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Expositions of Holy Scripture

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Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture

Author: Alexander Maclaren


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7883]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2012

Language: English

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




Produced by Tiffany Vergon, David King and the Online
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EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.



EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

SECOND KINGS FROM CHAP. VIII, AND CHRONICLES, EZRA, AND NEHEMIAH

ESTHER, JOB, PROVERBS
AND ECCLESIASTES



CONTENTS


THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS


THE STORY OF HAZAEL (2 Kings viii. 9-15)

IMPURE ZEAL (2 Kings x. 18-31)

JEHOIADA AND JOASH (2 Kings xi. 1-16)

METHODICAL LIBERALITY (2 Kings xii. 4-15)

THE SPIRIT OF POWER (2 Kings xiii. 16)

A KINGDOM'S EPITAPH (2 Kings xvii. 6-18)

DIVIDED WORSHIP (2 Kings xvii. 33)

HEZEKIAH, A PATTERN OF DEVOUT LIFE (2 Kings xviii. 5, 6)

'HE UTTERED HIS VOICE, THE EARTH MELTED' (2 Kings xix. 20-22; 28-37)

THE REDISCOVERED LAW AND ITS EFFECTS (2 Kings xxii. 8-20)

THE END (2 Kings xxv. 1-12)

THE KING'S POTTERS (1 Chron. iv. 23)

DAVID'S CHORISTERS (1 Chron. vi. 32, R.V. margin)

DRILL AND ENTHUSIASM (1 Chron. xii. 33)

DAVID'S PROHIBITED DESIRE AND PERMITTED SERVICE (1 Chron. xxii. 6-16)

DAVID'S CHARGE TO SOLOMON (1 Chron. xxviii. 1-10)

THE WAVES OF TIME (1 Chron. xxix. 30)


THE SECOND BOOK OF CHRONICLES


THE DUTY OF EVERY DAY (2 Chron. viii. 12-13, R.V.)

CONTRASTED SERVICES (2 Chron. xii. 8)

THE SECRET OF VICTORY (2 Chron. xiii. 18)

ASA'S REFORMATION, AND CONSEQUENT PEACE AND VICTORY (2 Chron. xiv.
2-8)

ASA'S PRAYER (2 Chron. xiv. 11)

THE SEARCH THAT ALWAYS FINDS (2 Chron. xv. 15)

JEHOSHAPHAT'S REFORM (2 Chron. xvii. 1-10)

AMASIAH (2 Chron. xvii. 16)

'A MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES' (2 Chron. xix. 1-11)

A STRANGE BATTLE (2 Chron. xx. 12)

HOLDING FAST AND HELD FAST (2 Chron. xx. 20)

JOASH (2 Chron. xxiv. 2, 17)

GLAD GIVERS AND FAITHFUL WORKERS (2 Chron. xxiv. 4-14)

PRUDENCE AND FAITH (2 Chron. xxv. 9)

JOTHAM (2 Chron. xxvii. 6)

COSTLY AND FATAL HELP (2 Chron. xxviii. 23)

A GODLY REFORMATION (2 Chron. xxix. 1-11)

SACRIFICE RENEWED (2 Chron. xxix. 18-31)

A LOVING CALL TO REUNION (2 Chron. xxx. 1-13)

A STRANGE REWARD FOR FAITHFULNESS (2 Chron. xxxii. 1)

MANASSEH'S SIN AND REPENTANCE (2 Chron. xxxiii. 9-16)

JOSIAH (2 Chron. xxxiv. 1-13)

JOSIAH AND THE NEWLY FOUND LAW (2 Chron. xxxiv. 11-28)

THE FALL OF JUDAH (2 Chron. xxxvi. 11-21)


EZRA


THE EVE OF THE RESTORATION (Ezra i. 1-11)

ALTAR AND TEMPLE (Ezra iii. 1-13)

BUILDING IN TROUBLOUS TIMES (Ezra iv. 1-5)

THE NEW TEMPLE AND ITS WORSHIP (Ezra vi. 14-22)

GOD THE JOY-BRINGER (Ezra vi. 22)

HEROIC FAITH (Ezra viii. 22, 23, 31, 32)

THE CHARGE OF THE PILGRIM PRIESTS (Ezra viii. 29)


THE BOOK OF NEHEMIAH


A REFORMER'S SCHOOLING (Neh. i. 1-11)

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL EVILS (Neh. i. 4)

'OVER AGAINST HIS HOUSE' (Neh. iii. 28)

DISCOURAGEMENTS AND COURAGE (Neh. iv. 9-21)

AN ANCIENT NONCONFORMIST (Neh. v. 15)

READING THE LAW WITH TEARS AND JOY (Neh. viii. 1-12)

THE JOY OF THE LORD (Neh. viii. 10)

SABBATH OBSERVANCE (Neh. xiii. l5-22)


THE BOOK OF ESTHER


THE NET SPREAD (Esther iii. 1-11)

ESTHER'S VENTURE (Esther iv. 10-17; v. 1-3)

MORDECAI AND ESTHER (Esther iv. 14)

THE NET BROKEN (Esther viii.3-8,15-17)


THE BOOK OF JOB


SORROW THAT WORSHIPS (Job i. 21)

THE PEACEABLE FRUITS OF SORROWS RIGHTLY BORNE
(Job v. 17-27)

TWO KINDS OF HOPE (Job viii. 14; Romans v. 5)

JOB'S QUESTION, JESUS' ANSWER (Job xiv. 14; John xi. 25,26)

KNOWLEDGE AND PEACE (Job xxii. 21)

WHAT LIFE MAY BE MADE (Job xxii. 26-29)

'THE END OF THE LORD' (Job xlii. 1-10)


THE PROVERBS


A YOUNG MAN'S BEST COUNSELLOR (Proverbs i. 1-19)

WISDOM'S CALL (Proverbs i. 20-33)

THE SECRET OF WELL-BEING (Proverbs iii. 1-10)

THE GIFTS OF HEAVENLY WISDOM (Proverbs iii. 11-24)

THE TWO PATHS (Proverbs iv. 10-19)

MONOTONY AND CRISES (Proverbs iv. 12)

FROM DAWN TO NOON (Proverbs iv. 18; Matt. xiii. 43)

KEEPING AND KEPT (Proverbs iv. 23; I Peter i. 5)

THE CORDS OF SIN (Proverbs v. 22)

WISDOM'S GIFT (Proverbs viii. 21)

WISDOM AND CHRIST (Proverbs viii. 30, 31)

THE TWO-FOLD ASPECT OF THE DIVINE WORKING (Proverbs
x. 29)

THE MANY-SIDED CONTRAST OF WISDOM AND FOLLY (Proverbs
xii. 1-15)

THE POOR RICH AND THE RICH POOR (Proverbs xiii. 7)

THE TILLAGE OF THE POOR (Proverbs xiii. 23)

SIN THE MOCKER (Proverbs xiv. 9)

HOLLOW LAUGHTER, SOLID JOY (Prov. xiv. 13; John xv. 11)

SATISFIED FROM SELF (Proverbs xiv. 14)

WHAT I THINK OF MYSELF AND WHAT GOD THINKS OF
ME (Proverbs xvi. 2)

A BUNDLE OF PROVERBS (Proverbs xvi. 22-33)

TWO FORTRESSES (Proverbs xviii. 10, 11)

A STRING OF PEARLS (Proverbs xx. 1-7)

THE SLUGGARD IN HARVEST (Proverbs xx. 4)

BREAD AND GRAVEL (Proverbs xx. 17)

A CONDENSED GUIDE FOR LIFE (Proverbs xxiii. 15-23)

THE AFTERWARDS AND OUR HOPE (Proverbs xxiii. 17, 18)

THE PORTRAIT OF A DRUNKARD (Proverbs xxiii, 29-35)

THE CRIME OF NEGLIGENCE (Proverbs xxiv. 11, 12)

THE SLUGGARD'S GARDEN (Proverbs xxiv. 30, 31)

AN UNWALLED CITY (Proverbs xxv. 28)

THE WEIGHT OF SAND (Proverbs xxvii. 3)

PORTRAIT OF A MATRON (Proverbs xxxi. 10-31)


ECCLESIASTES; OR, THE PREACHER


WHAT PASSES AND WHAT ABIDES (Eccles. i. 4; I John
ii. 17)

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE (Eccles. i. 9; I Peter iv. 2, 3)

TWO VIEWS OF LIFE (Eccles. i. 13; Hebrews xii. 10)

'A TIME TO PLANT' (Eccles. iii. 2)

ETERNITY IN THE HEART (Eccles. iii. 11)

LESSONS FOR WORSHIP AND FOR WORK (Eccles. v. 1-12)

NAKED OR CLOTHED? (Eccles. v. 15; Rev. xiv. 13)

FINIS CORONAT OPUS (Eccles. vii. 8)

MISUSED RESPITE (Eccles. viii. 11)

FENCES AND SERPENTS (Eccles. x. 8)

THE WAY TO THE CITY (Eccles. x. 15)

A NEW YEAR'S SERMON TO THE YOUNG (Eccles. xi. 9; xii. 1)

THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER (Eccles. xii. 1-7, 13-14)




THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS


THE STORY OF HAZAEL

'So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, even of
every good thing of Damascus, forty camels' burden, and came and stood
before him, and said, Thy son Ben-hadad king of Syria hath sent me to
thee, saying, Shall I recover of this disease? 10. And Elisha said
unto him, Go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the
Lord hath shewed me that he shall surely die. 11. And he settled his
countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed: and the man of God wept.
12. And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I
know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their
strong holds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay
with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women
with child. 13. And Hazael said. But what, is thy servant a dog, that
he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The Lord hath
shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria. 14. So he departed from
Elisha, and came to his master; who said to him, What said Elisha to
thee? and he answered, He told me that thou shouldest surely recover.
15. And it came to pass on the morrow, that he took a thick cloth, and
dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died: and
Hazael reigned in his stead.'--2 KINGS viii. 9-15.


This is a strange, wild story. That Damascene monarchy burst into
sudden power, warlike and commercial--for the two things went together
in those days. As is usually the case, Hazael the successful soldier
becomes ambitious. His sword seems to be the real sceptre, and he will
have the dominion. Many years before this Elijah had anointed him to
be king over Syria. That had wrought upon him and stirred ambition in
him. Elijah's other appointments, coeval with his own, had already
taken effect, Jehu was king of Israel, Elisha was prophet, and he only
had not attained the dignity to which he had been designated.

He comes now with his message from the king of Damascus to Elisha. No
doubt he had been often contrasting his own vigour with the decrepit,
nominal king, and many a time had thought of the anointing, and had
nursed ambitious hopes, which gradually turned to dark resolves.

He hoped, no doubt, that Ben-hadad was mortally sick, and it must have
been a cruel, crushing disappointment when he heard that there was
nothing deadly in the illness. Another hope was gone from him. The
throne seemed further off than ever. I suppose that, at that instant,
there sprang in his heart the resolve that he would kill Ben-hadad.
The recoil of disappointment spurred Hazael to the resolution which he
then and there took. It had been gathering form, no doubt, through
some years, but now it became definite and settled. While his face
glowed with the new determination, and his lips clenched themselves in
the firmness of his purpose, the even voice of the prophet went on,
'howbeit he shall certainly die,' and the eye of the man of God
searched him till he turned away ashamed because aware that his inmost
heart was read.

Then there followed the prophet's weeping, and the solemn announcement
of what Hazael would do when he had climbed to the throne. He shrank
in real horror from the thought of such enormity of sin. 'Is thy
servant a dog that he should do such a thing?' Elisha sternly answers:
'The Lord hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria.' The
certainty is that in his character occasion will develop evil. The
certainty is that a course begun by such crime will be of a piece, and
consistent with itself.

This conversation with Elisha seems to have accelerated Hazael's
purpose, as if the prediction were to his mind a justification of his
means of fulfilling it.

How like Macbeth he is!--the successful soldier, stirred by
supernatural monitions of a greatness which he should achieve, and at
last a murderer.

This narrative opens to us some of the solemn, dark places of human
life, of men's hearts, of God's ways. Let us look at some of the
lessons which lie here.

I. Man's responsibility for the sin which God foresees.

It seems as if the prophet's words had much to do in exciting the
ambitious desires which led to the crime. Hazael's purpose of
executing the deed is clearly known to the prophet. His ascending the
throne is part of the divine purpose. He could find excuses for his
guilt, and fling the responsibility for firing his ambition on the
divine messenger. It may be asked--What sort of God is this who works
on the mind of a man by exciting promises, and having done so, and
having it fixed in His purposes that the man is to do the crime, yet
treats it when done as guilt?

But now, whatever you may say, or whatever excuses Hazael might have
found for himself, here is just in its most naked form that which is
true about all sin. God foresees it all. God puts men into
circumstances where they will fall, God presents to them things which
they will make temptations. God takes the consequences of their
wrongdoing and works them into His great scheme. That is undeniable on
one side, and on the other it is as undeniable that God's foreseeing
leaves men free. God's putting men into circumstances where they fall
is not His tempting them. God's non-prevention of sin is not
permission to sin. God's overruling the consequences of sin is not His
condoning of sin as part of the scheme of His providence.

Man is free. Man is responsible. God hates sin. God foresees and
permits sin.

It is all a terrible mystery, but the facts are as undeniable as the
mystery of their co-existence is inscrutable.

II. The slumbering possibilities of sin.

Hazael indignantly protests against the thought that he should do such
a thing. There is conscience left in him yet. His example suggests how
little any of us know what it is in us to be or to do. We are all of
us a mystery to ourselves. Slumbering powers lie in us. We are like
quiescent volcanoes.

So much in us lies dormant, needing occasion for its development, like
seeds that may sleep for centuries. That is true in regard to both the
good and the bad in us. Life reveals us to ourselves. We learn to know
ourselves by our actions, better than by mental self-inspection.

All sin is one in essence, and may pass into diverse forms according
to circumstances. Of course characters differ, but the root of sin is
in us all. We are largely good because not tempted, as a house may
well stand firm when there are no floods. By the nature of the case,
thorough self-knowledge is impossible.

Sin has the power of blinding us to its presence. It comes in a cloud
as the old gods were fabled to do. The lungs get accustomed to a
vitiated atmosphere, and scarcely are conscious of oppression till
they cease to play.

All this should teach us--

Lessons of wary walking and humility. We are good because we have not
been tried.

Lessons of charity and brotherly kindness. Every thief in the hulks,
every prostitute on the streets, is our brother and sister, and they
prove their fraternity by their sin. 'Whatever man has done man may
do.' '_Nihil humanum alienum a me puto_.' 'Let him that is
without sin cast the first stone.'

III. The fatal necessity by which sin repeats itself in aggravated
forms.

See how Hazael is drifted into his worst crimes. His first one leads
on by fell necessity to others. A man who has done no sin is
conceivable, but a man who has done only one is impossible. Did you
ever see a dam bursting or breaking down? Through a little crack comes
one drop: will it stop there--the gap or the trickle? No! The drop has
widened the crack, it has softened the earth around, it has cleared
away some impediments. So another and another follow ever more
rapidly, until the water pours out in a flood and the retaining
embankment is swept away.

No sin 'is dead, being alone.' The demon brings seven other devils
worse than himself. The reason for that aggravation is plain.

There is, first, habit.

There is, second, growing inclination.

There is, third, weakened restraint.

There is, fourth, a craving for excitement to still conscience.

There is, fifth, the necessity of the man's position.

There is, sixth, the strange love of consistency which tones all life
down or up to one tint, as near as may be. There comes at last
despair.

But not merely does every sin tend to repeat itself and to draw others
after it. It tends to repeat itself in aggravated forms. There is
growth, the law of increase as well as of perpetuity. The seed
produces 'some sixty and some an hundredfold.'

And so the slaughtered soldiers and desolated homesteads of Israel
were the sequel of the cloth on Ben-hadad's face. The secret of much
enormous crime is the kind of relief from conscience which is found in
committing a yet greater sin. The Furies drive with whips of
scorpions, and the poor wretch goes plunging and kicking deeper and
deeper in the mire, further and farther from the path. So you can
never say: 'I will only do this one wrong thing.'

We see here how powerless against sin are all restraints. The prophecy
did not prevent Hazael from his sins. The clear sense that they were
sins did not prevent him. The horror-struck shudder of conscience did
not prevent him. It was soon gagged.

Hear, then, the conclusion of the whole matter. Christ reveals us to
ourselves. Christ breaks the chain of sin, makes a new beginning, cuts
off the entail, reverses the irreversible, erases the indelible,
cancels the irrevocable, forgives all the faultful past, and by the
power of His love in the soul, works a mightier miracle than changing
the Ethiopian's skin; teaches them that are accustomed to evil to do
well, and though sins be as scarlet, makes them white as snow. He
gives us a cleansed past and a bright future, and out of all our sins
and wasted years makes pardoned sinners and glorified, perfected
saints.



IMPURE ZEAL

'And Jehu gathered all the people together, and said unto them, Ahab
served Baal a little; but Jehu shall serve him much. 19. Now therefore
call unto me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his
priests; let none be wanting: for I have a great sacrifice to do to
Baal; whosoever shall be wanting, he shall not live. But Jehu did it
in subtilty, to the intent that he might destroy the worshippers of
Baal. 20. And Jehu said, Proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal. And they
proclaimed it. 21. And Jehu sent through all Israel: and all the
worshippers of Baal came, so that there was not a man left that came
not. And they came into the house of Baal; and the house of Baal was
full from one end to another. 22. And he said unto him that was over
the vestry, Bring forth vestments for all the worshippers of Baal. And
he brought them forth vestments. 23. And Jehu went, and Jehonadab the
son of Rechab, into the house of Baal, and said unto the worshippers
of Baal, Search, and look that there be here with you none of the
servants of the Lord, but the worshippers of Baal only. 24. And when
they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings, Jehu appointed
fourscore men without, and said, If any of the men whom I have brought
into your hands escape, he that letteth him go, his life shall be for
the life of him. 25. And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an
end of offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to
the captains, Go in, and slay them; let none come forth. And they
smote them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains
cast them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal. 26. And they
brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them.
27. And they brake down the image of Baal, and brake down the house of
Baal, and made it a draught house unto this day. 28. Thus Jehu
destroyed Baal out of Israel. 29. Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam
the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, Jehu departed not from after
them, to wit, the golden calves that were in Beth-el, and that were in
Dan. 30. And the Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in
executing that which is right in Mine eyes, and hast done unto the
house of Ahab according to all that was in Mine heart, thy children of
the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel. 31. But Jehu
took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his
heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made
Israel to sin.'--2 KINGS x. 18-31.


The details of this story of bloodshed need little elucidation. Jehu
had 'driven furiously' to some purpose. Secrecy and swiftness joined
to unhesitating severity had crushed the dynasty of Ahab, which fell
unlamented and unsupported, as if lightning-struck. The nobler
elements had gathered to Jehu, as represented by the Rechabite,
Jehonadab, evidently a Jehovah worshipper, and closely associated with
the fierce soldier in this chapter. Jehu first secured his position,
and then smote the Baal worship as heavily and conclusively as he had
done the royal family. He struck once, and struck no more; for the
single blow pulverised.

The audacious pretext of an intention to outdo the fallen dynasty in
Baal worship must have sounded strange to those who knew how his
massacre of Ahab's house had been represented by him as fulfilling
Jehovah's purpose, but it was not too gross to be believed. So we can
fancy the joyous revival of hope with which from every corner of the
land the Baal priests, prophets, and worshippers, recovered from their
fright, came flocking to the great temple in Samaria, till it was like
a cup filled with wine from brim to brim. The worship cannot have
numbered many adherents if one temple could hold the bulk of them.
Probably it had never been more than a court fashion, and, now that
Jezebel was dead, had lost ground. A token of royal favour was given
to each of the crowd, in the gift of a vestment from the royal
wardrobe. Then Jehu himself, accompanied by the ascetic Jehonadab,
entered the court of the temple, a strangely assorted pair, and a
couple of very 'distinguished' converts. The Baal priests would thrill
with gratified pride when these two came to worship. The usual
precautions against the intrusion of non-worshippers were taken at
Jehu's command, but with a sinister meaning, undreamed of by the eager
searchers. That was a sifting for destruction, not for preservation.
So they all passed into the inner court to offer sacrifice.

The story gives a double picture in verse 24. Within are the jubilant
worshippers; without, the grim company of their executioners, waiting
the signal to draw their swords and burst in on the unarmed mob. Jehu
carried his deception so far that he himself offered the burnt
offering, with Jehonadab standing by, and then withdrew, followed, no
doubt, by grateful acclamations. A step or two brought him to the
'eighty men without.' Two stern words, 'Go, smite them,' are enough.
They storm in, and 'the songs of the temple' are turned to 'howlings
in that day.' The defenceless, surprised crowd, huddled together in
the dimly lighted shrine, were massacred to a man. The innermost
sanctuary was then wrecked, corpses and statues thrown pell-mell into
the outer courts or beyond the precincts, fires lit to burn the
abominations, and busy hands, always more ready for pillage and
destruction than for good work, pulled down the temple, the ruins of
which were turned to base uses. The writer, picturing the wild scene,
sums up with a touch of exultation: 'Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of
Israel'--where note the emphatic prominence of the three names of the
king, the god, and the nation. That is the vindication of the terrible
deed.

Now the main interest of this passage lies in its disclosure of the
strangely mingled character of Jehu, and in the fact that his bloody
severity was approved by God, and rewarded by the continuance of his
dynasty for a longer time than any other on the throne of Israel.

Jehu was influenced by 'zeal for the Lord,' however much smoke mingled
with the flame. He acted under the conviction that he was God's
instrument, and at each new deed of blood asserted his fulfilment of
prophecy. His profession to Jehonadab (ver. 16) was not hypocrisy nor
ostentation. The Rechabite sheikh was evidently a man of mark, and
apparently one of the leaders of those who had not 'bowed the knee to
Baal'; and Jehu's disclosure of his animating motive was meant to
secure the alliance of that party through one of its chiefs. No doubt
many elements of selfishness and many stains mingled with Jehu's zeal.
It was much on the same level as the fanaticism of the immediate
successors of Mohammed; but, low as it was, look at its power. Jehu
swept like a whirlwind, or like leaping fire among stubble, from
Ramoth to Jezreel, from Jezreel to Samaria, and nothing stood before
his fierce onset. Promptitude, decision, secrecy,--the qualities which
carry enterprises to success--marked his character; partly, no doubt,
from natural temperament, for God chooses right instruments, but from
temperament heightened and invigorated by the conviction of being the
instrument whom God had chosen. We may learn how even a very imperfect
form of this conviction gives irresistible force to a man, annihilates
fear, draws the teeth of danger, and gathers up all one's faculties to
a point which can pierce any opposition. We may all recognise that God
has sent us on His errands; and if we cherish that conviction, we
shall put away from us slothfulness and fear, and out of weakness
shall be made strong.

But Jehu sets forth the possible imperfections of 'zeal for the Lord.'
We may defer for a moment the consideration of the morality of his
slaughter of the royal house and the Baal worshippers, and point to
the taint of selfishness and to the leaven of deceit in his
enthusiasm. We have not to analyse it. That is God's work. But clearly
the object which he had in view was not merely fulfilment of prophecy,
but securing the throne; and there was more passion, as well as
selfish policy, in his massacres, than befitted a minister of the
divine justice, who should let no anger disturb the solemnity of his
terrible task. Such dangers ever attend the path of the great men who
feel themselves to be sent by God. In our humbler lives they dog our
steps, and religious fervour needs ever to keep careful watch on
itself, lest it should degenerate unconsciously into self-will, and
should allow the muddy stream of earth-born passion to darken its
crystal waters.

Many a great name in the annals of the Church has fallen before that
temptation. We all need to remember that 'the wrath of man worketh not
the righteousness of God,' and to take heed lest we should be guided
by our own stormy impatience of contradiction, and by a determination
to have our own way, while we think ourselves the humble instruments
of a divine purpose. There was a 'Zelotes' in the Apostolate; but the
coarse, sanguinary 'zeal' of his party must have needed much purifying
before it learned what manner of spirit the zeal of a true disciple
was of.

Another point of interest is the divine emphatic approval of Jehu's
bloody acts (ver. 30). The massacre of the Baal worshippers is not
included in the acts which God declares to have been 'according to all
that was in Mine heart,' and it may be argued that it was not part of
Jehu's commission. Certainly the accompanying deceit was not 'right in
God's eyes,' but the slaughter in Baal's temple was the natural sequel
of the civil revolution, and is most probably included in the deeds
approved.

Perhaps Elisha brought Jehu the message in verse 30. If so, what a
contrast between the two instruments of God's purposes! At all events,
Jehovah's approval was distinctly given. What then? There need be no
hesitation in recognising the progressive character of Scripture
morality, as well as the growth of the revelation of the divine
character, of which the morality of each epoch is the reflection. The
full revelation of the God of love had to be preceded by the clear
revelation of the God of righteousness; and whilst the Old Testament
does make known the love of God in many a gracious act and word, it
especially teaches His righteous condemnation of sin, without which
His love were mere facile indulgence and impunity. The slaughter of
that wicked house of Ahab and of the Baal priests was the act of
divine justice, and the question is simply whether that justice was
entitled to slay them. To that question believers in a divine
providence can give but one answer. The destruction of Baal worship
and the annihilation of its stronghold in Ahab's family were
sufficient reasons, as even we can see, for such a deed. To bring in
Jehu into the problem is unnecessary. He was the sword, but God's was
the hand that struck. It is not for men to arraign the Lord of life
and death for His methods and times of sending death to evil-doers.
Granted that the 'long-suffering' which is 'not willing that any
should perish' speaks more powerfully to our hearts than the justice
which smites with death, the later and more blessed revelation is
possible and precious only on the foundation of the former. Nor will a
loose-braced generation like ours, which affects to be horrified at
the thought of the 'wrath of God,' and recoils from the contemplation
of His judgments, ever reach the innermost secrets of the tenderness
of His love.

From the merely human point of view, we may say that revolutions are
not made with rose-water, and that, at all crises in a nation's
history, when some ancient evil is to be thrown off, and some powerful
system is to be crushed, there will be violence, at which easy-going
people, who have never passed through like times, will hold up their
hands in horror and with cheap censure. No doubt we have a higher law
than Jehu knew, and Christ has put His own gentle commandment of love
in the place of what was 'said to them of old time.' But let us, while
we obey it for ourselves, and abjure violence and blood, judge the men
of old 'according to that which they had, and not according to that
which they had not.' Jehu's bloody deeds are not held up for
admiration. His obedience is what is praised and rewarded. Well for us
if we obey our better law as faithfully!

The last point in the story is the imperfection of the obedience of
Jehu. He contented himself with rooting out Baal, but left the calves.
That shows the impurity of his 'zeal,' which flamed only against what
it was for his advantage to destroy, and left the more popular and
older idolatry undisturbed. Obedience has to be 'all in all, or not at
all.' We may not 'compound for sins we are inclined to, by' zeal
against those 'we have no mind to.' Our consciences are apt to have
insensitive spots in them, like witch-marks. We often think it enough
to remove the grosser evils, and leave the less, but white ants will
eat up a carcass faster than a lion. Putting away Baal is of little
use if we keep the calves at Dan and Beth-el. Nothing but walking in
the law of the Lord 'with all the heart' will secure our walking
safely. 'Unite my heart to fear Thy name' needs to be our daily
prayer. 'One foot on sea and one on shore' is not the attitude in
which steadfastness or progress is possible.



JEHOIADA AND JOASH

'And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead,
she arose and destroyed all the seed royal. 2. But Jehosheba, the
daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of
Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons which were slain;
and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bedchamber from
Athaliah, so that he was not slain. 3. And he was with her hid in the
house of the Lord six years. And Athaliah did reign over the land. 4.
And the seventh year Jehoiada sent and fetched the rulers over
hundreds, with the captains and the guard, and brought them to him
into the house of the Lord, and made a covenant with them, and took an
oath of them in the house of the Lord, and shewed them the king's son.
5. And he commanded them, saying, This is the thing that ye shall do;
A third part of you that enter in on the sabbath shall even be keepers
of the watch of the king's house; 6. And a third part shall be at the
gate of Sur; and a third part at the gate behind the guard: so shall
ye keep the watch of the house, that it be not broken down. 7. And two
parts of all you that go forth on the sabbath, even they shall keep
the watch of the house of the Lord about the king. 8. And ye shall
compass the king round about, every man with his weapons in his hand:
and he that cometh within the ranges, let him be slain: and be ye with
the king as he goeth out and as he cometh in. 9. And the captains over
the hundreds did according to all things that Jehoiada the priest
commanded: and they took every man his men that were to come in on the
sabbath, with them that should go out on the sabbath, and came to
Jehoiada the priest. 10, And to the captains over hundreds did the
priest give king David's spears and shields, that were in the temple
of the Lord. 11. And the guard stood, every man with his weapons in
his hand, round about the king, from the right corner of the temple to
the left corner of the temple, along by the altar and the temple. 12.
And he brought forth the king's son, and put the crown upon him, and
gave him the testimony; and they made him king, and anointed him; and
they clapped their hands, and said, God save the king. 13. And when
Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people, she came to
the people into the temple of the Lord. 14. And when she looked,
behold, the king stood by a pillar, as the manner was, and the princes
and the trumpeters by the king, and all the people of the land
rejoiced, and blew with trumpets: and Athaliah rent her clothes, and
cried, Treason, Treason. 15. But Jehoiada the priest commanded the
captains of the hundreds, the officers of the host, and said unto
them, Have her forth without the ranges: and him that followeth her
kill with the sword. For the priest had said, Let her not be slain in
the house of the Lord. 16. And they laid hands on her; and she went by
the way by the which the horses came into the king's house: and there
was she slain.'--2 KINGS xi. 1-16.


The king of Judah has been killed, his alliance with the king of
Israel having involved him in the latter's fate. Jehu had also
murdered 'the brethren of Ahaziah,' forty-two in number. Next,
Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah and a daughter of Ahab, killed all the
males of the royal family, and planted herself on the throne. She had
Jezebel's force of character, unscrupulousness and disregard of human
life. She was a tigress of a woman, and, no doubt, her six years'
usurpation was stained with blood and with the nameless abominations
of Baal worship. Never had the kingdom of Judah been at a lower ebb.
One infant was all that was left of David's descendants. The whole
promises of God seemed to depend for fulfilment on one little, feeble
life. The tree had been cut down, and there was but this one sucker
pushing forth a tiny shoot from 'the root of Jesse.'

We have in the passage, first, the six years of hiding in the temple.
It is a pathetic picture, that of the infant rescued by his brave aunt
from the blood-bath, and stowed away in the storeroom where the mats
and cushions which served for beds were kept when not in use, watched
over by two loving and courageous women, and taught infantile lessons
by the husband of his aunt, Jehoiada the high priest. Many must have
been aware of his existence, and there must have been loyal guarding
of the secret, or Athaliah's sword would have been reddened with the
baby's blood. Like the child Samuel, he had the Temple for his home,
and his first impressions would be of daily sacrifices and white-robed
priests. It was a better school for him than if he had been in the
palace close by. The opening flower would have been soon besmirched
there, but in the holy calm of the Temple courts it unfolded
unstained. A Christian home should breathe the same atmosphere as
surrounded Joash, and it, too, should be a temple, where holy peace
rules, and where the first impressions printed on plastic little minds
are of God and His service.

We have next the disclosure and coronation of the boy king. The
narrative here has to be supplemented from that in 2 Chron. xxiii.,
which does not contradict that in this passage, as is often said, but
completes it. It informs us that before the final scene in the Temple,
Jehoiada had in Jerusalem assembled a large force of Levites and of
the 'heads of the fathers' houses' from all the kingdom. That
statement implies that the revolution was mainly religious in its
motive, and was national in its extent. Obviously Jehoiada would have
been courting destruction for Joash and himself unless he had made
sure of a strong backing before he hoisted the standard of the house
of David. There must, therefore, have been long preparation and much
stir; and all the while the foreign woman was sitting in the palace,
close by the Temple, and not a whisper reached her. Evidently she had
no party in Judah, and held her own only by her indomitable will and
by the help of foreign troops. Anybody who remembers how the Austrians
in Italy were shunned, will understand how Athaliah heard nothing of
the plot that was rapidly developing a stone's throw from her isolated
throne. Strange delusion, to covet such a seat, yet no stranger than
many another mistaking of serpents for fish, into which we fall!

Jehoiada's caution was as great as his daring. He does not appear to
have given the Levites and elders any inkling of his purpose till he
had them safe in the Temple, and then he opened his mind, swore them
to stand by him, and 'showed them the king's son.' What a scene that
would be--the seven-year-old child there among all these strange men,
the joyful surprise flashing in their eyes, the exultation of the
faithful women that had watched him so lovingly, the stern facing of
the dangers ahead. Most of the assembly must have thought that none of
David's house remained, and that thought would have had much to do
with their submitting to Athaliah's usurpation. Now that they saw the
true heir, they could not hesitate to risk their lives to set him on
his throne. Show a man his true king, and many a tyranny submitted to
before becomes at once intolerable. The boy Joash makes Athaliah look
very ugly.

Jehoiada's plans are somewhat difficult to understand, owing to our
ignorance of the details as to the usual arrangements of the guards of
the palace, but the general drift of them is plain enough. The main
thing was to secure the person of the king, and, for that purpose, the
two companies of priests who were relieved on the Sabbath were for
once kept on duty, and their numbers augmented by the company that
would, in the ordinary course, have relieved them. This augmented
force was so disposed as, first, to secure the Temple from attack;
and, second, to 'compass the king'--in his chamber, that is. We learn
from 2 Chronicles that it consisted of priests and Levites, and some
would see in that statement a tampering with the account in this
passage, in the interests of a later conception of the sanctity of the
Temple and of the priestly order. Our narrative is said to make the
foreign mercenaries of the palace guard the persons referred to; but
surely that cannot be maintained in the face of the plain statement of
verse 7, that they kept the watch of the Temple, for that was the
office of the priests. Besides, how should foreign soldiers have
needed to be armed from the Temple armoury? And is it probable on the
face of it that the palace guard, who were Athaliah's men, and
therefore antagonistic to Joash, and Baal worshippers, should have
been gained over to his side, or should have been the guards of the
house of Jehovah? If, however, we understand that these guards were
Levites, all is plain, and the arming of them with 'the spears and
shields that had been king David's' becomes intelligible, and would
rouse them to enthusiasm and daring.

Not till all these dispositions for the boy king's safety, and for
preventing an assault on the Temple, had been carried out, did the
prudent Jehoiada venture to bring Joash out from his place of
concealment. Note that in verse 12 he is not called 'the king,' as in
the previous verses, but, as in verse 4, 'the king's son.' He was king
by right, but not technically, till he had been presented to, and
accepted by, the representatives of the people, had had 'the
testimony' placed in his hands, and been anointed by the high-priest.
So 'they _made_ him king.' The three parts of the ceremony were
all significant. The delivering of 'the testimony' (the Book of the
Law--Deut. xvii 18, 19) taught him that he was no despot to rule by
his own pleasure and for his own glory, but the viceroy of the true
King of Judah, and himself subject to law. The people's making him
king taught him and them that a true royalty rules over willing
subjects, and both guarded the rights of the nation and set limits to
the power of the ruler. The priest's anointing witnessed to the divine
appointment of the monarch and the divine endowment with fitness for
his office. Would that these truths were more recognised and felt by
all rulers! What a different thing the page of history would be!

The vigilance of the tigress had been eluded, and Athaliah had a rude
awakening. But she had her mother's courage, and as soon as she heard
in the palace the shouts, she dashed to the Temple, alone as she was,
and fronted the crowd. The sight might have made the boldest quail.
Who was that child standing in the royal place? Where had he come
from? How had he been hidden all these years? What was all this frenzy
of rejoicing, this blare of trumpets, these ranks of grim men with
weapons in their hands? The stunning truth fell on her; but, though
she felt that all was lost, not a whit did she blench, but fronted
them all as proudly as ever. One cannot but admire the dauntless
woman, 'magnificent in sin.' But her cry of 'Treason! treason!'
brought none to her side. As she stood solitary there, she must have
felt that her day was over, and that nothing remained but to die like
a queen. Proudly as ever, she passed down the ranks and not a face
looked pity on her, nor a voice blessed her. She was reaping what she
had sown, and she who had killed without compunction the innocents who
stood between her and her ambitions, was pitilessly slain, and all the
land rejoiced at her death.

So ended the all but bloodless revolution which crushed Baal worship
in Judah. It had been begun by Elijah and Elisha, but it was completed
by a high priest. It was religious even more than political. It was a
national movement, though Jehoiada's courage and wisdom engineered it
to its triumph. It teaches us how God watches over His purposes and
their instruments when they seem nearest to failure, for one poor
infant was all that was left of the seed of David; and how, therefore,
we are never to despair, even in the darkest hour, of the fulfilment
of His promises. It teaches us how much one brave, good man and woman
can do to change the whole face of things, and how often there needs
but one man to direct and voice the thoughts and acts of the silent
multitude, and to light a fire that consumes evil.



METHODICAL LIBERALITY

'4. And Jehoash said to the priests, All the money of the dedicated
things that is brought into the house of the Lord, even the money of
every one that passeth the account, the money that every man is set
at, and all the money that cometh into any man's heart to bring into
the house of the Lord, 5. Let the priests take it to them, every man
of his acquaintance; and let them repair the breaches of the house,
wheresoever any breach shall be found. 6. But it was so, that in the
three and twentieth year of king Jehoash the priests had not repaired
the breaches of the house. 7. Then king Jehoash called for Jehoiada
the priest, and the other priests, and said unto them, Why repair ye
not the breaches of the house? Now therefore receive no more money of
your acquaintance, but deliver it for the breaches of the house. 8.
And the priests consented to receive no more money of the people,
neither to repair the breaches of the house. 9. But Jehoiada the
priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it
beside the altar, on the right side as one cometh into the house of
the Lord: and the priests that kept the door put therein all the money
that was brought into the house of the Lord. 10. And it was so, when
they saw that there was much money in the chest, that the king's
scribe and the high priest came up, and they put up in bags, and told
the money that was found in the house of the Lord. 11. And they gave
the money, being told, into the hands of them that did the work, that
had the oversight of the house of the Lord: and they laid it out to
the carpenters and builders that wrought upon the house of the Lord,
12. And to masons, and hewers of stone, and to buy timber and hewed
stone to repair the breaches of the house of the Lord, and for all
that wast laid out for the house to repair it. 13. Howbeit there were
not made for the house of the Lord bowls of silver, snuffers, basons,
trumpets, any vessels of gold, or vessels of silver, of the money that
was brought into the house of the Lord: 14. But they gave that to the
workmen, and repaired therewith the house of the Lord. 15. Moreover
they reckoned not with the men, into whose hand they delivered the
money to be bestowed on workmen: for they dealt faithfully.'--2 KINGS
xii. 4-15.


'The sons of Athaliah, that wicked woman, had broken up the house of
God,' says Chronicles. The dilapidation had not been complete, but had
been extensive, as may be gathered from the large expenditure recorded
in this passage for repairs, and the enumeration of the artisans
employed. No doubt Joash was guided by Jehoiada in setting about the
restoration, but the fact that he gives the orders, while the high
priest is not mentioned, throws light on the relative position of the
two authorities, and on the king's office as guardian of the Temple
and official 'head of the church.' The story comes in refreshingly and
strangely among the bloody pages in which it is embedded, and it
suggests some lessons as to the virtue of plain common sense and
business principles applied to religious affairs. If 'the outward
business of the house of God' were always guided with as much
practical reasonableness as Joash brought to bear on it, there would
be fewer failures or sarcastic critics.

We note, first, the true source of money for religious purposes. There
was a fixed amount for which 'each man is rated,' and that made the
minimum, but there was also that which 'cometh into any man's heart to
bring,' and that was infinitely more precious than the exacted tax.
The former was appropriate to the Old Testament, of which the
animating principle was law and the voice: 'Thou shalt' or 'Thou shalt
not.' The latter alone fits the New Testament, of which the animating
principle is love and the voice: 'Though I have all boldness in Christ
to enjoin thee ... yet for love's sake I rather beseech.' What
disasters and what stifling of the spirit of Christian liberality have
marred the Church for many centuries, and in many lands, because the
great anachronism has prevailed of binding its growing limbs in Jewish
swaddling bands, and degrading Christian giving into an assessment!
And how shrunken the stream that is squeezed out by such a process,
compared with the abundant gush of the fountain of love opened in a
grateful, trusting heart!

Next, we have the negligent, if not dishonest, officials. We do not
know how long Joash tried the experiment of letting the priests
receive the money and superintend the repairs; but probably the
restoration project was begun early in his reign, and if so, he gave
the experiment of trusting all to the officials, a fair, patient
trial, till the twenty-third year of his reign. Years gone and nothing
done, or at least nothing completed! We do not need to accuse them of
intentional embezzlement, but certainly they were guilty of carelessly
letting the money slip through their fingers, and a good deal of it
stick to their hands. It is always the temptation of the clergy to
think of their own support as a first charge on the church, nor is it
quite unheard of that the ministry should be less enthusiastic in
religious objects than the 'laity,' and should work the enthusiasm of
the latter for their own advantage. Human nature is the same in
Jerusalem in Joash's time, and to-day in Manchester, or New York, or
Philadelphia, and all men who live by the gifts of Christian people
have need to watch themselves, lest they, like Ezekiel's false
shepherds, feed themselves and not the flock, and seek the wool and
the fat and not the good of the sheep.

Next we have the application of businesslike methods to religious
work. It was clearly time to take the whole matter out of the priests'
hands, and Joash is not afraid to assume a high tone with the
culprits, and even with Jehoiada as their official head. He was in
some sense responsible for his subordinates, and probably, though his
own hands were clean, he may have been too lax in looking after the
disposal of the funds. Note that while Joash rebuked the priests, and
determined the new arrangements, it was Jehoiada who carried them out
and provided the chest for receiving the contributions. The king
wills, the high priest executes, the rank and file of the priests,
however against the grain, consent. The arrangement for collecting the
contributions 'saved the faces' of the priests to some extent, for the
gifts were handed to them, and by them put into the chest. But, of
course, that was done at once, in the donor's presence. If changes
involving loss of position are to work smoothly, it is wise to let the
deposed officials down as easily as may be.

Similar common sense is shown in the second step, the arrangement for
ascertaining the amounts given. The king's secretary and the
high-priest (or a representative) jointly opened the chest, counted
and bagged up the money. They checked each other, and prevented
suspicion on either side. No man who regards his own reputation will
consent to handle public money without some one to stand over him and
see what he does with it. One would be wise always to suspect people
who appeal for help 'for the Lord's work' and are too 'spiritual' to
have such worldly things as committees or auditors of their books.
Accurate accounts are as essential to Christian work as spirituality
or enthusiasm. The next stage was to hand over the money to the
'contractors,' as we should call them; and there similar precautions
were taken against possible peculation on the part of the two
officials who had received the money, for it was apparently 'weighed
out into the hands' of the overseers, who would thus be able to check
what they received by what the secretary and the high-priest had taken
from the chest, and would be responsible for the expenditure of the
amount which the two officials knew that they had received.

But all this system of checks seems to break down at the very point
where it should have worked most searchingly, for 'they reckoned not
with the men, into whose hand they delivered the money' to pay the
workmen, 'for they dealt faithfully.' That last clause looks like a
hit at the priests who had not dealt so, and contrasts the methods of
plain business men of no pretensions, with those of men whose very
calling should have guaranteed their trustworthiness. The contrast has
been repeated in times and places nearer home. But another suggestion
may also be made about this singular lapse into what looks like unwise
confidence. These overseers had proved their faithfulness and earned
the right to be trusted entirely, and the way to get the best out of a
man, if he has any reliableness in him, is to trust him utterly, and
to show him that you do. 'It is a shame to tell Arnold a lie; he
always believes us,' said the Rugby boys about their great
head-master. There is a time for using all precautions, and a time for
using none. Businesslike methods do not consist in spying at the heels
of one's agents, but in picking the right men, and, having proved
them, giving them a free hand. And is not that what the great Lord and
Employer does with His servants, and is it not part of the reason why
Jesus gets more out of us than any one else can do, that He trusts us
more?

One more point may be noticed; namely, the order of precedence in
which the necessary works were done. Not a coin went to provide the
utensils for sacrifice till the Temple was completely repaired. After
they had 'set up the house of God in its state,' as Chronicles tells
us, they took the balance of the funds to the king and Jehoiada, and
spent that on 'vessels for the house.' A clear insight to discern what
most needs to be done, and a firm resolve to 'do the duty that lies
nearest thee,' and to let everything else, however necessary, wait
till it is done, is a great part of Christian prudence, and goes far
to make works or lives truly prosperous. 'First things first'!--it is
a maxim that carries us far and as right as far.



THE SPIRIT OF POWER

'And Elisha said to the king of Israel, Put thine hand upon the bow.
And he put his hand upon it: and Elisha put his hands upon the king's
hands.'--2 KINGS xiii. 16.


This is part of one of the strangest narratives in the Old Testament.
Elisha is on his deathbed, 'sick of the sickness' wherewith he 'should
die.' A very different scene, that close sick-chamber, from the open
plain beyond Jordan from which Elijah had gone up; a very different
way of passing from life by wasting sickness than by fiery chariot!
But God is as near His servant in the one place as in the other, and
the slow wasting away is as much His messenger as the sudden
apocalypse of the horsemen of fire. The king of Israel comes to the
old prophet, and very significantly repeats over him his own
exclamation over Elijah, 'My father! My father! the chariot of Israel
and the horsemen thereof.' Elisha takes no notice of the grief and
reverence expressed by the exclamation, but goes straight to his work,
and what follows is remarkable indeed.

Here is a prophet dying; and his last words are not edifying moral and
religious reflections, nor does he seem to be much concerned to leave
with the king his final protest against Israel's sin, but his thoughts
are all of warfare, and his last effort is to stir up the sluggish
young monarch to some of his own enthusiasm in the conflict with the
enemy. It does not sound like an edifying deathbed. People might have
said, 'Ah! secular and political affairs should be all out of a man's
mind when he comes to his last moments.' But Elisha thought that to
stick to his life's work till the last breath was out of him, and to
devote the last breath to stimulating successors who might catch up
the torch that dropped from his failing hands, was no unworthy end of
a prophet's life.

So there followed what perhaps is not very familiar to some of us,
that strange scene in which the dying man is far fuller of energy and
vigour than the young king, and takes the upper hand of him, giving
him a series of curt, authoritative commands, each of which he
punctiliously obeys. 'Take bow and arrow,' and he took them. Then the
prophet lays his wasted hand for a moment on the strong, young hand,
and having thus either in symbol or reality--never mind
which--communicated power, he says to him, 'Fling open the casement
towards the quarter where the enemy's territory lies,' and he flings
it open. 'Now, shoot,' and he shoots. Then the old man gathers himself
up on his bed, and with a triumphant shout exclaims, 'The Lord's arrow
of victory!... Thou shalt smite the Syrians till they be consumed.'

That is not all. There is a second stage. The promise is given; the
possibility is opened before the king, and now all depends on the
question whether he will rise to the height of the occasion. So the
prophet says to him, 'Take the sheaf of arrows in your hand'; and he
takes them. And then he says, 'Now smite upon the ground.' It is a
test. If he had been roused and stirred by what had gone before; if he
had any earnestness of belief in the power that was communicated, and
any eagerness of desire to realise the promises that had been given of
complete victory, what would he have done? What would Elisha have done
if he had had the quiver in his hand? This king smites three
perfunctory taps on the floor, and having done what will satisfy the
old man's whim, and what in decency he had to do, he stops, as if
weary of the whole performance. So the prophet bursts out in
indignation on his dying bed--'Thou shouldst have smitten five or six
times; then hadst thou conquered utterly. Now thou shalt conquer but
thrice.' A strange story; very far away from our atmosphere and
latitude! Yet are there not obviously in it great principles which may
be disentangled from their singular setting, and fully applied to us?
I think so. Let us try and draw them from it.

I. Here we have the power communicated.

Now the story seems to indicate that it was only for a moment that the
prophet's hands were laid on the king's hands, because, after they had
been so laid, he is bidden to go to the window and fling it open, and
the bedridden man could not go there with him; then he is bidden to
draw the bow, and another hand upon his would have been a hindrance
rather than a help. So it was but a momentary touch, a communication
of power in reality or in symbol that the muscular young hand needed,
and the wasted old one could give. And is that not a parable for us?
We, too, if we are Christian men and women, have a gospel of which the
very kernel is that there is to us a communication of power, and the
very name of that divine Spirit whom it is Christ's greatest work to
send flashing and flaming through the world, is the 'Spirit of Power.'
And so the old promise that ye shall be clothed with strength from on
high is the standing prerogative of the Christian Church. There is not
merely some partial communication, as when hand touched hand, but
every organ is vitalised and quickened; as in the case of the other
miracle of this prophet, when he stretched himself on the dead child
eye to eye, and mouth to mouth, and hand to hand; and each part
received the vitalising influence. We have, if we are Christian
people, a Spirit given to us, and are 'strengthened with might by the
Spirit in the inner man.'

That gift, that strength comes to us by contact, not with Elisha, but
with Elisha's Lord and Master. Christ's touch, when He was on earth,
brought sight to the blind, healing to the sick, vigour to the limbs
of the lame, life to the dead. And you and I can have that touch, far
more truly, and far more mightily operative upon us than they had, who
only felt the contact of His finger, and only derived corporeal
blessing. For we can draw near to Him, and in union with Him by faith
and love and obedience, can have His Spirit in close contact with our
spirits, and strengthening us for all service, and for every task.
Brethren! that touch which gives strength is a real thing. It is no
mere piece of mystical exaggeration when we speak of our spirits being
in actual contact with Christ's Spirit. Many of us have no clear
conception, and still less a firm realisation, of that closer than
corporeal contact, more real than bodily presence, and more intimate
than any possible physical union, which is the great gift of God in
Jesus Christ, and brings to us, if we will, life and strength
according to our need. I would that the popular Christianity of this
day had a far larger infusion of the sound, mystical element that lies
in the New Testament Christianity, and did not talk so exclusively
about a Christ that is for us as to have all but lost sight of the
second stage of our relation to Christ, and lost a faith in a Christ
that is in us Brethren! He can lay His hand upon your spirit's hand.
He can flash light into your spirit's eye from His eye. He can put
breath and eloquence into your spirit's lips from His lips, and His
heart beating against yours can transfuse--if I may so say--into you
His own life-blood, which cleanses from all sin, and fits for all
conflict.

Then, further, let me remind you that this power, which is bestowed on
condition of contact, is given before duties are commanded. This king,
in our acted parable, first had the touch of Elisha's fingers, and
then received the command from Elisha's lips, 'Shoot!' So Jesus Christ
gives before He commands, and commands nothing which He has not fitted
us to perform. He is not 'an austere man, reaping where He did not
sow, and gathering where He did not straw'; but He comes first to us
saying, 'I give thee Myself,' and then He looks us in the eyes and
says, 'Wilt thou not give Me thyself?' He bestows the strength first,
and He commands the consequent duty afterwards.

Further, this strength communicated is realised in the effort to obey
Christ's great commands. Joash felt nothing when the prophet's hand
was laid upon his but, perhaps, some tingling. But when he got the bow
in his hand and drew the arrow to its head, the infused power
stiffened his muscles and strengthened him to pull; and though he
could not distinguish between his own natural corporeal ability and
that which had been thus imparted to him, the two co-operated in the
one act, and it was when he drew his bow that he felt his strength.
'Stretch forth thine hand,' said Christ to the lame man. But the very
infirmity to be dealt with was his inability to stretch it forth. At
the command he tried, and, to his wonder, the stiffened sinews
relaxed, and the joint that had been immovable had free play, and he
stretched out his hand, and it was restored whole as the other. So He
gives what He commands, and in obeying the command we realise and are
conscious of the power. Elisha and Joash but act an illustration of
the great word of Paul: 'Work out your own salvation ... for it is God
that worketh in you.'

II. And now, secondly, look at the perfected victory that is possible.

When the arrows, by God's strength operating through Joash's arm, had
been shot, the prophet says, 'The arrow of the Lord's victory! ...
thou shalt smite ... till thou have consumed.' Yes, of course; if the
arrow is the Lord's arrow, and the strength is His strength, then the
only issue corresponding to the power is perfect victory. I would that
Christian people realised more than they do practically in their lives
that while men's ideals and aims may be all unaccomplished, or but
partially approximated to, since God is God, His nature is perfection,
and nothing that He does can fall beneath His ideal and purpose in
doing it. All that comes from Him must correspond to Him from whom it
comes. He never leaves off till He has completed, nor can any one say
about any of His work, 'He began to build, and was not able to
finish.' So, Christian people! I would that we should rise to the
height of our prerogatives, and realise the fact that perfect victory
is possible, regard being had to the power which 'teaches our hands to
war and our fingers to fight.' A great deal of not altogether
profitable jangling goes on at present in reference to the question of
whether absolute sinlessness is possible for a Christian man on earth.
Whatever view we take upon that question, it ought not to hide from us
the fact which should loom very much more largely in our daily
operative belief than it does with most of us, that in so far as the
power which is given to us is concerned, perfect victory is within our
grasp, and is the only worthy and correspondent result to the perfect
power which worketh in us. So there is no reason, as from any defect
of the divine gift to the weakest of us, why our Christian lives
should have ups and downs, why there should be interruptions in our
devotion, fallings short in our consecration, contradictions in our
conduct, slidings backward in our progress. There is no reason why, in
our Christian year, there should be summer and winter; but according
to the symbolical saying of one of the old prophets, 'The ploughman
may overtake the reaper, and he that treadeth out the grapes him that
soweth the seed.' In so far as our Christian life is concerned, the
perfection of the power that is granted to us involves the possibility
of perfection in the recipient.

And the same thing is true in reference to a Christian man's work in
the world. God's Church has ample resources to overcome the evil of
the world. The fire is tremendous, but the Christian Church has
possession of the floods that can extinguish the fire. If we utilised
all that we have, we might 'smite till we had consumed,' and turned
the world into the Church of God. That is the ideal, the possibility,
when we look at the Christian man as possessor of the communicated
power of God. And then we turn to the reality, to our own consciences,
to the state of our religious communities everywhere, and we see what
seems to be blank contradiction of the possibility. Where is the
explanation?

III. That brings me to my last point, the partial victory that is
actually won.

'Thou shouldst have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten
the Syrians till they were consumed. But now thou shalt conquer but
thrice.' All God's promises and prophecies are conditional. There is
no such thing as an unconditional promise of victory or of defeat;
there is always an 'if.' There is always man's freedom as a factor. It
is strange. I suppose no thinking, metaphysical or theological, ever
has solved or ever will, that great paradox of the power of a finite
will to lift itself up in the face of, and antagonism to, an Infinite
Will backed by infinite power, and to thwart its purposes. 'How often
_would I_ have gathered ... and ye _would not.'_ Here is all
the power for a perfect victory, and yet the man that has it has to be
contented with a very partial one.

It is a solemn thought that the Church's unbelief can limit and hinder
Christ's work in the world, and we have here another illustration of
that truth. You will find now and then in the newspapers,
stories--they may be true or false--about caterpillars stopping a
train. There is an old legend of that fabulous creature the remora, a
tiny thing that fastened itself to the keel of a ship, and arrested it
in mid-ocean. That is what we do with God and His purposes, and with
His power granted to us.

A low expectation limits the power. This king did not believe, did not
expect, that he would conquer utterly, and so he did not. You believe
that you can do a thing, and in nine cases out of ten that goes
nine-tenths of the way towards doing it. If we cast ourselves into our
fight expecting victory, the expectation will realise itself in nine
cases out of ten. And the man who in faith refuses to say 'that beast
of a word--impossible!' will find that 'all things are possible to him
that believeth.' 'Expect great things of God,' and you will feel His
power tingling to your very fingertips, and will be able to draw the
arrow to its head, and send it whizzing home to its mark.

Small desires block the power. Where there is an iron-bound coast
running in one straight line, the whole ocean may dash itself on the
cliffs at the base, but it enters not into the land; but where the
shore opens itself out into some deep gulf far inland, and broad
across at the entrance, then the glad water rushes in and fills it
all. Make room for God in your lives by your desires and you will get
Him in the fullness of His power.

The use of our power increases our power. Joash had an unused quiver
full of arrows, and he only smote thrice. 'To him that hath shall be
given, and from him that hath not shall be taken.' The reason why many
of us professing Christians have so little of the strength of God in
our lives is because we have made so little use of the strength that
we have. Stow away your seed-corn in a granary and do not let the air
into it, and weevils and rats will consume it. Sow it broadcast on the
fields with liberal hand, and it will spring up, 'some thirty, some
sixty, some an hundredfold.' Use increases strength in all regions,
and unused organs atrophy and wither.

So, dear friends! if we will keep ourselves in contact with Christ,
and tremulously sensitive to His touch, if we will expect power
according to our tasks and our needs, if we will desire more of His
grace, and if we will honestly and manfully use the strength that we
have, then He will 'teach our hands to war and our fingers to fight,'
and will give us strength, 'so that a bow of brass is bent by' our
arms, and we shall be 'more than conquerors through Him that loved
us.'



A KINGDOM'S EPITAPH

'In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and
carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in
Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. 7. For so
it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their
God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under
the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, 8. And
walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from
before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they
had made. 9. And the children of Israel did secretly those things that
were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high
places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the
fenced city. 10. And they set them up images and groves in every high
hill, and under every green tree: 11. And there they burnt incense in
all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away
before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger:
12. For they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye
shall not do this thing. 13. Yet the Lord testified against Israel,
and against Judah, by all the prophets and by all the seers, saying,
Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep My commandments and My statutes,
according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I
sent to you by My servants the prophets. 14. Notwithstanding they
would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their
fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. 15. And they
rejected His statutes, and His covenant that He made with their
fathers, and His testimonies which He testified against them; and they
followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were
round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they
should not do like them. 16. And they left all the commandments of the
Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made
a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. 17.
And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the
fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do
evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. 18. Therefore
the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His
sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.'--2 KINGS
xvii. 6-18.


The brevity of the account of the fall of Samaria in verse 6 contrasts
with the long enumeration of the sins which caused it, in the rest of
this passage. Modern critics assume that verses 7-23 are 'an
interpolation by the Deuteronomic writer,' apparently for no reason
but because they trace Israel's fall to its cause in idolatry. But
surely the bare notice in verse 6, immediately followed by verse 24,
cannot have been all that the original historian had to say about so
tragic an end of so large a part of the people of God. The whole
purpose of the Old Testament history is not to chronicle events, but
to declare God's dealings, and the fall of a kingdom was of little
moment, except as revealing the righteousness of God.

The main part of this passage, then, is the exposition of the causes
of the national ruin. It is a _post mortem_ inquiry into the
diseases that killed a kingdom. At first sight, these verses seem a
mere heaping together, not without some repetition, of one or two
charges; but, more closely looked at, they disclose a very striking
progress of thought. In the centre stands verse 13, telling of the
mission of the prophets. Before it, verses 7-12, narrate Israel's sin,
which culminates in provoking the Lord to anger (ver. 11). After it,
the sins are reiterated with noticeable increase of emphasis, and
again culminate in provoking the Lord to anger (ver. 17). So we have
two degrees of guilt--one before and one after the prophets' messages;
and two kindlings of God's anger--one which led to the sending of the
prophets, and one which led to the destruction of Israel. The lessons
that flow from this obvious progress of thought are plain.

I. The less culpable apostasy before the prophets' warnings. The first
words of verse 7, rendered as in the Revised Version, give the purpose
of all that follows; namely, to declare the causes of the calamity
just told. Note that the first characteristic of Israel's sin was
ungrateful departure from God. There is a world of pathos and meaning
in that 'their God,' which is enhanced by the allusion to the Egyptian
deliverance. All sins are attempts to break the chain which binds us
to God--a chain woven of a thousand linked benefits. All practically
deny His possession of us, and ours of Him, and display the short
memory which ingratitude has. All have that other feature hinted at
here--the contrast, so absurd if it were not so sad, between the worth
and power of the God who is left and the other gods who are preferred.
The essential meanness and folly of Israel are repeated by every heart
departing from the living God.

The double origin of the idolatry is next set forth. It was in part
imported and in part home-made. We have little conception of the
strength of faith and courage which were needed to keep the Jews from
becoming idolaters, surrounded as they were by such. But the same are
needed to-day to keep us from learning the ways of the world and
getting a snare to our souls. Now, as ever, walking with God means
walking in the opposite direction from the crowd, and that requires
some firm nerve. The home-made idolatry is gibbeted as being according
to 'the statutes of the kings.' What right had they to prescribe their
subjects' religion? The influence of influential people, especially if
exerted against the service of God, is hard to resist; but it is no
excuse for sin that it is fashionable.

The blindness of Israel to the consequences of their sin is hinted in
the reference to the fate of the nations whom they imitated. They had
been cast out; would not their copyists learn the lesson? We, too,
have examples enough of what godless lives come to, if we had the
sense to profit by them. The God who cast out the vile Canaanites and
all the rest of the wicked crew before the sons of the desert has not
changed, and will treat Israel as He did them, if Israel come down to
their level. Outward privileges make idolatry or any sin more sinful,
and its punishment more severe.

Another characteristic of Israel's sin is its being done 'secretly.'
Of the various meanings proposed for that word (ver. 9) the best seems
to be that it refers to the attempt to combine the worship of God and
of idols, of which the calf worship is an instance. Elijah had long
ago taunted the people with trying 'to hobble on both knees,' or on
'two opinions' at once; and here the charge is of covering idolatry
with a cloak of Jehovah worship. A varnish of religion is convenient
and cheap, and often effectual in deceiving ourselves as well as
others; but 'as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,' whatever his
cloak may be; and the thing which we count most precious and long most
for is our god, whatever our professions of orthodox religion.

The idolatry is then described, in rapid touches, as universal.
Wherever there was a solitary watchman's tower among the pastures
there was a high place, and they were reared in every city. Images and
Asherim deformed every hill-top and stood under every spreading tree.
Everywhere incense loaded the heavy air with its foul fragrance. The
old scenes of unnamable abomination, which had been so terribly
avenged, seemed to have come back, and to cry aloud for another
purging by fire and sword.

The terrible upshot of all was 'to provoke the Lord to anger.' The New
Testament is as emphatic as the Old in asserting that there is the
capacity of anger in the God whose name is love, and that sin calls it
forth. The special characteristic of sin, by which it thus attracts
that lightning, is that it is disobedience. As in the first sin, so in
all others, God has said, 'Ye shall not do this thing'; and we say,
'Do it we will.' What can the end of that be but the anger of the
Lord? 'Because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the
children of disobedience.'

II. Verse 13 gives the pleading of Jehovah. The mission of the
prophets was God's reply to Israel's rebellion, and was equally the
sign of His anger and of His love. The more sin abounds, the more does
God multiply means to draw back to Himself. The deafer the ears, the
louder the beseeching voice of His grieved and yet pitying love. His
anger clothes itself in more stringent appeals and clearer revelations
of Himself before it takes its slaughtering weapons in hand. The
darker the background of sin, the brighter the beams of His light show
against it. Man's sin is made the occasion for a more glorious display
of God's character and heart. It is on the storm-cloud that the sun
paints the rainbow. Each successive stage in man's departure from God
evoked a corresponding increase in the divine effort to attract him
back, till 'last of all He sent unto them His Son.' In nature,
attraction diminishes as distance increases; in the realms of grace,
it grows with distance. The one desire of God's heart is that sinners
would return from their evil ways, and He presses on them the solemn
thought of the abundant intimations of His will which have been given
from of old, and are pealed again into all ears by living voices. His
law for us is not merely an old story spoken centuries ago, but is
vocal in our consciences to-day, and fresh as when Sinai flamed and
thundered above the camp, and the trumpet thrilled each heart.

III. The heavier sin that followed the divine pleading. That divine
voice leaves no man as it finds him. If it does not sway him to
obedience, it deepens his guilt, and makes him more obstinate. Like
some perverse ox in the yoke, he stiffens his neck, and stands the
very picture of brute obduracy. There is an awful alternative involved
in our hearing of God's message, which never returns to Him void, but
ever does something to the hearer, either softening or hardening,
either scaling the eyes or adding another film on them, either being
the 'savour of life unto life or of death unto death.' The mission of
the prophets changed forgetfulness of God's 'statutes' into
'rejection' of them, and made idolatry self-conscious rebellion. Alas,
that men should make what is meant to be a bond to unite them to God
into a wedge to part them farther from Him! But how constantly that is
the effect of the gospel, and for the same reason as in Israel--that
they 'did not believe in the Lord their God'!

The miserable result on the sinners' own natures is described with
pregnant brevity in verse 15. 'They followed vanity, and became vain.'
The worshipper became like the thing worshipped, as is always the
case. The idol is vanity, utter emptiness and nonentity; and whoever
worships nothingness will become in his own inmost life as empty and
vain as it is. That is the retribution attendant on all trust in, and
longing after, the trifles of earth, that we come down to the level of
what we set our hearts upon. We see the effects of that principle in
the moral degradation of idolaters. Gods lustful, cruel, capricious,
make men like themselves. We see it working upwards in Christianity,
in which God becomes man that men may become like God, and of which
the whole law is put into one precept, which is sure to be kept, in
the measure of the reality of a man's religion. 'Be ye therefore
imitators of God, as beloved children.'

In verses 16 and 17 the details of the idolatry follow the general
statement, as in verses 9 to 12, but with additions and with increased
severity of tone. We hear now of calves and star worship, and Baal,
and burning children to Moloch, and divination and enchantment. The
catalogue is enlarged, and there is added to it the terrible
declaration that Israel had 'sold themselves to do evil in the sight
of the Lord.' The same thing was said by Elijah to Ahab--a noble
instance of courage. The sinner who steels himself against the divine
remonstrance, does not merely go on in his old sins, but adds new
ones. Begin with the calves, and fancy that you are worshipping
Jehovah, and you will end with Baal and Moloch. Refuse to hear God's
pleadings, and you will sell your freedom, and become the lowest and
only real kind of slave--the bondsman of evil. When that point of
entire abandonment to sin, which Paul calls being 'sold under sin,' is
reached, as it may be reached, at all events by a nation, and
corruption has struck too deep to be cast out, once again the anger of
the Lord is provoked; but this time it comes in a different guise. The
armies of the Assyrians, not the prophets, are its messengers now.
Israel had made itself like the nations whom God had used it to
destroy, and now it shall be destroyed as they were.

To be swept out of His sight is the fate of obstinate rejection of His
commandments and pleadings. Israel made itself the slave of evil, and
was made the captive of Assyria. Self-willed freedom, which does as it
likes, and heeds not God, ends in bondage, and is itself bondage.
God's anger against sin speaks pleadingly to us all, saying, 'Do not
this abominable thing that I hate.' Well for us if we hearken to His
voice when 'His anger is kindled but a little.' If we do not yield to
Him, and cast away our idols, we shall become vain as they. Our evil
will be more fatal, and our obstinacy more criminal, because He
called, and we refused. 'Who may abide the day of His coming? and who
shall stand when He appeareth?' These captives, dragging their weary
limbs, with despair in their hearts, across the desert to a land of
bondage, were but shadows, in the visible region of things, of the far
more doleful and dreary fate that sooner or later must fall on those
who would none of God's counsel, and despised all His reproof, but
cling to their idol till they and it are destroyed together.



DIVIDED WORSHIP

'These nations feared the Lord, and served their own gods.'--2 KINGS
xvii. 33.


The kingdom of Israel had come to its fated end. Its king and people
had been carried away captives in accordance with the cruel policy of
the great Eastern despotisms, which had so much to do with weakening
them by their very conquests. The land had lain desolate and
uncultivated for many years, savage beasts had increased in the
untilled solitudes, even as weeds and nettles grew in the gardens and
vineyards of Samaria. At last the king of Assyria resolved to people
the country; and for this purpose he sent a mixed multitude from the
different nationalities of his empire to the land of Israel. They were
men of five nationalities, most of them recently conquered. Israel had
been deported to different parts of the Assyrian empire; men from
different parts of the empire were deported to the land of Israel.
Such cruel uprootings seemed to be wisdom, but were really a policy
that kept alive disaffection. It was the same mistake (and bore the
same fruits) as Austria pursued in sending Hungarian regiments to keep
down Venice, and Venetian-born soldiers to overawe Hungary.

These new settlers brought with them their national peculiarities, and
among the rest, their gods. They knew nothing about the Jehovah whom
they supposed to be the local deity of Israel; and when they were
troubled by the wild beasts which had, of course, rapidly increased in
the land, they attributed it to their neglect of His worship, and sent
an embassy to the king of Assyria telling that as they 'know not the
manners of the God of the land,' He has sent lions among them.

This is an instructive example of the heathen way of thinking. They
have their local deities. Each land, each valley, each mountain top,
has its own. They are ready to worship them all, for they have no real
worship for any. Their reason for worship is to escape from harm, to
pay the tribute to which the god has a right on his own territory,
lest he should make it the worse for them if they neglect it. 'The
mild tolerance of heathendom' simply means the utter absence of
religion and an altogether inadequate notion of deity.

So the settlers have sent to them one of these schismatic priests who
had belonged to the extinct sanctuary at Beth-el, and he, apparently,
not having any truer notions of God or of worship than they had,
nothing loth, teaches them the rites of the Israelite worship, which
was not like that of Judah, as is distinctly stated in the context.
This worship of Jehovah was, however, blended by them with their own
national idolatry. How contemptuously the historian enumerates the
hard names of their gods and the rabble rout of them which each nation
made! 'The men of Babylon _made_ Succoth-benoth' (probably a
deity, though the name may mean booths for purposes of prostitution)
and the others '_made_ Nergal and Ashima and Nibhaz and Tartak.'
What names, and what a pantheon! 'They feared the Lord and served
their own gods.'

This was the beginning of the Samaritan people, whom we find through
the rest of Scripture even down to the Acts of the Apostles, retaining
some trace of their heathen origin. Simon Magus bewitched them in his
sorceries. They began as heathen, though in lapse of years they came
to be pure monotheists, even more rigid than the Jews themselves, and
today, if you went to Nablus, you would find the small remnant of
their descendants adhering to Moses and the law, guarding their sacred
copy of the Pentateuch with unintelligent awe, and eating the Paschal
Lamb with wild rites. They have changed the object of their worship,
but one fears that it is little more real and deep than in old days,
2500 years ago, when their forefathers 'feared the Lord and served
their own gods.'

Now I venture to take this verse as indicative of a tendency which
belongs to a great many more people than the confused mass of settlers
that were shot down on the hills of Israel by the king of Assyria. It
is really a description of a great deal of what goes by the name of
religion amongst us.

I. The Religion of Fear.

These people would never have thought about God if it had not been for
the lions. When they did think of Him it was only to tremble before
Him. The reason for their trembling was that they did not know the
etiquette of His worship; that they thought of Him as having rights
over them because they had come into His territory, which He would
exact, or punish them for omitting. In a word, their notion of God was
that of a jealous, capricious tyrant, whose ways were inscrutable to
them, in whose territory they found themselves without their will, and
who needed to be propitiated if they would live in peace.

And this is the thought which is most operative in many minds, though
it is veiled in more seemly phrases, and which darkens and injures all
those on whom it lays hold. Need I spend time in showing you how,
point by point, this picture is a picture of many among us? How many
of you think of God when you are ill, and forget Him when you are
well? How many of you pour out a prayer when you are in trouble, and
forget all about Him and it when you are prosperous? How many of you
see God in your calamities and not in your joys? Why do people call
sudden deaths and the like the 'visitation of God'? How many of us are
like Italian sailors who burn candles and shriek out to the Madonna
when the storm catches them, and get drunk in the first wine-shop
which they come to when they land! Is not many a man's thought of God,
'I knew Thee that Thou wert an austere Man, and I was afraid'?

The popular religion is largely a religion of fear.

There is a fear which is right and noble. That is reverend, humble
adoration at the sight or thought of God's great perfections. Angels
veil their faces with their wings. Such awe has no thought of personal
consequences--is inseparable from all true knowledge of God; for all
greatness of character is perfected by love. Of such fear we are not
now speaking.

Terror of God is deep in men's hearts.

Fear is the apprehension of personal evil from some person or thing.
Now I believe that terror has its place in the human economy, and in
religion, as the sense of pain has. There is something in man's
relations to God to cause it.

The Bible sets forth 'the terror of the Lord,' that men may tremble
before Him. Moses said, 'I exceedingly fear and quake.' But that
terror is only right when it proceeds from a sense of God's holiness
and a consciousness of my own sinfulness. It is not right when it is a
mere dread of a hard tyrant. That terror is only right when it leads
to a joyful acceptance of God's revelation of His love in Christ.

Fear was never meant to be permanent, it is only the alarum-bell which
rings to wake up the soul that sleeps on when in mortal peril. And it
should pass into penitence, faith, joy in Jesus. 'We have access with
confidence by the faith of Him.' The brightness is great and awful,
but go nearer, as you can in Jesus, and lo! there is love in the
brightness. You see it all tender and sweet. A heart and a hand are
there, and from the midst of it the Father's voice speaks, and says,
'My son, give Me thine heart.'

The religion of fear is worthless. It produces no holiness, it does
nothing for a man, it does not bind him to God. He is none the
stronger for it. It paralyses so far as it does anything.

It is spasmodic and intermittent. It is impossible to keep it up, so
it comes in fits and starts. When the morning comes men laugh at their
terrors. It leads to wild endeavours to forget God--atheism--to
insensibility. He who begins by fearing when there was no need, ends
by not fearing when he ought.

II. The Religion of Form.

The Samaritans' whole worship was outward worship. They did the things
which the Beth-el priest taught them to do, and that was all.

And this again is a type, very common in our day. Religion must have
forms. The forms often help to bring us the spirit. But we are always
in danger of trusting to them too much.

How many of us have our Christianity only in outward seeming? The only
thing that unites men to God is love.

So your external connection with God's worship is of no use at all
unless you have that.

Church and chapel-goers are alike exposed to the danger of erecting
the forms of worship to a place in which they cannot be put without
marring the spirit of worship. Whether our worship be more or less
symbolic, whether we have a more or less elaborate ritual, whether we
think more or less of sacraments, whether we put hearing a sermon as
more or less prominent, or even if we follow the formless forms of the
Friends, we are all tempted to substitute our forms for the spirit
which alone is worship.

III. The Religion of Compromise or Worldliness.

They had God and they had gods. They liked the latter best. They gave
God formal worship, but they gave the others more active service.

Such a kind of religion is a type of much that we see around us; the
attempt to be Christians and worldlings, the indecision under which
many men labour all their lives, being drawn one way by their
consciences, another by their inclinations.

You cannot unite the two. God requires all. He fills the heart, and
claims supreme control over all the nature. There cannot be two
supreme in the soul. It cannot be God and self. It must be God or
self. You may look now one way and now another, but the way the heart
goes is the thing. Mr. Facing-both-ways does not really face both
ways. He only turns quickly round from one to the other.

Such divided religion is impossible in the nature of God--of the
soul--of religion.

To attempt it, then, is really to decide against God.

It is weak and unmanly to be thus vague and decided by circumstances.
You would have been a Mohammedan if you had been born in Turkey.

You ought to decide for God.

He claims, He deserves, He will reward and bless, your whole soul.

'Choose you this day whom ye will serve. If the Lord be God, follow
Him' If Baal or Succoth-benoth, then follow him. 'You cannot serve God
and Mammon.' 'He that is not for us is against us.' Be one thing or
the other.



HEZEKIAH, A PATTERN OF DEVOUT LIFE

'Hezekiah trusted in the Lord God of Israel.... 6. He clave to the
Lord, and departed not from following Him, but kept His
commandments.'--2 KINGS xviii. 5,6.


Devout people in all ages and stations are very much like each other.
The elements of godliness are always the same. This king of Israel,
something like two thousand six hundred years ago, and the humblest
Christian to-day have the family likeness on their faces. These words,
which are an outline sketch of the king's character, are really a
sketch of the religious life at all times and in all places. He
realised it; why may not we? He achieved it amid much ignorance; why
should not we amid our blaze of knowledge? He accomplished it amid the
temptations of a monarchy; why should not we in our humbler spheres?

There are four things set forth here as constituting a religious life.
We begin at the bottom with the foundation of everything. 'He trusted
in the Lord God of Israel.' The Old Testament is just as emphatic in
declaring that there is no religion without trust, and that trust is
the very nerve and life-blood of religion, as is the New. Only that in
the one half of the book our translators have chosen to use the word
'trust,' and in the other half of the book they have chosen to use,
for the very same act, the word 'faith.' They have thus somewhat
obscured the absolute identity which exists in the teaching of the Old
and of the New Testament as regards the bond which unites men to God.
That union always was, and always will be, begun in the simple
attitude and exercise of trust, and everything else will come out of
that, and without that nothing else will come.

So this king had a certain measure of knowledge about the character of
God, and that measure of knowledge led him to lean all his weight upon
the Lord. You and I know a great deal more about God and His ways and
purposes than Hezekiah did, but we can make no better use of it than
he did--translate our knowledge into faith, and rely with simple,
absolute confidence on Him whose name we know in Christ more fully and
blessedly than was possible to Hezekiah.

And need I remind you of how, in this life of which the outline is
here given and the inmost secret is here disclosed, there were
significant and magnificent instances of the power of humble trust to
bring to an else helpless man all the blessings that he needs, and to
put a crystal wall round about him that will preserve him from every
evil, howsoever threatening it may seem?

'It has come addressed to me, but it is meant for Thee. Vindicate
Thine own cause by delivering Thine own servant.' And so, 'when the
morning dawned, they were all dead men,' and faith rejoiced in a
perfect deliverance. And you and I may get the same answer, in the
midst of all our trials, difficulties, toils, and conflicts, if only
we will go the same way to get it, and let our faith work, as
Hezekiah's worked, and take everything that troubles us to our Father
in the heavens, and be quite sure that He is the God 'who daily bears
our burdens.' Let us begin with the simple act of confidence in Him.
That is the foundation, and on that we may build everything besides.

Let us see what this man further built upon it. The second story, if I
may so say, of the temple-fortress of his life, upon the foundation of
faith, was, 'He clave to the Lord.'

That is to say, the act of confidence must be followed and perfected
by tenacious adherence with all the tendrils of a man's nature to the
God in whom he says that he trusts. The metaphor is a very forcible
one, so familiar in Scripture as that we are apt to overlook its
emphasis. Let me recall one or two of the instances in which it is
employed about other matters which throw light on its force here.

First of all, remember that sweet picture of the widow woman from Moab
and the two daughters-in-law, one sent back, not reluctantly, to her
home; and the other persisting in keeping by Naomi's side, in spite of
difficulties and remonstrances. With kisses of real love Orpah went
back, but she did go back, to her people and her gods, but 'Ruth clave
unto her.' So should we cling to God, as Ruth flung her arms round
Naomi, and twined her else lonely and desolate heart about her dear
and only friend, for whose sweet sake she became a willing exile from
kindred and country. Is that how we cleave to the Lord?

More sacred still are the lessons that are suggested by the fact that
this is the word employed to describe the blessed and holy union of
man and woman in pure wedded life, and I suppose some allusion to that
use of the expression underlies its constant application to the
relation of the believing soul to Jehovah. For by trust the soul is
wedded to Him, and so 'joined to the Lord' as to be 'one spirit.'

Or if we do not care to go so deep as that, let us take the metaphor
that lies in the word itself, without reference to its Scriptural
applications. As the limpet holds on to its rock, as the ivy clings to
the wall, as a shipwrecked sailor grasps the spar which keeps his head
above water, so a Christian man ought to hold on to God, with all his
energy, and with all parts of his nature. The metaphor implies
tenacity; closeness of adhesion, in heart and will, in thought, in
desire, and in all the parts of our receptive humanity, all of which
can touch God and be touched by Him, and all of which are blessed only
in the measure in which, yielding to Him, they are filled and steadied
and glorified.

And there is implied, too, not only tenacity of adherence, but
tenacity in the face of obstacles. There must be resistance to all the
forces which would detach, if there is to be union with God in the
midst of life in the world. Or, to recur for a moment to the figure
that I employed a moment ago, as the sailor clings to a spar, though
the waves dash round him, and his fingers get stiffened with cold and
cramped with keeping the one position, and can scarcely hold on, but
he knows that it is life to cling and death to loosen, and so tightens
his grasp; thus have we to lay hold of God, and in spite of all
obstacles, to keep hold of Him. Our grasp tends to slacken, and is
feeble at the best, even if there were nothing outside of us to make
it difficult for us to get a good grip. But there are howling winds
and battering waves blowing and beating on us, and making it hard to
keep our hold.

Do not let us yield to these, but in spite of them all let our hearts
tighten round Him, for it is only in His sweet, eternal, perfect love
that they can be at rest. And let our thoughts keep close to Him in
spite of all distractions, for it is only in the measure in which His
light fills our minds and His truth occupies our thoughts that our
thinking spirits will be at rest. And let our desires, as the
tentacles of some shell-fish fasten upon the rock, and feel out
towards the ocean that is coming to it, let our desires go all out
towards Him until they touch that after which they feel, and curl
round it in repose and in blessedness.

The whole secret of a joyful, strong, noble Christian life lies
here--that on the foundation of faith we should rear tenacious
adherence to Him in spite of all obstacles. So it was a most
encyclopaedic, though laconic, exhortation that that 'good man' sent
down from Jerusalem to encourage the first heathen converts gave, when
instead of all other instruction or advice, or inculcation of less
important, and yet real, Christian duties, Barnabas exhorted them all
'that with purpose of heart'--the full devotion of their inmost
natures--'they should cleave to the Lord.'

Then the third stage, or the third story, in this building is that,
cleaving to the Lord, 'he departed not from following Him.' The
metaphor of cleaving implies proximity and union; the metaphor of
following implies distance which is being diminished. These two are
incongruous, and the very incongruity helps to give point to the
representation. The same two ideas of union and yet of pursuit are
brought still more closely together in other parts of Scripture. For
instance, there is a remarkable saying in one of the Psalms,
translated in our Bible--'My soul followeth hard after Thee. Thy right
hand upholdeth me,' where the expression 'followeth hard after' is a
lame attempt at translating the perhaps impossible-to-be-translated
fullness of the original, which reads 'My soul cleaveth after Thee.'
It is an incongruous combination of ideas, by its very incongruity and
paradoxical form suggesting a profound truth--viz. that in all the
conscious union and tenacious adherence to God which makes the
Christian life, there is ever, also, a sense of distance which kindles
aspiration and leads to the effort after continual progress. However
close we may be to God, it is always possible to press closer. However
full may be the union, it may always be made fuller; and the cleaving
spirit will always be longing for a closer contact and a more blessed
sense of being in touch with God.

So, as we climb, new heights reveal themselves, and the further we
advance in the Christian life the more are we conscious of the
infinite depths that yet remain to be traversed. Hence arises one
great element of the blessedness of being a Christian--namely, that we
need not fear ever coming to the end of the growth in holiness and the
increase of joy and power that are possible to us. So that weariness,
and the sense of having reached the limits that are possible on a
given path, which sooner or later fall upon men that live for anything
but God, can never be ours if we live for Him. But the oldest and most
experienced will have the same forward-looking glances of hope and
forward-directed steps of strenuous effort as the youngest beginner on
the path; and a Paul will be able to say when he is 'Paul the aged,'
and 'the time of his departure is at hand,' that he 'forgets the
things that are behind, and reaches forth unto the things that are
before, while he presses towards the mark.' Let us be thankful for the
endless progress which is possible to the Christian, and let us see to
it that we are never paralysed into supposing that 'to-morrow must be
_as_ this day,' but trust the infinite resources of our God, and
be sure that we growingly make our own the growing gifts which He
bestows.

And so, lastly, the fourth element in this analysis of a devout life
is 'He kept the commandments of the Lord.' That is the outcome of them
all. Faith, adhesion, aspiration, and progress, all vindicate their
value and reality in the simple, homely way of practical obedience.

Let us learn two things. One as to the worthlessness of all these
others, if they do not issue in this. Not that these inward emotions
are ever to be despised, but that, if they are genuine in our hearts,
they cannot but manifest themselves in our lives. And so, dear
Christian friends! do you not build upon your faith, on your adherence
to God, on your aspirations after Him, unless you can bring into
court, as witnesses for these, daily and hourly, your efforts after
the conformity of your will to His, in the great things and in the
small. Then, and only then, may we be sure that our confidence is not
a delusion, and that it is to Him that we cleave when our feet tread
in the paths of goodness.

And on the other hand, let us learn that all attempts to be obedient
to a divine will which do not begin with trust and cleaving to Him are
vain. There is no other way to get that conformity of will except by
that union of spirit. All other attempts are beginning at the wrong
end. You do not begin building your houses with the chimney-pots, but
many a man who seeks to obey without trusting does precisely commit
that fault. Let us be sure that the foundations are in, and then let
us be sure that we do not stop half-way up, lest all that pass by
should mock and say, 'This man began to build and was not able to
finish.'

How many professing Christians' lives are half-finished and unroofed
houses, because they have not 'added to their faith'--that is, to
their 'cleaving to the Lord'--endless aspiration and continual
progress, and to their aspiration and their progress the peaceable
fruit of practical righteousness! If these things be in us and abound,
they mark us as devout men after God's pattern. And if we want to be
devout men after God's pattern, we must follow God's sequence, which
begins with trust and ends with obedience.



'HE UTTERED HIS VOICE, THE EARTH MELTED'

'Then Isaiah the son of Amos sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the
Lord God of Israel, That which thou hast prayed to Me against
Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard. 21. This is the word that
the Lord hath spoken concerning him; The virgin, the daughter of Zion,
hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of
Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. 22. Whom hast thou reproached
and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and
lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel....
28. Because thy rage against Me and thy tumult is come up into Mine
ears, therefore I will put My hook in thy nose, and My bridle in thy
lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest. 29.
And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such things
as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of
the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards,
and eat the fruits thereof. 30. And the remnant that is escaped of the
house of Judah shall yet again take root downward, and bear fruit
upward. 31. For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they
that escape out of mount Zion: the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do
this. 32. Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of
Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there,
nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it. 33. By the
way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into
this city, saith the Lord. 34. For I will defend this city, to save
it, for Mine own sake, and for My servant David's sake. 35. And it
came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and
smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five
thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were
all dead corpses. 36. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and
went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. 37. And it came to pass, as
he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech
and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into
the land of Armenia: and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.'--2
KINGS xix. 20-22; 28-37.


At an earlier stage of the Assyrian invasion Hezekiah had sent to
Isaiah, asking him to pray to his God for deliverance, and had
received an explicit assurance that the invasion would be foiled. When
the second stage was reached, and Hezekiah was personally summoned to
surrender, by a letter which scoffed at Isaiah's promise, he himself
prayed before the Lord. Isaiah does not seem to have been present, and
may not have known of the prayer. At all events, the answer was given
to him to give to the king; and it is noteworthy that, as in the
former case, he does not himself come, but sends to Hezekiah. He did
come when he had to bring a message of death, and again when he had to
rebuke (chap. xx.), but now he only sends. As the chosen speaker of
Jehovah's will, he was mightier than kings, and must not imperil the
dignity of the message by the behaviour of the messenger. In a
sentence, Hezekiah's prayer is answered, and then the prophet, in
Jehovah's name, bursts into a wonderful song of triumph over the
defeated invader. 'I have heard.' That is enough. Hezekiah's prayer
has, as it were, fired the fuse or pulled the trigger, and the
explosion follows, and the shot is sped. 'Whereas thou hast prayed,
... I have heard,' is ever true, and God's hearing is God's acting in
answer. The methods of His response vary, the fact that He responds to
the cry of despair driven to faith by extremity of need does not vary.

But it is noteworthy that, with that brief, sufficient assurance,
Hezekiah, as it were, is put aside, and instead of three fighters in
the field, the king, with God to back him, and on the other side
Sennacherib, two only, appear. It is a duel between Jehovah and the
arrogant heathen who had despised Him. Jerusalem appears for a moment,
in a magnificent piece of poetical scorn, as despising and making
gestures of contempt at the baffled would-be conqueror, as Miriam and
her maidens did by the Red Sea. The city is 'virgin,' as many a
fortress in other lands has been named, because uncaptured. But she,
too, passes out of sight, and Jehovah and Sennacherib stand opposed on
the field. God speaks now not 'concerning,' but to, him, and indicts
him for insane pride, which was really a denial of dependence on God,
and passionate antagonism to Him, as manifested not only in his war
against Jehovah's people, but also in the tone of his insolent
defiances of Hezekiah, in which he scoffed at the vain trust which the
latter was placing in his God, and paralleled Jehovah with the gods of
the nations whom he had already conquered (Isaiah xix. 12).

The designation of God, characteristic of Isaiah, as 'the Holy One of
Israel,' expresses at once His elevation above, and separation from,
all mundane, creatural limitations, and His special relation to His
people, and both thoughts intensify Sennacherib's sin. The Highest,
before whose transcendent height all human elevations sink to a
uniform level, has so joined Israel to Himself that to touch it is to
strike at Him, and to vaunt one's self against it is to be arrogant
towards God. That mighty name has received wider extension now, but
the wider sweep does not bring diminished depth, and lowly souls who
take that name for their strong tower can still run into it and be
safe from 'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,' and the
strongest foes.

There is tremendous scorn in the threat with which the divine address to
Sennacherib ends. The dreaded world-conqueror is no more in God's eyes
than a wild beast, which He can ring and lead as He will, and not even
as formidable as that, but like a horse or a mule, that can easily be
bridled and directed. What majestic assertion lies in these figures and
in '_My_ hook' and '_My_ bridle!' How many conquerors and mighty men
since then have been so mastered, and their schemes balked! Sennacherib
had to return by 'the way that he came,' and to tramp back, foiled and
disappointed, over all the weary miles which he had trodden before with
such insolent confidence of victory. A modern parallel is Napoleon's
retreat from Moscow. But the same experience really befalls all who
order life regardless of God. Their schemes may seem to succeed, but in
deepest truth they fail, and the schemers never reach their goal.

In verse 29 the prophet turns away abruptly and almost contemptuously
from Sennacherib to speak comfortably to Jerusalem, addressing
Hezekiah first, but turning immediately to the people. The substance
of his words to them is, first, the assurance that the Assyrian
invasion had limits of time set to it by God; and, second, that beyond
it lay prosperous times, when the prophetic visions of a flourishing
Israel should be realised in fact. For two seed-times only field work
was to be impossible on account of the Assyrian occupation, but it was
to foam itself away, like a winter torrent, before a third season for
sowing came round.

But how could this sequence of events, which required time for its
unfolding, be 'a sign'? We must somewhat modify our notions of a sign
to understand the prophet. The Scripture usage does not only designate
by that name a present event or thing which guarantees the truth of a
prophecy, but it sometimes means an event, or sequence of events, in
the future, which, when they have come to pass in accordance with the
divine prediction of them, will shed back light on other divine words
or acts, and demonstrate that they were of God. Thus Moses was given
as a sign of his mission the worshipping in Mount Sinai, which was to
take place only after the Exodus. So with Isaiah's sign here. When the
harvest of the third year was gathered in, then Israel would know that
the prophet had spoken from God when he had sung Sennacherib's defeat.
For the present, Hezekiah and Judah had to live by faith; but when the
deliverance was complete, and they were enjoying the fruits of their
labours and of God's salvation, then they could look back on the weary
years, and recognise more clearly than while these were slowly passing
how God had been in all the trouble, and had been carrying on His
purposes of mercy through it all. And there will be a 'sign' for us in
like manner when we look back from eternity on the transitory
conflicts of earthly life, and are satisfied with the harvest which He
has caused to spring from our poor sowings to the Spirit.

The definite promise of deliverance in verses 32-34 is addressed to
Judah, and emphasises the completeness of the frustration of the
invader's efforts. There is a climax in the enumeration of the things
that he will not be allowed to do--he will not make his entry into the
city, nor even shoot an arrow there, nor even make preparation for a
siege. His whole design will be overturned, and as had already been
said (ver. 28), he will retrace his steps a baffled man.

Note the strong antithesis: 'He shall not come into this city, ... for
I will defend this city.' Zion is impregnable because Jehovah defends
it. Sennacherib can do nothing, for he is fighting against God. And if
we 'are come unto the city of the living God,' we can take the same
promise for the strength of our lives. God saves Zion 'for His own
sake,' for His name is concerned in its security, both because He has
taken it for His own and because He has pledged His word to guard it.
It would be a blot on His faithfulness, a slur on His power, if it
should be conquered while it remains true to Him, its King. His honour
is involved in protecting us if we enter into the strong city of which
the builder and maker is God. And 'for David's sake,' too, He defends
Zion, because He had sworn to David to dwell there. But Zion's
security becomes an illusion if Zion breaks away from God. If it
becomes as Sodom, it shares Sodom's fate.

It is remarkable that neither in the song of triumph nor in the
prophecy of deliverance is there allusion to the destruction of the
Assyrian army. How the exultant taunts of the one and the definite
promises of the other were to be fulfilled was not declared till the
event declared it. But faithful expectation had not long to wait, for
'that night' the blow fell, and no second was needed. We are not told
where the Assyrian army was, but clearly it was not before Jerusalem.
Nor do we learn what was the instrument of destruction wielded by the
'angel of the Lord,' if there was any. The catastrophe may have been
brought about by a pestilence, but however effected, it was 'the act
of God,' the fulfilment of His promise, the making bare of His arm.
'By terrible things in righteousness' did He answer the prayer of
Hezekiah, and give to all humble souls who are oppressed and cry to
Him a pledge that 'as they have heard, so' will they 'see, in the city
of' their 'God.' How much more impressive is the stern, naked brevity
of the Scriptural account than a more emotional expansion of it, like,
for instance, Byron's well-known, and in their way powerful lines,
would have been! To the writer of this book it seemed the most natural
thing in the world that the foes of Zion should be annihilated by one
blow of the divine hand. His business is to tell the facts; he leaves
commentary and wonder and triumph or terror to others.

There is but one touch of patriotic exultation apparent in the
half-sarcastic and half-rejoicing accumulation of synonyms descriptive
of Sennacherib's retreat. He 'departed, and went and returned.' It is
like the picture in Psalm xlviii., which probably refers to the same
events: 'They saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and
hasted away.'

About twenty years elapsed between Sennacherib's retreat and his
assassination. During all that time he 'dwelt at Nineveh,' so far as
Judah was concerned. He had had enough of attacking it and its God.
But the notice of his death is introduced here, not only to complete
the narrative, but to point a lesson, which is suggested by the fact
that he was murdered 'as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch
his god.' Hezekiah had gone into the house of _his_ God with
Sennacherib's letter, and the dead corpses of an army showed what
Jehovah could do for His servant; Sennacherib was praying in the
temple of _his_ god, and his corpse lay stretched before his
idol, an object lesson of the impotence of Nisroch and all his like to
hear or help their worshippers.



THE REDISCOVERED LAW AND ITS EFFECTS

'And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have
found the book of the law in the house of the Lord: and Hilkiah gave
the book to Shaphan, and he read it. 9. And Shaphan the scribe came to
the king, and brought the king word again, and said, Thy servants have
gathered the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it
into the hand of them that do the work, that have the oversight of the
house of the Lord. 10. And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying,
Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book: and Shaphan read it
before the king. 11. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the
words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. 12. And the
king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and
Achbor the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah a
servant of the king's, saying, 13. Go ye, enquire of the Lord for me,
and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this
book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled
against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of
this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning
us. 14. So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan,
and Asahiah, went unto Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the
son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe; (now she
dwelt in Jerusalem in the college;) and they communed with her. 15.
And she said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell the
man that sent you to me, 16. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring
evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the
words of the book which the king of Judah hath read: 17. Because they
have forsaken Me, and have burnt incense unto other gods, that they
might provoke Me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore
My wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be
quenched. 18. But to the king of Judah, which sent you to enquire of
the Lord, thus shall ye say to him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
As touching the words which thou hast heard; 19. Because thine heart
was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou
heardest what I speak against this place, and against the inhabitants
thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast
rent thy clothes, and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith
the Lord. 20. Behold, therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers,
and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes
shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place. And
they brought the king word again.'--2 KINGS xxii. 8-20.


We get but a glimpse into a wild time of revolution and
counter-revolution in the brief notice that the 'servants of Amon,'
Josiah's father, conspired and murdered him in his palace, but were
themselves killed by a popular rising, in which the 'people of the
land made Josiah his son king in his stead,' and so no doubt balked
the conspirators' plans. Poor boy! he was only eight years old when he
made his first acquaintance with rebellion and bloodshed. There must
have been some wise heads and strong arms and loyal hearts round him,
but their names have perished. The name of David was still a spell in
Judah, and guarded his childish descendant's royal rights. In the
eighteenth year of his reign, the twenty-sixth of his age, he felt
himself firm enough in the saddle to begin a work of religious
reformation, and the first reward of his zeal was the finding of the
book of the law. Josiah, like the rest of us, gained fuller knowledge
of God's will in the act of trying to do it so far as he knew it.
'Light is sown for the upright.'

I. We have, first, the discovery of the law. The important and
complicated critical questions raised by the narrative cannot be
discussed here, nor do they affect the broad lines of teaching in the
incident. Nothing is more truthful-like than the statement that, in
course of the repairs of the Temple, the book should be
found,--probably in the holiest place, to which the high priest would
have exclusive access. How it came to have been lost is a more
puzzling question; but if we recall that seventy-five years had passed
since Hezekiah, and that these were almost entirely years of apostasy
and of tumult, we shall not wonder that it was so. Unvalued things
easily slip out of sight, and if the preservation of Scripture
depended on the estimation which some of us have of it, it would have
been lost long ago. But the fact of the loss suggests the wonder of
the preservation. It would appear that this copy was the only one
existing,--at all events, the only one known. It alone transmitted the
law to later days, like some slender thread of water that finds its
way through the sand and brings the river down to broad plains beyond.
Think of the millions of copies now, and the one dusty, forgotten roll
tossing unregarded in the dilapidated Temple, and be thankful for the
Providence that has watched over the transmission. Let us take care,
too, that the whole Scripture is not as much lost to us, though we
have half a dozen Bibles each, as the roll was to Josiah and his men.

Hilkiah's announcement to Shaphan has a ring of wonder and of awe in
it. It sounds as if he had not known that such a book was anywhere in
the Temple. And it is noteworthy that not he, but Shaphan, is said to
have read it. Perhaps he could not,--though, if he did not, how did he
know what the book was? At all events, he and Shaphan seem to have
felt the importance of the find, and to have consulted what was to be
done. Observe how the latter goes cautiously to work, and at first
only says that he has received 'a book.' He gives it no name, but
leaves it to tell its own story,--which it was then, and is still,
well able to do. Scripture is its own best credentials and witnesses
whence it comes. Again Shaphan is the reader, as it was natural that a
'scribe' should be, and again the possibility is that Josiah could not
read.

II. One can easily picture the scene while the reader's voice went
steadily through the commandments, threatenings, and promises,--the
deepening eagerness of the king, the gradual shaping out before his
conscience of God's ideal for him and his people, and the gradual
waking of the sense of sin in him, like a dormant serpent beginning to
stir in the first spring sunshine.

The effect of God's law on the sinful heart is vividly pictured in
Josiah's emotion. 'By the law is the knowledge of sin.' To many of us
that law, in spite of our outward knowledge of it, is as completely
absent from our consciousness as it had been from the most ignorant of
Josiah's subjects; and if for once its searchlight were thrown into
the hidden corners of our hearts and lives, it would show up in
dreadful clearness the skulking foes that are stealing to assail us,
and the foul things that have made good their lodgment in our hearts
and lives. It always makes an epoch in a life when it is really
brought to the standard of God's law; and it is well for us if, like
Josiah, we rend our clothes, or rather 'our heart, and not our
garments,' and take home the conviction, 'I have sinned against the
Lord.'

The dread of punishment sprang up in the young king's heart, and
though that emotion is not the highest motive for seeking the Lord, it
is not an unworthy one, and is meant to lead on to nobler ones than
itself. There is too much unwillingness, in many modern conceptions of
Christ's gospel, to recognise the place which the apprehension of
personal evil consequences from sin has in the initial stages of the
process by which we are 'translated from the kingdom of darkness into
that of God's dear Son.'

III. The message to Huldah is remarkable. The persons sent with it
show its importance. The high priest, the royal secretary, and one of
the king's personal attendants, who was, no doubt, in his confidence,
and two other influential men, one of whom, Ahikam, is known as
Jeremiah's staunch friend, would make some stir in 'the second
quarter,' on their way to the modest house of the keeper of the
wardrobe. The weight and number of the deputation did honour to the
prophetess, as well as showed the king's anxiety as to the matter in
hand. Jeremiah and Zephaniah were both living at this time, and we do
not know why Huldah was preferred. Perhaps she was more accessible.
But conjecture is idle. Enough that she was recognised as having, and
declared herself to have, direct authoritative communications from
God.

For what did Josiah need to inquire of the Lord 'concerning the words
of this book'? They were plain enough. Did he hope to have their
sternness somewhat mollified by the words of a prophetess who might be
more amenable to entreaties or personal considerations than the
unalterable page was? Evidently he recognised Huldah as speaking with
divine authority, and he might have known that two depositories of
God's voice could not contradict each other. But possibly his embassy
simply reflected his extreme perturbation and alarm, and like many
another man when God's law startles him into consciousness of sin, he
betook himself to one who was supposed to be in God's counsels, half
hoping for a mitigated sentence, and half uncertain of what he really
wished. He confusedly groped for some support or guide. But, confused
as he was, his message to the prophetess implied repentance, eager
desire to know what to do, and humble docility. If dread of evil
consequences leads us to such a temper, we shall hear, as Josiah did,
answers of peace as authoritative and divine as were the threatenings
that brought us to our senses and our knees.

IV. The answer which Josiah received falls into two parts, the former
of which confirms the threatenings of evil to Jerusalem, while the
latter casts a gleam athwart the thundercloud, and promises Josiah
escape from the national calamities. Observe the difference in the
designation given him in the two parts. When the threatenings are
confirmed, his individuality is, as it were, sunk; for that part of
the message applies to any and every member of the nation, and
therefore he is simply called 'the man that sent you.' Any other man
would have received the same answer. But when his own fate is to be
disclosed, then he is 'the king of Judah, who sent you,' and is
described by the official position which set him apart from his
subjects.

Huldah has but to confirm the dread predictions of evil which the roll
had contained. What else can a faithful messenger of God do than
reiterate its threatenings? Vainly do men seek to induce the living
prophet to soften down God's own warnings. Foolishly do they think
that the messenger or the messenger's Sender has any 'pleasure in the
death of the wicked'; and as foolishly do they take the message to be
unkind, for surely to warn that destruction waits the evildoer is
gracious. The signal-man who waves the red flag to stop the train
rushing to ruin is a friend. Huldah was serving Judah best by plain
reiteration of the 'words of the book.'

But the second half of her message told that in wrath God remembered
mercy. And that is for ever true. His thunderbolts do not strike
indiscriminately, even when they smite a nation. Judah's corruption
had gone too far for recovery, and the carcase called for the
gathering together of the vultures, but Josiah's penitence was not in
vain. 'I have heard thee' is always said to the true penitent, and
even if he is involved in widespread retribution, its strokes become
different to him. Josiah was assured that the evil should not come in
his days. But Huldah's promise seems contradicted by the circumstances
of his death. It was a strange kind of being gathered to his grave in
peace when he fell on the fatal field of Megiddo, and 'his servants
carried him in a chariot dead, ... and buried him in his own
sepulchre' (2 Kings xxiii. 30). But the promise is fulfilled in its
real meaning by the fact that the threatenings which he was inquiring
about did not fall on Judah in his time, and so far as these were
concerned, he _did_ come to his grave in peace.



THE END

'1. And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth
month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon came, he, and all his host, against Jerusalem, and pitched
against it; and they built forts against it round about. 2. And the
city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah. 3. And on
the ninth day of the fourth month the famine prevailed in the city,
and there was no bread for the people of the land. 4. And the city was
broken up, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the
gate, between two walls, which is by the king's garden; (now the
Chaldees were against the city round about;) and the king went the way
toward the plain. 5. And the army of the Chaldees pursued after the
king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho: and all his army were
scattered from him. 6. So they took the king, and brought him up to
the king of Babylon to Riblah; and they gave judgment upon him. 7. And
they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes
of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of brass, and carried him to
Babylon. 8. And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month,
which is the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,
came Nebuzar-adan, captain of the guard, a servant of the king of
Babylon, unto Jerusalem: 9. And he burnt the house of the Lord, and
the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great
man's house burnt he with fire. 10. And all the army of the Chaldees,
that were with the captain of the guard, brake down the walls of
Jerusalem round about. 11. Now the rest of the people that were left
in the city, and the fugitives that fell away to the king of Babylon,
with the remnant of the multitude, did Nebuzar-adan, the captain of
the guard, carry away. 12. But the captain of the guard left of the
poor of the land to be vine-dressers and husbandmen.'--2 KINGS xxv.
1-12.


Eighteen months of long-drawn-out misery and daily increasing famine
preceded the fall of the doomed city. The siege was a blockade. No
assaults by the enemy, nor sorties by the inhabitants, are narrated,
but the former grimly and watchfully drew their net closer, and the
latter sat still in their despair. The passionless tone of the
narrative here is very remarkable. Not a word escapes the writer to
show his feelings, though he is telling his country's fall. We must
turn to Lamentations for sighs and groans. There we have the emotions
of devout hearts; here we have the calm record of God's judgment. It
is all one long sentence, for in the Hebrew each verse begins with
'and,' clause heaped on clause, as if each were a footstep of the
destroying angel in his slow, irresistible march.

The narrative falls into two principal parts--the fate of the king and
that of the city. It is unnecessary to dwell on the details. The
confusion of counsels, the party strife, the fierce hatred of God's
prophet, the agony of famine, are all suppressed here, but painted
with terrible vividness in the Book of Jeremiah. At last the fatal day
came. On the north side a breach was made in the wall, and through it
the fierce besiegers poured--the 'princes of the king of Babylon,'
with their idolatrous and barbarous names, 'came in, and sat in the
middle gate.' It was night. The sudden appearance of the conquerors in
the heart of the city shot panic into the feeble king and his 'men of
war' who had never struck one blow for deliverance; and they hurried
under cover of darkness, and hidden between two walls, down the ravine
to the king's garden, once the scene of pleasure, but waste now, and
thence, as best they could, round or over Olivet to the road to
Jericho. The king's flight by night had been foretold by Ezekiel far
away in captivity (Ezek. xii. 12); and the same prophet received on
that very day a divine message announcing the fall of the city, and
bidding him 'write thee the name of the day, even of this selfsame
day,' as that on which the king of Babylon 'drew close unto Jerusalem'
(Ezek. xxiv. 1 _et seq._).

Down the rocky road went the flying host, with 'their shaftless,
broken bows' closely followed by the avenging foe with 'red pursuing
spear.' Where Israel had first set foot on its inheritance, the last
king of David's line was captured and his monarchy shattered. The
scene of the first victory, when Jericho fell before unarmed men
trusting in God, was the scene of the last defeat. The spot where the
covenant was renewed, and the reproach of Israel rolled away, was the
spot where the broken covenant was finally avenged and abrogated. The
end came back to the beginning, and the cradle was the coffin.

Away up to Riblah, in the far north, under the shadow of Lebanon, the
captive was dragged to meet the conqueror. The name of each is a
profession of belief. The one means 'Jehovah is righteousness'; the
other, 'Nebo, protect the crown.' The idol seemed to have overcome,
but the defeat of the unbelieving confessor of the true God at the
hands of the idolater is really the victory of the righteousness which
the name celebrated and the bearer of the name insulted. His murdered
sons were the last sight which he saw before he was blinded, according
to the ferocious practice of the East. It was ingenuity of cruelty to
let him see for so long, and then to give him that as the last thing
seen, and therefore often remembered. Note how the enigma of Ezekiel's
prophecy (Ezek. xii. 13) and its apparent contradiction of Jeremiah's
(Jer. xxxii. 4; xxxiv. 3) are reconciled, and learn how easily the
fact, when it comes, clears the riddles of prophecy, and how easily,
probably, the whole facts, if we knew them, would clear the
difficulties of Scripture history. The blinded king was harmless, but
according to Jewish tradition, was set to work in a mill (though that
is probably only an application of Samson's story), and according to
Jeremiah (Jer. lii. 11), was kept in prison till his death. So ended
the monarchy of Judah.

The fate of the city was not settled for a month, during which, no
doubt, there was much consultation at Riblah whether to garrison or
destroy it. The king of Babylon did not go in person, but despatched a
force commanded by a high officer, to burn palace, Temple, the more
important houses (the poorer people would probably be lodged in huts
not worth burning), and to raze the fortifications. In accordance with
the practice of the great Eastern despotisms, deportation followed
victory--a clever though cruel device for securing conquests. But some
were left behind; for the land, if deserted, would have fallen out of
cultivation, and been profitless to Babylon. The bulk of the people of
Jerusalem, the fugitives who had joined the invaders during the siege,
and the mass of the general population, were carried off, in such a
long string of misery as we may still see on the monuments, and a
handful left behind, too poor to plot, and stirred to diligence by
necessity. So ended the possession by Israel of its promised
inheritance.

Now this fall of Jerusalem is like an object-lesson to teach
everlasting truth as to the retributive providence of God. What does
it say?

It declares plainly what brings down God's judgments. The terms on
which Israel prospered and held its land were obedience to God's law.
We cannot directly apply the principles of God's government of it to
modern nations. The present analogue of Israel is the Church, not the
nation. But when all deductions have been made, it is still true that
a nation's religious attitude is a most potent factor in its
prosperous development. It is not accidental that, on the whole,
stagnant Europe and America are Roman Catholic, and the progressive
parts Protestant. Nor was it causes independent of religion that
scattered a decaying Christianity in the lands of the Eastern Church
before the onslaught of wild Arabs, who, at all events, did believe in
Allah. So there are abundant lessons for politics and sociology in the
story of Jerusalem's fall.

But these lessons have direct application to the individual and to the
Christian Church. All departure from God is ruin. We slay ourselves by
forsaking Him, and every sinner is a suicide. We live under a moral
government, and in a system of things so knit together as that even
here every transgression receives its just recompense--if not visibly
and palpably in outward circumstances, yet really and punctually in
effects on mind and heart, which are more solemn and awful. 'Behold
the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth: much more the wicked
and the sinner.' Sin and sorrow are root and fruit.

Especially does that crash of Jerusalem's fall thunder the lesson to
all churches that their life and prosperity are inseparably connected
with faithful obedience and turning away from all worldliness, which
is idolatry. They stand in the place that was made empty by Israel's
later fall. Our very privileges call us to beware. 'Because of
unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith.' That great
seven-branched candlestick was removed out of its place, and all that
is left of it is its sculptured image among the spoils on the
triumphal arch to its captor. Other lesser candlesticks have been
removed from their places, and Turkish oppression brings night where
Sardis and Laodicea once gave a feeble light. The warning is needed
to-day; for worldliness is rampant in the Church. 'If God spared not
the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee.' The fall
of Jerusalem is not merely a tragic story from the past. It is a
revelation, for the present, of the everlasting truth, that the
professing people of God deserve and receive the sorest chastisement,
if they turn again to folly.

Further, we learn the method of present retribution. Nebuchadnezzar
knew nothing of the purposes which he fulfilled. 'He meaneth not so,
neither doth his heart think so.' He was but the 'axe' with which God
hewed. Therefore, though he was God's tool, he was also responsible,
and would be punished even for performing God's 'whole work upon
Jerusalem,' because of 'the glory of his high looks.' The retribution
of disobedience, so far as that retribution is outward, needs no
'miracle.' The ordinary operations of Providence amply suffice to
bring it. If God wills to sting, He will 'hiss for the fly,' and it
will come. The ferocity and ambition of a grim and bloody despot,
impelled by vainglory and lust of cruel conquest, do God's work, and
yet the doing is sin. The world is full of God's instruments, and He
sends punishments by the ordinary play of motives and circumstances,
which we best understand when we see behind all His mighty hand and
sovereign will. The short-sighted view of history says 'Nebuchadnezzar
captured Jerusalem B.C. so and so,' and then discourses about the
tendencies of which Babylonia was exponent and creature. The deeper
view says, God smote the disobedient city, as He had said, and
Nebuchadnezzar was 'the rod of His anger.'

Again, we learn the Divine reluctance to smite. More than four hundred
years had passed since Solomon began idolatry, and steadily, through
all that time, a stream of prophecy of varying force and width had
flowed, while smaller disasters had confirmed the prophets' voices.
'Rising up early and sending' his servants, God had been in earnest in
seeking to save Israel from itself. Men said then, 'Where is the
promise of His coming?' and mocked His warnings and would none of His
reproof; but at last the hour struck and the crash came. 'As a dream
when one awaketh; so, O Lord! when Thou awakest, Thou shalt despise
their image.' His judgment seems to slumber, but its eyes are open,
and it remains inactive, that His long-suffering may have free scope.
As long as His gaze can discern the possibility of repentance, He will
not strike; and when that is hopeless, He will not delay. The
explanation of the marvellous tolerance of evil which sometimes tries
faith and always evokes wonder, lies in the great words, which might
well be written over the chair of every teacher of history: 'The Lord
is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but
is long-suffering to us-ward.' Alas, that that divine patience should
ever be twisted into the ground of indurated disobedience! 'Because
sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the
heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.'

God's reluctance to punish is no reason for doubting that He will.
Judgment is His 'strange work,' less congenial, if we may so
paraphrase that strong word of the prophet's, than pure mercy, but it
will be done nevertheless. The tears over Jerusalem that witnessed
Christ's sorrow did not blind the eyes like a flame of fire, nor stay
the outstretched hand of the Judge, when the time of her final fall
came. The longer the delay, the worse the ruin. The more protracted
the respite and the fuller it has been of entreaties to return, the
more terrible the punishment. 'Behold, therefore, the goodness and
severity of God: towards them which fell, severity; but toward thee,
goodness, if thou continue in His goodness: otherwise thou also shalt
be cut off.'




THE FIRST BOOK OF CHRONICLES


THE KING'S POTTERS

'There they dwelt with the king for his work.'--1 CHRON. iv. 23.


In these dry lists of names which abound in Chronicles, we now and
then come across points of interest, oases in the desert, which need
but to be pondered sympathetically to yield interesting suggestions.
Here for example, buried in a dreary genealogical table, is a little
touch which repays meditating on. Among the members of the tribe of
Judah were a hereditary caste of potters who lived in 'Netaim and
Gederah,' if we adhere to the Revised Version's text, or 'among
plantations and hedges' if we prefer the margin. But they are also
described as dwelling 'with the king.' That can only mean on the royal
estates, for the king himself resided in Jerusalem. He, however, held
large domains in the territory of Judah, on some of which these
ceramic artists were settled down and followed their calling. They
were kept on the royal estates and kept in comfort, not needing to
till, but fed and cared for, that they might be free to mould, out of
common clay, forms of beauty and 'vessels meet for the master's use.'
Surely we may read into the brief statement of the text a meaning of
which the writer of it never dreamt, and see in the description of
these forgotten artisans, a symbol of our Christian relations to our
Lord and of our life's work.

I. We, too, dwell with the King.

The Davidic king was in Jerusalem, and the potters were 'among
plantations and hedges,' yet in a real sense they 'dwelt with the
king,' though some of them might never have seen his face or trod the
streets of the sacred city. Perhaps now and then he came to visit them
on his outlying domains, but they were always parts of his household.
And have we, Christ's servants, not His gracious parting word: 'I am
with you always'? True, we are not beside Him in the great city, but
He is beside us in His outlying domains, and we may be with Him in His
glory, if while we still outwardly live among the 'plantations and
hedges' of this life, we dwell in spirit, by faith and aspiration,
with our risen and ascended Lord. If we so 'dwell with the King,' He
will dwell with us, and fill our humble abode with the radiance of His
presence, 'making that place of His feet glorious.' That He should be
with us is supreme condescension, that we should be with Him is the
perfection of exaltation. How low He stoops, how high we can rise! The
vigour of our Christian life largely depends on our keeping vivid the
consciousness of our communion with Jesus and the sense of His real
presence with us. How life's burdens would be lightened if we faced
them all in the strength of the felt nearness of our Lord! How
impossible it would be that we should ever feel the dreary sense of
solitude, if we felt that unseen, but most real, Presence wrapping us
round! It is only when our faith in it has fallen asleep that any
earthly good allures, or any earthly evil frightens us. To be sure, in
our thrilling consciousness, that we dwell with Jesus is an
impenetrable cuirass that blunts the points of all arrows and keeps
the breast that wears it unwounded in the fray. The world has no
voices which can make themselves heard above that low sovereign
whisper: 'I am with you always, even to the end of the world'--and
after the end has come, then we shall be with Him.

But we find in this notice a hint that leads us in yet another
direction. They 'dwelt with the king' in the sense that they were
housed and cared for on his lands. And in like manner, the true
conception of the Christian life is that each of us is 'a sojourner
with Thee,' set down on Christ's domains, and looked after by Him in
regard to provision for outward wants. We have nothing in property,
but all is His and held by His gift and to be used for Him. The slave
owns nothing. The patch of ground which he cultivates for his food and
what grows on it, are his master's. These workmen were not slaves, but
they were not owners either. And we hold nothing as our own, if we are
true to the terms on which it is given us to hold.

So if we rightly appreciate our position as dwelling on the King's
lands, our delusion of possession will vanish, and we shall feel more
keenly the pressure of responsibility while we feel less keenly the
grip of anxiety. We are for the time being entrusted with a tiny piece
of the royal estates. Let us not strut about as if we were owners, nor
be for ever afraid that we shall not have enough for our needs. One
sometimes comes on a model village close to the gates of some ducal
palace, and notes how the lordly owner's honour prompts its being kept
up to a high standard of comfort and beauty. We may be sure that the
potters were well lodged and looked after, and that care for their
personal wants was shifted from their shoulders to the king's. So
should ours be. He will not leave His servants to starve. They should
not dishonour Him and disturb themselves by worries and cares that
would be reasonable only if they had no Provider. He has said, 'All
things are given to Me of My Father,' and He gives us all that God has
given Him.

II. We dwell with the King for His work.

The king's potters had not to till the land nor do any work but to
mould clay into vessels for use and beauty. For that purpose they had
their huts and bits of ground assigned them. So with us, Christ has a
purpose in His provision for us. We are set down on His domains, and
we enjoy His presence and providing in order that, set free from
carking cares and low ends, we may, with free and joyous hearts, yield
ourselves to His joyful service. The law of our life should be that we
please not ourselves, nor consult our own will in choosing our tasks,
nor seek our own profit or gratification in doing them, but ever ask
of Him: 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?' and when the answer
comes, as come it will to all who ask with real desire to learn and
with real inclination to do His will, that we 'make haste and delay
not, but make haste to keep His commandments.' The spirit which should
animate our active lives is plainly enough taught us in that little
word, they 'dwelt with the king for his work.'

Nor are we to forget that, in a very profound sense, dwelling with the
King must go before doing His work. Unless we are living continually
under the operation of the stimulus of communion with Jesus, we shall
have neither quickness of ear to know what He wishes us to do, nor any
resolute concentration of ourselves on our Christ-appointed tasks. The
spring of all noble living is communion with noble ideals, and
fellowship with Jesus sets men agoing, as nothing else will, in
practical lives of obedience to Jesus. Time given to silent, retired
meditation on that sweet, sacred bond that knits the believing soul to
the redeeming Lord is not lost with reference to active work for
Jesus. The meditative and the practical life are not antagonistic, but
complementary, Mary and Martha are sisters, though sometimes they
differ, and foolish people try to set them against each other.

But we must beware of a common misconception of what the King's work
is. The royal potters did not make only things of beauty, but very
common vessels designed for common and ignoble uses. There were
vessels of dishonour dried in their kilns as well as vessels 'meet for
the master's use.' There is a usual and lamentable narrowing of the
term 'Christian work,' to certain conventional forms of service, which
has done and is doing an immense amount of harm. The King's work is
far wider in scope than teaching in Sunday-schools, or visiting the
sick, or any similar acts that are usually labelled with the name. It
covers all the common duties of life. A shallow religion tickets some
selected items with the name; a robuster, truer conception extends the
designation to everything. It is not only when we are definitely
trying to bring others into touch with Jesus that we are doing Him
service, but we may be equally serving Him in everything. The
difference between the king's work and the poor potters' own lay not
so much in the nature as in the motive of it, and whatever we do for
Christ's sake and with a view to His will is work that He owns, while
a regard to self in our motive or in our end decisively strikes any
service tainted by it out of the category.

We are to hallow all our deeds by drawing the motive for them from the
King and by laying the fruits of them at His feet. Thus, and only
thus, will the most 'secular' actions be sanctified and the narrowest
life be widened to contain a present Christ.

There are subsidiary motives which may legitimately blend with the
supreme one. The potters would be stimulated to work hard and with
their utmost skill when they thought of how well they were paid in
house and store for their work. We have ample reasons for dedicating
our whole selves to Jesus when we think of His gift of Himself to us,
of His wages beforehand, of His joyful presence with His eye ever on
us, marking our purity of motive and our diligence.

There is a final thought that may well stimulate us to put all our
skill and effort into our work. The potters' work went to Jerusalem.
It was for the king. What can be too good for him? He will see it,
therefore let us put our best into it. And we shall see it too, when
we too enter 'the city of the great King.' Jars that perhaps were
wrought by these very workmen of whom we have been speaking turn up
to-day in the excavations in Palestine. So much has perished and they
remain, speaking symbols of the solemn truth that nothing human ever
dies. Our 'works do follow us.' Let us so live that these may be
'found unto praise and honour and glory' at the appearing of 'the
King.'



DAVID'S CHORISTERS

'They stood in their office, according to their order.'--1 CHRON. vi.
32 (R.V. margin).


This brief note is buried in the catalogue of the singers appointed by
David for 'the service of song in the house of the Lord.' The waves of
their choral praise have long ages since ceased to eddy round the
'tabernacle of the tent of meeting,' and all that is left of their
melodious companies is a dry list of names, in spite of which the dead
owners of them are nameless. But the chronicler's description of them
may carry some lessons for us, for is not the Church of Christ a
choir, chosen to 'shew forth the praises of Him who has called us out
of darkness into His marvellous light'? We take a permissible liberty
with this fragment, when we use it to point lessons that may help that
great band of choristers who are charged with the office of making the
name of Jesus ring through the world. Now, in making such a use of the
text, we may linger on each important word in it and find each
fruitful in suggestions which we shall be the better for expanding in
our own meditations.

We pause on the first word, which is rendered in the Authorised and
Revised Versions 'waited,' and in the margin of the latter 'stood.'
The former rendering brings into prominence the mental attitude with
which the singers held themselves ready to take their turns in the
service, the latter points rather to their bodily attitude as they
fulfilled their office. We get a picture of the ranked files gathered
round their three leaders, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan. These three names
are familiar to us from the Psalter, but how all the ranks behind them
have fallen dim to us, and how their song has floated into inaudible
distance! They 'stood,' a melodious multitude, girt and attent on
their song, or waiting their turn to fill the else silent air with the
high praises of Jehovah, and glad when it came to their turn to open
their lips in full-throated melody.

Now may we not catch the spirit of that long vanished chorus, and find
in the two possible renderings of this word a twofold example, the
faithful following of which would put new vigour into our service? We
are called to a loftier office, and have heavenly harmonies entrusted
to us to be made vocal by our lips, compared with which theirs were
poor. 'They waited on' their office, and shall not we, in a higher
fashion, wait on our ministry, and suffer no inferior claims to block
our way or hamper our preparedness to discharge it? To let ourselves
be entangled with 'the affairs of this life,' or to 'drowse in idle
cell,' sleepily letting summonses that should wake us to work sound
unheeded and almost unheard, is flagrant despite done to our high
vocation as Christians. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' but
not if in their waiting their eyes are straying everywhere but to
their Master's pointing hand or directing eye. The world is full of
voices calling Christ's folk to help; but what a host of so-called
Christians fail to hear these piteous and despairing cries, because
the noise of their own whims, fancies, and self-centred desires keeps
buzzing in their ears. A constant accompaniment of deafness is
constant noises in the head; and the Christians who are hardest of
hearing when Christ calls are generally afflicted with noises which
are probably the cause, and not merely an accompaniment, of their
deafness. For indeed it demands no little detachment of spirit from
self and sense, from the world and its clamant suitors, if a Christian
soul is to be ready to mark the first signal of the great Conductor's
baton, and to answer the lightest whisper, intrusting it with a task
for Him, with its self-consecrating 'Here am I. Send me.'

It used to be said that they who watched for providences never wanted
providences to watch for; it is equally true that they who are on the
watch for opportunities for service never fail to find them, and that
ears pricked to 'hear what God the Lord shall speak,' summoning to
work for Him, will not listen in vain. Paul saw in a vision 'a
_man_ of Macedonia' begging for his help, and 'straightway' he
concluded that '_God_ had called' him to preach in Europe. Happy
are these Christian workers who hear God's voice speaking through
men's needs, and recognise a divine imperative in human cries!

May we not see in the attitude of David's choristers as they sang,
hints for our own discharge of the tasks of our Christian service?
There was a curse of old on him who did the work of the Lord
'negligently,' and its weight falls still on workers and work. For who
can measure the harm done to the Christian life of the negligent
worker, and who can expect any blessing to come either to him or to
others from such half-hearted seeming service? The devil's kingdom is
not to be cast down nor Christ's to be builded up by workers who put
less than their whole selves, the entire weight of their bodies, into
their toil. A pavior on the street brings down his rammer at every
stroke with an accompanying exclamation expressing effort, and there
is no place in Christ's service for dainty people who will not sweat
at their task, and are in mortal fear of over-work. Strenuousness, the
gathering together of all our powers, are implied in the attitude of
Heman and his band as they 'stood' in their office. Idle revellers
might loll on their rose-strewn couches as they 'sing idle songs to
the sound of the viol and devise for themselves instruments of music,
like David,' but the austerer choir of the Temple despised ease, and
stood ready for service and in the best bodily posture for song.

The second important word of the text brings other thoughts no less
valuable and rich in practical counsel. The singers in the Temple
stood in their 'office,' which was song. Their special work was
praise. And that is the highest task of the Church. As a matter of
fact, every period of quickened earnestness in the Church's life has
been a period marked by a great outburst of Christian song. All
intense emotion seeks expression in poetry, and music is the natural
speech of a vivid faith. Luther chanted the Marseillaise of the
Reformation, 'A safe stronghold our God is still,' and many another
sweet strain blended strangely with the fiery and sometimes savage
words from his lips. The Scottish Reformation, grim in some of its
features as it was, had yet its 'Gude and Godly Ballads.' At the birth
of Methodism, as round the cradle at Bethlehem, hovered as it were
angel voices singing, 'Glory to God in the highest.' A flock of
singing birds let loose attends every revival of Christian life.

The Church's praise is the noblest expression of the Church's life.
Its hymns go deeper than its creeds, touch hearts more to the quick,
minister to the faith which they enshrine, and often draw others to
see the preciousness of the Christ whom they celebrate. How little we
should have known of Old Testament religion, notwithstanding law and
prophets, if the Psalter had perished!

And it is true, in a very deep sense, that we shall do more for Christ
and men by voicing our own deep thankfulness for His great gifts and
speaking simply our valuation of, and our thankfulness for, what we
draw from Him than by any other form of so-called Christian work. We
can offend none by saying: 'We have found the Messias,' and are
adoringly glad that we have. The most effectual way of moving other
souls to participate in our joy is to let our joy speak. 'If you wish
me to weep,' your own tears must not be held back, and if you wish
others to know the preciousness of Christ, you must ring out His name
with fervour of emotion and the triumphant confidence. We are the
'secretaries of God's praise,' as George Herbert has it, for we have
possession of His greatest gift, and have learned to know Him in
loftier fashion than Heman's choristers dreamed of, having seen 'the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,' and tasted the sweetness of
redeeming love. The Apocalyptic seer sets forth a great truth when he
tells us that he first heard a new song from the lips of the
representatives of the Church, who could sing, 'Thou wast slain and
didst redeem us to God with Thy blood,' and then heard their adoration
echoed from 'many angels round about the throne,' and finally heard
the song reverberated from every created thing in heaven and earth, in
the sea and all deep places. A praising Church has experiences of its
own which angels cannot share, and it sets in motion the great sea of
praise whose surges break in music and roll from every side of the
universe in melodious thunder to the great white throne. Without our
song even angel voices would lack somewhat.

  'God said, "A praise is in Mine ear;
  There is no doubt in it, no fear:
  Clearer loves sound other ways:
  I miss My little human praise."'

The song of the redeemed has in it a minor strain that gives a
sweetness far more poignant than belongs to those who cannot say: 'Out
of the depths I cried unto Thee.' 'The sweetest songs are those which
tell of saddest thought,' and recount experiences of conquered sin and
life springing from death.

But it is also true that no kind of Christian service will be
effectual, if it lacks the element of grateful praise as its motive
and mainspring. Perhaps there would be fewer complaints of toiling all
night and wearily hauling in empty nets, if the nets were oftener let
down not only 'at Thy word' but with glad remembrance of the
fishermen's debt to Jesus, and in the spirit of praise. When all our
work is a sacrifice of praise, it is pleasing to God and profitable to
ourselves and to others. If we would oftener bethink ourselves, and
herald every deed with a silent dedication of it and of ourselves to
Him who died for us, we should less often have to complain that we
have sowed much and brought back little. A pinch of incense cast into
the common domestic fire makes its flame sacrificial and fragrant.

The last important word of the text is also fertile in hints for us.
The singers stood in their office 'according to their order.' That
last expression may either refer to rotation of service or to
distribution of parts in the chorus. They did not sing in unison,
grand as the effect of such a song from a multitude sometimes is, but
they had their several parts. The harmonious complexity of a great
chorus is the ideal for the Church. Paul puts the same thought in a
sterner metaphor when he tells the Colossian Christians that he joys
'beholding your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ,'
where he is evidently thinking of the Roman legion with its rigid
discipline and its solid, irresistible, ranked weight. Division of
function and consequent concordant action of different parts is the
lesson taught by both metaphors, and by the many modern examples of
the immense results gained in machinery that almost simulates vital
action, and by organisations for great purposes in which men combine.
The Church should be the highest example of such combination, for it
is the shrine of the noblest life, even the life of its indwelling
Lord. Every member of it should have and know his place. Every
Christian should know his part in the great chorus, for he has a part,
even if it is only that of tinkling the triangle in the orchestra or
beating a drum. That division of function and concordance of action
apply to all forms of the Church's action, and are enforced most
chiefly by the great Apostolic metaphor of the body and its members.
Paul did not delight in 'uniformity.' Inferiors calling themselves his
successors have often aimed at enforcing it, but nature has been too
strong for them, and the hedge will grow its own way in spite of
pedants' shears. 'If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing?'
The monotony of a church in which uniformity was the ideal would be
intolerable. The chorus has its parts, and the soprano cannot say to
the bass, 'I have no need of you,' nor the bass to the tenor, 'I have
no need of thee.'

So let us see that we find our own place, and see that we fill it,
singing our own part lustily, and not being either confused or made
dumb because another has other notes to sing than are written on our
score. Let us recognise unity made more melodious by diversity, the
importance of the humblest, and 'having gifts differing according to
the grace given unto us let us wait on our ministry,' and stand in our
office according to our order.



DRILL AND ENTHUSIASM

'[Men that] could keep rank, they were not of double heart.'--1 CHRON.
xii. 33.


These words come from the muster-roll of the hastily raised army that
brought David up to Hebron and made him King. The catalogue abounds in
brief characterisations of the qualities of each tribe's contingent.
For example, Issachar had 'understanding of the times.' Our text is
spoken of the warriors of Zebulon, who had left their hills and their
flocks in the far north, and poured down from their seats by the blue
waters of Tiberias to gather round their king. They were not only like
their brethren expert in war and fully equipped, but they had some
measure of discipline too, a rare thing in the days when there were no
standing armies. They 'could keep rank,' could march together, had
been drilled to some unanimity of step and action, could work and
fight together, were an army, not a crowd, and not only so, but also
'they were not of double heart.' Each man, and the whole body, had a
brave single resolve; they had one spirit animating the whole, and
that was to make David king, an enthusiastic loyalty which made them
brave, and a discipline which kept the courage from running to waste.

I take, then, this text as bringing before us two very important
characteristics which ought to be found in every Christian church, and
without which no real prosperity and growth is possible. These two may
be put very briefly: organisation and enthusiastic devotion. These are
both important, but in very different degrees. Organisation without
valour is in a worse plight than valour without organisation. The one
is fundamental, the other secondary. The one is the true cause, so far
as men are concerned, of victory, the other is but the instrument by
which the cause works. There have been many victories won by
undisciplined valour, but disciplined cowardice and apathy come to no
good.

These two have been separated and made antagonistic, and churches are
to be found which glory in the one, and others in the other. Some have
gone in for order, and are like butterflies in a cabinet all ticketed
and displayed in place, but a pin is run through their bodies and they
are dead; and others have prided themselves on unfettered freedom, and
been not an army, but a mob. The true relation, of course, is that
life should shape and inform organisation, and organisation should
preserve, manifest and obey life. There must be body to hold spirit,
there must be spirit to keep body from rotting.

I. Organisation.

This is not the strong point of Nonconformist churches. We pride
ourselves on our individualism, and that is all very well. We believe
in direct access of each soul to Christ, that men must come to Him one
by one, that religion is purely a personal matter, and the firmness
with which we hold this tends to make us weak in combined action. It
cannot be truthfully denied that both in the relations of our churches
to one another, and in the internal organisation of these, we are and
have been too loosely compacted, and have forgotten that two is more
than one _plus_ one, so that we are only helping to redress the
balance a little when we insist upon the importance of organisation in
our churches.

And first of all--remember the principles in subordination to which
our organisation must be framed.

What are we united by? Common love and faith to Christ, or rather
Christ Himself. 'One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are
brethren.' So there must be nothing in our organisation which is
inconsistent with Christ's supreme place among us, and with our
individual obedience to Him. There are to be no 'lords over God's
heritage' in the Church of Christ. There are churches in which the
temptation to be such affects the official chiefly, and there are
others, with a different polity, in which it is chiefly a Diotrephes,
who loves to have pre-eminence. Character, zeal, social station, even
wealth will always confer a certain influence, and their possessors
will be tempted to set up their own will or opinions as dominant in
the Church. Such men are sinning against the very bond of Christian
union. Organisation which is bought by investing one man with
authority, is too dearly purchased at the cost of individual
development on the individual's own lines. A row of clipped yew-trees
is not an inspiring sight.

And yet again what are we organised for? Not merely for our own growth
or spiritual advantage, but also, and more especially, for spreading
faith in Christ and advancing His glory. All our organisation, then,
is but an arrangement for doing our work, and if it hinders that, it
is cumbrous and must be cut away or modified, at all hazards.
Ecclesiastical martinets are still to be found, to whom drill is
all-important, and who see no use in irregular valour, but they are a
diminishing number, and they may be recommended to ponder the old wise
saying: 'Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increase is by
the strength of the ox.' If the one aim is a 'clean crib' the best way
to secure that is to keep it empty; but if a harvest is the aim, there
must be cultivation, and one must accept the consequences of having a
strong team to plough. The end of drill is fighting. The parade-ground
and its exercising is in order that a corps may be hurled against the
enemy, or may stand unmoved, like a solid breakwater against a charge
which it flings off in idle spray, and the end of the Church's
organisation is that it may move _en masse_, without waste,
against the enemy.

But a further guiding principle to shape Christian organisation is
that of the Church as the body of Christ. That requires that there
shall be work for every member. Christ has endowed His members with
varying gifts, powers, opportunities, and has set them in diverse
circumstances, that each may give his own contribution to the general
stock of work. Our theory is that each man has his own proper gift
from God, 'one after this manner, and another after that.' But what is
our practice? Take any congregation of Christian people in any of our
churches, and especially in the Free Churches of which I know most,
and is there anything like this wide diversity of forms of service, to
which each contributes? A handful of people do all the work, and the
remainder are idlers. The same small section are in evidence always,
and the rest are nowhere. There are but a few bits of coloured glass
in a kaleidoscope, they take different patterns when the tube is
turned, but they are always the same bits of glass.

There needs to be a far greater variety of forms of work for our
people and more workers in the field. There are too few wheels for the
quantity of water in the river, and, partly for that reason, the
amount of water that runs waste over the sluice is deplorable. There
is a danger in having too many spindles for the power available, but
the danger in modern church organisation is exactly the other way.

Every one should have his own work. In all living creatures,
differentiation of organs increases as the creature rises in the scale
of being, from the simple sac which does everything up to the human
body with a distinct function for every finger. It should not be
possible for a lazy Christian to plead truly as his vindication that
'no man had hired' him. It should be the Church's business to find
work for the unemployed.

The example in our text should enforce the necessity of united work.
David's levies could keep rank. They did not let each man go at his
own rate and by his own road, but kept together, shoulder to shoulder,
with equal stride. They were content to co-operate and be each a part
of a greater whole. That keeping rank is a difficult problem in all
societies, where individual judgments, weaknesses, wills, and
crotchets are at work, but it is apt to be especially difficult in
Christian communities, where one may expect to find individual
characteristics intensified, a luxuriant growth of personal
peculiarities, an intense grip of partial aspects of the great truths
and a corresponding dislike of other aspects of these, and of those
whose favourite truths they are. One would do nothing to clip that
growth, but still Christians who have not learned to subordinate
themselves in and for united work are of little use to God or man.
What does such united work require? Mainly the bridling of self, the
curbing of one's own will, not insisting on forcing one's opinions on
one's brother, not being careful of having one's place secured and
one's honour asserted. Without such virtues no association of man
could survive for a year. If the world managed its societies as the
Church manages its unity, they would collapse quickly. Indeed it is a
strong presumption in favour of Christianity that the Churches have
not killed it long ago. Vanity, pride, self-importance, masterfulness,
pettishness get full play among us. Diotrephes has many descendants
to-day. A cotton mill, even if it were a co-operative one, could not
work long without going into bankruptcy, if there were no more power
of working together than some Christian congregations have. A watch
would be a poor timekeeper, where every wheel tried to set the pace
and be a mainspring, or sulked because the hands moved on the face in
sight of all men, while it had to move round and fit into its brother
wheel in the dark.

Subordination is required as well as co-operation. For if there be
harmonious co-operation in varying offices, there must be degrees and
ranks. The differences of power and gift make degrees, and in every
society there will be leaders. Of course there is no commanding
authority in the Churches. Its leaders are brethren, whose most
imperative highest word is, 'We beseech you.'

Of course, too, these varieties and degrees do not mean real
superiority or inferiority in the eye of God. From the highest point
of view nothing is great or small, there is no higher or lower. The
only measure is quality, the only gauge is motive. 'Small service is
true service while it lasts.' He that receiveth a prophet in the name
of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward. But yet there are, so
far as our work here is concerned, degrees and orders, and we need a
hearty and ungrudging recognition of superiority wherever we find it.
If the 'brother of high degree' needs to be exhorted to beware of
arrogance and imposing his own will on his fellows, the 'brother of
low degree' needs not less to be exhorted to beware of letting envy
and self-will hiss and snarl in his heart at those who are in higher
positions than himself. If the chief of all needs to be reminded that
in Christ's household preeminence means service, the lower no less
needs to be reminded that in Christ's household service means
pre-eminence.

So much, then, for organisation. It is perfectly reconcilable with
democracy that is not mob-ocracy. In fact, democracy needs it most. If
I may venture to speak to the members of the Free Churches, with which
I am best acquainted, I would take upon myself to say that there is
nothing which they need more than that they should show their polity
to be capable of reconciling the freest development of the individual
with the most efficient organisation of the community. The object is
work for Christ, the bond of their fellowship is brotherly union with
Christ. Many eyes are on them to-day, and the task is in their hands
of showing that they can keep rank. The most perfect discipline in war
in old times was found, not amongst the subjects of Eastern despots
who were not free enough to learn to submit, but amongst the republics
of Greece, where men were all on a level in the city, and fell into
their places in the camp, because they loved liberty enough to know
the worth of discipline, and so the slaves of Xerxes were scattered
before the resistless onset of the phalanx of the free. The terrible
legion which moved 'altogether when it moved at all,' and could be
launched at the foe like one javelin of steel, had for its units free
men and equals. There needs freedom for organisation. There needs
organisation for freedom. Let us learn the lesson. 'God is not the
author of confusion, but of order, in all churches of saints.'

II. Enthusiastic devotion.

These men came to bring David up to Hebron with one single purpose in
their hearts. They had no sidelong glances to their own self-interest,
they had no wavering loyalty, they had no trembling fears, so we may
take their spirit as expressing generally the deepest requirements for
prosperity in a church.

The foundation of all prosperity is a passion of personal attachment
to Christ our King.

Christ is Christianity objective. Love to Christ is Christianity
subjective. The whole stress of Christian character is laid on this.
It is the mother of all grace and goodness, and in regard to the work
of the Church, it is the ardour of a soul full of love to Jesus that
conquers. The one thing in which all who have done much for Him have
been alike in that single-hearted devotion.

But such love is the child of faith. It rests upon belief of truth,
and is the response of man to God. Dwelling in the truth is the means
of it. How our modern Christianity fails in this strong personal bond
of familiar love!

Consider its effect on the individual.

It will give tenacity of purpose, will brace to strenuous effort, will
subdue self, self-regard, self-importance, will subdue fear. It is the
true anaesthetic. The soldier is unconscious of his wounds, while the
glow of devotion is in his heart and the shout of the battle in his
ears. It will give fertility of resource and patience.

Consider its effect on the community.

It will remove all difficulties in the way of discipline arising from
vanity and self which can be subdued by no other means. That flame
fuses all into one glowing mass like a stream that pours from the
blast furnace. What a power a church would be which had this! It is
itself victory. The men that go into battle with that one firm
resolve, and care for nothing else, are sure to win. Think what one
man can do who has resolved to sell his life dear!

Consider the worthlessness of discipline without this.

It is a poor mechanical accuracy. How easy to have too much machinery!
How the French Revolution men swept the Austrian martinets before
them! David was half-smothered in Saul's armour. On the other hand,
this fervid flame needs control to make it last and work. Spirit and
law are not incompatible. Valour may be disciplined, and the
combination is irresistible.

And so here, till we exchange the close array of the battlefield for
the open ranks of the festal procession on the Coronation day, and lay
aside the helmet for the crown, the sword for the palm, the
breastplate for the robe of peace, and stand for ever before the
throne, in the peaceful ranks of 'the solemn troops and sweet
societies' of the unwavering armies of the heavens who serve Him with
a perfect heart, and burn unconsumed with the ardours of an immortal
and ever brightening love, let us see to it that we too are 'men that
can keep rank and are not of double heart.'



DAVID'S PROHIBITED DESIRE AND PERMITTED SERVICE

'Then he called for Solomon his son, and charged him to build an house
for the Lord God of Israel. 7. And David said to Solomon, My son, as
for me, it was in my mind to build an house unto the name of the Lord
my God: 8. But the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Thou hast shed
blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: thou shalt not build an
house unto My name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth
in My sight. 9. Behold, a son shall be born to thee, who shall be a
man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round
about: for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and
quietness unto Israel in his days. 10. He shall build an house for My
name; and he shall be My son, and I will be his Father; and I will
establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel for ever. 11. Now, my
son, the Lord be with thee; and prosper thou, and build the house of
the Lord thy God as He hath said of thee. 12. Only the Lord give thee
wisdom and understanding, and give thee charge concerning Israel, that
thou mayest keep the law of the Lord thy God, 13. Then shalt thou
prosper, if thou takest heed to fulfil the statutes and judgments
which the Lord charged Moses with concerning Israel: be strong, and of
good courage; dread not, nor be dismayed. 14. Now, behold, in my
trouble I have prepared for the house of the Lord an hundred thousand
talents of gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver; and of
brass and iron without weight; for it is in abundance: timber also and
stone have I prepared and thou mayest add thereto. 15. Moreover, there
are workmen with thee in abundance, hewers and workers of stone and
timber, and all manner of cunning men for every manner of work. 16. Of
the gold, the silver, and the brass, and the iron, there is no number.
Arise, therefore, and be doing, and the Lord be with thee.'--1 CHRON.
xxii. 6-16.


This passage falls into three parts. In verses 6-10 the old king tells
of the divine prohibition which checked his longing to build the
Temple; in verses 11-13 he encourages his more fortunate successor,
and points him to the only source of strength for his happy task; in
verses 14-16 he enumerates the preparations which he had made, the
possession of which laid stringent obligations on Solomon.

I. There is a tone of wistfulness in David's voice as he tells how his
heart's desire had been prohibited. The account is substantially the
same as we have in 2 Samuel vii. 4-16, but it adds as the reason for
the prohibition David's warlike career. We may note the earnestness
and the motive of the king's desire to build the Temple. 'It was in my
heart'; that implies earnest longing and fixed purpose. He had brooded
over the wish till it filled his mind, and was consolidated into a
settled resolve. Many a musing, solitary moment had fed the fire
before it burned its way out in the words addressed to Nathan. So
should our whole souls be occupied with our parts in God's service,
and so should our desires be strongly set towards carrying out what in
solitary meditation we have felt borne in on us as our duty.

The moving spring of David's design is beautifully suggested in the
simple words 'unto the name of the Lord my God.' David's religion was
eminently a personal bond between him and God. We may almost say that
he was the first to give utterance to that cry of the devout heart,
'My God,' and to translate the generalities of the name 'the God of
Israel' into the individual appropriation expressed by the former
designation. It occurs in many of the psalms attributed to him, and
may fairly be regarded as a characteristic of his ardent and
individualising devotion. The sense of a close, personal relation to
God naturally prompted the impulse to build His house. We must claim
our own portion in the universal blessings shrined in His name before
we are moved to deeds of loving sacrifice. We must feel that Christ
'loved me, and gave Himself for me,' before we are melted into
answering surrender.

The reason for the frustrating of David's desire, as here given, is
his career as a warrior king. Not only was it incongruous that hands
which had been reddened with blood should rear the Temple, but the
fact that his reign had been largely occupied with fighting for the
existence of the kingdom showed that the time for engaging in such a
work, which would task the national resources, had not yet come. We
may draw two valuable lessons from the prohibition. One is that it
indicates the true character of the kingdom of God as a kingdom of
peace, which is to be furthered, not by force, but in peace and
gentleness. The other is that various epochs and men have different
kinds of duties in relation to Christ's cause, some being called on to
fight, and others to build, and that the one set of tasks may be as
sacred and as necessary for the rearing of the Temple as the other.
Militant epochs are not usually times for building. The men who have
to do destructive work are not usually blessed with the opportunity or
the power to carry out constructive work. Controversy has its sphere,
but it is mostly preliminary to true 'edification.' In the broadest
view all the activity of the Church on earth is militant, and we have
to wait for the coming of the true 'Prince of peace' to build up the
true Temple in the land of peace, whence all foes have been cast out
for ever. To serve God in God's way, and to give up our cherished
plans, is not easy; but David sets us an example of simple-hearted,
cheerful acquiescence in a Providence that thwarted darling designs.
There is often much self-will in what looks like enthusiastic
perseverance in some form of service.

II. The charge to Solomon breathes no envy of his privilege, but
earnest desire that he may be worthy of the honour which falls to him.
Petitions and exhortations are closely blended in it, and, though the
work which Solomon is called to do is of an external sort, the
qualifications laid down for it are spiritual and moral. However
'secular' our work in connection with God's service may be, it will
not be rightly done unless the highest motives are brought to bear on
it, and it is performed as worship. The basis of all successful work
is God's presence with us, so David prays for that to be granted to
Solomon as the beginning of all his fitness for his task.

Next, David recalls to his son God's promise concerning him, that it
may hearten him to undertake and to carry on the great work. A
conviction that our service is appointed for us by God is essential
for vigorous and successful Christian work. We must have, in some way
or other, heard Him 'speak concerning us,' if we are to fling
ourselves with energy into it.

The petitions in verse 12 seem to stretch beyond the necessities of
the case, in so far as building the Temple is concerned. Wisdom and
understanding, and a clear consciousness of the duty enjoined on him
by God in reference to Israel, were surely more than that work
required. But the qualifications for God's service, however the manner
of service may be concerned with 'the outward business of the house of
God,' are always these which David asked for Solomon. The highest
result of true 'wisdom and understanding' given by God is keeping
God's law; and keeping it is the one condition on which we shall
obtain and retain that presence of God with us which David prayed for
Solomon, and without which they labour in vain that build. A life
conformed to God's will is the absolutely indispensable condition of
all prosperity in direct Christian effort. The noblest exercise of our
wisdom and understanding is to obey every word that we hear proceeding
out of the mouth of God.

III. There is something very pathetic in the old king's enumeration of
the treasures which, by the economies of a lifetime, he had amassed.
The amount stated is enormous, and probably there is some clerical
error in the numbers specified. Be that as it may, the sum was very
large. It represented many an act of self-denial, many a resolute
shearing off of superfluities and what might seem necessaries. It was
the visible token of long years of fixed attention to one object. And
that devotion was all the more noble because the result of it was
never to be seen by the man who exercised it.

Therein David is but a very conspicuous example of a law which runs
through all our work for God. None of us are privileged to perform
completed tasks. 'One soweth and another reapeth.' We have to be
content to do partial work, and to leave its completion to our
successors. There is but one Builder of whom it can be said that His
hands 'have laid the foundation of this house; His hands shall also
finish it.' He who is the 'Alpha and Omega,' and He alone, begins and
completes the work in which He has neither sharers nor predecessors
nor successors. The rest of us do our little bit of the great work
which lasts on through the ages, and, having inherited unfinished
tasks, transmit them to those who come after us. It is privilege
enough for any Christian to lay foundations on which coming days may
build. We are like the workers on some great cathedral, which was
begun long before the present generation of masons were born, and will
not be finished until long after they have dropped trowel and mallet
from their dead hands. Enough for us if we can lay one course of
stones in that great structure. The greater our aims, the less share
has each man in their attainment. But the division of labour is the
multiplication of joy, and all who have shared in the toil will be
united in the final triumph. It would be poor work that was capable of
being begun and perfected in a lifetime. The labourer that dug and
levelled the track and the engineer that drives the locomotive over it
are partners. Solomon could not have built the Temple unless, through
long, apparently idle, years, David had been patiently gathering
together the wealth which he bequeathed. So, if our work is but
preparatory for that of those who come after, let us not think it of
slight importance, and let us be sure that all who have had any
portion in the toil shall share in the victory, that 'he that soweth
and he that reapeth may rejoice together.'



DAVID'S CHARGE TO SOLOMON

'And David assembled all the princes of Israel, the princes of the
tribes, and the captains of the companies that ministered to the king
by course, and the captains over the thousands, and captains over the
hundreds, and the stewards over all the substance and possession of
the king, and of his sons, with the officers, and with the mighty men,
and with all the valiant men, unto Jerusalem. 2. Then David the king
stood up upon his feet, and said, Hear me, my brethren, and my people:
As for me, I had in mine heart to build an house of rest for the ark
of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God, and had
made ready for the building: 3. But God said unto me, Thou shalt not
build an house for My name, because thou hast been a man of war, and
hast shed blood. 4. Howbeit the Lord God of Israel chose me before all
the house of my father to be king over Israel for ever: for He hath
chosen Judah to be the ruler; and of the house of Judah, the house of
my father; and among the sons of my father He liked me to make me king
over all Israel: 5. And of all my sons, (for the Lord hath given me
many sons), he hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of
the kingdom of the Lord over Israel. 6. And He said unto me, Solomon
thy son, he shall build My house and My courts: for I have chosen him
to be My son, and I will be his father. 7. Moreover I will establish
his kingdom for ever, if he be constant to do My commandments and My
judgments, as at this day. 8. Now therefore in the sight of all Israel
the congregation of the Lord, and in the audience of our God, keep and
seek for all the commandments of the Lord your God: that ye may
possess this good land, and leave it for an inheritance for your
children after you for ever. 9. And thou, Solomon my son, know thou
the God of thy father, and serve Him with a perfect heart and with a
willing mind: for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all
the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek Him, He will be found
of thee; but if thou forsake Him, He will cast thee off for ever. 10.
Take heed now; for the Lord hath chosen thee to build an house for the
sanctuary: be strong, and do it.'--1 CHRON. xxviii. 1-10.


David had established an elaborate organisation of royal officials,
details of which occupy the preceding chapters and interrupt the
course of the narrative. The passage picks up again the thread dropped
at chapter xxiii. 1. The list of the members of the assembly called in
verse 1 is interesting as showing how he tried to amalgamate the old
with the new. The princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes,
represented the primitive tribal organisation, and they receive
precedence in virtue of the antiquity of their office. Then come
successively David's immediate attendants, the military officials, the
stewards of the royal estates, the 'officers' or eunuchs attached to
the palace, and the faithful 'mighty men' who had fought by the king's
side in the old days. It was an assembly of officials and soldiers
whose adherence to Solomon it was all-important to secure, especially
in regard to the project for building the Temple, which could not be
carried through without their active support. The passage comprises
only the beginning of the proceedings of this assembly of notables.
The end is told in the next chapter; namely, that the Temple-building
scheme was unanimously and enthusiastically adopted, and large
donations given for it, and that Solomon's succession was accepted,
and loyal submission offered by the assembly to him.

David's address to this gathering is directed to secure these two
points. He begins by recalling his own intention to build the Temple
and God's prohibition of it. The reason for that prohibition differs
from that alleged by Nathan, but there is no contradiction between the
two narratives, and the chronicler has already reported Nathan's words
(chap. xvii. 3, etc.), so that the motive which is ascribed to many of
the variations in this book, a priestly desire to exalt Temple and
ritual, cannot have been at work here. Why should there not have been
a divine communication to David as well as Nathan's message? That
hands reddened with blood, even though it had been shed in justifiable
war, were not fitted to build the Temple, was a thought so far in
advance of David's time, and flowing from so spiritual a conception of
God, that it may well have been breathed into David's spirit by a
divine voice. Sword in one hand and trowel in the other are
incongruous, notwithstanding Nehemiah's example. The Temple of the God
of peace cannot be built except by men of peace. That is true in the
widest and highest application. Jesus builds the true Temple.
Controversy and strife do not. And, on a lower level, the prohibition
is for ever valid. Men do not atone for a doubtful past by building
churches, founding colleges, endowing religious or charitable
institutions.

The speech next declares emphatically that the throne belongs to David
and his descendants by real 'divine right,' and that God's choice is
Solomon, who is to inherit both the promises and obligations of the
office, and, among the latter, that of building the Temple. The
unspoken inference is that loyalty to Solomon would be obedience to
Jehovah. The connection between the true heavenly King and His earthly
representative is strongly expressed in the remarkable phrase: 'He
hath chosen Solomon ... to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of
Jehovah,' which both consecrates and limits the rule of Solomon,
making him but the viceroy of the true king of Israel. When Israel's
kings remembered that, they flourished; when they forgot it, they
destroyed their kingdom and themselves. The principle is as true
to-day, and it applies to all forms of influence, authority, and
gifts. They are God's, and we are but stewards.

The address to the assembly ends with the exhortation to these leaders
to 'observe,' and not merely to observe, but also to 'seek out' God's
commandments, and so to secure to the nation, whom they could guide,
peaceful and prosperous days. It is not enough to do God's will as far
as we know it; we must ever be endeavouring after clearer, deeper
insight into it. Would that these words were written over the doors of
all Senate and Parliament houses! What a different England we should
see!

But Solomon was present as well as the notables, and it was well that,
in their hearing, he should be reminded of his duties. David had
previously in private taught him these, but this public 'charge'
before the chief men of the kingdom bound them more solemnly upon him,
and summoned a cloud of witnesses against him if he fell below the
high ideal. It is pitched on a lofty key of spiritual religion, for it
lays 'Know thou the God of thy fathers' as the foundation of
everything. That knowledge is no mere intellectual apprehension, but,
as always in Scripture, personal acquaintanceship with a Person, which
involves communion with Him and love towards Him. For us, too, it is
the seed of all strenuous discharge of our life's tasks, whether we
are rulers or nobodies, and it means a much deeper experience than
understanding or giving assent to a set of truths about God. We know
one another when we summer and winter with each other, and not unless
we love one another, and we know God on no other terms.

After such knowledge comes an outward life of service. Active
obedience is the expression of inward communion, love, and trust. The
spring that moves the hands on the dial is love, and, if the hands do
not move, there is something wrong with the spring. Morality is the
garment of religion; religion is the animating principle of morality.
Faith without works is dead, and works without faith are dead too.

But even when we 'know God' we have to make efforts to have our
service correspond with our knowledge, for we have wayward hearts and
obstinate wills, which need to be stimulated, sometimes to be coerced
and forcibly diverted from unworthy objects. Therefore the exhortation
to serve God 'with a perfect heart and with a willing mind' is always
needful and often hard. Entire surrender and glad obedience are the
Christian ideal, and continual effort to approximate to it will be
ours in the degree in which we 'know God.' There is no worse slavery
than that of the half-hearted Christian whose yoke is not padded with
love. Reluctant obedience is disobedience in God's sight.

David solemnly reminds Solomon of those 'pure eyes and perfect
judgment,' not to frighten, but to enforce the thought of the need for
whole-hearted and glad service, and of the worthlessness of external
acts of apparent worship which have not such behind them. What a deal
of seeming wheat would turn out to be chaff if that winnowing fan
which is in Christ's hand were applied to it! How small our biggest
heaps would become!

The solemn conditions of the continuance of God's favour and of the
fulfilment of His promises are next plainly stated. God responds to
our state of heart and mind. We determine His bearing to us. The
seeker finds. If we move away from Him, He moves away from us. That is
not, thank God! all the truth, or what would become of any of us? But
it is true, and in a very solemn sense God is to us what we make Him.
'With the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure; and with the perverse Thou
wilt show Thyself froward.'

The charge ends with recalling the high honour and office to which
Jehovah had designated Solomon, and with exhortations to 'take heed'
and to 'be strong, and do it.' It is well for a young man to begin
life with a high ideal of what he is called to be and do. But many of
us have that, and miserably fail to realise it, for want of these two
characteristics, which the sight of such an ideal ought to stamp on
us. If we are to fulfil God's purposes with us, and to be such tools
as He can use for building His true Temple, we must exercise
self-control and 'take heed to our ways,' and we must brace ourselves
against opposition and crush down our own timidity. It seems to be
commanding an impossibility to say to a weak creature like any one of
us, 'Be strong,' but the impossible becomes a possibility when the
exhortatio

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