen of
conservatism in its purest form. So wise were our ancestors, that
nothing of theirs shall ever be touched. Infallible legislators can make
immutable laws; the rest of us must be content to learn by blundering,
and to grow by changing. The man who says, 'I never alter my opinions,'
condemns himself as either too foolish or too proud to learn.

But probably, if the question had been about a law that was inconvenient
to Darius himself, or to these advocates of the constitution as it has
always been, some way of getting round it would have been found out. If
the king had been bold enough to assert himself, he could have walked
through the cobweb. But this is one of the miseries of yielding to evil
counsels, that one step taken calls for another. 'In for a penny, in for
a pound.' Therefore let us all take heed of small compliances, and be
sure that we can never say about any doubtful course, 'Thus far will I
go, and no farther.' Darius was his servants' servant when once he had
put his name to the arrogant decree. He did not know the incidence of
his act, and we do not know that of ours; therefore let us take heed of
the quality of actions and motives, since we are wholly incapable of
estimating the sweep of their consequences.

Darius's conduct to Daniel was like Herod's to John the Baptist and
Pilate's to Jesus. In all the cases the judges were convinced of the
victim's innocence, and would have saved him; but fear of others biassed
justice, and from selfish motives, they let fierce hatred have its way.
Such judges are murderers. From all come the old lessons, never too
threadbare to be dinned into the ears, especially of the young, that to
be weak is, in a world so full of temptation, the same as to be wicked,
and that he who has a sidelong eye to his supposed interest, will never
see the path of duty plainly.

What a feeble excuse to his own conscience was Darius's parting word to
Daniel! 'Thy God, whom thou servest continually, He will deliver thee!'
And was flinging him to the lions the right way to treat a man who
served God continually? Or, what right had Darius to expect that any god
would interfere to stop the consequences of his act, which he thus
himself condemned? We are often tempted to think, as he did, that a
divine intervention will come in between our evil deeds and their
natural results. We should be wiser if we did not do the things that,
by our own confession, need God to avert their issues.

But that weak parting word witnessed to the impression made by the
lifelong consistency of Daniel. He must be a good man who gets such a
testimony from those who are harming him. The busy minister of state had
done his political work so as to extort that tribute from one who had no
sympathy with his religion. Do we do ours in that fashion? How many of
our statesmen 'serve God continually' and obviously in their public
life?

What a contrast between the night passed in the lions' den and the
palace! 'Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage,' and
soft beds and luxurious delights of sense bring no ease to troubled
consciences. Daniel is more at rest, though his 'soul is among lions,'
than Darius in his palace. Peter sleeps soundly, though the coming
morning is to be his last. Better to be the victim than the doer of
injustice!

The verdict of nightly thoughts on daily acts is usually true, and if
our deeds do not bear thinking of 'on our beds,' the sooner we cancel
them by penitence and reversed conduct, the better. But weak men are
often prone to swift and shallow regrets, which do not influence their
future any more than a stone thrown into the sea makes a permanent gap.
Why should Darius have waited for morning, if his penitence had moved
him to a firm resolution to undo the evil done? He had better have
sprung from his bed, and gone with his guards to open the den in the
dark. Feeble lamentations are out of place when it is still time to act.

The hurried rush to the den in the morning twilight, and the 'lamentable
voice,' so unlike royal impassiveness, indicate the agitation of an
impulsive nature, accustomed to let the feeling of the moment sway it
unchecked. Absolute power tends to make that type of man. The question
thrown into the den seems to imply that its interior was not seen. If
so, the half-belief in Daniel's survival is remarkable. It indicates, as
before, the impression of steadfast devoutness made by the old man's
life, and also a belief that his God was possibly a true and potent
divinity.

Such a belief was quite natural, but it does not mean that Darius was
prepared to accept Daniel's God as his god. His religion was probably
elastic and hospitable enough to admit that other nations might have
other gods. But his thoughts about this 'living God' are a strange
medley. He is not sure whether He is stronger than the royal lions, and
he does not seem to feel that if a god delivers, his own act in
surrendering a favoured servant of such a god looks very black. A
half-belief blinds men to the opposition between their ways and God's,
and to the certain issue of their going in one direction and God in
another. If Daniel be delivered, what will become of Darius? But, like
most men, he is illogical, and that question does not seem to have
occurred to him. Surely this man may sit for a portrait of a weak,
passionate nature, in the feebleness of his resistance to evil, the half
hopes that wrong would be kept from turning out so badly as it promised,
the childish moanings over wickedness that might still have been mended,
and the incapacity to take in the grave, personal consequences of his
crime.

II. We next note the great deliverance. The king does not see Daniel,
and waits in sickening doubt whether any sound but the brutes' snarl at
the disturber of their feast will be heard. There must have been a sigh
of relief when the calm accents were audible from the unseen depth. And
what dignity, respect, faith, and innocence are in them! Even in such
circumstances the usual form of reverential salutation to the king is
remembered. That night's work might have made a sullen rebel of Daniel,
and small blame to him if he had had no very amiable feelings to Darius;
but he had learned faithfulness in a good school, and no trace of
returning evil for evil was in his words or tones.

The formal greeting was much more than a form, when it came up from
among the lions. It heaped coals of fire on the king's head, let us
hope, and taught him, if he needed the lesson, that Daniel's
disobedience had not been disloyalty. The more religion compels us to
disregard the authority and practices of others, the more scrupulously
attentive should we be to demonstrate that we cherish all due regard to
them, and wish them well. How simply, and as if he saw nothing in it to
wonder at, he tells the fact of his deliverance! 'My God has sent His
angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths.' He had not been able to say, as
the king did before the den was opened, 'Thy God will deliver thee'; but
he had gone down into it, knowing that He was able, and leaving himself
in God's care. So it was no surprise to him that he was safe.
Thankfulness, but not astonishment, filled his heart. So faith takes
God's gifts, however great and beyond natural possibility they may be;
for the greatest of them are less than the Love which faith knows to
move all things, and whatsoever faith receives is just like Him.

Daniel did not say, as Darius did, that he served God continually, but
he did declare his own innocency in God's sight and unimpeachable
fidelity to the king. His reference is probably mainly to his official
conduct; but the characteristic tone of the Old Testament saint is
audible, which ventured on professions of uprightness, accordant with
an earlier stage of revelation and religious consciousness, but scarcely
congruous with the deeper and more inward sense of sin produced by the
full revelation in Christ. But if the tone of the latter part of verse
22 is somewhat strange to us, the historian's summary in verse 23 gives
the eternal truth of the matter: 'No manner of hurt was found upon him,
because he had trusted in his God.' That is the basis of the reference
in Hebrews xi. 33: 'Through faith ... stopped the mouths of lions.'

Simple trust in God brings His angel to our help, and the deliverance,
which is ultimately to be ascribed to His hand muzzling the gaping
beasts of prey, may also be ascribed to the faith which sets His hand in
motion. The true cause is God, but the indispensable condition without
which God will not act, and with which He cannot but act, is our trust.
Therefore all the great things which it is said to do are due, not to
anything in it, but wholly to that of which it lays hold. A foot or two
of lead pipe is worth little, but if it is the channel through which
water flows into a city, it is priceless.

Faith may or may not bring external deliverances, such as it brought to
Daniel; but the good cheer which this story brings us does not depend on
these. When Paul lay in Rome, shortly before his martyrdom, the
experience of Daniel was in his mind, as he thankfully wrote to Timothy,
'I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.' He adds a hope which
contrasts strangely, at first sight, with the clear expectation of a
speedy and violent death, expressed a moment or two before ('I am
already being offered, and the time of my departure is come') when he
says, 'The Lord will deliver me from every evil work'; but he had
learned that it was possible to pass through the evil and yet to be
delivered from it, and that a man might be thrown to the lions and
devoured by them, and yet be truly shielded from all harm from them. So
he adds, 'And will save me unto His heavenly kingdom,' thereby teaching
us that the true deliverance is that which carries us into, or something
nearer towards, the eternal home. Thus understood, the miracle of
Daniel's deliverance is continually repeated to all who partake of
Daniel's faith, 'Thou hast made the Most High thy habitation ... thou
shalt tread upon the lion and adder.'

The savage vengeance on the conspirators and the proclamation of Darius
must be left untouched. The one is a ghastly example of retributive
judgment, in which, as sometimes is the case even now, men fall into the
pit they have digged for others, and it shows the barbarous cruelty of
that gorgeous civilisation. The other is an example of how far a man may
go in perceiving and acknowledging the truth without its influencing his
heart. The decree enforces recognition of Daniel's God, in language
which even prophets do not surpass; but it is all lip-reverence, as
evanescent as superficial. It takes more than a fright caused by a
miracle to make a man a true servant of the living God.

The final verse of the passage implies Daniel's restoration to rank, and
gives a beautiful, simple picture of the old man's closing days, which
had begun so long before, in such a different world as Nebuchadnezzar's
reign, and closed in Cyrus's, enriched with all that should accompany
old age--honour, obedience, troops of friends. 'When a man's ways please
the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.'


A NEW YEARS MESSAGE

     'But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and
     stand in thy lot at the end of the days.'--DANIEL xii. 13.

Daniel had been receiving partial insight into the future by the visions
recorded in previous chapters. He sought for clearer knowledge, and was
told that the book of the future was sealed and closed, so that no
further enlightenment was possible for him. But duty was clear, whatever
might be dark; and there were some things in the future certain,
whatever might be problematic. So he is bidden back to the common paths
of life, and is enjoined to pursue his patient course with an eye on the
end to which it conducts, and to leave the unknown future to unfold
itself as it may.

I do not need, I suppose, to point the application. Anticipations of
what may be before us have, no doubt, been more or less in the minds of
all of us in the last few days. The cast of them will have been very
different, according to age and present circumstances. But bright or
dark, hopes or dreads, they reveal nothing. Sometimes we think we see a
little way ahead, and then swirling mists hide all.

So I think that the words of my text may help us not only to apprehend
the true task of the moment, but to discriminate between the things in
the unknown future that are hidden and those that stand clear. There are
three points, then, in this message--the journey, the pilgrim's
resting-place, and the final home. 'Go thou thy way till the end be: for
thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.' Let us,
then, look at these three points briefly.

I. The journey.

That is a threadbare metaphor for life. But threadbare as it is, its
significance is inexhaustible. But before I deal with it, note that very
significant 'but' with which my text begins. The Prophet has been asking
for a little more light to shine on the dark unknown that stretches
before him. And his request is negatived--'_But_ go thou thy way.' In
the connection that means, 'Do not waste your time in dreaming about, or
peering into, what you can never see, but fill the present with
strenuous service.' 'Go thou thy way.' Never mind the far-off issues;
the step before you is clear, and that is all that concerns you. Plod
along the path, and leave to-morrow to take care of itself. There is a
piece of plain practical wisdom, none the less necessary for us to lay
to heart because it is so obvious and commonplace.

And then, if we turn to the emblem with which the continuity of daily
life and daily work is set forth here, as the path along which we
travel, how much wells up in the shape of suggestion, familiar, it may
be, but very needful and wholesome for us all to lay to heart!

The figure implies perpetual change. The landscape glides past us, and
we travel on through it. How impossible it would be for us older people
to go back to the feelings, to the beliefs, to the tone and the temper
with which we used to look at life thirty or forty years ago! Strangely
and solemnly, like the silent motion of some gliding scene in a theatre,
bit by bit, inch by inch, change comes over all surroundings, and,
saddest of all, in some aspects, over ourselves.

    'We all are changed, by still degrees,
     All but the basis of the soul.'

And it is foolish for us ever to forget that we live in a state of
things in which constant alteration is the law, as surely as, when the
train whizzes through the country, the same landscape never meets the
eye twice, as the traveller looks through the windows. Let us, then,
accept the fact that nothing abides with us, and so not be bewildered
nor swept away from our moorings, nor led to vain regrets and paralysing
retrospects when the changes that must come do come, sometimes slowly
and imperceptibly, sometimes with stunning suddenness, like a bolt out
of the blue. If life is truly represented under the figure of a journey,
nothing is more certain than that we sleep in a fresh hospice every
night, and leave behind us every day scenes that we shall never traverse
again. What madness, then, to be putting out eager and desperate hands
to clutch what must be left, and so to contradict the very law under
which we live!

Then another of the well-worn commonplaces which are so believed by us
all that we never think about them, and therefore need to be urged, as I
am trying, poorly enough, to do now--another of the commonplaces that
spring from this image is that life is continuous. Geologists used to be
divided into two schools, one of whom explained everything by invoking
great convulsions, the other by appealing to the uniform action of laws.
There are no convulsions in life. To-morrow is the child of to-day, and
yesterday was the father of this day. What we are, springs from what we
have been, and settles what we shall be. The road leads somewhither, and
we follow it step by step. As the old nursery rhyme has it--

    'One foot up and one foot down,
     That's the way to London town.'

We make our characters by the continual repetition of small actions. Let
no man think of his life as if it were a heap of unconnected points. It
is a chain of links that are forged together inseparably. Let no man
say, 'I do this thing, and there shall be no evil consequences impressed
upon my life as results of it.' It cannot be. 'To-morrow _shall be_ as
this day, and much more abundant.' We shall to-morrow be more of
everything that we are to-day, unless by some strong effort of
repentance and change we break the fatal continuity, and make a new
beginning by God's grace. But let us lay to heart this, as a very solemn
truth which lifts up into mystical and unspeakable importance the things
that men idly call trifles, that life is one continuous whole, a march
towards a definite end.

And therefore we ought to see to it that the direction in which our life
runs is one that conscience and God can approve. And, since the rapidity
with which a body falls increases as it falls, the more needful that we
give the right direction and impulses to the life. It will be a dreadful
thing if our downward course acquires strength as it travels, and being
slow at first, gains in celerity, and accrues to itself mass and weight,
like an avalanche started from an Alpine summit, which is but one or two
bits of snow and ice at first, and falls at last into the ravine, tons
of white destruction. The lives of many of us are like it.

Further, the metaphor suggests that no life takes its fitting course
unless there is continuous effort. There will be crises when we have to
run with panting breath and strained muscles. There will be long
stretches of level commonplace where speed is not needed, but 'pegging
away' is, and the one duty is persistent continuousness in a course. But
whether the task of the moment is to 'run and not be weary,' or to
'walk and not faint,' crises and commonplace stretches of land alike
require continuous effort, if we are to 'run with patience the race that
is set before us.'

Mark the emphasis of my text, 'Go thy way _till_ the end.' You, my
contemporaries, you older men! do not fancy that in the deepest aspect
any life has ever a period in it in which a man may 'take it easy.' You
may do that in regard to outward things, and it is the hope and the
reward of faithfulness in youth and middle age that, when the grey
hairs come to be upon us, we may slack off a little in regard to outward
activity. But in regard to all the deepest things of life, no man may
ever lessen his diligence until he has attained the goal.

Some of you will remember how, in a stormy October night, many years
ago, the _Royal Charter_ went down when three hours from Liverpool, and
the passengers had met in the saloon and voted a testimonial to the
captain because he had brought them across the ocean in safety. Until
the anchor is down and we are inside the harbour, we may be shipwrecked,
if we are careless in our navigation. 'Go thou thy way _until the end_.'
And remember, you older people, that until that end is reached you have
to use all your power, and to labour as earnestly, and guard yourself as
carefully, as at any period before.

And not only '_till_ the end,' but 'go thou thy way _to_ the end.' That
is to say, let the thought that the road has a termination be ever
present with us all. Now, there is a great deal of the so-called devout
contemplation of death which is anything but wholesome. People were
never meant to be always looking forward to that close. Men may think of
'the end' in a hundred different connections. One man may say, 'Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' Another man may say, 'I have only
a little while to master this science, to make a name for myself, to win
wealth. Let me bend all my efforts in a fierce determination--made the
fiercer because of the thought of the brevity of life--to win the end.'
The mere contemplation of the shortness of our days may be an ally of
immorality, of selfishness, of meanness, of earthly ambitions, or it may
lay a cooling hand on fevered brows, and lessen the pulsations of hearts
that throb for earth.

But whilst it is not wholesome to be always thinking of death, it is
more unwholesome still never to let the contemplation of that end come
into our calculations of the future, and to shape our lives in an
obstinate blindness to what is the one certain fact which rises up
through the whirling mists of the unknown future, like some black cliff
from the clouds that wreath around it. Is it not strange that the surest
thing is the thing that we forget most of all? It sometimes seems to me
as if the sky rained down opiates upon people, as if all mankind were in
a conspiracy of lunacy, because they, with one accord, ignore the most
prominent and forget the only certain fact about their future; and in
all their calculations do _not_' so number their days' as to 'apply'
their 'hearts unto wisdom.' 'Go thou thy way until the end,' and let thy
way be marked out with a constant eye towards the end.

II. Note, again, the resting-place.

'Go thou thy way, for thou shalt rest.' Now, I suppose, to most careful
readers that clearly is intended as a gracious, and what they call a
euphemistic way of speaking about death. 'Thou shalt rest'; well, that
is a thought that takes away a great deal of the grimness and the terror
with which men generally invest the close. It is a thought, of course,
the force of which is very different in different stages and conditions
of life. To you young people, eager, perhaps ambitious, full of the
consciousness of inward power, happy, and, in all human probability,
with the greater portion of your lives before you in which to do what
you desire, the thought of 'rest' comes with a very faint appeal. And
yet I do not suppose that there is any one of us who has not some burden
that is hard to carry, or who has not learned what weariness means.

But to us older people, who have tasted disappointments, who have known
the pressure of grinding toil for a great many years, whose hearts have
been gnawed by harassments and anxieties of different kinds, whose lives
are apparently drawing nearer their end than the present moment is to
their beginning, the thought, 'Thou shalt rest,' comes with a very
different appeal from that which it makes to these others.

    'There remaineth a rest for the people of God,
     And I have had trouble enough for one,'

says our great modern poet; and therein he echoes the deepest thoughts
of most of this congregation. That rest is the cessation of toil, but
the continuance of activity--the cessation of toil, and anxiety, and
harassment, and care, and so the darkness is made beautiful when we
think that God draws the curtain, as a careful mother does in her
child's chamber, that the light may not disturb the slumberer.

But, dear friends, that final cessation of earthly work has a double
character. 'Thou shalt rest' was said to this man of God. But what of
people whom death takes away from the only sort of work that they are
fit to do? It will be no rest to long for the occupations which you
never can have any more. And if you have been living for this wretched
present, to be condemned to have nothing to do any more in it and with
it will be torture, and not repose. Ask yourselves how you would like to
be taken out of your shop, or your mill, or your study, or your
laboratory, or your counting-house, and never be allowed to go into it
again. Some of you know how wearisome a holiday is when you cannot get
to your daily work. You will get a very long holiday after you are dead.
And if the hungering after the withdrawn occupation persists, there will
be very little pleasure in rest. There is only one way by which we can
make that inevitable end a blessing, and turn death into the opening of
the gate of our resting-place; and that is by setting our heart's
desires and our spirit's trust on Jesus Christ, who is the 'Lord both of
the dead and of the living.' If we do that, even that last enemy will
come to us as Christ's representative, with Christ's own word upon his
lip, 'Come unto Me, ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and
I'--because He has given Me the power--'_I_ will give you rest.'

    'Sleep, full of rest, from head to foot;
     Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.'


III. That leads me to the last thought, the home.

'Thou shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days.' 'Stand'--that is
Daniel's way of preaching, what he has been preaching in several other
parts of his book, the doctrine of the resurrection. 'Thou shalt stand
in _thy lot_.' That is a reference to the ancient partition of the land
of Canaan amongst the tribes, where each man got his own portion, and
sat under his own vine and fig-tree. And so there emerge from these
symbolical words thoughts upon which, at this stage of my sermon, I can
barely touch. First comes the thought that, however sweet and blessed
that reposeful state may be, humanity has not attained its perfection
until once again the perfected spirit is mated with, and enclosed
within, its congenial servant, a perfect body. 'Corporeity is the end of
man.' Body, soul, and spirit partake of the redemption of God.

But then, apart from that, on which I must not dwell, my text suggests
one or two thoughts. God is the true inheritance. Each man has his own
portion of the common possession, or, to put it into plainer words, in
that perfect land each individual has precisely so much of God as he is
capable of possessing. 'Thou shalt stand in thy lot,' and what
determines the lot is how we wend our way till that other end, the end
of life. 'The end of the days' is a period far beyond the end of the
life of Daniel. And as the course that terminated in repose has been, so
the possession of 'the portion of the inheritance of the saints in
light' shall be, for which that course has made men meet. Destiny is
character worked out. A man will be where he is fit for, and have what
he is fit for. Time is the lackey of eternity. His life here settles how
much of God a man shall be able to hold, when he stands in his lot at
the 'end of the days,' and his allotted portion, as it stretches around
him, will be but the issue and the outcome of his life here on earth.

Therefore, dear brethren, tremendous importance attaches to each
fugitive moment. Therefore each act that we do is weighted with eternal
consequences. If we will put our trust in Him, 'in whom also we obtain
the inheritance,' and will travel on life's common way in cheerful
godliness, we may front all the uncertainties of the unknown future,
sure of two things--that we shall rest, and that we shall stand in our
lot. We shall all go where we have fitted ourselves, by God's grace, to
go; get what we have fitted ourselves to possess; and be what we have
made ourselves. To the Christian man the word comes, 'Thou shalt stand
in thy lot.' And the other word that was spoken about one sinner, will
be fulfilled in all whose lives have been unfitting them for heaven:
'Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.' He,
too, stands in his lot. Now settle which lot is yours.

        *        *        *        *        *


HOSEA


THE VALLEY OF ACHOR

     'I will give her ... the valley of Achor for a door of
     hope.'--HOSEA II. 15.

The Prophet Hosea is remarkable for the frequent use which he makes of
events in the former history of his people. Their past seems to him a
mirror in which they may read their future. He believes that 'which is
to be hath already been,' the great principles of the divine government
living on through all the ages, and issuing in similar acts when the
circumstances are similar. So he foretells that there will yet be once
more a captivity and a bondage, that the old story of the wilderness
will be repeated once more. In that wilderness God will speak to the
heart of Israel. Its barrenness shall be changed into the fruitfulness
of vineyards, where the purpling clusters hang ripe for the thirsty
travellers. And not only will the sorrows that He sends thus become
sources of refreshment, but the gloomy gorge through which they
journey--the valley of Achor--will be a door of hope.

One word is enough to explain the allusion. You remember that after the
capture of Jericho by Joshua, the people were baffled in their first
attempt to press up through the narrow defile that led from the plain of
Jordan to the highlands of Canaan. Their defeat was caused by the
covetousness of Achan, who for the sake of some miserable spoil which he
found in a tent, broke God's laws, and drew down shame on Israel's ranks
When the swift, terrible punishment on him had purged the camp, victory
again followed their assault, and Achan lying stiff and stark below his
cairn, they pressed on up the glen to their task of conquest. The rugged
valley, where that defeat and that sharp act of justice took place, was
named in memory thereof, the valley of _Achor_, that is, _trouble_; and
our Prophet's promise is that as then, so for all future ages, the
complicity of God's people with an evil world will work weakness and
defeat, but that, if they will be taught by their trouble and will purge
themselves of the accursed thing, then the disasters will make a way for
hope to come to them again. The figure which conveys this is very
expressive. The narrow gorge stretches before us, with its dark
overhanging cliffs that almost shut out the sky; the path is rough and
set with sharp pebbles; it is narrow, winding, steep; often it seems to
be barred by some huge rock that juts across it, and there is barely
room for the broken ledge yielding slippery footing between the beetling
crag above and the steep slope beneath that dips so quickly to the black
torrent below. All is gloomy, damp, hard; and if we look upwards the
glen becomes more savage as it rises, and armed foes hold the very
throat of the pass. But, however long, however barren, however rugged,
however black, however trackless, we may see if we will, a bright form
descending the rocky way with radiant eyes and calm lips, God's
messenger, Hope; and the rough rocks are like the doorway through which
she comes near to us in our weary struggle. For us all, dear friends, it
is true. In all our difficulties and sorrows, be they great or small; in
our business perplexities; in the losses that rob our homes of their
light; in the petty annoyances that diffuse their irritation through so
much of our days; it is within our power to turn them all into occasions
for a firmer grasp of God, and so to make them openings by which a
happier hope may flow into our souls.

But the promise, like all God's promises, has its well-defined
conditions. Achan has to be killed and put safe out of the way first, or
no shining Hope will stand out against the black walls of the defile.
The tastes which knit us to the perishable world, the yearnings for
Babylonish garments and wedges of gold, must be coerced and subdued.
Swift, sharp, unrelenting justice must be done on the lust of the flesh,
and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, if our trials are ever
to become _doors of hope._ There is no natural tendency in the mere fact
of sorrow and pain to make God's love more discernible, or to make our
hope any firmer. All depends on how we use the trial, or as I say--first
stone Achan, and then hope!

So, the trouble which detaches us from earth gives us new hope.
Sometimes the effect of our sorrows and annoyances and difficulties is
to rivet us more firmly to earth. The eye has a curious power, which
they call persistence of vision, of retaining the impression made upon
it, and therefore of seeming to see the object for a definite time after
it has really been withdrawn. If you whirl a bit of blazing stick round,
you will see a circle of fire though there is only a point moving
rapidly in the circle. The eye has its memory like the soul. And the
soul has its power of persistence like the eye, and that power is
sometimes kindled into activity by the fact of loss. We often see our
departed joys, and gaze upon them all the more eagerly for their
departure. The loss of dear ones should stamp their image on our hearts,
and set it as in a golden glory. But it sometimes does more than that;
it sometimes makes us put the present with its duties impatiently away
from us. Vain regret, absorbed brooding over what is gone, a sorrow kept
gaping long after it should have been healed, like a grave-mound off
which desperate love has pulled turf and flowers, in the vain attempt to
clasp the cold hand below--in a word, the trouble that does not withdraw
us from the present will never be a door of hope, but rather a grim gate
for despair to come in at.

The trouble which knits us to God gives us new hope. That bright form
which comes down the narrow valley is His messenger and herald--sent
before His face. All the light of hope is the reflection on our hearts
of the light of God. Her silver beams, which shed quietness over the
darkness of earth, come only from that great Sun. If our hope is to grow
out of our sorrow, it must be because our sorrow drives us to God. It is
only when we by faith stand in His grace, and live in the conscious
fellowship of peace with Him, that we rejoice in hope. If we would see
Hope drawing near to us, we must fix our eyes not on Jericho that lies
behind among its palm-trees, though it has memories of conquests, and
attractions of fertility and repose, nor on the corpse that lies below
that pile of stones, nor on the narrow way and the strong enemy in front
there; but higher up, on the blue sky that spreads peaceful above the
highest summits of the pass, and from the heavens we shall see the angel
coming to us. Sorrow forsakes its own nature, and leads in its own
opposite, when sorrow helps us to see God. It clears away the thick
trees, and lets the sunlight into the forest shades, and then in time
corn will grow. Hope is but the brightness that goes before God's face,
and if we would see it we must look at Him.

The trouble which we bear rightly with God's help, gives new hope. If we
have made our sorrow an occasion for learning, by living experience,
somewhat more of His exquisitely varied and ever ready power to aid and
bless, then it will teach us firmer confidence in these inexhaustible
resources which we have thus once more proved, 'Tribulation worketh
patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.' That is the
order. You cannot put patience and experience into a parenthesis, and
omitting them, bring hope out of tribulation. But if, in my sorrow, I
have been able to keep quiet because I have had hold of God's hand, and
if in that unstruggling submission I have found that from His hand I
have been upheld, and had strength above mine own infused into me, then
my memory will give the threads with which Hope weaves her bright web. I
build upon two things--God's unchangeableness, and His help already
received; and upon these strong foundations I may wisely and safely
rear a palace of Hope, which shall never prove a castle in the air. The
past, when it is God's past, is the surest pledge for the future.
Because He has been with us in six troubles, therefore we may be sure
that in seven He will not forsake us. I said that the light of hope was
the brightness from the face of God. I may say again, that the light of
hope which fills our sky is like that which, on happy summer nights,
lives till morning in the calm west, and with its colourless, tranquil
beauty, tells of a yesterday of unclouded splendour, and prophesies a
to-morrow yet more abundant. The glow from a sun that is set, the
experience of past deliverances, is the truest light of hope to light
our way through the night of life.

One of the psalms gives us, in different form, a metaphor and a promise
substantially the same as that of this text. 'Blessed are the men who,
passing through the valley of weeping, make it a well.' They gather
their tears, as it were, into the cisterns by the wayside, and draw
refreshment and strength from their very sorrows, and then, when thus we
in our wise husbandry have irrigated the soil with the gathered results
of our sorrows, the heavens bend over us, and weep their gracious tears,
and 'the rain also covereth it with blessings.' No chastisement for the
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it
yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.'

Then, dear friends, let us set ourselves with our loins girt to the
road. Never mind how hard it may be to climb. The slope of the valley of
trouble is ever upwards. Never mind how dark is the shadow of death
which stretches athwart it. If there were no sun there would be no
shadow; presently the sun will be right overhead, and there will be no
shadow then. Never mind how black it may look ahead, or how frowning the
rocks. From between their narrowest gorge you may see, if you will, the
guide whom God has sent you, and that Angel of Hope will light up all
the darkness, and will only fade away when she is lost in the sevenfold
brightness of that upper land, whereof our 'God Himself is Sun and
Moon'--the true Canaan, to whose everlasting mountains the steep way of
life has climbed at last through valleys of trouble, and of weeping, and
of the shadow of death.


'LET HIM ALONE'

     'Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.'--HOSEA iv. 17.

The tribe of Ephraim was the most important member of the kingdom of
Israel; consequently its name was not unnaturally sometimes used in a
wider application for the whole of the kingdom, of which it was the
principal part. Being the 'predominant partner,' its name was used alone
for that of the whole firm, just as in our own empire, we often say
'England,' meaning thereby the three kingdoms: England, Scotland, and
Ireland. So 'Ephraim' here does not mean the single tribe, but the whole
kingdom of Israel.

Now Hosea himself was a Northerner, a subject of that kingdom; and its
iniquities and idolatries weighed heavily on his heart, and were ripped
up and brought to light with burning eloquence in his prophecies. The
words of my text have often, and terribly, been misunderstood. And I
wish now to try to bring out their true meaning and bearing. They have a
message for us quite as much as they had for the people who originally
received them.

I. I must begin by explaining what, in my judgment, this text does not
mean.

First, it is not what it is often taken to be, a threatening of God's
abandoning of the idolatrous nation. I dare say we have all heard grim
sermons from this text, which have taken that view of it, and have tried
to frighten men into believing now, by telling them that, perhaps, if
they do not, God will never move on their hearts, or deal with them any
more, but withdraw His grace, and leave them to insensibility. There is
not a word of that sort in the text. Plainly enough it is not so, for
this vehement utterance of the Prophet is not a declaration as to God,
and what He is going to do, but it is a commandment to some men, telling
them what _they_ are to do. 'Let him alone' does not mean the same thing
as '_I_ will let him alone'; and if people had only read with a little
more care, they would have been delivered from perpetrating a libel on
the divine loving-kindness and forbearance.

It is clear enough, too, that such a meaning as that which has been
forced upon the words of my text, and is the common use of it, I
believe, in many evangelical circles, cannot be its real meaning,
because the very fact that Hosea was prophesying to call Ephraim from
his sin showed that God had _not_ let Ephraim alone, but was wooing him
by His prophet, and seeking to win him back by the words of his mouth.
God was doing all that He could do, rising early and sending His
messenger and calling to Ephraim: 'Turn ye! Turn ye! why will ye die?'
For Hosea, in the very act of pleading with Israel on God's behalf, to
have declared that God had abandoned it, and ceased to plead, would have
been a palpable absurdity and contradiction.

But beyond considerations of the context, other reasons conclusively
negative such an interpretation of this text. I, for my part, do not
believe that there are any bounds or end to God's forbearing pleading
with men in this life. I take, as true, the great words of the old
Psalm, in their simplest sense--'His mercy endureth for ever'; and I
fall back upon the other words which a penitent had learned to be true
by reflecting on the greatness of his own sin: 'With Him are multitudes
of redemptions'; and I turn from psalmists and prophets to the Master
who showed us God's heart, and knew what He spake when He laid it down
as the law and the measure of human forgiveness which was moulded upon
the pattern of the divine, that it should be 'seventy times seven'--the
multiplication of both the perfect numbers into themselves--than which
there can be no grander expression for absolute innumerableness and
unfailing continuance.

No, no! men may say to God, 'Speak no more to us'; or they may get so
far away from Him, as that they only hear God's pleading voice, dim and
faint, like a voice in a dream. But surely the history of His
progressive revelation shows us that, rather than such abandonment of
the worst, the law of the divine dealing is that the deafer the man, the
more piercing the voice beseeching and warning. The attraction of
gravitation decreases as distance increases, but the further away we are
from Him, the stronger is the attraction which issues from Him, and
would draw us to Himself.

Clear away, then, altogether out of your minds any notion that there is
here declared what, in my judgment, is not declared anywhere in the
Bible, and never occurs in the divine dealings with men. Be sure that He
never ceases to seek to draw the most obstinate, idolatrous, and
rebellious heart to Himself. That divine charity 'suffereth long, and is
kind' ... 'hopeth all things, and beareth all things.'

Again, let me point out that the words of my text do not enjoin the
cessation of the efforts of Christian people for the recovery of the
most deeply sunken in sin. 'Let him alone' is a commandment, and it is a
commandment to God's Church, but it is not a commandment to despair of
any that they may be brought into the fold, or to give up efforts to
that end. If our Father in heaven never ceases to bear in His heart His
prodigal children, it does not become those prodigals, who have come
back, to think that any of their brethren are too far away to be drawn
by their loving proclamation of the Father's heart of love.

_There_ is the glory of our Gospel, that, taking far sadder, graver
views of what sin and alienation from God are, than the world's
philosophers and philanthropists do, it surpasses them just as much as
in the superb confidence with which it sets itself to the cure of the
disease as in the unflinching clearness with which it diagnoses the
disease as fatal, if it be not dealt with by the all-healing Gospel. All
other methods for the restoration and elevation of mankind are compelled
to recognise that there is an obstinate residuum that will not and
cannot be reached by their efforts. It used to be said that some old
cannon-balls, that had been brought from some of the battlefields of the
Peninsula, resisted all attempts to melt them down; so there are
'cannon-balls,' as it were, amongst the obstinate evil-doers, and the
degraded and 'dangerous' classes, which mark the despair of our modern
reformers and civilisers and elevators, for no fire in their furnaces
can melt down their hardness. No; but there is the furnace of the Lord
in Jerusalem, and the fire of God in Zion, which can melt them down, and
has done so a hundred and a thousand times, and is as able to do it
again to-day as it ever was. Despair of no human soul. That boundless
confidence in the power of the Gospel is the duty of the Christian
Church. 'The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth!' They laughed Him to
scorn, knowing that she was dead. But He put out His hand, and said unto
her '_Talitha cumi_, I say unto thee, Arise!' When we stand on one side
of the bed with your social reformers on the other, and say 'The damsel
is not dead, but sleepeth,' they laugh us to scorn, and bid us try our
Gospel upon these people in our slums, or on those heathens in the New
Hebrides. We have the right to answer, 'We have tried it, and man after
man, and woman after woman have risen from the sick-bed, like Peter's
wife's mother; and the fever has left them, and they have ministered
unto Him. There are no people in the world about whom Christians need
despair, none that Christ's Gospel cannot redeem. Whatever my text
means, it does not mean cowardly and unbelieving doubt as to the power
of the Gospel on the most degraded and sinful.

II. So, the text enjoins on the Christian Church separation from an
idolatrous world.

'Ephraim is joined to idols.' Do you 'let him alone.' Now, there has
been much harm done by misreading the force of the injunction of
separation from the world. There is a great deal of union and
association with the most godless people in our circle, which is
inevitable. Family bonds, business connections, civic obligations--all
these require that the Church shall not withdraw from the world. There
is the wide common ground of Politics and Art and Literature, and a
hundred other interests, on which it does Christian men no good, and the
world much harm, if the former withdraw to themselves, and on the plea
of superior sanctity, leave these great departments of interest and
influence to be occupied only by non-Christians.

Then, besides these thoughts of necessary union and association upon
common ground, there is the other consideration that absolute separation
would defeat the very purpose for which Christian people are here. 'Ye
are the salt of the earth,' said Christ. Yes, and if you keep the meat
on one plate and the salt on another, what good will the salt be? It has
to be rubbed in particle by particle, and brought into contact over all
the surface, and down into the depths of the meat that it is to preserve
from putrefaction. And no Christian churches or individuals do their
duty, and fulfil their function on earth, unless they are thus closely
associated and intermingled with the world that they should be trying to
leaven and save. A cloistered solitude, or a proud standing apart from
the ordinary movements of the community, or a neglect, on the plea of
our higher duties, of the duties of the citizen of a free country--these
are not the ways to fulfil the exhortation of my text. 'Let the dead
bury their dead,' said Christ; but He did not mean that His Church was
to stand apart from the world, and let it go its own way. It is a bad
thing for both when little Christian côteries gather themselves
together, and talk about their own goodness and religion, and leave the
world to perish. Clotted blood is death; circulated, it is life.

But, whilst all this is perfectly true--and there are associations that
we must not break if we are to do our work as Christian people--it is
also true that it is possible, in the closest unions with men who do not
share our faith, to do the same thing that they are doing, with a
difference which separates us from them, even whilst we are united with
them. They tell us that, however dense any material substance may seem
to be, there is always a film of air between contiguous particles. And
there should be a film between us and our Christless friends and
companions and partners, not perceptible perhaps to a superficial
observer, but most real. If we do our common work as a religious duty,
and in the exercise of all our daily occupations 'set the Lord always
before' us, however closely we may be associated with people who do not
so live, they will know the difference; never fear! And you will know
the difference, and will not be identified with them, but separate in a
wholesome fashion from them.

And, dear brethren, if I may go a step further, I would venture to say
that it seems to me that our Christian communities want few things more
in this day than the reiteration of the old saying, 'Have no fellowship
with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.' There
is so much in this time to break down the separation between him that
believeth in Christ and him that doth not; narrowness has come to be
thought such an enormous wickedness, and liberality is so lauded by all
sorts of superficial people, that Christian men need to be summoned back
to their standard. 'Being let go, they went to their own company'--there
is a natural affinity which should, and will, if our faith is vital,
draw us to those who, on the gravest and solemnest things, have the same
thoughts, the same hopes, the same faith. I do not urge you, God knows,
to be bigoted and narrow, and shut yourselves up in your faith, and
leave the world to go to the devil; but I do not wish, either, that
Christian people should fling themselves into the arms and nestle in the
hearts of persons who do not share with them 'like precious faith.'

I am sure that there are many Christian people, old and young, who are
suffering in their religious life because they are neglecting this
commandment of my text. 'Let him alone.' There can be no deep affection,
and, most of all--if I may venture on such ground--no wedded love worth
the name, where there is not unanimity in regard to the deepest matters.
It does not say much for the religion of a professing Christian who
finds his heart's friends and his chosen companions in people that have
no sympathy with the religion which he professes. It does not say much
for you if it is so with you, for the Christian, whom you like least, is
nearer you in the depths of your true self than is the non-Christian
whom you love most.

Be sure, too, that if we mix ourselves up with Ephraim, we shall find
ourselves grovelling beside him before his idols ere long. Godlessness
is infectious. Many a young woman, a professing Christian, has married a
godless man in the fond hope that she might win him. It is a great deal
more frequently the case that he perverts her than that she converts
him. Do not let us knit ourselves in these close bonds with the
worshippers of idols, lest we 'learn their ways, and get a snare into
our souls.' 'Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. What fellowship
hath light with darkness? Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye
separate, saith the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a
Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and My daughters.'


'PHYSICIANS OF NO VALUE'

     'When Ephralm saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went
     Ephraim to Assyria, and sent to king Jareb: but he is not able to
     heal you, neither shall he cure you of your wound.'--HOSEA v. 13
     (R.V.).

The long tragedy which ended in the destruction of the Northern Kingdom
by Assyrian invasion was already beginning to develop in Hosea's time.
The mistaken politics of the kings of Israel led them to seek an ally
where they should have dreaded an enemy. As Hosea puts it in figurative
fashion, Ephraim's discovery of his 'sickness' sent him in the vain
quest for help to the apparent source of the 'sickness,' that is to
Assyria, whose king in the text is described by a name which is not his
real name, but is a significant epithet, as the margin puts it, 'a king
that should contend'; and who, of course, was not able to heal nor to
cure the wounds which he had inflicted. Ephraim's suicidal folly is but
one illustration of a universal madness which drives men to seek for the
healing of their misery, and the alleviation of their discomfort, in
the repetition of the very acts which brought these about. The attempt
to get relief in such a fashion, of course, fails; for as the verse
before our text emphatically proclaims, it is God who has been 'as a
moth unto Ephraim,' gnawing away his strength: and it is only He who can
heal, since in reality it is He, and not the quarrelsome king of
Assyria, who has inflicted the sickness.

Thus understood, the text carries wide lessons, and may serve us as a
starting-point for considering man's discovery of his 'sickness,' man's
mad way of seeking healing, God's way of giving it.

I. First, then, man's discovery of his sickness.

The greater part of most lives is spent in mechanical, unreflecting
repetition of daily duties and pleasures. We are all apt to live on the
surface, and it requires an effort, which we are too indolent to make
except under the impulse of some arresting motive, to descend into the
depths of our own souls, and there to face the solemn facts of our own
personality. The last place with which most of us are familiar, is our
innermost self. Men are dimly conscious that things within are not well
with them; but it is only one here and there that says so distinctly to
himself, and takes the further step of thoroughly investigating the
cause. But that superficial life is at the mercy of a thousand
accidents, each one of which may break through the thin film, and lay
bare the black depths.

But there is another aspect of this discovery of sickness, far graver
than the mere consciousness of unrest. Ephraim does not see his sickness
unless he sees his sin. The greater part of every life is spent without
that deep, all-pervading sense of discord between itself and God. Small
and recurrent faults may evoke recurring remonstrances of conscience,
but that is a very different thing from the deep tones and the clear
voice of condemnation in respect to one's whole life and character which
sounds in a heart that has learned how 'deceitful and desperately
wicked' it is. Such a conviction may flash upon a man at any moment, and
from a hundred causes. A sorrow, a sunset-sky, a grave, a sermon, may
produce it.

But even when we have come to recognise clearly our unrest, we have gone
but part of the way, we have become conscious of a symptom, not of the
disease. Why is it that man is alone among the creatures in that
discontent with externals, and that dissatisfaction with himself? 'Foxes
have holes, and the birds of the air have roosting-places': why is it
that amongst all God's happy creatures, and God's shining stars, men
stand 'strangers in a strange land,' and are cursed with a restlessness
which has not 'where to lay its head'? The consciousness of unrest is
but the agitation of the limbs which indicates disease. That disease is
the twitching paralysis of sin. Like 'the pestilence that walketh in
darkness,' it has a fell power of concealing itself, and the man whose
sins are the greatest is always the least conscious of them. He dwells
in a region where the malaria is so all-pervading that the inhabitants
do not know what the sweetness of an unpoisoned atmosphere is. If there
is a 'worst man' in the world, we may be very sure that no conscience is
less troubled than his is.

So the question may well be urged on those so terribly numer

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/15836