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Woman in Sacred History

by Harriet Beecher Stowe · English · Gutenberg #48872 · 378,660 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Woman in Sacred History

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe


        
Release date: May 4, 2015 [eBook #48872]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN IN SACRED HISTORY ***

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       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: Mary the Mother of our Lord]




  WOMAN
  IN
  SACRED HISTORY:

  A SERIES OF SKETCHES
  _DRAWN FROM SCRIPTURAL, HISTORICAL, AND LEGENDARY SOURCES_.

  BY
  HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

  Illustrated with Sixteen Chromo-Lithographs,

  AFTER PAINTINGS BY RAPHAEL, BATONI, HORACE VERNET, GOODALL,
  LANDELLE, KOEHLER, PORTAËLS, VERNET-LECOMTE, BAADER, MERLE,
  AND BOULANGER: PRINTED BY MONROCQ, FROM STONES EXECUTED BY
  JEHENNE, PARIS.

  [Illustration: logo]

  NEW YORK:
  J. B. FORD AND COMPANY.
  1874.




  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
  BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANY,
  in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.




CONTENTS.


INTRODUCTION.


I. WOMEN OF THE PATRIARCHAL AGES.

  1. SARAH THE PRINCESS.

  2. HAGAR THE SLAVE.

  3. REBEKAH THE BRIDE.

  4. LEAH AND RACHEL.


II. WOMEN OF THE NATIONAL PERIOD.

   5. MIRIAM, SISTER OF MOSES.

   6. DEBORAH THE PROPHETESS.

   7. DELILAH THE DESTROYER.

   8. JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER.

   9. HANNAH THE PRAYING MOTHER.

  10. RUTH THE MOABITESS.

  11. THE WITCH OF ENDOR.

  12. QUEEN ESTHER.

  13. JUDITH THE DELIVERER.


III. WOMEN OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

  14. THE MYTHICAL MADONNA.

  15. MARY THE MOTHER OF JESUS.

  16. THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.

  17. THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.

  18. MARY MAGDALENE.

  19. MARTHA AND MARY.




THE ILLUSTRATIONS

OF THIS VOLUME.


The notable characters among the women of Bible history present so
attractive and variable a theme for pictorial representation, that
they have been several times grouped in book form, both in Europe
and America, within the past twenty years. The freshness of the
present publication, therefore, consists not in the subject but in
its mode of treatment.

In seeking material to illustrate Mrs. Stowe's interesting sketches,
two purposes have been kept in view: first, the securing of a
series of pictures which, by a judicious selection among different
schools and epochs of art, might give a more original and less
conventional presentation of the characters than could be had were
all the illustrations conceived by the same mind, or executed
by the same hand; and, secondly, the choice of such pictorial
subjects as were well adapted to reproduction in colors, so as to
represent as perfectly as possible, by the rapidly maturing art of
chromo-lithography, the real ideas of the painters. The guiding
principles of selection have been _aptness of design_ and a rich
_variety of effect_.

It will be seen that, in pursuit of this purpose, some pictures
of world-wide renown have been here reproduced in whole or in
part,--the desirable being always limited by the practicable;
examples of these are the beautiful "Magdalen" of BATONI, and the
main portion of that most wonderful of all pictures, the "Sistine
Madonna" of RAPHAEL. The only possible excuse for mutilating this
glorious design is the desire to give some slight idea of its
color-effect to thousands who have known it only through engravings,
and who could never know it otherwise, unless in some such way as
this. Among our illustrations are copies of celebrated paintings
of more modern date, by the great painters of France, Germany, and
England;--such as PAUL DELAROCHE'S graceful scene on the Nile, where
Miriam watches little Moses, exposed in the bullrushes; HORACE
VERNET'S terrible "Judith"; BAADER'S remorseless "Delilah"; and
GOODALL'S lovely picture of "Mary, the Mother of Our Lord," with
her offering of two doves in the Temple. Of still another class
are those which have been adapted, because of their appositeness,
to illustrate subjects which they were not originally painted
for: of these, LANDELLE'S "Fellah Woman," well shows the Oriental
style and youthful sweetness of "Rebekah" at the fountain, and the
"Dancing-Girl" of VERNET-LECOMTE may fairly represent the costume
and beauty of Salome, the "Daughter of Herodias." In addition to
these varieties, the sixteen plates include several which were
designed and painted expressly for this work. One of the most
pleasing is "Ruth," by DEVEDEUX of Paris. It is accounted also a
peculiar advantage that the "Queen Esther" and the "Martha and
Mary"--two very striking and effective pictures--are from the studio
of BOULANGER, who shares with Gérome the highest eminence as a
delineator of the peculiar and beautiful features of the Orient.

In order to give some idea of the care taken in the reproduction of
these subjects, it may be stated that (except where the original
paintings themselves were accessible) in every case an accurate copy
in oils was painted by a skillful artist, and this, together with
photographs from the original pictures, the best impressions of
the best engravings, etc., formed the basis on which Jehenne, the
artist-lithographer, founded his conscientious work. Each subject
is produced by a series of color-printings, the average number of
stones to each picture being fifteen. The delicacy and difficulty of
this art may be the better appreciated by remembering that, while
the painter has always at hand his palette, with its numberless
pigments of color and shades of color, for the patient elaboration
of the picture, the lithographer has to analyze the work which
has thus grown up by infinite touches under the painter's brush,
and must study to concentrate as much as possible the effects of
each single color in a single stone,--which can print or touch the
picture but once. The final effect is of course produced by the
superposition of colors and shades of color one upon another; but
the art which can thus transfer the painter's minute and painful
toil to the breadth and rapidity of mechanical reproduction, making
accessible to thousands the designs in form and ideas in color of
the creating genius, instead of leaving them imprisoned in the
single copy which only the rich purchaser may possess,--this is also
a true art, and claims the recognition of true lovers of art.

Below is given a descriptive list of the subjects, pictures, and
artists of the illustrations in the present publication.


No. I. _Mary, the Mother of our Lord._ FRED. GOODALL (England, b.
1822).

This presentation of the Virgin, going into the temple with her
offering of two doves, is one of the most delicate and beautiful
of the entire series. The exceeding simplicity of design and of
coloring gives it an effect of purity, while the face is tender,
thoughtful, and in every way attractive. The softness of the drapery
and the gentle gradations of light are especial features.

II. _Hagar and Ishmael._ CHRISTIAN KOEHLER (Werben, Germany, b.
1809; d. 1861).

This picture is strong and expressive rather than attractive. The
depth of the greenish-blue sky and the barrenness of the indicated
landscape give an intensity to the desolateness of the mother,
clasping the form of her sturdy and unconscious little outcast son.
The original painting is now in the Civic Gallery, at Düsseldorf, on
the Rhine. It was painted at Leinwald in 1843.

III. _Rebekah._ CHARLES LANDELLE (Laval, France, b. 1815).

This is one of those charming subjects which the enterprise and
graceful art of the French have brought from the Orient. The
original painting (1866) is entitled "Femme Fellah," and represents
one of the women of the Nubian tribe of Fellahs, resting at the well
before taking up the earthen jar which she has just filled with
water. This lovely face and figure may well be used to illustrate
the maidenly grace of "Rebekah at the Fountain."

IV. _Leah and Rachel._ JEAN FRANÇOIS PORTAËLS (Vilvorde, Belgium, b.
1820).

Leah the "tender-eyed" became the wife of Jacob seven years before
he attained the hand of his chosen love, Rachel the "beautiful." And
with this, the picture must tell its own story.

V. _Miriam and Moses._ PAUL DELAROCHE (France, b. 1797; d. 1856).

This is one of the most famous designs of one of the most fertile
artists of France. The original painting has been often engraved,
but its freshness and beauty are best shown by reproducing its soft
and delicate coloring. The careful sister, watching through the
rushes, and the indistinct form of the mother on the bank above, are
in exquisite contrast to the quietude of the babe in his basket on
the waters of the placid Nile.

VI. _Deborah._ CHARLES LANDELLE (Laval, France, b. 1815).

This is one of the adaptations spoken of above. The original
painting represents Velleda, the Prophetess of the Gallic Druids.
The grand form, noble face, and inspired attitude of the original
figure have been scrupulously retained, the background only being
somewhat modified, the better to suggest the _locale_ of the
Israelitish prophetess.

VII. _Delilah._ LOUIS MARIE BAADER (Lannion, France).

A most ungrateful and ungracious subject, but one portrayed with
singular strength and concentration of purpose, amid a studious
interest of detail, in this effective picture. The cold, hard look
of the face, and the unrelenting will expressed by the slender but
steady arm and the supporting hand, half buried in the cushion,
instantly attract attention, while the harmonious variety of color
in the accessory draperies and furniture of the strange apartment
supports the interest of the central figure without detracting from
its power.

VIII. _Jephtha's Daughter._ HUGUES MERLE. (St. Marcelin, France).

This illustration of the stern chieftain's daughter among the
mountains with her companions, bewailing the desolate fate to which
she was devoted, is an adaptation from one of MERLE'S beautiful
pictures. This artist is noted for his success in depicting young
girls and children. The general expression of face, figure, and
surroundings, mark the aptness of this design for its present use.

IX. _Ruth._ LOUIS DEVEDEUX (Paris, France).

The author of this charming fancy of the gentle and faithful
Moabite, which was painted for this volume, is one of the rising and
already recognized painters of France, having taken several medals
under the severe critical awards of the French annual _Salon_. The
tender grace and modesty of both face and figure are enhanced by the
delicacy of the color.

X. _Queen Esther._ HENRI-ALEXANDRE ERNEST BOULANGER (Paris, France,
b. 1815).

Having just returned from one of his trips to the Orient, whither
he had gone with his brilliant _confrère_ GÉROME, to refill his
portfolio with new faces and costumes and scenes, to be wrought up
into new pictures, MONS. BOULANGER was fortunately able to respond
promptly to the demand for two original designs and paintings for
the present work. "Queen Esther" is one of these. The proud and
serene beauty of the face, the dignity of the form and bearing, and
the simple richness of the costume make this a notable picture. And,
although the background is devoid of everything save the sombre
shadow which gives relief to the figure, the imagination easily
supplies the haughty king, the throng of courtiers, and the crowd of
suppliant Jews behind their queen.

XI. _Judith._ HORACE VERNET (France, b. 1789; d. 1863).

Artists have always been fond of this strong subject, but none have
so well succeeded in rendering the beauty of the intrepid Jewess,
combined with her resolution and force of character. The horror of
the old woman, who holds the dreadful basket to receive the head,
is finely contrasted with the superb sternness of Judith's face and
action, just as the illuminated, gorgeous tapestry of the tyrant's
tent is rebuked by the quiet sky and the steady shining of the
stars. It is a grand composition, and most effective in coloring.

XII. _The Sistine Madonna._ RAPHAEL SANZIO (Urbino, Italy, b. 1483;
d. 1520).

Originally painted as an altar-piece for the Sistine Chapel, in the
Vatican at Rome (whence its name), this grand picture is now in the
Dresden Gallery. The painting has, below the Virgin's figure, to
the right and left, the kneeling figures of Saint Barbara and Pope
Gregory the Sixth, under whose reign both the chapel and the picture
were produced. The halo about the Virgin and Infant is filled with
indistinct cherub faces, and at the very bottom, apart from the
main design, are the two cherubs which appear in the plate. The
original design is necessarily shorn of many of these details in the
combination given, but the more important portions of the painting
are well shown.

XIII. _The Daughter of Herodias._ EMIL VERNET-LECOMTE (Paris,
France, b. 1821).

As stated in the remarks prefatory to this list, the plate taken
to represent the Oriental type of beauty, and one at least of the
costumes of her class, is LECOMTE'S "L'Almée" (Dancing-Girl).
Travelers in the East find by investigation so little change of
dress or manners, boats, houses, tools, instruments, or modes of
life in any form, from those of twenty centuries ago, that we need
not go far astray in taking a dancing-girl of the present day in
that ancient land, to suggest the dress which the daughter of
Herodias possibly assumed, in order to please the puissant king
and gain by his favor the request of her revengeful mother. The
plate presents also, from the simple view-point of art, a pleasing
picture. (Original painted in 1866.)

XIV. _The Woman of Samaria._ EMIL VERNET-LECOMTE (Paris, France, b.
1821).

This is another of that artist's admirable Eastern subjects, and
has been deemed a singularly apposite illustration of the woman at
the well, to whom Jesus talked. The easy poise of the figure, the
steadiness of the head and right hand, and the strength of the face,
indicate the self-reliance and confidence of a woman who had seen
much of life; while the listless forgetfulness of the left hand,
holding the water-jar, and the earnest gaze of the eyes show the
awakened mind and fixed attention of the listener.

XV. _Mary Magdalene._ POMPEO GIROLAMO BATONI (Lucca, Italy, b. 1708;
d. 1781).

This beautiful design and admirable piece of color is one of the
pictures that the world keeps alive in constant reproduction. It
is one of the few paintings which fairly compete with the masters
of the sixteenth century on their own ground; for, though it is a
picture of the eighteenth century, painted during the decadence of
European, and especially of Italian art, it is very much after the
style of the older artists, and is brought into direct comparison
with the similar expression of this subject by Correggio, in the
same gallery at Dresden. Every student knows that it easily holds
its own in the competition, if, indeed, it does not bear away the
palm.

XVI. _Martha and Mary._ HENRI-ALEXANDRE ERNEST BOULANGER (Paris,
France, b. 1815).

Of the entire list of illustrations taken from modern paintings,
perhaps no one is more thoroughly original and effective than this;
the hand of a master is to be seen in every line. The rich beauty
and spirited action of Martha, the serene repose of Mary's figure,
the sweetness of her face and the quietude of her look under the
fiery reproaches of the elder sister, the characteristic contrast
of color in the dresses of the two, the suggested coolness of the
vine-embowered porch, and the general harmony of line, design, and
color, are well worthy of observation. The fact that it was designed
for this volume by the great Orientalist gives to the picture an
especial value and interest.




WOMAN IN SACRED HISTORY.




INTRODUCTION.


The object of the following pages will be to show, in a series of
biographical sketches, a history of WOMANHOOD UNDER DIVINE CULTURE,
tending toward the development of that high ideal of woman which we
find in modern Christian countries.

All the characters comprised in these sketches belong to one
nationality. They are of that mysterious and ancient race whose
records begin with the dawn of history; who, for centuries, have
been sifted like seed through all the nations of the earth, without
losing either their national spirit or their wonderful physical and
mental vigor.

By this nation the Scriptures, which we reverence, were written and
preserved. From it came all the precepts and teachings by which our
lives are guided in things highest and holiest; from it came He who
is at once the highest Ideal of human perfection and the clearest
revelation of the Divine.

We are taught that the Creator revealed himself to man, not at
once, but by a _system_ progressively developing from age to age.
Selecting one man, he made of his posterity a sacerdotal nation,
through which should gradually unfold a religious literature, and
from which should come a succession of religious teachers, and the
final development, through Jesus, of a religion whose ultimate
triumphs should bring complete blessedness to the race.

In tracing the Bible narrative from the beginning, it is interesting
to mark the effect of this great movement in its relation to women.
The characters we have selected will be arranged for this purpose
in a series, under the following divisions:--

    I. WOMEN OF THE PATRIARCHAL AGES.
   II. WOMEN OF THE NATIONAL PERIOD.
  III. WOMEN OF THE CHRISTIAN PERIOD.

We understand by the patriarchal period the interval between the
calling of Abraham and the public mission of Moses. The pictures of
life at this time are interesting, because they give the clearest
idea of what we may call the raw material on which the educational
system of the Divine Being began to work. We find here a state of
society the elements of which are in some respects peculiarly simple
and healthful, and in others exhibiting the imperfections of the
earth's childhood. Family affection appears to be the strongest
force in it, yet it is family affection with the defects of an
untaught, untrained morality. Polygamy, with its well-known evils,
was universal in the world. Society was broken into roving tribes,
and life was a constant battle, in which artifice and deception were
the only refuge of the quiet and peace-loving spirit. Even within
the bounds of the family, we continually find fraud, artifice, and
deception. Men and women, in that age of the world, seem to have
practiced deceit and spoken lies, as children do, from immaturity
and want of deep reflection. A certain childhood of nature, however,
is the redeeming charm in all these pictures. There is an honest
simplicity in the narrative, which refreshes us like the talk of
children.

We have been so long in the habit of hearing the Bible read in
solemn, measured tones, in the hush of churches, that we are apt to
forget that these men and women were really flesh and blood, of the
same human nature with ourselves. A factitious solemnity invests
a Bible name, and some good people seem to feel embarassed by the
obligation to justify all the proceedings of patriarchs and prophets
by the advanced rules of Christian morality. In this respect, the
modern fashion of treating the personages of sacred story with the
same freedom of inquiry as the characters of any other history has
its advantages. It takes them out of a false, unnatural light,
where they lose all hold on our sympathies, and brings them before
us as real human beings. Read in this way, the ancient sacred
history is the purest naturalism, under the benevolent guidance of
the watchful Father of Nations.

Pascal very wisely says, "The whole succession of men during the
long course of ages ought to be considered as a single man, who
exists and learns from age to age." Considered in this light, it
is no more difficult to conceive of an infinite Father tolerating
an imperfect childhood of morals in the whole human race, than in
each individual of that race. The patriarchs are to be viewed as
the first pupils in the great training-school whence the world's
teachers in morals were to come, and they are shown to us in all
the crudity of early pupilage. The great virtue of which they
are presented as the pattern is the virtue of the child and the
scholar--FAITH.

Faith, the only true reason for weak and undeveloped natures,
was theirs, and as the apostle says, "it was counted to them for
righteousness." However imperfect and uncultured one may be, if he
has implicit trust in an infallible teacher, he is in the way of all
attainment.

The faith of which Abraham is presented as the example is not the
blind, ignorant superstition of the savage. Not a fetish, not a
selfish trust in a Patron Deity for securing personal advantages,
but an enlightened, boundless trust in the Supreme power, wisdom,
and rectitude. "The Judge of all the earth will _do right_." In
this belief, Abraham trusts him absolutely. To him he is willing to
surrender the deepest and dearest hopes of his life, and sacrifice
even the son in whom center all the nerves of joy and hope,
"accounting," as the Apostle tells us, "that God was able to raise
him from the dead."

Nor was this faith bounded by the horizon of this life. We are
informed by the Apostle Paul, who certainly well understood the
traditions of his nation, that Abraham looked forward to the same
heavenly home which cheers the heart of the Christian. "By faith
Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should
after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not
knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of
promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac
and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: _for he looked
for a city that hath foundations_, whose builder and maker is God.
They--the patriarchs--desired a better country, even an heavenly:
wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God." (Heb. xi.
8-10, 16.)

We are further told that this faith passed as a legacy through the
patriarchal families to the time of Moses, and that the inspiring
motive of his life was the invisible God and the future world beyond
the grave. "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to
be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer
affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of
sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches
than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense
of reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of
the great king; for he endured as seeing him who is invisible."
(Heb. xi. 24-27.) It has been blindly asserted that the hope of a
future life was no part of the working force in the lives of these
ancient patriarchs. Certainly, no one ever sacrificed more brilliant
prospects of things seen and temporal, for the sake of things unseen
and eternal, than Moses.

Finally, one remarkable characteristic of all these old patriarchs
was the warmth of their affections. Differing in degree as to
moral worth, they were all _affectionate_ men. So, after all that
Christianity has done for us, after all the world's growth and
progress, we find no pictures of love in family life more delicate
and tender than are given in these patriarchal stories. No husband
could be more loyally devoted to a wife than Abraham; no lover
exhibit less of the eagerness of selfish passion and more of
enduring devotion than Jacob, who counted seven years of servitude
as nothing, for the love he bare his Rachael; and, for a picture of
parental tenderness, the story of Joseph stands alone and unequalled
in human literature.

In the patriarchal families, as here given, women seem to have
reigned as queens of the interior. Even when polygamy was
practiced, the monogamic affection was still predominant. In the
case of Abraham and Jacob, it appears to have been from no wandering
of the affections, but from a desire of offspring, or the tyranny of
custom, that a second wife was imposed.

Female chastity was jealously guarded. When a young prince seduced
Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, although offering honorable marriage,
with any amount of dowry, the vengeance of the brothers could only
be appeased by blood; and the history of Joseph shows that purity
was regarded as a virtue in man as well as in woman. Such, then,
was the patriarchal stock,--the seed-form of the great and chosen
nation. Let us now glance at the influences which nourished it
through the grand growth of the prophetic or national period, up to
the time of its consummate blossom and fruit in the Christian era.

Moses was the great lawgiver to mold this people into a nation.
His institutes formed a race of men whose vital force has outlived
conquest, persecution, dispersion, and every possible cause
which could operate to destroy a nationality; so that, even to
our time, talent and genius spring forth from the unwasted vigor
of these sons and daughters of Abraham. The remarkable vigor
and vitality of the Jewish race, their power of adaptation to
every climate, and of bearing up under the most oppressive and
disadvantageous circumstances, have attracted the attention of the
French government, and two successive commissions of inquiry, with
intervals of three or four years between, have been instituted, "on
the causes of the health and longevity of the Jewish race."

In the "Israelite" of February 9, 1866, we have, on this subject,
the report of M. Legoyt, chief of a division of the ministry of
commerce and public works, one of the first statisticians of France.
He says: "We have seen that all the documents put together are
affirmative of an exceptional vitality of the Jews. How can this
phenomenon be explained? Dietrici, after having demonstrated its
existence in Prussia, thinks it is to be attributed to greater
temperance, a better regulated life, and purer morals. This is
likewise the opinion of Drs. Neufville, Glatter, and Meyer. Cases
of drunkenness, says Dietrici, frequent among the Christians, occur
very rarely among the Jews. This regularity and discipline, and
greater self-control, of Jewish life is confirmed by the criminal
statistics of Prussia, which show fewer Jews condemned for crime."

M. Legoyt goes on to account for this longevity and exceptional
vitality of the Jews by the facts of their family life: that early
marriages are more common; that great care is taken to provide for
the exigencies of marriage; that there are fewer children born, and
thus they are better cared for; that family feeling is more strongly
developed than in other races; that the Jewish mother is the nurse
of her own infant, and that great care and tenderness are bestowed
on young children.

It is evident that the sanitary prescriptions of the Mosaic law
have an important bearing on the health. If we examine these laws
of Moses, we shall find that they consist largely in dietetic and
sanitary regulations, in directions for detecting those diseases
which vitiate the blood, and removing the subjects of them from
contact with their fellows.

But the greatest peculiarity of the institutes of Moses is their
care of family life. They differed from the laws of all other
ancient nations by making the family the central point of the state.
In Rome and Greece, and in antiquity generally, the ruling purpose
was war and conquest. War was the normal condition of the ancient
world. The state was for the most part a camp under martial law, and
the interests of the family fared hardly. The laws of Moses, on the
contrary, contemplated a peaceful community of land-holders, devoted
to agriculture and domestic life. The land of Canaan was divided
into homesteads; the homestead was inalienable in families, and
could be sold only for fifty years, when it reverted again to the
original heirs. All these regulations gave a quality of stability
and perpetuity to the family. We have also some striking laws which
show how, when brought into immediate comparison, family life is
always considered the first; for instance, see Deuteronomy xxiv.
5: "When a man hath taken a new wife he shall not go out to war,
neither shall he be charged with any business; but he shall be free
at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken."
What can more strongly show the delicate care of woman, and the high
regard paid to the family, than this? It was more important to be a
good husband and make his wife happy than to win military glory or
perform public service of any kind.

The same regard for family life is shown, in placing the father and
the mother as joint objects of honor and veneration, in the Ten
Commandments: "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may
be long in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee." Among the
Greeks, the wife was a nonentity, living in the seclusion of the
women's apartments, and never associated publicly with her husband
as an equal. In Rome, the father was all in all in the family, and
held the sole power of life and death over his wife and children.
Among the Jews, the wife was the co-equal queen of the home, and was
equally honored and obeyed with her husband. Lest there should be
any doubt as to the position of the mother, the command is solemnly
reiterated, and the mother placed first in order: "And the Lord
spake to Moses, speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them,
Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Ye shall fear
every man his MOTHER and his father. I am the Lord." (Lev. xix.
3.) How solemn is the halo of exaltation around the mother in this
passage, opened with all the authority of God,--calling to highest
holiness, and then exalting the mother and the father as, next to
God, objects of reverence!

Family government was backed by all the authority of the state,
but the power of life and death was not left in the parents'
hands. If a son proved stubborn and rebellious, utterly refusing
domestic discipline, then the father and the mother were to unite
in bringing him before the civil magistrates, who condemned him to
death. But the _mother_ must appear and testify, before the legal
act was accomplished, and thus the power of restraining the stronger
passions of the man was left with her.

The laws of Moses also teach a degree of delicacy and consideration,
in the treatment of women taken captives in war, that was
unparalleled in those ages. With one consent, in all other ancient
nations, the captive woman was a slave, with no protection for
chastity. Compare with this the spirit of the law of Moses: "If
thou seest among thy captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire
unto her that thou wouldst have her to wife, then thou shalt bring
her to thy house, and she shall remain in thy house and bewail her
father and mother a full month; and after that thou shalt go in
unto her and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife." Here is
consideration, regard to womanly feeling, and an opportunity for
seeking the affection of the captive by kindness. The law adds,
furthermore, that if the man change his mind, and do not wish to
marry her after this time for closer acquaintance, then he shall
give her her liberty, and allow her to go where she pleases: "Thou
shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise
of her, because thou hast humbled her."

The laws of Moses did not forbid polygamy, but they secured to the
secondary wives such respect and attention as made the maintenance
of many of them a matter of serious difficulty. Everywhere we find
Moses interposing some guard to the helplessness of the woman,
softening and moderating the harsh customs of ancient society in
her favor. Men were not allowed to hold women-servants merely for
the gratification of a temporary passion, without assuming the
obligations of a husband. Thus we find the following restraint on
the custom of buying a handmaid or concubine: "If a man sell his
daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out to work as
the men-servants do, and, if she please not her master which hath
betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed; he
shall have no power to sell her unto a stranger, seeing he hath
dealt deceitfully with her. And if he have betrothed her to his
son, he shall deal with her as a daughter. And if he take another
wife, her food and her raiment, and her duty of marriage shall he
not diminish. And if he do not these three things unto her, then
shall she go out free without money." (Ex. xxi. 7.) This law, in
fact, gave to every concubine the rights and immunities of a legal
wife, and in default of its provisions she recovered her liberty.
Thus, also, we find a man is forbidden to take two sisters to wife,
and the feelings of the first wife are expressly mentioned as the
reason: "Thou shalt not take unto thy wife her sister to vex her
during her lifetime."

In the same manner it was forbidden to allow personal favoritism
to influence the legal rights of succession belonging to children
of different wives. (Deut. xxi. 15.) "If a man have two wives, one
beloved and the other hated, and they have both borne him children,
and if the firstborn son be hers that is hated, then, when he
maketh his sons to inherit, he may not make the son of the beloved
firstborn, but he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the
firstborn."

If a man slandered the chastity of his wife before marriage, she
or her relations had a right to bring him before a tribunal of the
elders, and, failing to substantiate his accusations, he was heavily
fined and the right of divorce taken from him.

By thus hedging in polygamy with the restraints of serious
obligations and duties, and making every concubine a wife, entitled
to claim all the privileges of a wife, Moses prepared the way for
its gradual extinction. For since it could not be a mere temporary
connection involving no duty on the man's part, since he could
not sell or make merchandise of the slave when he was tired of
her, since the children had a legal claim to support,--it became a
serious matter to increase the number of wives. The kings of Israel
were expressly forbidden to multiply wives; and the disobedience
of Solomon, who followed the custom of Oriental sovereigns, is
mentioned with special reprobation, as calling down the judgments of
God upon his house.

The result of all this was, that in the course of time polygamy fell
into disuse among the Jews; and, after the Babylonian captivity,
when a more strenuous observance of the laws of Moses was enforced,
it almost entirely ceased.[1] In the time of Christ and the
Apostles, the Jews had become substantially a monogamic nation.

  [1] Michaelis, Laws of Moses, III. 5, § 95.

Another peculiarity in the laws of Moses is the equality of the
treatment of man and woman. Among other nations, adultery was
punished severely in the wife, and lightly, if at all, in the
husband. According to the Jewish law, it was punished by the death
of both parties. If a man seduced a girl, he was obliged to marry
her; and forcible violation was punished by death.

While in many other nations, prostitution, in one form or other,
formed part of the services of the temple and the revenues of the
state, it was enacted that the wages of such iniquity should not
be received into the treasury of the Lord; and, finally, it was
enjoined that there should be no prostitute among the daughters of
Israel. (Deut. xxiii. 17, 18.)

In all that relates to the details of family life, the laws of Moses
required great temperance and government of the passions; and,
undoubtedly, these various restraints and religious barriers raised
by the ceremonial law around the wife and mother are one great
reason of the vigor of the Jewish women and the uncorrupted vitality
of the race.

The law of Moses on divorce, though expressly spoken of by Christ
as only a concession or adaptation to a low state of society, still
was, in its day, on the side of protection to women. A man could
not put his wife out of doors at any caprice of changing passion: a
legal formality was required, which would, in those times, require
the intervention of a Levite to secure the correctness of the
instrument. This would bring the matter under the cognizance of
legal authority, and tend to check the rash exercise of the right
by the husband. The final result of all this legislation, enforced
from age to age by Divine judgments, and by the warning voices of
successive prophets, was, that the Jewish race, instead of sinking
into licentiousness, and losing stamina and vigor, as all the other
ancient nations did, became essentially a chaste and vigorous
people, and is so to this day.

The comparison of the literature of any ancient nation with that of
the Jews strikingly demonstrates this. The uncleanness and obscenity
of much of the Greek and Roman literature is in wonderful contrast
to the Jewish writings in the Bible and Apocrypha, where vice is
never made either ludicrous or attractive, but mentioned only with
horror and reprobation.

If we consider now the variety, the elevation, and the number of
female characters in sacred history, and look to the corresponding
records of other nations, we shall see the results of this culture
of women. The nobler, the heroic elements were developed among the
Jewish women by the sacredness and respect which attached to family
life. The veneration which surrounded motherhood, and the mystic
tradition coming down through the ages that some Judæan mother
should give birth to the great Saviour and Regenerator of mankind,
consecrated family life with a devout poetry of emotion. Every
cradle was hallowed by the thought of that blessed child who should
be the hope of the world.

Another cause of elevation of character among Jewish women was their
equal liability to receive the prophetic impulse. A prophet was,
by virtue of his inspiration, a public teacher, and the leader of
the nation,--kings and magistrates listened to his voice; and this
crowning glory was from time to time bestowed on women.

We are informed in 2 Kings xxii. 14, that in the reign of King
Josiah, when a crisis of great importance arose with respect to
the destiny of the nation, the king sent a deputation of the chief
priests and scribes to inquire of the word of the Lord from Huldah
the prophetess, and that they received her word as the highest
authority. This was while the prophet Jeremiah was yet a young man.

The prophetess was always a poetess, and some of the earliest
records of female poetry in the world are of this kind. A lofty
enthusiasm of patriotism also distinguishes the Jewish women, and
in more than one case in the following sketches we shall see them
the deliverers of their country. Corresponding to these noble women
of sacred history, what examples have we in polished Greece? The
only women who were allowed mental culture--who studied, wrote, and
enjoyed the society of philosophers and of learned men--were the
courtesans. For chaste wives and mothers there was no career and no
record.

In the Roman state we see the influence upon woman of a graver style
of manhood and a more equal liberty in the customs of society. In
Rome there were sacred women, devoted to religion, and venerated
accordingly. They differed, however, from the inspired women of
Jewish history in being entirely removed from the experiences of
family life. The vestal virgins were bound by cruel penalties
to a life of celibacy. So far as we know, there is not a Jewish
prophetess who is not also a wife, and the motherly character is
put forward as constituting a claim to fitness in public life. "I,
Deborah, arose a mother in Israel." That pure ideal of a sacred
woman springing from the bosom of the family, at once wife, mother,
poetess, leader, inspirer, prophetess, is peculiar to sacred
history.




WOMEN OF THE PATRIARCHAL AGES.




SARAH THE PRINCESS.


One woman in the Christian dispensation has received a special
crown of honor. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, mother of the Jewish
nation, is to this day an object of traditional respect and homage
in the Christian Church. Her name occurs in the marriage service as
an example for the Christian wife, who is exhorted to meekness and
obedience by St. Peter, "Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him
lord; whose daughters ye are, so long as ye do well, and are not
subject to a slavish fear."

In turning to the narrative of the Old Testament, however, we
are led to feel that in setting Sarah before wives as a model
of conjugal behavior, no very alarming amount of subjection or
submission is implied.

The name Sarah means "princess"; and from the Bible story we
infer that, crowned with the power of eminent beauty, and fully
understanding the sovereignty it gave her over man, Sarah was
virtually empress and mistress of the man she called "lord." She
was a woman who understood herself and him, and was too wise to
dispute the title when she possessed the reality of sway; and while
she called Abraham "lord," it is quite apparent from certain little
dramatic incidents that she expected him to use his authority in the
line of her wishes.

In going back to these Old Testament stories, one feels a ceaseless
admiration of the artless simplicity of the primitive period of
which they are the only memorial. The dew of earth's early morning
lies on it, sparkling and undried; and the men and women speak out
their hearts with the simplicity of little children.

In Abraham we see the man whom God designed to be the father of
a great sacerdotal nation; through whom, in the fullness of time,
should come the most perfect revelation of himself to man, by Jesus
Christ. In choosing the man to found such a nation, the Divine
Being rejected the stormy and forcible characters which command
the admiration of rude men in early ages, and chose one of gentler
elements.

Abraham was distinguished for a loving heart, a tender domestic
nature, great reverence, patience, and fidelity, a childlike
simplicity of faith, and a dignified self-possession. Yet he was not
deficient in energy or courage when the event called for them. When
the warring tribes of the neighborhood had swept his kinsman, Lot,
into captivity, Abraham came promptly to the rescue, and, with his
three hundred trained servants, pursued, vanquished, and rescued.
Though he loved not battle, when roused for a good cause he fought
to some purpose.

Over the heart of such a man, a beautiful, queenly woman held
despotic sway. Traveling with her into the dominions of foreign
princes, he is possessed by one harassing fear. The beauty of this
woman,--will it not draw the admiration of marauding powers? And
shall I not be murdered, or have her torn from me? And so, twice,
Abraham resorts to the stratagem of concealing their real relation,
and speaking of her as his sister. The Rabbinic traditions elaborate
this story with much splendor of imagery. According to them, Abraham
being obliged by famine to sojourn in Egypt, rested some days by the
river Nile; and as he and Sarah walked by the banks of the river,
and he beheld her wonderful beauty reflected in the water, he was
overwhelmed with fear lest she should be taken from him, or that he
should be slain for her sake. So he persuaded her to pass as his
sister; for, as he says, "she was the daughter of my father, but
not of my mother." The legend goes on to say, that, as a further
precaution, he had her placed in a chest to cross the frontier; and
when the custom-house officers met them, he offered to pay for the
box whatever they might ask, to pass it free.

"Does it contain silks?" asked the officers.

"I will pay the tenth as of silk," he replied.

"Does it contain silver?" they inquired.

"I will pay for it as silver," answered Abraham.

"Nay, then, it must contain gold."

"I will pay for it as gold."

"May be it contains most costly gems."

"I will pay for it as gems," he persisted.

In the struggle the box was broken open, and in it was seated a
beautiful woman whose countenance illumined all Egypt. The news
reached the ears of Pharaoh, and he sent and took her.

In comparing these Rabinnic traditions with the Bible, one is
immediately struck with the difference in quality,--the dignified
simplicity of the sacred narrative contrasts forcibly with the
fantastic elaborations of tradition.

The Rabbinic and Alcoranic stories are valuable, however, as showing
how profound an impression the personality of these characters had
left on mankind. The great characters of the Biblical story, though
in themselves simple, seemed, like the sun, to raise around them
many-colored and vaporous clouds of myth and story. The warmth of
their humanity kept them enwreathed in a changing mist of human
sympathies.

The falsehoods which Abraham tells are to be estimated not by the
modern, but by the ancient standard. In the earlier days of the
world, when physical force ruled, when the earth was covered with
warring tribes, skill in deception was counted as one of the forms
of wisdom. "The crafty Ulysses" is spoken of with honor through the
"Odyssey" for his skill in dissembling; and the Lacedemonian youth
were punished, not for stealing or lying, but for performing these
necessary operations in a bungling, unskillful manner.

In a day when it was rather a matter of course for a prince to help
himself to a handsome woman wherever he could find her, and kill
her husband if he made any objections, a weaker party entering the
dominions of a powerful prince was under the laws of war.

In our nineteenth century we have not yet grown to such maturity
as not to consider false statements and stratagem as legitimate
war policy in dealing with an enemy. Abraham's _ruse_ is not,
therefore, so very far behind even the practice of modern
Christians. That he should have employed the same fruitless
stratagem twice, seems to show that species of infatuation on the
one subject of a beloved woman, which has been the "last infirmity"
of some otherwise strong and noble men,--wise everywhere else, but
weak there.

The Rabbinic legends represent Sarah as being an object of ardent
admiration to Pharaoh, who pressed his suit with such vehemence
that she cried to God for deliverance, and told the king that she
was a married woman. Then--according to this representation--he
sent her away with gifts, and even extended his complacency so far
as to present her with his daughter Hagar as a handmaid,--a legend
savoring more of national pride than of probability.

In the few incidents related of Sarah she does not impress us as
anything more than the beautiful princess of a nomadic tribe, with
many virtues and the failings that usually attend beauty and power.

With all her advantages of person and station, Sarah still wanted
what every woman of antiquity considered the crowning glory of
womanhood. She was childless. By an expedient common in those early
days, she gives her slave as second wife to her husband, whose child
shall be her own. The Rabbinic tradition says that up to this time
Hagar had been tenderly beloved by Sarah. The prospect, however, of
being mother to the heir of the family seems to have turned the head
of the handmaid, and broken the bonds of friendship between them.

In its usual naïve way, the Bible narrative represents Sarah as
scolding her patient husband for the results which came from
following her own advice. Thus she complains, in view of Hagar's
insolence: "My wrong be upon thee. I have given my maid unto thy
bosom, and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in
her eyes. The Lord judge between thee and me."

We see here the eager, impulsive, hot-hearted woman, accustomed to
indulgence, impatient of trouble, and perfectly certain that she is
in the right, and that the Lord himself must think so. Abraham, as a
well-bred husband, answers pacifically: "Behold, thy maid is in thy
hand, to do as pleaseth thee." And so it pleased Sarah to deal so
hardly with her maid that she fled to the wilderness.

Finally, the domestic broil adjusts itself. The Divine Father, who
watches alike over all his creatures, sends back the impetuous slave
from the wilderness, exhorted to patience, and comforted with a
promise of a future for her son.

Then comes the beautiful idyl of the three angels, who announce
the future birth of the long-desired heir. We could wish all our
readers, who may have fallen out of the way of reading the Old
Testament, to turn again to the eighteenth chapter of Genesis, and
see the simple picture of those olden days. Notice the beautiful
hospitality of reception. The Emir rushes himself to his herd to
choose the fatted calf, and commands the princess to make ready the
meal, and knead the cakes. Then comes the repast. The announcement
of the promised blessing, at which Sarah laughs in incredulous
surprise; the grave rebuke of the angels, and Sarah's white lie,
with the angel's steady answer,--are all so many characteristic
points of the story. Sarah, in all these incidents, is, with a few
touches, made as real flesh and blood as any woman in the pages
of Shakespeare,--not a saint, but an average mortal, with all the
foibles, weaknesses, and variabilities that pertain to womanhood,
and to womanhood in an early age of imperfectly developed morals.

We infer from the general drift of the story, that Sarah, like most
warm-hearted and passionate women, was, in the main, a kindly,
motherly creature, and that, when her maid returned and submitted,
she was reconciled to her. At all events, we find that the son of
the bondwoman was born and nurtured under her roof, along with her
own son Isaac. It is in keeping with our conception of Sarah, that
she should at times have overwhelmed Hagar with kindness, and helped
her through the trials of motherhood, and petted the little Ishmael
till he grew too saucy to be endured.

The Jewish mother nursed her child three years. The weaning was
made a great _fête_, and Sarah's maternal exultation at this crisis
of her life, displayed itself in festal preparations. We hear her
saying: "God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will
laugh with me. Who would have said unto Abraham that Sarah should
have given children suck? for I have borne him a son in his old age."

In the height of this triumph, she saw the son of the Egyptian woman
mocking, and all the hot blood of the woman, mother, and princess
flushed up, and she said to her husband: "Cast out this bondwoman
and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my
son, even with Isaac."

We are told "the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because
of his son." But a higher power confirms the hasty, instinctive
impulse of the mother. The God of nations saw in each of these
infant boys the seed-forms of a race with a history and destiny
apart from each other, and Abraham is comforted with the thought
that a fatherly watch will be kept over both.

Last of all we come to the simple and touching announcement of the
death of this woman, so truly loved to the last. "And Sarah was a
hundred and seven and twenty years old: these were the years of the
life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron
in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to
weep for her." It is a significant token of the magnificent physical
vigor with which that early age was endowed, that now, for the first
time, the stroke of death has fallen on the family of Abraham, and
he is forced to seek a burial-place. Sarah, the beautiful princess,
the crowned mother of a great nation, the beloved wife, is dead; and
Abraham, constant lover in age as youth, lays her away with tears.
To him she is ever young; for love confers on its object eternal
youth.

A beautiful and peculiar passage in the history describes the
particulars of the purchase of this burial-place. All that love can
give to the fairest, most beautiful, and dearest is a tomb; and
Abraham refuses to take as a gift from the nobles of the land so
sacred a spot. It must be wholly his own, bought with his own money.
The sepulchre of Machpelah, from the hour it was consecrated by the
last sleep of the mother of the tribe, became the calm and sacred
resting-place to which the eyes of children's children turned. So
Jacob, her grandson, in his dying hour, remembered it:--

"Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron
the Hittite. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there
they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah."

Two powerful and peculiar nations still regard this sepulchre with
veneration, and cherish with reverence the memory of Sarah the
Princess.

[Illustration: HAGAR THE SLAVE]




HAGAR THE SLAVE.


A striking pendant to the picture of Sarah the Princess is that of
Hagar the Slave.

In the Bible narrative she is called simply Hagar the Egyptian;
and as Abraham sojourned some time in the land of Egypt, we are
to suppose that this acquisition to the family was then made.
Slavery, in the early patriarchal period, had few of the horrors
which beset it in more modern days. The condition of a slave more
nearly resembled that of the child of the house than that of a
modern servant. The slave was looked upon, in default of children,
as his master's heir, as was the case with Eliezer of Damascus, the
confidential servant of Abraham; the latter, when speaking to God
of his childless condition says: "Lo! one born in my house is mine
heir." In like manner there is a strong probability in the legend
which represents Hagar as having been the confidential handmaid of
Sarah, and treated by her with peculiar tenderness.

When the fear of being childless seized upon her, Sarah was willing
to exalt one, who was as a second self to her, to the rank of
an inferior wife, according to the customs of those early days;
intending to adopt and treat as her own the child of her handmaid.
But when the bondwoman found herself thus exalted, and when the
crowning honor of prospective motherhood was conferred upon her,
her ardent tropical blood boiled over in unseemly exultation,--"her
mistress was despised in her eyes."

Probably under the flapping curtains of the pastoral tent, as under
the silken hangings of palaces, there were to be found flatterers
and mischief-makers ready to fill the weak, credulous ear with their
suggestions. Hagar was about to become mother of the prince and heir
of the tribe; her son one day should be their chief and ruler, while
Sarah, childless and uncrowned, should sink to a secondary rank.
Why should she obey the commands of Sarah?

Our idea of Sarah is that of a warm-hearted, generous, bountiful
woman, with an intense sense of personal dignity and personal
rights,--just the woman to feel herself beyond measure outraged
by this unexpected result of what she must have looked upon as
unexampled favor. In place of a grateful, devoted creature,
identified with her interests, whose child should be to her as her
own child, she finds herself confronted with an imperious rival, who
lays claim to her place and position.

The struggle was one that has been witnessed many a time since in
families so constituted, and with such false elements. Abraham,
peace-loving and quiet, stands neutral; confident, as many men are,
of the general ability of the female sex, by inscrutable ways and
methods of their own, to find their way out of the troubles they
bring themselves into. Probably he saw wrong on both sides; yet
Hagar, as the dependent, who owed all the elevation on which she
prided herself to the good-will of her mistress, was certainly the
more in fault of the two; and so he dismisses the subject with: "Thy
maid is in thy hand; do with her as pleaseth thee."

The next we hear of the proud, hot-hearted, ungoverned slave-girl,
is her flight to the wilderness in a tumult of indignation and
grief, doubtless after bitter words and hard usage from the once
indulgent mistress. But now comes into the history the presence of
the Father God, in whose eye all human beings are equal, and who
looks down on the boiling strifes and hot passions of us all below,
as a mother on the quarrels of little children in the nursery.
For this was the world's infancy, and each character in the drama
represented a future nation for whom the All-Father was caring.

So when the violent, desolate creature had sobbed herself weary in
the lonesome desert, the story says: "And the angel of the Lord
found her by a fountain of water, in the way to Shur. And he said,
Hagar, Sarah's maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go?
And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress, Sarah."

In this calm question there is a reminder of duty violated, and in
the submissive answer is an acknowledgment of that duty. The angel
calls her "Sarah's maid," and she replies, "my mistress, Sarah."

"And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress,
and submit thyself under her hands." Then, as with awe and
submission she rises to go, she is comforted with promises of
gracious tenderness. The All-Father does not take part with her in
her rebellious pride, nor in her haughty desire to usurp the station
and honors of her mistress, and yet he has sympathy for that strong,
awakening feeling of motherhood which makes the wild girl of the
desert begin at once to crave station and place on earth for the
son she is to bring into it. So the story goes on: "And the angel
of the Lord said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly,
that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the
Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a
son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard
thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against
every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in
the presence of all his brethren. And she called the name of the
Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I
also here looked after him that seeth me?"

This little story is so universally and beautifully significant of
our every-day human experience, that it has almost the force of an
allegory.

Who of us has not yielded to despairing grief, while flowing by us
were unnoticed sources of consolation? The angel did not _create_
the spring in the desert: it was there all the while, but Hagar was
blinded by her tears. She was not seeking God, but he was seeking
her. How often may we, all of us, in the upliftings and deliverances
of our life, say as she did, "Have I here looked after him that
seeth me?"

The narrative adds, "Wherefore the spring was called _The Well of
Him that Liveth and Seeth Me_."

That spring is still flowing by our daily path.

So, quieted and subdued and comforted, Hagar returns to her
mistress and her home, and we infer from the story, that, with
submission on her part, kindness and bounty returned on the part of
her mistress. She again becomes a member of the family. Her son is
born, and grows up for twelve years under the shadow of Abraham's
tent, and evidently, from the narrative, is fondly beloved by his
father, and indulgently treated by his foster-mother.

In an hour of confidential nearness the Divine Father announces to
Abraham that a son shall be given him by the wife of his heart.

"As for Sarah, thy wife, I will bless her, and give thee a son of
her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be
of her. Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed, and said in
his heart: Shall a child be born to him that is an hundred years
old, and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?" Yet, in this
moment of triumphant joy, his heart yearns after Ishmael; "And
Abraham said unto God: O that Ishmael might live before thee!" And
the Divine answer is: "As for Ishmael, I have heard thee. Behold, I
have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him
exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a
great nation."

But now comes the hour long waited for, of Sarah's triumph,--the
fulfillment of the desires of her life. A generous heart would have
sympathized in her triumph. A mother who had known the blessedness
of motherhood would have rejoiced when the mistress who had done
so much for her was made so joyful. If her own son be not the heir
in succession, yet an assured future is promised to him. But the
dark woman and her wild son are of untamable elements. They can no
more become one in spirit with the patriarchal family, than oil can
mix with water. When the weaning feast is made, and all surround
the little Isaac, when the mother's heart overflows with joy, she
sees the graceless Ishmael mocking; and instantly, with a woman's
lightning prescience, she perceives the dangers, the impossibilities
of longer keeping these aliens under the same roof,--the feuds, the
jealousies, the fierce quarrels of the future.

"Cast out this bondwoman and her son," she says, with the air of
one accustomed to command and decide; "for the son of this bondwoman
shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac."

It appears that Abraham had set his heart on the boy, and had hoped
to be able to keep both in one family, and divide his inheritance
between them; but it was otherwise decreed. "And God said to
Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight, because of the lad and
because of thy bondwoman: in all that Sarah hath said unto thee,
hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. And
also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is
thy seed. And Abraham arose up early, and took bread and a bottle of
water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and sent her
away with the child; and she departed and wandered in the wilderness
of Beersheba." Probably she was on the road towards Egypt. "And the
water was all spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one
of the shrubs; and she went away and sat her down over against him
a good way off, as it were a bow-shot, for she said, Let me not see
the death of the child; and she lifted up her voice and wept."

Poor, fiery, impatient creature!--moaning like a wounded
leopardess,--apparently with no heart to remember the kindly Power
that once before helped her in her sorrows; but the story goes on:
"And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of the Lord
called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee,
Hagar? Fear not, for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he
is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thy hand; for I will
make of him a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a
well of water; and she went and filled the bottle with water and
gave the lad drink. And God was with the lad, and he grew, and
dwelt in the wilderness and became an archer. And he dwelt in the
wilderness of Paran; and his mother took him a wife out of the land
of Egypt."

In all this story, nothing impresses us so much as the absence of
all modern technical or theological ideas respecting the God who is
represented here as sowing the seed of nations with a wise foresight
of the future. As a skillful husbandman, bent on perfecting a
certain seed, separates it from all others, and grows it by itself,
so the Bible tells us that God selected a certain stock to be
trained and cultivated into the sacerdotal race, through which
should come his choicest revelations to man. Of this race in its
final outcome and perfected flowering was to spring forth Jesus,
spoken of as the BRANCH of this sacred tree. For the formation of
this race, we see a constant choice of the gentler and quieter
elements of blood and character, and the persistent rejection of
that which is wild, fierce, and ungovernable. Yet it is with no fond
partiality for the one, or antipathy to the other, that the Father
of both thus decides. The thoughtful, patient, meditative Isaac is
chosen; the wild, hot-blooded, impetuous Ishmael is rejected,--not
as in themselves better or worse, but as in relation to their
adaptation to a great purpose of future good to mankind. The ear of
the All-Father is as near to the cry of the passionate, hot-tempered
slave, and the moans of the wild, untamable boy, as to those of the
patriarch. We are told that God was with Ishmael in his wild growth
as a hunter in the desert,--his protector from harm, the guardian of
his growing family, according to the promise made to Abraham.

When the aged patriarch is gathered to his fathers at the age of a
hundred and seventy-five years, it is recorded: "And Abraham gave up
the ghost in a good old age, an old man and full of years; and his
sons, Isaac and Ishmael, buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the
field that Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth; there was Abraham
buried, and Sarah his wife."

The subsequent history of the nation which Ishmael founded, shows
that the promises of God were faithfully kept.

The Arab race has ever been a strongly marked people. They have been
worshipers of the one God, and, at one time, under the califs, rose
to a superiority in art, science, and literature beyond that of
so-called Christian nations.

The race of Ishmael is yet as vigorous and as peculiar, and as
likely to perpetuate itself, as the race of Isaac and Jacob; and as
God was near to the cries and needs of the wild mother of the race
and her wild offspring, so, doubtless, he has heard the prayer that
has gone up from many an Arab tent in the desert.

The besetting sin of a select people is the growth of a spirit of
haughty self-sufficiency among them. In time the Jews came to look
upon themselves as God's only favorites, and upon all other nations
as outcasts. It is this spirit that is rebuked by the prophet Amos
(ix.) when, denouncing the recreant children of Israel, he says,
in the name of the Lord: "Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians
unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I brought up
Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor,
and the Syrians from Kir?"

There is a deep comfort in this record of God's goodness to a poor,
blinded, darkened, passionate slave-woman, nowise a model for
imitation, yet tenderly watched over and succored and cared for in
her needs. The Father unsought is ever seeking. He who said, "What
aileth thee, Hagar?" is he who, in later times, said that he came
to seek and to save the lost. Not to the saintly and the righteous
only, or mostly, but to the wayward, the sinful, the desperate, the
despairing, to those whose troubles come of their own folly and
their own sin, is the angel sent to console, to promise, to open the
blind eyes upon the fountain which is ever near us in life's desert,
though we cannot perceive it.

[Illustration: REBEKAH THE BRIDE]




REBEKAH THE BRIDE.


In the pictures which the Bible opens to us of the domestic life
of the patriarchal ages, we have one perfectly characteristic and
beautiful idyl of a wooing and wedding, according to the customs
of those days. In its sweetness and sacred simplicity, it is a
marvelous contrast to the wedding of our modern fashionable life.

Sarah, the beautiful and beloved, has been laid away in the dust,
and Isaac, the cherished son, is now forty years old. Forty years
is yet early youth, by the slow old clock of the golden ages, when
the thread of mortal life ran out to a hundred and seventy-five or
eighty years. Abraham has nearly reached that far period, and his
sun of life is dipping downwards toward the evening horizon. He has
but one care remaining,--to settle his son Isaac in life before he
is gathered to his fathers.

The scene in which Abraham discusses the subject with his head
servant sheds a peculiar light on the domestic and family relations
of those days. "And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his
house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand
under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of
heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife
unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell:
but thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a
wife unto my son Isaac. And the servant said unto him, Peradventure
the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I
needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest? And
Abraham said unto him, Beware that thou bring not my son thither
again. The Lord God of heaven, which took me from my father's house,
and from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and sware
unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send
his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from
thence. And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then
thou shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither
again."

Here it is remarkable that the servant is addressed as the legal
guardian of the son. Abraham does not caution Isaac as to whom he
should marry, but cautions the old servant of the house concerning
the woman to whom he should marry Isaac. It is apparently understood
that, in case of Abraham's death, the regency in the family falls
into the hands of this servant.

The picture of the preparations made for this embassy denotes a
princely station and great wealth. "And the servant took ten camels
of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his
master were in his hand; and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto
the city of Nahor."

Now comes a quaint and beautiful picture of the manners of those
pastoral days. "And he made his camels to kneel down without the
city by a well of water, at the time of the evening, even the time
that women go out to draw water."

Next, we have a specimen of the kind of prayer which obtained in
those simple times, when men felt as near to God as a child does to
its mother. Kneeling, uncovered, in the evening light, the gray old
serving-man thus talks to the invisible Protector:--"O Lord God of
my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and
show kindness unto my master Abraham. Behold, I stand here by the
well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out
to draw water: and let it come to pass that the damsel to whom I
shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and
she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let
the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and
thereby shall I know that thou hast showed kindness unto my master."

This is prayer. Not a formal, ceremonious state address to a
monarch, but the talk of the child with his father, asking simply
and directly for what is wanted here and now. And the request was
speedily granted, for thus the story goes on: "And it came to pass,
before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who
was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's
brother." It is noticeable, how strong is the sensibility to womanly
beauty in this narrative. This young Rebekah is thus announced:
"And the damsel was very fair to look upon, and a virgin, and she
went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up." Drawn
by the bright eyes and fair face, the old servant hastens to apply
the test, doubtless hoping that this lovely creature is the one
appointed for his young master. "And the servant ran to meet her,
and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher.
And she said, Drink, my lord: and she hastened, and let down her
pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink." She gave with a will,
with a grace and readiness that overflowed the request; and then it
is added: "And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will
draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. And
she hasted and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again
unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels." Let us
fancy ten camels, all on their knees in a row, at the trough, with
their long necks, and patient, careworn faces, while the pretty
young Jewess, with cheerful alacrity, is dashing down the water from
her pitcher, filling and emptying in quick succession, apparently
making nothing of the toil; the gray-haired old servant looking on
in devout recognition of the answer to his prayer, for the story
says: "And the man wondering at her, held his peace, to wit [know]
whether the Lord had made his journey prosperous or not."

There was wise penetration into life and the essentials of wedded
happiness in this prayer of the old servant. What he asked for his
young master was not beauty or talent, but a ready and unfailing
outflow of sympathy and kindness. He sought not merely for a
gentle nature, a kind heart, but for a heart so rich in kindness
that it should run even beyond what was asked, and be ready to
anticipate the request with new devices of helpfulness. The lively,
light-hearted kindness that could not be content with waiting on the
thirsty old man, but with cheerful alacrity took upon herself the
care of all the ten camels, this was a gift beyond that of beauty;
yet when it came in the person of a maiden exceedingly fair to look
upon, no marvel that the old man wondered joyously at his success.

When the camels had done drinking, he produced from his treasury a
golden earring and bracelets, with which he adorned the maiden. "And
he said to her, Whose daughter art thou? tell me, I pray thee; is
there room in thy father's house for us to lodge in? And she said
unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she
bare to Nahor. She said, moreover, unto him, We have both straw and
provender enough, and room to lodge in. And the man bowed down his
head, and worshiped the Lord. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God
of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his
mercy and his truth: I being in the way, the Lord led me to the
house of my master's brethren."

We may imagine the gay delight with which the pretty maiden ran to
exhibit the gifts of jewelry that had thus unexpectedly descended
upon her. Laban, her brother, does not prove either a generous or
hospitable person in the outcome of the story; but the ambassador
of a princely relative, traveling with a caravan of ten camels, and
showering gold and jewels, makes his own welcome. The narrative
proceeds:--"And it came to pass when he saw the earring, and the
bracelets upon his sister's hands, and when he heard the words of
Rebekah his sister, saying, Thus spake the man unto me; that he came
unto the man; and, behold, he stood by the camels at the well. And
he said, Come in, thou blessed of the Lord; wherefore standest thou
without? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels. And
the man came into the house: and he ungirded the camels, and gave
straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet, and
the men's feet that were with him. And there was set meat before him
to eat: but he said, I will not eat, till I have told my errand. And
he said, Speak on. And he said, I am Abraham's servant, and the Lord
hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great: and he hath
given him flocks, and herds, and silver, and gold, and men-servants,
and maid-servants, and camels, and asses."

After this exordium he goes on to tell the whole story of his oath
to his master, and the purport of his journey; of the prayer that he
had uttered at the well, and of its fulfillment in a generous-minded
and beautiful young maiden; and thus he ends his story: "And I bowed
down my head, and worshiped the Lord, and blessed the Lord God of
my master Abraham, which hath led me in the right way to take my
master's brother's daughter unto his son. And now, if ye will deal
kindly and truly with my master, tell me: and if not, tell me; that
I may turn to the right hand or to the left. Then Laban and Bethuel
answered and said, The thing proceedeth from the Lord: we cannot
speak unto thee bad or good. Behold, Rebekah is before thee; take
her, and go, and let her be thy master's son's wife, as the Lord
hath spoken. And it came to pass, that when Abraham's servant heard
their words, he worshiped the Lord, bowing himself to the earth."

And now comes a scene most captivating to female curiosity. Even in
patriarchal times the bridegroom, it seems, provided a _corbeille
de mariage_; for we are told: "And the servant brought forth
jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them
to Rebekah; he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious
things." The scene of examining jewelry and garments and rich
stuffs in the family party would have made no mean subject for a
painter. No wonder such a suitor, sending such gifts, found welcome
entertainment. So the story goes on: "And they did eat and drink,
he and the men that were with him, and tarried all night; and they
rose up in the morning; and he said, Send me away unto my master.
And her brother and her mother said, Let the damsel abide with us a
few days, at the least ten, and after that she shall go. And he said
unto them, Hinder me not, seeing the Lord hath prospered my way;
send me away, that I may go to my master. And they said, We will
call the damsel and inquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah,
and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will
go. And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and
Abraham's servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah, and said
unto her, Thou art our sister; be thou the mother of thousands of
millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate
them." The idea of being a mother of nations gives a sort of dignity
to the married life of these patriarchal women,--it was the motherly
instinct made sublime.

Thus far, this wooing seems to have been conceived and conducted
in that simple religious spirit recognized in the words of the old
prayer: "Grant that all our works may be begun, continued, and ended
in thee." The Father of Nations has been a never-failing presence in
every scene.

The expectant bridegroom seems to have been a youth of a pensive,
dreamy, meditative nature. Brought up with the strictest notions of
filial submission, he waits to receive his wife dutifully from his
father's hand. Yet, as the caravan nears the encampment, he walks
forth to meet them. "And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at
the eventide: and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the
camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw
Isaac, she lighted off the camel. For she had said unto the servant,
What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the
servant had said, It is my master: therefore she took a veil, and
covered herself."

In the little that is said of Rebekah, we see always that alert
readiness, prompt to see and do what is to be done at the moment. No
dreamer is she, but a lively and wide-awake young woman, who knows
her own mind exactly, and has the fit word and fit action ready for
each short turn in life. She was quick, cheerful, and energetic in
hospitality. She was prompt and unhesitating in her resolve; and
yet, at the moment of meeting, she knew the value and the propriety
of the _veil_. She covered herself, that she might not unsought be
won.

With a little touch of pathos, the story ends: "And Isaac brought
her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became
his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his
mother's death." We see here one of those delicate and tender
natures that find repose first in the love of a mother, and, when
that stay is withdrawn, lean upon a beloved wife.

So ideally pure, and sweet, and tenderly religious has been the
whole inception and carrying on and termination of this wedding,
that Isaac and Rebekah have been remembered in the wedding ritual
of the catholic Christian churches as models of a holy marriage
according to the Divine will. "Send thy blessing upon these thy
servants, this man and this woman, whom we bless in thy name; that
as Isaac and Rebekah lived faithfully together, so these persons may
surely perform and keep the vow and covenant between them."

In the subsequent history of the family, the dramatic individuality
of the characters is kept up: Isaac is the gentle, thoughtful,
misty dreamer, lost in sentiment and contemplation; and Rebekah the
forward, cheerful, self-confident manager of external things. We
can fancy it as one of the households where all went as the mother
said. In fact, in mature life, we see these prompt and managing
traits, leading the matron to domestic artifices which could only
be justified to herself by her firm belief that the end pursued was
good enough to sanctify the means. Energetic, lively, self-trustful
young women do sometimes form just such managing and diplomatic
matrons.

Isaac, the husband, always dreamy and meditative, becomes old and
doting; conceives an inordinate partiality for the turbulent son
Esau, whose skill in hunting supplies his table with the meat he
loves. Rebekah has heard the prophetic legend, that Jacob, the
younger son, is the chosen one to perpetuate the sacred race; and
Jacob, the tender, the care-taking, the domestic, is the idol of her
heart.

Now, there are some sorts of women that, if convinced there was such
a Divine oracle or purpose in relation to a favorite son, would
have rested upon it in quiet faith, and left Providence to work out
its ends in its own way and time. Not so Rebekah. The same restless
activity of helpfulness that led her to offer water to all the
camels, when asked to give drink for the servant, now led her to
come to the assistance of Providence. She proposes to Jacob to make
the oracle sure, and obtain the patriarchal blessing by stratagem.
When Jacob expresses a humble doubt whether such an artifice may not
defeat itself and bring on him the curse rather than the blessing of
his father, the mother characteristically answers: "Upon me be the
curse, my son: only obey my voice." Pages of description could not
set a character before us more sharply and distinctly than this one
incident, and nothing can show more dramatically in whose hands was
the ruling power in that family.

The managing, self-reliant Rebekah, ready to do her full share in
every emergency, and to run before every occasion with her busy
plannings, is not a character of patriarchal ages merely. Every age
has repeated it, and our own is no exception. There are not wanting
among us cheerful, self-confident, domestic managers, who might take
a lesson from the troubles that befell the good-hearted, but too
busy and officious Rebekah, in consequence of the success of her own
schemes. The account of this belongs to our next chapter.

[Illustration: LEAH AND RACHEL]




LEAH AND RACHEL.


In the earlier portions of the Old Testament we have, very
curiously, the history of the deliberate formation of an influential
race, to which was given a most important mission in the world's
history. The principle of _selection_, much talked of now in
science, is the principle which is represented in the patriarchal
history as operating under a direct Divine guidance. From the
calling of Abraham, there seems to have been this continued
watchfulness in selecting the party through whom the chosen race was
to be continued. Every marriage thus far is divinely appointed and
guided. While the Fatherly providence and nurture is not withdrawn
from the rejected ones, still the greatest care is exercised to
separate from them the chosen. The latter are selected apparently
not so much for moral excellence in itself considered, as for
excellence in relation to stock. The peaceable, domestic, prudent,
and conservative elements are uniformly chosen, in preference to the
warlike and violent characteristics of the age.

The marriage of Isaac and Rebekah was more like the type of a
Christian marriage than any other on record. No other wife shared
a place in his heart and home; and, even to old age, Isaac knew
no other than the bride of his youth. From this union sprang twin
boys; between whom, as is often the case, there was a remarkable
difference. The physical energy and fire all seemed to go to
one, the gentler and more quiet traits to the other. Esau was
the wild huntsman, the ranger of the mountains, delighting in
force,--precisely adapted to become the chief of a predatory tribe.
Jacob, the patient, the prudent, the submissive, was the home child,
the darling of his mother. Now, with every constitutional excellency
and virtue is inevitably connected, in our imperfect humanity, the
liability to a fault. The peace-loving and prudent, averse to
strife, are liable to sins of artifice and deception, as stronger
natures are to those of force and violence. Probably, in the calm
eye of Him who sees things just as they are, the one kind of fault
is no worse than the other. At all events, the sacred narrative is
a daguerreotype of character; it reflects every trait and every
imperfection without comment. The mild and dreamy Isaac, to save his
wife from a rapacious king, undertakes to practice the same artifice
that his father used before him, saying, "She is my sister"; and the
same evil consequence ensues. The lesson of artifice once taught
in the family, the evil spreads. Rebekah, when Isaac is old and
doting, commands Jacob to personate his older brother, and thus
gain the patriarchal blessing, which in those days had the force
of a last will and testament in our times. Yet, through all the
faults and errors of the mere human actors runs the thread of a
Divine guidance. Before the birth of Jacob it was predicted that
he should be the chosen head of the forming nation; and by his
mother's artifice, and his own participation in it, that prediction
is fulfilled. Yet the natural punishment of the action follows. Esau
is alienated, and meditates murder in his heart; and Jacob, though
the mother's darling, is driven out from his home a hunted fugitive,
parted from her for life. He starts on foot to find his way to
Padan-Aram, to his father's kindred, there to seek and meet and woo
the wife appointed for him.

It is here that the history of the patriarch Jacob becomes
immediately helpful to all men in all ages. And its usefulness
consists in just this,--that Jacob, at this time in his life, was no
saint or hero. He was not a person distinguished either by intellect
or by high moral attainment, but simply such a raw, unformed lad
as life is constantly casting adrift from the shelter of homes.
He is no better and no worse than the multitude of boys, partly
good and partly bad, who, for one reason or another, are forced to
leave their mothers and their fathers; to take staff in hand and
start out on the great life-journey alone. He had been religiously
brought up; he knew that his father and his mother had a God,--the
Invisible God of Abraham and Isaac; but then, other gods and lords
many were worshiped in the tribes around him, and how did he know,
after all, which was the right one? He wanders on over the wide,
lonesome Syrian plains, till dark night comes on, and he finds
himself all alone, an atom in the great silent creation,--alone,
as many a sailor-boy has found himself on the deck of his ship, or
hunter, in the deep recesses of the forest. The desolate lad gathers
a heap of stones for a pillow and lies down to sleep. Nothing could
be more sorrowfully helpless than this picture; the representative
portrait of many a mother's boy to-day, and in all days. We cannot
suppose that he prayed or commended his soul to God. We are told
distinctly that he did not even remember that God was in that place.
He lies down, helpless and forlorn, on his cold stone pillow, and
sinks, overcome with fatigue, to prayerless slumber. And now, in
his dreams, a glorious light appears; a luminous path opens upward
to the skies,--angels are passing to and fro upon it, and above, in
bright benignity, stands a visible form, and says: "I am the Lord
God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon
thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed
shall be as the dust of the earth; and thou shalt spread abroad
to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south;
and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be
blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all
places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again unto this land;
for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have
spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said,
Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was
afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but
the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob arose
up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his
pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of
it. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will
keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and
raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in
peace, then shall the Lord be my God: and this stone, which I have
set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that Thou shalt
give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee."

In one night how much is born in that soul! The sentiment of
reverence, awe of the Divine,--a conviction of the reality of God
and an invisible world,--and the beginning of that great experiment
by which man learns practically that God is his father. For, in
the outset, every human being's consciousness of God must be just
of this sort. Have I a Father in heaven? Does he care for me? Will
he help me? Questions that each man can only answer as Jacob did,
by casting himself upon God in a matter-of-fact, practical way in
the exigencies of this present life. And this history is the more
valuable because it takes man in his earlier stages of imperfection.
We are apt to feel that it might be safe for Paul, or Isaiah, or
other great saints, to expect God to befriend them; but here a poor,
untaught shepherd boy, who is not religious, avows that, up to this
time, he has had no sense of God; and yet between him and heaven
there is a pathway, and about him in his loneliness are ministering
spirits; and the God of Abraham and of Isaac is ready to become
his friend. In an important sense, this night dream, this gracious
promise of God to Jacob, are not merely for him, but for all erring,
helpless, suffering sons of men. In the fatherly God thus revealed
to the patriarch, we see the first fruits of the promise that
through him all nations should be blessed.

The next step of the drama shows us a scene of sylvan simplicity.
About the old well in Haran, shepherds are waiting with their
flocks, when the stripling approaches: "And Jacob said unto them,
My brethren, whence be ye? And they said, Of Haran are we. And he
said unto them, Know ye Laban the son of Nahor? And they said, We
know him. And he said unto them, Is he well? And they said, He is
well: and, behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep. And
he said, Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the cattle
should be gathered together. Water ye the sheep, and go and feed
them. And they said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered
together, and till they roll the stone from the well's mouth; then
we water the sheep. And while he yet spake with them Rachel came
with her father's sheep; for she kept them. And it came to pass,
when Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Laban, his mother's brother,
and the sheep of Laban, his mother's brother, that Jacob went near,
and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of
Laban, his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up
his voice, and wept; and Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's
brother, and that he was Rebekah's son: and she ran and told her
father. And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob,
his sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and
kissed him, and brought him to his house."

In the story of Isaac, we have the bridegroom who is simply the
submissive recipient of a wife at his father's hands; in that of
Jacob, we have the story of love at first sight. The wanderer,
exiled from home, gives up his heart at once to the keeping of his
beautiful shepherdess cousin, and so, when the terms of service
are fixed with the uncle, the narrative says: "And Laban had two
daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the
younger was Rachel. Leah was tender-eyed; but Rachel was beautiful
and well-favored. And Jacob loved Rachel, and said, I will serve
thee seven years for Rachel, thy younger daughter. And Jacob served
seven years for Rachel, and they seemed unto him but a few days, for
the love he had to her."

But when the wedding comes, in the darkness and secrecy of the night
a false bride is imposed on the lover. And Jacob awoke, and behold
it was Leah. Not the last man was he who has awakened, after the
bridal, to find his wife was not the woman he had taken her to be.
But the beloved one is given as a second choice, and seven years
more of service are imposed as her price.

The characteristics of these two sisters, Leah and Rachel, are less
vividly given than those of any of the patriarchal women. Sarah,
Hagar, and Rebekah are all sharply defined characters, in and of
themselves; but of Leah and Rachel almost all that can be said is
that they were Jacob's wives, and mothers of the twelve tribes of
Israel.

The character of their father Laban was narrow, shrewd, and hard,
devoid of any generous or interesting trait, and the daughters
appear to have grown up under a narrowing and repressing influence.
What we learn of them in the story shows the envies, the jealousies,
the bickerings and heart-burnings of poorly developed natures. Leah,
the less beloved one, exults over her handsomer and more favored
sister because she has been made a fruitful mother, while to Rachel
the gift of children is denied. Rachel murmurs and pines, and
says to her husband, "Give me children, or I die." The desire for
offspring in those days seemed to be an agony. To be childless, was
disgrace and misery unspeakable. At last, however, Rachel becomes a
mother and gives birth to Joseph, the best-beloved of his father.
The narrative somehow suggests that charm of personal beauty and
manner which makes Rachel the beloved one, and her child dearer than
all the rest. How many such women there are, pretty and charming,
and holding men's hearts like a fortress, of whom a biographer could
say nothing only that they were much beloved!

When Jacob flees from Laban with his family, we find Rachel secretly
taking away the images which her father had kept as household gods.
The art by which she takes them, the effrontery with which she
denies the possession of them, when her father comes to search for
them, shows that she had little moral elevation. The belief in the
God of her husband probably was mixed up confusedly in her childish
mind with the gods of her father. Not unfrequently in those dim
ages, people seemed to alternate from one to the other, as occasions
varied. Yet she seems to have held her husband's affections to the
last; and when, in giving birth to her last son, she died, this son
became the darling of his father's old age. The sacred poet has made
the name of this beloved wife a proverb, to express the strength of
the motherly instinct, and "Rachel weeping for her children" is a
line that immortalizes her name to all time.

Whatever be the faults of these patriarchal women, it must be
confessed that the ardent desire of motherhood which inspired them
is far nobler than the selfish, unwomanly spirit of modern times,
which regards children only as an encumbrance and a burden. The
motherly yearning and motherly spirit give a certain dignity to
these women of primitive ages, which atones for many faults of
imperfect development.

Twenty-one years elapse, and Jacob, a man of substance, father
of a family of twelve children, with flocks and herds to form a
numerous caravan, leaves the service of his hard master to go back
to his father. The story shows the same traits in the man as in the
lad. He is the gentle, affectionate, prudent, kindly, care-taking
family-man, faithful in duty, and evading oppression by quiet skill
rather than meeting it with active opposition. He has become rich,
in spite of every effort of an aggressive master to prevent it.

When leaving Laban's service, he thus appeals to him: "These twenty
years have I been with thee: thy ewes and thy she-goats have not
cast their young, and the rams of thy flock have I not eaten. That
which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of
it. Thus was I: in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost
by night, and my sleep departed from mine eyes. Thus have I been
twenty years in thy house. I served thee fourteen years for thy two
daughters, and six years for thy cattle; and thou hast changed my
wages ten times. Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham,
and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely thou hadst sent me
away now empty. God hath seen my affliction and the labor of my
hands, and rebuked thee yesternight."

To the last of the history of Jacob, we see the same man,--careful,
patient, faithful, somewhat despondent, wrapped up in family ties
and cares, and needing at every step to lean on a superior power.
And the Father on whom he seeks to lean is never wanting to him, as
he will never be to any of us, however weak, or faulty, or blind. As
the caravan nears home, news is brought that Esau, with an army of
horsemen, is galloping to meet him. Then says the record: "Jacob was
greatly afraid and distressed: and Jacob said, O God of my father
Abraham, the God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me,
Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well
with thee: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of
all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant: for with
my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands.
Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand
of Esau; for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the
mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do thee
good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be
numbered for multitude." The prayer is not in vain. That night a
mysterious stranger meets Jacob in the twilight shadows of morning.
He seeks to detain him; but, as afterwards, when the disciples met
an unknown Friend on the way to Emmaus, he made as though he would
go farther. So now this stranger struggles in the embrace of the
patriarch. Who, then, is this?--is it the Divine One? The thought
thrills through the soul as Jacob strives to detain him. There is
something wildly poetic in the legend. "And he said, Let me go,
for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except
thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said,
Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but
Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and
hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him: Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.
And he said, Wherefore dost thou ask after my name? And he blessed
him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for he
said, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
God's love to man, the power of man's weakness and sorrow over the
Father-heart, were never more beautifully shown than in this sacred
idyl. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of the weak,
the sinful, the despondent, the defenceless; the helper of the
helpless,--He is the God of this sacred story; and so long as man is
erring, and consciously frail, so long as he needs an ever-present
and ever-loving Friend and Helper, so long will this story of Jacob
be dear to the human heart.




WOMEN OF THE NATIONAL PERIOD.

[Illustration: MIRIAM AND MOSES]




MIRIAM, SISTER OF MOSES.


It has been remarked by Montalembert that almost all the great
leading men in history have been intimately associated with superior
women. If we look on Moses in a merely human light, and judge him
by what he accomplished, as we do other historic characters, he
is in certain respects the greatest man of antiquity. The works
of the legislators, kings, and conquerors of ancient history were
perishable. Their cities have crumbled, their governments and
commonwealths have dissolved as waves of the sea. Moses alone
founded a nation that still lives with an imperishable vitality,--a
people whose religious literature still expresses the highest
aspirations of the most cultivated nations of the earth.

His advent, therefore, forms an era in the history of humanity, and
the very opening of his career presents us with pictures of imposing
and venerable female characters. The mother of Moses is mentioned,
in the epistle to the Hebrews, as one of those worthies of ancient
time, who triumphed over things seen by the power of a sublime
faith in the invisible God and his promises. The very name of the
mother (Exodus vi. 20), Jochebed,--"the glory of Jehovah,"--shows
that a deep spirit of religious enthusiasm and trust was the
prevailing impulse in the family. She was of that moral organization
whence, through the laws of descent, might spring the prophet and
prophetess. By _faith_ she refused to obey the cruel order of the
king, and for three months hid the beautiful child.

And here comes in the image of the first, and one of the most
revered, of the race of Hebrew prophetesses, Miriam, the elder
sister of Moses. According to the Rabbinic tradition, the gift of
prophecy descended upon her even in childhood. The story is that
Miriam's mother, Jochebed, was one of the midwives to whom Pharaoh
gave the command to destroy the children, and that when the child
Miriam heard it, being then only five years old, her face flushed
scarlet, and she said in anger: "Woe to this man! God will punish
him for his evil deeds." After this the tradition says that when the
decree went forth for the destruction of every male child, Amram
separated himself from his wife Jochebed, lest he should bring on
her the anguish of fruitless motherhood. After three years, the
spirit of prophecy came on Miriam as she sat in the house, and
she cried out suddenly: "My parents shall have another son, who
shall deliver Israel out of the hands of the Egyptians." The angel
Gabriel guided Amram back to find his wife, whom he found blooming
in all the beauty of youth, though more than a hundred years old.
When she found herself with child, she feared that it might prove a
boy, to be cruelly slain. Then the Eternal One spake in a dream to
the father, bidding him be of good cheer, for he would protect the
child, and all nations should hold him in honor.

The tradition goes on to say that the boy was born without pain, and
that when he was born the whole house was filled with a light as of
bright sunshine. The mother's anxiety was increased when she saw the
beauty of the child, who was lovely as an angel of God. The parents
called him Tobias, "God is good," to express their thankfulness,
and Amram kissed Miriam on the brow and said: "Now know I that thy
prophecy is come true."

In contrast to this ornate narrative is the grave and chaste
simplicity of the Scripture story. It is all comprised in two or
three verses of the second chapter of Exodus. "And there went a man
of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the
woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a
goodly child she hid him three months. And when she could no longer
hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with
slime and with pitch, and put the child therein and laid it in the
flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off to see
what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to
wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along the river's
side: and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid
to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and
behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him and said: This
is one of the Hebrew children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's
daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,
that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said
unto her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And
Pharaoh's daughter said, Take this child away, and nurse it for me,
and I will give thee thy wages; and the woman took the child and
nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's
daughter, and she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I
drew him out of the water."

To this, we may add the account which St. Stephen gives when
standing before the Jewish council. "In which time Moses was born,
who was exceeding fair,[2] and nourished up in his father's house
three months. And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him
up and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds."

  [2] The marginal translation reads "fair to God."

Such are the extremely brief notices of a great event and of a group
of characters whose influence on mankind every one of us feels
to-day. For, the Jewish nation, in being chosen of God to be a
sacerdotal race, was to pass through a history which should embody
struggles, oppressions, agonies, victories, and deliverances, such
as should represent to all time the sorrows and joys, the trials
and hopes, of humanity. To this day, the events of Jewish history
so well express universal experiences, that its literature in all
languages, and under all difference of climate and custom, has an
imperishable hold on the human heart. It has been well said that
nations struggling for liberty against powerful oppressors flee as
instinctively to the Old Testament as they do to mountain ranges.
The American slave universally called his bondage Egypt, and read
the history of the ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea
as parts of his own experience. In the dark days of slavery, the
history of Moses was sung at night, and by stealth, on plantations,
with solemn rhythmic movements, reminding one of old Egyptian times.
It was the Marseillaise of a rude people, forbidden by the master,
and all the dearer to the slave.

We must take the full force of the anguish, the ignominy, the
oppression of slavery acting on noble and sensitive natures,
elevated by faith in a high national destiny, and looking with
earnestness and prayer for its evolution, in order to get a full
idea of the character of Miriam. Such periods produce children with
that highly exalted organization which is predisposed to receive the
prophetic impulse. The Rabbinic traditions with regard to Miriam,
which we have added, are detailed at length by Josephus in his
history, and show how strong is the impression which the personality
of this woman made on those of her time, in connection with the life
of their great lawgiver.

The Bible account of the birth and preservation of Moses has the
usual quality of Scripture narratives; it is very brief and very
stimulating to the imagination. Who of us has not seen in childhood
the old Nile with its reeds and rushes, its background of temples
and pyramids? We have shared the tremors of the mother and sister
while the little one was launched in the frail ark. Probably some
report of the kindness of the Princess had inspired a trembling
hope. The mother dares not stay to guard her treasure, lest she
draw cruel eyes upon it; but the little Miriam, as a child playing
among the tall reeds, can remain on the watch without attracting
attention. In the scene where the helpless stranger is discovered
by the Princess, we have, in the movements of the sister, all the
characteristics, in miniature, of the future leader of Israel.
Prompt, fearless, with an instantaneous instinct as to the right
thing to be done at the critical moment, we can see the little
Hebrew maid press forward amid the throng surrounding the alarmed
and crying child. The tradition is that an Egyptian woman, at the
command of the Princess, tried to quiet him at her breast, and that
the young prophet indignantly rejected the attempt,--a statement
which we who know babies, whether prophetic or otherwise, may deem
highly probable. Then spoke up the little Miriam: "Shall I go and
call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child
for thee?" This was a bold proposal, but it succeeded. Perhaps the
small speaker had some of the wonderful beauty of her infant brother
to set off her words: at all events, the Princess seems at once to
have trusted her with the commission. We may readily believe the
little feet had not far to go. The child comes back to his mother's
bosom as a royal ward.

We see here in the child Miriam great self-poise and
self-confidence. She is not afraid of royalty, and, though of an
enslaved and despised race, is ready to make suggestions to a queen.
These are the traits of a natural leader, and we shall see them
reappearing later in the history of Miriam. It was customary among
the Oriental races to prolong the period of nursing two or three
years, and Moses was thus in the care of his mother and elder sister
for a long time.

Josephus gives the tradition current among the Jews, that the child
was a wonderfully attractive one,--so beautiful, that every one who
beheld him turned to look at him. The mother and sister looked upon
him as the visible pledge of God's mercy to their suffering people,
as well as the visible answer to prayer. The God of Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob, in whose hand are all hearts, had made a refuge
for the young Deliverer in the very family of the destroying tyrant!

The intercourse thus established between the court of Pharaoh and
these two women must have materially advanced their position. We
see in the Princess indications of a gracious and affable nature,
and in Miriam a quick readiness to turn every favorable indication
to good account. It is, therefore, quite probable that Miriam may
have shared the liberal patronage of the Princess. Evidently she
continued to influence the mind of her brother after he had gone
into the family of Pharaoh, since we see her publicly associated
with him at the great period of the national deliverance.

In the history of Moses, and in his laws and institutes, we see
a peculiar and almost feminine tenderness and consideration for
whatever is helpless and defenceless. Perhaps the history of his own
life,--the story of the forlorn helplessness of his own cradle,
and the anguish of his mother and sister,--operating on a large
and generous nature, produced this result. For example, among the
laws of the great lawgiver, we find one which forbids the caging
of a free bird (Deut. xxii. 6, 7); thus it was allowed to take the
young who might easily be reconciled to captivity, but forbidden to
take those accustomed to freedom. Whoever has seen the miserable
struggles of a free bird brought suddenly into captivity, can
appreciate the compassionateness of the man who made such a law for
a great people. In the same spirit another law forbids the muzzling
of the ox when he treads the grain, and commands every man to stop
and help an overburdened ass that falls beneath his load; and it
particularly adds, that the ass of an enemy shall be helped, no
matter how great the unwillingness.

In fact, the strongest impulse in the character of Moses appears to
have been that of protective justice, with regard to every helpless
and down-trodden class. The laws of Moses, if carefully examined,
are a phenomenon,--an exception to the laws of either ancient or
modern nations in the care they exercised over women, widows,
orphans, paupers, foreigners, servants, and dumb animals. Of all the
so-called Christian nations there is none but could advantageously
take a lesson in legislation from them. There is a plaintive,
pathetic tone of compassion in their very language, which seems to
have been learned only of superhuman tenderness. Not the gentlest
words of Jesus are more compassionate in their spirit than many of
these laws of Moses. Some of them sound more like the pleadings of
a mother than the voice of legal statutes. For example: "If thou
lend money to any that is poor by thee, thou shalt not lay upon
him usury. If thou at all take thy neighbor's garment to pledge,
thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down, for that
is his covering, it is his raiment for his skin; wherein shall he
sleep? and it shall come to pass that when he crieth unto me I will
hear, for I am gracious." "Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant
that is poor and needy, whether he be of thine own brethren or of
strangers that are within thy gates. At his day shalt thou give him
his wages, neither shall the sun go down upon it, for he is poor
and setteth his heart upon it, lest he cry unto the Lord against
thee." "Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger nor of
the fatherless, nor take the widow's raiment as pledge; thou shalt
remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God
redeemed thee, therefore I command thee to do this thing." "When
thou cuttest down thy harvest and hast forgot a sheaf in the field,
thou shalt not go again to fetch it, it shall be for the stranger,
the fatherless, and the widow. When thou beatest thine olive-tree,
thou shalt not go over it again; when thou gatherest the grapes of
thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward, it shall be for the
stranger, the fatherless, and the widow."

In all this, we see how deep was the impression made on the mind
of Moses by the enslaved and helpless condition of his people. He
had felt for the struggles of the enslaved, and it made him tender
to the wild bird of the desert beating against its cage, to the
overloaded ass fainting under his burden, to the hungry ox toiling
to procure food which he was restricted from enjoying.

Of the period including the time that Moses left his mother and
sister to dwell in the palace of the Pharaohs, and receive the
education of an Egyptian prince, we have no record in the sacred
narrative, except the declaration of Stephen in the book of Acts,
that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and mighty
in word and deed.

In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible there is a brief _résumé_ of what
is said by ancient authors of this period of his life. According
to Strabo, he was educated at Heliopolis, and grew up there as a
priest, under his Egyptian name of Osariph. According to Philo,
he was taught the whole range of Greek, Chaldee, and Assyrian
literature. From the Egyptians, especially, he learned mathematics,
to train his mind for the unprejudiced reception of truth. He
invented boats, engines for building, instruments of war and of
hydraulics, and also understood hieroglyphics and mensuration of
land. He taught Orpheus, and is thence called by the Greeks Musæus,
and by the Egyptians Hermes. According to Josephus, he was sent as
general of the Egyptian army on an expedition against Ethiopia.
He got rid of the serpents, in the countries through which he was
to march, by turning basketfuls of ibises upon them. Tharbis,
the daughter of the King of Ethiopia, fell in love with him, and
induced her father to surrender to him; and he returned in triumph
with her to Egypt as his wife, and founded the city of Hermopolis
to celebrate his victory. We see here, that if Moses remained true
to the teachings of his mother and sister, and the simple faith
of Israel, it was not for want of the broadest culture the world
afforded. Egypt was the cradle of arts and letters, and the learned
men of Greece traveled there to study the mysteries which were
concealed under her hieroglyphics. Moses was a priest of Egypt in
virtue of being a prince of a royal house. According to the Egyptian
tradition, although a priest of Heliopolis, he always performed his
devotions outside the walls of the city, in the open air, turned
towards the sunrising. According to the language of St. Paul, "he
endured as seeing Him that is invisible."

In Wilkinson's "Egypt," we have some interesting suggestions as
to the life and training of the Egyptian priest, which go far to
show what manner of education must have been given to Moses. The
utmost purity of person was enjoined. Daily and nightly bathing
of the whole person, a dress of pure linen, great exactness as to
food, with strict dietetic regulations, were also a part of the
training. The Egyptians were the fountains of physiological and
medical knowledge to the nations of antiquity, and undoubtedly
these studies were a part of the "wisdom" of the priests. Moses
must also have passed through the lesser and the greater initiation
into the mysteries of Egypt; in which were taught the unity of God,
the immortality of the soul, and the retributions of a future life.
Thus he had an opportunity of comparing that portion of the Divine
teaching and traditions which had descended through Egypt, with the
pure stream which had flowed down through the patriarchal families.

It thus appears that the Divine Being, in choosing the teacher and
lawgiver to form his chosen nation, did not disdain the existing
wisdom of the world up to that time. Moses had before him the
results of all the world's experience in thought and culture. Egypt
was the best there was to know, and he knew Egypt thoroughly. While,
however, he often took suggestions from the ritual and philosophy
of the Egyptians, the general bent of his institutes in reference to
them was jealous and antagonistic.

At the end of such a training and such varied experience,--as
priest, as general, as conqueror,--Moses returns to Egypt and
meets again his sister, in whose heart the prophetic fire is still
burning; and the sight of the oppression and misery of his people
leads him to seek to interpose for their deliverance. The first
act is the simple, unadvised movement of indignation at injustice;
he sees a Hebrew slave writhing under the lash of an Egyptian; he
kills the tyrant and delivers the slave. He next tries to rouse a
national spirit of union among his people, and separates two who are
fighting, with the words, "Ye are brethren, and should not contend."
St. Stephen further interprets the heart of Moses at this crisis:
"For he supposed that his brethren would have understood how that
God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not. But he
that did his neighbor wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee
a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the
Egyptian yesterday?" (Acts vii. 25, 27, 28.) According to Josephus,
there were at this time envious and jealous plots hatching against
Moses in the court of Pharaoh, and his life was threatened.

He fled to the land of Midian, where, with characteristic chivalry,
his first act was to interfere for the protection of some women
who were prevented by the brutality of the shepherd herdsmen from
watering their flocks.

Still we see in him the protector of the weak and defenseless. In
this case his interference procures for him the gratitude of the
priest of the shepherd tribe, and the exiled Egyptian prince becomes
a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian. He marries and settles down,
apparently content with the life of a simple herdsman. This seems
to have been one of those refluent tides to which natures of great
sensibility are liable, after a short experience of the realities
of life. At once ardent and tender, Moses had been ready to cast in
his fortunes with his oppressed and suffering people; but he found
them unwilling to listen to him, and unworthy of freedom. His
heart sinks,--the grandeur of courts, military renown, the wisdom
of Egypt, are all less in his eyes than even the reproach of a good
cause; but he feels himself powerless and alone, rejected by the
very people whom he came to serve. Like the Greater Prophet of whom
he was the type, "He came unto his own, and his own received him
not."

In sinking of heart and despair, the solitude of the wilderness, its
loneliness and stern simplicity, are a refuge and rest to him. In
the great calm of nature he draws near to Him who is invisible. What
is most peculiar in the character of Moses, with all his advantages
of beauty, rank, station, education, and military success, is a
singular absence of self-esteem and self-reliance. When the God of
his fathers appears in flaming fire and commissions him to go and
lead forth his oppressed people, Moses shrinks from the position,
and prays that it may be given to another. He is not eloquent; he
says, he is of stammering speech and a slow tongue, and he prays the
Lord to choose another. How often it happens that the work of the
world is thus put upon men who shrink from it,--not from indolence,
but from an exalted ideality, a high conception of the work to be
done! Moses was dumb and stammering with low-minded, vulgar-natured
men, as men who live high up in the radiant air of the nobler
feelings often are. How bring his great thoughts and purer feelings
down to their conceptions? He must have a spokesman, and evidently
regards his brother Aaron as better fitted to take the lead than
himself.

Aaron seems to be a specimen of that class of men--facile,
sympathetic, easily moved, and with a ready gift of words--whom
greater natures often admire for a facility and fluency which
their very greatness denies to them. And yet it is this Aaron who,
when Moses had been more than a month absent on the mount, was
carried away by the demand of the people to make them a visible
god; and who, if his brother had not cast himself down in agony of
intercession, would have been swept away by the Divine anger.

In the great scene of the national deliverance, after the passage
of the Red Sea, behold Moses and Miriam once more reunited in a
grand act of national triumph! A solemn procession goes forth on
the shores of the sea, and Moses leads the psalm of thanksgiving.
"And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in
her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and
with dances. And Miriam answered them, saying, Sing ye to the Lord,
for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he
thrown into the sea." The solemn union of man and woman in this
great public act of worship and thanksgiving, which inaugurated a
free nation, is indicative of the equality given to women by the
Divine Being in all that pertains to the spiritual and immortal. "On
your sons and _your daughters_," says the prophet Joel, "I will pour
out of my spirit, and _they_ shall prophesy"; and the same passage
is quoted by St. Peter as expressive of the genius of the opening
Christian dispensation. Thus we find at the opening of the Mosaic,
as well as the Christian dispensation, this announcement of the
equality of the sexes in their spiritual nature.

Many circumstances make it probable that as Moses and Miriam
unitedly led the devotions of the people on this most solemn of
national festivals, so they continued to be united in administrative
station during that important period when the national code of laws
and religious ritual were being crystallized and consolidated. We
infer from a passage in the prophet Micah,[3] that it was not in
mere brotherly fondness that Moses would have consulted this sister,
who had been to him as a mother, but that she was understood to be
one of the divinely appointed leaders of the people, and that he was
thus justified in leaning upon her for counsel.

  [3] Micah, who prophesied in the reign of Hezekiah, represents the
  Divine Being as thus addressing his people: "I brought thee up
  out of the land of Egypt; I sent before thee _Moses and Aaron and
  Miriam_" (Micah vi. 4). This is an indorsement more direct than any
  other prophetess ever received.

Moses was distinguished above all men we read of in history by a
singular absence of egoism. He was like a mother in the midst of the
great people whose sins, infirmities, and sorrows he bore upon his
heart with scarcely a consciousness of self. He had no personal
interests. He was a man so lowly and gentle of demeanor that all
his associates felt free to advise him. Thus his father-in-law,
Jethro, visiting him in the wilderness, expresses himself with
perfect freedom in regard to the excessive toil he is undergoing
in the care of the people, and suggests the appointment of elders
who should share the work of management. The eighteenth chapter
of Exodus is a beautiful picture of the character and demeanor
of Moses towards his father-in-law, and of his meek readiness to
take advice. It appears that in all the long, laborious journey
through the wilderness, Moses felt the burden and the responsibility
altogether more than the honor, and there is a despairing freedom
in the complaints he sometimes pours out to his God. Thus in one
of the periods of national discontent, when the people were all
"weeping and murmuring every man in his tent door," Moses says,
"Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and why have I not found
favor in thine eyes, that thou layest the burden of all this people
upon me? Have I conceived all this people,--have I begotten them,
that thou shouldst say, Carry them in thy bosom as a nursing father
beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto
their fathers? I am not able to bear all this people alone, because
it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I
pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favor in thy sight; and
let me not see my wretchedness." The answer to this prayer is the
appointment of seventy elders, under the care of God, to be sharers
in the responsibilities of Moses. This division of responsibility
seems to have relieved Moses, and he had not a thought of divided
honor, though it at once occurred to others with regard to him.
When the gift of prophecy descended upon some of these seventy
elders, it seems to have been imagined by some that this honor would
take from the dignity of Moses; and we are told (Num. xi. 28, 29),
"Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young
men, answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them. And Moses said
unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord's
people were prophets!" If now we consider this singular meekness
and unselfishness of Moses, we may easily see how it might be a
temptation to an ambitious, self-asserting spirit to cross beyond
the proper limit of advice and counsel into that of tyrannical
dictation.

We have seen, in the few scenes where Miriam has appeared, that she
had a peculiar, prompt self-assertion and ready positiveness which
made leadership a necessity and a pleasure to her. She was a woman
to court rather than shrink from responsibility, and to feel to the
full all the personal dignity and glory which her rank and position
gave her; and, accordingly, the sacred narrative, which conceals no
fault, informs us how gradually these unwatched traits grew up into
the very worst form of selfish ambition. After all the trials and
sorrows of Moses, all the cabals and murmurings that wearied his
soul and made him feel that life was a burden to him, we come at
last to the severest trial of his life, when the sister and brother
on whom he had leaned joined against him. The whole incident,
recorded in Numbers xii., is most painful and most singular. "And
Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses on account of an Ethiopian
woman whom he had married." This is after the visit of his Midianite
father-in-law, Jethro, who brought back to Moses his wife and two
sons, from whom he had been long separated. It is supposed by some
that this "woman of Cush" is the person referred to. If Moses had to
this time been without a wife, he had been entirely devoted to his
sister. Now another female influence comes in,--the wife of Moses
may have felt disposed to assert her position among the women of
Israel, and thus a broil may have arisen. One can easily imagine
subjects of contention, and great vivacity of dissent, and the
authority of Moses would naturally be referred to as the supreme one.

Miriam and Aaron join together to repudiate that authority, and set
themselves up as equals. "And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken
_only_ by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by _us_? And the Lord heard
it. And the Lord spake suddenly to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, Come
out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three
came out. And the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud, and stood
in the door of the tabernacle, and called forth Moses and Aaron
and Miriam, and he said: Hear now my words. If there be a prophet
among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision,
and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who
is faithful in all my house. With him I will speak mouth to mouth,
even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the
Lord shall he behold. Wherefore, then, were ye not afraid to speak
against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled,
and the Lord departed from them, and the cloud departed from the
tabernacle; and behold Miriam became leprous, white as snow; and
Aaron looked upon Miriam, and behold she was leprous. And Aaron
said to Moses, Alas, my lord, lay not this sin upon us, wherein we
have done foolishly and wherein we have sinned. Let her not be as
one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out
of his mother's womb. And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal
her now, O Lord, I beseech thee." The answer given to Moses draws
a strong simile from the customs of those desert tribes where the
father holds almost the sacred place of a god in the family. If her
own father had expressed towards her the utmost extreme of mingled
indignation and loathing at her conduct, would she not be ashamed
for a while! And the command is given that she be shut out from the
camp for seven days.

It is evidence of the high position held by this woman, that the
whole camp of Israel waited during those seven days, while she was
suffering under this terrible rebuke. The severity of the rebuke and
punishment which fell upon Miriam seems at first sight excessive.
But we shall notice, in the whole line of the traditions with
respect to the prophetic office, the most complete unselfishness is
absolutely required. To use the prophetic gift in any manner for
personal ambition or aggrandizement, was sacrilege. The prophet must
be totally, absolutely without self. His divine gifts must never be
used for any personal and individual purpose, even for the relief
of utmost want. Thus the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, gifted
with miraculous power, wandered hungry in the desert, and waited to
be fed by God. Thus Jesus, the Head of all the Prophets, when after
wandering forty days he was an hungered, refused the suggestion to
feed himself by his own miraculous power, and also the suggestion to
glorify himself by a public display of that power.

Miriam, as we have seen, had naturally a great many of those
personal traits which easily degenerate into selfish ambition. She
was self-confident, energetic, and self-asserting by nature, and she
had been associating with a brother whose peculiar unselfishness
and disposition to prefer others in honor before himself had given
full scope to her love of dictation. Undoubtedly, in most things her
influence and her advice had been good, and there had been, in her
leadership among the women of Israel, much that was valuable and
admirable. But one of the most fearful possibilities in our human
experience is the silent manner in which the divine essence exhales
from our virtues and they become first faults and afterward sins.
Sacred enthusiasms, solemn and awful trusts for noble purposes,
may, before we know it, degenerate into mere sordid implements of
personal ambition. In the solemn drama that has been represented in
Scripture, the punishment that falls on the prophetess symbolizes
this corruption. God departs from the selfish and self-seeking soul,
and, with God, all spiritual life. The living, life-giving, inspired
prophetess becomes a corrupt and corrupting leper. Such was the
awful lesson spoken in this symbol of leprosy; and, while the gifted
leader of Israel waited without the camp, the nation pondered it in
silence.

One cannot but wonder at the apparent disproportion of the
punishment upon Aaron. Yet, by careful observation, we shall find
it to be a general fact in the Divine dealings, that the sins of
weakness are less severely visited than the sins of strength.
Aaron's was evidently one of those weak and yielding natures that
are taken possession of by stronger ones, as absolutely as a child
is by a grown man. His was one of those sympathetic organizations
which cannot resist the force of stronger wills. All his sins are
the sins of this kind of temperament. To suffer bitterly, and
to repent deeply, is also essential to this nature; and in the
punishment which fell on the sister who had tempted him, Aaron was
more punished than in anything that could have befallen himself.
There is utter anguish and misery in the cry which he utters when he
sees his sister thus stricken.

There seems to have been a deep purpose in thus appointing to the
priestly office a man peculiarly liable to the sins and errors of
an excess of sympathy. The apostle says, that the proper idea of a
priest was one "who could have compassion on the ignorant, and on
them that are out of the way, for that he also is compassed with
infirmity." Among men such humility is only acquired by bitter
failures. At the same time a nature so soft and yielding could not
be smitten like a stronger one without being utterly destroyed.
Aaron appears to have been so really crushed and humbled by the
blow which struck his sister that he suffered all of which he was
capable. The whole office of the priest was one of confession and
humiliation. In every symbol and every ceremony he expressed a sense
of utmost unworthiness and need of a great expiation. It seems,
therefore, in sympathy with the great and merciful design of such
an office, that for its first incumbent should be chosen a man
representing the infirmity rather than the strength of humanity.
Our own experience in human nature is, that those who err from
too sympathetic an organization, and a weak facility in receiving
impressions from others, may yet have great hold on the affections
of men, and be the most merciful counsellors of the sinful and
tempted.

The great Leader of Israel, who proclaimed his name through Moses
as forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, evidently fully
forgave and restored both Miriam and Aaron, since he remained in the
priestly office, and she is subsequently mentioned in Holy Writ as
an ordained prophetess.

After this scene in the desert we lose sight of Miriam entirely,
and are only reminded of her in one significant passage, where it
is said to Israel, "Remember what the Lord thy God did to Miriam by
the way, after ye were come forth from Egypt" (Deut. xxiv. 9). Her
death is recorded, Numbers xx. 1. Josephus gives an account of her
funeral obsequies, which were celebrated in the most solemn manner
for thirty days; the same honor was shown to a woman endowed with
the prophetic commission that was given to her brothers; and not
only so, but, as late as the time of St. Jerome, the tomb of Miriam
was shown as an object of veneration.

One thing in respect to the sacred and prophetic women of the
Jewish race is peculiar. They were uniformly, so far as appears,
married women and mothers of families, and not like the vestal
virgins of antiquity, set apart from the usual family duties of
women. Josephus mentions familiarly the husband of Miriam as
being Hur, the well-known companion and assistant of Moses on a
certain public occasion. He also refers to Bezaleel, one of the
architects who assisted in the erection of the tabernacle, as her
grandson. We shall find, by subsequent examination of the lives of
prophetic women who were called to be leaders in Israel, that they
came from the bosom of the family, and were literally, as well as
metaphorically, mothers in Israel. In the same year that Miriam
died, Aaron, her brother, was also laid to rest, and, of the three,
Moses remained alone.

It is remarkable that while Jewish tradition regarded Miriam
with such veneration, while we see her spoken of in Holy Writ as
a divinely appointed leader, yet there are none of her writings
transmitted to us, as in the case of other and less revered
prophetesses. The record of her fault and its punishment is given
with the frankness with which the Bible narrates the failings of
the very best; and, after that, nothing further is said. But it is
evident that that one fault neither shook her brother's love nor
the regard of the nation for her. Josephus expressly mentions that
the solemn funeral honors which were shown her, and which held the
nation as mourners for thirty days, were ordered and conducted by
Moses, who thus expressed his love and veneration for the sister who
watched his infancy and shared his labors. The national reverence
for Miriam is shown in the Rabbinic tradition, that, on account of
her courage and devotion in saving her brother's life at the Nile, a
spring of living water, of which the people drank, always followed
her footsteps through her wanderings in the wilderness. On her
death the spring became dry. No more touching proof of a nation's
affectionate memory can be given than a legend like this. Is it not
in a measure true of every noble, motherly woman?

Yet, like many of her sex who have watched the cradle of great
men, and been their guardians in infancy and their confidential
counsellors in maturity, Miriam is known by _Moses_ more than by
herself.

As sunshine reappears in the forms of the plants and flowers it
has stimulated into existence, so much of the power of noble women
appears, not in themselves, but in the men who are gradually molded
and modified by them. It was a worthy mission of a prophetess to
form a lawgiver. We cannot but feel that from the motherly heart
of this sister, associated with him in the prophetic office, Moses
must have gained much of that peculiar knowledge of the needs and
wants and feelings of women which in so many instances shaped his
administration.

The law which protected the children of an unbeloved wife from
a husband's partiality, the law which secured so much delicacy
and consideration to a captive woman, the law which secured
the marriage-rights of the purchased slave and forbade making
merchandise of her, the law which gave to the newly married wife
the whole of the first year of her husband's time and attention,
are specimens of what we mean when we say that the influence of a
noble-hearted woman passed into the laws of Moses. No man could be
more chivalric or more ready to protect, but it required a woman's
heart to show where protection was most needed, and we see in all
these minute guardings of family life why the Divine Being speaks
of a woman as being divinely associated with the great lawgiver: "I
sent before you Moses and Aaron and Miriam."

Thus a noble womanly influence passed through Moses into permanent
institutions. The nation identified her with the MAN who was their
glory, and Miriam became immortal in Moses.

[Illustration: DEBORAH THE PROPHETESS]




DEBORAH THE PROPHETESS.


The Book of Judges is the record of a period which may be called
the Dark Ages of the Jewish Church, even as the mediæval days were
called the Dark Ages of Christianity. In both cases, a new system of
purity and righteousness, wholly in advance of anything the world
had ever before known, had been inaugurated by the visible power
of God,--the system of Moses, and the system of Christ. But these
pure systems seem, in each case, to have been allowed to struggle
their own way through the mass of human ignorance and sin. The
ideal policy of Moses was that of an ultra-democratic community,
so arranged that perforce there must be liberty, fraternity, and
equality. There was no chance for overgrown riches or abject
poverty. Landed property was equally divided in the outset, and a
homestead allowed to each family. Real estate could not be alienated
from a family for more than a generation; after that period, it
returned again to its original possessor. The supreme law of the
land was love. Love, first, to the God and Father, the invisible
head of all; and secondly, towards the neighbor, whether a Jewish
brother or a foreigner and stranger. The poor, the weak, the
enslaved, the old, the deaf, the blind, were protected by solemn
and specific enactments. The person of woman was hedged about by
restraints and ordinances which raised her above the degradation of
sensuality to the honored position of wife and mother. Motherhood
was exalted into special honor, and named as equal with fatherhood
in the eye of God. "Ye shall fear every man _his mother_ and his
father, and keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord." (Lev. xix. 3.)

Refinement of feeling, personal cleanliness, self-restraint, order,
and purity were taught by a system of ordinances and observances,
which were intertwined through all the affairs of life, so that
the Jew who lived up to his law must of necessity rise to a noble
manhood. But this system, so ideally perfect, encountered an age
of darkness. Like all beautiful ideals, the theocratic republic
of Moses suffered under the handling of coarse human fingers.
Without printed books or printing, or any of the thousand modern
means of perpetuating ideas, the Jews were constantly tempted to
lapse into the customs of the heathen tribes around. The question
whether Jehovah or Baal were God was kept open for discussion, and
sometimes, for long periods, idolatry prevailed. Then came the
subjugation and the miseries of a foreign yoke, and the words of
Moses were fulfilled: "Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God,
with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of
all things, therefore shalt thou serve the enemy whom the Lord shall
send against thee, in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness, and
in want of all things; and he shall put a yoke of iron on thy neck,
till he have destroyed thee."

The history of the Jewish nation, in the Book of Judges, presents
a succession of these periods of oppression, and of deliverance by
a series of divinely inspired leaders, sent in answer to repentant
prayers. It is entirely in keeping with the whole character of the
Mosaic institutions, and the customs of the Jewish people, that one
of these inspired deliverers should be a woman. We are not surprised
at the familiar manner in which it is announced, as a thing quite in
the natural order, that the chief magistrate of the Jewish nation,
for the time being, was a woman divinely ordained and gifted. Thus
the story is introduced:--

"And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord when
Ehud was dead, and the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin, King
of Canaan, that reigned in Hasor, the captain of whose host was
Sisera, which dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles. And the children
of Israel cried unto the Lord; for he had nine hundred chariots of
iron, and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel.
And Deborah, the prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel
at that time. And she dwelt under the palm-tree of Deborah, between
Ramah and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim, and the children of Israel came
up to her for judgment. And she sent and called Barak, the son of
Abinoam, and said unto him: Hath not the Lord God of Israel said, Go
draw towards Mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the
children of Zebulun and the children of Naphtali? And I will draw
unto thee, at the river Kishon, Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army,
with his chariots and his multitude, and I will deliver him into thy
hands. And Barak said: If _thou_ wilt go with me, I will go; but if
thou wilt not go with me, I will not go. And she said: I will surely
go with thee; notwithstanding, the journey that thou takest shall
not be for thine honor, for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand
of a woman."

In all this we have a picture of the reverence and confidence with
which, in those days, the inspired woman was regarded. The palm-tree
which shaded her house becomes a historical monument, and is spoken
of as a well-known object. The warlike leader of the nation comes
to her submissively, listens to her message as to a divine oracle,
and obeys. He dares not go up to battle without her, but if she will
go he will follow her. The prophetess is a wife, but her husband
is known to posterity only through her. Deborah was the wife of
Lapidoth, and therefore Lapidoth is had in remembrance even down to
our nineteenth century.

This class of prophetic and inspired women appear to have been
the poets of their time. They were, doubtless, possessed of that
fine ethereal organization, fit to rise into the higher regions
of ecstasy, wherein the most exalted impressions and enthusiasms
spring, as birds under tropic sunshine. The Jewish woman was
intensely patriotic. She was a living, breathing impersonation
of the spirit of her nation; and the hymn of victory chanted by
Deborah, after the issue of the conflict, is one of the most
spirited specimens of antique poetry. In order to sympathize with
it fully, we must think of the condition of woman in those days,
when under the heel of the oppressor. The barriers and protections
which the laws of Moses threw around the Jewish women inspired in
them a sense of self-respect and personal dignity which rendered the
brutal outrages inflicted upon captives yet more intolerable. The
law of Moses commanded the Jewish warrior who took a captive woman
to respect her person and her womanhood. If he desired her, it must
be as a lawful wife; and even as a husband he must not force himself
at once upon her. He must bring her to his house, and allow her a
month to reconcile herself to her captivity, before he took her to
himself. But among the nations around, woman was the prey of whoever
could seize and appropriate her.

The killing of Sisera by Jael has been exclaimed over by modern
sentimentalists as something very shocking. But let us remember how
the civilized world felt when, not long since, the Austrian tyrant
Heynau outraged noble Hungarian and Italian women, subjecting them
to brutal stripes and indignities. When the civilized world heard
that he had been lynched by the brewers of London,--cuffed, and
pommeled, and rolled in the dust--shouts of universal applause went
up, and the verdict of society was, "Served him right." Deborah
saw, in the tyrant thus overthrown, the ravisher and brutal tyrant
of helpless women, and she extolled the spirit by which Jael had
entrapped the ferocious beast, whom her woman's weakness could not
otherwise have subdued.

There is a beautiful commentary on the song of Deborah in Herder's
"Spirit of Hebrew Poetry." He gives a charming translation, to
which we refer any one who wishes to study the oldest poem by a
female author on record. The verse ascribed to Miriam seems to have
been only the chorus of the song of Moses, and, for aught that
appears, may have been composed by him; but this song of Deborah is
of herself alone. It is one of the noblest expressions of devout
patriotism in literature.

We subjoin a version of this poem, in which we have modified, in
accordance with Herder, some passages of our ordinary translation.

    "Praise ye Jehovah for the avenging of Israel,
    When the people willingly offered themselves.
    Hear, O ye kings; give ear, O ye princes.
    I will sing praise to Jehovah;
    I will praise Jehovah, God of Israel.
    Jehovah, when thou wentest out from Seir,
    When thou marchedst from Edom,
    The earth trembled and the heavens dropped,
    The clouds also poured down water."

The song now changes, to picture the miseries of an enslaved people,
who were deprived of arms and weapons, and exposed at any hour and
moment to the incursions of robbers and murderers:--

    "In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath,
    In the days of Jael,
    The highways were unoccupied,
    And travelers walked through by-ways.
    The inhabitants ceased from the villages,
    Till I, Deborah, arose.
    I arose a mother in Israel.
    They went after strange gods;
    Then came the war to their gates.
    Was there then a shield or a spear
    Among forty thousand in Israel?"

The theme then changes, to celebrate those whose patriotic bravery
had redeemed their country:--

    "My heart throbs to the governors of Israel
    That offered themselves willingly among the people.
              Bless ye Jehovah!
    Speak, ye that ride on white asses,
    Ye that sit in judgment, and ye that walk by the way,
    They that are delivered from the noise of archers
    In the place of drawing water,
    There shall they rehearse the righteous acts of Jehovah,
    His righteous acts towards the inhabitants of the villages.
    Then shall the people go down to the gates.
    Awake! awake! Deborah,
    Awake! awake! utter a song!
    Arise, Barak, and lead captivity captive,
    Thou son of Abinoam!"

After this, another change: she reviews, with all a woman's fiery
eloquence, the course which the tribes have taken in the contest,
giving praise to the few courageous, self-sacrificing patriots, and
casting arrows of satire and scorn on the cowardly and selfish. For
then, as in our modern times, there were all sorts of men. There
were those of the brave, imprudent, generous, "do-or-die" stamp,
and there were the selfish conservatives, who only waited and
talked. So she says:--

    "It was but a small remnant that went forth against the mighty.
    The people of Jehovah went with me against the mighty.
    The march began with Ephraim,
    The root of the army was from him;
    With him didst thou come, Benjamin!
    Out of Machir came down the leaders;
    Out of Zebulun the marshals of forces;
    And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah.
    Issachar, the life-guard of Barak,
    Sprang like a hind into the battle-field!"

It appears that the tribe of Reuben had only been roused so far as
to _talk_ about the matter. They had been brought up to the point of
an animated discussion whether they should help or not. The poetess
thus jeers at them:--

    "By the brooks of Reuben there were great talkings and inquiries.
    Why abodest thou in thy sheepfolds, Reuben?
    Was it to hear the bleating of the flocks?
    By the brooks of Reuben were great talks [but nothing more].
    Gilead, too, abode beyond Jordan;
    And why did Dan remain in his ships?
    Asher stayed on the sea-shore and remained in his harbor.
    Zebulun and Naphtali risked their lives unto the death
    In the high places of the field of battle."

Now comes the description of the battle. It appears that a sudden
and violent rain-storm and an inundation helped to rout the enemy
and gain the victory; and the poetess breaks forth:--

    "The kings came and fought;
    The kings of Canaan in Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo;
    They brought away no treasure.
    They fought; from heaven the stars in their courses
    They fought against Sisera.
    The river Kishon swept them down,
    That ancient river, Kishon.
    O my soul! walk forth with strength!
    Then was the rattling of hoofs of horses!
    They rushed back,--the horses of the mighty."

And now the solemn sound of a prophetic curse:--

    "Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of Jehovah,
    Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof,
    Because they came not to the help of Jehovah,
    To the help of Jehovah against the mighty!"

Then follows a burst of blessing on the woman who had slain the
oppressor; in which we must remember, it is a woman driven to the
last extreme of indignation at outrages practiced on her sex that
thus rejoices. When the tiger who has slain helpless women and
children is tracked to his lair, snared, and caught, a shout of
exultation goes up; and there are men so cruel and brutal that even
humanity rejoices in their destruction. There is something repulsive
in the thought of the artifice and treachery that beguiled and
betrayed the brigand chief. But woman cannot meet her destroyer in
open, hand-to-hand conflict. She is thrown perforce on the weapons
of physical weakness; and Deborah exults in the success of the
artifice with all the warmth of her indignant soul.

    "Blessed above women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite!
    Blessed shall she be above women in the tent!
    He asked water and she gave him milk;
    She brought forth butter in a lordly dish.
    She put her hand to the nail,
    Her right hand to the workman's hammer.
    With the hammer she smote Sisera,
    She smote off his head.
    When she had stricken through his temple,
    At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay prostrate.
    At her feet he bowed, he fell.
    Where he bowed, there he fell down dead!"

The outrages on wives, mothers, and little children, during twenty
years of oppression, gives energy to this blessing on the woman who
dared to deliver.

By an exquisite touch of the poetess, we are reminded what must have
been the fate of all Judæan women except for this nail of Jael.

    "The mother of Sisera looked out at a window.
    She cried through the lattice,
    Why delay the wheels of his chariot?
    Why tarries the rattle of his horse-hoofs?
    Her wise ladies answered: yea, she spake herself.
    Have they not won? Have they not divided the prey?
    To every man a virgin or two;
    To Sisera a prey of divers colors, of divers colors and gold
        embroidery,
    Meet for the necks of them that take the spoil."

In the reckoning of this haughty princess, a noble Judæan lady,
with her gold embroideries and raiment of needle-work, is only an
ornament meet for the neck of the conqueror,--a toy, to be paraded
in triumph. The song now rises with one grand, solemn swell, like
the roll of waves on the sea-shore:--

    "So let all thine enemies perish, O Jehovah!
    But let them that love thee shine forth as the sun in his strength."

And as this song dies away, so passes all mention of Deborah. No
other fragment of poetry or song from her has come down from her
age to us. This one song, like a rare fragment of some deep-sea
flower, broken off by a storm of waters, has floated up to tell
of her. We shall see, as we follow down the line of history, that
women of this lofty poetic inspiration were the natural product of
the Jewish laws and institutions. They grew out of them, as certain
flowers grow out of certain soils. To this class belonged Hannah,
the mother of Samuel, and Huldah, the prophetess, and, in the
fullness of time, Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose _Magnificat_ was
the earliest flower of the Christian era. Mary was prophetess and
poet, the last and greatest of a long and noble line of women, in
whom the finer feminine nature had been kindled into a divine medium
of inspiration, and burst forth in poetry and song as in a natural
language.

[Illustration: DELILAH THE DESTROYER]




DELILAH THE DESTROYER.


The pictures of womanhood in the Bible are not confined to subjects
of the better class.

There is always a shadow to light; and shadows are deep, intense,
in proportion as light is vivid. There is in bad women a terrible
energy of evil which lies over against the angelic and prophetic
power given to them, as Hell against Heaven.

In the long struggles of the Divine Lawgiver with the idolatrous
tendencies of man, the evil as well as the good influence of
woman is recognized. There are a few representations of loathsome
vice and impurity left in the sacred records, to show how utterly
and hopelessly corrupt the nations had become whom the Jews were
commanded to exterminate. Incurable licentiousness and unnatural
vice had destroyed the family state, transformed religious services
into orgies of lust, and made woman a corrupter, instead of a
saviour. The idolatrous temples and groves and high places against
which the prophets continually thunder were scenes of abominable
vice and demoralization.

No danger of the Jewish race is more insisted on in sacred history
and literature than the bad power of bad women, and the weakness of
men in their hands. Whenever idolatry is introduced among them it is
always largely owing to the arts and devices of heathen women.

The story of Samson seems to have been specially arranged as a
warning in this regard. It is a picture drawn in such exaggerated
colors and proportions that it might strike the lowest mind and be
understood by the dullest. As we have spoken of the period of the
Judges as corresponding to the Dark Ages of Christianity, so the
story of Samson corresponds in some points with the mediæval history
of St. Christopher. In both is presented the idea of a rugged
animal nature, the impersonation of physical strength, without
much moral element, but seized on and used by a divine impulse for
a beneficent purpose. Samson had strength, and he used it to keep
alive this sacerdotal nation, this race from whom were to spring the
future apostles and prophets and teachers of our Christianity.

Like some unknown plant of rare flower and fruit, cast out to
struggle in ungenial soil, nipped, stunted, browsed down by cattle,
trodden down by wild beasts, the Jewish race, in the times of the
Book of Judges showed no capability of producing such men as Isaiah
and Paul and John, much less Jesus. Yet, humanly speaking, in this
stock, now struggling for bare national existence, and constantly
in danger of being trampled out, was contained the capacity of
unfolding, through Divine culture, such heavenly blossoms as Jesus
and his apostles.

In fact, then, the Christian religion, with all its possibilities
of hope and happiness for the human race, lay at this period
germinant, in seed form, in a crushed and struggling race. Hence the
history of Samson; hence the reason why he who possessed scarcely
a moral element of character is spoken of as under the guidance
of the Spirit of the Lord. A blind impulse inspired him to fight
for the protection of his nation against the barbarous tribes that
threatened their destruction, and with this impulse came rushing
floods of preternatural strength. With the history of this inspired
giant is entwined that of a woman whose name has come to stand as
a generic term for a class,--Delilah! It is astonishing with what
wonderful dramatic vigor a few verses create before us this woman so
vividly and so perfectly that she has been recognized from age to
age.

Delilah! not the frail sinner falling through too much love; not the
weak, downtrodden woman, the prey of man's superior force; but the
terrible creature, artful and powerful, who triumphs over man, and
uses man's passions for her own ends, without an answering throb of
passion. As the strength of Samson lies in his hair, so the strength
of Delilah lies in her hardness of heart. If she could love, her
power would depart from her. Love brings weakness and tears that
make the hand tremble and the eye dim. But she who cannot love
is guarded at all points; _her_ hand never trembles, and no soft,
fond weakness dims her eye so that she cannot see the exact spot
where to strike. Delilah has her wants,--she wants money, she wants
power,--and men are her instruments; she will make them her slaves
to do her pleasure.

Samson, like the great class of men in whom physical strength
predominates, appears to have been constitutionally good-natured and
persuadable, with a heart particularly soft towards woman. He first
falls in love with a Philistine woman whom he sees, surrendering
almost without parley. His love is animal passion, with good-natured
softness of temper; it is inconsiderate, insisting on immediate
gratification. Though a Nazarite, vowed to the service of the Lord,
yet happening to see this woman, he says forthwith: "I have seen a
woman in Timnath, of the daughters of the Philistines; therefore
get her for me for a wife. Then said his father and his mother, Is
there never a woman of the daughters of thy people, that thou goest
to take a Philistine woman to wife? But he said, Get her for me; for
she pleaseth me well."

She is got; and then we find the strong man, through his passion
for her, becoming the victim of the Philistines. He puts out a
riddle for them to guess. "And they said to Samson's wife, Entice
thy husband that he may declare unto us the riddle. And Samson's
wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest
me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people
and hast not told me. And she wept before him seven days, and on the
seventh day he told her." A picture this of what has been done in
kings' palaces and poor men's hovels ever since,--man's strength was
overcome and made the tool of woman's weakness.

We have now a record of the way this wife was taken from him, and
of the war he declared against the Philistines, and of exploits
which caused him to be regarded as the champion of his nation by the
Hebrews, and as a terror by his enemies. He holds them in check, and
defends his people, through a course of years; and could he have
ruled his own passions, he might have died victorious. The charms of
a Philistine woman were stronger over the strong man than all the
spears or swords of his enemies.

The rest of the story reads like an allegory, so exactly does it
describe that unworthy subservience of man to his own passions,
wherein bad women in all ages have fastened poisonous roots of
power. The man is deceived and betrayed, with his eyes open, by a
woman whom he does not respect, and who he can see is betraying him.
The story is for all time. The temptress says: "How canst thou say,
I love thee, when thy heart is not with me? Thou hast mocked me
these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength
lieth. And it came to pass when she pressed him daily with her
words, and urged him so that his soul was vexed to death, that he
told her all his heart." Then Delilah runs at once to her employers.
"She sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up
this once, he hath told me all his heart. And she made him sleep
upon her knees; and called for a man, and bade him shave off the
seven locks, and his strength went from him. And she said, The
Philistines be upon thee, Samson, and he awoke and said, I will go
out and shake myself, as at other times, and he wist not that the
Lord was departed from him. But the Philistines took him, and put on
him fetters of brass, and he did grind in their prison house."

Thus ignobly ends the career of a deliverer whose birth was promised
to his parents by an angel, who was vowed to God, and had the gift
of strength to redeem a nation. Under the wiles of an evil woman he
lost all, and sunk lower than any slave into irredeemable servitude.

The legends of ancient history have their parallels. Hercules,
the deliverer, made the scoff and slave of Omphale, and Antony,
become the tool and scorn of Cleopatra, are but repetitions of the
same story. Samson victorious, all-powerful, carrying the gates
of Gaza on his back, the hope of his countrymen and the terror of
his enemies; and Samson shorn, degraded, bound, eyeless, grinding
in the prison-house of those he might have subdued,--such was the
lesson given to the Jews of the power of the evil woman. And the
story which has repeated itself from age to age, is repeating itself
to-day. There are women on whose knees men sleep, to awaken shorn
of manliness, to be seized, bound, blinded, and made to grind in
unmanly servitude forever.

    "She hath cast down many wounded,
    Yea, many strong men hath she slain;
    Her house is the way to Hell,
    Going down to the chambers of Death."

[Illustration: JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER]




JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER.


This story, which has furnished so many themes for the poet and
artist, belongs, like that of Samson, to the stormy and unsettled
period of Jewish history which is covered by the Book of Judges.

Jephtha, an illegitimate son, is cast out by his brethren, goes off
into a kind of border-land, and becomes, in that turbulent period, a
leader of a somewhat powerful tribe.

These times of the Judges remind us forcibly, in some respects, of
the chivalric ages. There was the same opportunity for an individual
to rise to power by personal valor, and become an organizer and
leader in society. A brave man was a nucleus around whom gathered
others less brave, seeking protection, and the individual in time
became a chieftain. The bravery of Jephtha was so great, and his
power and consideration became such, that when his native land was
invaded by the Ammonites, he was sent for by a solemn assembly of
his people, and appointed their chief. Jephtha appears, from the
story, to have been a straightforward, brave, generous, God-fearing
man.

The story of his vow is briefly told. "And Jephtha vowed a vow unto
the Lord and said, If thou wilt without fail deliver the children
of Ammon into my hands, then it shall be that whatsoever cometh
first out of my door to meet me, when I return, shall be the Lord's,
and I will offer it as a whole offering unto the Lord." The vow
was recorded, a great victory was given, and the record says, "And
Jephtha came to Mizpah, unto his house, and behold, his daughter
came out to meet him with timbrels. She was his only child, and
beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass,
when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas! my
daughter, thou hast brought me very low; for I have opened my mouth
to the Lord, and cannot go back. And she said, My father, if thou
hast opened thy mouth to the Lord, do to me according to that which
hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken
vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even the children of Ammon.
And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: Let
me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains
to bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go. And he
sent her away for two months, and she went with her companions and
bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at
the end of two months, that she returned to her father, who did with
her according to his vow."

And what was that? The popular version generally has been that
Jephtha killed his daughter, and offered her a burnt sacrifice.
Josephus puts this interpretation upon it, saying that "he
offered such an oblation as was neither conformable to the law
nor acceptable to God; not weighing with himself what opinion the
hearers would have of such a practice." A large and very learned and
respectable body of commentators among the Jews, both ancient and
modern, deny this interpretation, and, as appears to us, for the
best of reasons.

Jephtha was a Jew, and human sacrifice was above all things
abhorrent to the Jewish law and to the whole national feeling. There
is full evidence, in other pictures of life and manners given in
the Book of Judges, that in spite of the turbulence of the times,
there were in the country many noble, God-fearing men and women who
intelligently understood and practiced the wise and merciful system
of Moses.

Granting that Jephtha, living in the heathen border-land, had
mingled degrading superstitions with his faith, it seems improbable
that such men as Boaz, the husband of Ruth, Elkanah, the husband of
Hannah, Manoah and his wife, the parents of Samson, and the kind
of people with whom they associated, could have accepted, as Judge
of Israel, a man whom their laws would regard as guilty of such a
crime. Besides, the Jewish law contained direct provisions for such
vows. In three or four places in the Jewish law, it is expressly
stated that where a human being comes into the position of a whole
offering to God, the life of that human being is not to be taken;
and a process of substitution and redemption is pointed out. Thus
the first-born of all animals and the first-born of all men were
alike commanded to be made whole offerings to the Lord: the animals
were slain and burnt, but the human being was redeemed. No one can
deny that all these considerations establish a strong probability.

Finally, when historians and commentators are divided as to a
fact, we are never far out of the way in taking that solution
which is most honorable to our common human nature, and the most
in accordance with our natural wishes. We suppose, therefore, that
the daughter of Jephtha was simply taken from the ordinary life of
woman, and made an offering to the Lord. She could be no man's wife;
and with the feelings which were had in those days as to marriage,
such a lot was to be lamented as the cutting off of all earthly
hopes. It put an end to the house of Jephtha, as besides her he had
no son or daughter, and it accounts for the language with which
the account closes, "She knew not a man,"--a wholly unnecessary
statement, if it be meant to say that she was killed. The more we
reflect upon it, the more probable it seems that this is the right
view of the matter.

The existence from early times among the Jews of an order of women
who renounced the usual joys and privileges of the family state,
to devote themselves to religious and charitable duties, is often
asserted. Walter Scott, a learned authority as to antiquities, and
one who seldom made a representation without examination, makes
Rebecca, in Ivanhoe, declare to Rowena that from earliest times such
an order of women had existed among her people, and to them she
purposes to belong.

We cannot leave the subject without pausing to wonder at the
exquisite manner in which the historian, whoever he was, has set
before us a high and lovely ideal of womanhood in this Judæan girl.
There is but a sentence, yet what calmness, what high-mindedness,
what unselfish patriotism, are in the words! "My father, if thou
hast opened thy mouth to the Lord, do to me according to thy
promise, forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance on thine
enemies, the children of Ammon."

Whatever it was to which she so calmly acceded, it was to her the
death of all earthly hope, calmly accepted in the very flush and
morning tide of victory. How heroic the soul that could meet so
sudden a reverse with so unmoved a spirit!




HANNAH THE PRAYING MOTHER.


The story of Hannah is a purely domestic one, and is most valuable
in unveiling the intimate and trustful life of faith that existed
between the Jehovah revealed in the Old Testament and each separate
soul, however retired and humble. It is not God the Lawgiver and
King, but, if we may so speak, God in his private and confidential
relations to the individual. The story opens briefly, after the
fashion of the Bible, whose brevity in words is such a contrast to
the tediousness of most professed sacred books.

"There was a man," says the record, "named Elkanah, and he had two
wives; and the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the
other Peninnah, and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none."
Hannah, from the story, appears to have had one of those intense
natures, all nerve and sensibility, on which every trouble lies with
double weight. The lack of children in an age when motherhood was
considered the essential glory of woman, was to her the climax of
anguish and mortification. Nor was there wanting the added burden
of an unfriendly party to notice and to inflame the hidden wound by
stinging commentaries; for we are told that "her adversary provoked
her sore, to make her fret." And thus, year by year, as the family
went up to the sacred feast at Shiloh, and other exultant mothers
displayed their fair sons and daughters, the sacred feast was turned
into gall for the unblest one, and we are told that Hannah "wept and
did not eat." "Then said Elkanah unto her, Hannah, why weepest thou?
and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? Am I not
better to thee than ten sons?"

Hannah was one of a class of women in whom genius and a poetic
nature are struggling with a vague intensity, giving the keenest
edge to desire and to disappointment. All Judæan women desire
children, but Hannah had that vivid sense of nationality, that
identification of self with the sublime future of her people, that
made it bitter to be excluded from all share in those hopes and
joys of motherhood from which the earth's deliverer was to spring.
She desired a son, as poets desire song, as an expression of all
that was heroic and unexpressed in herself, and as a tribute to the
future glories of her people. A poet stricken with paralysis might
suffer as she suffered. But it was a kind and degree of sorrow, the
result of an exceptional nature, which few could comprehend. To some
it would afford occasion only for vulgar jests. Even her husband,
devoted as he was, wondered at rather than sympathised with it.

It appears that there rose at last one of those flood-tides of
feeling when the soul cries out for relief, and _must_ have a
Helper; and Hannah bethought her of the words of Moses, "What nation
is there that hath their God _so nigh_ unto them as the Lord our
God is unto us, for all that we call unto him for?" It is precisely
for such sorrows--intimate, private, personal, and not to be
comprehended fully by any earthly friend--that an All-seeing, loving
Father is needed. And Hannah followed the teachings of her religion
when she resolved to make a confidant of her God, and ask of him the
blessing her soul fainted for. She chose the sacred feast at Shiloh
for the interview with the gracious Helper; and, after the festival,
remained alone in the holy place in an ecstasy of fervent prayer.
The narrative says: "And she was in bitterness of soul and prayed
unto the Lord and wept sore. And she vowed a vow and said, O Lord of
Hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid,
and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but will give unto
thine handmaid a man-child, then will I give him unto the Lord all
the days of his life. And it came to pass as she continued praying
before the Lord, that Eli marked her mouth. Now Hannah she spake
in her heart, only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard;
therefore Eli thought she had been drunken."

He--dear, kind-hearted, blundering old priest--reproved her with
about as much tact as many similar, well-meaning, obtuse people use
nowadays in the management of natures whose heights and depths they
cannot comprehend. Hannah meekly answers: "No, my lord, I am a woman
of a sorrowful spirit; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink,
but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Count not thy handmaid
for a daughter of Belial, for out of the abundance of my complaint
and grief have I spoken hitherto. Then Eli answered and said, Go in
peace, the God of Israel grant thee thy petition thou hast asked of
him. And she said, Let thine handmaid find grace in thy sight. So
the woman went her way and did eat, and her countenance was no more
sad."

This experience illustrates that kind of prevailing prayer that
comes when the soul, roused to the full intensity of its being by
the pressure of some anguish, pours itself out like a wave into the
bosom of its God. The very outgush is a relief; there is healing in
the very act of self-abandonment, as the whole soul casts itself
on God. And though there be no present fulfillment, yet, in point
of fact, peace and rest come to the spirit. Hannah had no voice
of promise, no external sign, only the recorded promise of God to
hear prayer; but the prayer brought relief. All the agony of desire
passed away. Her countenance was no more sad. In due time, the
visible answer came. Hannah was made the happy mother of a son, whom
she called Samuel, or "Asked of God."

This year, when the family went up to Shiloh, Hannah remained with
her infant; for she said to her husband, "I will not go up until
the child be weaned; and then will I bring him that he may appear
before the Lord, and there abide forever." The period of weaning
was of a much later date among Jewish women than in modern times;
and we may imagine the little Samuel three or four years old when
his mother prepares, with all solemnity, to carry him and present
him in the temple as her offering to God. "And when she had weaned
him she took him up with her, with three bullocks, and one ephah of
flour, and a bottle of wine, and brought him unto the house of the
Lord in Shiloh; and the child was young. And they slew a bullock,
and brought the child to Eli. And she said, O my lord, as thy soul
liveth, my lord, I am the woman that stood by thee here praying
unto the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me
my petition which I asked of him. Therefore also have I lent him to
the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord. And she
worshiped the Lord there."

And now the depths of this silent woman's soul break forth into
a song of praise and thanksgiving. Hannah rises before us as the
inspired poetess, and her song bears a striking resemblance in theme
and in cast of thought to that of Mary the mother of Jesus, years
after. Indeed, there is in the whole history of this sacred and
consecrated child, a foreshadowing of that more celestial flower of
Nazareth that should yet arise from the Judæan stock. This idea of
a future Messiah and King permeated every pious soul in the nation,
and gave a solemn intensity to the usual rejoicings of motherhood;
for who knew whether the auspicious child might not spring from
her lineage! We see, in the last verse of this poem, that Hannah's
thoughts in her hour of joy fix themselves on the glorious future of
the coming King and Anointed One as the climax of her joy.

It will be interesting to compare this song of Hannah with that of
Mary, and notice how completely the ideas of the earlier mother
had melted and transfused themselves into the heart of Mary. Years
after, when the gathering forces of the Church and State were
beginning to muster themselves against Martin Luther, and he stood
as one man against a world, he took refuge in this song of the happy
woman; printed it as a tract, with pointed commentaries, and spread
it all over Europe; and in thousands of hamlets hearts were beating
to the heroic words of the Judæan mother:--

    "My heart rejoiceth in Jehovah,
    My horn is exalted in Jehovah;
    My speech shall flow out over my enemies,
    Because I rejoice in thy salvation.
    There is none holy as Jehovah:
    For there is none beside thee:
    Neither is there any rock like our God.
    Talk no more so exceeding proudly;
    Let not arrogance come out of thy mouth:
    For Jehovah is a God of knowledge,
    By him are actions weighed.
    The bows of mighty men are broken,
    But the weak are girded with strength.
    The rich have hired out for bread;
    But the hungry cease from want.
    The barren woman hath borne seven;
    The fruitful one hath grown feeble.
    Jehovah killeth and maketh alive;
    He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up.
    Jehovah maketh poor and maketh rich;
    He bringeth low, and lifteth up.
    He raiseth the poor out of the dust,
    He lifteth the beggar from the dunghill,
    To set them among princes,
    To make them inherit the throne of glory;
    For the pillars of the earth are Jehovah's,
    He hath set the world upon them.
    He will keep the feet of his saints,
    The wicked shall be silent in darkness;
    For by strength no man shall prevail.
    The adversaries of Jehovah shall be broken to pieces;
    Out of heaven shall he thunder upon them.
    Jehovah shall judge the ends of the earth;
    He shall give strength unto his King,
    And exalt the horn of his Anointed."

This song shows the fire, the depth, the fervency of the nature of
this woman, capable of rising to the sublimest conceptions. It is
the ecstasy of the triumph of conscious weakness in an omnipotent
protector. Through her own experience, as it is with every true
soul, she passes to the experience of universal humanity; in her
Deliverer she sees the Deliverer and Helper of all the helpless and
desolate; and thus, through the gate of personal experience, she
comes to a wide sympathy with all who live. She loves her God, not
mainly and only for what he is to her, but for what he is to all.
How high and splendid were these conceptions and experiences that
visited and hallowed the life of the simple and lowly Jewish woman
in those rugged and unsettled periods, and what beautiful glimpses
do we get of the good and honest-hearted people that lived at that
time in Palestine, and went up yearly to worship at Shiloh!

After this we have a few more touches in this beautiful story. The
little one remained in the temple; for it is said, "And Samuel
ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen
ephod. Moreover, his mother made him a little coat and brought it to
him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer
the yearly sacrifice." How the little one was cared for the story
does not say. In some passages of the Bible, we have intimations
of an order of consecrated women who devoted themselves to the
ministries of the temple, like Anna the prophetess, "who departed
not from the temple, but served God with fasting and prayer, night
and day." Doubtless from the hands of such were motherly ministries.
One rejoices to hear that the Gracious Giver blessed this mother
abundantly more than she asked or thought; for we are told that a
family of three sons and two daughters were given to her.

We cannot forbear to add to this story that of the sacred little
one, who grew fair as the sheltered lily in the house of God. Child
of prayer, born in the very ardor and ecstasy of a soul uplifted
to God, his very nature seemed heavenly, and the benignant Father
early revealed himself to him, choosing him as a medium for divine
messages. One of the most thrilling and poetic passages in the Bible
describes the first call of the Divine One to the consecrated child.
The lamps burning in the holy place; the little one lying down to
sleep; the mysterious voice calling him; his innocent wonder, and
the slow perception of old Eli of the true significance of the
event,--all these form a beautiful introduction to the life of the
last and most favored of those prophetic magistrates who interpreted
to the Jewish people the will of God. Samuel was the last of the
Judges,--the strongest, the purest, and most blameless,--the worthy
son of such a mother.

[Illustration: RUTH]




RUTH THE MOABITESS.


The story of Ruth is a beautiful idyl of domestic life, opening to
us in the barbarous period of the _Judges_. In reading some of the
latter chapters of that book, one might almost think that the system
of Moses had proved a failure, and that the nation was lapsing back
into the savage state of the heathen world around them; just as,
in reading the history of the raids and feuds of the Middle Ages,
one might consider Christianity a failure. But in both cases there
were nooks and dells embosomed in the wild roughness of unsettled
society, where good and honest hearts put forth blossoms of immortal
sweetness and perfume. This history of Ruth unveils to us pictures
of the best people and the best sort of life that were formed by the
laws and institutes of Moses,--a life pastoral, simple, sincere,
reverential, and benevolent.

The story is on this wise: A famine took place in the land of Judah,
and a man named Elimelech went with his wife and two sons to sojourn
in the land of Moab. The sons took each of them a wife of the
daughters of Moab, and they dwelt there about ten years. After that,
the man and both the sons died, and the mother, with her two widowed
young daughters, prepared to return to her kindred. Here the scene
of the little drama opens.

The mother, Naomi, comes to our view, a kind-hearted, commonplace
woman, without any strong religious faith or possibility of heroic
exaltation,--just one of those women who see the hard, literal
side of a trial, ungilded by any faith or hope. We can fancy her
discouraged and mournful air, and hear the melancholy croak in
her voice as she talks to her daughters, when they profess their
devotion to her, and their purpose to share her fortunes and go with
her to the land of Israel.

"Turn again, my daughters; why will ye go with me? Are there yet any
more sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands? Turn again, my
daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have an husband. If I
should say that I have hope to-night that I should have an husband,
and bear sons, would ye tarry for them till they were grown? Would
ye stay from having husbands? Nay, my daughters, it grieveth me for
your sake that the hand of the Lord hath gone out against me."

This pre-eminently literal view of the situation seemed to strike
one of the daughters as not to be gainsaid; for we read: "And
they lifted up their voices and wept again, and Orpah kissed her
mother-in-law, but Ruth clave unto her."

All the world through, from that time to this, have been these two
classes of friends. The one weep, and kiss, and leave us to our
fate, and go to seek their own fortunes. There are plenty of that
sort every day. But the other are one with us for life or death.

The literal-minded, sorrowful old woman has no thought of inspiring
such devotion. Orpah, in her mind, has done the sensible and only
thing in leaving her, and she says to Ruth: "Behold, thy sister has
returned unto her people and unto her gods; return thou after thy
sister-in-law."

We see in this verse how devoid of religious faith is the mother. In
a matter-of-course tone she speaks of Orpah having gone back to her
gods, and recommends Ruth to do the like. And now the fair, sweet
Ruth breaks forth in an unconscious poetry of affection, which has
been consecrated as the language of true love ever since: "Entreat
me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for
whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest
I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and
more also, if aught but death part thee and me."

Troth-plight of fondest lovers, marriage-vows straitest and most
devoted, can have no love-language beyond this; it is the very
crystallized and diamond essence of constancy and devotion. It
is thus that minds which have an unconscious power of enthusiasm
surprise and dominate their literal fellow-pilgrims. It is as if
some silent dun-colored bird had broken out into wondrous ecstasies
of silver song. Naomi looked on her daughter, and the narrative
says, "When she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go with her,
then she left speaking to her." But Ruth is ignorant of the beauty
of her own nature; for Love never knows herself or looks in a mirror
to ask if she be fair; and though her superior moral and emotive
strength prevail over the lower nature of the mother, it is with a
sweet, unconscious, yielding obedience that she follows her.

When they came back to their kindred, the scene is touchingly
described. In her youth the mother had been gay and radiant, as
her name, Naomi, "pleasant," signifies. "And it came to pass that
when they came in, all the village was moved about them, and they
said: Is this Naomi? And she said: "Call me not Naomi, call me Marah
[bitterness]; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I
went out full, and the Lord hath brought me again empty. Why then
call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the
Almighty hath afflicted me?"

We see here a common phase of a low order of religion. Naomi does
not rebel at the Divine decree. She thinks that she is bitterly
dealt with, but that there is no use in complaining, because it is
the _Almighty_ that has done it. It does not even occur to her that
in going away from the land of true religion, and encouraging her
sons to form marriages in a heathen land, she had done anything to
make this affliction needful; and yet the whole story shows that but
for this stroke the whole family would have settled down contentedly
among the Moabites, and given up country and religion and God. There
are many nowadays to whom just such afflictions are as needful, and
to whom they seem as bitter and inexplicable.

The next scene shows us the barley-field of the rich proprietor,--"a
mighty man, a man of wealth," the narrative calls him. Young men
and maidens, a goodly company, are reaping, binding, and gathering.
In the shade are the parched corn and sour wine, and other
provisions set forth for the noontide rest and repast.

The gracious proprietor, a noble-minded, gentle old man, now comes
upon the scene. "And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said to
the reapers, The Lord be with you; and they answered, The Lord bless
thee." The religious spirit of the master spread itself through all
his hands, and the blessing that he breathes upon them was returned
to him. The sacred simplicity of the scene is beyond praise.

He inquires of his men the history of this fair one who modestly
follows the reapers, and, finding who she is, says: "Hearest thou,
my daughter, go not to glean in any other field, but abide here with
my maidens. Let thine eyes be upon the field that they reap, and go
after them: have I not charged the young men not to touch thee? and
when thou art athirst, go to the vessels and drink of that that the
young men have drawn." Then she bowed herself and said: "Why have I
found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldst take knowledge of me,
seeing I am a stranger?" And he said: "It hath been fully shown unto
me all that thou hast done to thy mother-in-law since the death of
thy husband; how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the
land of thy nativity, and art come to a people that thou knewest not
heretofore. The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given
thee of the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust."

We have afterwards the picture of the young gleaner made at home at
the noontide repast, where the rich proprietor sat with his servants
in parental equality,--"And she sat beside the reapers, and he did
reach her parched corn, and she did eat and was sufficed."

There is a delicacy in the feeling inspired by the timid, modest
stranger, which is expressed in the orders given by Boaz to the
young men. "And it came to pass when she rose to glean, that Boaz
commanded his young men, saying: Let her glean even among the
sheaves, and reproach her not; and let fall also some handfuls of
purpose for her, that she may glean them, and rebuke her not."

Gleaning, by the institutes of Moses, was one of the allotted
privileges of the poor. It was a beautiful feature of that system
that consideration for the poor was interwoven with all the acts of
common life. The language of the laws of Moses reminded the rich
that they were of one family with the poor. "Thou shalt not harden
thy heart nor shut thy hand from thy _poor brother_. Thou shalt
surely give to him, and thy heart shall not be grieved when thou
givest, because for this the Lord thy God shall bless thee." "And
when ye reap the harvest of your land thou shalt not wholly reap
the corners of the field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings
of thy harvest; and thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither
shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave
them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord." This provision
for the unfortunate operated both ways. It taught consideration and
thoughtfulness to the rich, and industry and self-respect to the
poor. They were not humbled as paupers. They were not to be beggars,
but gleaners, and a fair field for self-respecting labor was opened
to them. In the spirit of these generous laws the rich proprietor
veils his patronage of the humble maid. Ruth was to be abundantly
helped, as it were, by a series of fortunate accidents.

We see in the character of Boaz the high-minded, chivalrous
gentleman, devout in his religion Godward, and considerately
thoughtful of his neighbor; especially mindful of the weak and
helpless and unprotected. It was the working out, in one happy
instance, of the ideal of manhood the system of Moses was designed
to create.

And now the little romance goes on to a happy termination. The
fair gleaner returns home artlessly triumphant with the avails of
her day's toil, and tells her mother of the kind patronage she
has received. At once, on hearing the name, the prudent mother
recognizes the near kinsman of the family, bound, by the law of
Moses and the custom of the land, to become the husband and
protector of her daughter. In the eye of Jewish law and Jewish
custom Ruth already belonged to Boaz, and had a right to claim the
position and protection of a wife. The system of Moses solved the
problem of woman by allotting to every woman a man as a protector.
A widow had her son to stand for her; but if a widow were left
without a son, then the nearest kinsman of the former husband
was bound to take her to wife. The manner in which Naomi directs
the simple-minded and obedient daughter to throw herself on the
protection of her rich kinsman is so far removed from all our modern
ideas of propriety that it cannot be judged by them. She is directed
to seek the threshing-floor at night, to lie down at his feet, and
draw over her his mantle; thus, in the symbolic language of the
times, asserting her humble right to the protection of a wife. Ruth
is shown to us as one of those artless, confiding natures that see
no evil in what is purely and rightly intended. It is enough for
her, a stranger, to understand that her mother, an honored Judæan
matron, would command nothing which was not considered decorous and
proper among her people. She obeys without a question. In the same
spirit of sacred simplicity in which the action was performed it was
received. There is a tender dignity and a chivalrous delicacy in the
manner in which the bold yet humble advance is accepted.

"And Boaz awoke, and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said,
Who art thou? And she said, I am Ruth, thy handmaid. Spread thy
skirt over me, for thou art my near kinsman. And he said, Blessed
art thou of the Lord, my daughter, for thou hast shown more kindness
at the end than in the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedst not
the young men, poor or rich. And now, my daughter, fear not; I will
do for thee all that thou requirest, for all the city of my people
doth know that thou art a virtuous woman."

The very crucial test of gentlemanly delicacy and honor is
the manner in which it knows how to receive an ingenuous and
simple-hearted act of confidence. As in the fields Boaz did not
ostentatiously urge alms upon the timid maiden, but suffered her
to have the pleasure of gleaning for herself, so now he treats this
act by which she throws herself upon his protection as an honor
done to him, for which he is bound to be grateful. He hastens to
assure her that he is her debtor for the preference she shows him.
That courtesy and chivalric feeling for woman which was so strong a
feature in the character of Moses, and which is embodied in so many
of his laws and institutes, comes out in this fine Hebrew gentleman
as perfectly, but with more simplicity, than in the Sir Charles
Grandison of the eighteenth century. And so, at last, the lovely
stranger, Ruth the Moabitess, becomes the wife of the rich landed
proprietor, with the universal consent of all the people. "And
all the people that were in the gates and the elders said, We are
witnesses. The Lord make this woman that is come into thy house like
Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel."

From this marriage of the chivalrous, pious old man with the devoted
and loving Ruth the Moabitess, sprang an auspicious lineage. The
house of David, the holy maiden of Judæa and her son, whom all
nations call blessed, were the illustrious seed of this wedding.
In the scene at the birth of the first son of Ruth, we have a fine
picture of the manners of those days. "And the women said unto
Naomi, Blessed be the Lord which hath not left thee this day without
a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel. And he shall be
unto thee a restorer of thy life and a nourisher of thy old age:
for thy daughter-in-law, which loveth thee, and is better to thee
than seven sons, hath borne him. And Naomi took the child and
laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it. And the women her
neighbors gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi, and
they called his name Obed; he is the father of Jesse, the father of
David."

In all this we see how strong is the impression which the _loving_
nature of Ruth makes in the narrative. From the union of this
woman so tender and true, and this man so gracious and noble and
chivalric, comes the great heart-poet of the world. No other songs
have been so dear to mankind, so cherished in the heart of high and
low, rich and poor, in every nation and language, as these Psalms of
David.

    "It is that music to whose tone
      The common pulse of man keeps time,
    In cot or castle's mirth or moan,
      In cold or fervid clime."

In the tender friendship of David for Jonathan, we see again the
loving constancy of Ruth in a manly form,--the love between soul
and soul, which was "wonderful, passing the love of women." In the
ideal which we form of Mary, the mother of Jesus, lowly, modest,
pious, constant, rich in the power of love and in a simple, trustful
faith, we see the transmission of family traits through generations.
Dante, in his "Paradise," places Ruth among the holy women who sit
at the feet of the glorified Madonna. The Providence that called a
Moabitish ancestress into that golden line whence should spring the
Messiah was a sort of morning star of intimation that He should be
of no limited nationality; that he was to be the Son of Man, the
Lord and brother of all mankind.




THE WITCH OF ENDOR.


What was a witch, according to the law of Moses, and why was
witchcraft a capital offense? A witch was the dark shadow of a
prophetess.

A prophetess was a holy woman drawing near to the spiritual world
by means of faith and prayer, and thus inspired by God with a
knowledge beyond the ordinary power of mortals. Her prophecies and
her guidance were all from the only true source of knowledge; the
spirits that attended her were true and heavenly spirits, and she
became a medium by whom the will of God and the perplexed path of
duty were mad

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