UBRA~ OF CONGRESS. 
 
 elf 
 
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 UNITED STATES 07 AMERICA. 
 
STUDIES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT, 
 
 / BY 
 
 i 
 
 AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR AT ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 
 AUTHOR OF "THE STILL HOUR," ETC. 
 
 11 
 
 ( 
 
 
 BOSTON : 
 CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, 
 
 CONGREGATIONAL HOUSE, 
 
 BEACON STREET. 
 
 1879. 
 

 \ 
 
 Copyright, 1878, by 
 CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY 
 
 C. J. PETERS & SON, 
 
 73 Fedebal Street. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 These studies of the Old Testament were originally 
 published in one of our most widely-circulated religious 
 papers. So many persons have expressed a wish for 
 them in a more permanent form, that they are now 
 gathered into this volume. Slight changes have been 
 made, — a change in the order of topics, an occasional 
 enlargement or alteration of paragraphs, and a few 
 corrections. If the volume serves to illustrate, in any 
 degree, how ancient and neglected Scriptures may be 
 revived in the popular interest, and thus to show the 
 perpetuity of the Old Testament as a' living book for 
 all ages, the object of this republication will be ac-^ 
 complished. 
 
 Theological Seminary, Andovek, Mass. 
 Oct. 1, 1878. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 -I. 
 
 The Prophet of the Broken - Heart . 
 
 7 
 
 . n. 
 
 God works with Minorities who are work- 
 
 
 
 ing for Him 
 
 21 
 
 m. 
 
 A Model of Prater in Emergencies . 
 
 33 
 
 IV. 
 
 An Ancient Revival of Religion 
 
 43 
 
 ,v. 
 
 Christian Alliances with Wicked Men . 
 
 55 
 
 VI. 
 
 Honoring God's House 
 
 67 
 
 VII. 
 
 Presumption in the Worship of God 
 
 79 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Fidelity to the Religion of a Godly Ances- 
 
 
 
 try 
 
 89 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Lost Son of a Godly Father 
 
 100 
 
 X. 
 
 The Godly Son of an Ungodly Father . 
 
 111 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Prodigal Son of Godly Parents 
 
 124 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Twin Serpents . . • 
 
 137 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Avowed Enemies of Religion . . - . 
 
 147 
 
 XIV. 
 
 A Talk with Young People about Josiah 
 
 161 
 
 XV. 
 
 An Ancient Model of Youthful Temperance. 
 
 174 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Lost Bible • . 
 
 187 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Good Men who are not Churchmen . 
 
 201 
 
 XVHI. 
 
 Intertwining of God's Plans with the Plans 
 
 
 
 of Men 
 
 215 
 
 -XIX. 
 
 The Kingdoms that die, and the Kingdom 
 
 
 
 that lives 
 
 230 
 
 XX. 
 
 Fruitless Convictions of Sin .... 
 
 5 
 
 244 
 
b CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXI. The Men in the Fire 261 
 
 'XXII. The Man in the Lions' Den 277 
 
 XXIII. The Fulfilment of Prophecy in the Career 
 
 of Cyrus 295 
 
 XXTV. Christ the Centre of Biblical Thought . . 314 
 
STUDIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 THE PROPHET OF THE BROKEN HEART. 
 
 Oil that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of 
 tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the 
 daughter of my people! — Jek. ix. 1. 
 
 THE "Weeping Prophet" is the title often 
 given to Jeremiah. He is not a popular 
 prophet. Unhappy men are not commonly popu- 
 lar men. Yet this one had ample reason for the 
 depression under which he lived, and the minor 
 key which runs through the strain of his writings. 
 He was very far from being a morose man. He 
 did not mourn over disappointed ambitions of his 
 youth. He was not soured at the world's injustice. 
 He wasted no melodrama over the "cold, cold 
 world." He was the last man living to be a mis- 
 anthrope. 
 
 It may help us to appreciate two of the most 
 affecting and sublime books of the Bible, to in- 
 quire, What was it that made this very able and 
 godly man so miserable ? Why should he, more 
 
 7 
 
8 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 than other men, be given over to lifelong sorrow ? 
 Why should he, more than other men, leave us a 
 book of "Lamentations" as the most significant 
 record of his life? Why should his name have 
 coined a word, "jeremiad," expressive of the 
 lugubrious and dismal in literature? 
 
 The answer is this. He had a most delicately 
 sensitive nature, a most profound attachment to 
 the cause of God, an intense patriotic love of his 
 native land ; yet it was his lot to live at an age 
 when the people of God had fallen into most fear- 
 ful apostasy, and the most terrific judgments were 
 impending over them. It was given to him to see 
 those judgments hurrying on apace. He heard 
 angels of retribution on the wings of the wind. 
 He saw their sabres flashing in the sun. 
 
 Moreover, it was his mission to tell the people 
 of their sins, to rebuke the nobles for their oppres- 
 sion, the humbler orders for their vileness, the 
 priesthood for their falseness, even his fellow- 
 prophets for their infidelity to the living God. 
 The whole nation, from prince to beggar, had 
 reached the very bottom of national depravity; 
 and this lone man was set to tell them of it, and 
 to forewarn them of the frightful doom which was 
 impending. He was the prophet of unwelcome 
 truth. He had to face the facts of an age of 
 retribution. He had to tear away the illusions 
 with which people were deceiving themselves. 
 They were bragging of the recovery of the Bible, 
 
THE PROPHET OF THE BROKEN HEART. 9 
 
 which Josiah had found in the rubbish of their 
 desecrated temple. ' They claimed that that sacred 
 treasure was going to make all things right with 
 them. They treated it much as an African savage 
 regards the fetich which he worships, or the 
 amulet which he wears around his neck. The 
 possession of the Sacred Book, they thought, 
 would save them. This young prophet knew 
 better, and he had to tell them so. 
 
 The recovered Bible had come too late to save 
 them, just as Christianity now comes to some 
 savage tribes too late to save them from extermi- 
 nation. The people did not want to hear his 
 story. He was a croaker. They wanted to hear 
 somebody who would give them a pleasanter dis- 
 course. People who are living in sin, and who 
 know it, are sometimes very fond of "beautiful 
 sermons." They will bear any thing better than 
 the simple truth. Beauty is more popular than 
 truth. 
 
 Besides, this unpopular preacher stood alone. 
 Not another one of the prophetic order stood by 
 him. The only friend he had was one Baruch, an 
 obscure scribe ; and even he got sadly frightened 
 at the plain talk of his outspoken friend. The 
 priests, too, hated him as a renegade. All classes 
 — some for one reason, and some for another — 
 agreed in their spite against this solitary truth- 
 teller. Like Bunyan and many another unpala- 
 table preacher, he got himself into prison for his 
 
10 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 fidelity. For forty years it was his business to 
 deliver his warnings and rebukes and threaten- 
 ings, word for word, as God bade him, to nobles 
 and priests and people who were bent on destruc- 
 tion, and determined not to be saved by God or 
 man. 
 
 To him belongs the distinction of first suffering 
 the burning of the word of God by the enraged 
 king who would not listen to his reproofs. Many 
 times after his day, faithful preachers and reform- 
 ers saw the Bible burned in the market-place by 
 royal and papal decree. But the first in the long 
 line of such honored men was this despondent 
 prophet of Judsea. On him Satan first wreaked 
 that form of impotent revenge. As if a truth 
 could be burned with a flaming scroll ! 
 
 A singular fact also is it, that this solitary 
 preacher, the butt of a nation's ridicule, does not 
 seem to have been made for such work. Usually 
 God fits the man to his life's work. If he is to 
 have stern work to do, he is made of stern stuff. 
 Luther, with much that was lovable in his nature, 
 was, on the whole, a rough, stout man. That 
 square face and thick neck, and those compact 
 lips of his, indicate a man of will, who could bear 
 rougher handling than other men. He was to 
 contend with devils ; and God gave him a nature 
 which devils feared. Nobody ever called Luther 
 the " weeping prophet." If he shed tears, it was 
 on his knees before God only. He shed no tears 
 
THE PEOPHET OF THE BROKEN HEAET. 11 
 
 before the Diet of Worms. He was in no lachry- 
 mose mood when he had the pope's bull to deal 
 with, outside the Elster Gate of Wittenberg. 
 
 The mourning prophet of Juclsea does not seem 
 to have been of that stern make. He had a deli- 
 cate and retiring nature. Gentle and unselfish 
 was he, like a loving woman. When the sombre 
 truth first dawns upon his early manhood, and he 
 sees the work he has to do, he breaks out with the 
 despairing cry, "Ah, Lord! I cannot speak! I 
 am but a child ! " So overwhelmed is he by the 
 sight of his country's shame, and the foresight of 
 her doom, that he exclaims, " Oh that my head 
 were waters, that I might weep day and night for 
 the daughter of my people ! " His writings show, 
 by their chosen imagery, that he longs for solitude. 
 He hungers to get away from the sins and sorrows 
 of his time. Cowper's refrain, " Oh for a lodge in 
 some vast wilderness ! " would have expressed the 
 habit of his mind. He "sits alone, and keeps 
 silence, crouching under his burden." We seem 
 to hear him crying out in the bitterness of his 
 spirit, — 
 
 " The time is out of joint. Oh, cursed spite, 
 That ever I was born to set it right ! " 
 
 It is very significant of the despair of his soul, 
 that he lives a celibate life. It is not for such a 
 man as he to seek the dear delights of family and 
 companionships of home. His great life's work is 
 
12 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 too sad, too heart-breaking. He will not venture 
 to lay the half of it on the heart of any woman. 
 At times, when the solitude of it, and the black- 
 ness of it, and the funeral dirge of it, become 
 intolerable, he heaps curses on the day of his 
 birth. True to his Oriental instincts, he curses 
 the very messenger who bore the glad news to his 
 father that a boy was born to bear his name. Yes, 
 he is the Prophet of the Broken Heart. The sins 
 of his people are a lifelong grief to him. His 
 own work, as their spiritual teacher, overwhelms 
 him. The mystery of his life is, why he, of all 
 men living, should have been called to such a 
 mission, among such a people, on the eve of their 
 destruction, too late to do them any good ; when 
 all that he can do is to proclaim to them the judg- 
 ments with which they are soon to be overtaken. 
 
 When the late Rev. Charles Kingsley was in his 
 last sickness, and very near his end, though he did 
 not know it, but was waiting in anguish for the 
 daily expected death of his wife, he said one day, 
 as his biographer tells us, " It must be right ; for 
 it is so strange and yet so painful." The very 
 mysteriousness of inexplicable trial is a token of 
 the divine wisdom from which it comes. No other 
 mind could contrive trial so profound. It must 
 come from God, and " must be right." Such was 
 the forlorn consolation of the stricken prophet, 
 when overwhelmed, as he often was, by the lot 
 which it had pleased God to send him. Even 
 
THE PROPHET OF THE BROKEN HEART. 13 
 
 God's veracity he questions : " O Lord, thou hast 
 deceived me, and I was deceived." Imprecations 
 flow from his lips like household words. 
 
 To his own times and people he was the prophet 
 of doom. So far as they were concerned, his work 
 ended there. Not so in the fore-reaching design of 
 God. Jeremiah " builded better than he knew." 
 He did an unconscious work for coming ages. 
 Imperfect man as he was, he was the forerunner 
 of the spiritual disclosures of the new dispensa- 
 tion. The old dispensation was near its end. Its 
 sun was going down in blood-red clouds. But the 
 spiritual meaning of the ancient forms and rites 
 was coming slowly to the light. To no other 
 prophet of the olden time, unless it be Isaiah, do 
 we turn for glimpses of it as we do to this despair- 
 ing one. The very burden of his soul pressed it 
 out of him. He was driven to fall back upon the 
 spiritual truths and consolations which his own 
 soul needed. His very sins made them a necessity 
 to him. Nothing else could save him from mania 
 or suicide. God thus used him, his sorrows, his 
 self-conflicts, his errors, his sins. 
 
 Let us pass rapidly over a few suggestions drawn 
 from this sketch of this remarkable man : — 
 
 1. Jeremiah represents a class of good men and 
 women of whom some exist in every age. There 
 are some good men of whom it must be conceded 
 that they are not gay Christians. From their 
 make, and from the disclosures of truth which 
 
14 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 God gives them, they cannot be. They have a 
 peculiarly sensitive and deep nature. They have 
 profound intuitions. Their religion is proportion- 
 ately deep and tender. In all this world's history, 
 nothing else is so Startling a fact to them as that 
 this is a lost world, estranged from God, on its 
 way, but for God's loving grace, to an eternal and 
 awful doom. 
 
 These men and women are often blamed for 
 being gloomy. In their hearts they answer, " How 
 can we be hilarious wh^n the imperilled souls of 
 men, and our own too, lest as a burden upon us ? " 
 If the world were enveloped in one vast conflagra- 
 tion, should we naturally laugh and sing and dance 
 our way through it? Yet a more fearful flame is 
 ravaging it than that of the fires of Etna. A cer- 
 tain sobriety of deportment seems to such men 
 becoming to life in such a world as this, and with 
 such a future crowding on its destiny. 
 
 Christian ministers, whose ■ work compels them 
 to think much of these things, are apt to be so 
 oppressed by them as to acquire a certain gravity 
 of demeanor which the world laughs at. If you 
 could look into their hearts, as you sometimes do 
 in their memoirs, you would see that they bear the 
 burden day and night of this lost world. 
 
 2. Christians of the broken heart, it must be 
 confessed, are not apt to be popular with the world. 
 Very hard things are said of them. Very unjust 
 judgments they have to bear in silence. The world 
 
THE PROPHET OF THE BROKEN HEART. 15 
 
 cracks many a jest upon their long faces and their 
 " vinegar " aspect. I have seen tears trembling in 
 their eyes, as their only answer to the gibes of 
 men for whose souls they went home to pray. 
 
 Yet have not you heard from such jesters the 
 fling at our common faith, "If I believed what 
 you believe, I should move heaven and earth to 
 save souls : it seems to me I could never laugh 
 again " ? So said an estimable woman of the 
 world to me last summer. It is hard to please 
 men who do not feel the inner life which many 
 humble Christians lead. Which shall we do, gen- 
 tlemen and ladies, which shall we do ? — hold on 
 to, and try to act upon, the faith that gives us 
 "long faces," or meet your charge of heartless 
 inconsistency by living as if this were already a 
 saved world, and our home were Eden ? 
 
 3. The class of godly men and women of whom 
 Jeremiah is the type possess a very profound style 
 of Christian character. Not perfect, by any means. 
 We all have an ideal of a certain robust and 
 rounded Christian life superior to theirs. On the 
 whole, St. Paul was a nobler character than Jere- 
 miah. He ought to have been. He saw at its 
 meridian the sun which the prophet only foresaw 
 long before the dawn. Yet it is unjust not to give 
 the Jeremiahs of our brotherhood the credit for 
 ploughing deep in their sense of eternal things. 
 They may not be as happy as their faith in Christ 
 warrants them to be. Yet they do make a begin- 
 
16 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 ning in the right direction. Theirs is a struggle 
 to be and to do, of which they have no reason to 
 be ashamed. They do not cover their eyes. They 
 accept God's teachings courageously. Eternity 
 will show to us all, that some of the world's 
 great souls are among them. Multitudes who were 
 more popular with their fellow-men here will there 
 stand aside, and leave a clear space for those 
 mourning ones to go up and hear God's message 
 to them. Does anybody doubt what that will be ? 
 4. Such Christians as the "weeping prophet" 
 represents are men and women of great spiritual 
 power. The world does not like them, but cannot 
 help respecting them. " I keep clear of unhappy 
 people," said one of the impatient ones : yet I 
 observed that he chose for his pastor, and honored 
 as a great man, one whose face was long, and 
 whose look betokened secret tears. We love 
 realities, after all. We feel the power of the man 
 who knows the most of them, and feels them most 
 profoundly. The man or woman who takes God's 
 views of things, interprets human life as God in- 
 terprets it, looks out on eternity as God reveals 
 it, and whose visage bears the marks of inward 
 struggles of soul with the facts of human destiny 
 as God declares them, is a power with us all. If 
 we come into deep waters, and the billows go over 
 our heads, we look around gasping for the friendly 
 word or look or hand of such to cheer us. The 
 very men we have laughed at, or shrunk from, 
 
THE PROPHET OF THE BROKEN HEART. 17 
 
 because they were " unco' guid men," are those 
 whose experience we want then. 
 
 Said one man of the world, whose misfortune it 
 was to have a " gay parson " for his pastor, " Our 
 pastor is a capital fellow, a born wit, a splendid 
 mimic ; he keeps the table in a roar ; and in the 
 pulpit he is not afraid to make us laugh." Said 
 his friend, " Suppose that you had lost your only 
 child, or that you were yourself about to die." 
 — " Well," was the reply, " to tell you the truth, 
 he is the last man I should want to see then. Still 
 he is a capital fellow." 
 
 Somehow the " capital fellows," in the ministry 
 or out of it, are a little limited in their range of 
 usefulness. They do for picnics or the croquet- 
 ground. When we come to those passages of life 
 or death at which eternity looks in upon us, we 
 turn to men and women of another make. 
 
 5. Who can help seeing that broken-hearted 
 Christians are in some respects very nearly akin to 
 the Lord Jesus Christ f 
 
 Does not their life, dropping its inconsistencies, 
 strike us very much as his life does ? He did not 
 live a very hilarious life. Jests are not the chief 
 thing we remember from his lips. His biographers 
 do not say much of his " eyes sparkling with fun," 
 and his " ringing laugh." He was never called a 
 "capital fellow." Such clergymen as Matthew 
 Byles and Sydney Smith, somehow, do not remind 
 us very impressively of him. He attended a wed- 
 
18 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 ding ; but the chief thing he did there had more to 
 do with eternity than with time, more to do with 
 God than with man. Comic songs — But stop ! 
 Let us take off our shoes from our feet, for the 
 ground whereon we stand is holy ! 
 
 The sorrows of men had a strange attraction for 
 him. He did not " keep clear of unhappy men." 
 The grave of Lazarus was the scene of one of the 
 events most strikingly like him. The way he felt 
 about Jerusalem seems very much like that of the 
 weeping prophet. The nights he spent in prayer 
 are a great comfort to these Christians of the 
 broken heart. Of Gethsemane and Calvary what 
 shall we say ? May we reverently ask what class 
 of Christians most nearly resemble him there? 
 What kind of disciples did he long to see around 
 him then ? What is the meaning of that prophetic 
 portrait of him which painters have never copied, 
 " His visage was marred more than any man, and 
 his form more than the sons of men " ? 
 
 6. Let us not be misunderstood. It is not that 
 the example even of the " Man of Sorrows " for- 
 bids mirth, the laugh, the song, the jest. No: 
 there is a time to laugh, and a time to dance. Re- 
 joice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy 
 heart cheer thee ! Christ never by one word or 
 look enjoined ascetic virtues. He lived so that 
 bad men called him a glutton. Men who prayed in 
 the streets with one eye open called him a wine- 
 bibber. Men who cheated widows said he was a 
 
THE PKOPHET OF THE BROKEN HEART. 19 
 
 sabbath-breaker. Adulterers charged him with 
 unseemly acquaintance with outcast women. 
 Murderers and blasphemers called him the devil. 
 He was no saint according to the standard of such 
 men. Nevertheless, the whole drift of his teach- 
 ings and his life was towards a different kind of 
 life from that which men call pleasure. Its joys 
 lie deeper, and are built upon certain august and 
 stern realities. And those realities it is which 
 these Christians of the downcast eye are struggling 
 with, some of them, day by day, all their lives 
 long. 
 
 We do them a very mean injustice if we fail to 
 give them credit for this. They are simply strug- 
 gling, like drowning men, as for dear life, to be 
 true to the faith they hold. With heavy hearts 
 and swollen eyes, they are trying to live their faith. 
 They are agonizing to get near to Christ, and to 
 live there. Drowning men do not sing many 
 comic songs. Ye cynical critics, think what you 
 may of the rest of us : there are such men and 
 women as these, of whom Christ is not ashamed. 
 Oh, what poor fools we are if we profane their 
 conflicts with a gibe ! 
 
 7. These Christians of the broken heart are sure 
 of a very exalted rank in heaven. I hear a voice 
 from beyond the stars, saying, "Blessed are they 
 that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed 
 are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, 
 for they shall be filled. What are these that are 
 
20 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 arrayed in white robes? Whence came they? 
 These are they that came out of great tribulation : 
 therefore are they before the throne of God, and 
 serve him day and night in his temple. They 
 shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more: 
 and God shall wipe away all tears from their 
 eyes." 
 
GOD WORKS WITH MINORITIES WHO ARE 
 WORKING FOR HIM. 
 
 Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multi- 
 tude; for the battle is not yours, but God's. ... Ye shall not 
 need to fight: . . . stand ye still, and see the salvation of the 
 Lord: . . . fear not, the Lord will be with you. — 2 Chron. xx. 
 15, 17. 
 
 AT the darkest hour of our civil war, when 
 the life of the country seemed trembling in 
 the balance, the Government proclaimed a fast. 
 The people gathered in immense numbers in the 
 churches. Men not often seen there were found 
 there on that day. An eminent civilian in one of 
 our Atlantic cities, who seldom sought God's 
 house on the Lord's Day, was observed on that 
 fast day kneeling devoutly with God's people. 
 When inquired of what brought Mm out to such 
 services, he replied, " I thought it was high time 
 to get help somewhere. We are in a tight place, 
 and we need it." 
 
 Men often seek God in " a tight place," when 
 they think little of him in other places. It is 
 marvellous how reasonable and proper grayer seems 
 to them in such emergencies. 
 
 Such was the condition of the Judsean kingdom 
 
 21 
 
22 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 at the time of which our text speaks. A fast had 
 just beeu observed ; the entire people had come 
 together to obtain help of God " in a tight place." 
 He gave them their desire, as he commonly does 
 when men in trouble turn to him for relief. And 
 in giving it he announced one of the great princi- 
 ples of his working in the affairs of his kingdom : 
 he works with minorities who are working for him. 
 "Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this 
 great multitude ; for the battle is not yours, but 
 God's." Go out against them. The Lord will be 
 with you. 
 
 1. The history of the Church is full of illustra- 
 tions of this law of divine procedure. Dip into it 
 anywhere, and you come upon this divine strat- 
 egy. Napoleon thought that he knew the world 
 well. He had studied the history of great empires ; 
 but he said it was an inexplicable mystery to him, 
 that Christianity, beginning as it did with a few 
 fishermen of the feeblest nation then on the globe, 
 should in his time have risen to be so much more 
 mighty than his own conquests, which had almost 
 all the armies of Europe to back them. 
 
 " Oh ! where are kings and empires now, 
 Of old that went and came ? 
 But, Lord, thy Church is praying yet, 
 A thousand years the same." 
 
 It was God's way of working with minorities 
 who are working for him. When the Church be- 
 
GOD WORKS WITH MINORITIES. 23 
 
 came corrupt, and needed reform, the same thing 
 was repeated. A few earnest men, who were 
 hunted like wild beasts, in a few years shook the 
 world. The battle was not theirs, but God's. 
 
 An old saying of the German reformers, which 
 a modern reformer has untruthfully claimed as 
 his own, was, " One, with God on his side, is a 
 majority." " The battle is not yours, but God's." 
 This fragment of our lesson was the favorite text 
 of Sir Fowell Buxton. He once wrote to his 
 daughter that she would find his Bible opening of 
 itself to the place where this passage occurs. This 
 text it was which gave him courage to move in the 
 British Parliament for the emancipation of slaves 
 throughout the British Empire. When he entered 
 on that conflict, he stood almost alone ; when his 
 bill was first read in Parliament, it was received 
 with shouts of derisive laughter. But he be- 
 thought him of this text, and began his speech 
 saying, "Mr. Speaker, the reading of this bill is 
 the. beginning of a movement which will surely 
 end in the abolition of slavery throughout the 
 British dominions." The old Hebrew prophet 
 never said a truer word. Sir Fowell knew it ; for 
 the battle was not his, but God's. 
 
 The same phenomenon was witnessed in the first 
 attempt to establish American missions among the 
 heathen. When one of the early meetings of the 
 American Board was held at Bradford, Mass., less 
 than twenty persons were in attendance ; and they 
 
24 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 were hooted at by boys on the piazza of the hotel 
 where they were in session. Barely sixty-five 
 years have passed ; and at the last meeting of that 
 Board, in Providence, five thousand strangers from 
 abroad were present, and two churches were filled 
 with eager friends. 
 
 When the first American missionaries reached 
 India, the English Government refused them a 
 landing. " Go back," was the imperious order : 
 " go back in the ship in which you came." In the 
 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 
 when it was first proposed to send the gospel to 
 the heathen, reverend clergymen declared against 
 the fanatical scheme. They said that " the heath- 
 en were a contented and happy people, and that 
 it was no business of Scottish Christians to disturb 
 them." And this in face of our Lord's express 
 command, " Go ye into all the world, and preach 
 the gospel to every creature." Not a century has 
 passed since that time : yet now all Christendom 
 rings with gratulation over the achievement of 
 Christian missions ; and no other class of men are 
 so reverently canonized in the affections of the 
 Church as her missionaries to the heathen world. 
 This is the fruit of God's working with minorities 
 who are working for him. 
 
 So uniform has been this method of divine pro- 
 cedure, that we may safely say that great progress 
 of any good cause is seldom if ever secured in any 
 other way. When a good cause becomes popular, 
 
GOD WORKS WITH MINORITIES. 25 
 
 and majorities swing over to its support, the work 
 is substantially done. Probably some new cause 
 is then coming to the birth underneath. Every 
 cause which God originates starts with only Gid 
 eon's three hundred. 
 
 2. From this law of God's working, it is clear 
 that in spiritual affairs the balance of power does 
 not depend on numbers. Votes have very little to 
 do with it. It depends on spiritual forces. It 
 depends on insight into the spiritual wants of 
 the world ; on consecration to God's service ; on 
 the power of prayer ; on spiritual discovery of the 
 side on which God is ; and specially on intensity 
 of Christian character. 
 
 The few who start a great movement towards 
 the world's conversion, and who become its heroes 
 because God has chosen them, are always intense 
 men. They see things vividly. They have great 
 visions. They feel profoundly. Their souls are 
 aflame with holy ardor. " His ministers are a 
 flaming fire." Yet they are men of sustained en- 
 thusiasm. The fire does not crackle and blaze out 
 quickly : it burns like kindled anthracite. In the 
 best sense they are men of one idea, — a vast idea, 
 in which a thousand common ones are centred, 
 yet one to which whole souls can be reasonably 
 devoted. So far as this world is concerned, God 
 is possessed of one idea. 
 
 Such men are always a power in the world. 
 The world cannot help it, and they cannot help it. 
 
26 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Such men are one of God's powers, imperial in 
 authority, and destined to conquest. In due time 
 numbers will swell around them. Meanwhile it 
 is of very little account how many or how few 
 they are at the outset. 
 
 " A little flock: so calls He thee 
 
 Who bought thee with his blood ; 
 A little flock, disowned of men, 
 But owned and loved of God." 
 
 3. It is a great thought on this subject, that the 
 human race furnishes but a small part of the holy 
 ministries of this world. The ministry of angels 
 probably swells what we call minorities to secret 
 majorities. " Are they not all ministering spirits ? " 
 Invisible multitudes probably fill the air with their 
 busy pinions in service to the right. We are sur- 
 rounded with a great cloud of witnesses. When 
 conflicts deepen on the earth, for and against the 
 cause of Christ, other worlds send hosts of eager 
 combatants to the fray. Probably no child of God 
 is ever left without these unseen auxiliaries. " He 
 shall give his angels charge over thee." Earthly 
 monarchs often form secret treaties of alliance, 
 offensive and defensive, by which each pledges 
 the whole force of his kingdom to the support of 
 the other. Let us have faith to see the unseen, 
 and it may often help our wavering courage to 
 remember that countless myriads are in secret 
 alliance with us. 
 
GOD WORKS WITH MINORITIES. 27 
 
 One of England's great poets says of a noted 
 champion of liberty, — 
 
 " Thou hast left behind 
 Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and skies : 
 There's not a breathing of the common wind 
 That will forget thee. Thou hast great allies. 
 . . . Winds blow and waters roll 
 Strength to the brave." 
 
 But the friend of Christ has allies more imperial 
 than skies and winds and waters. Principalities in 
 heavenly places, beings some of whom probably 
 sway at their will the powers of nature, are his 
 allies. 
 
 4. Success in spiritual affairs often loses the char- 
 acter of a conflict, so overwhelming and so easy is 
 the working of divine auxiliaries. Thus ran the 
 good cheer to the outnumbered men of Judah: 
 " Ye shall not need to fight in this battle : stand 
 ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with 
 you." God's help often comes in immense waves 
 of spiritual re-enforcements. Our small calcula- 
 tions and petty fears are overborne. We are lifted 
 up, and carried over the obstacles which daunted 
 us. We can no longer find the perils which 
 alarmed us. This comes about with such ease and 
 stillness that we lose the sense of struggle and of 
 combat. 
 
 Revivals of religion often take on this look. 
 The more powerful and pure they are, the more 
 still and godlike. At such periods sanguine be- 
 
28 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 lie vers are apt to think the age of conflict for the 
 Church is over, and the latter days of peace and 
 tranquil progress are dawning. In the great 
 awakenings in New England, under the preaching 
 of the Rev. Drs. Lyman Beecher and Nettleton, it 
 was a favorite theme of gratulation to them, that 
 probably the closing age of this world's pilgrimage 
 was near at hand, and the golden visions of Isaiah 
 were about to be realized. They seemed to them- 
 selves to stand still, and see the salvation of the 
 Lord. 
 
 5. Minorities of honest and earnest men, devoted 
 to a great cause, should never he opposed heedlessly. 
 If it is God's method to begin great changes for 
 good by putting into the hearts of a few men 
 great ideas and great enterprises and great expec- 
 tation, we need to be cautious how we treat men 
 who may be spiritual pioneers. It is the way of 
 the world to frown them down. They are branded 
 with scornful nicknames. Fanatics, madmen, 
 fools, men call them. " The crazy tinker " was 
 the title by which the world labelled and libelled 
 the author of the " Pilgrim's Progress." " Method- 
 ists," " Puritans," " Quakers," — all nicknames at 
 first. Not so will the wise and candid treat such 
 men. 
 
 Fanaticism may always be detected by its affinity 
 with malign passions. Religious earnestness is not 
 fanaticism. Novelty in religious thought and 
 theory of life is not presumptively visionary. 
 
GOD WORKS WITH MINORITIES. 29 
 
 That men turn the world upside down, is no proof 
 that they are madmen. St. Paul did that. When 
 men are obviously moved by profound convictions, 
 and are in dead earnest in proclaiming them, if 
 they are honest, candid, prayerful, unselfish men, 
 and do not contradict either the word of God or 
 the common sense of men, they deserve a hearing. 
 They may be heralds of a new era of Christian 
 progress. Their ideas may be from God. The 
 power which moves them may be the power of God. 
 Their self-confidence may be a divine assurance, 
 prophetic of the future. " The homely beauty of 
 the good old cause " may be about to spring into 
 new life and glory in their hands. 
 
 Take care that you do not recklessly denounce 
 and deride such meu, lest you should denounce 
 and deride God. It is like God to raise up such 
 men, and inspire them, and send them to his peo- 
 ple, as he sent the old prophets. A docile "spirit 
 will welcome God's teaching, come in what form 
 it may. God usually sends in forms which men 
 have not expected. The true attitude of a Chris- 
 tian thinker and worker toward such phenomena 
 is one of vigilance and candor. Wisdom did not 
 die with our fathers ; neither will it die with us. 
 Old men will not carry it out of the world with 
 them. New truth must be expected from new 
 men. The world has yet to see a great many John 
 the Baptists, voices in the wilderness, forerunners 
 of great eras. 
 
30 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Let us, then, be on the lookout for such men. 
 Let us greet them with a God-speed when they 
 make their divine credentials clear. Let us keep 
 our tastes in abeyance to our convictions. We love 
 what we are used to. We revere the ancient. 
 We all have roots in the venerable past. This is 
 well. Yet the grandest arena of God's working is 
 the future. A Christian's treasure should be there. 
 Ours is a religion of hope, of expectation, of on- 
 iooking to golden ages yet to come. Blessed were 
 those Jews in our Lord's time who stood waiting 
 for his coming, ready to receive him with open 
 hearts. Blessed, too, are the foreseeing men and 
 women of all ages, who are always watching for 
 the morning ; praying for great things ; working 
 for great things ; expecting great things ; bending 
 forward, and listening for the prophetic voices; 
 quick to see the great light in the heavens, when 
 it first gilds the tops of the eastern hills. 
 
 6. Within the Church of Christ itself is to be 
 found a minority of believers whom Grod regards with 
 peculiar complacency. An eminent clergyman of 
 Philadelphia once expressed the opinion that a 
 majority of the professed followers of Christ do 
 not add any appreciable strength to the spiritual 
 power of the Church. It saddens one to think 
 that this may be true. Be it true or not, the fact 
 cannot be doubted that there is within the Church 
 a body of believers of peculiar spirituality of char- 
 acter and consistency of life, who are generally a 
 minority. 
 
GOD WORKS WITH MINORITIES. 31 
 
 There is a church within the Church. St. John 
 in his vision of the future declares, " Blessed and 
 holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection. 
 They shall be kings and priests unto God, and 
 shall reign with him a thousand years." Whatevei 
 that may mean, it implies gradation in the spiritual 
 rank of the redeemed. This tallies with what we 
 see in the Church on earth. There are Christians 
 who always live near to God. They are obviously 
 bent on living as Christ lived. They live as if 
 they belonged to God. Their property they treat 
 as his, not their own. They are always ready for 
 Christian work. A revival of religion never takes 
 them by surprise. They live in a revival perpetu- 
 ally. They are men and women of much prayer. 
 Pastors depend upon them in emergencies, as they 
 cannot upon all professed believers. We always 
 know where to find them, and never find them 
 in the wrong place, on the wrong side, saying 
 the wrong word, doing the wrong thing. 
 
 Theirs is not a religion of form, not a religion 
 of intermittent and erratic feeling, not a religion 
 of aesthetic taste, but a religion of deep and con- 
 trolling principle. As a spiritual power, they are 
 the vanguard of the Church. They are the spir- 
 itual aristocracy of Christ's kingdom. These are 
 they who shall sit on his right hand and on his left 
 without asking for the dignity. Princes are they in 
 prayer, conquerors in conflict with the powers of 
 evil, saints to whom the truculent criticism of the 
 world even does not refuse the title. 
 
32 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Almost every large church contains a group of 
 such Christians, few or more, yet commonly a 
 minority. Sometimes they can be numbered on 
 one's fingers. "I have one man in my church," 
 said an aged pastor not long ago, — "I have one 
 man on whom I can always depend. I do not 
 know that I have another." It is a legitimate ob- 
 ject of prayer and Christian aspiration, to be num- 
 bered among those chosen few. God looks upon 
 them with complacent joy. Christ sees in them of 
 the travail of his soul. They satisfy him. Like 
 David, they are men after God's own heart. Like 
 John, they are beloved disciples. Like Mary, they 
 have chosen the good part. Like Paul, they fight 
 a good fight. Their very presence in the world, 
 the world feels as a power on the side of right. 
 Every good cause feels the loss of them when they 
 die. As we stand beside their open graves, we 
 thank God anew for the doctrine of immortality. 
 One star diflereth from another star in glory. So 
 also is the resurrection of the dead. 
 
A MODEL OF PRAYER IN EMERGENCIES. 
 
 And Asa cried unto the Lord his God, and said, Lord, it is 
 nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or with them 
 that have no power: help us, O Lord our God; for we rest on 
 thee, and in thy name we go against this multitude. O Lord, 
 thou art our God; let not man prevail against thee. — 2 Chkojst. 
 xiv. 11. 
 
 THE prayers recorded in the Bible are almost 
 all of them models in their place. Such is 
 the prayer of the Jewish monarch in the text. 
 
 King Asa is in a great strait. To all human 
 appearance, his throne and his life are in peril. 
 His Ethiopian enemy is in battle array before 
 him, with numbers in the proportion to his own 
 of about two to one. His defeat is morally cer- 
 tain. He and his staff must have felt, in that 
 valley of Ephratah, as they looked over the 
 roods of glittering spears, as our own Washington 
 felt in Valley Forge, in the most dismal winter of 
 the Revolution. He seems to himself to have 
 come to the place of extreme catastrophe. He 
 he can only lie down and die. 
 
 Like the " Father of his Country," the Jewish 
 king betakes himself to prayer. It is about all 
 there is left for him to do, preliminary to the fatal 
 
34 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 morrow. His petition is very brief. In great 
 emergencies our wants are summed up in few 
 words. We have no heart for 'more. This is the 
 model of prayer in an emergency. It is made up of 
 four fragments, each of which teaches us a funda- 
 mental element in the spirit of prayer in such an 
 exigency. 
 
 1. Prayer in emergencies should be founded on a 
 strong faith in GrooVs independence of human 
 resources and methods of judgment. Hear the 
 stricken monarch, as he kneels beneath the 
 weight of a kingdom: "Lord, it is nothing to 
 thee to help, whether with many or with them 
 that have no power." This goes to the heart of 
 the case. Nothing else equals the situation. 
 "True," we seem to hear him plucking up his 
 own courage in the extremity, — " true, I am out- 
 numbered. Every man of us must engage two 
 to-morrow. The best military science of the age 
 is pitted against us. These Ethiopian invaders 
 are no mean folk. They are stalwart men, led by 
 able generals, flushed with victories. They are 
 doubtless laughing at our temerity, and glorying 
 in our coming shame. And by all human calcu- 
 lations they are right. They are sure to win: 
 we are doomed to fail. The laws of war bid us 
 make the best terms of peace we can. Now is the 
 time for a masterly retreat. But — No: not 
 so, not so ! What are numbers to the God of 
 Judah ? What are military tactics, and captains 
 
A MODEL OF PRAYER IN EMERGENCIES. 35 
 
 of renown, and the pomp of conquest, — what 
 are they all to the God of Israel ? A small mat- 
 ter, — a very small matter. I remind me of the 
 Red Sea. Our God is the living God. He made 
 the heavens and the earth. The nations are as a 
 drop in a bucket. He taketh up the islands as a 
 very little thing. Yes, Lord, it is nothing to thee 
 to help us in this emergency. It is like thee to give 
 the battle to the weak. It is like thee to over- 
 throw the many by the few." 
 
 Military history, in every age, is not destitute 
 of similar occurrences. There have been Chris- 
 tian generals, who, to the world's eye, have 
 seemed to have mysterious successes. They who 
 watched the career of Gen. Havelock in India 
 observed this feature in his history. His supe- 
 riors used to put him upon service, to which they 
 dared not send other men. They said that he 
 often succeeded, where, by the laws of war, he 
 ought not to succeed. Whether due to his habits 
 of prayer, or not, there was the fact. 
 
 In our own civil war, on one occasion, the gen- 
 eral in command of certain forces broke out with 
 the exclamation, on the eve of battle, "We have 
 got them now, and they know it. God Almighty 
 cannot save them." So he had "got them," by 
 all human reckoning of the chances. His staff 
 responded, " Yes, we are sure of them." But 
 it happened, — how much it had to do with the 
 fortunes of the day, we will not presume to say, 
 
36 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 but it happened, — that the commander-in-chief 
 on the other side was a praying man. He had 
 that morning spent an hour in his tent, invoking 
 divine interposition in the coming conflict. The 
 close of the day found him again in his tent offer- 
 ing thanksgiving for a victory, while the presump- 
 tuous general who thought that " God Almighty 
 could not defeat him " was in ignominious flight 
 down the valley of the Shenandoah. 
 
 Why should it not be so ? Such men command 
 invisible allies. They invoke the onset of spirit- 
 ual battalions. They lead their enemies into am- 
 buscades of angelic legions. If our eyes were not 
 holclen, we might see that the very air is full of 
 them. 
 
 Are there not, in the lives of us all, emergencies 
 in which our deliverance may depend on our real- 
 izing to our faith the principle that God is in- 
 dependent of the resources which decide human 
 judgment ? In certain extreme hours, very much 
 may depend on the depth of our faith in this. 
 Our own courage may depend on it. Our power 
 to energize others may depend on it. Our power 
 with God may depend on it. We need to feel 
 that prayer may command improbable results, 
 because it commands supernatural resources. 
 
 Much is gained also when we appreciate the 
 ease with which God achieves marvellous issues 
 in response to prayer. " A God doing wonders " 
 is one of his significant titles, — significant of the 
 
A MODEL OF PRAYER IN EMERGENCIES. 37 
 
 usage of his dominion. To him there are no such 
 things as emergencies. Prayer never finds him 
 overwhelmed by surprises. 
 
 " To thee there's nothing old appears, — 
 Great God, there's nothing new." 
 
 The magnitude of our requests never startles 
 his composure. In his serene life, there are no 
 extreme hours, no critical junctures, no unforeseen 
 contingencies. He is never conscious of an hour 
 when his resources run low, when his powers are 
 put to the strain, when he is weary and would 
 pause to rest. The affairs of the universe are 
 never a burden to him. 
 
 Note the biblical way of describing the acts of 
 God: "He spake, and it was done. He command- 
 ed, and it stood fast. God said, Let there be light, 
 and there was light." The serenity of the stars 
 characterizes all his working. So calmly, so easi- 
 ly, with such assurance of reserved forces and 
 unused energies, does he perform, in answer to 
 prayer, achievements which overwhelm our puny 
 thought by their magnitude. Armies in the shock 
 of battle he sways as easily as the breathing of an 
 infant. 
 
 A few years ago there appeared in our skies 
 the most brilliant comet of the century. It was 
 six millions of miles distant from our globe. Such 
 was the speed of its' movement, that, if it had been 
 aimed hither in its march, it would have come 
 
38 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 crashing upon us in less than two days, with the 
 rnomentum of a hundred and fifty thousand miles 
 an hour. Yet God held that blazing meteor in its 
 appointed groove, worn by millions of years of 
 travel, so that it glided gently across our world's 
 orbit with motion imperceptible. It had the still- 
 ness of a painting. Our infant children looked 
 out upon it, and bade it good-night, as a beautiful 
 plaything in the sky, without so much as the clos- 
 ing of an eyelid at the eternal rush of its progress. 
 So calm, so facile, so beautifully silent, are God's 
 wonder-workings in answer to prayer. Mysteries 
 so vast and so anomalous that astonished angels 
 desire to look into them, occur with the ease of a 
 summer twilight. 
 
 We need to believe this. With all our hearts 
 we need to accept it as the natural way of God's 
 procedure. We need to be uplifted on the wings 
 of faith to the divine plane of things in our emer- 
 gencies. Then we can look down upon them as 
 aeronauts above the clouds look down upon thun- 
 der-storms and tornadoes, from a region of unut- 
 terable stillness and under an unclouded sun. 
 
 2. The example before us suggests, as a second 
 element in believing prayer in emergencies, a pro- 
 found sense of the inadequacy of all other sources of 
 relief but Crod. We need to feel that we are shut 
 in to God, and God only. " Help us, O Lord our 
 God, for we rest in thee." This is the plea of the 
 imperilled monarch. This is his argument for the 
 
A MODEL OF PRAYER IN EMERGENCIES. 39 
 
 rescue of his tottering kingdom: "We are help- 
 less. Our forces are outnumbered beyond the 
 reach of human daring. We can die, but we can 
 do no more. By all chances, as men count them, 
 we are doomed. We do not know which way to 
 turn. There is no turning for us. We mareh 
 right on to death. We are shut up to the arm of 
 God. Help, Lord, or we perish." 
 
 This familiar element in the spirit of prayer, 
 emergencies force upon our thought. Often divine 
 Providence seems to second the procedure of di- 
 vine grace by leaving us in a great emergency till 
 we feel this. Deliverance is slow in „ coming. 
 Prayer is not answered in a breath. The trial 
 gathers intensity. The crisis deepens. The tire 
 waxes hot. The object seems to be to quicken in 
 the soul the sense of God as a reality because he 
 is felt to be a necessity. Ruin here, ruin there, 
 ruin everywhere except in the one thought that 
 there is a God. Intense conceptions of the reality 
 of God come to some minds in no other way than 
 through this secret alliance of providence and grace 
 in the discipline. The needed convictions have to 
 be burned in by fiery trial. 
 
 But when the end is gained, when God becomes 
 an infinite fact, when we become content to go 
 fearless into solitude with God, to cast every 
 thing upon God, to rest in God, then believing 
 prayer wells up sweet and fresh from the heart, 
 and flows out in glad assurance from the lips. 
 Then relief, success, conquest, is not far off. 
 
40 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 In this spirit, not only the great exigencies of 
 the Church need to be met, but the emergencies 
 of individual life as well. Said Whitefield in one 
 of the crises of his life, "I have thrown myself 
 blindfold into His almighty arms." Said the late 
 Rev. Dr. Griffin in a similar exigency, "I feel 
 that God is all that is left to me." 
 
 Every human life lies through some such valleys 
 of Ephratah, where the man seems to himself shut 
 out from all human sources of support, and shut 
 in to solitude with God. If such crises are met in 
 the spirit of believing prayer, they are the pre- 
 cursors of triumph. Some conquest of opposing 
 forces, or some self-conquest preparative to heav- 
 en, or some conquest over powers of darkness of 
 which only God and angels are the witnesses, is in 
 the near future. 
 
 3. Prayer in emergencies, as illustrated in the 
 example before us, involves a third element. It is 
 a profound identification with God. " In thy name 
 we go against this multitude." That is, " The 
 battle is not ours, but God's. Our interests are 
 lost in God's interests. Selfish desire can have no 
 place here. We are lifted and driven beyond all 
 that. For God we pray; for God we fight." 
 
 So Luther felt in the great crisis of his life. 
 " Here stand I for God : I can do no other." So 
 the great leaders of the Church have marched to 
 victory. Until the cause at stake is thus identi- 
 fied with God, prevailing prayer is impossible. In 
 
A MODEL OF PRAYER IN EMERGENCIES. 41 
 
 a selfish prayer we beat the winds. Nothing is 
 sure in this world but the purposes of God. No 
 interests are safe but his. No cause is secure but 
 his. 
 
 Until we can get our private individual concerns 
 within the lines of his plans, we can be sure of 
 nothing. This is the province of believing prayer 
 in emergencies, — to lift us up and out from our 
 petty selves, and so unite us with God that our 
 interests are his because his interests have become 
 ours. Our will is his because his will has been 
 accepted as ours. Then prayer becomes but a 
 prophecy of his decree. Its success is a foregone 
 conclusion. While we are speaking, the answer is 
 on our own lips. One design, doubtless, of great 
 and crushing emergencies, is to help us up to this 
 summit of identification with God, by driving us 
 up the rocky steep that leads thither. 
 
 4. One other phase of prayer in such emergen- 
 cies, suggested by the fragment of biography be- 
 fore us, is a hearty recognition of GrooVs ownership 
 of us. " O Lord, thou art our God ; let not man 
 prevail against thee." 
 
 To Jewish thought the force of this language 
 was intensified by comparison with pagan theories 
 of Godhead. Every nation was believed to have 
 its deity. Ethiopia had her god, and Judaea had 
 hers. When a Jew therefore said, " Thou art our 
 God," he meant to acknowledge God's ownership 
 of him and all his belongings. That any other 
 
42 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 nation should prevail against Judaea, meant to 
 Jewish thought a victory of man over the living 
 God. 
 
 This gave deep significance to Jewish prayer on 
 the eve of battle. Not only was his cause God's 
 cause, by his being identified with God, but he 
 and all he had belonged to God. His success, 
 therefore, was God's success, and his defeat was 
 God's defeat. "Let not man prevail against 
 Thee!" 
 
 This conception of prayer in critical exigencies 
 fills up the Christian idea of it to the brim. We 
 belong to God. Whatever concerns us concerns 
 him. Our sorrow is his sorrow. Our joy is his 
 joy. If it is best for us that we be delivered, it 
 is as much to God as to us that he shall send 
 deliverance. No wedge can be driven between, 
 to separate him from us, his interests from ours. 
 The sacredness and eternity of divine ownership 
 are pledged to our success. 
 
 By the right of creation we belong to God. By 
 the right of faithful and undying friendship we 
 belong to God. By the right of eternal redemp- 
 tion we belong to God. By the right of purchase 
 with the blood of Christ we belong to God. Will 
 God desert his own with such rights as these ? 
 
 
AN ANCIENT REVIVAL OF RELIGION. 
 
 When Asa heard these words, he took courage, and put away 
 the abominable idols out of all the land, . . . and renewed the 
 altar of the Lord. . . . And he gathered all Judah and Ben- 
 jamin, and the strangers with them: ... for they fell to him in 
 abundance, when they saw that the Lord his God was with him. 
 . . . And they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of 
 their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul. . . . 
 And they sware unto the Lord with a loud voice, and with shout- 
 ing, and with trumpets, and with cornets. And all Judah re- 
 joiced at the oath: for they had sworn with all their heart, and 
 sought him with their whole desire; and he was found of them: 
 and the Lord gave them rest round about. — 2 Cheon. xv. 8, 9, 
 12-15. 
 
 EEVIVALS are supposed by many to be of 
 modern origin ; their opponents say, of mod- 
 ern invention. Not so ; for here in the heart of 
 the Old Testament we find a record of a revival 
 which tallies, with singular accuracy, with similar 
 works of divine grace in our own day. 
 
 As the narrative runs, there has been a long 
 period of religious decline. Israel has been 
 "without the true God, and without a teaching 
 priest, and without law." The services of religion 
 have been grossly neglected: idolatry has over- 
 spread the kingdom. Then trouble comes. As 
 usual, God rebukes irreligion by calamity. War 
 
 43 
 
44 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 ravages the land. No man's life or property is 
 safe. " God did vex them with all adversity." 
 
 In their affliction they tnrn again to God. 
 " They sought him, and he was found of them." 
 God is never far off from men in trouble. An 
 obscure prophet, nowhere else named in the 
 Scriptures, rouses the king to attempt a general 
 reformation of the people. The king sets to work 
 with a will, and a wide-spread work of divine 
 grace is the result. It is a clear case of deliberate 
 seeking for and working for a revival of religion, 
 and with success. 
 
 1. Varying somewhat the order of the narra- 
 tive, we see first that the heart of a revival lies in a 
 renewal of the covenant of the Church with God. 
 " They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord 
 God of their fathers, with all their heart and with 
 all their soul." And again, "They had sworn 
 with all their heart, and sought him with their 
 whole desire." Clearly they mean to make a 
 business of it. It is no half-way affair. With 
 the stern zeal characteristic of a semi-civilized 
 age and a theocratic government, they determine 
 that opposers shall suffer for it. "Whosoever 
 would not seek the Lord should be put to death." 
 Yes, they are evidently in dead earnest. By their 
 , theory the whole nation is the Church ; and the 
 Church must be purified, cost what it may. 
 
 One of the laws of the working of the Holy 
 Spirit is disclosed here. A revival of religion 
 
AN ANCIENT REVIVAL OF RELIGION. 45 
 
 begins in the Church of Christ. Rarely, if ever, 
 does an exception occur. God does not work 
 independently of his chosen people. The con- 
 version of the world waits on the will of the 
 Church. 
 
 The history of revivals emphasizes this law. 
 A dead Church holds back from God the dead 
 world. . An awakened Church is the pioneer of an 
 awakened world. A fragment of the Church vital- 
 ized by the Spirit of God will be felt by a godless 
 community. Godly faith is a great power. It 
 takes but little of it to set men thinking and 
 asking what it means. Apply a little fire, in one 
 small spot, to a block of marble, and you soon 
 send a fissure rending through the whole. So the 
 quickening of one small church by a new infusion 
 of divine grace will break up the solidity of sin 
 through a whole community. A little group of men 
 who mean what they say, and who say the great 
 truths of God and an eternal world, will always 
 get a hearing. Crowds often follow one man who 
 has received a new baptism from on high. There 
 is a wonderful magnetism about such a man. 
 
 2. A second feature in this ancient revival of 
 religion was a public proclamation of a revived faith 
 before the world. It is often objected to modern 
 revivals, that men make so much ado about them. 
 Religion, it is said, is a still affair. It lies between 
 a man's own soul and God. We are commanded 
 to pray in secret chambers with the door shut. 
 
46 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Why all this noise about living to God and saying 
 souls ? Rid us of this cant. Give us rather the 
 poetry of a silent faith. Let each man look after 
 his own soul, and not annoy his neighbors. As 
 one such wise man once expressed it, "Let each 
 man have a snug little Zion of his own." 
 
 Not so thinks the awakened king of Judah and 
 his subaltern chiefs. They make a great ado- about 
 the regeneration of the realm. They go through 
 the land like the hot-headed reformers in the 
 Netherlands; pulling down idols, and rebuilding 
 desecrated altars, and putting a stop to ungodly 
 rites of worship. Small chance is theirs if they 
 try to keep the business secret. " They sware 
 unto the Lord with a loud voice, and with shout- 
 ing, and with trumpets, and with cornets." Camp- 
 meetings and tent-preaching and tabernacles a|e a 
 small matter compared with this uprising of a 
 whole nation. It is more like the up-springing of 
 our country when Sumter fell. We made no silent 
 affair of that. 
 
 Religious men in earnest are too much in earnest 
 to be still about it. They are moved by a great 
 power. It will express itself as becomes a great 
 power. Out it will come in speech, in act, in 
 prayer, in song, in great enterprise, and in glad 
 achievement. It is the instinct of religious faith 
 to bear its witness to the world. It is not ashamed. 
 Why should it skulk? God has given a great 
 deliverance : men must proclaim it to those who 
 
AN ANCIENT REVIVAL OF RELIGION. 47 
 
 need the same. The pearl is of great price : men 
 will rejoice over it. 
 
 A certain degree of publicity, therefore, in a 
 spiritual quickening of the Church, is inevitable. 
 It is but natural. Other great awakenings work 
 in the same way. We do not denounce the ardor 
 of a political campaign as the hysteria of old 
 women and sick folk. We do not call the rush to 
 the gold-mines of California and the Black Hills 
 cant. Why, then, judge by a different law the 
 great awakenings of men to the realities of eter- 
 nity? The Black Hills, with all their golden 
 treasure, will one day burn to cinders in volcanic 
 fire. The souls of the men now crowding there 
 will then be still living somewhere, undying as 
 God is. Where ? That is the question the Church 
 tries to answer in a great revival. 
 
 On one occasion Edmund Burke came upon the 
 hustings to contest a seat in Parliament before an 
 excited assembly. The people had come together 
 with preparations for bonfires and illuminations, 
 and processions marching to the sound of drum 
 and fife. When he had just mounted the plat- 
 form, the news came that his opponent, who was 
 to have met him there that morning, had been just 
 found dead in his bed. Both Burke and his hear- 
 ers were so overwhelmed by that momentary open- 
 ing of the eternal world to their dim vision that 
 he could not speak, and they were in no mood to 
 hear. He only lifted his voice for one solemn 
 
48 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 moment, and exclaimed, "What shadows we are, 
 and what shadows we pursue ! " Was that cant ? 
 Yet a revival of religion is no other than just that 
 awakening to the reality of eternal things, and a 
 permanent setting of the current of popular 
 thought in that channel. Why not ? 
 
 3. This old Jewish revival developed a third 
 feature. It ivas attended with a great influx of con- 
 verts from without. " The strangers fell to him out 
 of Israel in abundance, when they saw that the 
 Lord his G-od was with him." So commonly works 
 a pure revival upon the world. Very rare is the 
 exception in which the heart of the world does not 
 respond to the heart of the Church. Growth is 
 the law of all life. A tree expands from the life 
 of its root. Double the vitality there, and you 
 double the fruitage. So is it with the spiritual 
 life, of which the Church of God is the centre. 
 
 " They saw that the Lord his God was with him." 
 This is the conviction with which a pure revival 
 impresses men of the world. A feeling of awe 
 often becomes general in a community in which 
 the Holy Spirit is moving with great power. The 
 consciousness of God fills hearts unused to such 
 convictions. 
 
 Many years ago an eminent officer in the gov- 
 ernment of Massachusetts returned from Europe 
 to his home in an inland town in which a power- 
 ful work of divine grace was in progress. He had 
 not heard of it. As he passed through the streets, 
 
AN ANCIENT KEVIVAL OF RELIGION. 49 
 
 the look of things seemed strange to him. The 
 countenances of those whom he met impressed 
 him with a sense of something unusual. The 
 church-bell was tolling at an unusual hour. " What 
 has happened here ? " was his inquiry. " Something 
 is in the air. Things seem like the day of judg- 
 ment." There was no mystery in this. It was like 
 the day of judgment. God was there, deciding the 
 eternal destiny of hundreds of souls. It proved so 
 to that awe-struck man, for he was soon one of the 
 rejoicing converts. 
 
 In the great awakening under President Ed- 
 wards, men cried out in great assemblies under 
 the overpowering sense of the reality of God's 
 being. The same phenomenon occurred during 
 the " Year of Grace " in Ireland. Under the 
 preaching of the late Rev. Dr. Blackburn of Mis- 
 souri, men were known to rush out of churches 
 and off from camping-grounds, saying that they 
 could not bear the terror of God's presence, which 
 threatened to crush them. 
 
 Certain animals have a mysterious sense by 
 which they discern the coming-on of an earth- 
 quake, or the presence of death, before the dull 
 eyes and ears of humankind detect them. So 
 there seems to be in man a spiritual sense which 
 under certain conditions feels the presence of God 
 as it cannot at other times. What are the path- 
 ological affections of the body, often witnessed in 
 intense revivals, but the succumbing of the ner- 
 
50 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 vous system to spiritual impressions which flesh 
 and blood cannot bear with equanimity ? They are 
 hints of that awful majesty of God which shook 
 Mount Sinai, and which God himself expressed in 
 the law, " No man shall see me and live." 
 
 4. A fourth feature of a true revival of religion 
 is a thorough reformation of public and private mor- 
 als. " Asa took courage, and put away the abom- 
 inable idols out of all the land." To put away 
 idolatrous worship was what we should call a 
 reformation in morals. Idolatry was immorality 
 concentrated in most hideous forms. No religious 
 zeal could have been genuine in a monarch which 
 did not sweep the land clean of them. 
 
 Thus in every so-called revival, the critical test 
 of its genuineness is the inquiry, "How does it 
 affect the real life of converts ? " It is in perfect 
 keeping with such an awakening that a temper- 
 ance revival should accompany it. The most 
 valuable fruit of Mr. Moody's work in Boston 
 during the winter of 1876-77 was believed by 
 sage observers to be the reformation of hundreds 
 of inebriates and many abandoned women, — re- 
 formed because religiously converted. They attrib- 
 ute their reformation to no other cause than 
 their new-found religion. The metropolitan police 
 remarked a perceptible diminution of the crimes 
 usually caused by rum. Rumsellers complained 
 that their business was interrupted. There are 
 localities in New York and Boston where once a 
 
AN ANCIENT REVIVAL OF RELIGION. 51 
 
 man could not safely go unarmed after nightfall, 
 but where now a woman can go safely at midnight ; 
 and the power which has wrought the change is 
 the work of a few Christian women in mission- 
 schools. 
 
 That dishonest men become honest; that false 
 men become true ; that drunkards become temper- 
 ate ; that vile men become pure ; that lost women 
 recover the purity of their childhood; that men 
 of intrigue and sharp dealing become guileless in 
 act and speech; that profane men become rever- 
 ent ; that sabbath-breakers are found in the house 
 of God, — these are among the legitimate tokens 
 of a great and general revival, which are to be 
 reasonably looked for if it is a work of God. One 
 of the most significant evidences of conversion 
 was given by a poor and ignorant man to a com- 
 mittee of examination for his admission to the 
 church when he said, " I don't know what reli- 
 gion has done for me in my business, except that 
 I have burned my bushel-measure." 
 
 An apparent religious awakening which does not 
 result in making converts more honest, more truth- 
 ful, more pure in private morals, is not worthy of 
 trust. God is not in it. The payment of honest 
 debts ; dealing in trade by equity rather than by 
 law ; the giving-up of tricks of trade ; a living price 
 for slop-work ; the sale of pure milk ; the surrender 
 of trades which are inimical to public morals ; the 
 destruction of distilleries; the refusal to lease 
 
52 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 houses for immoral uses, and hotels for the sale of 
 alcoholic liquors ; care not to be ignorant of such 
 leases ; suffering loss of dividends for the observ- 
 ance of the Lord's Day ; the honest report of prop- 
 erty to assessors ; a fair day's work when working 
 for the Government ; refusing to cheat the post- 
 office ; truthful invoices of imported goods ; honest 
 oaths at the custom-house; in a word, freedom 
 from guile in transactions of business, — these are 
 among the proper fruits of a revival of religion. 
 The world has a right to look for them. The 
 world is right in heaping its indignation and con- 
 tempt on any religious epidemic which does not 
 prove its right to exist by these plain signs of a live 
 conscience in worldly affairs. Shall a man be a 
 smooth and smiling communicant in God's Church, 
 doing service, it may be, at the Lord's table, and 
 at same time a fit candidate for the penitentiary? 
 God is on the side of the world in its indignant 
 protest. "Your new moons and sabbaths, and 
 calling of assemblies, I cannot away with ; incense 
 is an abomination unto me ; when ye make many 
 prayers, I will not hear." 
 
 Of all compounds of human weakness and 
 depravity, the most repulsive is a bonfire of reli- 
 gious cant, winch is all feeling and no principle, 
 all talk and no character, all prayer and no life, all 
 Sunday and no week-day. Ye whited sepulchres ! 
 Ye generation of vipers ! The holiest of men join 
 the indignant outcry of the world against such 
 
AN ANCIENT REVIVAL OF RELIGION. 53 
 
 nauseating hypocrisy. That is a wise and always 
 timely petition of the Church of England : " From 
 the deceits of the world, from the crafts of the 
 Devil, good Lord, deliver us ! " 
 
 5. One other fact suggested by this ancient 
 model of a revival is, that often such awakenings 
 are followed by periods of temporal prosperity. 
 " The Lord gave them rest round about." In 
 that semi-civilized age the symbol of all temporal 
 calamities was a state of chronic war, and the 
 symbol of all temporal blessings was a state of 
 peace. Eest from civil and foreign discord meant 
 the prosperity of the arts of peace. The encour- 
 agement of industry, the increase of property, the 
 unity of families, the preservation of young life, 
 the growth of the able-bodied population, the in- 
 crease of the comforts of civilization, and the 
 advance of the general culture, all attended long- 
 continued peace. This was the blessing which 
 God gave as a sequence of the quickening of the 
 national conscience. 
 
 Not always do all forms of temporal blessing 
 attend repentance and holy living. But such is 
 the tendency of a godly life. The promises of 
 God have never yet been tested by the spiritual 
 conversion of an entire nation. That test the 
 Christian religion is to receive in the golden age 
 which prophecy promises to the Church. The ces- 
 sation of war and intemperance alone would double 
 the property of the globe in a single generation. 
 
54 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 All that facts bear witness to at present is that 
 the drift of religious living is to better a man's 
 worldly condition. Many a country village has 
 been improved in its physical condition — in the 
 comfort of families ; in the lessening of poverty ; 
 in the peace of neighborhoods ; in the charitable- 
 ness of conversation ; in the obedience of children ; 
 in the fidelity of parents; in the refinement of 
 amusements ; in the adornment of streets ; in the 
 beautifying of cemeteries; in aspirations toward 
 literature, art, and general culture — by a thor- 
 ough renovation of its society through a powerful 
 revival of religion. No other civilizing power 
 equals that of pure religion. It never hurts a 
 man, for any of the right uses of this world, to 
 make a Christian of him. 
 
CHRISTIAN ALLIANCES WITH WICKED MEN. 
 
 And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer . . . said to king Je- 
 hoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that 
 hate the Lord? — 2 Chroi*. xix. 2. 
 
 IT is wonderful at how many points the biogra- 
 phies of the Old Testament touch modern 
 life. 
 
 "Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love 
 them that hate the Lord? " Such is the reproof 
 addressed by the prophet to the king of Judah. 
 Jehoshaphat seems to have been a good sort of 
 man, as the world goes, — better than the average 
 of his age. " Good things are found in thee," 
 is the kindly judgment of the prophet about him. 
 But he was an ambitious man. He wanted to 
 stand well with the world. He aspired to the 
 glory of a splendid reign. To promote his politi- 
 cal aspirations, he sought alliance with one of the 
 most impious princes of the time, and an apostate 
 from the true religion. . As the monarch of a theo- 
 cratic government he could hardly have done a 
 worse thing. 
 
 Jehoshaphat was a representative man, — repre- 
 sentative of a large class of good men in every 
 
 55 
 
56 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 age, who for selfish, ends choose their friends from 
 among the irreligious and the worldly. 
 
 1. The friendship of wicked men is one of the 
 most dangerous social temptations to which Chris- 
 tians are subjected. Modern life in cities illustrates 
 it with special force. 
 
 The wealth of the world is very largely in the 
 hands of men who are not the friends of Christ. 
 Wealth is a great power. It commands respect. 
 Honestly gained and properly used, it deserves 
 respect. It is not necessarily a sin to desire the 
 friendship of the rich. 
 
 In many communities intelligence and culture 
 also are possessed mainly by the irreligious. Re- 
 ligion often thrives best amongst the poor and the 
 illiterate. 
 
 "Not many rich or noble called, 
 Not many great or wise : 
 They whom God makes his kings and priests 
 Are poor in human eyes." 
 
 They who heard Christ gladly were the com- 
 mon people. " Have any of the rulers believed on 
 him ? " His chosen apostles were humble trades- 
 men and fisher-folk. 
 
 Irreligious men are often very bright men. 
 They are brilliant conversers, ready wits, racy in 
 thought and speech. Even profane men are forci- 
 ble talkers. The society of such men is often fas- 
 cinating. Fun, repartees, humorous anecdote, 
 though not forbidden by the Christian religion, it 
 
CHRISTIAN ALLIANCES WITH WICKED MEN. 57 
 
 must be conceded, are not its strong points. Irre- 
 ligion often seems to have a monopoly of them. 
 The joy of a godly life does not depend largely 
 on the risible faculties. The young, therefore, 
 often find powerful allurement to irreligious friend- 
 ships in the social brilliancy of those who are 
 living without God.- 
 
 The interests of business sometimes create a 
 similar peril. Two men once took the lease of a 
 hotel. One was a professing Christian, the other 
 not. The enterprise threatened to bankrupt them 
 both. Nothing could save them but the secret 
 and illegal sale of intoxicating drinks. The Chris- 
 tian partner's faith was not strong enough to with- 
 stand the resolute selfishness of the other. 
 
 In a higher circle of life professional success 
 often tempts a young man of aspiring mind to 
 seek to ally himself with those who love not God, 
 and care nothing for his cause. Many years ago 
 a young lawyer, who afterwards became a mem- 
 ber of the House of Representatives of the United 
 States, was a member of an obscure church in the 
 mountains of New England. So long as he re- 
 mained nestled among the Mils, he was faithful to 
 the religion of his fathers. But his professional 
 prospects required him to migrate to the metropo- 
 lis. There he found himself in a new world. 
 The faith of his childhood was unpopular. Yery 
 largely it was the faith of the poor and the middling 
 classes of society. The wealth, the culture, the 
 
58 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 social rank, the professional prestige, of the com- 
 munity, were compacted in almost solid phalanx 
 against it. Prejudice against it ran so high, that 
 the churches in which it was preached were 
 branded with opprobrious nicknames. Their wor- 
 shippers were hustled in the street. 
 
 It was a severe temptation to the youthful and 
 brilliant lawyer, who may have felt that he had 
 the making of a great statesman in his brain. 
 The necessities of his professional future — yes, 
 of his professional usefulness — seemed to compel 
 him to abandon the old faith of the Pilgrims, and 
 to seek association with the magnates of the bar 
 and bench by casting in his lot with those who 
 denied Christ. He fell before the temptation. 
 From that time to his death, his religious faith, 
 though probably not theoretically changed, was 
 clouded over, and practically buried under his 
 professional alliances. 
 
 This form of trial is often not only severe, but 
 insidious. The wiles of a crafty adversary seldom 
 create one more plausible and alluring. There 
 seems to be no escape from it, and often nothing 
 fatal in it. Men find themselves confronted by a 
 compact and insurmountable wall of circumstance, 
 which shuts them in and hedges them around. 
 As they see things, no course is left to them, but 
 to choose their friends from the secret or avowed 
 enemies to the cross of Christ. Said an excellent 
 Christian lady not long ago, "Almost my entire 
 
CHKISTIAN ALLIANCES WITH WICKED MEN. 59 
 
 circle of friends is made up of those who have no 
 sympathy with my religion. In the city where I 
 live, there are no others with whom I can associate 
 on terms of social equality." 
 
 2. Of this trial of Christian principle, it should 
 be further said, that the Christian religion requires 
 no narrow or ascetic seclusion from the world. " I 
 pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the 
 world, but that thou shouldest keep them from 
 the evil." Such was the sensible prayer of our 
 Lord for his disciples. No fanaticism here. It is 
 our chief discipline for a better world, to learn to 
 live as a good man should in this world. 
 
 A crystal is sometimes formed in the embrace 
 of a bowlder of granite. To clear it of its rough 
 enclosure, and to bring its beautiful facets to the 
 light, Nature submerges it in deep waters, shatters 
 it by tempests, and abrades it by contact with 
 stones and mud, and the rubbish of the sea. Thus 
 a redeemed soul is by the plan of God immersed 
 in the cares and toils and enticements and useful- 
 ness of a world of sin, so that by sheer resistance 
 to evil, and abrasion with depravity, it may be 
 polished to the transparent image of Him who 
 made it. 
 
 The thing which Christian principle forbids is 
 the seeking of worldly friendships and alliances 
 for selfish ends, and to the peril of religious use- 
 fulness and religious character. Every Christian's 
 good sense discerns the distinction, and acknowl- 
 edges its reasonableness. 
 
60 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT* 
 
 3. Yet the irreligious friendships of religious 
 men violate the ruling spirit of the Scriptures. A 
 deliberate invitation of this form of temptation is 
 close akin to apostasy. Gloss it over as we may, 
 — and very ingenious and winsome are the dis- 
 guises by which a deceived conscience can adorn 
 it, — gloss it over as we please, it is a policy of 
 life which starts wrong. Therefore it threatens 
 catastrophe in the end. 
 
 The Scriptures recognize but two grades of 
 caste in this world, — the good and the bad ; the 
 righteous and the wicked ; the friends of God and 
 the enemies of God. In the incisive language of 
 the New Testament, men are all either saints or 
 sinners. In the world, not of the world ; come ye 
 out from among them; be ye separate; a royal 
 priesthood; a peculiar people; strangers and pil- 
 grims on earth, — such are the mottoes by which 
 inspired wisdom indicates the followers of Christ. 
 The very being of the Church is for the purpose 
 of keeping alive and fresh in human thought that 
 old distinction between saint and sinner. Between 
 the two the great gulf is fixed. They drift asun- 
 der in this world, as they are to be kept asunder 
 in the next world. 
 
 Now, a Christian who subjects his Christian 
 faith to worldly policy in the choice of his asso- 
 ciates in life strikes right athwart the whole range 
 of scriptural command and admonition and expos- 
 tulation and example. No Christian can safely 
 do that. 
 
CHEISTIAN ALLIANCES WITH WICKED MEN. 61 
 
 The statesman to whom I have referred, with 
 all his brilliant ingenuity, did not escape the 
 apparent wrecking of his religions faith on this 
 rock. From the honr in which he deliberately 
 abandoned the religious connections of his youth, 
 the spirituality of his religious character declined. 
 He was never afterwards known to the world as 
 even a professing Christian. Though nominally 
 such, he mingled with men for years, and they 
 never knew it. He was practically a man of the 
 world, a lover of the world, an honored leader 
 of the world, worthy of all the dignities he re- 
 ceived, and more, but an alien from the people of 
 God. He lost his reverence for the Christian 
 sabbath. He forsook, for long intervals, the 
 Lord's table. Even to the laws of Christian 
 morality he became treacherous. His veracity, his 
 honesty, his temperance, his chastity, all were 
 submerged in his intense and overmastering world- 
 liness before he died. 
 
 Though, at the last, a few not very positive 
 words on his death-bed left his Christian friends 
 not utterly without hope that he died a penitent 
 believer, yet his public career of more than forty 
 years belied the hope. For the great distinctive 
 ends of Christian living and usefulness, his life 
 was a failure. It ended a blackened ruin of that 
 which had a splendid beginning, and gave magnifi- 
 cent promise for the future. 
 
 4. This suggests that entangling alliances with 
 
62 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 the world often involve an immense sacrifice of 
 Christian usefulness. 
 
 A man cannot be greatly useful as a Christian 
 without great positiveness of religious character. 
 It lies in the very nature of our religion, that a 
 man must believe it with his whole soul. He 
 must give his whole being to it. In a divided 
 heart it cannot live. One who tries the experi- 
 ment pulls down with one hand what he builds 
 up with the other. He drenches every sacred fire 
 he kindles. He does not win the world to Christ. 
 The world wins him. 
 
 Such a man is commonly a dead weight in the 
 Church. If not that, he owes what good influence 
 he has to other things than his religion. A 
 spiritual power in the Church he is not, and cannot 
 be. He never- heads a forlorn hope on God's side 
 of things. If he is even a silent looker-on in the 
 conflict, and not an active opponent of the more 
 spiritual developments of Christ's kingdom, that 
 is the best that can be hoped for from him. 
 
 Such men are very apt to be opposers of re- 
 vivals. In great awakenings they are ultra con- 
 servatives. Their instinct is to carp at or ignore 
 such movements. The enemy of souls often finds 
 in a group of such men his most efficient auxil- 
 iary. When at last death surprises them into a 
 'more truthful view of things, they often die mourn- 
 ing over a wasted and perverted life. 
 
 An old English proverb says, " He must have a 
 
CHKISTTAN ALLIANCES WITH WICKED MEN. 63 
 
 long spoon who would sup with the Devil." The 
 saddest feature in the career of such men is that 
 Satan most disastrously outwits them. They do 
 not build as they think to build. They are be- 
 guiled, hoodwinked, led blindfold, to the loss of 
 all that a child of God should hold most dear. 
 They are Samsons: mighty, it may be, in re- 
 sources of worldly prowess; great against foxes, 
 lions, bears ; but weaker than an infant in the lap 
 of Delilah, and blind captives in the prison-house 
 of Philistines. 
 
 5. Christian alliances with the wicked do not 
 command the respect of the very men for whose favor 
 they are formed. Men of the world are very keen 
 in their judgments of Christian character. They 
 know what is consistent Christian living, when 
 they see it, as well as we do. Indeed, their theo- 
 retic ideal of a Christian life is commonly more 
 exalted than that of men who are struggling to 
 realize it. No other class of men are so prompt to 
 tell us what they would do if they believed as we 
 do, as those who believe nothing. An upright and 
 downright Christian they always revere. In heart 
 they niake obeisance to him as to no other type of 
 man. Do you not know a godless man who professes 
 to have lost all faith in religion, but who makes 
 exception of some one humble Christian woman, — 
 his mother perhaps, or sister, or wife ? " If ever 
 human being gets to heaven, she will," is his tes- 
 timony. That one life keeps open to his faith the 
 celestial gates. 
 
64 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Said Walter Scott, on one occasion, to his daugh- 
 ter, — substantially, I quote from memory, — "I 
 know this world ; I have read many books ; I have 
 known many splendidly educated men in my time ; 
 but I declare to you that I have heard more lofty 
 and noble sentiments from the lips of poor, unedu- 
 cated men and women in times of trouble, than I 
 ever met with elsewhere outside of the pages of 
 the Bible." Yes, the world reveres the honest 
 principles of our religion in plain, honest lives. 
 
 By the same instinctive insight into facts, they 
 recoil with contempt when they encounter men or 
 women who sacrifice those principles to worldly 
 policy or social ambitions. They never at heart 
 trust such a man. They may use him as they do 
 other tools ; but they never love him in return, 
 because they cannot trust him. 
 
 In religion, as in other things, few things 
 command the respect of the world like courage. 
 Fidelity to honest convictions, conformity of heart 
 to the faith of the head, the struggle at least to 
 make the heart tally with the profession, the world 
 bows reverently to these things always. Men will 
 bear to be browbeaten by an act of religious fidel- 
 ity better than to be fawned upon. They tolerate 
 a fanatic sooner than a traitor. We all respect 
 a pugilist more than we do a coward. A profess- 
 ing Christian never makes a meaner blunder than 
 when he thinks to flatter wicked men, and win 
 their good-will, by trampling on his deepest con 
 victions, or ignoring his most solemn vows. 
 
 
CHKISTIAN ALLIANCES WITH WICKED MEN. 65 
 
 6. Loving those that hate God inflicts a wound 
 of great severity on the feelings of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. When a young man is choosing his life's 
 companions, Christ is looking on. When a young 
 woman is wavering between the Church of Christ 
 and the world, in her choice of the dearest friend 
 she is ever to know, Christ is watching the trem- 
 bling scales. 
 
 Every professed follower of his, Christ regards 
 as his personal friend. He loves him as if he were 
 the only friend left him. Picture his look on the 
 scared Peter. Think of him in Gethsemane say- 
 ing, " Could ye not watch with me one hour ? " 
 See him on the cross, turning his languid eyes in 
 search of his hiding disciples. Every one who 
 bears his name, he remembered and thought of 
 in that supreme hour. 
 
 To-day he longs for your friendship, my brother, 
 as if there were no other one in the universe to 
 share the gift of his life's blood. He would have 
 died for you alone, as readily as for countless mil- 
 lions. Hear him : " I was hungry, and ye gave 
 me no meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no 
 drink ; I was sick, and ye took me not in." Deeds 
 of common human kindness, such as we lavish on 
 a stranger, he longed for. He longs for them now. 
 From you, from me, from each one whom he died 
 for, he craves the human love which is so precious 
 to us all. Love is hurt if it is not loved in return. 
 
 What, then, must his feelings be when he sees 
 

 66 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 one who has been his friend, turning coldly from 
 him, and choosing in his place the friendship of 
 the world which crucified him, and which would 
 crucify him again ? My brother, it is not so much 
 that you are losing Christ, as that Christ is losing 
 you. It is from Calvary that the voice comes now 
 to each one of us in our solitude : " Shouldest thou 
 love them that hate the Lord ? " 
 
HONORING GOD'S HOUSE. 
 
 And it came to pass after this, that Joash was minded to 
 repair the house of the Lord. . . . And he gathered together the 
 priests and the Levites, and said to them, Go out unto the cities 
 of Judah, and gather of all Israel money to repair the house of 
 your God from year to year, and see that ye hasten the matter. 
 ... So the workmen wrought, and the work was perfected by 
 them, and they set the house of God in his state, and strength- 
 ened it. — 2 Chkon. xxiv. 4, 5, 13. 
 
 IT is popular in our day to decry as superstition 
 that devout instinct which reveres a Christian 
 temple as God's peculiar dwelling-place. Cold- 
 blooded men say, " It is no more than any other 
 mass of bricks and mortar." Poetry, too, has 
 much to say of worshipping God in fields and 
 forests and mountains and valleys, and on the sea. 
 A good deal of watery sentiment has been ex- 
 pended by sabbath-breakers on " Nature's first 
 temple." 
 
 The undoubted truth of God's omnipresence is 
 about all the truth there is underneath this popular 
 twaddle. Let us see, then, what reason we have 
 for regarding a place of Christian worship with 
 peculiar reverence. 
 
 1. The biblical history of the idea of a place where 
 
68 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 God is worshipped represents it as one of peculiar 
 and awful sanctity. The development of the con- 
 ception of " the Lord's house " in the Scriptures 
 is deeply interesting. The most ancient hint of it 
 in any known literature is found in the Book of 
 Job. " Nature's first temple " was as magnificent 
 then as now; yet the afflicted patriarch laments, 
 " Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I 
 might come even to his seat!" He longs to fix 
 upon some spot where he can find God, — some place 
 where the awful distance between him and God 
 shall be lessened. Just because God is every- 
 where, he seems, to himself, to find him nowhere. 
 
 This is human nature. Call it infirmity if you 
 will : still it is human nature. The intuitions of 
 the race have acknowledged it. Groves, moun- 
 tains, grottoes, caves, streams, valleys, plains, lakes, 
 as well as altars and temples, have been conse- 
 crated as the abodes of gods. As we instinctively 
 clothe our conception of God in human form, and 
 seem to hear his voice, dread his eye, see his hand, 
 hear his footfall, so we intuitively assign to him 
 some place which we approach with awe. Is this 
 all falsehood? It is not like God to make the 
 soul of man a liar in its very nature. 
 
 " Nature's first temple " was as grand and impos- 
 ing in Abraham's day as now : yet he went three- 
 days' journey with his costly sacrifice to Mount 
 Moriah; and there, in a definite and becoming 
 place y he found and worshipped God. Isaac was 
 
69 
 
 fond of walking in the fields at eventide ; but he 
 built an altar at Beersheba, because God there 
 appeared to him, and blessed him. The heavens 
 were resplendent with the constellations of a 
 Syrian sky when Jacob spent a night in the open 
 plain. The ground was his couch, and a stone 
 was his pillow. But he discovered before morning 
 that God was there ; and he called the place Beth- 
 el, and said, " How dreadful is this place ! This 
 is none other than the house of God ; and this is 
 the gate of heaven." Again he spends a solitary 
 night under the open sky, and his dreams are 
 troubled. He seems to be struggling with an 
 august and mysterious stranger till the daybreak. 
 And he calls that place " Peniel ; " for, says he, 
 " I have seen God face to face." 
 
 Moses is keeping flocks near Mount Horeb, and 
 a bush on fire turns him aside. He thinks it " a 
 great sight," for he discovers that God is there. 
 He hears a voice saying, " Draw not nigh hither : 
 put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place 
 whereon thou standest is holy ground." Again, 
 when Moses leads the people out of Egypt, not 
 every man's tent is God's dwelling, but a pillar of 
 cloud and of fire leads the march, and God is in 
 the pillar. Arrived at Sinai, amidst thunder and 
 lightning and tempest and fire, and " a voice of 
 words," God is found high up in the mountain 
 and the cloud. Moses goes up into the thick 
 darkness where God is. There he receives the 
 
70 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 pattern of the tabernacle, and that becomes for 
 generations the peculiar mercy-seat of God. The 
 people fear exceedingly, and tremble, and cry out, 
 " Let not God speak with us, lest we die ! " 
 
 At length the kingdom of Judah reaches its 
 golden age; and the temple rises in far-famed 
 splendor. God says of it, "I have hallowed this 
 place, to put my name there forever." The tem- 
 ple of Solomon was the original ideal of a house 
 of God, realized in architecture unrivalled in that 
 age. A whole nation poured out its treasures in 
 the building. The wisest of monarchs tasked 
 the skill of the most ingenious artificers, and the 
 genius of the most accomplished architects of the 
 times. It was the Jewish St. Peter's. Ophir sent 
 its pure gold, and Lebanon its magnificent cedars. 
 Jerusalem and Tyre united their navies as trans- 
 port ships. " The house of God " must be made 
 " exceeding magnifical, of fame and glory through- 
 out all countries." So hallowed was the place, 
 and so sacred the work, that it must proceed in 
 hushed stillness. Because God was to dwell there, 
 " neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron," 
 must be " heard in the house while it was in build- 
 ing." It must grow in silence, as forests grow. 
 
 " No workman's steel nor ponderous axes rung J 
 Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung." 
 
 When finished it was one of the wonders of the 
 world. The reporters of the age could not tell 
 
HONORING GOD'S HOUSE. 71 
 
 the half of it. Sheba's queen was abashed as she 
 approached it, and " there was no more spirit in 
 her." 
 
 Such is the biblical conception of the sacredness 
 of the house of God. " The holy place ; the holy 
 hill; the place where mine honor dwelleth; the 
 gate of heaven : " so the Bible describes in brief 
 its unutterable sanctity. 
 
 2. The Bible represents the building and repairing 
 of the Lord's house as acts of eminent piety. The 
 historian says of Joash in the context, that he 
 was a godly man as long as he had the guidance 
 of the celebrated priest Jehoiada. Yet the only 
 thing thought worthy of mention in that part of 
 his reign is, that " he was minded to repair the 
 house of the Lord." 
 
 It was counted an act of signal devotion in 
 David, that he was minded " to build the house 
 of the Lord." Only the awful sacredness of the 
 work forbade David's doing it, because he had 
 been a man of war. It was incongruous with the 
 divine idea, that a military chief, who had shed 
 much blood, should set his hand to a work so holy. 
 The dignity of a great civilian, and the most highly 
 cultured monarch of the age, was better suited to 
 its hallowed purpose. Of Solomon's long and 
 splendid reign, the erection of the temple was the 
 crowning deed, renowned alike as a token of his 
 wisdom and his piety. The chief object of one 
 entire book of the Bible — the Book of Nehemiah 
 — is to record the building of the second temple. 
 
72 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Passing on to later times, the most significant 
 token of the divine idea of the temple where God 
 dwelt is found in the fact that our Lord accepted 
 it as the symbol of his own sacred body. "He 
 spake of the temple of his body." His resurrec- 
 tion, the crowning event of his sinless life, was a 
 rebuilding of a temple. When the apostles also 
 would express to Christian believers the most ex- 
 alted conception of their consecrated character in 
 God's sight, the form of the admonition is, u Ye 
 are the temple of God. Whoso defileth the tem- 
 ple of God, Mm shall God destroy." 
 
 3. In perfect keeping with the biblical idea on 
 this subject, it is the instinct of a devout heart, every- 
 ivliere and alivays, to revere the house in which Giod 
 is 'publicly worshipped. Like every other vital 
 principle of religion, it may degenerate into' super- 
 stition. But it is natural to the spirit of worship. 
 Catholic Christians are right in their reverent 
 regard for their churches and utensils of service. 
 If Protestant Christians have lost the ancient spirit 
 of the Church in this respect, they are none the 
 better for it. 
 
 An incident occurred in Boston not long ago, 
 which made me wish that all our churches were 
 open for daily and hourly individual worship. A 
 poor emigrant-woman, with her helpless children, 
 apparently just from the ship in which they had 
 come to a strange land, saw a Protestant church, 
 on the spire of which was the familiar cross. She 
 
73 
 
 thought it a temple of her own faith. But, as its 
 doors were closed, she could not enter ; and she 
 devoutly knelt with her children on the pavement, 
 and offered silent prayer. She was a stranger in a 
 strange land. Strange faces and sounds which she 
 could not understand were all around her; but 
 there was one thing which was familiar and dear 
 to her, — the cross, emblematic of our common 
 Redeemer. She could understand that. I seemed 
 to hear her voice as her heart flowed out in grate- 
 ful prayer for herself and children in the new life 
 which they were beginning, or in thanksgiving for 
 their safety from the perils of the sea. Was that 
 superstition ? I could not call it so. ♦ 
 
 I once sat in the shadow of one of the arches 
 of the Colosseum at Rome, in the autumnal moon- 
 light, and alone. That ruin has long since been 
 consecrated as a place of Christian worship. A 
 cross stands in the centre, around which a crowd 
 of worshippers is often gathered on a Friday, lis- 
 tening to very earnest, and by no means unchris- 
 tian, preaching. As I sat there trying to picture 
 the scenes of the early martyrdoms which had oc- 
 curred there, when Christian captives were thrown 
 to wild beasts amidst the ferocious plaudits of a 
 hundred thousand spectators in the galleries above, 
 a solitary peasant came through; and bending 
 under his burden of fagots, and unconscious that 
 any human eye was looking on, he knelt and of- 
 fered silent prayer before the cross. The cross 
 
74 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 was nothing to my Puritan iconoclasm ; and the 
 promise on the placard appended to it, of deliver- 
 ance from I do not know how much time in pur- 
 gatory to any one who shall imprint a kiss there, 
 saddened me. But I could not judge by my se- 
 verer faith the impulsive devotion of the poor 
 Italian. I wanted to grasp his hand as that of a 
 Christian brother. He was expressing in his way 
 the same instinct of religious reverence which I 
 felt in looking upon the spot where thousands of 
 Christian martyrs had sealed their fate in blood. 
 Who shall judge between us, and say that my mood 
 was religion, and his superstition ? 
 
 It may have been an extreme of this instinct 
 which led Dr. Samuel Johnson to lift his hat rev- 
 erently whenever he passed a church in the streets 
 of London ; but better that than the covered head 
 and the laugh and the jest often seen and heard in 
 our churches. That is a becoming, because a per- 
 fectly sensible, act of reverence, in which worship- 
 pers of the Church of England bow the head in 
 silent prayer at the beginning of public religious 
 service. Our plainer forms of worship would be 
 improved by the usage. 
 
 4. The associations of the Lord's house are an 
 incalculable help to the culture of religious character. 
 We are creatures of association. We are often 
 moved more profoundly than we think by our 
 surroundings. The recollection of our experiences 
 in the house of God may be among the most 
 
HONORING GOD'S HOUSE. 75 
 
 precious treasures that memory hoards. The 
 prayers we have heard there ; the old hymns of the 
 fathers, some of them redolent with the incense 
 of a thousand years; the sermons which have 
 moved us ; the Scriptures read and expounded ; 
 certain texts which were new to us and most 
 timely ; the light of the setting sun streaming in 
 at western windows when it seemed like the glory 
 of God's countenance ; the seat where the mother 
 sat holding fast our childish hand, or the corner 
 from which the father turned his loving eye upon 
 us in mild reproof : the pews from which sainted 
 men and women have gone to their rest, — oh, 
 there are holy forces in such reminiscences ! They 
 are "golden vials full of odors." They come back 
 to us in after-years, "trailing clouds of glory." 
 They make the very walls of the house of God 
 eloquent. The stone cries out of the wall, and 
 the beam out of the timber answers it. The very 
 silence of the place on a week-day is more potent 
 than angels' voices. O thou homely "meeting- 
 house " of my youth, God bless thee ! If I forget 
 thee, let my right hand forget her cunning ; if I 
 do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the 
 roof of my mouth ! 
 
 An eminent statesman of our country, whose 
 funeral was attended by reverent thousands, once 
 boasted flippantly that he " had not seen the inside 
 of a church in twelve years." Well, he had sought 
 other things, and he had his reward. But his 
 
76 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 character, through his long public career, showed 
 the want of just those qualities which devout at- 
 tendance on the services of religion would have 
 tended to develop. He was irreverent, unchar- 
 itable, selfish, intemperate in speech, one-sided in 
 policy, a man of few friends, whom all men feared 
 but few could love. And, so far as men could see, 
 — God knows how truthfully, — he died as the 
 fool clieth. Not one word of Christian consolation 
 relieved his last agonies. He uttered not one 
 word which could indicate whether he believed in 
 God or not, whether he had a soul or not, whether 
 he thought of or cared for the world to which he 
 was going. An educated Greek who had never 
 heard of the New Testament might have died as 
 calmly and as rationally. Socrates died more ra- 
 tionally. Many a savage in our Western wilds has 
 died chanting his tribal cleath-song, with more evi- 
 dence of fitness to meet the Great Spirit than that 
 man over whose bier thousands went through the 
 forms of magnificent mourning. " I had rather be 
 a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to 
 dwell in the tents of wickedness." 
 
 5. A Christian church is the most significant em- 
 blem we have of heaven. " This is the gate of 
 heaven," said the astonished patriarch. He had 
 seen angels. Heaven seemed very near to him. 
 
 There was reason in the simple faith of our 
 fathers, which interpreted these words so literally 
 that they longed to build their tombs underneath 
 
HONOKING GOD'S HOUSE. 77 
 
 the churches where they and their fathers wor- 
 shipped, or in the cheerful " God's acre " around 
 them. They wanted to be close at hand when the 
 morning dawned. 
 
 It was one of the strange omissions which at- 
 tracted the wonder of St. John in the New Jeru- 
 salem, that he saw no temple there. But he adds 
 as a reason, ample in his view, that the Lord God 
 Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. Let 
 us not lift irreverently the veil from these words ; 
 yet they must mean so much as this, — that in 
 some mysterious way the ineffable Godhead will 
 do for us there what the material temples of our 
 worship do here. These are the antechamber to 
 that awful yet precious Presence. 
 
 It is an inspiring thought also, that the most 
 intelligible conception the Scriptures give us of 
 the occupations of the heavenly life is that of 
 churchly song. The service of song is the one 
 grand hint which our embodied spirits can com- 
 prehend of what heaven is, and what we are to do 
 there. Active as we doubtless shall be beyond all 
 conceptions of our tired faculties here ; migrating, 
 it may be, in chariots of eager thought, to distant 
 and invisible portions of the universe, — yet all 
 that we do shall be done in the spirit of such ecs- 
 tatic gladness, that we shall live in a state of holy 
 and triumphant song. Melody shall express, more 
 than any other one idea, our doing and our being. 
 
 For one, I cannot rid myself of the hope, too, 
 
78 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 that we shall sometimes — perhaps on great anni- 
 versaries commemorative of earthly histories — 
 literally sing the very psalms and hymns which 
 are so often the " gate of heaven " to us here. It 
 would be sadder parting with this world than we 
 hope it will be when our time comes, if we must 
 forget these ancient lyrics, or find our tongues 
 dumb when we would utter them. How can we 
 live without them ? Are they not a part of our very 
 being ? Take them away, with all the experiences 
 of which they are the symbol, and what would 
 there be left of us to carry into heaven ? 
 
 Some lines, at least, of the hymn " Rock of ages, 
 cleft for me," and " My faith looks up to thee," 
 and " Not all the blood of beasts," and " Nearer, 
 my. God, to thee," and " Just as I am, without one 
 plea," — must we part with them ? It would be 
 like parting with the recognition of friends in 
 heaven. 
 
 What disembodied life, if there is such a thing, 
 may be, I do not know. To my earth-bound 
 thought it is what I imagine the gorgeous pinions 
 and sportive flights of the butterfly are to the 
 caterpillar. But one thing I hope and pray for : 
 Of old friends, and old scriptures, and old hymns, 
 and old litanies, and old churches where the 
 fathers worshipped their God and mine, Lord, 
 keep my memory green forever ! 
 
PRESUMPTION IN THE WORSHIP OF GOD. 
 
 But when [Uzziah] was strong, his heart was lifted up to his 
 destruction: for he transgressed against the Lord his God, and 
 went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar 
 of incense. . . . And Azariah the priest went in after him, and 
 with him fourscore priests of the Lord, that were valiant men: 
 . . . And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It 
 appertaineth not to thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, 
 but to the priests, the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to 
 burn incense. Go out of the sanctuary, for thou hast trespassed. 
 . . . Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to 
 burn incense : and while he was wroth with the priests, the lep- 
 rosy even rose up in his forehead before the priests in the house 
 of the Lord, from beside the incense altar. . . . And Azariah the 
 chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and, behold, he 
 was leprous in his forehead, and they thrust him out from thence ; 
 yea, himself hasted also to go out, because the Lord had smitten 
 him. — 2 Chkon. xxvi. 16-20. 
 
 THE punishment of sin by bodily disease is 
 commonly long in coming. It is one of the 
 apparent after-thoughts of retribution in which God 
 clearly expresses his accumulated anger against sin 
 long ago committed, and perhaps forgotten. 
 
 The case of Uzziah is one of the few instances 
 recorded in the Scriptures of instant and severe 
 punishment of the sin of irreverence and presump- 
 tion. God does not always punish sin in the same 
 way. The sin is the same, age after age. It is 
 
 79 
 
80 STUDIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 marvellous how human nature repeats itself, but 
 God's treatment of the wrong is infinitely diversi- 
 fied. That irreverent worshippers are not all lep- 
 ers, is no proof that they are more pleasing to God 
 now than when the Judsean king was rebuked by 
 that loathsome disease. 
 
 Let us note some of the ways in which the guilt 
 of presumption in the worship of God is often in- 
 curred in modern times. 
 
 1. It ought not to provoke a smile when the 
 first is named as that of sleeping in G-ooVs house. 
 We must not be severe — for God is not so — in 
 judging of the aged and the infirm and the diseased, 
 whose worn-out powers yield to the soporific at- 
 mosphere, and perhaps the more soporific sermon, 
 on a hot Sunday in July. One of the most touch- 
 ing illustrations of God's charitable judgment of 
 physical infirmity is our Lord's plaintive inquiry 
 of his sleepy disciples in the garden, in which 
 there is only a low undertone of reproof: " Could 
 ye not watch with me one hour?" Think of 
 falling asleep in Gethsemane ! Could you or I 
 have done it ? Yet Christ was very gentle in his 
 thought of his weary disciples ; and so he is of us, 
 if age or disease renders sleep irresistible. Certain 
 insomniac patients have been known, who for the 
 most part could sleep only in the house of God. 
 Not to such is the infirmity charged as sin. 
 
 But when no such excuse exists, when sleep is 
 welcomed by the hale worshipper as a means of 
 
PRESUMPTION IN THE WORSHIP OF GOD. 81 
 
 whiling away an irksome hour, few things of the 
 silent sort can be more impertinent to the most high 
 Godo Should we sleep anywhere else where God 
 should make his awful presence known ? Should 
 we have slept through the earthquake at Sinai? 
 Shall we sleep in the day of judgment ? Even in 
 our death-hour do we not hope at least to have all 
 our faculties about us and wide awake? The case 
 is too plain for argument. That man coolly insults 
 God, who needlessly composes himself to slumber, 
 when professing to be a suppliant for mercy at his 
 feet. 
 
 2. Similar is the presumption of neglecting to 
 participate in divine worship when present in God's 
 house. Negative sins are sometimes most intensely 
 sinful. Heedless sins are sometimes most fearfully 
 fatal. 
 
 If you were one of a delegation to the Court of 
 St. James, for the presentation of a petition, and 
 were admitted to audience with the Queen, should 
 you think it becoming to the dignity of the royal 
 presence to neglect the business in hand, and to 
 wander about the apartment curiously, while your 
 chairman was presenting the petition in your name ? 
 Yet that which would be only a breach of etiquette 
 there, is a much graver offence in the house of 
 God. A listless and wandering mind roving like 
 fool's eyes, in the temple of worship, is a most in- 
 solent indignity to the King of kings. 
 
 Look at it in another light. When the Rev. Dr. 
 
82 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Armstrong was wrecked with a large number of 
 fellow-passengers on one of the Sound steamers, 
 many years ago, his last act was to gather his 
 doomed companions together in the shattered cabin, 
 and, while the ship was thumping to pieces on the 
 rocks, he committed their souls and his own to 
 God in prayer. It was his last chance, and theirs, 
 to pray this side of eternity. Men who had not 
 prayed for years prayed then, with agony of desire. 
 If you had been one of that group, would you have 
 stood or sat in silent contempt of the solemnity ? 
 Yet you may he doing just that, — flinging insult 
 *in the face of God on the threshold of eternity, 
 and tossing to the winds your last chance of prayer, 
 — every time you listen to public worship in which 
 you do not reverently join. 
 
 There is yet another aspect of it. Like all other 
 presumptuous sins, the hearing of prayer without 
 participating in the service has a peculiarly indu- 
 rating effect on the conscience. The habit deadens 
 all the moral sensibilities auxiliary to conscience. 
 The sense of gratitude is dulled if thanksgiving to 
 God falls on the ear without awakening response 
 of heart. The susceptibility of penitence is blunt- 
 ed if confession of sin is offered in the hearing of 
 an unanswering soul. The sense of honor is be- 
 numbed if one incurs the meanness of listening 
 unmoved to an acknowledgment of God's claims 
 upon one's love. A latent sense of moral propriety 
 is deadened when reverent speech, look, attitudes, 
 
PRESUMPTION IN THE WORSHIP OF GOD. 83 
 
 are expressed around one who gazes in stolid va- 
 cuity of thought and torpor of feeling. A delicate 
 sense of moral beauty is drugged by the hearing 
 of holy song to which the heart is apathetic. Men 
 rarely appreciate how fearfully they debase and 
 deform the most godlike faculties of their being, 
 by the quickly growing habit of unresponsive 
 listening to the services of God's house. 
 
 There is an insidious disease which slowly and 
 secretly turns vital organs of the body to bone. 
 It begins by ossifying little fragments of tissue 
 here and there. No medical skill can arrest its 
 progress. Nature is perverted from her healthy 
 processes of assimilation and nutrition, to the crea- 
 tion in the system of nothing but bone. What 
 should be life to muscle and nerve and sinew and 
 arteries, turns to solid and lifeless bone. At 
 length the heart is reached, and vital parts of it 
 become bone, and its beautiful work of pulsation, 
 by which life is sent in red streams to the very 
 tips of the fingers, ceases, and death ensues. Such 
 is the moral induration which the sensibilities of a 
 soul suffer, when long appealed to by the services 
 of religion, to which it will not give back a throb 
 of responsive feeling. . Ossification of heart may 
 have a double meaning. 
 
 3. Presumption in worship may take the form 
 of frequenting the house of God as a place of enter- 
 tainment merely. " Thou art to them as a very 
 lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and 
 
84 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 can play well on an instrument ; for they hear thy 
 words, and do them not." Thus the Lord said to 
 the prophet Ezekiel; and it is a truthful record 
 of the reception which multitudes give to faithful 
 and eloquent preaching. Often the auditorium of 
 God's house is turned end for end. It is not the 
 pulpit, but the organ and the operatic quartette, 
 which entertain the wondering listeners. 
 
 In a certain church the most costly music that 
 money can buy is furnished to the worshippers. 
 The same "stars" appear there on Sunday that 
 stood the evening before on the stage of the opera 
 or the theatre. An entrance-fee is charged at the 
 door. People flock thither as to a place of re- 
 ligious entertainment. Many of them profess no 
 other motive. The sermon, the prayer, the scrip- 
 tural lesson, are but appendages to the perform- 
 ances of the operatic troupe. Is that worship? 
 Can God be pleased with it? "My house shall 
 be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it 
 a den of thieves." Is it any more a sin to sell a 
 dove in the temple than to sell a song ? The only 
 instance in which our Lord gave way to violence 
 in his holy indignation was at the sight of the 
 desecration of the sanctuary. Would he not find 
 use for the whip of small cords if he should wan- 
 der into certain churches in our day ? 
 
 4. We are guilty of presumptuous sin in wor- 
 ship, if we endeavor to conceal from ourselves 
 hidden sin under cover of scrupulous devotion. In 
 
PRESUMPTION IN THE WORSHIP OF GOD. 85 
 
 the time of the judges of Israel there lived a man, 
 Micah by name, who stole eleven hundred shekels 
 of silver. He built him an idol with a part of it, 
 thus " consecrating it to the Lord " as he thought. 
 He was an idolater and a thief. His conscience 
 pricked him. So, to make every, thing sure, he 
 hired a young Levite to be his household chaplain. 
 " Now," said he, " the Lord will do me good, see- 
 ing that I have a Levite to my priest." That 
 was a semi-barbarous age. The trick of the thiev- 
 ing rascal seems transparent. We marvel that 
 even an old half-civilized Jew could juggle him- 
 self with it. But are there no such self-cheated 
 worshippers in our times ? By more ingenious 
 devices perhaps, and in more recondite twists of 
 conscience, yet not a whit less impiously towards 
 God, we may make our very fidelity to God's 
 house, and the zeal of our worship, a cover to hid- 
 den sin which we are not willing to abandon, and 
 therefore not willing to see. 
 
 A recent celebrated forger in New York was 
 one of the most faithful attendants upon the wor- 
 ship of a Christian sanctuary. For years, while 
 he was setting his hand to the deeds for which he 
 •now lies in the penitentiary, he was repeating 
 every sabbath the prayers of an ancient church ; 
 singing the songs which the voices of martyrs had 
 hallowed ; giving freely of his stolen goods to the 
 benevolences of God's people ; and, as he seems to 
 have believed, loving rather to do deeds of charity 
 
86 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 than to hoard gold. It would be just like man, if 
 that poor man really persuaded himself that his re- 
 ligious devotions would somehow offset his crimes. 
 Yes : that is man as he is by nature. Such are we 
 all, but by the grace of God. Our very consciences 
 become tortuous and serpentine under the wiles 
 of sin, till we verily think we can mock God with 
 impunity. Oh, how idiotic we become when we 
 make Satan our ally ! 
 
 5. We are guilty of presumptuous worship when 
 ive offer to Grod services in which any essential truth 
 of GrooTs being is denied or ignored. A celebrated 
 preacher of " another gospel," recently deceased, 
 has published as a part of the " truth as it is in 
 Jesus," as he understood it, the following frag- 
 ments : " I take not the Bible for my master, 
 nor even Jesus of Nazareth. . . . He is my best 
 historic ideal of human greatness; not without 
 errors, and I presume of course not without sins. 
 For men without sins exist in the dreams of girls. 
 You and I never saw such a one, and we never 
 shall." Let us think kindly of the erring one who 
 has gone to a world where the " Lamb that was 
 slain " sits as judge of the living and the dead. 
 He has discovered before this time who and what 
 the Lord Jesus Christ is. He has learned what 
 that means, " Who is the brightness of his glory 
 and the express image of his person." But can 
 God ever have been pleased with worship which 
 denied his triune being; with prayer which as- 
 
 
PRESUMPTION IN THE WORSHIP OF GOD. 87 
 
 sumed that the Lord of glory was a sinner ; with 
 songs of praise in which the claims of Him who 
 " was with God, and was God," were ignored ? 
 . How God will deal in eternity with honest in- 
 fidelity, if there be such a thing in the strictest and 
 final analysis of the human heart, we may safely 
 leave to him. I do not know, and do not wish to 
 know. But it becomes us who believe with all 
 our souls that Jesus Christ is indeed the Lord of 
 glory, " very God of very God," and that in him 
 we have an infinite and eternal and sinless Saviour, 
 to beware how we offer, or seem to offer, worship 
 which denies him his place on the throne of the 
 universe. The place of worship where he is thus 
 denied is no place for us. Prayer offered other- 
 wise than in his name is not prayer to us. What- 
 ever it may be to those who honestly offer it, to us 
 it cannot be worship of the true God. We kindle 
 unhallowed fire on a strange altar if we thus seek 
 communion with the Most High. Our fellowship 
 is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. 
 
 Even in our own usages of prayer, and in our 
 own sanctuaries, we need to be most watchful of 
 our moods, lest we pray as a regenerate heathen 
 might pray, who had never heard of Christ; as 
 Socrates and Plato, for aught we know, may 
 have prayed; with no hearty recognition of the 
 merits of Christ as our only ground of approach 
 to the throne of grace. A redeemed sinner, who 
 believes that he is redeemed, who knows that he 
 
88 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 has been bought with the precious blood of Christ, 
 commits an act of fearful presumption if he ever 
 lapses into what may, for distinction's sake, be 
 called unchristian prayer. In what other form 
 more insolent to the most high God can he take 
 God's name in vain ? 
 
 
FIDELITY TO THE RELIGION OF A GODLY 
 ANCESTRY. 
 
 And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in 
 the ways of his father David, and sought not unto Baalim; hut 
 sought to the Lord God of his father, and walked in his com- 
 mandments. . . . Therefore the Lord stablished the kingdom in 
 his hand; . . . and he had riches and honor in abundance. — 
 2 Chkon. xvii. 3-5. 
 
 KING JEHOSHAPHAT was the son of a 
 pious father. The chief fact about him 
 which the Bible emphasizes is, that he was faithful 
 to that father's instructions, and followed his ex- 
 ample. " He sought to the Lord God of his father, 
 and walked in his commandments." He was also 
 the child of other godly ancestors, going far back 
 to the beginning of the royal line. " God was 
 with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the first 
 ways of his father David." 
 
 In the religion of the Old Testament, much is 
 made of family descent. A favorite title, by 
 which God declared himself to his ancient people, 
 was, " The God of thy fathers." Moses at the 
 Red Sea sang, " The Lord is my father's God, 
 and I will exalt him." King Hezekiah made it 
 his plea for the pardon of his people : " The good 
 
 89 
 
90 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to 
 seek the Lord God of his fathers." Daniel prays, 
 " I thank thee, O thou God of my fathers." Solo- 
 mon at the dedication of the temple prays, " The 
 Lord our God be with us as he was with our 
 fathers." Moses, predicting the calamities which 
 should come upon the nation in the distant fu- 
 ture, imagines the lookers-on as asking, " What 
 meaneth the heat of this great anger ? " And he 
 replies, " Men shall say, Because they have for- 
 saken the covenant of the Lord God of their 
 fathers." 
 
 Yes, in the theory of religion and its blessings 
 in the Old Testament, the glory of the children is 
 their fathers. One topic suggested by the present 
 lesson is that of fidelity to the faith and example of 
 a pious ancestry. Observe : — 
 
 1. It is an unspeakable blessing to have been born 
 in the line of a Christian parentage. "What lan- 
 guage can express the thanksgivings of thousands 
 of us for our Christian mothers ? Do not many of 
 us owe as much to the firmness and the prayers 
 of Christian fathers? How many of us could 
 have borne, without a wreck of character, the 
 temptations of early youth, but for the hallowed 
 restraints of a Christian home? The voice of 
 family prayer is that of a guardian angel in a 
 multitude of homes. 
 
 Much more than godly instruction and exam- 
 ple is involved in the blessing. By a mysterious 
 
FIDELITY TO RELIGION. 91 
 
 law of God's government, tendencies to character 
 spring from the line of natural descent. Quali- 
 ties of mind, natural sensibilities, the fineness of 
 conscience, the very make of the soul, in which 
 the elements of voluntary character germinate, 
 come to us by no choice of ours. It is a great 
 thing to have had that fountain of our moral being 
 purified and vitalized by the grace of God. 
 
 The purest blood this world has ever known is 
 that of a Christian ancestry. It outranks all 
 other aristocracies. Descent from kings and em- 
 perors bears no comparison with it. Yes, William 
 Cowper, thou art right : — 
 
 "My boast is not that I deduce my birth 
 From loins enthroned, the rulers of the earth; 
 But higher far my proud pretensions rise, — 
 The son of parents passed into the skies." 
 
 The length of the line of Christian inheritance 
 is in many cases a reduplication of the blessing. 
 Blessed above princes of the blood royal is a 
 fellow-townsman of mine, who is the descendant, 
 in the eighth generation, from a well-known Eng- 
 lish martyr, and the golden cord of whose godly 
 heritage has never once in all that time been 
 broken. 
 
 It is an impressive thought, what an accumula- 
 tion of prayer surrounds an infant at its birth in 
 such a line ! It was a favorite habit of the Pil- 
 grim Fathers, to pray for their posterity to the end 
 
92 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 of time. If "their angels do always behold the 
 face of my Father which is in heaven," a convoy 
 of angels must herald the advent of such an infant 
 upon its earthly career. What a different thing is 
 the probation of such a child from that of one 
 who bears in his very blood the virus of a dozen 
 generations of vice and pollution ! 
 
 Probably in no other nation on the globe are 
 there so many as in our own of such Christian 
 families, who trace back their lineage through 
 centuries of prayer and godly living. Says a 
 historian of the early settlement of this country, 
 " God sifted three kingdoms, that he might send 
 choice spirits to people this continent." Many of 
 us are living in grooves of spiritual blessing, fixed 
 by answered prayer a thousand years before we 
 were born. An eminent Christian of my acquaint- 
 ance used to thank God daily for concealed bless- 
 ings. Chief among such secret gifts is the shadowy 
 hand of godly ancestors, stretched forth across the 
 ages in benediction on our heads. 
 
 2. The religion of our fathers, because it is such, 
 has a strong presumptive claim upon our faith. The 
 presumption may be balanced by opposing evi- 
 dence ; but, till it is thus neutralized, it exists in 
 the case of every man. It is no dishonor to a 
 young man to believe in the religion of his father. 
 It shows no want of independence to be a Chris- 
 tian because one's father was a Christian. To 
 believe as my father believed, to trust the faitJi 
 
FIDELITY TO RELIGION. 93 
 
 which my mother sang to me, to cling to the 
 Christian hopes which first bloomed at the fireside 
 of my childhood's home, to rest in my inherited 
 religion, and follow the example of my godly 
 parents, is no nnmanly thing. God forbid that I 
 should glory in breaking loose from such sacred 
 ties ! Said a clergyman of my acquaintance, " I 
 have been young, and now am old, and I have 
 spent my life in the study of the religions of the 
 world ; but I have yet to find a stronger proof of 
 the truth of the Christian Scriptures than I dis- 
 covered forty years ago in the character and life 
 of my father and mother." 
 
 That pride of intellect which a young man some- 
 times feels, which makes him think that nothing 
 in religious faith can be settled by the past, that 
 he must therefore inquire de novo, as if no expe- 
 rience had taught his ancestry any thing, is a very 
 weak and narrow affection of the brain. No gen- 
 eration exists, in God's plan, for nothing. Every 
 generation of Christian believers adds something 
 to the reasonable faith of the world in Christ, as 
 truly as every generation of astronomers furnishes 
 data for the calculations of astronomers who fol- 
 low them. I have no more reason for rejecting the 
 Christian faith of my father because I have not 
 investigated every thing about it, than I have for 
 going back to the Ptolemaic theory of the stars 
 because I am not an expert in the Copernican 
 astronomy. 
 
94 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 3. It is one of the divine laws of the increase of 
 the Church, that the children of Christian parents 
 should themselves be Christians. The conversion 
 of this world to Christ is not to be brought about 
 by revivals of religion alone. There are laws of 
 grace as well as laws of nature. There is a law 
 of Christian nurture, by which, through the grace 
 of God, every Christian family becomes a nursery 
 of the Church of Christ. Such is God's obvious 
 design. Character is not transferable from father 
 to son, but the elements out of which character 
 grows are so. Religion once rooted in a Christian 
 family should achieve so much conservation of 
 Christian forces. A moral dike is thus built up 
 against the floods of depravity, behind which 
 children may be safe, as Holland is from the 
 inroads of the sea. 
 
 There is no good reason why our children should 
 not grow up into Christian faith, instead of being 
 wrenched into it by moral convulsions after years 
 of riot in depravity. Plant an acorn anywhere, 
 and anyhow, in good soil, and it will grow upward, 
 and not downward. By the law of its being it 
 seeks the sun. So a child set in the groundwork 
 of a Christian household, and nurtured in its holy 
 light and atmosphere, should by the very condi- 
 tions of his existence grow up towards God and 
 heaven. 
 
 Many do thus grow up Christians. Many Chris- 
 tian men and women cannot remember the day 
 
FIDELITY TO RELIGION. 95 
 
 when they did not love God and trust in Christ. 
 A Christian childhood may be reasonably expected 
 to be free from flagrant vices. The very birth- 
 hour may be the hour of holy regeneration. Chris- 
 tian training may be the medium of sanctifying 
 grace. By this law of religious nurture, as well 
 as by that of great awakenings from a godless 
 life, it is God's design that the Church shall grow, 
 till it covers all the families of the redeemed. 
 One such family is in God's plan the fountain of 
 a pure stream which is to widen and deepen till it 
 flows in holy majesty into eternity. 
 
 4. The imitation of a godly ancestry is peculiarly 
 pleasing to God. It is everywhere so represented 
 in the Scriptures. Says St. Paul to Timothy, " I 
 thank God when I call to remembrance the un- 
 feigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in 
 thy grandmother Lois and thy mother Eunice." 
 The transmission of godliness to the third genera- 
 tion is here the theme of thanksgiving. 
 
 God is pleased with honor paid to his own laws. 
 When he has given to a young man the inestimable 
 blessing of a Christian parentage, he looks to see 
 the blessing recognized. It is a joy to Christ to 
 see a youth treading in the steps of a Christian 
 father, and praying to old age the prayers taught 
 by a Christian mother. Such a life honors God's 
 mode of procedure. It is the supreme form of 
 obedience to parents, with which God is well 
 pleased. When Christian living follows a long 
 
96 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 line of godly progenitors running back through 
 centuries of grace, there is an accumulation of 
 glory to the gracious plans of God which cannot 
 but be a joy to him. 
 
 5. It is an act of signal and relentless guilt, to 
 break the line of a pious heritage by a godless life. 
 It involves a terrific contest with God for the 
 damnation of the soul. Tough is the task which 
 such a young man sets himself, to destroy his soul. 
 He must do it fighting against the most potent de- 
 vices of God for his salvation. Father's counsels, 
 mother's prayers, godly example, the indefinable 
 atmosphere, like to none other, of a Christian 
 home, the holy momentum from a long procession 
 of Christian forefathers, going back, it may be, 
 into unknown history, must be persistently, in dead 
 earnest, insolently, contended with and defied. 
 
 That is a conflict more sanguinary, and of more 
 woful issue, than any ever fought with sword or 
 cannon on sea or land. A tripled and quadrupled 
 cordon of spiritual influences must be charged and 
 broken through. Such forces are never overcome 
 but by the aid of opposing forces from the powers 
 of darkness. Such a one must achieve his destruc- 
 tion by inviting Satan into alliance. He must throw 
 himself into the embrace of malignant auxiliaries. 
 It is as if he cried out from within the reserved 
 enclosure in which God has sought to protect him, 
 " Come and help me to withstand God ! " Oh ! it 
 is the saddest sight that angels ever look upon, 
 
FIDELITY TO RELIGION. 97 
 
 when the child of a godly ancestry forces his way 
 to hell over trampled prayers, and mangled forms 
 of fathers and mothers extending back in the 
 shadowy past perhaps a thousand years. 
 
 Of the eminent men in American history, no 
 one has come to the close of life under a darker 
 cloud of reprobation from God and man than 
 Aaron Burr. He was the son of parents eminent 
 for piety. His father was the venerable president 
 of a Christian college. His mother was the daugh- 
 ter of the Rev. President Edwards, a most godly 
 man, and herself also a woman renowned for her 
 rare Christian culture. The family extended far 
 back in a luminous pathway of Christian faith and 
 prayer. What an accumulation of holy forces was 
 concentrated upon Aaron Burr's boyhood and early 
 manhood ! They surrounded him in no hard, re- 
 pellant forms, but in the genial graces and beau- 
 tiful adornments of educated Christian society. 
 The piety of his father was lighted up by a mirth- 
 ful humor. No happier men ever lived than the 
 clergy of that age. The best education of the 
 times, too, was his. Thus directed, so far as home 
 and inheritance and circumstance could do it, thus 
 directed toward heaven, he entered on his active 
 manhood. 
 
 When approaching his twentieth year, he be- 
 came interested in the salvation of his soul. The 
 Spirit of God then clearly set before him the great 
 alternative, and pressed his decision on the side of 
 
98 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 virtue and religion. He retired for some weeks to 
 a rural town in Connecticut, for the sake of set- 
 tling once for all the question of his religious 
 character. Nobody knows what was the history 
 of those critical weeks, — through what conflicts 
 he passed, how near he may have approached to 
 the God of his fathers, nor what fatal influences 
 turned him back. But he came home resolved, 
 as he said, " never again to trouble himself about 
 his soul's salvation." 
 
 To all appearance he kept that resolution to the 
 last. The die was cast, as he meant it should be, 
 " once for all." It is not known that he was ever 
 again seriously disturbed by religious convictions. 
 He entered on what promised to be a brilliant 
 public career, without God and without hope. He 
 passed through it a godless man. He ended it 
 disappointed in his ambitions, and soured against 
 all the world. He died in obscurity, abandoned 
 by old friends for years before, unsaluted by them 
 as they passed him in the street, with the guilt of 
 murder on his soul, and the brand of Cain on his 
 brow. So far as man can know, he went speech- 
 less into eternity, with a seared conscience and a 
 hardened heart. God suffered him, as he generally 
 does suffer such men, to die as he had lived. 
 
 His was a representative history, — representa- 
 tive of those who break the line of ancestral piety, 
 and force their way to an irreligious life and death, 
 in defiance of God's protective plans for their sal- 
 
FIDELITY TO RELIGION. 99 
 
 vation. It is an appalling question — do not angels 
 pause, and " lean on their harps " to catch the an- 
 swer ? — " Who, are the Aaron Burrs now living in 
 Christian families ? " 
 
THE LOST SON OF A GODLY FATHER. 
 
 The Lord brought Judah low because of Ahaz Mug of Israel. 
 Aud iu the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against 
 the Lord. This is that king Ahaz. . . . He said, Because 
 the gods of the kings of Syria help them, therefore will I sacri- 
 fice to them, that they may help me. But they were the ruin of 
 him. . . . And in every several city of Judah he made high 
 places to burn incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger 
 the Lord God of his fathers. —2 Chron. xxviii. 19, 22, 23, 25. 
 
 "TTTHEREFOEE do the wicked live ? " Some 
 V V wicked men are among the most useful 
 of mankind. Certain poisons medical science uses 
 to fight certain diseases which yield to no other 
 remedy. So certain examples of iniquity may be 
 transformed by the grace of God into remedial 
 forces, by the contrast they furnish to the virtues, 
 and the wisdom they teach to observers. 
 
 King Ahaz is one of the stupendous monuments 
 of guilt in Israelitish history. He is one of the 
 few men in any history of whom not one good 
 thing is recorded. His career was one uniform 
 and unmitigated stream of iniquity from begin- 
 ning to end. Not one virtue or virtuous act is 
 thought worthy of mention in his whole life. So 
 black and disgraceful was his reign, that when he 
 
 100 
 
THE LOST SON OF A GODLY FATHER. 101 
 
 died, the indignant and revolted conscience of the 
 nation refused him burial in the royal sepulchre. 
 
 Let us inquire what lessons may be learned from 
 the life of such a supreme model of depravity. 
 
 1. His career illustrates that law of character by 
 which the wickedness of a man is proportioned to 
 the amount of holy influence which he has conquered. 
 We find a reason for his extreme depravity in the 
 extreme facilities which he had for being a saint. 
 He was the son of a godly father. His youth was 
 passed under the restraints of holy example. He 
 was one in a royal line which had been distin- 
 guished for examples of illustrious piety. He had 
 good blood. He came from good stock. He knew 
 that he alone, of all the monarchs of the world, 
 held his crown and kingdom by divine right as 
 king of God's chosen people. He knew that a 
 splendid history lay behind him, and that a more 
 splendid future was before him. In the line of 
 regal descent, in which he was a connecting link, 
 One was to appear in whom all the nations of the 
 world were to be blessed. That ancient promise 
 of God to Abraham spanned like a rainbow the 
 royal family of Judah. Mysterious as its meaning 
 was, it must have been a power of moral restraint 
 and moral stimulus to a man called of God to sit 
 on the throne of Judah. 
 
 Said a French monarch, when once solicited to 
 consent to a dishonorable treaty, " The blood of 
 Charlemagne is in my veins ; and who dares to 
 
102 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 propose this thing to me ? " The sense of honor- 
 able inheritance must have been a moral power of 
 immense significance to a monarch who stood in a 
 line of theocratic princes. And it was not frit- 
 tered away and lost in the mere sense of chivalry : 
 it was a direct and potent help to holy living 
 before God. Such a combination of holy influ- 
 ence this Judsean king broke through ; and there- 
 fore he became the man he was. The depth of his 
 fall was proportioned to the momentum acquired 
 in bursting the bonds which held him. 
 
 Such is the natural working of things in the 
 experience of sin. It is a fundamental law of 
 character. As virtue is proportioned in vigor to 
 the temptations resisted, so depravity is propor- 
 tioned to the forces of conscience and inheritance 
 and education and example and persuasion, and 
 the Spirit of God, which have been fought with 
 and conquered. This must always be reckoned in 
 forecasting a man's future in a career of sin. The 
 best things perverted are the worst. Christian 
 birth abused becomes a curse. Religious educa- 
 tion trampled on becomes a fountain of moral 
 disease. Sabbaths broken become an opportunity 
 to vice. Natural sensibilities to religion, indurated 
 by transgression, become a foundation for towering 
 iniquity. Convictions of sin resisted are often 
 transformed into beliefs of falsehood. The striv- 
 ings of the Holy Spirit quenched become the 
 basis of satanic conquest. Devils fill the place 
 from which the Spirit of God has been ejected. 
 
THE LOST SON OF A GODLY FATHER. 103 
 
 It used to be proverbial in the days of American 
 slavery, that the most ferocious overseers were 
 Northern men who had to override the convictions 
 of their youth and their inherited faith in order to 
 become slave-drivers. This was one variety of the 
 universal law which governs the degree of charac- 
 ter, good or bad. Tell me what good influence 
 a man has defied and scorned in becoming what 
 he is, and I will give you the gauge of his de- 
 pravity. The worst of men are apostates from the 
 best of faiths. 
 
 2. The career of this apostate prince illustrates 
 also the faithfulness of God in chastising wicked 
 men for their good. " The Lord brought Judah 
 low because of Ahaz." From the beginning to 
 the end of his reign, he experienced the truth 
 that the way of transgressors is hard. In war he 
 was whipped all around. In alliances he was 
 cheated and checkmated. His people were made 
 captives by thousands. Nothing went well with 
 him. His public life was one long career of de- 
 fying God, yet of God's persistent efforts to save 
 him by chastising him. 
 
 This is repeated over and over again in the ex- 
 perience of wicked men. Such men often think it 
 a great mystery that they suffer so much. They 
 do not understand why it is that misfortune pur- 
 sues them so. " Just my luck," says one, when ill 
 success attends his business. Yet often the secret 
 reason is that God is trying to save the man. He 
 
104 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 is contending with God in one way, and God is 
 contending with him in another. There is no 
 luck about it. It is God's faithfulness to the soul, 
 at the expense of the pocket. 
 
 " It is a great mystery ; I do not understand it : , 
 it is unjust," says an ungodly man whom disease 
 lays low, perhaps just on the eve of splendid suc- 
 cesses. The cup is dashed from his lips, just when 
 he is best able to enjoy it. Ill health follows him 
 perhaps till he is glad to find such rest as he can 
 in the grave. Often it is no mystery. It is God's 
 striving to save the man. It is God's faithfulness 
 to his soul, at the cost of his body. Somebody's 
 prayers are answered in his afflictions. 
 
 In one of the works of a popular author of fic- 
 tion, a wicked man, engaged in a wicked business, 
 is represented as scolding and swearing at and 
 beating his Christian wife, because she persists — 
 poor soul ! — in praying for him. He protests that 
 she shall stop praying, or he must stop his busi- 
 ness. Both cannot go on together: one or the 
 other must give way. He thinks he has tried it, 
 and found it so. The fancy is often true to fact. 
 Often prayer cannot be answered except by chas- 
 tising a man. He must be whipped out of his 
 sins, or he never can be a happy man. This is the 
 secret of the misfortunes of many an ungodly man. 
 
 The sufferings of this world are not in the strict 
 sense retributive. They are disciplinary. The 
 world of retribution lies farther on. In love, God 
 
THE LOST SON OF A GODLY FATHER. 105 
 
 holds the rod over many a bad man. He strikes 
 him here, and he strikes him there. God's flail 
 threshes him like wheat. He surrounds him with 
 trouble. He heaps up misfortunes. They come 
 thick and fast. Life is one long disappointment. 
 " Few and evil have my days been," is his lament 
 as he looks backward : " all is vanity and vexation 
 of spirit." Is not this the general feeling with 
 which men reach old age without the consolations 
 of religion ? " Oh that I had never been born ! " 
 exclaimed Voltaire in his old age. But in this 
 experience of the wicked, God is never vindictive. 
 This is his way of striving to save men from eter- 
 nal death. Sometimes he pursues it to the very 
 last, till the grave closes over the incorrigible 
 sinner, and he passes on to a world where the 
 retributive decisions of eternity displace the be- 
 nign discipline of time. 
 
 3. The life of this depraved prince illustrates 
 further the extreme which sin reaches when men fight 
 successfully against G-ocfs chastisements. " In the 
 time of his distress did he trespass yet more against 
 the Lord." This is the fearful phenomenon some- 
 times witnessed in the developments of sin in this 
 world. Some men are not subdued by suffering. 
 They refuse to bow to chastisement. The more 
 they suffer, the more they sin. Trouble angers 
 them against God. They indicate their growing 
 fitness for the world of woe in this induration of 
 heart by which susceptibility to the softening 
 
106 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 effect of sorrow is destroyed. Sometimes this 
 phenomenon is witnessed on a large scale. Times 
 of pestilence are proverbially times of unusual 
 wickedness in great cities. The plague in London 
 developed the vices of the metropolis frightfully. 
 Men patrolled the streets singing ribald songs 
 beside the dead-cart. In the peril of shipwreck, 
 two classes of sufferers are often observed, — those 
 whom the peril subdues to prayer, and those whom 
 it drives to the rum-bottle. 
 
 When the Pemberton Factory fell, two classes 
 of sufferers were crushed under the ruins, and 
 two sets of voices came forth from the smoke 
 and flame. The favorite hymns of the Methodist 
 Church from the one drowned the curses and im- 
 precations from the other. Thus the two went up 
 on those wings of fire to meet God. How like to 
 the contrast of the two crucified thieves ! " Lord, 
 remember me ; " and, " If thou be the Christ, save 
 thyself and us." 
 
 Few things are so truthful a touchstone to the 
 character of men as the way in which they treat 
 the suffering which God sends as chastisement. 
 One man turns at its bidding, and becomes an 
 heir of glory: another defies it, and becomes a 
 monument of perdition. Lord, who maketh us to 
 differ ? 
 
 4. The reign of this wicked monarch illustrates 
 the disappointments which wicked men experience in 
 their hopes of happiness in sin. The historian 
 
THE LOST SON OF A GODLY FATHER. 107 
 
 relates of him : " He said, Because the gods of the 
 kings of Syria help them, therefore will I sacrifice 
 to them, that they may help me. But they were 
 the ruin of him'' True to the life, every word of 
 it ! In no more truthful figure can we express the 
 experience of many young men who enter on a 
 career of worldliness. They see other men living 
 for this world alone, as it seems to a looker-on, on 
 the top of the wave of human felicity. A rich 
 man seems to them a supremely happy man. A 
 successful statesman appears to have all that an 
 aspiring man can ask for. A man who has gained 
 the summit of social rank and splendor becomes, 
 to many who are below him, the model of earthly 
 bliss. Any man at the top of the ladder seems 
 very high up to a man at the bottom. So a young 
 man is -apt to look on the world to which he pro- 
 poses to devote his being. "The world makes 
 these men happy," he says ; "and I will try it, that 
 it may make me happy too." This is the secret 
 experience, probably, of all who give themselves 
 deliberately to a life of irreligion. They are 
 allured by the glamour of irreligious prosperity. 
 
 But, when they try the experiment for them- 
 selves, " it is the ruin of them." The fruit turns 
 to ashes. No such young man ever finds the 
 world to be what it looked to be when he surveyed 
 it from afar. It is a beautiful mirage. The testi- 
 mony of experience is proverbial, that the richest 
 men are not the happiest men. The most success- 
 
108 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 ful ambitions men are not the happiest men. The 
 pleasure-seekers who seem to have their fill of all 
 they planned for in life are not the happiest men. 
 One word expresses the issue of all such experi- 
 ments, — disappointment. This world is full of 
 soured and disappointed men. The more irreli- 
 gious men are, the more profoundly they experi- 
 ence this inward consciousness of failure in their 
 life's plans. They have " hewed out to themselves 
 broken cisterns that can hold no water." 
 
 In one of Hawthorne's thrillingly fearful fictions, 
 he represents a wretched man going about with a 
 serpent in his bosom. Every now and then he 
 clutches at his breast with his fingers, crying, " It 
 gnaws me ; it gnaws me ! " As he walks the streets 
 among his kind, he thinks he finds that every 
 man he meets is cursed with the same snaky guest 
 in his bosom. Each man at intervals seems to 
 thrust his hand up to throttle the reptile. All 
 alike are doomed to the hideous companionship. 
 " It gnaws me ; it gnaws me ! " is the universal 
 confession. The whole world seems to his crazed 
 fancy to be at the mercy of vipers, each man 
 warming and cherishing his own. 
 
 Such a world is any world of beings given over 
 to seeking happiness in itself. Such is this world, 
 except as its fearful consciousness is relieved by 
 the grace of God. Such is self in any man or 
 woman, when turned away from God and turned 
 inward. No flagrant crimes like those of the 
 
THE LOST SON OF A GODLY FATHER. 109 
 
 Judaean king are necessary to reduce a man to this 
 condition of inward and conscious curse. Perjury, 
 arson, murder, are not the only nor the most com- 
 mon precursors of such a doom. A man has only 
 to abandon God, and live to himself, and he is as 
 sure of it as Judas. Such a man may sit on the 
 throne of the Cassars, or revel in the wealth of " far- 
 thest Ind ; " yet he carries the snake in his bosom. 
 In his honest hours, when he confesses the truth 
 to his own soul, his ghastly soliloquy is, " It gnaws 
 me ; it gnaws me ! " 
 
 5. The career of this wretched prince illustrates 
 the distinction which it is possible for a man to gain 
 in this world as a monument of guilt. "He did 
 trespass more against the Lord. This is that king 
 Ahaz!" Such is the reflection of the annalist, 
 after enumerating the monarch's crimes. " This is 
 that king Ahaz. Look at him ; mark him ! let him 
 stand in history as a monster of iniquity ; let the 
 world stand aghast at him." Such seems to be 
 the spirit of the inspired recorder. We all natu- 
 rally crave distinction, — one man for one thing, 
 another for another : all hanker for it in something. 
 Any thing to lift us up and out of the common 
 herd ! This is the temper of a world without God. 
 It is possible for a man of reckless impiety to be*- 
 come illustrious for guilt, and that only. Some 
 such names stand out in history, and will stand 
 thus forever. Where all are sinners, some become 
 guilty above their fellows, — princes in depravity ; 
 
110 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 royal dukes in iniquity ; men so like to Satan in 
 character, that he dwells with and takes possession 
 of them before the time. 
 
 This, I repeat, is possible to any man. It re- 
 quires no great genius or invention. A man need 
 not travel far and explore distant seas to gain the 
 means of this hideous renown. It requires only 
 a strong, persistent, and selfish will, determined to 
 fight God. This is the natural drift of sin. What 
 a scaffold is among human punishments, what hy- 
 drophobia is among deadly diseases, such may a 
 man become among his fellow-sinners, by simply 
 giving himself to himself, and defying the rights 
 of God. 
 
 This is the legitimate ending of a long career 
 of alternate chastisement and sin without repent- 
 ance. A Cornish proverb says, " He that will not 
 be ruled by the rudder must fee ruled by the 
 rock." This is the rock on which haughty and 
 defiant guilt is wrecked. It is simply left to itself, 
 to become what it has chosen to be, — such a de- 
 mon of iniquity as to be abhorred of God and man. 
 God save us from ourselves ! We carry within 
 us the elements of hell, if we but choose to make 
 them such. Ahaz, Judas, Nero, Borgia, Alva, — 
 all were once prattling infants in happy mothers' 
 arms. The first babe of our race — a marvel of 
 joy to the first" mother — was the first murderer. 
 Who shall dare to encounter the possibilities of 
 human guilt, without the grace of God ? 
 
THE GODLY SON OF AN UNGODLY FATHER. 
 
 Hezekiah . . . did that which was right in the sight of the 
 Lord, according to all that David his father had done. Thus did 
 Hezekiah . . . and wrought that which was good and right and 
 truth before the Lord his God. And in every work that he be- 
 gan in the service of the house of God, and in the law, and in 
 the commandments, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, 
 and prospered." — 2 Chkon. xxix. 1, 2, xxxi. 20, 21. 
 
 ONE human life illustrates the whole govern- 
 ment of God. We live under such overshad- 
 owings of God's purposes, that at every turn we 
 come upon something which shows forth principles 
 which are eternal. Truth is indeed stranger than 
 fiction. Romance cannot equal the grandeur 
 which every human life, if read aright, discloses. 
 Hence it is that the Bible is made up so largely of 
 fragments of biography. 
 
 1. Studying the life and reign of Hezekiah, we 
 discover, among other things, that he is an illustra- 
 tion of the sovereignty of God in conversion. He 
 was one of the model princes of Judah. Yet early 
 in his life his conversion was one of the most im- 
 probable of events. He was the son of one of the 
 most impious monarchs that ever sat on the throne 
 of Israel. Bad blood was in his veins. His youth 
 
 in 
 
112 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 was cursed by a most polluted pareutal example. 
 The abominations of Oriental idolatry were the 
 atmosphere of his childhood. Not in the retire- 
 ment of a private home, surrounded by better 
 homes, did he live, but among the splendid cor- 
 ruptions of a court which set the current of pop- 
 ular opinion, and defiled the whole kingdom. No 
 other spot on earth is so fatal to youthful inno- 
 cence as a corrupt court. Yet there this heir to 
 the throne was born and bred. Parental and royal 
 example combined to make him a bad man and a 
 worse king. 
 
 It is the mysterious lot of many other men, to 
 be born and educated under circumstances which 
 render their conversion to God intrinsically im- 
 probable. They seem born to vice. They are 
 trained to immorality. Childish and even infan- 
 tile lips are taught to profane God's name. This 
 is not always the lot of the poor and the ignorant 
 only. It was the favorite pastime of one of the 
 statesmen of the first period of our Republic, to 
 teach his beautiful little motherless daughter at 
 four years of age to prattle the oaths with which 
 his own conversation was polluted. It is one of 
 the unsolved mysteries of God's government, that 
 such enormities are permitted. Humming-birds 
 seem to have a more blessed existence than the 
 children of such impious fathers and mothers. 
 
 Yet God often enters such homes with his sav- 
 ing grace. He speaks the word, " Thou art mine," 
 
THE GODLY SON OF AN UNGODLY FATHER. 113 
 
 and a child of immortality is saved. Christ is 
 swift to take such a little one in his arms, and 
 bless it ; and it becomes an heir of glory. It is 
 like God to do sovereign things. Therefore it 
 is like God to do things which to human view 
 seem to border on the impossible. 
 
 2. The conversion of Hezekiah, therefore, should 
 give encouragement to the children of unchristian 
 parents. So much is often said, and justly, of the 
 covenant of God with Christian parents, that 
 sometimes in the contrast a cloud seems to rest 
 over the destiny of those who do not share that 
 blessing. Said one child of vice, "My father 
 was a drunkard, and my grandfather was a drunk- 
 ard before him ; I shall be a drunkard too ; we 
 belong to a race of drunkards. I may as well 
 accept my lot first as last : it is my fate." Said 
 another, a man of high culture, but notorious for 
 his ungoverned passions, " My father was just so : 
 his boys are all so. We can't live in peace to- 
 gether : we never did. We are all possessed of the 
 devil : I can't help it." 
 
 Not so does God reason. " All souls are mine," 
 he declares. " The son shall not bear the iniquity 
 of the father," is his law. " If he beget a son 
 that seeth all his father's sins, and doeth not such 
 like, he shall not die for the iniquity of his lather : 
 he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it 
 shall die." The principle of individual responsi- 
 bility is most sacredly built into the foundations 
 
114 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, 
 
 of God's government. He never swerves from it 
 the breadth of a hair. In this respect, every man, 
 woman, and child on the globe stands alone before 
 God, as if no other man, woman, child, had stood 
 before them. Each one of us stands alone, — alone 
 here, alone at the judgment, alone forever. Each 
 sins alone, is judged alone, is saved or lost alone. 
 The solitude in which every man dies is an em- 
 blem of the individuality of his being forever. 
 
 It is also the way of God to save men when to 
 human view their salvation is incredible. He de- 
 lights in miracles of grace. The early disciples 
 could not believe that Saul of Tarsus was con- 
 verted. It is not recorded that they had ever 
 prayed for his conversion. That was the quickest 
 way of putting an end to his persecution of them ; 
 but it does not appear that they ever thought of 
 it. But God was beforehand with them. Saul, 
 before they knew it, was praying for them. God 
 loves such paradoxes of grace. Unwritten biog- 
 raphy is full of them. 
 
 True, it is a great blessing to have been born in 
 the line of a godly ancestry. But it is a greater 
 blessing to have been born at all, under the grace 
 of God, in a Christian land, amidst sabbaths, 
 Bibles, churches, and under the gracious provi- 
 dences of God. Some of the best of men have 
 been illustrations of divine grace to the worst. 
 What of heathen converts to Christianity? 
 Heaven is already becoming populous with the 
 
 
THE GODLY SON OF AN UNGODLY FATHEB. 115 
 
 children of idolaters, liars, drunkards, thieves, 
 adulterers, murderers. Go back far enough in the 
 ancestral line of any of us, and we come to a 
 generation of cannibals. What but the love of 
 God first took off that ancestral curse ? 
 ■ 3. The upright character of Hezekiah illustrates 
 also that the conversion of men is often assisted hy 
 their natural recoil from extreme wickedness. The 
 young monarch must have come to the throne in 
 a state of disgust with his father's crimes. He 
 must have felt the dishonor of them to the royal 
 name. He must have seen the wretched condition 
 of the kingdom on account of them. His subse- 
 quent life shows that as a young man he must have 
 been thoughtful and of tender conscience. He 
 was just the man to blush for his father's disgrace, 
 and to recoil with a } r oung man's pride from his 
 country's shame. This class of influences, under 
 the grace of God, may have been the means of his 
 salvation. It is noticeable that his reform was 
 begun instantly on his accession to the kingdom. 
 He lost no time. He was evidently prepared for 
 his work by previous thought and resolution. 
 
 This is one of the benevolent devices of God 
 for the defeat of sin. Sin is often so used as to 
 defeat itself. One of the reasons why it is per- 
 mitted to run its course, and come to a head, is 
 that men may see it in its hideous maturity. Only 
 thus can we know it as it is. The delay of God 
 in its punishment may be often due to this law. 
 And it often works to the salvation of souls. 
 
116 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Even irreligious men are shocked by wickedness 
 which exceeds their own. A young man's first 
 knowledge of the world, when he goes out from 
 the innocence of his childhood's home, often pro- 
 duces a recoil from the world's depravity. He 
 did not know before that sin was so vile a thing. 
 He starts back from it, and begins to feel his need 
 of prayer. Not long ago a young man who had 
 just entered college wrote home to his father, say- 
 ing, "I did not know how wicked young men 
 could be till I came here. I shall not get through 
 without a wreck unless I commit myself as a 
 follower of Christ." From that time he conse- 
 crated his life to God. God used the very enor- 
 mities of sin to save him from sin. 
 
 So the child of vicious parents is often saved 
 from vice by his early knowledge of vice. Many 
 a drunkard's child has never tasted a drop of in- 
 toxicating drink. The Holy Spirit is ingenious in 
 devising ways of alluring men to heaven. He 
 draws men in backward in their recoil from hell. 
 He uses sin to defeat sin. When a prairie is on 
 fire, and the traveller is in danger of being sur- 
 rounded and suffocated by the roaring flame, he 
 has a way of fighting fire with fire. So the Spirit 
 of God sets guilt against guilt. Temptation is 
 checkmated by the very ghastliness of the crime 
 which it proposes. 
 
 The young should cherish, then, as for dear life, 
 their first revolt of conscience from abounding sin. 
 
THE GODLY SON OP AN UNGODLY FATHER. 117 
 
 The sensitiveness of a soul not yet inured to vice 
 is the guard which God has given for its protec- 
 tion. The backward spring from mature depravity 
 is a token of moral health : it may be the prelude 
 to the soul's conversion. 
 
 Charles IX. of France, in his youth, had humane 
 and tender sensibilities. The fiend who tempted 
 him was the mother who had nursed him. When 
 she first proposed to him the massacre of the Hu- 
 guenots, he shrunk from it with horror : " No, no, 
 madam ! they are my loving subjects." Then was 
 the critical hour of his life. Had he cherished that 
 natural sensitiveness to bloodshed, St. Bartholo- 
 mew's Eve would never have disgraced the history 
 of his kingdom, and he himself would have escaped 
 the fearful remorse which crazed him on his death- 
 bed. To his physician he said in his last hours, 
 " Asleep or awake, I see the mangled forms of the 
 Huguenots passing before me. They drip with 
 blood. They make hideous faces at me. They 
 point to their open wounds, and mock me. Oh 
 that I had spared at least the little infants at the 
 breast ! " Then he broke out in agonizing cries 
 and screams. Bloody sweat oozed from the pores 
 of his skin. He was one of the very few cases in 
 history which confirm the possibility of the phe- 
 nomenon which attended our Lord's ancmish in 
 Gethsemane. That was the fruit of resisting, 
 years before, the recoil of his youthful conscience 
 from the extreme of guilt. 
 
118 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Our English word " remorse " comes from a 
 Latin word which means " to bite back." Tender 
 sensibilities trampled on in our youth grow rabid, 
 like canine madness, and " bite back " upon the 
 offender with a malignant venom which has no 
 remedy. 
 
 4. The narrative before us illustrates the fact 
 that ivhen God converts men from amidst surround- 
 ings of great depravity, he often has some great t and 
 signal service for them to do for him. Such was the 
 case with King Hezekiah. God summoned him to 
 the reformation of a kingdom. He trained him 
 for it by permitting him to see the guilt and the 
 ruin of his father's reign. When the critical time 
 came, he lifted him out of the slough of iniquity, 
 and made him one of the signal examples of a 
 godly prince, whose name should give lustre to 
 the Jewish throne forever after. 
 
 Thus God often works in humbler life. One of 
 the most successful clergymen in the history of the 
 New-England pulpit was the son of a drunkard 
 and a thief. His youth was spent in extreme pov- 
 erty and disgrace. The family name was a by- 
 word. When he resolved to work his way to 
 college and to the pulpit, his father overwhelmed 
 him with parental curses. In that man's boyhood, 
 his rum for this world and the next seemed to 
 human view well-nigh certain. " Like father, like 
 son," said his neighbors. But God had other plans 
 for the unfortunate youth. That masterly pulpit 
 
THE GODLY SON OF AN UNGODLY FATHER. 119 
 
 was preparing for him, and he preparing for it. 
 The earthly father's curses and the heavenly Fa- 
 ther's blessing were pitted against each other. 
 God brought him safely through those fires of 
 Moloch. He called him to stand in a place more 
 honorable than the courts of kings. He became 
 greatly successful in revivals of religion. Before 
 his death, more than twelve hundred persons were 
 known to him who attributed their conversion to 
 his ministry. 
 
 God knows where to find his chosen ones. He 
 sees them from afar. They may be born in dens 
 of vice, and nurtured in almshouses and attics and 
 cellars. But He who was born in a manger has 
 his eye upon them ; and he brings their feet out 
 into a large place. They stand at last before 
 kings. Their usefulness in the end is propor- 
 tioned to the lowliness and the peril of their be- 
 ginning. A popular writer of our own day says 
 that it takes three generations to create a gentle- 
 man. It takes not half of one to create a king who 
 shall reign with Christ a thousand years. 
 
 5. The work of King Hezekiah illustrates the 
 moral power of one man in effecting a great work to 
 which God has called him. From the narrative in 
 the lesson it appears that the reformation of the 
 kingdom was at first the idea of Hezekiah alone. 
 " It is in my heart," he says, " to make a covenant 
 with the Lord." Nobody seems to have put him 
 up to it. No prophet came to warn or to stimulate 
 
120 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 him. The movement grew up silently in his own 
 heart. God and he planned it alone. Probably 
 he had been brooding over it and praying over it 
 for years. Men do not spring into such honor at 
 a bound. At last he was the soul of the reform. 
 The idea was his ; the measures were his ; the ex- 
 ecution was his. 
 
 So it often is in other great works of God. 
 Some one man heads it ; puts his soul into it ; 
 gives his life to it ; rouses other men, and energizes 
 them in it. There is almost no limit to the power 
 of a live man called of God to a great life's work. 
 Other men fall back to the right and to the left, 
 and let such a man go up the highway of the King, 
 while they fall in at the rear, and acknowledge his 
 lead. 
 
 In almost every group of Christian workers, 
 some one such man is the confessed leader ; not 
 the man that seeks leadership, but the man whom 
 leadership seeks. Not great men and kings alone 
 are thus exalted. God calls them from lowly 
 places rather. Not many noble are called. The 
 lives of such men as William Carey and Harlan 
 Page are immortal witnesses to what one man can 
 do, if he is roused by great ideas, filled with a 
 great faith, endowed with a great soul, inspired 
 by a great hope, and sets himself to work at God's 
 bidding and in God's way. The secret leading of 
 such men by the teachings of the Holy Spirit is 
 akin to inspiration. They never lie in their pro- 
 posals, and never fail in their achievements. 
 
THE GODLY SON OF AN UNGODLY FATHER. 121 
 
 6. The work of King Hezekiah illustrates also 
 the suddenness with which God often achieves by the 
 hand of such men great changes in the progress of his 
 kingdom. Following the story of this ancient re- 
 formation, we learn at the end of the narrative that 
 " Hezekiah rejoiced, and all the people, that God 
 had prepared the people, for the thing was done sud- 
 denly." It was an instance of a very rapid work 
 of grace. Although the king had originated the 
 movement, and set others to work out the idea 
 over which he had long brooded, he found things 
 ready to his hand. God had " prepared the peo- 
 ple for it." They had been reading God's provi- 
 dence, as well as he. Secret currents of feeling 
 were swelling in their hearts. All that they 
 needed was a leader. When, therefore, the leader 
 appeared in the person of their youthful prince, 
 events moved quickly. Results ripened fast. 
 Before they had time to dally over it, the thing 
 was done. The kingdom was righted, and brought 
 once more into line in the service of the living 
 God. 
 
 This is another of the common laws of God's 
 working. He prepares different agencies in differ- 
 ent channels secretly. Each is quietly fitted to 
 another by unseen strategy. The leader is fash- 
 ioned for the people, and the people trained for 
 the leader. Unknown to each other, men are set 
 to thinkmg of the same thing. The same fire is 
 kindled in many hearts; the same resolves are 
 
122 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 created, trie same hopes cherished. Perhaps no 
 man knows the heart of his neighbor in the thing. 
 Each man may think he is alone in it. Bnt by 
 and by the time comes when things are ripe for 
 a disclosure of God's plans. The leader appears, 
 and unexpectedly finds that he has a large follow- 
 ing. The people rise, and suddenly find that they 
 have a born leader. Organization is easy. Every- 
 body seems to have a mind for the work. The 
 result is a great and sudden growth of Christ's 
 kingdom. Revivals of religion have illustrated 
 this law over and over again. The history of 
 Christian missions is full of it. The abolition of 
 American slavery illustrated it. How we used to 
 talk and pray on that subject twenty years ago ! 
 We thought it one of the far-distant events in our 
 coming history. Centuries hence, in some golden 
 age, we dreamed that some happy generation of 
 our successors would arise, who would devise 
 some way of putting an end to the atrocious sys- 
 tem. Nobody conceived it possible that the end 
 was so near, and would come so suddenly. But 
 God was fitting events to events, and men to men. 
 Had our spiritual senses been more alert, we 
 should have heard the chariot-wheels and the 
 tramping of steeds. At last, when he was ready, 
 the end came in the twinkling of an eye. Such 
 phenomena suggest the possibility that the conver- 
 sion of the world may be nearer than we think. 
 
THE GODLY SON OF AN UNGODLY FATHER. 123 
 
 Who knows? It would not be stranger than 
 some things which God has done, if men now 
 living should see this world consecrated to Jesus 
 Christ. 
 

 THE PRODIGAL SON OF GODLY PARENTS. 
 
 And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, 
 and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and 
 prayed unto him; and he was entreated of him, and heard his 
 supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his king- 
 dom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God. — 2 
 Chkon. xxxiii. 12, 13. 
 
 FEW principles of the divine government are 
 more vital to religion than those which gov- 
 ern the transmission of tendencies to good and to 
 evil in the line of family descent. In previous 
 studies we have seen some varieties of them. We 
 have observed a son faithful to the example of a 
 godly father, in the case of Jehoshaphat; a son 
 defying that example to the death, in the case of 
 Ahaz ; and the son of a most impious father re- 
 coiling to the service of God, in the person of 
 Hezekiah. 
 
 The life of King Manasseh illustrates another 
 phase of the working of those principles. The re- 
 markable distinction of his career is, that he is 
 the only case clearly recorded in the Scriptures, of 
 a youth breaking away from the restraints and ex- 
 ample of a religious parentage, who was recovered 
 by the grace of God, and brought to repentance. 
 
 124 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON OF GODLY PARENTS. 125 
 
 His life is the old story, — sin, chastisement, re- 
 pentance, and forgiveness. "He did evil in the 
 sight of the Lord; he made Judah to do worse 
 than the heathen;" "Wherefore the Lord brought 
 upon him the host of Assyria, which bound him in 
 fetters, and carried him to Babylon;" "And w"hen 
 he was in affliction, he humbled himself greatly 
 before the God of his fathers;" "And he was 
 entreated of him, and heard his supplication ; " 
 "Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was 
 God." Guilt, suffering, penitence, pardon. The 
 story of Juclah's prince is the story of to-day. 
 Twenty-five hundred years have not changed its 
 tenor, nor relaxed the principles of God's gov- 
 ernment which it illustrates. 
 
 1. It deserves to be noticed, that the fall of 
 Manasseh was an exception to the general law respect- 
 ing the history of children of a godly parentage. 
 The charge has been exultingly used against the 
 credit of religion, that the sons of Christian fathers 
 are generally worse than others. The sons of 
 bishops and clergymen and deacons and elders are 
 often said to be proverbially wicked. The re- 
 straints of a religious home are sometimes criticised 
 as tending by re-action to the extremes of vice. 
 This assertion is not true historically. Statistics 
 disprove it. 
 
 In a certain New-England town of some thou- 
 sands of people, the records of the Christian fami- 
 lies were once examined thoroughly to test this 
 
126 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 question. I am unable to recall the exact num- 
 bers; but the proportion of the children of such 
 families who became religious men and women, 
 as related to those who did not, was more than 
 five to one. Three or four such investigations 
 have come within my knowledge, all ending in 
 a similar result. In the Theological Seminary 
 at Andover, some years ago, it was found, on in- 
 quiry, that out of its hundred and twenty students 
 preparing for the ministry of the gospel, more, than 
 the hundred were from Christian homes, and 
 more than twelve were sons of Christian ministers. 
 A similar inquiry, with similar results, was once 
 instituted in Amherst College. Had the common 
 proverb on the subject been true, no such propor- 
 tions as these would have been at all probable. 
 The reverse should be the law : the Church should 
 look for her clergy to families in which children 
 have not the misfortune of religious restraints to 
 lay the foundation for profane re-actions. 
 
 The design of God in the constitution of the 
 Christian family is to make it the fountain of 
 all virtues, the very citadel of religion, and the 
 nursery of the Church. The Church itself is but 
 the family on an extended scale. In the long-run, 
 and as a general rule, it works as God intended 
 that it should work. The covenant of God with 
 faithful parents is not dishonored. The Church 
 owes to it a very large portion of her membership, 
 and many of the most brilliant ornaments of her 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON OF GODLY PARENTS. 127 
 
 pulpits. It is a fact which children in Christian 
 households should ponder seriously, that, if they 
 do break loose from the restraints of their reli- 
 gious training, they become exceptional cases of sin 
 against exceptional privilege. 
 
 2. This is confirmed by the fact, which the 
 early manhood of Manasseh also illustrates, that, 
 when the children of the good become vicious, they do 
 become worse than the average of wicked men. The 
 brief records of Manasseh's reign clearly hint 
 this. He fell back to the disgraceful level of his 
 grandfather Ahaz. The catalogue of his crimes 
 is fearful. " He made Judah to do worse than 
 the heathen," says the historian. He practised 
 sorcery and necromancy, and restored the furnace 
 to Tophet. He worshipped the stars. He sacri- 
 ficed his own children to pagan deities. He named 
 his son Amon after an Egyptian idol. He was the 
 first persecutor in Judah of the true religion. He 
 removed the ark out of the holy of holies. Tra- 
 dition says that the name of Jehovah was erased 
 from all public documents and inscriptions. His 
 reign was a "reign of terror " to the prophets of 
 the Most High. The secular historian says that 
 " day by day a fresh batch of the prophetic order 
 were ordered to execution. From end to end of 
 Jerusalem were to be seen traces of their blood." 
 Tradition says that the prophet Isaiah, nearly 
 ninety years of age, perished by Manasseh's order. 
 Yet the same tradition declares that his mother 
 
128 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 was Isaiah's daughter. He was one of the three 
 kings who in Jewish story had no part in the 
 life to come, — Jeroboam, Ahab, Manasseh. His 
 name became in Jewish annals the synonyme of 
 infamy. 
 
 This is an obviously natural working of things. 
 A steel spring will recoil one way with a force 
 proportioned to the power with which it has been 
 bent the other way. A cannon-ball dropped from 
 the summit o'f a shot-tower reduplicates its velo- 
 city as it descends, and it strikes the earth with a 
 concussion proportioned to the height of the tower. 
 Similar is the law of character. Both virtue and 
 depravity are in exact ratio to the resistance over- 
 come. 
 
 The child of godly parentage therefore, if he 
 becomes an outcast, does fall lower than the aver- 
 age of outcasts. In the natural course of things 
 he becomes a more hardened sinner in the sight of 
 God. His conscience suffers a more fatal violence. 
 His subsequent conversion is less probable. Such 
 is the law of natural progress in the evolution of 
 character. This doubtless is the foundation of the 
 proverb that the sons of ministers and elders and 
 deacons generally become monuments of superla- 
 tive vice. When they do so, they attract the atten- 
 tion of observers by the very extreme of their 
 wickedness and its contrast to the homes of their 
 childhood. The child of godly progenitors can- 
 not tamper with temptation without 
 
 
 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON OF GODLY PARENTS. 129 
 
 greater peril of the loss of the soul than that in- 
 curred by other men. Exalted to heaven in privi- 
 lege, — thrust down to hell in guilt : such is the 
 contrast as the Bible paints it. 
 
 3. The fall of Manasseh illustrates a mysterious 
 but undoubted fact respecting the law of heredi- 
 tary descent as affecting character. It is that the 
 virus of an evil parentage, when arrested in one gen- 
 eration, may pass over, and re-appear in the genera- 
 tion following. This youthful prince was the son 
 of Hezekiah, one of the best of Judsean monarchs, 
 but the grandson of Ahaz, one of the worst. 
 
 Physicians tell us that there are certain heredi- 
 tary diseases of which the inheritance is often 
 intermittent. One generation may escape their 
 fatal fangs, but they may appear in all their viru- 
 lence in the generation next succeeding. Similar 
 is the mystery of spiritual inheritance. The un- 
 written history of families discloses the fact that 
 sometimes the Christian son of an ungodly father 
 had a most devout grandmother, whose prayers 
 seem to be answered in his conversion. Her god- 
 ly virtues seem to hold over, and re-appear in the 
 persons of her grandchildren. 
 
 By the same law, a vicious son of a Christian 
 father will sometimes- be found to have sprung 
 from a more vicious grandfather. The evil blood 
 descends, like a subterranean rivulet, through the 
 person of his own son, and comes to the surface 
 again in the evil tendencies of the grandson. I 
 
130 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 would not probe irreverently nor to fanciful re- 
 sults the mysteries of God's procedures. But 
 these are facts sometimes seen in the character of 
 the linked generations. God has deemed the prin- 
 ciple they involve of sufficient importance to be 
 affirmed imperatively in the third commandment 
 of the Decalogue. King Manasseh's fall, there- 
 fore, is to the point. Evil is tenacious of life. It 
 intertwines itself around the roots of character. 
 Tendencies to it, once created, run in the blood. 
 We all suffer the curse of it from the fall of 
 Adam. Not to the destruction or the lessening 
 of individual responsibility — no, not by a hair- 
 breadth. But it affects visibly the conditions of 
 probation. 
 
 The old English preachers used to make much 
 of this law of the divine government. Moral in- 
 heritance was to them a most stupendous and 
 practical fact. Jeremy Taylor has somewhere 
 recorded a prayer that God will purify the inher- 
 ited fountain of evil in the soul, and turn back 
 the current from rolling downward from the father 
 to the son. To a thoughtful man, not unobserv- 
 ant of the ways of God, this is a most appro- 
 priate theme of secret prayer. If I am conscious 
 of corrupt tendencies which have been a tempta- 
 tion to me all my life, and which I know to have 
 been felt and lamented, or perhaps not lamented, 
 in the lives of my progenitors, why should I not 
 pray, with the fervor of a father's solicitude for 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON OF GODLY PARENTS. 131 
 
 the salvation of his offspring, that the accursed 
 current may stop with me ? that by the grace of 
 God it may not pass on, and deluge with tempta- 
 tion the lives and souls of my children ? 
 
 There are rivers which come down from the sum- 
 mit of Oriental mountains swollen with freshets, 
 and destructive to the tillage and pasturage of the 
 valleys ; but, as they approach the sea, they are 
 absorbed and lost in the sands of the desert. So 
 may we pray that inherited proclivities to sin, to 
 vice it may be, may be arrested in their cursed 
 flow, and be lost forever from the line of the fam- 
 ily in which we form a link, and are appointed to 
 work out other destinies than our own. Every 
 Christian parent may well pray, " Lord, visit not 
 my sins and the sins of my fathers upon the chil- 
 dren of the third and the fourth generations ! " 
 
 4. The fall of this young monarch illustrates 
 the power of high station and worldly prosperity to 
 counteract the influence of a religious education. 
 Manasseh had all that youthful ambition could 
 desire, to make him in love with the world. His 
 childhood was spent in anticipation of the most 
 splendid position in the kingdom. He was heir to 
 wealth and dignity and the alliances of kings. 
 Courtiers nattered him. Young men felt them- 
 selves honored by his friendship. Old men did 
 him reverence as their future sovereign. The 
 temptation overwhelmed him, and he fell before 
 it. 
 
132 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 When the sons of godly parents go astray, it is 
 found, more frequently than otherwise, that they 
 fall before the enticements created by their fa- 
 thers' wealth, and the ease and luxury with which 
 wealth surrounds them. I ask the principal of a 
 large academy, what is the chief cause of the ruin 
 of boys from religious homes ; and he answers with- 
 out a moment's hesitation, " Too much money." I 
 ask the president of one of the largest colleges 
 in New England, what is the surest protection to 
 young men against the perils of college life ; and 
 he responds, " Poverty." 
 
 We know not what we ask when we pray for 
 riches and worldly eminence for our children. 
 Such prayers, answered as we wish, might just 
 nullify our care for their religious culture, and 
 make them the sorrow of our old age. Many a 
 Christian father goes down to the grave, gray be- 
 fore his time, mourning over the vices of children 
 whose fall is due to the riches he has hoarded for 
 them, and the social companionship to which it 
 has been the ambition of his life to lift them. 
 Many of us have yet to learn to live for our chil- 
 dren on principles which recognize our own faith 
 in the littleness of time and the magnitude of 
 eternity. 
 
 5. The misfortunes which followed the apostasy 
 of Manasseh illustrate the faithfulness of Grod to 
 his covenant with godly parents. It is noticeable 
 that the chastisements inflicted upon the young 
 
THE PUODIGAL SON OF GODLY PARENTS. 133 
 
 king were very severe. A tremendous downfall is 
 that which precipitates a king from his throne to the 
 dungeon of a foreign enemy. Few of the princes 
 of Judah suffered that. But this one had been 
 exceptionally wicked : it must needs be, therefore, 
 that he be exceptionally chastised. 
 
 We are told, too, that in his captivity " he 
 humbled himself greatly" A certain proportion 
 runs through his history. A great sinner, a great 
 sufferer, a great penitent. God works thoroughly. 
 He is faithful in adjusting the discipline to the 
 exigency. Whom he loves, he chastens propor- 
 tionately to his necessities. He spares not the rod 
 at the expense of the child's soul. He plans for 
 eternity, not for time. So would we have it — 
 would we not? — in the experience of our chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Often is this experience repeated in common life, 
 whether our weafc souls would so have it or not. 
 God is faithful beyond our desires. Like other 
 wise fathers, he adjusts his dealings to the future 
 judgment and desires of his children. He trusts 
 to eternity for his justification in our sight. The 
 prayers of the Christian father and mother for the 
 wayward son are answered in waves and billows 
 of affliction often, till the prodigal comes back, and 
 humbles himself greatly, and says, " I have sinned 
 against my father and my father's God." 
 
 If a star in our evening sky should stray from 
 its orbit, it could not go beyond the reach of those 
 
134 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 laws of matter and motion which have governed it 
 from its birth. Gravitation would still hold it, as 
 in grooves of iron which the ages could not wear 
 away. Such a wandering star is a wayward and 
 ungodly son of godly parents. An outcast though 
 he be, the subject of scalding tears and despairing 
 prayers, yet from those prayers he can never get 
 loose. For years and years they will hold him 
 within the circuit of salvation. They will follow 
 him beyond the seas. Into the most loathsome 
 dens of vice they will pursue and surround him as 
 with a wall of fire. To the demons of temptation 
 they are a voice of defiance and of challenge, say- 
 ing, " Ye shall not have this child of mine : so help 
 me God!" 
 
 And often God is in the voice. I have heard a 
 Christian mother of an outcast son say, "I know 
 that my boy will yet be converted to Jesus Christ. 
 It has been told to me in my hours of agonizing 
 prayer. I have given him to God. He is no longer 
 mine. I may not live to see it ; but God will take 
 care of the treasure I have committed to his keep- 
 ing. I shall see my son in heaven." Who shall 
 dare to say nay to such a trusting woman ? It is 
 just like God to do such sovereign things. 
 
 6. The salvation of this penitent prince should 
 be both an encouragement and a warning to those sons 
 of Christian parents who have lost the paths of virtue. 
 Often is it said of the penitent thief on the cross, 
 that one such case is recorded in the Scriptures, 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON OF GODLY PARENTS. 185 
 
 that none may despair of repentance on a death- 
 bed ; and but one, that none may presume. 
 
 Similar is the twofold lesson to be learned from 
 the recovery of this fallen monarch. He tried the 
 fearful experiment of abandoning the God of his 
 fathers, and becoming a monument of illustrious 
 guilt. Through bitter disappointment and humil- 
 iating sorrow, he was saved. The Scriptures ex- 
 pressly contradict the Jewish tradition. But he 
 was one of a thousand. No other such is clearly 
 declared in the Scriptures to have run that risk 
 with safety at the last. God can save a soul in 
 such an extremity of sin ; but it is like lifting to 
 its place again a fallen star. Fallen stars generally 
 go out in darkness. 
 
 That is an exceptional hazard which a young 
 man incurs in such an experience. It is like cross- 
 ing Niagara over the rapids, on a tight-rope. One 
 Blondin out of forty millions may have done it, 
 and reached the hither shore in safety ; but would 
 you or I risk it for that? The general law of 
 God's dealings with men is that strange and un- 
 natural wickedness shall be left to itself to work 
 out its own penalties. This it did in the case of 
 King Ahaz. 
 
 Place these two royal sinners side by side. 
 Both had the example and teachings and prayers 
 of godly parents. Both broke loose from these 
 restraints, and ran a career of wild and defiant 
 crime. One was saved, the other lost ; one taken, 
 
136 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 the other left. Why the difference we know not. 
 It is the way of God to do autocratic things. But 
 woe to him who presumes upon God's regal mercy, 
 to defy his laws and trample on his grace ! The 
 probabilities are incalculably great that he will 
 be left to his own chosen way, and to mourn at 
 last, — 
 " The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted." 
 

 THE TWIN SERPENTS. 
 
 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, 
 when they were in the field, that. Cain rose up against Abel his 
 brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where 
 is Abel thy brother ? And he said, I know not : am I my broth- 
 er's keeper ? And he said, What hast thou done ? The voice 
 of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And 
 now thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her 
 mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. A fugitive 
 and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto 
 the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. — Gen. iv. 
 8-13. 
 
 THE story of Cain is the story of all ages. Sin, 
 suffering; the one following the other by a 
 law fixed and imperative like that by which pain 
 agonizes a burning hand. A living poet speaks of 
 
 " The coils 
 Of those twin serpents, — Sin and Suffering." 
 
 So far as the narrative informs us, the suffering 
 of the first murderer was mental suffering. Dis- 
 ease did not blast him ; chains did not bind him ; 
 the mysterious mark on his forehead was not a 
 burning brand. He went his way like other men. 
 He had sons and daughters : he built the first city 
 known in history. Tradition says that he founded 
 
 137 
 
138 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 many cities, and became the head of a great em- 
 pire. Yet Cain " went out from the presence of the 
 Lord." He lived a life of conscious curse. The 
 serpents coiled within. Cursed in thought, cursed 
 in feeling, cursed in fears, cursed in blasted hopes, 
 cursed in one long despair : such was life to the 
 first man who bore the fruit of the first matured 
 and ripened sin. And such will be the life of the 
 last man who shall go out from the presence of 
 the Lord, bearing the burden of a finished crime 
 unrepentejd of and unforgiven. 
 
 Sin finds in the very constitution of the human 
 mind the enginery of its own retribution. Let us 
 note some of these retributive experiences of sin, 
 as developed in the common life of men. 
 
 1. The very consciousness of sin is destructive of a 
 sinner s peace. The consciousness of sin is itself 
 suffering. " Sin revived, and I died," is the testi- 
 mony of St. Paul. And this is the testimony of 
 every sinner of every age. The bare conviction 
 of guilt in having transgressed the law of God is 
 the basis of the keenest anguish a man ever suffers 
 in this world or any other. 
 
 We are so made that it cannot be otherwise. 
 God has so constituted our nature that no man 
 ever yet lived who felt absolutely no emotion 
 when the naked fact of sin was laid on his con- 
 science by the Spirit of God, and held there. 
 That fact of guilt, to a soul thus compelled to face 
 it, is like a live coal to a naked eyeball. 
 
THE TWIN SEBPENTS. 139 
 
 Moreover, the worst of it is that conscience, if 
 left to itself, never finds an adequate remedy. It 
 never teaches a sinner how he may gain deliver- 
 ance from sin or suffering. It never hints to him 
 the possibility of deliverance from either. That 
 is no part of its design. The design of conscience 
 is simply to express God's law. Therefore, in a 
 sinner's experience, its working is to express the 
 evil of transgressing that law. Its legitimate 
 work is to pour out upon a sinner burning and 
 indignant accusations of guilt, of folly, of dis- 
 honor, of degradation, of moral defilement, of of- 
 fensiveness to the holy universe, and of exposure 
 to the wrath of a holy God, and — leave them there. 
 
 2. The destructive working of sin in a sinner's 
 experience is further seen in the fact that sin tends 
 to develop sin. Like all other forms of character, 
 sin grows. Never for an hour is it at a standstill. 
 No soul can live in eternal infancy. One sin be- 
 gets another sin. Nothing else in nature is so 
 prolific. One sin roots itself in the soil of char- 
 acter, and spreads itself outward, and lifts itself 
 heavenward defiantly. Sin penetrates the under- 
 ground of character, and forms there hidden enor- 
 mities and unconscious depths of passion. A man 
 of long experience in sin is always a worse man 
 than he seems to himself to be. The day of judg- 
 ment is to be a day of fearful surprises and over- 
 whelming revolutions in self-knowledge. 
 
 Sin full-grown defies law because it is law ; re- 
 
140 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 sists restraint because it is restraint ; contests au- 
 thority with God because he is God. Says Cain, 
 as depicted by Lord Byron in colloquy with Luci- 
 fer, "I bend to neither God nor thee." Lord 
 Byron knew whereof he affirmed. This is the 
 legitimate heroism of sin. 
 
 Sin runs to passion ; passion, to tumult in char- 
 acter; and a tumultuous character tends to tem- 
 pests and explosions, which scorn secrecies and 
 disguises. Then the whole man comes to light. 
 He sees himself, and others see him, as he is in 
 God's sight. Those solemn imperatives and their 
 awful responses, " Thou shalt not," — "I will," — 
 "Thou shalt," — " I will not," — make up then 
 all that the man knows of intercourse with God. 
 This is sin in the ultimate and finished type of it. 
 That is what it grows to in every sinner, if un- 
 checked by the grace of God. Every man unre- 
 deemed becomes a demon in eternity. 
 
 3. The destructiveness of sin is still further seen 
 in the apprehension of its discovery, with which the 
 consciousness of guilt is always more or less pain- 
 fully attended. Our souls are so made as to trem- 
 ble at the thought of detection in wrong. This is 
 often quite distinct from the fear of other suffering. 
 
 A burglar, not long ago, entered and rifled the 
 contents of an unoccupied dwelling at the seaside. 
 He ransacked the rooms from attic to cellar, and 
 heaped his plunder together in the parlor. There 
 were evidences that there he had sat down to rest, 
 
 
THE TWIN SERPENTS. 141 
 
 perhaps to think. On a bracket in the corner 
 stood a marble bust of Guido's "Ecce Homo," 
 Christ crowned with thorns. The guilty man had 
 taken it in his hands, and examined it. It bore 
 the marks of his fingers. But he had replaced it, 
 and turned its face to the wall, as if he would not 
 have even the cold, sightless eyes of the marble 
 Saviour look upon his deed of infamy. Be it so, 
 or not, there is in every human soul an instinct 
 of concealment of sin, of which that act is a 
 truthful emblem. The instinct of hiding clutches 
 at every act of wrong-doing, and would bury it 
 forever from the vision of pure eyes. The first 
 act of the first sinner, when the fact of sin grew 
 into his consciousness, was to hide himself at the 
 sound of God's voice in the garden. Never till 
 then had it been needful that God should ask, 
 "Where art thou?" Thus human nature antici- 
 pated all through earth's history the craving for 
 a hiding-place. Thus it foreshadowed the last 
 prayer of the last sinner : " Rocks and moun- 
 tains, fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him 
 that sitteth on the throne ! " 
 
 But what is the effect of this craving for con- 
 cealment on a sinner's life? It dooms him to 
 moral solitude. It shuts him into the society of 
 his own outraged conscience. He must bear the 
 torture of an inevitable Nemesis alone. That 
 sometimes goads him by the sheer dread of detec- 
 tion to forestall it by confession, that he may be 
 
142 STUDIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 rid of the torment of anticipating it. Do not the 
 history of snicide in this world, and the records 
 of tribunals of human justice, confirm this work- 
 ing of the law of conscience ? 
 
 These bodies of ours are so made as to be allies 
 of conscience in this thing. They are sometimes 
 all aglow and quivering with the signs by which 
 this fear of detection in wrong discloses itself to 
 the beholder. An eminent jurist in England, after 
 long practice at the bar, said that he was awe- 
 struck by the machinery for the discovery of false- 
 hood which God had constructed in the muscles of 
 the human countenance. The human face, he said, 
 was the most honest thing he had ever found in 
 man. If every thing else bore the mask of per- 
 jury, he said, there was an involuntary muscle in 
 one of the lips, which he had never known a wit- 
 ness to be able to control in the act of giving per- 
 jured testimony. The labial- muscle, true to the 
 hand of Him who made it, would start and vibrate 
 at the thrill of the fear of detection, in the soul 
 which crouched at bay behind it. So impossible 
 is it, in the last extremity, for a guilty being to 
 suppress its dread of discovery as a distinct and 
 positive source of suffering in the experience of 
 sin. 
 
 4. Once more, the destructiveness of sin in the 
 experience of the sinner is seen in the foreboding 
 of judicial and eternal retribution which is incident 
 to sin. No two ideas are more indissolubly joined 
 
THE TWIN SERPENTS. 143 
 
 in the working of the human mind than these two 
 of suffering and sin. "Sin — suffering; suffering 
 — sin." To a logical mind it is inevitable to rea- 
 son from the one to the other, even to the tracery 
 of a hair in the proportion of effect to cause. " So 
 much sin, so much suffering:" this is law. And 
 again, " So much suffering, so much sin : " this is 
 law. Think what we may of it, this is law. Job's 
 friends were true to the law of nature in this 
 thing. These two angels of despair have trodden 
 the ages as a winepress. It is the natural working 
 of an honest conscience, unrelieved by the grace 
 of God, to weld these two things together in the 
 forebodings of a guilty soul. 
 
 Hence, in the experience of sin, it is sheer na- 
 ture to anticipate suffering. And eternal sin must 
 involve eternal suffering: this is nature. Yes; 
 " it must be so : thou reasonest well." By na- 
 ture, as well as by revelation, the worm dieth not. 
 It is not superstition to fear an eternal hell ; it is 
 not bigotry to believe in it and to teach it : it is 
 simple nature acting out one of its involuntary 
 and elementary instincts. The heart's throbbing 
 is not more natural. A fearful looking-for of 
 judgment is, sooner or later, in the order of nature, 
 the fruitage of all sin. 
 
 Besides, the human conscience finds no end to 
 it. Once a sinner, always a sinner : this is nature. 
 Therefore, once a sinner, always a sufferer : this, 
 too, is nature. Again we must say, think what we 
 
144 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 may of it, this is law. It is no peculiarity of the 
 Bible. Priests have not made it so. The Bible is 
 no more responsible for it than the Koran. It is 
 an obstinate fact in the make of the human soul. 
 It declares the doom of any and every soul, if left 
 to itself to drag a history of sin behind it. 
 
 Consequently man the world over trembles at 
 something. Guilt sooner or later makes us all 
 cowards. We are naturally afraid of God. We 
 dread our own immortality. Who knows what is 
 to come of it? We are afraid of death. Who 
 has ever got an answer from the awful silence 
 beyond? An English general of unquestioned 
 courage confessed that he always trembled at the 
 first boom of the cannon in battle. He feared it 
 as much in his fiftieth fight as in his first. Do not 
 such moments of standing eye to eye with death, 
 and trembling at the booming echoes of eternity, 
 occur in the lives of the best and the bravest of 
 us? 
 
 But why ? Why should a man fear death ? A 
 caterpillar does not fear the chrysalis through 
 which it passes to a thing of beauty. Ah ! but we 
 are not butterflies. We are souls. We are images 
 of God. Our dread of death, of immortality, of 
 God, is the hammer of a deathless conscience fall- 
 ing on the anvil of eternal right, with the power 
 of an almighty will in the arm that wields it. 
 Woe to any thing that lies between ! 
 
 An honest conscience, then, can never point a 
 
THE TWIN SERPENTS. 145 
 
 man to himself for peace. It never tells him to 
 look within for that. It shuts him in to his de- 
 spair, and leaves him there. This is all that na- 
 ture can do for him. If there is no other source 
 of hope, he "goes out," like Cain, "from the pres- 
 ence of the Lord," to return no more. The twin 
 serpents are the companions of his solitude, for- 
 ever and forever. 
 
 From this review of the working of sin in the 
 experience of men, two things become obvious : — 
 
 It is reasonable that a sinner should inquire anx- 
 iously, " What shall I do to be saved?" No man 
 has any reason to be ashamed of anxiety for the 
 salvation of his soul. 
 
 Equally obvious is the preciousness of the work 
 of Christ. Christ becomes a reality to us, only by 
 being felt to be a necessity. He is a reality only 
 because he is a necessity. Here our thought should 
 culminate, — in the preciousness of Christ to lost 
 souls. Yes, lost ! No other one word expresses 
 so truthfully the condition in which Christ finds 
 us all. Lost to virtue ; lost to the respect and 
 trust of the holy universe ; lost to the benignant 
 operation of conscience ; lost to self-respect, to 
 hope, to peace, to the conscious blessedness of 
 being ; lost to the complacent love of Gocl, — the 
 past all guilt, and the future all despair ! 
 
 It is to such a being, to a crowded and forlorn 
 world of such beings, that Christ gives himself. 
 He gives himself to blot out the past. Oh, to 
 
146 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 blot out the past ! We know little of ourselves 
 if our experience has not taught us the need 
 of that. We know as little of Christ's work for 
 us, if we have not experienced the reality of that. 
 Yet how tame is language to express that expe- 
 rience ! Are there not hours in which we can only 
 adore in grateful silence the love of which we can- 
 not speak? If we would speak, do we not fall 
 back upon some such simple speech as that of 
 those lines which have already been the solace 
 of multitudes on death-beds, — 
 
 " Just as I am, without one plea, 
 Save that thy blood was shed for me, 
 And that thou bid'st me come to thee, 
 O Lamb of God, I come!" 
 

 AVOWED ENEMIES OF EELIGION. 
 
 After this did Sennacherib, king of Assyria, send his servants 
 to Jerusalem (but he himself laid siege against Lachish, and all 
 his power with him) unto Hezekiah, king of Judah, and unto all 
 Judah that were at Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith Sennacherib, 
 king of Assyria, Whereon do ye trust, that ye abide in the siege 
 in Jerusalem? Know ye not what I and my fathers have done 
 unto all the people of other lands ? Were the gods of the nations 
 of those lands any ways able to deliver their lands out of mine 
 hand ? Who was there among all the gods of those nations that 
 my fathers utterly destroyed, that could deliver his people out 
 of mine hand, that your God should be able to deliver you out 
 of mine hand? And his servants spake yet more against the 
 Lord God, and against his servant Hezekiah. — 2 Ckron. xxxii. 
 9, 10, 13, 14, 16. 
 
 THE enemies of religion are of two sorts. The 
 enmity of one class is concealed from expres- 
 sion in words. It is often accompanied with pro- 
 fessions of respect. It is covered by outward 
 virtues. It may not be distinctly known to the 
 conscience of the man himself. The enmity of 
 the other class is open and avowed. The Chris- 
 tian religion is caricatured and libelled, and thus 
 denounced. Its claims are ranked with those of 
 obsolete mythologies. Religion itself in any form 
 is pronounced to be the dream of superstition or 
 the craft of priests. 
 
 147 
 
148 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 This second class of enemies to the cross of 
 Christ are very strikingly paralleled by the char- 
 acter and deeds of the Assyrian king. He did 
 and proposed to do by the sword, what they do 
 and propose to do by tongue and pen. A very 
 truthful picture of the one may be seen in the nar- 
 rative of the other. Let us, then, read the char- 
 acter of modern hostility to Christianity in that 
 of Sennacherib and his marshals. 
 
 1. The first thing which attracts our notice is 
 their hoastfulness. The Assyrian monarch evident- 
 ly had no mean opinion of himself. " Know ye 
 not," he says, " what I and my fathers have done ? " 
 " We are big men. We have great armies. We 
 are flushed with victories. We do not know what 
 it is to be beaten. Think twice, good people, 
 before you presume to contend with me. Am not 
 I the great and noble Sennacherib, successor to 
 Nimrod the mighty, the victor in a hundred bat- 
 tles, who have put my foot on the neck of kings ? " 
 Such is the strain in which this Assyrian fellow 
 swaggers at the people of the living God. 
 
 Hardly could a more truthful picture be drawn 
 of the open enemies of God in every age. One 
 thing is always characteristic of them, — they 
 know how to brag. Self-conceit is their most 
 obvious quality. They are rich in brass. Their 
 claims are astounding to one who has not learned 
 their loud policy. Voltaire predicted with brazen 
 effrontery that Christianity would be defunct in 
 
AVOWED ENEMIES OF RELIGION. 149 
 
 twenty-five years. He claimed that he and the 
 encyclopaedists of France had written it to death. 
 Yet to-day, after a century has gone by, the copies 
 of the Christian Scriptures circulated in France 
 alone, papal though it be, are numbered by hun- 
 dreds of thousands every year, while the book- 
 sellers say that no other works lie on their shelves 
 so long as the once-famous works of Voltaire. 
 
 It is a favorite device — one cannot call it argu- 
 ment — with the enemies of the gospel, to claim 
 that it is obsolete. The world has outlived it. 
 Like other superstitions it has had its day. The 
 Old Testament especially is the object of this brag- 
 gart strategy. " Does anybody believe that stuff 
 now ? " said a very young lady to a friend not long 
 ago. " The world made in six days? Joshua stop- 
 ping the sun ? Jonah and the whale, and all that ? 
 Ha, ha ! I thought that intelligent people had got 
 over that." Probably she would have found it 
 no easy matter to give a reason for her denial of 
 the faith of her fathers. But her flippancy was 
 the fruit of the loud-mouthed assertions of infidel- 
 ity that the Old Testament is defunct. 
 
 Any lie persisted in may gain the force and mo- 
 mentum of a truth. These naked denials of bibli- 
 cal facts constitute in our day a very large share 
 of the capital of infidelity. Science, it is claimed, 
 has disproved the Mosaic cosmogony, at the very 
 time when scientific men are finding out that there 
 is a mysterious coincidence between the Mosaic 
 
150 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 and the geologic records. The testimony of the 
 Book and the testimony of the rocks agree to such 
 marvellous extent that unchristian scientists are 
 beginning to inquire where Moses got Ms informa- 
 tion. Moses somehow knew what it has taken 
 science four thousand years to discover. 
 
 The growth of Christianity, it is declared, has 
 ceased, and it is far on in the process of its de- 
 cline ; at the very time when secular historians are 
 lauding it as outweighing all other civilizing forces 
 put together. 
 
 The intelligence of the Christian system is de- 
 nied : it is claimed to be only fit for children and 
 fools ; at the very time when it is commanding the 
 faith of a larger proportion of the thinkers of the 
 race than any other system known in history. 
 
 Christian missions are pronounced a failure, at 
 the very time when they have made Christianity 
 a power which the nations respect and idolatry 
 fears over more than half the world. Cannibal 
 tribes are transformed into fit allies of the most 
 renowned empires and most enlightened republics 
 on the globe, in less than half a century, by the 
 preaching of a few men who went forth to their 
 work amidst the world's mingled compassion and 
 derision, — compassion for their fate, and derision 
 for their folly; and yet the attempt to Christian- 
 ize "happy and contented idolaters " is declared 
 an antiquated blunder. 
 
 This, I repeat, is the policy by which the en£- 
 
AVOWED ENEMIES OF KELIGION. 151 
 
 mies of the Christian religion expect to browbeat 
 its friends ont of their faith. This policy is very 
 old. Our religion has outlived a great many de- 
 velopments of it. First it was astronomy ; then it 
 was geology; then it was Chinese and Indian his- 
 tory; then it was Egyptian chronology; then it 
 was flint arrowheads and stone hatchets ; and now 
 it is evolution and the correlation of forces, and so 
 on, — which infidelity has declared to have been the 
 death-blow to Christianity and the annihilation of 
 its sacred books. The claim is not a prediction, 
 not a conjecture, but a declaration of historic fact. 
 The thing is done. The Christian system is de- 
 funct. All that the world has to do with it in 
 future is to smile at the comedy, and learn wisdom 
 from the blunder. It is in vain that we point to 
 the achievements of our faith now in progress, and 
 claim that it is a very lively thing for a dead thing. 
 There is a class of " advanced thinkers " who will 
 have their way about it. They ring the changes 
 on the old story, — that the Christian religion is 
 obsolete, and belongs henceforth to the historic 
 mythologies. " Philosophers " and " seers " and 
 "liberal thinkers" talk of Confucius and Zoro- 
 aster, and Moses and Mahomet, and Jesus and Soc- 
 rates, — all in a breath, as if they were of equal 
 authority, and all alike ciphers in the " Church of 
 the Future." 
 
 It is related of an ancient king, that having van- 
 quished his rival in battle, and taken him captive, 
 

 152 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 lie confined him in a cage, from which he was led 
 out in chains daily, and compelled to bend to the 
 ground at the saddle-bows of his victor, who used 
 his prostrate body as a riding-block to assist him 
 in mounting his horse. Like that is the imperious 
 spirit with which the avowed enemies of Christ 
 treat his claims to their faith. 
 
 2. A second feature by which this kind of hos- 
 tility to religion is characterized is its special ani- 
 mosity to the ministers of the gospel. It is notice- 
 able that the bragging Assyrian does not address 
 his appeal chiefly to the Judsean king and his offi- 
 cial representatives. His attempt is to stir up 
 revolt among the populace, by appeals to their 
 superstition and their fears. The official head of 
 the kingdom and his subalterns are treated with 
 contempt. They " spake yet more against the Lord 
 God, and against his servant Hezekiah." As the 
 head of a theocratic kingdom, Hezekiah was the 
 chief official representative to his people of the true 
 religion. 
 
 Again and again is this hostility to the ministers 
 of religion displayed by its open foes. The people 
 are exhorted to revolt against " the priests." The 
 popular name which infidelity gives to Christian- 
 ity is " priestcraft." In every large community 
 in which enmity to the gospel is openly professed, 
 is to be found a class of men who are pre-eminent- 
 ly minister-haters. Their ridicule and denuncia- 
 tion are specially aimed at the clergy. No other 
 
AVOWED ENEMIES OF RELIGION. 158 
 
 class of men receive at their hands such severe 
 measure and uncandid judgment. The human 
 frailties of ministers are the butt of their satire. 
 The fall of a minister, they never let the world 
 hear the last of. That good-nature which the ma- 
 jority of civilized beings extend to men of other 
 professions, is often denied to ministers. Lawyers, 
 judges, physicians, merchants, teachers, journalists, 
 may depend upon a fair hearing and a genial look 
 from these men ; but they are porcupines to minis- 
 ters. When will the enemies to the popular the- 
 ology of New England have done with Cotton 
 Mather ? When will the opponents of the Puri- 
 tan faith, throughout the country, have done with 
 the Salem witchcraft, and the whipping of Quak- 
 ers, and the banishment of Roger Williams ? Will 
 the world ever accept the truth about the Connect- 
 icut Blue Laws? 
 
 The clergy, who are held responsible for all the 
 moral blunders of their age, are the most roundly 
 abused of men, living or dead. It is a sign of the 
 general excellence of their character, and a sign, 
 too, that infidelity fears them, that, with such con- 
 centration of the world's shafts upon them, they 
 exist at all to-day, as a class respected and loved 
 by anybody. No thanks are due to religious lib- 
 eralism, that their characters are safe anywhere. 
 What does communism say of the Christian cler- 
 gy? What did it do to the humane and godly 
 Archbishop of Paris in 1871? 
 
154 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 3. Avowed enmity to religion is often character- 
 ized also by the plausibility of its reasonings against 
 the destiny of Christianity. Sennacherib was a 
 shrewd fellow. His speech to the Jewish popu- 
 lace was a very cunning specimen of demagogical 
 oratory. His argument was a very plausible one. 
 His facts were true. He and his fathers had been 
 mighty men. Their arms had been crowned with 
 success. The nations cowered before them. The 
 gods of the nations had been as helpless before 
 their conquering legions as so many bullocks. 
 Reasoning upon the facts in the light of no other 
 than the pagan theology, Sennacherib was right. 
 His conquest of Judaea was a foregone conclusion. 
 
 " Were the gods of those nations any ways able 
 to deliver their lands out of mine hand? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Who was there among all the gods of those 
 nations that could deliver his people ? " 
 
 " Not a god." 
 
 "How much less shall your God deliver you 
 out of my hand ! — you, little petty Judah, not so 
 large as the least of my provinces ! " 
 
 " True : it is a fact." 
 
 Such must have been the colloquy between 
 them, carried on by the Jewish hearers silently 
 and with sinking hearts. On the pagan theory of 
 the gods, and in the light of recent history, the 
 Assyrian monarch had the best of the argument 
 by all odds. 
 
AVOWED ENEMIES OF RELIGION. 155 
 
 So it often seems in the controversy between 
 religion and its avowed enemies. They often 
 seem to make out a strong case of it. Much can 
 be plausibly said against religion and its friends. 
 Facts can be made to seem conclusive against 
 them. Real difficulties are found in our faith, 
 which no wise man will pretend that he does not 
 feel. Science discloses facts which require modi- 
 fications of our interpretations of the Scriptures. 
 Astronomy gave a fearful shock to popular faith 
 in the Bible — simple as it seems to us now — 
 when it revealed the fact that the sun did not 
 move around the earth. As simple will seem the 
 explanation of other scientific mysteries by and 
 by; but they are none the less startling at the 
 outset, for that. 
 
 The ministers of religion, too, are but men, often 
 weak men, sometimes wicked men, always imper- 
 fect men. The assaults of infidelity upon them 
 often seem very plausible. Religion itself has to 
 bear the brunt of them. 
 
 Specially do the confident predictions of the 
 downfall of Christianity often seem morally cer- 
 tain. The philosophical proof alone of this is 
 unanswerable. It is the great marvel of history, 
 that such a religion as ours can hold its own at all 
 in such a world as this. By all the laws of human 
 evidence by which men prognosticate the future, 
 the Christian religion ought long before this time 
 to have disappeared from the face of the earth. 
 
156 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Its temples ought to be now antiquarian ruins, of 
 which curious travellers should be ferreting out 
 the history and the meaning. The Scriptures 
 ought now to be stored in antiquarian libraries, 
 not read or cared for by twenty men in a genera- 
 tion. 
 
 On purely philosophical grounds, the enemies 
 of our religion are right in their assurances of its 
 speedy overthrow. The balance of natural prob- 
 abilities is never in its favor. The great forces of 
 this world are its allied foes. Crises have oc- 
 curred in its history, in which persecution has 
 been backed up by wealth, by learning, by the 
 prestige of antiquity, by civil law, by public opin- 
 ion, and by bayonets, — by all the great forces 
 which sway society and compact empires; and 
 thus allied, it has borne down — upon what? 
 Upon armies bristling with steel? upon Ehren- 
 breitsteins and Cronstadts ? No : upon a handful 
 of poor men and friendless women and little chil- 
 dren, who had no weapon of defence but prayer ! 
 
 Many times has the success of persecution 
 seemed to be a foregone conclusion. Many times 
 has its success appeared to be an accomplished 
 fact. It has laughed at failure as a bugbear. It 
 has burnt up the handful of men, women, and chil- 
 dren, as the Duke of Alva did in the Netherlands. 
 The people of God even have often thought their 
 case a hopeless one. "We trusted that it had 
 been he that should have redeemed Israel." Oh, 
 
AVOWED ENEMIES OE RELIGION. 157 
 
 yes ! We did trust, but our trust is disappointed. 
 Our enemies have triumphed. Our cause is hope- 
 less. We can only lie down and die. 
 
 Periods sometimes occur in which scepticism 
 becomes for a time the popular mood of a nation. 
 Infidelity is greeted by the controlling minds of 
 the time. Universities and royal societies nurse 
 it. Elegant literature dandles it. Poetry sings 
 it. The sciences pay tribute to it. Fashion co- 
 quets with it. Philosophy crowns it. Wealth 
 builds temples to it. Philanthropy and liberty 
 bring incense to it from afar. Even to the friends 
 of Christ it seems as if every thing were going 
 against them. Society seems to have run mad 
 with unbelief. What was Paris in 1789, and again 
 in 1871, but one vast lunatic-asylum of unbe- 
 lievers? At such times, to worldly wisdom it is 
 the right thing to prophesy the speedy extinction 
 of Christianity. 
 
 4. The history of the avowed enemies of Christ 
 is characterized by the certainty, the suddenness, and 
 the unexpected means of their disappointment. 
 
 Somebody made very short work with Sennache- 
 rib. One night was time enough to answer his 
 gasconade at the people of God. One verse is all 
 that the historian thinks necessary to tell the 
 story : " The Lord sent an angel which cut off all 
 the mighty men of valor." One angel of the 
 Lord was a match for the Assyrian battalions. 
 The mighty men were not looking for such a re- 
 
158 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 enforcement to their enemy. That was the last 
 thing they dreamed of. That destroying angel, 
 be it a pestilence or a storm, or a miraculous appa- 
 rition, was the " angel of death " to a hundred 
 and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrian hosts 
 before morning. 
 
 The fame of that mysterious event spread 
 quickly around the world. It became the. symbol 
 of all sudden national deliverances. It lives thus 
 to our own times. Isaiah's triumphant description 
 of it is read every year in the churches of Moscow, 
 on the anniversary of the salvation of the Russian 
 Empire by the celebrated retreat of the French 
 army in 1815. The opening watchword of the 
 Judsean song of triumph, " God is our refuge and 
 strength," has furnished the inscription over the 
 greatest of Eastern churches in Constantinople. 
 It is the foundation, too, of the noblest national 
 hymn in Western Europe, — Luther's far-famed 
 " Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott." 
 
 An English poet has celebrated the event in 
 words so full of the old Hebrew spirit as to de- 
 serve citation here : — 
 
 " The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, 
 And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. 
 
 Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, 
 That host with their banners at sunset were seen: 
 Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, 
 That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. 
 
AVOWED ENEMIES OF EELIGION. 159 
 
 For the angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, 
 And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed ; 
 And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, 
 And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still! 
 
 And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, 
 
 But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride. 
 
 And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, 
 The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown; 
 And the might of the Gentile, un smote by the sword, 
 Hath melted like snow at the glance of the Lord." 
 
 The history of our religion develops often a 
 similar phenomenon in God's dealings with its 
 avowed and boastful enemies. They are sure to 
 be disappointed in the result. Something keeps 
 Christianity alive to-day, centuries after, by the 
 logic of its foes, it ought to have been dead and 
 buried. Something makes it grow and thrive. 
 It never had a deeper hold upon the world's faith 
 than now. Never before did its friends look out 
 upon a more resplendent future. 
 
 Often the local triumphs of our religion occur 
 suddenly. A revival of religion changes the mood 
 of a community in a month. Corrupt institutions 
 like slavery fall suddenly, and by unlooked-for 
 agencies. Times of apparent decline of religion 
 are often times of preparation, in which great 
 principles are secretly taking root ; and at length 
 they start up and grow as acknowledged powers 
 of Christian truth. The visible progress of our 
 
160 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 religion in the world is commonly by sudden leaps 
 and revolutionary changes. A single angel from 
 the living God works out results at which both 
 friends and enemies of truth stand amazed. 
 
 Sometimes in private communities it is the 
 angel of Death. Opposers of religion are some- 
 times removed at a moment so critical, that men 
 cannot but silently put the two things together. 
 By ways of his own, God achieves his eternal 
 purposes. 
 
 " God moves in a mysterious way, 
 His wonders to perform.' ' 
 
A TALK WITH YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT 
 JOSIAH. 
 
 Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he 
 reigned in Jerusalem one and thirty years. And he did that 
 which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the ways 
 of David his father, and declined neither to the right hand nor 
 to the left. For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet 
 young, he began to seek after the God of David his father : and 
 in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem 
 from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and 
 the molten images. — 2 Chron. xxxiv. 1-3. 
 
 IT is a noticeable fact, tftat the histories in the 
 Old Testament, of kings and other great men, 
 tell us so much about their youth. Where they 
 were born ; who their fathers and mothers were ; 
 what happened to them in their childhood; how 
 old they were when they began to reign ; the fact 
 that some of them were boy-princes, — just the 
 things about them which interest young people in 
 them in all ages, — are thought worthy of a place 
 in the word of God. We may reasonably take it 
 as a sign that God feels special interest in children 
 and youth, that he has constructed the Bible so. 
 
 The story of Josiah is not so well known as 
 those of Samuel and Joseph ; but it is told with 
 
 161 
 
162 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 the same kind of zest, and is as full of lessons 
 most valuable to the young. 
 
 1. It shows, among other things, that a child 
 may become a Christian very early in life. He was 
 but fifteen years old when he is spoken of as 
 "seeking the God of his father David." That 
 was the first that people knew of it. But probably 
 he had been a prayerful boy long before that. 
 He had been a king then for seven years. If he 
 had been a wild wayward youth, this would proba- 
 bly have been mentioned. 
 
 There is no more difficulty now in a young per- 
 son's becoming a Christian than there was in the 
 case of King Josiah or of Samuel. When youth 
 has been spent in sin, sin has become a habit. 
 The habit of sin is quick in forming. Once 
 formed, it is a powerful hinderance to conversion. 
 The natural and easy way for a child is to groiv 
 up. sl Christian, so as never to remember the time 
 when he was not one. 
 
 Nathan Dickerman is sometimes spoken of as 
 an unnatural boy, because he gave evidence of 
 being a child of God at the age of four years. 
 Many have thought that that had something to do 
 with his early death. "All the good boys die 
 early," it is said of Sunday-school books. The 
 books may not all be what they ought to be, but 
 Nathan Dickerman's early piety was just the most 
 natural thing in the world. We shall probably 
 have many such cases as the millennium ap- 
 
A TALK ABOUT JOSIAH. 163 
 
 proaches. That is the true way of coming into 
 the church, — growing into it from earliest years. 
 
 2. The narrative of this young king shows also 
 that young persons may become Christians without 
 the excitement of a revival. I have heard children 
 wish that a great revival would occur, and carry 
 them into the kingdom of Christ in a whirl of 
 excitement. They think it would be so much 
 easier, if everybody else were beginning to serve 
 God. If their companions were ready ; if George 
 and Henry and Mary and Julia would join them ; 
 if there were a great stir about religion ; if people 
 were talking of nothing else, — it would appear so 
 natural then to do as others do ! If Mr. Ham- 
 mond, the children's preacher, would come, and 
 hold a series of meetings, and form a child's 
 church, with a covenant which a child could 
 understand, some imagine that they would be 
 among the first to rise and say, "I will obey 
 Christ." 
 
 Perhaps they would ; yet they might not be 
 any nearer heaven than now. People are often 
 deceived in a revival. None are more likely to be 
 so than young people, who know little of their 
 own hearts. In a great excitement, Satan often 
 tries to make one think one is a Christian falsely, 
 so as to escape real conversion. 
 
 Besides, often the great test of our willingness 
 to obey God is, whether we are willing to do it 
 alone. To do what others do not, may be the very 
 
164 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 thing that God requires. If we truly love God, 
 we should obey him if we were the only persons 
 in the world to do it. We should do it all the 
 more for being alone. If the dear Saviour had no 
 other friend, would you desert him, and leave him 
 with none ? It would be heroic to stand by him 
 then. This Josiah did when he began the refor- 
 mation of his kingdom : he stood absolutely alone. 
 He started the revival by being the first convert. 
 
 The great question is an individual one. Daniel 
 Webster once said, that, of all the subjects of 
 human thought that had ever occurred to him, this 
 was the greatest and the most impressive, — " the 
 personal relation of the soul to God." Salvation lies 
 between each single soul alone and God alone. Each 
 one of us must die alone. Each one must go into 
 eternity alone. Each one must be judged alone. 
 It will matter very little then what others have 
 done. God will inquire of you what you have 
 done. Why should you wait for others, or they 
 for you ? Waiting is a perilous thing when God 
 says "Now." "To-morrow" has ruined a great 
 many souls, 
 
 3. King Josiah^s conversion shows that a young 
 person may become a Christian just at the time when 
 the pleasures of the world are the most attractive. 
 He was at an age when the world is fresh and new 
 to a young man. He was a king. This world is 
 a beautiful place to a youthful prince who has 
 health and wealth and leisure and princely com- 
 
A TALK ABOUT JOSIAH. 165 
 
 panions to make it such. One could be happy in 
 such a world forever. 
 
 The young often plead it as an excuse for neg- 
 lecting to obey God, that they are so young ; the 
 world so new; so many of their associates are 
 irreligious; and they have so much to make a 
 worldly life enjoyable. Not so did the youthful 
 king reason. Life could scarcely look more at- 
 tractive to anybody than it did to him. He might 
 have made one long holiday of it. That was the 
 fashion of the time. Nobody thought it necessary 
 to be religious but a few old gray-haired prophets. 
 It would have attracted no notice, and nobody 
 would have blamed him, if he had lived a life of 
 respectable neglect of God. But he loved God. 
 He wished to please God. 
 
 The happiest life conceivable in this world is 
 the life of one to whom God gives the" innocent 
 enjoyments of youth, and adds to them the deeper 
 joys of religion. There is no contradiction be- 
 tween them. God enjoys the sports of the young 
 more than they do, if only they love him. Who 
 is it that makes the lambs skip, and the birds sing, 
 and the squirrels chirp, and the bees hum ? Their 
 pleasure is all pleasure to God. 
 
 4. The story of Josiah shows, further, that a 
 child may be a Christian without being unmanly or 
 unwomanly. Boys sometimes imagine that religion 
 will take the spirit all out of them. I have never 
 heard girls say this, but I suspect they have often 
 
166 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 felt it. I have heard it said that " the pious boy 
 is the milksop of the family." If this is true, it is 
 very strange that King Josiah did not turn out so. 
 He began to be religious very early. We do not 
 know that he was ever any thing else. But even 
 at the age of nineteen years he was a great reform- 
 er. Eeformers are not apt to be milksops. Did 
 anybody ever call Luther a milksop ? The pope 
 did not call him so. He found him such a lively 
 opponent that he could think of nothing to do with 
 him but to burn him. When Luther entered the 
 hall where the Diet of Worms was in session, one of 
 the ablest military commanders of the age tapped 
 him on the shoulder, and said, "Monk, monk, 
 thou art on a passage more perilous than I evei 
 knew on the bloodiest battle-field." Such milk- 
 sops are the great reformers of the world. 
 
 King Josiah was one of such. He did for his 
 country and age what Luther did for Europe. He 
 was the most energetic man in his kingdom. We 
 sometimes say of a very bright youth, that he is 
 the life of the house. King Josiah was just that. 
 He made things lively for everybody. Judah 
 never had a more spirited and gallant prince. Had 
 he lived in the middle ages, he would have been 
 renowned for all chivalrous virtues. Did you ever 
 read of the " Knights of St. John " ? In all their 
 innocent exploits, King Josiah would have been 
 one of them. He put down the bad men of the 
 realm, right and left, most valiantly. Not one of 
 them dared to insult him. 
 
A TALK ABOUT JOSIAH. 167 
 
 At last he lost his life by courageous exposure 
 in battle, though warned beforehand not to risk it. 
 The whole nation mourned for him as one of the 
 bravest monarchs they had ever had; and this 
 after a long reign of thirty-odd years. If his piety 
 had made a prig of him, would not his people have 
 found him out in that time ? Yet they loved him 
 and mourned for him, much as our country loved 
 and mourned for President Lincoln. 
 
 Let me tell you how the idea has come about, 
 that religion makes a boy a chicken-hearted fellow. 
 It is just because religion cultivates certain still 
 virtues. Benevolence, purity, reverence, meek- 
 ness, charity, the forgiveness of injuries, and such 
 like, are required by the law of Christ. A young 
 man who becomes a Christian will not swear, nor 
 quarrel with his companions, nor break the sab- 
 bath, nor insult his teachers, nor sing ribald songs 
 in the streets, nor brag about fighting everybody. 
 In a word, he will not be a rowdy, but a gentle- 
 man. Therefore he will be nicknamed " milksop " 
 by rowdies. That he must expect. It is an honor 
 to be nicknamed by rowdies. He should remem- 
 ber that all that religion requires of him in this 
 respect is that he cultivate and practise the very 
 virtues which are necessary to make a gentleman. 
 The very highest type of character which the cul- 
 ture of the world has ever conceived of is that of 
 a Christian gentleman. And that is precisely what 
 religion makes a young man. By the way, have 
 
168 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 you ever thought what is the meauing of this word 
 " gentleman " ? It is only a gentle-man. That is, 
 a man possessed of the quiet and passive graces, 
 just those which the Christian religion teaches. 
 Wickedness always tends to rudeness, to violence, 
 to angry and turbulent passions, to loud and pro- 
 fane speech. The noblest culture of the world 
 unconsciously supports the Christian religion in 
 teaching a boy that he must be a gentle-man. 
 
 I have heard of an ignorant boy who was very 
 fond of fighting, who, when he was asked who 
 was the person in heaven whom he most wanted 
 to see, sang out, at the top of his voice, " Go- 
 liath ! " He thought the Philistine giant was a 
 much more respectable man than Solomon. So 
 long as we number among the godly men of the 
 world such men as David and Solomon and 
 Josiah, and St. Louis of France, and Edward the 
 Sixth of England, and Gustavus Adolphus, and 
 William of Orange, and Washington, and Lincoln, 
 we have no reason to fear that our religion will 
 make us chicken-hearted. When that takes place, 
 the world will have to find some other name for 
 its finest characters than that of gentle-man. 
 
 5. The history of this ancient prince suggests 
 also that one ivho becomes a Christian early in life 
 is likely to become a better man than one who first 
 lives through a career of sin. He is likely to be a 
 more consistent Christian. He will probably 
 have fewer faults to get rid of, and fewer habits 
 which his piety must break up. 
 
A TALK ABOUT JOSIAH. 169 
 
 It is remarkable that through the whole of 
 Josiah's long reign, — one of the longest in Judsean 
 annals, — not one wrong thing is recorded of him. 
 Doubtless he had faults, and did wrong things; 
 but not one was important enough to be men- 
 tioned in the Bible. Other great and good men 
 are mentioned in the Scriptures, who were very 
 inconsistent. They did some very wicked things. 
 Some of them had long periods of wickedness, 
 in which they displeased God exceedingly, and 
 had to suffer for it. The Bible is very honest 
 about its great men. It does not conceal their 
 faults, nor make them out better than they were. 
 But of King Josiah it has not a thing to say 
 with which God finds fault. The only important 
 mistake recorded of him was that in which he lost 
 his life by fighting with the king of Egypt. The 
 narrative appears to indicate that God incited the 
 Egyptian king to warn him that he would lose 
 his life if he went into the battle. But there is no 
 evidence that he knew that the warning came from 
 God. He thought it was the notion only of his 
 enemy. He determined that his enemy should 
 not outwit him in that way. Therefore, like the 
 brave man he was, and the father of his country, 
 he plunged into the thickest of the fight, and died 
 as brave soldiers love to die. Except that one 
 mistake of excessive bravery and patriotism, not 
 a thing is recorded of him that went wrong. 
 
 This indicates that as he grew up to manhood 
 
170 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 he had a very symmetrical character. He was a 
 great and good man all around. This was the 
 natural result of his early piety. Other things 
 being equal, those become the best men and 
 women who spend the largest portion of their 
 lives in serving God. They have the least to 
 undo, in consecrating their lives to Christ, the 
 fewest old sins to overcome, the least headway of 
 sinful habit to get rid of. 
 
 In my boyhood I used to attend the church of 
 the late Rev. Albert Barnes of Philadelphia. He 
 used to preach, once in two months, a sermon' to 
 us children. We thought him the holiest man in 
 the world. We used to call him "the beloved 
 disciple," he was so like the apostle John. We 
 did not believe that St. John was a better man. 
 But I well remember his confessing to us, that, 
 though he had then been a Christian for more 
 than twenty years, he had not entirely got over 
 certain wrong habits of thought and feeling which 
 he had indulged in his youth. He lamented all 
 his life that he had not given his heart to God in 
 his boyhood. He said, that, if he had done so, he 
 should have been a better Christian and a hap- 
 pier man. 
 
 6, The story of this good king suggests further, 
 that the way for a young person to become a Christian 
 is to make a business of doing right. Josiah's whole 
 life was spent in setting things right throughout his 
 kingdom. Before his reign every thing had gone 
 
A TALK ABOUT JOSIAH. 171 
 
 wrong. The worship of God was neglected. Idols 
 were worshipped instead. The word of God was 
 lost. The people had become so wicked as to have 
 forgotten what God had commanded in the law of 
 Moses. That was as if you and I should become 
 so heedless of God's words as to forget the Lord's 
 Prayer. The temple which Solomon had built with 
 such magnificence was so neglected that cattle 
 broke into it ; and every thing was in a bad way. 
 
 As soon as the young king was old enough to 
 understand the state of things, he set himself, and 
 his ministers, and his cabinet, and his soldiers, and 
 his workmen, to putting things to rights. He be- 
 gan early, and kept at it, and spent his life in it. 
 Nobody else put him up to it. It was his own 
 idea. We are told that he " covenanted to serve 
 God with all his heart and with all his soul." 
 This is what I mean by making a business of doing 
 right. He started with the very first thing that 
 he had to do, and did it right, and in order to please 
 God. 
 
 Now, this is the true way to be a Christian. 
 There is no great mystery about it. There is noth- 
 ing in it which a child cannot do by the grace of 
 God as well as anybody else. You can do it as 
 well as I. God does not require you to go through 
 any long season of unhappiness, in trying to feel 
 as some others have felt in repenting of sin. You 
 have only to do right in order to please Christ. 
 That is religion, and that is the whole of it. 
 
172 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 To a young child, religion consists very largely 
 in obeying parents; running on errands pleas- 
 antly ; speaking the truth ; learning lessons faith- 
 fully ; being respectful to teachers ; being kind to 
 playmates, especially the poor ones and unhappy 
 ones; reverencing the aged; praying with the 
 heart, instead of " saying prayers ; " and doing 
 all these things in order to please Christ, because 
 he is good and has died for you, and you love 
 him. 
 
 Take the very first thing you have to do ; be it 
 only to go for a glass of water for your mother, or 
 playing a game of croquet with your sister, when 
 you had rather play marbles than do either: do 
 the thing that costs you something, and do it right, 
 and do it because it will please Christ. Christ 
 will be pleased with it, as truly as he was with 
 Solomon for building the temple, or with Josiah 
 for repairing it. 
 
 Then keep doing things right, and in order to 
 please God, all your life. That is living a Chris- 
 tian life. It will be made up largely of little 
 things. Christ has taken pains to say to us that 
 he is contented with little services from us. A 
 cup of cold water given in the right way shall not 
 lose its reward. He notices little things more 
 than he does great ones, because there are more of 
 them, and everybody can do them. Make a busi- 
 ness of doing them right, and he will remember it 
 thousands and millions of years hence, and when he 
 
A' TALK ABOUT JOSIAH. 173 
 
 comes to judgment. Out of all the millions of 
 people that will be there, he will call for you, and 
 say, " Come, ye blessed of my Father. " 
 
AN ANCIENT MODEL OF YOUTHFUL 
 TEMPERANCE. 
 
 But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile 
 himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine 
 which he drank. — Dan. i. 8. 
 
 THE Old Testament often seems as if it were 
 inspired especially for young men. The les- 
 son before us answers with singular pertinence 
 the inquiry which every young man ought to ask 
 and answer in a manly way : " What stand shall I 
 take respecting obedience to the drinking usages of 
 society?" 
 
 We talk of the old prophets. But at the time 
 of which we now speak, this one was a very young 
 man. He comes home, therefore, to every young 
 man's level. He takes each one by the hand for 
 a plain brotherly talk on a very stale subject. 
 Let us listen and overhear the young prophet's 
 counsel. 
 
 I. What were Daniel's temptations to abandon 
 a life of abstinence from strong drink ? Many a 
 namesake of his may look into his own life for the 
 answer. 
 
 1. He was tempted by his youth. He is sup- 
 
 174 
 
ANCIENT MODEL OF TEMPERANCE. 175 
 
 posed to have been from eighteen to twenty-two 
 years of age, when the question of abstinence be- 
 came a practical one to him. He was at the age 
 when appetite is strong, health good, principle 
 weak, and experience not at all. A young man 
 starts often on a life of self-indulgence by simply 
 doing nothing, thinking nothing, caring nothing. 
 He just prolongs into manhood the animal instincts 
 of childhood. Before he knows it the mischief is 
 done. We are all animals before we are men. 
 Drinking is our first natural pleasure. It is for 
 each young man to say for -himself whether it 
 shall be the last. 
 
 2. Daniel was tempted also by the usages of his 
 social rank. He was a noble, probably of the 
 blood-royal. It was the usage of his order to 
 drink wine, and the best of it, and much of it. 
 Probably then, as now, it was the sign of a gentle- 
 man in the circle of society in which the young 
 nobleman moved, to know good wine when he 
 tasted it, to use it freely, and to enjoy the social 
 hilarity of it without scruple. Oriental literature 
 had its drinking-songs, like those of Burns and 
 Thomas Moore. Babylon had its Fifth Avenue, 
 its Chestnut Street, its Beacon Street, where the 
 social aristocracy of the city discussed the con- 
 tents of their wine-cellars, as did the guests at the 
 marriage in Cana. It required not a little moral 
 courage for a young noble of the royal stock of 
 Judah to go to the metropolitan dinner-parties, 
 
176 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 and leave his wine untasted. " An odd fellow, this 
 young Hebrew ! " his companions said. " Yes, in- 
 deed! Does the upstart Jew think to teach us 
 what should be the habits pf a Babylonian gentle- 
 man?" 
 
 3. Daniel was tempted by the courtesies of offi- 
 cial station. He was in training for the first office 
 in the realm. He encountered the same tempta- 
 tion which a young man would now encounter if 
 he were invited to dine at the mansion of the 
 French Minister in Washington. " If I have the 
 honor of drinking the health of the beautiful and 
 accomplished daughter of the Hon. Secretary 
 Xerxes, shall I play the boor by refusing, for the 
 sake of an absurd scruple about a glass of wine ? " 
 Such was the gist of the question which put the 
 principle of the young Hebrew to the test. How 
 many young Americans in official circles would 
 have borne the trial ? 
 
 4. Daniel was tempted also by his professional 
 prospects. Few young men have ever lived who 
 have had a more splendid opening before them, to 
 a magnificent professional career, than the young 
 prophet statesman had at the court of Babylon. 
 He was noted for his manly beauty. His personal 
 address was that of an accomplished nobleman. 
 He was acquiring the ripest culture of the age. 
 He had only to conform to the usages of the most 
 select and refined society of the capital, to make 
 sure of a career which should satisfy the utmost 
 
ANCIENT MODEL OF TEMPEBANCE. 177 
 
 ambition of an aspiring youth who was conscious 
 that he had in him the making of a great states- 
 man, and a leader of men. 
 
 The temptation was the same in kind with that 
 which assails a young lawyer or physician in New 
 York or Philadelphia, who has his own way to 
 make in his profession, and who, if true to the 
 principle of total abstinence from intoxicating 
 drinks, must by his example reprove the very men 
 on whose support he depends for professional suc- 
 cess. Said one such,." A carriage and a conscience 
 are expensive luxuries. In my profession one can- 
 not enjoy both. I prefer to drive my carriage." 
 So did not the young civilian at the court of Baby- 
 lon. 
 
 More than one member of the American Con- 
 gress has died a sot because he could not with- 
 stand this form of temptation. One member of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States, of a past 
 generation, was persuaded by his friends to resign 
 his office, and retire to the practice of his profes- 
 sion in his native State, because he could not en- 
 dure the peril to which the drinking habits of 
 "Washington subjected a man in his position. " Bo- 
 disco's wines are too much for me," was the lame 
 apology of an intoxicated senator for his beastly 
 appearance in the Senate Chamber after a dinner 
 the night before at the mansion of the Russian 
 minister. If report be true, more than one mem- 
 ber of that honorable body now owe to the young 
 
178 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 men of the country a similar humiliating confes- 
 sion. 
 
 5. Daniel was tempted also by his absence from 
 home and native land. The tour of Europe has 
 broken down the principles, and broken up the 
 habits, of multitudes from America. Paris is a 
 volcanic vortex to scores of American medical stu- 
 dents. One such, when his ruin was complete, 
 beyond hope of recovery, used his medical knowl- 
 edge as a means of reckoning how many years his 
 broken constitution could bear the excesses to 
 which he had become addicted. " I know," said 
 he, " that I can enjoy life in my own way about 
 so many years. I shall parcel out my fortune to 
 last so long a time, and no longer. When my 
 time is up, my revolver shall end all. No long 
 decline for me. Dying is wretched business, and 
 shall be soon over." Parisian life had given him 
 both his habits and his ethics. 
 
 A young man does not know how much of the 
 real grit of right principle he has in him till he 
 goes away from home, and lives where nobody 
 knows him; where he can live anyhow, and do 
 any thing, and yet come silently back, and his old 
 friends shall be none the wiser. Alas ! many such 
 young men have brought back seared consciences 
 and hardened hearts, and habits of self-indulgence 
 which have doomed them to a drunkard's grave. 
 
 Yet this form of temptation the young Hebrew 
 statesman did not escape. He met it in its most 
 
ANCIENT MODEL OF TEMPERANCE. 179 
 
 urgent form. He was not only in a foreign land, 
 in the Paris of the ancient world, in the court of a 
 king, associating with corrupt young nobles and 
 aristocratic pleasure-seekers, but he was a captive. 
 He had no home. His own country, as an inde- 
 pendent kingdom, was blotted from the map of 
 Asia. Judaea was to Asia what Poland is to Eu- 
 rope, — nationally and politically it had ceased 
 to be. 
 
 Polish nobles to-day, in the capitals of Europe, 
 seek to drown their memory of their country's 
 wrongs. If anybody could find palliation of in- 
 temperate habits, they can find it in their national 
 misfortunes. Just that form of intense temptation 
 young Daniel encountered at the age of twenty- 
 one. 
 
 Put now all these things together, — youth, 
 social usage, official rank, professional interests, 
 absence from home and native land, and the mor- 
 tifications of captivity, — and where, hi modern 
 life, can you find a case of stronger temptation to 
 a self-indulgent and pleasure-seeking career ? 
 
 II. Pass we now to observe what was the young 
 nobleman's conduct in the trial. 
 
 1. He was true to his faith in abstinence from 
 the use of wine. Let us not muddle ourselves here 
 with irrelevant matters. Whether or not wine- 
 drinking is a sin per se ; whether or not a pledge 
 to abstain is a duty ; whether or not membership 
 of a temperance society is wise ; whether or not 
 
180 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTA MENT. 
 
 wine is more innocent than rum ; whether this, 
 that, or the other is the wisest policy, — do not at 
 all concern the point in hand. 
 
 The point is, that the young prophet had a prin- 
 ciple of his own on the subject, and adhered to it. 
 He believed, no matter why, that for him wine 
 was a forbidden luxury ; and he stuck to that con- 
 viction. He was not cajoled out of it by selfish 
 interests nor by side issues. A remarkable thing 
 about him is the absence of casuistry. He makes 
 no attempt to hoodwink his conscience. He 
 accepts it as a plain case. Duty settled, every 
 thing is settled. He will be true to that, though 
 the heavens fall. Not one of the inducements he 
 had to twist his conscience awry, and create for 
 himself an exceptional case, has a feather's weight 
 with him. His friend and superior talks of the 
 danger of losing his head. He retreats none the 
 more for that. 
 
 Yet he does not bluster. He does not even say 
 much of conscience. He does not fling his con- 
 victions in the face of his friends. He does not 
 browbeat those who differ from him. Not a word 
 appears which implies that he thought wine- 
 drinking a sin in them. Heads shall be saved, and 
 friendships kept intact, if it may be honestly done. 
 It deserves emphasis, that, in fidelity to his own 
 convictions, he did no violence to those of others. 
 In becoming a reformer he did not cease to be a 
 gentleman. 
 
ANCIENT MODEL OF TEMPERANCE. 181 
 
 2. Daniel was true to the education o£ his child- 
 hood. His convictions were doubtless the fruit of 
 early training. He is not ashamed of that. He 
 indulges in no swagger about the bigotry of his 
 father, and the narrow mind of his teachers. He 
 does not plead that now he has come to manhood 
 he must act for himself, and will not be bound by 
 the usage of his father's house. 
 
 Young men sometimes break away from the tem- 
 perate principles and habits of their youth on this 
 plea of personal independence. They boast that 
 they have attained to greater breadth of view 
 than the fathers had. Ah, yes ! breadth of view. 
 " Broad views," I have observed, are but the gild- 
 ed gateway to the " broad road." They remind me 
 of the young man of whom I have somewhere 
 read, who would no longer read the Bible which 
 he had been taught to revere, "because," he said, 
 "it has such a mess of Presbyterian bigotry in it." 
 Daniel is gulled by no such nonsense. He will 
 put his foot into no trap of self-conceit which 
 Satan may set to catch the vanity of youth. 
 
 He has been educated to do right, and of that 
 he is not ashamed. His conduct is clearly in con- 
 trast, and is meant to be, with the customs of the 
 society around him. Jerusalem against Babylon : 
 that is the gist of it. His father's house stands 
 over against the court of the king. The training 
 of his childhood is pitted against the corruption 
 of the heathen capital. Jew against Pagan : when 
 
182 
 
 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 it comes to that, he stands manfully by the tradi- 
 tions of his own kindred and the home of his in- 
 fancy. His silent soliloquy is, " Mine be the God 
 of my fathers, mine the old songs of my country's 
 faith, mine the prayers that my mother taught 
 me." 
 
 3. He was true also to the principle of temperance 
 as a religious virtue. The drinking customs of 
 Babylon often meant more than they seemed to 
 mean. They were saturated with the virus of 
 idolatry. A Chaldsean dinner-party was a sacrifice 
 to the gods of the kingdom, as were afterwards 
 the social entertainments of Greece and Rome. 
 If a state banquet were given at the palace, instead 
 of inviting the young Hebrew to dine with the 
 princes of the realm, the invitation would read in 
 some such form as this : " His Majesty the King 
 commands the presence of Belteshazzar at a sacri- 
 fice to BafcL" 
 
 It became, therefore, a very essential element in 
 the policy of the prophet-statesman, that it should 
 be pervaded by the dignity of his religion. The 
 idolatrous banquet at the palace must be met by 
 the religious temperance of the guest. Thus Dan- 
 iel practised temperance as a religious virtue, — 
 nothing less. He put it on the basis of a religious 
 scruple. " He purposed in his heart that he would 
 not defile himself with the king's meat and wine." 
 
 Language cannot well express more truthfully 
 the fundamental principle of the temperance re- 
 
ANCIENT MODEL OF TEMPERANCE. 183 
 
 form. The virtue it inculcates is a religious vir- 
 tue. It is a religious reform, or it is nothing. Its 
 opposite involves moral defilement, to which no 
 young man of lofty and pure spirit will subject 
 himself. Pure manhood in this thing needs to 
 respect itself with much of the delicacy of chaste 
 womanhood. Both revere the sacredness of the 
 human body. They treat it as the temple of God. 
 Rarely do young men maintain their position as 
 the friends of temperance on any less holy ground. 
 
 Said the Bishop of Calcutta, on the platform of 
 a native society for the improvement of Hindoo 
 morals, " If you wish to make any thing eternal, 
 you must build it on the Christian religion. That 
 is the only thing in this world that is eternal." 
 He was right. No reform is worth its cost, which 
 is not important enough to rise to the level of a 
 religious duty. Make it that, to the consciences of 
 men, and it will live. Make it less than that, and 
 men may play with it for a day, but will never 
 build it into any thing that can live to future ages. 
 
 4. The prophet also calmly trusted the conse- 
 quences of his procedure to God. There is some- 
 thing sublime, as there always is in such phenom- 
 ena, in the assurance of this youthful hero that he 
 may trust the end with an unseen Power. He has 
 only to do his duty amidst the intricacies of his 
 lot, and an invisible Friend will care for the rest. 
 He has no fear of losing his head. If he must 
 lose it, be it so. There is another thing which he 
 
184 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 fears more. He asks for but ten days, however, 
 to show who is in the right. He will stake his 
 chances on ten days of prayer. A short time often 
 shows on which side of things God stands. The 
 powers which prayer brings to the front often 
 move quickly. God loves speed in decisions for 
 him. 
 
 The great thing which a young man needs in a 
 crisis of temptation is to declare for the right 
 quickly. Leave no time for temptation to accu- 
 mulate. Then intrust consequences to God. It 
 often requires a great deal of character to do that ; 
 not only a religious principle, but a strong charac- 
 ter back of that. To be content, in a crisis, with 
 the single thought of duty, is one of the grandest 
 things in history. Yet a child can do it. God 
 never disappoints that trust. When a young man 
 throws himself headlong into the sea of tempta- 
 tion, with only the one spar of duty to lay hold 
 of, God is there to uplift and bear him over the 
 billows. In grasping duty, he grasps a living and 
 almighty hand. 
 
 There is an old book, yet extant in some of our 
 libraries, which tells the story of an old man who 
 was the warrior-poet of his tribe. He had seen 
 much of life, and been conversant with many lands. 
 He had stood in the cottages of shepherds and in 
 the courts of kings : dens and caves were not un- 
 known to his checkered career. The literature of 
 his age was familiar to him : he had been no mean 
 
 
ANCIENT MODEL OF TEMPEEANCE. 185 
 
 contributor to its treasures. At length when, near 
 the end of his days, his countrjonen gathered rev- 
 erently around him to listen to the wisdom of the 
 old soldier in the forms of Eastern song, he 
 summed up the result of his long experience of the 
 ways of God with men in these words : " I have 
 been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen 
 the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." 
 When a young man is called to hazard something 
 that is dear to him at the call of duty, he can find 
 in all the literature of the ages no anchor that 
 grapples more securely in the storms of life than 
 this testimony of the old man of Mount Zion. 
 
 III. What were the results of Daniel's fidelity 
 in his own experience ? These must now be said 
 in few words. By his temperance he gained a 
 healthy body. It gave him athletic sinews and 
 pure blood. It secured to him what many young 
 men value more, — a fresh complexion and the look 
 of manly courage. No blotches on his face blabbed 
 of secret vices. His was a countenance before 
 which a pure woman's eye would not fall. He 
 gained also that "richest boon of a good man's 
 life," — an unsullied conscience. He slept and 
 waked, and waked and slept, at peace with God. 
 
 In that brief trial of his youth, he laid the foun- 
 dation of a robust, religious manhood. He laid 
 then the train which led to a long and splendid 
 career of courtly usefulness. The mysterious 
 power which subsequently closed the mouths of 
 
186 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 lions for his safety began at this time to gather 
 around his person. In this early and brief frag- 
 ment of his life, he settled the future of his pro- 
 fessional career as a prophet of the living God. 
 Those ten short days secured to him a place in 
 the world's history, in which he is destined to live 
 in the grateful and reverent affections of mankind 
 forever. Who cares now for the Chaldsean mon- 
 arch and his haughty court? They live to-day 
 in the world's memory only because this young 
 Hebrew seer has condescended to speak of them. 
 As one of the authors of the word of God, and 
 one of the great actors in the history of God's 
 Church, he is to live while time lasts. Men of all 
 ages will inquire for him in heaven. They will 
 point him out, one to another, as the interpreter 
 of the "handwriting on the wall." Children 
 there will seek him out as " the man of the lions' 
 den." The redeemed of all times will revere him 
 as one of God's great ministers and chosen friends. 
 The foundation of this magnificent destiny, ex- 
 tending into two worlds, was built far back in 
 those few days — not longer than a boy's holidays 
 — in which the character of the young man was 
 proved, and his principles tried, as a friend of tem- 
 perance and the child of conscience. 
 
 

 THE LOST BIBLE. 
 
 And when they brought out the money that was brought into 
 the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the 
 law of the Lord given by Moses. And the king commanded 
 Hilkiah, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Abdon the son of 
 Micah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah a servant of the 
 king's, saying: Go, inquire of the Lord for me, and for them that 
 are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book 
 that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured 
 out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the 
 Lord, to do after all that is written in this book. — 2 Chron". 
 xxxiv. 14, 20, 21. 
 
 THE apocryphal historian of Judaea extols the 
 memory of King Josiah as being " sweet as 
 honey in all mouths, and as music at a banquet 
 of wine." This Oriental eulogy is due largely to 
 his agency in the recovery of the lost Bible of his 
 kingdom. 
 
 Few more remarkable events can happen in a 
 nation's history than the loss of the sacred book 
 of its religion. Nations have deliberately aban- 
 doned the faith of their fathers, and adopted a 
 new religion. But the loss of a religion from a 
 nation's memory, so that its sacred book, when 
 recovered, is welcomed as a novelty, is an event 
 seldom if ever paralleled outside of Judsean annals. 
 
 187 
 
188 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 The remedy of such a loss is justly regarded as 
 the great event of the reign of Josiah. 
 
 Scarcely can a more sublime scene for a great 
 historic painting be conceived of, than that of this 
 youthful monarch, standing amidst the assembled 
 magnates of his kingdom, and leaning against a 
 pillar of the temple, while he reads to the aston- 
 ished crowd brought together by the news of the 
 discovery, the whole book of Deuteronomy, from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 No wonder that the devout monarch rent his 
 robe, and the people were overwhelmed at the 
 anathemas which they had brought down upon 
 themselves and their children by permitting the 
 religion of their fathers to pass utterly out of the 
 traditions of the kingdom. 
 
 We may make an instructive use of this scene, 
 by inquiring ivhat we should lose if we should part 
 with the Christian Scriptures and with all the insti- 
 tutions and blessings for which we are indebted to 
 them. We appreciate a treasure most thoroughly 
 when we have lost it. We realize the value of a 
 fortune, of health, of a friend, of a good name, 
 most keenly, when they have gone from us. 
 " Blessings brighten as they take their flight." 
 
 Infidels often charge us with childishness in 
 loving our Bible as we do. " Why care so much 
 for a booh?" they say; "why revere so devoutly 
 an antiquated volume which the world has out- 
 lived, whose fables children marvel at, and wise 
 
THE LOST BIBLE. 189 
 
 men laugh at ? " The best answer to these things 
 is to imagine that the world had lost " the book," 
 and had lost with it all that it has given to man- 
 kind. Would that be a thing for wise men to 
 laugh at, and wits to jeer at ? 
 
 1. In the loss of the Bible and its fruits, we 
 should lose the knowledge of the true God. History 
 proves this beyond reasonable dispute. An un- 
 answerable argument for the fact of a revelation 
 from God, is the fact that the world needs one to 
 assure it that there is a God. God must speak, 
 or man does not find him. Men are like lost 
 children searching in the darkness for their father 
 and their father's house. He is searching for them 
 too ; but they do not recognize him till they hear 
 his voice, calling their names in the wilderness or 
 in the fog. When we are taunted with the fact 
 that ours is the religion of a book, the answer is 
 sufficient, that mankind needs a book to keep alive 
 in the earth the knowledge of a spiritual and per- 
 sonal God. Blot out the Bible and its effects from 
 the world's history, and we fall back by slow but 
 sure gradations into the condition of the most de- 
 based of African tribes. Serpents and monkeys 
 become our deities. We are fortunate above many, 
 of our fellow-men, if we rise so high as to pray to 
 the golden globe of fire which rises every morning 
 over our eastern hills. 
 
 2. By the loss of the Scriptures and their results 
 from the knowledge of mankind, we should lose, 
 
190 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 sooner or later, our institutions of benevolence. 
 Benevolence on any large scale, and in the form 
 of permanent institutions, and for all classes of 
 mankind, is a biblical idea. Hospitals, asylums 
 for the insane, retreats for the fatherless and for 
 widows, and the thousand kindred forms in which 
 charity to the unfortunate and the poor has ex- 
 pressed itself in Christian lands, are among the 
 trophies of the Christian Scriptures. 
 
 The sporadic and fitful attempts of charity to 
 express itself in heathen institutions do not de- 
 serve mention by the side of the beneficent rec- 
 ords of Christianity. A heathen philosopher, once 
 visiting the country, was conducted through many 
 of our public buildings. When he had received 
 our hospitality, and was about to return, he said 
 to a friend, "Your prisons, and your dungeons, 
 and your scaffolds, and your armies, I understand : 
 my country can outdo you in such things; but 
 your orphan-asylums and old men's homes aston- 
 ish me, and your homes for old women would 
 seem to my people ridiculous." 
 
 Even De Tocqueville, coming from a papal 
 country, where the Scriptures are padlocked, was 
 amazed to see charity extended in this Bible land 
 to criminals. Our societies for reform of prison 
 discipline were a novelty to him. Said he, "In 
 my country, once a rascal, always a rascal. You 
 do things differently." Yes, we do things taught 
 by the example of Him who ate with publicans 
 and sinners. 
 
THE LOST BIBLE. 191 
 
 It would be an exaggeration to say that charity, 
 in the form of almsgiving, cannot exist without 
 the Bible. Heathenism has often made that a 
 condition of salvation. Hospitals and houses of 
 refuge are not unknown to Buddhism. But 
 charity systematized, charity extended into all the 
 sinuosities of social life, charity founded on the 
 principle of the common brotherhood of man, can- 
 not exist where the Bible is unknown. The 
 brotherhood of man is a biblical idea. It is re- 
 vealed from heaven. The popular mind of the 
 race has never originated it when left to work out 
 its own theories of society. Moreover, even such 
 forms of benevolence as do exist in heathen lands 
 do not stand the assaults of human selfishness, in 
 the long-run, unless re-enforced by the religion of 
 the Scriptures. The drift of heathen civilization 
 is downward, not upward. Nothing but the word 
 of God has restorative force enough, as a humaniz- 
 ing and civilizing power, to arrest that decline, 
 and give to the principle of benevolence a perma- 
 nent and sovereign sway in social institutions. 
 
 A pamphlet lies upon my table, of more than 
 three hundred octavo pages, which contains little 
 else than the titles, with brief explanatory notes, 
 of the charitable institutions of the city of New 
 York alone. The combined literatures of Greece 
 and Rome never produced a volume like that. 
 They never could. The ancient republics con- 
 tained in their palmiest days no material for the 
 production of such a work. 
 
192 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Infanticide, the exposure of superannuated par- 
 ents, slavery, human sacrifices, and cannibalism, 
 are ultimately the usages and institutions in which 
 human nature expresses the drift of its selfish in- 
 stincts when untaught by a revelation from God. 
 It requires only time enough for those instincts to 
 come to their maturity in a finished depravity, to 
 work out the extinction of organized benevolence. 
 Over against such results, we now find more than 
 ten thousand charitable associations in the single 
 State of New York. Every one of these would 
 pass out of existence if we should strike out of 
 the civilization of the Empire State the Christian 
 Scriptures and their natural products. 
 
 The State of Massachusetts has expended more 
 than two millions of dollars upon a single asylum 
 for the insane. Banish the Bible from the schools 
 and the homes and the character of Massachusetts, 
 and in less than the life of three generations we 
 should have here a people to whom taxation for 
 such a purpose, beyond the need of caging the 
 insane like tigers, would be denounced as tyranny. 
 It is not yet a hundred years since the insane and 
 wild beasts were treated alike in some parts of 
 Europe. Strike out the Bible from our history, 
 and every such asylum, and all kindred institutions 
 with which the State is dotted from Berkshire to 
 the sea, would give place to institutions and cus- 
 toms of organic selfishness, and ultimately of bar- 
 barian cruelty. The spirit of the Bible must be 
 
THE LOST BIBLE. 193 
 
 in the homes of a people, and its sacred words 
 on the lips of their children, and its humane 
 spirit in their hearts, before society and govern- 
 ment can develop themselves on any large scale 
 in the forms of organized benevolence. 
 
 Conceive, then, of a sovereign state in which, 
 from end to end, should be found not one hospital ; 
 not one retreat for the insane ; not one home for 
 friendless and aged women ; not one asylum for 
 orphans; not one house for abandoned children; 
 not one infirmary for incurable invalids ; not one 
 asylum for the blind; not one refuge for fallen 
 women ; not one school for the deaf and dumb ; 
 not a spot where Laura Bridgman could find a 
 friend ; not one institution for the care of idiots ; 
 not one provident society ; not one almshouse ; not 
 one sanitarium for the cure of inebriates ; not one 
 association for the employment of street- Arabs ; 
 not one mission-school ; not one sewing-school ; not 
 one society for the protection of emigrants ; not one 
 home for sailors, not one for soldiers ; not so much 
 as one little " Shoe and Stocking Society," such as 
 once honored the North End of Boston, — conceive, 
 I say, of such a sovereign commonwealth, and, in 
 place of these, imagine it dotted all over, as it 
 must be, with prisons and penitentiaries and scaf- 
 folds and pillories and whipping-posts, with rum- 
 shops at .every corner to furnish material for these 
 grim expedients of justice ; and you have some 
 faint picture of what Massachusetts would be if 
 
194 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 she could have existed at all without the infusion 
 of the Bible as her life-blood into the framework 
 of her civilization. 
 
 3. In the loss of the Bible and its fruits, we 
 should sooner or later suffer the loss of our institu- 
 tions for popular education. Here, again, it would 
 be untrue to say that heathenism is of necessity 
 and always barbarism. Culture has existed without 
 a revelation from heaven. Schools are ■ not the 
 product of the Bible only. But it is beyond 
 question, that popular education is of biblical ori- 
 gin. Besides the impotence of heathenism to 
 sustain even such culture as it creates, and to 
 prevent the relapse of the race into barbarian 
 ignorance, it is a truism that other than Christian 
 religions build themselves on the ignorance of the 
 masses. Even Greek and Roman civilization — 
 the most brilliant that man ever framed without 
 the aid of a revelation — knew no such thing as 
 that which we understand by the education of the 
 people. Cicero was perhaps, on the whole, the 
 most enlightened and liberal statesman the world 
 ever saw outside of the biblical circle of civiliza- 
 tion. Yet no man has ever lived in whose mind 
 was more profoundly rooted the aristocratic idea 
 that education is for the few, and ignorance for 
 the many ; ease and leisure for the few, and toil 
 and slavery for the many. 
 
 Heathenism everywhere assumes that the people 
 exist to be governed, and that, to be governed 
 
THE LOST BIBLE. 195 
 
 well, they must be kept in ignorance. Voltaire 
 betrayed his want of the biblical idea of culture 
 in saying, " The people must have bread and 
 amusement. But do not teach them to reason." 
 
 The drift of culture without the spirit of the 
 Bible in the heart is seen in the hostility of the 
 ancient governor of Virginia to the spirit of New 
 England, which he expressed by thanking God 
 that Virginia had no free schools, and praying that 
 she might never have such "pests." That is 
 human nature when educated in ignorance of or 
 hostility to the spirit of the Scriptures. 
 
 Witness the testimony of the Komish Church. 
 Locking up the Scriptures and fighting free schools 
 go hand in hand. The Vatican has one of the 
 most costly libraries in Italy ; but a traveller who 
 visits it sees only the blind oaken doors which 
 shut it in. Education there is for the few only, 
 and for them only by permission of authority. So 
 it is the world over. The free Bible and the free 
 school stand and fall together. 
 
 Add to this the putrescent tendencies of society, 
 when not counteracted by the antiseptic power 
 of Christianity, and the inevitable sequence of 
 the loss of the Scriptures must be the loss of all 
 that should deserve the world's respect in popular 
 education. Imagine, then, the State of Virginia, 
 with the prayers of Sir William Berkeley an- 
 swered. Picture to your fancy the Old Dominion 
 with not one schoolhouse in all its broad domain ; 
 
196 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 not one college or university or seminary for either 
 sex, which should be open to free access from the 
 lower and middle classes of society. Imagine that 
 it had not one newspaper printed in the mother 
 tongue; not one free library; not one popular 
 lyceum ; not a popular lecture given on either side 
 of the Blue Ridge from year's end to year's end ; 
 not an institute of teachers ever held there ; not 
 one printing-press for the publishing of popular 
 information ; not so much as a Farmer's Almanac 
 seen anywhere ; not a speech delivered from the 
 stump to enlighten the people in their civil duties ; 
 not a post-office open to any but dignitaries of the 
 State ; not a telegraph-pole erected within its 
 borders: in a word, give back the old Virginia 
 plantations to the savages from whom they were 
 bought or plundered, and you get some dim idea 
 of what a great country like ours would be if the 
 word of God were expunged from its history. 
 That our land is any thing better than that to-day, 
 as the abode of popular science and general cul- 
 ture, we owe to the fact that Sir William's prayers 
 were not answered, but a free Bible was left to 
 work out its own fruits in a free press and free 
 schools. 
 
 4. By the loss of the Scriptures and their crea- 
 tions, we should sooner or later part with our in- 
 stitutions of civil liberty. History shows that the 
 great charter of freedom in the world is the word 
 of God. The great free nations of the earth are 
 
THE LOST BIBLE. 197 
 
 the great Christian nations. And of those the 
 most free are the great Protestant peoples who 
 keep God's word clear from the dominion of priests. 
 The institutes of Moses are marvellously imbued 
 with the principles of our own republic. The 
 principle of our town-meeting is found in one 
 of the provisions of the Mosaic code for the gov- 
 ernment of the people. A volume has been written 
 to show the republicanism of the civil constitution 
 given by the great Jewish lawgiver. Where, 
 think you, did Thomas Jefferson get the idea of 
 democratic government which he embodied in the 
 Declaration of Independence? From an obscure 
 Baptist church in the backwoods of Virginia. 
 
 Yes, if you would imagine a land from whose 
 civilization the Bible and its products are wholly 
 lost, and faded from the people's memory, you 
 must conceive of a land of slaves and tyrants ; a 
 land without a written constitution; without a 
 declaration of independence ; without a bill of 
 rights ; without trial by jury ; without an elective 
 franchise ; without a jurisprudence framed to guard 
 the liberties of the citizen; without courts and 
 tribunals organized and managed in the interests 
 of equal justice ; without legislatures representative 
 of the popular will ; without one of that galaxy of 
 institutions and unwritten laws which we deem 
 the glory of our Republic. Every one of these we 
 owe ultimately to the Christian Scriptures. 
 
 My space fails me. It was my purpose to show 
 
198 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 that the loss of the Bible and its fruit from the 
 world would involve the destruction of peace and 
 its attendant blessings; that ivar would become 
 ultimately the chronic condition of society; that 
 the modern idea of the family would be lost ; that 
 the institution of marriage, as we understand it, 
 would cease to be ; that woman would be reduced 
 to servitude ; that home would lose its holy mean- 
 ing ; that infanticide would be restored ; that hw- 
 man sacrifices to infernal deities would become the 
 prevalent form of religious service; that protec- 
 tion against desolating pestilences would become 
 impossible ; that cannibalism would live again ; 
 and, in a word, that the tendencies of the human 
 race to barbarism in its most brutal forms would 
 be revived, and that its natural career would be 
 towards its own extinction on this globe. The 
 whole earth would be subjected at last to the 
 destiny which overtook and had well-nigh over- 
 whelmed the savage tribes of this Western conti- 
 nent when Christianity found them two hundred 
 and fifty years ago, and towards which the best 
 civilization of the world was drifting when Christ 
 was born. 
 
 One of the great poets has portrayed the scene 
 in which light should be banished from the uni- 
 verse. He describes the blotting out of stars and 
 moons and suns ; this earth still wandering in the 
 blackness of the universal dark. He pictures men 
 living by watch-fires. They burn up their forests, 
 
THE LOST BIBLE. 199 
 
 their cities, their homes, their temples, and all 
 holy things, to create a light by which to see each 
 other's faces, and get warmth against the growing 
 intensity of cold. Commerce dies ; its once famous 
 marts crowded with the products of distant lands 
 are forsaken: not so much as a blade of grass 
 grows in the deserted streets. Ships rot in their 
 harbors. Sails which have whitened every sea 
 flap idly in the dead night air. Men grow wolfish 
 in the universal woe. They curse each other, and 
 gnash their teeth, and howl for one ray of light. 
 Mothers turn savagely upon their youngest-born. 
 No love, no family, no home, survives. Temples 
 of religion there are none ; and, as for God, men 
 have forgotten but to curse him and die. 
 
 Gradually the whole globe becomes depopulated. 
 It rolls in space without inhabitants save two sur- 
 vivors, and they are mortal foes. They scrape to- 
 gether a fagot and a few dried leaves, and blow 
 them to a blaze, that they may once see each 
 other's faces. Then with one look of frenzied 
 hate, and a shriek of maniacal fury, impotent to 
 wreak itself except upon itself, they expire. So 
 human history is ended. Not a hand is left to roll 
 up the map of nations. 
 
 " The world is void, 
 
 Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless, 
 
 A lump of Death." 
 
 Such a world would this earth become if the 
 
200 
 
 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 light of the word of God were once put out, and 
 all that it has done to illumine and elevate and 
 civilize and refine and redeem mankind were 
 blotted forever from its history. Such would be 
 the consequence of a final and irremediable loss 
 of the Bible. 
 
GOOD MEN WHO ARE NOT CHURCHMEN. 
 
 And Jeremiah said unto the house of the Rechabites, Thus 
 saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Because ye have 
 obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father, and kept all 
 his precepts, and done according unto all that he hath com- 
 manded you; therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God 
 of Israel: Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man 
 to stand before me forever. — Jer. xxxv. 18, 19. 
 
 THE foregoing title expresses in brief the lead- 
 ing practical idea which we derive from this 
 biblical fragment about the Rechabites. Opin- 
 ions may not unreasonably differ about this singu- 
 lar people. But as I understand the scriptural 
 notices of them, they were not Israelites by birth, 
 nor included in the covenant of God with his 
 peculiar people. Yet they were good men. They 
 recoiled from the wickedness of the world around 
 them. They sought, as men are in all ages prone 
 to do, to find protection in ascetic vows. 
 
 They saw, for instance, that intemperance was 
 a great and damning vice : therefore they vowed 
 that they would drink no wine. They correspond 
 very nearly, in that respect, to the modern societies 
 of " Good Templars" and " Sons of Temperance ; " 
 that is, they were pledged to the practice of total 
 
 201 
 
202 STUDIES OF TlfE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 abstinence ; yet were not, by virtue of that vow, 
 members of the church of God. 
 
 They saw, also, that" the great cities of the 
 world were the chief centres of corruption : there- 
 fore they vowed to live forever in tents. Their 
 ancestor and founder, Jonadab, was a Bedouin 
 Arab, as we should call him. The desert was his 
 home, and the tent his dwelling. It was a vow of 
 the sect to live so forever. 
 
 They observed, also, that the possession of fixed 
 property was a great temptation to men. They 
 would therefore have none of it. Every man 
 bound himself not to own a house, not to buy a 
 field, not to till a vineyard. Like the Dominicans 
 and others of the Romish Church, they took the 
 vow of poverty, so far as these forms of worldly 
 estate were concerned. They would escape sin by 
 fleeing from temptation. That was their principle. 
 
 These three things seem to have been the creed 
 of the sect : to drink no wine ; to own no fixed 
 property; to dwell in no permanent abodes. 
 Their organization as a tribe was clearly an at- 
 tempt to live a purer life than the world around 
 them, by cultivating the simple tastes and habits 
 of herdsmen, living in tents, wandering wherever 
 they could find pasturage, being much in the open 
 air, and at night sleeping under the resplendent 
 skies of Arabia. 
 
 But what have these ancient " Good Templars " 
 to do with the mission of Jeremiah to the kingdom 
 
GOOD MEN WHO ARE NOT CHURCHMEN. 203 
 
 of Judah? Just this, and no more : they are used 
 as a means of reproof. They were faithful to 
 their vows: the Jews were not. They adhered 
 to the religion of their fathers : the Jews did not. 
 They were practically better men and women than 
 the average of the world: the Jews were not. 
 They kept themselves clear from the corruptions 
 of the great metropolitan cities : the Jews did not. 
 They practised the virtues of temperance, of plain 
 living, of frugality, and the kindred virtues of 
 country life : the Jews had given themselves up to 
 the extravagance and the idolatrous vices of the 
 great capitals. So far as we know, they worshipped 
 the true God : the Jews had become so corrupt as 
 to worship a calf, a goat, a lizard, any thing that 
 anybody worshipped $ they followed the fashions 
 in their religion. 
 
 The prophet therefore uses these " Good Tem- 
 plars " as a means of shaming the men of Judah 
 for their wickedness and apostasy. I do not under- 
 stand that he means to give the divine approval to 
 them as a sect ; or to set the divine seal upon their 
 vows, as necessary to holy living ; nor even to de- 
 fend their total abstinence. It is a stretch of bibli- 
 cal authority, to make this fragment an argument 
 for the divine authority of temperance-societies. 
 Other scriptures may support them, but not this 
 one. 
 
 The prophet seems to say to the apostate Jews, 
 " Look, you renegade people of God, look at these 
 
204 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT; 
 
 Rechabites ! Are you not ashamed of yourselves ? 
 They have not had half of your privileges, but 
 they outdo you in right living. They are consist- 
 ent with their professions. They stick to their 
 vows. They live up to the light they have. You 
 do neither. Therefore, by the authority given me 
 by the living God, I tell you that God will bless 
 them, and will curse you." 
 
 This I take to be the simple purpose of this 
 introduction of the Rechabites into the word of 
 God. In a nutshell, the design is to reprove bad 
 men in the Church by contrasting them with good men 
 out of the Church. The value of such a fragment 
 in the Scriptures for practical use in all ages may 
 be seen by a brief notice of the following hints : — 
 
 1. The popular criticism upon the Church is 
 true : " Better men are out of it than some men in 
 it" There are bad men in the Church, and very 
 imperfect good ones. Men profess religion who 
 will cheat in a trade, who will lie to cover the 
 cheat, who will take a false oath to bolster the lie. 
 Name almost any crime that quick-witted deprav- 
 ity can invent, and doubtless it has been committed 
 by some professed child of God. Prudent mer- 
 chants refuse credit to a man who pleads his 
 standing in the Church as a reason for giving him 
 credit. Christian ministers, too, have done their 
 full share of deeds which have pierced the heart 
 of Christ. The chivalrous and manly virtues in 
 some men overbalance the Christian graces in 
 
GOOD MEN WHO ARE NOT CHURCHMEN. 205 
 
 some other men. There are " Good Templars " 
 and "Odd Fellows "and "Free Masons" who 
 make their fraternities substitutes for the Church, 
 and we cannot say that the substitution is not 
 plausible. 
 
 When the world charges us with these contrasts, 
 we admit them. When we are asked what we 
 have to say for ourselves, we answer nothing in 
 defence of such men, but bow our heads in shame. 
 We can at best echo St. Paul's lament, and u tell 
 you even weeping, that they are enemies to the 
 cross of Christ." 
 
 2. The contrast between apostates in the Church, 
 and good men out of it, is an exception to the general 
 fact. As the Rechabites of old were a small and 
 exceptional sect, no fair representative of the hea- 
 then world, so now the good men who are not 
 churchmen are not a fair specimen of what men 
 naturally become who live out of covenant with 
 God. As in the Jewish Church there were men 
 and women who were not apostates, so there are 
 multitudes in the Christian Church now who do 
 not deserve the charge that they are no better 
 than other men. The apostates and hypocrites on 
 the one side, and the good men who are not 
 churchmen on the other, are both exceptions to 
 the general law. It is but fair to admit this. It is 
 but just to claim it. 
 
 The very fact that the alleged contrast attracts 
 attention and provokes satire is proof of this. If 
 
206 STUDIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 it were the general law, that the Church makes 
 men scoundrels, and that irreligion makes men the 
 pattern of all the virtues, the charge of inconsis- 
 tency would disappear. If it were the natural 
 drift of things that clergymen should be adulterers, 
 thieves, liars, drunkards, the fact would be accept- 
 ed as the legitimate fruit of their profession. They 
 would, as a class, stand in public esteem where 
 blacklegs do now. Public opinion rests at last 
 upon the facts. In the West-India Islands and in 
 some parts of South America the Komish priest- 
 hood have, as a class, fallen into debasing vices. 
 They drink, they lie, they swear, they gamble, 
 they brawl, they are licentious. They suspend 
 mass to attend a horse-race. These things are so 
 common that public sentiment accepts them as the 
 usual accompaniments of the priestly function. 
 They have long since ceased to excite remark. 
 No hue-and-cry is raised when a priest is guilty 
 of these things. The popular proverbs run thus : 
 " As bad as a priest ; " " As drunk as a friar ; " 
 " As tricky as a Jesuit," and so on. 
 
 Such would be the popular judgment the world 
 over, before long, if the fact of clerical depravity 
 were universally true, or if it were generally true 
 that Christian ministers are no better than the 
 average of men. It is not true, and the world 
 knows it. It is a calumny which no man who is 
 not innately and thoroughly dishonest and mean 
 will charge upon the clerical office. The man 
 
GOOD MEN WHO AKE NOT CHURCHMEN. 207 
 
 who has lost faith in such a body of men and 
 women as now compose the Protestant Church of 
 Christendom, and large portions of the Catholic 
 Church, must be a man who has lost faith in him- 
 self. His loss of trust in their virtues springs 
 from the loss of consciousness of those virtues in 
 his own heart. He believes no better because he 
 is no better. 
 
 3. The concessions which Christians make to cyni- 
 cal critics of the Church need often to be qualified 
 by loyalty to the brotherhood. There is a virtue in 
 loyalty to one's guild, which truth and justice 
 sometimes call to the front. 
 
 There is a tone of criticism of the Church which 
 sounds very candid, and very faithful, and very 
 independent of clanship, which, after all, is un- 
 manly and mean, simply because it is not true. 
 Underneath it, there is a truckling to the malicious 
 judgment of the wicked. The faults of Christians 
 are exaggerated. The numbers of the hypocritical 
 are overrated. Guilt is assumed on insufficient 
 evidence. Evidence which a jury would scout 
 is deemed sufficient to condemn a professor of 
 religion. Such accusers do not face the accused 
 like men. They will swell a secret into common 
 fame ; yet, when summoned to bear witness, they 
 skulk. 
 
 All nations have a proverb about "the bird 
 that fouls its own nest." All honorable men 
 respect loyalty to one's own. The conditions of 
 
208 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Christian living in this world are such as to call 
 for large practice of this virtue. No other body 
 of men are so sure of receiving unjust judgment 
 as Christians are. To belong to the Church of 
 Christ is to be a mark for cynics to hawk at, and 
 for vultures to peck at. In simple fair play, the 
 Church needs the magnanimous graces among its 
 own members. Does not everybody know a pro- 
 fessing Christian who has the inconsistencies of 
 his brethren at his tongue's end always, and their 
 excellences never? That brother should look 
 into " trades-unions " and " Masonic lodges," for 
 a lesson in loyalty. 
 
 I have somewhere read a legend of a wretched 
 man, one of nature's monstrosities, the tip of 
 whose tongue was a snake's head. In his sleep 
 the hideous reptile lay coiled within; but Ms 
 breathing was a low and ominous hiss. When 
 he woke, and attempted to speak, the monster 
 thrust itself out in wavy vibrations, hissing, 
 biting, stinging. A fitting symbol this of men 
 who can never find a good thing to say of the 
 Church of Christ. Inspired imagery resembles 
 the revolting legend : " They have sharpened 
 their tongues like a serpent ; adder's poison is 
 under their lips." Shall brethren in Christ thrust 
 such venomous fangs at each other? When 
 tempted to misanthropic judgment of a Christian 
 brother, remember the snake-headed tongue. The 
 truth is that conscious hypocrites in the Church 
 are comparatively few. 
 
GOOD MEN WHO ARE NOT CHURCHMEN. 209 
 
 And what of ministers of the gospel ? I have 
 elsewhere spoken of the inconsistencies of the 
 Church and her ministry with sufficient fidelity. 
 May I now offset it with a bit of testimony? 
 True, it is interested testimony : but no other can 
 be founded on knowledge of the facts; it must 
 pass for what it is worth. For more than thirty 
 years I have known the clerical profession as no 
 man can know it who is not in it and behind the 
 scenes. With more or less of personal intimacy, 
 I have known nearly two thousand preachers of 
 the gospel. I know their #ims, their motives, 
 their methods, their weaknesses, their policies, 
 their secrets ; for every profession has its honora- 
 ble secrets and its wise policies. And my con- 
 viction is that there is not another body of men 
 living, of equal numbers, the record of whose 
 life, public and private, will bear scrutiny so 
 well as theirs. The testimony which the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury publicly gave to the character of the 
 American missionaries in Western Asia, in 1860, 
 "they are a marvellous combination of common 
 sense and piety," is true of the great body of 
 Protestant ministers whom I have known. Out 
 of the whole number, but five have made a wreck 
 of moral character. Of what other profession or 
 guild, equal in numbers, and chosen at random, 
 can that be said ? 
 
 Similar is the testimony which any man who 
 knows the facts will bear respecting the great body 
 
210 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 of the Church. When men claim that the Church 
 as a body has done nothing to lift the standard of 
 human virtue, that Christians as a whole are no 
 better than other men, it is wrong by silence even 
 to give in to the calumny. It is but just to the 
 living and the dead to protest that it is not true. 
 The facts of life do not bear out such sweeping 
 censures. To concede the justice of them is treach- 
 ery to men and women of whom the world is not 
 worthy. It is a confession that our Lord did not 
 know how to lift this world up into redeemed and 
 regenerated life, when he planned the doing of it 
 by the agency and example of the Church. It is 
 a confession that his work, through eighteen cen- 
 turies of churchly life, has been a dead failure. 
 Who believes this, except those who wish to be- 
 lieve it ? 
 
 4. The virtues of good men who are not churchmen 
 are due largely to the salutary influence of the Church 
 upon them. The Rechabites owed their knowledge 
 of the true God to the Jewish people. Their vir- 
 tues were due to their association with that people, 
 not to their knowledge or practice of heathenism 
 and its fruits. Similar is the teaching of history 
 in all subsequent ages. The virtues of the world 
 in their finest growth live upon the graces of the 
 Church. 
 
 A cannon-ball, in its course through the air, 
 moves, with a velocity only less than its own, a 
 certain bulk of the surrounding atmosphere. That 
 
GOOD MEN WHO ARE NOT CHURCHMEN. 211 
 
 " wind of the ball " is sometimes strong enough to 
 knock a man flat. When you stand close to an 
 express-train of cars at full speed, you feel the 
 same phenomenon. Within a certain distance, 
 the space around a body in quick motion is filled 
 with its momentum, and the air moves as it moves. 
 Similar is the moral power of the Church of Christ 
 over multitudes who are taught its principles, who 
 know its creed, who witness its example, and whose 
 infancy was fashioned by its ordinances. They 
 feel its restraining power when they do not bow 
 to its saving power. 
 
 Christian ideas govern the public opinion of the 
 world to-day, though spiritual religion is by no 
 means in the ascendant. It takes but a small mi- 
 nority of earnest believers to carry with them the 
 speculative belief of a large majority. So nations 
 populous and mighty are nominally Christian to- 
 day, because they contain a nucleus of spiritual 
 Christians. These keep alive the Christian reli- 
 gion as a power of restraint, of culture, of refine- 
 ment, of civilization, of virtue, to multitudes to 
 whom it is not yet a power of salvation. That 
 such men are what they are, they owe to the living 
 faith that is in the Church. They owe it to godly 
 mothers and praying fathers, and Christian wives, 
 and the recollections of their own Christian child- 
 hood. That among them are found Christians in 
 heart who are not such by profession, they owe to 
 the more positive and consistent ones, who do not 
 
212 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 fear to profess before the world the faith they cher- 
 ish in secret. The Church of Christ achieves thus 
 a vast amount of unacknowledged conquest. 
 
 The moral virtues in their ripened forms live in 
 this world on the life-blood of the Christian graces. 
 Christian sap is flowing through the whole tree of 
 European and American civilization. Profound 
 and far-reaching is the principle, " Ye are the salt 
 of the earth." 
 
 5. While God blesses goodness and the right 
 wherever he finds them, he still depends for them 
 chiefly upon the Church which he has created for all 
 time. History, in this old Judsean line, seems to 
 turn aside for a moment to salute respectfully these 
 ancient sons of temperance. Yet it speedily re- 
 turns again to the old channel of the Church of 
 God. No sect is taken as a substitute for the 
 Church. God does not abandon his people, and 
 take up Rechabites in their stead. He knew his 
 own mind when he founded the Church, and said 
 to Abraham, " In thee shall all the nations of the 
 earth be blessed." 
 
 Traces are still found, in the wilds of Arabia, 
 of the descendants of the ancient tribe of Jonadab, 
 in fulfilment, as it is believed, of Jeremiah's proph- 
 ecy. But how little has been the Rechabite influ- 
 ence on the world ! We have to search biblical 
 antiquities to find it. The world knows nothing 
 of its history. Turn to a secular historian, and 
 you find that a few lines are all that he thinks it 
 
GOOD MEN WHO AEE NOT CHURCHMEN. 213 
 
 necessary to give to this ancient sect ; and those 
 only because it is mentioned in the Bible. Com- 
 pare the article " Rechabites " with the article 
 " Christianity " in any good encyclopaedia. Just 
 such is the proportion of the good that is in the 
 world to the good that is in the Church, in respect 
 to the strength of each as a spiritual power, and 
 their value to the coming ages. 
 
 The great stream of civilization and redemption 
 has flowed down the ages of the past, not through 
 any accidental and wayside canal of Rechabite or 
 Masonic virtue, but through the great river-bed of 
 the Christian Church. Here are the living foun- 
 tains. Here are treasured the truths which the 
 world most needs to know. Here are garnered 
 the promises which gild with golden radiance the 
 world's future. The hope of all coming time is in 
 this Church of the living God. 
 
 6. The principles we have thus briefly glanced 
 at suggest that heaven is full of surprises for those 
 who reach it. Said an aged clergyman when 
 drawing near to that world, "I expect to find 
 there some who I have never thought would get 
 there ; and I expect to miss some whom I have 
 supposed to be sure of it." Yes, surprises of this 
 sort await us. Not every one that saith, " Lord, 
 Lord," shall enter there. Many who did not say 
 "Lord, Lord," will be found to have given the 
 cup of cold water to some disciple. God only 
 knows his own. He will gather them from the 
 
214 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 four winds. Not one will escape his eye. He will 
 need no church-records to inform him who they 
 are. He will need no marble monument to tell 
 him where their dust reposes. He will need no 
 epitaph to tell him what they were. Not one 
 bruised reed of virtue will be broken, not one 
 flickering flame or buried spark of grace put out, 
 by his avenging hand, in the great day. Yet it is 
 to be a " great and terrible day." Fearful disap- 
 pointments will be found there. Said a devout 
 but trembling saint on his death-bed, "There 
 must be some tremendous examples held up to 
 the universe : what if I should be one of them ! " 
 It becomes us all to walk humbly before God. 
 Professions of religion cannot save us. Vows in 
 the Church or out of it cannot save us. The con- 
 trite and believing heart , — this, and this only, is 
 the place in which God dwells. This is his living 
 temple. This is more to God than the pillar of 
 fire and the pillar of cloud, — more than the Shechi- 
 nah and the holy of holies. This is more to 
 Christ than church and clergy and sacraments. 
 "I heard a great voice out of heaven saying: 
 Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he 
 will dwell with them. God himself shall be with 
 them, and be their God." 
 

 INTERTWINING OF GOD'S PLANS WITH 
 THE PLANS OF MEN. 
 
 But the army of the Chaldseans pursued after the king, and 
 overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho ; and all his army was 
 scattered from him. Then they took the king, and carried him 
 up unto the king of Bahylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; 
 where he gave judgment upon him. And the king of Babylon 
 slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes : he slew also all the 
 princes of Judah in Riblah. Then he put out the eyes of Zede- 
 kiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in chains, and carried 
 him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death. 
 — Jek. lii. 8-11. 
 
 THE title of one of the most useful of modem 
 sermons is, " Every Man's Life a Plan of God." 
 The story of the Judaean captivity brings to view, 
 as every other great event in history does, these 
 
 I two distinct lines of purpose, — the line of God 
 and the line of man. To effect God's will in the 
 fulfilment of ancient prophecy, some one man must 
 take the leadership of the people. Some one man 
 must head their downfall. Some one man must 
 lead their sad procession into bondage. Some one 
 man must, suffer there the barbarities of ancient 
 warfare ; must see his children slaughtered one by 
 one before his eyes ; must suffer worse than death 
 in the loss of his own sight ; and must die at last 
 
 215 
 
216 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 a dethroned prince, a childless father, a blind old 
 man, in an enemy's country, and in a dungeon. 
 Yet the great wheels of Providence moved on 
 calmly and relentlessly, crushing out that one life 
 as if no being in the universe cared for it. No 
 friendly ear seemed to hear the death-cry of the 
 victim. 
 
 Of the many truths which the passage before 
 us teaches, this mysterious intervolution of the plans 
 of God with the plans of men will seem to some 
 minds the most impressive. 
 
 1. The enclosure of the plans of men within 
 the plans of God is such that commonly men appear 
 to be left very much to themselves. This unfortu- 
 nate prince, whose lot it was to close the line of 
 independent monarchs on the throne of Juclah, 
 does not appear to have been overruled by any 
 visible network of divine purposes, any more than 
 the humblest beggar in Judaea. When the histo- 
 rian came to record his life, the record would 
 naturally run, " Such are the chances of war ; such 
 is the fate of unfortunate princes in barbarous 
 times." 
 
 Yet all the while a plan of God enveloped him, 
 which touched and checked at all points his plans, 
 directed his working to God's ends, and wrought 
 out over and around him a chapter of universal 
 history, which was to concern the world in distant 
 ages, and nations yet unborn. Nearly twenty-five 
 hundred years have come and gone since then ; 
 
INTERTWINING OF GOD'S PLANS. 217 
 
 more than seventy generations have lived and 
 died ; yet on the first Lord's Day of the month of 
 May, this year, millions of people in many lands, 
 making a belt around the globe, were pondering 
 the fate of that blind old man in the dungeons of 
 Chaldaea. 
 
 Such is the sublime involution of every human 
 life with the purposes of God. So noiseless is his 
 working, that, when men are defeated, his agency 
 is not forced upon their notice. They need not 
 see him if they choose not to see him. Common- 
 ly they do not see him. They say of their misfor- 
 tunes, " Luck was against me." " Such are life's 
 chances." " We've lost the game." 
 
 2. In leaving men to themselves in the forming 
 and working of their own plans, divine control does 
 not prevent the occurrence of very shocking catastro- 
 phes. Look at this miserable old Jew. His con- 
 temporaries saw nothing unusual in his fate. 
 That he should be vanquished in war, that he 
 should be caught in his flight, that he should be 
 marched into captivity, that he should be thrown 
 into a dungeon, that he should be chained like a 
 wolf, that his children should be butchered before 
 his eyes, that those eyes should be gouged out by 
 the hangman, and that he should linger out his 
 wretched old age, a blind captive and a disgraced 
 prince, who could only long to die, excited no sur- 
 prise. That was the usage of the age. Such 
 were the contingencies of royal birth, and the 
 
218 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 chances of war. He knew it beforehand. The 
 world said of him, " He took his chances, and they 
 ran against him. He played his game, and lost it. 
 He probably would have treated his royal foe in 
 the same way if he had gained it." 
 
 But we read the story with blood running cold. 
 It shocks our sensibilities, that any human being, 
 the most insignificant in the universe, should be 
 thus overridden and crushed by the spiked wheels 
 of states and empires. We marvel that God 
 should suffer such things. Can there be a God, 
 we ask, who can permit such useless torture of a 
 lone old man? A society of atheists once pub- 
 lished a card on which were printed these words : 
 " What becomes of God's omnipotence, if he 
 would have prevented suffering, and could not ? 
 What becomes of his benevolence, if he could 
 have prevented suffering, and would not ? " Sure 
 enough, without a revelation we cannot explain 
 one such scene in the drama of one human 
 life. 
 
 Yet such is the darksome way in which God 
 moves. Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself. 
 He seems to keep himself aloof, in awful seclusion 
 from human woes, as if the sight of them were 
 either too much, or too little, for such as he. I 
 go forward, but he is not there ; and backward, 
 but I cannot perceive him. Does not every-day 
 human life often force the cry of Job from white 
 and trembling lips ? 
 

 INTERTWINING OF GOD'S PLANS. 219 
 
 A young husband and wife start on their bridal 
 tour. Loving and loved, their hearts open to all 
 living things, the future ' seems to be one long 
 golden age. In a few hours, they are dragged, 
 with charred arms infolding each other's lifeless 
 forms, from the ruins of the wrecked train at 
 Ashtabula, and their bridal tour is ended. 
 
 A factory building, five stories high, falls to the 
 ground just after seven hundred men and women 
 and children have begun their afternoon task. 
 Through the oily crevices of the ruins, fire creeps 
 and hisses and leaps, and coils itself around its 
 helpless victims, like a swift, mad serpent. I 
 stand by what were just now living and chatting 
 men and women, and children whom mothers 
 " kissed good-by " an hour ago. I see them now, 
 still and stark, arranged in ghastly order on the 
 floor of the city hall. I observe that the arms of 
 many, burned to the blackened bone, have been 
 thrown up to fight off the flames from their roast- 
 ing faces. Oh ! can there be a God in the same 
 world where such things are ? If there be one, is 
 he not such as Elijah laughed at? Does he not 
 tarry, talking with somebody? Is he not hunt- 
 ing ? Is he not on a journey ? Is he not asleep ? 
 Oh! who, what, where is he? Oh that I knew 
 where I might find him ! 
 
 A man was once drawn out insensible from the 
 ruins of a railroad-train after a collision, he the 
 only living one of twelve. He said that when he 
 
220 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 came to himself, the first thing he noticed was a 
 bluebird singing merrily in a hazel-bush near by. 
 
 On the field of Shiloh, where four thousand 
 wounded and dying men lay in their blood all 
 night, the blue and the gray side by side, one of 
 them looked up reproachfully to the cold stars. 
 "Why," thought he, "do they not veil their 
 faces ? They seem to wink to each other at this 
 scene of agony, as if it were the denotiment of a 
 comedy." 
 
 Yes, God does seem to leave men to their fate 
 at times, as if death-throes were no concern of his. 
 All happy things at such times appear to mock 
 human agony with a ferocity all the more unbear- 
 able because it is so still and so beautiful, yet so 
 cold-blooded. Individuals are left to work out 
 their own ruin. Tempters do devil's work on the 
 young and the unwary. Innocent ones suffer 
 with the guilty. Nations trample out nations in 
 the rage of their huge passions. The millions are 
 dragged under by the pride of one. Helpless 
 women and little children are the victims. The 
 great wheels crash into and crumple up the lit- 
 tle wheels. Happy homes give place to battle- 
 grounds. Wheat-fields grow rank, fertilized by 
 human blood. Artillery thunders in cemeteries, 
 and ploughs open graves. " Glorious victories " 
 are but the pretty name of hell. So human life 
 goes on. This is history. It was in view of such 
 possibilities in every human life that DeQuincey 
 

 INTERTWINING OF GOD'S PLANS. 221 
 
 said, " Death we can face ; but, knowing what life 
 is, which of us is it, that, without shuddering, 
 could, if consciously summoned to it, face the 
 hour of birth?" 
 
 3. Yet the plans of God envelop and use the 
 plans of men with more than motherly tenderness for 
 every man, every woman, every child. In infinite 
 pity he looks down upon man, woman, child, one 
 by one. The remoteness of his hiding is only the 
 measure of his love. All the mystery springs 
 from the fact that his melting eye looks so far 
 ahead, and his soft hand reaches down to the roots 
 of suffering, so far beyond our sight, or even our 
 will to see. 
 
 This truth in its fulness we owe to the Bible. 
 Through the whole range of the Old Testament 
 this idea runs, — that God is a personal and faith- 
 ful Friend to every one who will be his friend. 
 ^" My God;" "my Rock;" "my Fortress;" "my 
 "Deliverer;" "the God of Abraham;" "the God 
 of Isaac ; " " the God of Jacob ; " " Abraham, the 
 friend of God ; " " Moses, my friend ; " " ye are 
 as the apple of mine eye ; " "I will do them good 
 with my whole heart and with my whole soul." 
 Do we venture to say, " Our Father " ? He re- 
 sponds, "As one whom his mother comforteth, 
 so will I comfort thee." 
 
 The New Testament declares the same with yet 
 more intense significance. A fond mother dotes 
 over the glossy ringlets of her boy : he finds them 
 
222 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 among her garnered treasures when, in strong 
 xnanhood, he has followed her to the burial. But 
 God, with the affairs of a boundless universe on 
 his mind, has found time to do what was never 
 done by young mother to her first-born in the 
 leisure of the nursery, — to number the very hairs 
 on his head. We have but a faint conception of 
 that love which belongs to creatorship and re- 
 demption. God only knows the love of God. 
 
 TaMng this key from God's word, we can un- 
 lock the whole mystery of life, so far as suffering 
 is concerned. To the eye of a good man, it is not 
 so much the greatness as the minuteness of God's 
 love which overwhelms him. Scientists claim that 
 the microscope has revealed more of the wonders 
 of nature than the telescope. So it is the micro- 
 scopic look into human life which reveals the 
 most marvellous loving-kindness of God. 
 
 Let any man once give faith to the biblical 
 thought of God as his personal friend, and carry it 
 back to the review of his own life from infancy up, 
 and he will find the evidence of divine love to him, 
 as if to him only, coming in upon his soul like the 
 flood of many waters. The invisible hand is seen 
 in such things as these, — I select at random from 
 one life only, — an old song which the mother sang 
 in the Sunday twilight ; a tree, a stream, a lake, a 
 mountain, which were more than friends to our 
 boyhood ; a certain chance interview with a friend, 
 which was rich in lifelong results ; a speech heard 
 
INTERTWINING OF GOD'S PLANS. 223 
 
 on a certain festive day; the sight of the great 
 man who first awakened great aspirations within 
 us; the sight of the good man who first made 
 religion a reality to us ; a certain book come upon 
 at hap-hazard ; a certain sermon heard long years 
 ago, or one sentence in it, or the text only; the 
 death of the college friend which first made heaven 
 a fact to us ; the mild reproof of a certain saintly 
 woman ; the first lesson in practical astronomy ; 
 a Christian hymn sung somewhere in the moun- 
 tains ; the* gift of a rosebud from a hand now still 
 forever; a certain conversation with a stranger in 
 the cars ; last words from a mother's death-bed ; a 
 certain prayer heard when homesick in a foreign 
 land; the mysterious delays which prevented us 
 from embarking on board the ship that went down 
 at sea ; a look at the Bay of Naples ; an hour in 
 the Colosseum at Rome ; the hour spent in the 
 " closes " of Edinburgh where Chalmers labored ; 
 the Lord's Supper at Lucerne. 
 
 Can we not all recall similar events and circum- 
 stances, some of them too minute to mean much 
 in the rehearsal, but which have been so inwrought 
 into our subsequent life that we cannot but break 
 forth sometimes into a carol of thanksgiving at 
 the thought of them ? I know a man whom the 
 perfume of mignonnette in the month of August 
 moves to ejaculatory prayer, because it is so asso- 
 ciated with a certain day and hour in August of a 
 certain year in the critical period of his youth, 
 
224 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 when, walking in his father's garden, he gave his 
 heart to Christ. 
 
 That wounded soldier who rebuked the winking 
 stars on the field of Shiloh bethought him of a 
 hymn which he used to sing when a boy in the 
 Sunday school. Something moved him to sing it 
 again ; and he broke out with, — 
 
 " When I can read my title clear 
 To mansions in the skies," &c. 
 
 When the third line was reached, another voice 
 joined his, then another and another ; and when 
 he began the second stanza, more than three hun- 
 dred of those wounded men, some of them with 
 faltering and dying accents, and again the gray 
 and the blue together, wafted that Christian song 
 over that field of blood. 
 
 Was there no prevision of a divine eye, no plan- 
 ning of a divine hand, in teaching them that hymn 
 of holy triumph long years before ? Was there no 
 prompting of thoughtful and tender kindness in 
 their being moved to sing it then when most they 
 needed it? To many of them, doubtless, it was 
 more than the wings of angels, bearing them up 
 to the opening heavens. 
 
 We cannot convince a man of the reality of 
 these awakening and creative influences in other 
 lives, who has not felt them in his own. The 
 power to see them is largely a matter of will. If 
 I take a handful of steel-filings, and hold ovei 
 
INTERTWINING OF GOD'S PLANS. 225 
 
 them my ebony ruler, there is no motion. They 
 lie still and dead. But if I take a magnet, that 
 iron with a soul in it, and draw it slowly over 
 them, every solitary particle springs in response, 
 and clings to the electric metal as to a friend. So 
 let a man whose faith in God is wooden review his 
 own life, and he may find nothing suggestive to 
 such faith. But once magnetize him with the will 
 to see, and he cannot find so much as the space 
 for a needle's point on which the love of God has 
 not left its impress. 
 
 To eyes once opened to this truth, it throws a 
 flood of golden light over the blackest and most 
 tempestuous midnight of a troubled life. Such 
 a man knows that there is a God in heaven 
 whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, but 
 who deigns to dwell in the homes of men. You 
 can neither prove it to him nor disprove it. He 
 knows it. When scientists come bending under 
 the weight of their learned volumes, proving be- 
 yond all question that God is not, he waves them 
 off, smiling as at the bugaboo which scared his 
 childhood in the dark. 
 
 4. The interlacing of the plans of God with the 
 plans of men goes far towards explaining the mys- 
 tery of shocking and exceptional calamity. Start- 
 ing with the inexplicable fact of sin, there is little 
 mystery left in any kind or degree or combinations 
 of suffering. In a world overrun with sin and 
 steeped in guilt as this world is, suffering is no 
 
228 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 mystery. It is God's great remedial antidote to 
 sin. The mystery would be fearful if there were 
 none. Suffering is a wonderful fertilizer to the 
 roots of character. The great object of this life 
 is character. This is the only thing we can carry 
 with us into eternity. Benevolent discipline, there- 
 fore, is aimed at the accumulating, the consolidat- 
 ing, and the purifying, of character. To gain the 
 most of it, and the best of it, is the object of 
 probation. 
 
 For such an object, suffering must often take on 
 a surgical severity. The right hand must be cut 
 off, and the right eye plucked out. Who can say 
 what suffering may not have done for that wretched 
 prince of Judah in the dungeons of Chaldsea? 
 The butchery of his children may have been the 
 only thing that could drive him back to the God 
 of his fathers. Blinded eyes and chained limbs 
 may have been necessary to fit him for heaven. 
 Those dark days and silent nights, — at a distance 
 of twenty-five hundred years one shivers at the 
 thought of them, — yet they may have been a 
 grand opportunity for the Spirit of God to work 
 in. God may have been waiting for it for fifty 
 years. The doomed sufferer, but the saved sinner, 
 may now be praising God for them. It will prob- 
 ably be one of the surprises of heaven, that we 
 shall find there so many saved by God's loving 
 use of last days, it may be of last hours, of speech- 
 less suffering here. 
 
INTERTWINING OF GOD'S PLANS. 227 
 
 But what of the suffering of innocence and the 
 awful inequalities of it in this world ? What of 
 those helpless, butchered little children of the 
 Judsean king ? Well, we admit that it is a tough 
 question ; yet it is not wholly unanswerable. The 
 mystery is lightened when we take in God's con- 
 ception of the evil of sin. Nothing can be too 
 shocking to express divine abhorrence of that. 
 The more startling and mysterious that expression, 
 the more natural it is. Sin itself is the great 
 anomaly of the universe. God's treatment of it 
 should seem to be full of anomalies, strange and 
 fearful. That is just what sin calls for. Hence 
 the suffering of the innocent with and for the 
 guilty. Yet, to the innocent, suffering is not 
 vengeance ; it is not punishment even : it is only 
 the discipline which love chooses for their holy 
 development. To them it is just what they are 
 conscious of receiving. If conscious of no sin, 
 they are conscious of no punishment. 
 
 Have you never seen the look of age on the 
 countenance of an infant in its coffin ? Suffering 
 may have done rapidly the work of years of or- 
 dinary life there in creating character. That 
 infant's chief praise in heaven may be for the fact 
 that its brief life here was one of anguish. That 
 may have been the chief instrument by which God 
 has lifted it above the rank of a humming-bird. 
 
 Even when death in shocking and violent fury 
 seems to overtake men unprepared, who shall say 
 
228 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 that infinite love, and love to them, may not have 
 so ordained it ? Men who have entered the valley 
 of the shadow by drowning, and have come back 
 to life, tell us of a strange quickening of the soul's 
 capacities in those moments of suspended vitality. 
 Souls live fast in last moments. Who can say, 
 then, that the Spirit of God does not avail himself 
 of that law of mind, and work fast in such 
 moments? At the last trump, we shall be 
 changed in the twinkling of an eye. Why not as 
 well in the death-gasp? Oh! you and I must 
 become a great deal wiser than we are now, in 
 the hidden things of wisdom, before we can ven- 
 ture to raise a question even of the tenderness of 
 God, in the most appalling tragedy which cold stars 
 ever winked at, or merry bluebirds ever sang to 
 in the hazel-bush. 
 
 5. The interworking of the plans of God with 
 the plans of men suggests the only true method of 
 happy as well as holy living. It is to make our 
 plans one with God's plans. Thus blessedness is 
 sure for both worlds. Study God's plans ; study 
 his providences ; study his word ; hearken for the 
 whispers of his Spirit. Make much of still hours. 
 Find out thus your place in God's purposes of 
 procedure. Then drop into that place trustfully 
 and contentedly. Move with his moves, start at 
 his bidding, go here, go there, stay, as he directs. 
 Lie still and suffer, if that be the order from 
 above. Have no will but his. Pray no unquali- 
 
 
INTERTWINING OF GOD'S PLANS. 229 
 
 fied prayers, except where lie has revealed his will. 
 Never plan without taking God into confidence, 
 and asking him what he thinks of it. Never con- 
 tend with God in secret feeling. Give way to no 
 silent longings of discontent. Indulge no reveries 
 over impossible blessings. When prayer has lifted 
 you into harmony with him, do not fritter it away 
 by repining after-thoughts. Never look backward : 
 remember Lot's wife. Our chief miseries come 
 from spiritual retrogrades. In short, be at one 
 with God : so shall your peace flow like a river, 
 and your joy shall be like the swellings of Jordan. 
 
THE KINGDOMS THAT DIE, AND THE KING- 
 DOM THAT LIVES. 
 
 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up 
 a kingdom which shall never be destroyed ; and the kingdom 
 shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and 
 consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Foras- 
 much as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain 
 without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the 
 clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to 
 the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is 
 certain, and the interpretation thereof sure. — Dan. ii. 44, 45. 
 
 THIS enigmatical passage in the life of the 
 Babylonian monarch is aptly summed up in 
 the foregoing title. I must leave to the commen- 
 taries the disputed interpretation of this symbolic 
 language, and confine my thought to the obvious 
 principle involved in it, which extends over a 
 broader area. It expresses a fragment of that 
 universal law by which every thing human is 
 doomed to decay, but to which there is one, and 
 but one, mysterious exception. 
 
 1. The law of decay in human affairs : let us en- 
 deavor to obtain some fresh conception of it, as a 
 law under which every human life passes. 
 
 (1) It is impressively illustrated in the fact that 
 individuals pass so soon out of the memory of the 
 
 230 
 
THE KINGDOMS THAT DIE. 231 
 
 world. Individuals soon die, and the dead are 
 soon forgotten. When a man dies, another man 
 arises who will fill his place, and, as a rule, fill it 
 as well as he has done. His business, his houses, 
 his lands, his honors, his titles, will pass into other 
 hands, and by the world at large he will not be 
 missed. He will die out of the world's thought as 
 thoroughly as his mouldering body passes out from 
 the home which he once cheered, and from the seat 
 at the table of which he was once the honored 
 head. 
 
 A man's character may live. The influence he 
 exerted may pass into other lives, but not in any 
 such way as to identify his name, and keep that 
 alive. That dies as surely as he dies, and not long 
 after. Scientists tell us that it is a law of dynamics 
 that a pin dropped to the surface of the earth 
 sends a concussion through the universe. But 
 who hears the falling pin ? Who feels the force of 
 the blow ? What sleeper is awakened by it ? Who 
 identifies and remembers it ? Similar is the law of 
 individual influence. It lives, indeed, through all 
 time, and penetrates eternity; but the man soon 
 ceases to be known as its author. His decaying 
 brain is not more securely buried in the grave 
 from the sight of men, than his name is, sooner or 
 later, from their memory. Such is the common 
 course of human life. So it has been ; so it is ; so 
 it must be ; so it will be forever. 
 
 (2) This law of decay is more impressively illus- 
 
232 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 trated in the fact that nations die. Why should 
 not a proud and gallant nation, which has made a 
 thousand years of history, make ten thousand 
 more, — yes, live on forever ? The monarch of the 
 East was not without some reason for his boast, 
 " Is not this great Babylon, which I have built ? " 
 Who shall dare to predict its downfall ? It surely, 
 with its walls three hundred and fifty feet high, 
 and so broad that four chariots could drive abreast 
 on their summit, — it surely had the look of eter- 
 nity. " The Eternal City," the Romans proudly 
 called their peerless capital, — and why not ? 
 
 Yet what is the history of great empires ? What 
 but the record of the death-scenes of ■ nations ? 
 The glory of one is the doom of another ; the rise 
 of one, the fall of its predecessor. So uniform has 
 the process been, that philosophic historians have 
 believed that the history of nations is foredoomed 
 to run in a circle, not in a line. Rise, growth, 
 glory, decay, fall, death, seem to tell the whole 
 story. History seems like one vast obituary. 
 
 So complete is the oblivion which creeps over 
 great nations, that in some cases the fact of their 
 having lived is known only by melancholy infer- 
 ence from the fact that they have died. Antiqua- 
 rians find in the East enormous burial-places, with 
 cypresses overgrowing thousands of graves, when 
 every other trace of the cities which once supplied 
 them with their silent population has disappeared. 
 The aboriginal mounds found in some parts of our 
 
THE KINGDOMS THAT DIE. 233 
 
 own continent tell a similar story. Great nations 
 doubtless once lived here, of which those burial- 
 mounds are the only monument now extant. Not 
 a page of written history, not a hieroglyph, remains 
 to tell us who and what they were : their very 
 names are blotted from the knowledge of mankind 
 forever. 
 
 (3) This law of decay is illustrated instruct- 
 ively in the fact that it disappoints the most plausi- 
 ble plans and expectations of men. Endless are the 
 expedients by which men struggle against death in 
 the memory of their successors. Some have built 
 pyramids ; others have fought battles ; others have 
 written books or made discoveries; others have 
 founded cities, libraries, schools, churches ; others 
 have established families among a hereditary nobil- 
 ity. How much of wasted mind has been ex- 
 pended on the science of heraldry ! Yet- not one 
 of these lifelong struggles has succeeded in giving 
 to any man the object of his ambition. The world 
 forgot, more than a thousand years ago, who built 
 some of the pyramids of Egypt. Long before 
 that, men had ceased to care who founded Thebes 
 or Palmyra. The impressiveness of such oblivion 
 sometimes borders on the ludicrous. A few years 
 ago I wandered over the ruins of old Rome, and 
 what think you I saw among the ruins of the fall- 
 en palace of the Caesars ? A garden of cabbages ! 
 The vilest of vegetables had more power to per- 
 petuate its kind than he whom men once wor- 
 
234 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 shipped as a god, and of whom they said that a 
 new star appeared in the heavens when he died. 
 The only, living successor of Nero and Caligula 
 was a plain Mr. Smith, who had erected on those 
 ruins a red-brick house, not more imposing than 
 the one in which his namesake lives in Tenth 
 Street, Philadelphia, or in Houston Street, New 
 York. 
 
 Napoleon lamented that his conquests did not 
 last as long as the time he occupied in making 
 them. His own prediction was, that the time 
 would come when all that the world would care to 
 know of him would be comprised in half a page 
 of history ; and he was right. Sir Walter Scott 
 fell into idiocy in his almost superhuman effort to 
 place himself at the head of one of the noble fam- 
 ilies of Great Britain. But no child of his lives 
 to inherit his honors or perpetuate his fame. That 
 means of keeping alive the name of Walter Scott 
 has failed forever. 
 
 The point I would emphasize by these illustra- 
 tions is the fact that the law of decay which is 
 written on all things human is so imperious in its 
 sway that the most ingenious and stupendous ex- 
 ertions of men to achieve what they call immor- 
 tality are overreached and defeated by it, and 
 that therefore disappointment is written on thou- 
 sands of wasted lives. The most long-lived of 
 those whom the world calls immortal on the rolls 
 of fame must at last accept the epitaph which the 
 
THE KINGDOMS THAT DIE. 235 
 
 poet Keats suggested for his own : " Here lies one 
 whose name was writ in water." 
 
 2. But to this law of decay in human affairs 
 there is one grand and marvellous exception. God 
 has a kingdom in this world, which lives. 
 
 (1) It deserves mention in illustration of this 
 exception, that the work of God in redemption is 
 the only thing in human history that dates hack to 
 the beginning of time. God's work in this world is 
 the only thing now living that goes back into 
 antediluvian history. It is the only thing which 
 links the whole of human history together. Other 
 things fall, die, rot, by t.he side of this : this lives 
 on to the world's end. 
 
 The vanity of individuals, the ambition of fami- 
 ilies, the pride of cities, the glory of nations, the 
 conflicts of races, — all have been short-lived. But 
 it has not been so with this work of God. For- 
 tunes are dissipated in a tithe of the time which it 
 requires to amass them. Commercial panics pros- 
 trate merchant princes in an hour. Treasures are 
 sunk in the sea or in storms of fire. The very 
 highways of commerce are changed by events which 
 no human foresight can provide for. Cities like 
 Venice and the Hanse towns, once the centres of 
 great trades, are left like stranded ships, and the 
 commerce of the world flows elsewhere. King- 
 doms, too, perish from the memory of men. Races 
 become extinct. But it is not so with this work 
 of God. 
 
236 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 The very sciences of the world fluctuate. The 
 knowledge of one age becomes folly to the next. 
 The universities of to-day laugh at those of yes- 
 terday. Culture runs the gauntlet of system after 
 system of philosophy, of political economy, of art, 
 which seem to have been created only for the sake 
 of dying. Pursuits once dignified as sciences, such 
 as astrology, alchemy, magic, are exploded. But 
 it is not so with this work of God. 
 
 The world's religions, too, have succumbed to 
 the same law of doom. A religious system once 
 rooted in the civilization of a people is the last 
 thing to die. But many such have expired. Oth- 
 ers are in the process of dissolution. Even the 
 languages in which men transmit their treasures 
 of learning, civilization, and religion, die. What 
 an appalling thing to the imagination is a dead 
 language ! Every thing that man originates lives 
 but a brief time in a world's life. But it is not 
 so with this work of God. 
 
 Amidst disorganizing forces that shake to pieces 
 every thing else, this work lives, with the fixedness 
 of the North Star. Other things bend to this: 
 this never yields to them. All force in this world, 
 sooner or later, yields to this unarmed and silent 
 power. In every thing else the iron and the brass 
 and the clay become like the chaff of the summer 
 threshing-floor; while the stone cut out without 
 hands is growing to a great mountain, and filling 
 the whole earth. 
 
 
•THE KINGDOMS THAT DIE. 237 
 
 (2) The contrast between the kingdoms of men 
 and the kingdom of God is further seen in the 
 mysterious vitality of right in this world, in its con- 
 flicts with wrong. Evil, organized never so deftly, 
 becomes effete. Good seems robust and always 
 growing. The right, in the outset of a great 
 conflict with wrong, is always underneath ; yet it 
 always comes uppermost. It is never safe to an 
 evil thing to agitate it. Inquiry is death to it. 
 In every conflict the right gains something. It 
 never loses a battle. Its drawn battles are secret 
 victories. When Edmund Burke said to the first 
 military and naval power of the world, " You can- 
 not conquer America," he spoke a principle which 
 runs through all historic struggle of wrong with 
 right. 
 
 It is astonishing what heroic deeds men who are 
 not above their fellows in strength of religious 
 principle will dare to undertake, if sustained by a 
 consciousness of being in the right. Why are a 
 dozen policemen, on the side of law, a match for 
 a hundred desperadoes in a riot ? When the Con- 
 tinental Congress was debating the question of 
 independence of the mother-country, more than 
 half the world believed it would never dare to 
 do the deed. English statesmen smiled incredu- 
 lously when it was threatened. When the " Decla- 
 ration " was under discussion, and it was rumored 
 that it would be signed that day, an old man was 
 sent into the belfry of Independence Hall, in 
 
238 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Philadelphia, where the Congress was in session, 
 and directed to strike one hundred strokes on 
 " Liberty Bell " when the act was done. The old 
 man sauntered up the spiral stairs muttering, 
 " They will never do it ; they will never do it." 
 He spoke the feeling of more than half his con- 
 temporaries the world over. The hours went 
 slowly by : the old man fell asleep at his post, but 
 was at length roused by a shout from "State 
 House yard : " " Ring, ring ! they've done it ! " 
 And the hundred tongues of " Liberty Bell " told 
 the world that fifty-five 1 men had defied the first 
 naval power of Europe. 
 
 They had done it at the risk of their lives. 
 Every man who signed that scroll committed high 
 treason. When the last name was written, a si- 
 lence fell upon the assembly, in which every man 
 thought of the scaffold. So oppressive was the 
 stillness, that Franklin felt the need of lifting the 
 mood of his colleagues to one more cheerful ; and 
 he uttered the bon mot which has since become 
 famous : " Now we must all hang together, or we 
 shall all hang separately." 
 
 Nothing could have sustained such men in such 
 a deed but the simple consciousness that they 
 were in the right. Among them were praj'ing 
 men, whose thought was of the God of battles. 
 
 1 Common history says "fifty-six." But one of the number 
 was absent at the time, and was permitted to add bis name some 
 time after. 
 
THE KINGDOMS THAT DIE. 239 
 
 The clause near the end of the Declaration, " With 
 a firm reliance on Divine Providence," was not in 
 the original draft by Jefferson. It was inserted 
 as an amendment by unanimous vote. That ap- 
 peal to God, in behalf of right, was more to them 
 than the fleets of England, which whitened all the 
 harbors of the world. Right in the affairs of men 
 is the synonyme of God. It lives because he lives. 
 It is eternal because he is eternal. 
 
 3. The contrast between God's kingdom and 
 the kingdoms of this world is further seen in an 
 anomalous suspension of the law of decay in some 
 cases of historic immortality. The only men who 
 are destined to live while the world lives are those 
 who are in some way especially identified with the 
 kingdom of Christ. The only nations which will 
 escape the decline and fall which have thus far 
 made up the dismal round of history are those 
 which shall be given to Christ, and shall realize 
 the Christian ideal of national life in the civiliza- 
 tion of the future. The perpetuity of the Hebrew 
 nation is the great miracle of history, unparalleled 
 by the fate of any other people on the globe under 
 similar conditions. They live because they were 
 once, and are to be again, the chosen people of 
 God in executing the purposes of redemption. 
 
 Such exceptions are perceptible even in the ex- 
 perience of individuals. Compare a good man and 
 a bad man in any community, in respect to the 
 memory of them which lives after them. The good 
 
240 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 man always lives longer, in the memory of survi- 
 vors, than the bad man of the same amount of 
 character, and with equal conditions of power. 
 Never did inspiration utter a truer apothegm than 
 in recording that " the memory of the wicked shall 
 rotr 
 
 4. Here belongs the fact that the only names 
 from the remote past which in the nature of things 
 can go down to the world's latest ages, are those 
 which are to be immortalized by the Christian Scrij)- 
 tures. 
 
 This book is the only literature of the first times 
 which can live in the vivid and fresh interest of 
 men to the last times. 
 
 It is a pleasant thought, that the very names 
 which we revere in the biblical biographies will 
 seem to the last generations of the race to be the 
 only immortal names in history. The very stories 
 which we teach to our children from these inspired 
 pages will fascinate the children and the children's 
 children of the world's closing ages. Abel, Abra- 
 ham, Joseph, David. Isaiah, Daniel, John the Bap- 
 tist, St. Paul, the Virgin Mary, will live in the 
 reverence of the remotest times, when not a guess 
 at their existence could survive the ravages of 
 time but for the place they hold in the execution 
 of God's work and in the record of it in God's 
 word. 
 
 The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews will immortalize certain names, which 
 
THE KINGDOMS THAT DIE. 241 
 
 now are not known to half the world. That poor 
 woman who broke the box of alabaster on the per- 
 son of her Lord is to have a memorial of that act 
 preserved for her among all nations and through 
 all time. She will be the subject of study to 
 Christian scholars when the Pyramids of Egypt 
 shall have crumbled. What will the world care 
 then for Cheops in comparison with this nameless 
 woman ? Her deed of love to Christ will give her 
 a name above all the honors of heraldry. It is an 
 affecting comment on the destiny of all things hu- 
 man, that the only thing which is to hand down 
 the name of the first man of our race to the last 
 man is that plan of God in the structure of the 
 Bible which has wrought the name of Adam into 
 the story of redemption. 
 
 A single reflection is suggested by this review. 
 It is the glory of the Christian Church. Who can 
 help exulting in it ? In this Church of the living 
 God is concentrated all that is eternal in this 
 world's history. It is identified with God, and 
 God is identified with it. Its work is God's work. 
 Already its history laps over into another world. 
 It has sent forward its advance-guard in innumer- 
 able hosts who are waiting for the rear-guard. 
 But a little stream divides them. That stream it- 
 self is populous with the multitudes who are cross- 
 ing over. 
 
 " Just before, the shining shore 
 We may almost discover." 
 
242 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 It is a privilege — is it not ? — to be a member 
 of the Church of Christ ; to constitute one of 
 this mighty and immortal host ; to bear the name 
 which it bears ; to unite in its songs, and be re- 
 membered in its prayers ; to be identified with its 
 work, and to share its rewards ; to be counted 
 worthy of its sufferings, and to earn the fruit of 
 its heroism : what has life to offer to a good man 
 of lofty aspirations which can bear comparison 
 with this ? I never think of a child of God out- 
 side of the Church of Christ, but with feelings of 
 unutterable compassion. He is -losing so much 
 which might be his; he is failing to achieve so 
 much which might swell his reward at the Mas- 
 ter's coming ! 
 
 He reminds me of the story of " The Man with- 
 out a Country," doomed, in punishment of his mo- 
 mentary treason, never to hear from human lips 
 the name of the land that gave him birth. He 
 crossed oceans in his country's service, but could 
 never hear her glory told. Her insignia were torn 
 from the badge of his uniform. When his com- 
 panions exulted over the news of her victories, 
 dead silence stopped all voices if he entered their 
 circle. The newspaper from home was not per- 
 mitted to pass into his hands till it had been re- 
 viewed by a censor, and the name of his country 
 expurgated from its columns. Though an honest 
 sailor and a gallant officer, his name appeared no- 
 where on the roll of his country's fame. He lived 
 
THE KINGDOMS THAT DIE. 243 
 
 and died a nameless man, without a country and 
 without a home. 
 
 Such a one does a Christian seem, who is trying 
 to serve God and make his way to heaven outside 
 of and out of sympathy with the Church of Christ. 
 What can be done with such a man in heaven ? 
 What regrets must mingle with his joys on enter- 
 ing there ! " Do this in remembrance of me." 
 That one command, given in the parting hour by 
 the loving Saviour to loved disciples, he has never 
 in his whole life obeyed. 
 
 Oh, thanks to God for his visible Church ! for 
 her hymns and her prayers, for her ordinances and 
 the promises she inherits, for the fellowship of the 
 saints on earth with saints in heaven, for the 
 history of her sufferings, and the future of her 
 triumphs ! Thank God for her immortality ! 
 While every thing else in this world must die and 
 rot, there is one thing that lives, one thing over 
 which death has no power, one thing that smiles 
 at the grave as it passes on to a life that has no 
 end! 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 
 
 Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his 
 lords, and drank wine before the thousand. ... In the same hour 
 came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the 
 candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and 
 the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king's 
 countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that 
 the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one 
 against another. . . . And this is the writing that was written : 
 Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uphaksin. This is the interpretation of 
 the thing: Mene; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished 
 it. Tekel; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found 
 wanting. Peres; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the 
 Medes and Persians. ... In that night was Belshazzar the king 
 of the Chaldseans slain. —Dan. v. 1, 5, 6, 25-28, 30. 
 
 WASHINGTON ALLSTON spent more 
 than twelve years attempting to paint the 
 scene of Belshazzar's feast, and then left his work 
 unfinished. It is said that the chief difficulty, 
 which the artist's genius could not overcome, was 
 that of depicting the despair of the doomed king. 
 Well it might be so ; for it was the despair of a 
 lost soul brought suddenly face to face with the 
 retributive judgment of God, written by a mys- 
 terious hand from another world. What art can 
 portray it in the look of a human face ? 
 
 This Chaldsean monarch is one of the few indi- 
 
 244 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 245 
 
 vidual cases mentioned in the Scriptures, of men 
 whose damnation in eternity is made morally cer- 
 tain. Rarely, even in the case of a very wicked 
 man, does the inspired writer lift the veil from 
 individual destiny, and assure us that it is fatal. 
 But in this instance there can scarcely be room 
 for doubt. The implications of doom are over- 
 whelming. Belshazzar had been long familiar 
 with a knowledge of the true God. He had had 
 miraculous evidences of it in the experience of 
 his father. " Thou knewest all this," is the faith- 
 ful reminder which the prophet gives him. Yet 
 he had persisted in a life and reign of extreme 
 and unblushing guilt. " O Belshazzar, thou hast 
 not humbled thine heart ; but hast lifted up thy- 
 self against the Lord of heaven." Then appeared 
 the fearful writing on the wall, the purport of 
 which is too plain to admit of doubt. That night 
 the king was summoned to the bar of God. 
 
 This may be fairly assumed, therefore, as a case 
 of clear and prolonged conviction of sin which did 
 not result in the soul's salvation. Who of us has 
 the heart to follow the doomed monarch beyond 
 the scenes of that awful night ? Let us draw the 
 veil over that unwritten and unutterable future, 
 and turn to a class of men whose experience on 
 the subject of religion is not dissimilar, so far as 
 this, — that they have long known the truth, have 
 long felt themselves to be sinners before God, yet 
 they stop just there, with the acknowledged sense 
 
246 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 of sin often lying as a wearisome weight on their 
 souls, and never relieved Jby repentance and the 
 consciousness of peace with God. If they were 
 to be suddenly called into God's presence with 
 hearts unchanged, as the Chaldsean king was, the 
 verdict of the mysterious hand would be the 
 same : " Thou art weighed in the balances, and 
 art found wanting." 
 
 One young man I once knew, in whose mind 
 these very words rested for months, as the sum- 
 ming up of his own character and destiny. 
 "Weighed, and found wanting," — the words were 
 like a live coal upon his eyeballs. Wherever he 
 looked he saw them. They glared upon him from 
 the walls of his chamber. All faith, all hope, was 
 buried in them. Outwardly he lived like other 
 men. Few knew the dull nightmare of conscious 
 and despairing guilt in which he lived. Yet rare- 
 ly was he conscious of an hour when he did not 
 feel it, resting like a pall over the joys of this 
 world, and foreshadowing in silent prophecy his 
 doom in another. He represented a class of men 
 who are not few, who suffer for years under hope- 
 less and fruitless convictions of sin. 
 
 There are certain truths which one who is living 
 in the state of mind here described needs espe- 
 cially to consider. 
 
 1. One is that the suffering which accompanies 
 hopeless conviction of sin is no more than a sinner 
 Hopeless consciousness of sin is re- 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 247 
 
 morse ; and remorse is the natural vengeance of 
 sin upon a sinner. It is legitimate : it is just. 
 We are never wronged in the vengeance of re- 
 morse. God has not wronged us in making us 
 susceptible of such suffering ; conscience does not 
 wrong us in inflicting it ; the holy universe does 
 not wrong us in approving it. 
 
 We have no reason to compassionate ourselves 
 as if we were only unfortunates in the gloom of 
 hopeless guilt. That is an enervating state of 
 mind in which a convicted sinner pities himself 
 because he feels that he is a sufferer. Conviction 
 must probe our souls deeper than that. We must_ 
 condemn ourselves, and justify God, even if he 
 should leave us in that furnace of burning re- 
 morse through eternity. Never a man of us will 
 truly accept Christ as a Saviour, who does not so 
 feel his own guilt as to drop the sense of injury, 
 and justify God in his condemnation. "Eternal 
 sin deserves eternal woe," — until we feel this in 
 our inmost being, we have no adequate sense of 
 what sin is, — no adequate sense, therefore, of our 
 need of Christ ; and we accept Christ never but 
 as a necessity. 
 
 One man lived in such an overwhelming con- 
 sciousness of ill-desert, that, when death ap- 
 proached, he wrote to a friend, " Let me beg of 
 you, as you value your old friend, not to suffer 
 any pomp to be used at my funeral, nor any mon- 
 umental inscription to mark where I am laid. 
 
248 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Lay me quietly in the earth : place a sun-dial over 
 my grave, and let me be forgotten." Yet that 
 man was John Howard. The best of men feel 
 most profoundly the conviction of ill-desert as a 
 part of the conviction of sin. Until a sinner feels 
 this, he cannot feel that Christ is a necessity to 
 him ; and there is no peace for him. 
 
 2. Yet one who suffers under unavailing convic- 
 tions should see that it is no proper effect of religion 
 to produce such convictions. On no subject do we 
 confound causes and effects more egregiously than 
 on this. We charge upon religion the misery 
 which arises from the want of it. The legitimate 
 tendency of piety in the soul is all benignant. 
 The fruit of the Spirit — what is it? Love, joy, 
 peace. Glad tidings of great joy, this is the gos- 
 pel. It is a volume of benedictions. 
 
 Elementary truths are these ; yet the sense of 
 guilt often crowds them out of sight. A sinner 
 feels the throes of remorse, and says within him- 
 self, "This is the fruit of religion." His former 
 gayety he contrasts with his present misery ; and 
 he reflects, " This is what religion does for a man." 
 The world looks upon the change in him, and 
 says, "See the working of your religion : it is a 
 sour-faced business ! " Not so, not so. There is 
 no religion in suffering as such. There is no reli- 
 gion in fear, in conviction of guilt, in self-reproach, 
 in forebodings of hell. A prolonged endurance 
 of these is no necessary preliminary to the peace 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 249 
 
 of a forgiven soul. Some converted men have 
 never experienced them in protracted or despair- 
 ing agony. 
 
 Says Dr. Chalmers, " I cannot say of myself 
 that I ever felt a state of mind corresponding to 
 John Bnnyan's 'Slough of Despond.' What am 
 I to infer from this? That I have not yet sur- 
 mounted the impassable barrier that stands be- 
 tween me and the gate of life? So one would 
 suppose from John Bunyan. So I would sup- 
 pose, myself, were it not for the assurance of the 
 Saviour, ' He that believeth in me, though he were 
 dead yet shall he live.' This is my firm hold, and 
 I will not let it go." 
 
 No, there are no grooves in which the experi- 
 ence anterior to the joy of pardon must run long 
 and gloomily, as through an unlighted tunnel. 
 The tumultuous conflicts which some endure, at 
 a certain crisis of their religious history, are the 
 conflicts of sin, — not with sin, but of sin. They 
 are the sheer obstinacy of guilt resisting its own 
 condemnation by the just mind of God. They 
 are the death-struggle of sin, prolonged only so 
 long as the sinner withholds himself from Christ. 
 In the rapids of a cataract, the bare struggle to 
 stand still may strain the muscles to agony. So, 
 in the midst of convictions of guilt, and the striv- 
 ings of the Holy Spirit, a sinner's sheer effort to 
 remain a sinner may wrench all joy out of him. 
 
 3. A third truth which should command the 
 
250 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 faith of one who endures ineffectual convictions 
 of sin is, that God is a sinner's friend. It seems 
 irreverent to affirm this, as if a doubt of it were 
 conceivable. Yet towards no other one truth is 
 the human heart so faithless. The instinct of sin 
 is to look upon God as not only the enemy of sin, 
 but the enemy of the sinner as well. 
 
 Under Christian light, right here beneath the 
 meridian of Christian illumination, men do not 
 know God as their friend. "May I love God ? " 
 was the trembling and faithless query of one peni- 
 tent believer. When sin dawns upon the sinner's 
 conscience as a reality, it starts up the thought of 
 God as an enemy. We are apt to count that man 
 our enemy to whom we are enemies. Nature says, 
 " He will injure me, whom I have injured." Sin is 
 twin brother to Hate. 
 
 Said an injured man at the capital of our coun- 
 try, justifying himself for taking the life of his 
 enemy, "He wronged me in that one thing in 
 which no man ever forgives his fellow. He and I 
 cannot live on the same globe together." So it is 
 human nature to reason about God. " He is my 
 enemy because I am his." The world seems to be 
 losing its youth, and growing old before its time, 
 in the struggle of the ages to rid itself of this 
 satanic conception of God. That there is one 
 Being in the universe, who, with no taint in his 
 ineffable purity, can look down upon this world 
 with mild, pitying, forgiving eyes, — this one 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 251 
 
 thought of God in Christ is the conception of 
 him against which guilt has been contending for 
 six thousand years. 
 
 One who suffers under prolonged and abortive 
 convictions of sin should therefore admit this faith 
 to his heart, — that God is a sinner's friend. Not 
 merely that Christ is his friend. A strange and 
 murky distortion sometimes gets possession of us. 
 It is that somehow God and Christ are not at one 
 in friendliness to the guilty. The idea does not 
 define itself sharply. If it did, a man's good 
 sense would reject it. But, if defined, it would 
 be something like this, — that, while Christ desires 
 to save men, back of his atoning work there stands 
 a frowning and relentless Deity, who is averse to 
 the whole procedure by which a sinner escapes 
 eternal woe. God, as such, is eager to damn a 
 sinner. The necessities of his holy nature are 
 such that he enjoys the outpouring of his wrath 
 in eternal fires. God, as such, therefore, is the 
 sinner's enemy. In the blackness of darkness 
 which, overwhelms a despairing soul, these two 
 conceptions of God as love, and God as a con- 
 suming fire, often wrestle like masked com- 
 batants. 
 
 In the final extreme, there comes about that 
 state of guilty conviction without hope which 
 one of the most earnest thinkers of England 
 described by saying, "Life, the world, mankind, 
 religion, eternity, all appear to me like one vast 
 
252 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 scene of confusion, stretching away before me, and 
 closed in shades of the most dreadful darkness, — 
 a darkness which only the most powerful splendors 
 of Deity can illumine, and which appears as if 
 they never had illumined it." 
 
 I have somewhere read a story of a man who 
 was locked into a darkened chamber at midnight 
 and alone, with a maniac in a paroxysm of silent 
 and cunning bloodthirst. Crouching in one corner, 
 the horror-struck man could hear the creaking of 
 the floor under the cat-like tread of the demoniac 
 as he crept after him. He moved noiselessly to 
 another corner ; but soon he felt the magnetic 
 sense of the proximity of the foe he could not see 
 and dared not touch. Springing past him in the 
 darkness, he could perceive the taint of his hot 
 breath, and could hear his quick panting, and 
 the grinding of his teeth in disappointed rage. 
 Moments were ages in the waiting for the death- 
 grapple. When the morning dawned, and relief 
 came, and the windows were thrown open, his 
 raven hair was turned snow-white. 
 
 To such insane companionship does hopeless 
 guilt doom a man at the last in the communings 
 of his soul with God. With trembling reverence 
 be it said, if God were an Almighty Maniac he 
 could scarcely be an object of more profound 
 terror or more relentless hate. This is no fiction. 
 Some heathen tribes have worshipped just such a 
 god. It is a frightful confirmation of the biblical 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 253 
 
 conception of sin, that when the human mind 
 loses all knowledge of the true God, the Devil 
 takes his place. And not the Devil in lofty and 
 aspiring malignity like that of Milton's Satan, but 
 in grovelling or insane distortions which the soul 
 shudders at, yet yields to. " Fall down and wor- 
 ship me," is the dread command; and it is obeyed. 
 Demoniac idols in heathen temples bear a frightful 
 resemblance to the faces of maniacs. 
 
 Now, so long as such a nightmare of horror as 
 this broods over a man, think you that he can 
 have peace ? 
 
 The power which conquers guilt is the omnipo- 
 tence of love. Let it be repeated and reiterated 
 therefore, — God is the sinner's friend. Throw 
 open the windows to the light of heaven. Let 
 the glory of God stream in from golden skies ! 
 The whole Godhead is the sinner's friend. " I will 
 rejoice to do them good with my whole heart and 
 with my whole soul." There is no Nemesis crouch- 
 ing with malign cunning behind the cross. God 
 is never more the sinner's friend than in the very 
 quickening of conscience which he resists. 
 
 It has been said, that, in such a world as this, " a 
 man may have too much love to weep." So in the 
 appalling extremity to which sin has reduced man- 
 kind, God has too much love to beguile them with 
 a maudlin kindness which would not pain them 
 by a disclosure of their guilt to their own souls. 
 God is intent on their salvation, not so much from 
 
254 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 suffering as from sin. Sin is the maelstrom which 
 sucks into its vortex all joy, all peace, all hope. 
 God strains the resources of his wisdom and his 
 power to rescue men from eternal guilt. He con- 
 descends to enter into conflict with them to save 
 them from themselves. Such is his faithful, his 
 enduring, his long-suffering, his overwhelming 
 friendship. His indeed is love which many 
 waters cannot quench, nor floods drown. George 
 Fox describes his own discovery of this truth, in 
 language which portrays the experience of all who 
 are enlightened by the grace of God. He says, 
 " I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and 
 death. But an infinite ocean of light and love 
 flowed over the ocean of darkness ; and in that I 
 saw the infinite love of God." 
 
 At some point in our mental history, if we are 
 ever to be saved, we must let into our souls that 
 mighty and swelling flood of benignity which God 
 has poured forth in this work for our deliverance 
 from guilt, and in which the whole heart of the 
 Godhead has been expressed. Said one, reflecting 
 upon the disclosures of God in nature, " Flowers 
 surely are smiles of God's goodness." — "Yes," 
 said his friend with a deeper insight, "yes; but 
 the fairest flower I ever saw climbing around a 
 poor man's window was never so beautiful in my 
 eyes as the Bible which I saw lying within." So 
 should we look at the goodness of God, as it is 
 seen in the revelation of the brightness of the 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 255 
 
 Father's glory. Nowhere else do we feel as we 
 do here, that God is a sinner's friend. 
 
 4. Again, one who labors under fruitless con- 
 victions needs to see that the chief obstacle to his 
 salvation is not the want of a more perfect under- 
 standing of the theory of conversion. This suggests 
 a peculiar delusion under which men often suffer, 
 when convinced of sin without repentance. We 
 are apt to fancy, in such a state, that we should 
 be saved more easily if we understood the process 
 more philosophically. Our work would be more 
 practicable if we could see into God's work more 
 cunningly. 
 
 If we could lift the curtain that hides the de- 
 crees, of God ; if we could discover how prayer can 
 affect the decree concerning our salvation, which 
 was fixed before we had souls to save ; if we could 
 solve the riddle of impenitent prayer ; if we could 
 satisfy reason as to the responsibility of a sinner 
 whose heart God has hardened in some sense, as 
 he did Pharaoh's ; in brief, if the tangled knot of 
 the divine and the human in one, which is laced 
 most inseparably in the doctrine of conversion, 
 could be untwisted, and its filaments straightened 
 out side by side, — we cannot resist the feeling 
 that we should breathe more freely, and look 
 heavenward more hopefully. 
 
 The point I would emphasize, therefore, is that 
 the chief obstruction to a man's salvation never 
 lies in any such difficulty as that. A sinner needs 
 
256 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 to admit this and to feel it. It may be that even 
 a legitimate interest in the theory of religion — 
 that is, an interest right enough in itself, and at 
 some time and for some minds important — is not 
 timely to your mind now and here. Some minds 
 need, for their healthy and practical working in 
 religious matters, a reduction of speculative tone. 
 Religious speculation often reaches a condition 
 like that which medical science calls "sub-acute 
 inflammation." It needs to be reduced to less 
 feverish inquiry. 
 
 The Rev. John Foster of Bristol was probably 
 by nature one of the most sceptical men who have 
 ever been led to accept Christ as a Saviour, It 
 was a long stride towards the salvation of such a 
 soul as his when he was led to say, as he did at 
 last, after long despair, " I have felt the neces- 
 sity of dismissing subtle speculations, and of yield- 
 ing a humble, cordial assent to mysterious truth, 
 just as and because the Scriptures declare it, with- 
 out asking, 'How can these things be?' The 
 gospel is to me a matter of urgent necessity. I 
 come to Jesus because I need pardon." So must 
 every sinner come, — not beguiled by the solution 
 of difficulties, but driven by a sense of necessities. 
 The vast majority of us never come in any other 
 way. 
 
 5. The chief obstacle to the termination of fruit- 
 less convictions in peace with God is to be found 
 in some plain, practical affair of character and real 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 257 
 
 life. No feeling, I think, is more common among 
 those who have found peace in Christ, after pro- 
 tracted and remorseful conflict, than the feeling 
 of surprise that they have been kept aloof from 
 Christ so long. They have been looking up into 
 the clouds, struggling with aching eyes to see 
 visions ; or have introverted their thoughts upon 
 themselves, straining to see their own eyeballs : 
 wliile the real obstacle to their conversion has 
 been in plain sight at their feet, — a little thing 
 perhaps ; a trifling thing, as they now regard it ; 
 in comparison with Christ, a contemptible thing. 
 They are humiliated at the discovery that so mean 
 a thing has had power to hold them back from the 
 wide-open gates of heaven. It seems to them, in 
 the retrospect, like some invisible and malignant 
 magic in the air. 
 
 I have seen a diseased man fascinated by a piece 
 of magnetized iron not so large as my hand. He 
 would gaze upon it as if, like a serpent, it had 
 charmed him. He would follow it from room to 
 room, in agony lest it should pass out of his sight. 
 He would chase it in the street, and lie down and 
 grovel in the dust where it was thrown. He 
 seemed as if his spirit had in part passed out of 
 him, and had entered that magnet. 
 
 Thus demented do converted men sometimes 
 seem to themselves to have been, when they look 
 back over the unseen line which separates them 
 from their impenitent life, and see what a paltry 
 

 258 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 thing it was which held them so long transfixed in 
 those fruitless convictions, while a crucified Sa- 
 viour was pleading with them and dying for them, 
 within reach of their hand. Such has been the 
 experience of thousands, and doubtless will be of 
 thousands more. 
 
 The charms by which the sorcery of sin thus 
 bewitches men are very numerous, and diverse in 
 character. In one man it is a distrust of God's 
 willingness to save, or, if to save, to save him. In 
 another, it is an unwillingness to own the simpli- 
 city of God's methods of salvation. In another it 
 is a desire for a gorgeous experience, like that of 
 exceptional Christian memoirs. In the vast ma- 
 jority, however, it is not in any conceptions cher- 
 ished about the way of salvation, but in something 
 altogether more tangible and earthly. The whole 
 truth is, that the man loves something more than 
 God. In one it is his property; in another, his 
 reputation ; in another, his ease ; in another, his 
 literary tastes ; in another, an unchristian employ- 
 ment or habit or association, which he feels to 
 be a-t war with an earnest Christian life. He fore- 
 sees, that, if he becomes a Christian, that must be 
 given up. In some it is an unwillingness publicly 
 to profess religion, to perform certain public or 
 social religious duties, to encounter the ridicule of 
 companions, or to forgive an injury which rankles 
 in the heart. 
 
 Some such verv simple thing is the citadel in 
 
 
FRUITLESS CONVICTIONS OF SIN. 259 
 
 which the forces of guilty resolve intrench them- 
 selves. That is the secret reason why the soul is 
 benighted in impotent convictions. Yet what a 
 meanness of spirit does it seem to have indicated 
 when the soul comes out into the liberty of Christ, 
 to have shnt itself up in that prison-house of 
 remorse so long, and for such a thing ! 
 
 I have somewhere read of an obscure Scotch 
 woman whom Dr. Chalmers, as the story ran, was 
 once summoned at midnight to attend in her last 
 hours. She had lived for many years in sterile 
 conviction of her sinfulness. Her anguish at last 
 threatened her reason. " Weighed in the balances, 
 and found wanting ! " This was the burden she 
 was carrying into eternity. With that kindly 
 sympathy and tact for which Chalmers was noted 
 in his ministrations to the ignorant, he sat down 
 by her side, heard the story of her life, now and 
 then aiding her to state her own case, for he knew 
 it better than she did ; and at length, when she 
 had been calmed by the expression of her burden, 
 he pointed out to her the one simple thing which 
 he conjectured to have been the thing that had 
 withheld her from Christ. The profoundest doc- 
 trine of our theology he told her as a simple story 
 in her own Lowland dialect, and then told her, in 
 the same rude speech of her childhood, that she 
 must give up that thing for Christ's sake. The 
 heavy-laden one, who had borne her infirmity for 
 many years, and could in no wise lift up herself. 
 
260 
 
 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 looked up and said, but half believing, "And is 
 that a' ? " It was as if the Lord himself had laid 
 his hand upon her. Immediately she was made 
 straight, and glorified God. 
 
 So, many a penitent belie Yer at the last recalls 
 his bondage in sin, and exclaims, " Is that all that 
 kept me so long away from Christ ? " 
 
THE MEN IN THE FIRE. 
 
 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the 
 king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in 
 this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver 
 us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of 
 thy hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, 
 that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image 
 which thou hast set up. — Dan. iii. 16-18. 
 
 FEW men have the fortitude to bear the appli- 
 cation of the moxa. When Senator Sumner 
 was once inquired of, whether he found it intoler- 
 able, he evaded the query, saying, " Well, fire is 
 fire. I believe the world has no two opinions 
 about that." When St. Paul would express the 
 severity of the trial of the eternal judgment, to 
 which every man's work in life is to be subjected, 
 he terms it " the trial as by fire." 
 
 Yes, fire is fire. Men in a furnace at white heat 
 are not blamable, as the world judges, if they 
 fling religious scruples to the winds. If wise men 
 grow mad, if calm men become furious, if honest 
 men are false, if devout men swear, the world 
 finds no heart to rebuke them"; for are they not 
 men in the fire ? 
 
 Not so thought and reasoned and acted the 
 
 261 
 
262 
 
 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 three youthful victims of Chaldsean vengeance. 
 They stand at the head of the long line of mar- 
 tyrs by fire in Christian history. Thousands in 
 later times, some even younger than they, have 
 walked calmly to the stake, cheered by the words 
 of these young Hebrew exiles. Their great ser- 
 vice to the world of subsequent ages is their 
 teaching by word and act the nature and the work- 
 ing of a religion of principle. 
 
 1. They illustrate the truth that a religion of 
 principle is founded on intelligent convictions of 
 truth, so fixed in the heart as to be beyond the reach 
 of argument. Their answer to the king's com- 
 mand has been the watchword of martyrs from 
 that day to this : " We are not careful to answer 
 thee in this matter. . . . But be it known unto 
 thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods." 
 
 There is a state of religious experience, possible 
 to every Christian, of which this is a sample. It 
 is a state in which the believer no longer needs 
 argument to support his convictions, and is no 
 longer -open to argument against them. Certain 
 central truths of religion are fixed in his very 
 soul.. They have been settled once for all and 
 forever. An oak of a hundred years' growth is 
 not rooted so immovably. They are thus settled, 
 because they have become matters Of experience. 
 They long ago passed out of the realm of theory 
 into the realm which Whitefield called " soul-life." 
 The believer no longer believes : he knows. His 
 
THE MEN IN THE FIRE. 263 
 
 faith has become his life. It has passed into the 
 same rank of truths as that of gravitation. It 
 gives to the whole religious being of the man a 
 certain planetary fixedness and serenity, like those 
 of Orion and the Pleiades. Canst thou loose the 
 bands of Orion ? 
 
 On such foundations a religion of principle is 
 built. When infidelity assails it, when ridicule 
 scoffs at it, when science disproves it, when au- 
 thority forbids it, when fire and sword and gibbet 
 would crush it, its calm reply is, "We are not 
 careful to answer thee, but we will not." In 
 these very words the father of the Wesleys sent 
 back his answer to an iniquitous order from James 
 II. of England. 
 
 When Philip II. of Spain sent ' " Alva the 
 Butcher " on his crusade against the people of the 
 Netherlands, thousands of men, women, and chil- 
 dren sent back from the scaffold and the stake 
 these words of calm defiance : " We are not care- 
 ful to answer, but be it known that we will not 
 obey." Children from ten to fifteen years of age 
 used to imitate in solemn sport the scene of the 
 auto-da-fe, in token of their resolve to die in the 
 faith of their fathers. And when the sport be- 
 came grim reality, and their tender limbs shrivelled 
 and crackled in the flames, they did not flinch. 
 That was the religion of principle, uttering itself 
 from the depths of a " soul-life," which had out- 
 lived the need of argument to support it, and the 
 power of argument to change it. 
 
264 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 What could those children know of the argu- 
 ment for Christian truth, which ages of debate 
 and of august councils had elaborated ? They 
 neither knew, nor cared to know. They had re- 
 ceived from God a profounder teaching. Theirs 
 was an experience of truth in the soul's life. 
 They knew it because they had lived it. They 
 could as easily have been argued out of their faith 
 in the sunrise, as out of their faith in Christ. 
 Just tnat kind of evidence and that degree of 
 conviction are the privilege oi every child of God. 
 
 2. The religion of principle consists pre-emi- 
 nently in obedience to the sense of duty, without re- 
 gard to consequences. So far as it appears from the 
 story of these " men in the fire," this was their 
 reasoning, and the whole of it : " We have only 
 to do right, in the fear of God." Not a word is 
 uttered from which we can infer that they think 
 for one moment of what is or is not expedient. 
 They are in a strait in which they may well be 
 pardoned if they do ask themselves : " Can we 
 not somehow save our lives ? " Not a word of 
 that sort appears, except a sublime assurance that 
 God will save them, but a more sublime purpose to 
 obey him whether he will or not. No nice points 
 occur to them to be settled ; no possible evasions ; 
 no concealment of their convictions; no hiding of 
 their purposes. 
 
 Volumes have been written by wise men on 
 questions relating to possible escape from martyr- 
 
THE MEN IN THE FIRE. 265 
 
 dom by crafty victims. " May a man lie to save 
 his life from the flames ? Has an enemy to God 
 a right to know the truth from one to whom a 
 disclosure of the truth is death ? How much of 
 one's faith may one hold in secret, under threat 
 of axe and gibbet ? For wife and children may not 
 a man lie, when he would not to save his own 
 life ? " Said one, " I will not tell one falsehood to 
 save my life, but I will tell ten to save my boy." 
 Not a hint of any such Jesuitical strategy do these 
 victims of pagan ferocity give us. There is a 
 magnificent fling of self-abandonment in their sole 
 resolve and its bold avowal, " Be it known that we 
 will not." Moreover, the grandeur of the whole 
 procedure is that their conscience is so eagle-eyed 
 as to see the right on the spur of the moment. 
 They are not startled into a momentary equivoca- 
 tion. When good men deny Christ, they are com- 
 monly surprised into it. Not so these three cap- 
 tives of the fire. They might be the three " wise 
 men of the East," for their self-collected and clear- 
 headed discernment of the right. With the hell 
 of the furnace in the one scale, and beautiful 
 young life in the other, there is not an instant of 
 doubt which shall kick the beam. Said a Roman 
 general, when urged to save his life at the cost of 
 his honor, " It is necessary that my honor should 
 live: it is not necessary that I should." So say 
 these gentle youth, as they look into the mouth of 
 that white furnace : "It is necessary that we be 
 true to God : it is not necessary that we live." 
 
266 
 
 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Always is it characteristic of a religion of prin- 
 ciple, that it gives small place to questions of ex- 
 pediency, except where the right depends on the 
 expedient. The strength of godly principle is 
 proportioned to its godly simplicity. It works 
 with a noble independence of complicated motives 
 and the intricacies of diplomacy. It never under- 
 mines a duty by questions of casuistry. Twists 
 and doublings of conscience are not to its taste. 
 Straight on it moves, to life if it may, to death 
 if it must. This gives to such a type of religious 
 character a marvellous power when confronted 
 with this world of stratagem and duplicity. 
 
 The old mythology tells a story of a labyrinth 
 of three thousand chambers, so contrived that no 
 man had ever come out of it alive. The victim 
 doomed to explore its dark recesses wandered on 
 in hopeless mazes, turning this way and that, 
 doubling on his track, confused by his own foot- 
 steps, dismayed by the sound of the bones of pre- 
 vious victims as he trampled on them, till at last, 
 worn out with weariness and hunger and thirst 
 and fright, he laid himself down, friendless and 
 alone, to die. At length one prisoner bethought 
 himself of the simple expedient of a ball of silk, 
 the filament of which was scarcely visible to the 
 eye. One end of it he fastened at the entrance, 
 and then unrolled it as he advanced. Thus he 
 explored the cave of doom, from whence no mor- 
 tal had returned to the light of day before. 
 
THE MEN IN THE FIRE. 267 
 
 When he had reached its remotest chambers he 
 had only to wind np again the silken thread, and 
 follow it back to light and life. Snch a filament 
 of silken simplicity is duty, to one who is sent 
 into the intricacies and snares of this world on 
 probation for eternity. 
 
 3. The religion of principle carries with it a pro- 
 found sense of a personal God. " Our God whom 
 we serve." This is the first and last and ruling 
 thought of these youthful heroes. Duty is no 
 abstraction to them. They are not philosophers. 
 They are simply believers in a living God. Poor 
 souls ! they know no better. They have never 
 heard of the "Over-Soul" and the "Soul of the 
 world." They have not been taught the dignity 
 of their descent from baboons, by the force of 
 " natural selection." Advanced thinkers have not 
 instructed them in the religion of "protoplasm." 
 But they do the best they know, humbly hoping 
 that things will not go hard with them for trust- 
 ing in a personal God. They enter into no discus- 
 sion of the Hebrew as compared with the Chal- 
 dsean ethics. God, the living God, is the beginning 
 and the end of the whole business. 
 
 A singular type of religious belief — or nega- 
 tion, call it which you please — has sprung up in 
 our day, perhaps for the first time in the world's 
 history. It proposes to build a system of Chris- 
 tian ethics on the intuitions of conscience alone, 
 denying the authority of Christ and the being of 
 
268 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 a God. " Do right," is its moral law. " Obey 
 conscience." " Care not for Jesus of Nazareth : 
 lie was a man like the rest of us. As for God, 
 have no fear of him: he is a bugaboo of dark 
 ages." 
 
 Never was a more unnatural monstrosity manu- 
 factured as the basis of a practical religion for 
 men in their right minds. The Tartar who made 
 his windmill do his praying for him, and the 
 Frenchman who politely left his card on the 
 cathedral altar, had not a more ignoble notion of 
 religion. A healthy mind recoils from it as an 
 absurdity. 
 
 To such a mind, duty and God are correlative 
 ideas. Each is inseparable from the other. The 
 force of each corresponds to the force of the other 
 in the faith of the believer. Talk to a man of 
 duty, and his instinctive query is, "Duty to 
 whom?" Tell a man that he ought, and he re- 
 joins, " Ought? why ? " " Ought " implies obliga- 
 tion : obligation to whom ? The very structure 
 of the language mirrors a person. It means that 
 or nothing. This mysterious indweller which we 
 call " conscience," and which is the still guest of 
 every man, is simply God writing his will on the 
 walls of the soul's inner chambers. It is impera- 
 tive as God is, pure as God is, deathless as God 
 is. To hold to conscience, and deny God, is to 
 grasp the shadow, and reject the substance. 
 
 The New England Pilgrims have been lauded 
 
THE MEIT IN THE FIRE. 269 
 
 for the strength of their religious principle in not 
 landing on the coast of Plymouth on the Lord's 
 Day. Sixty-six days they had spent in a ship of 
 but a hundred and eighty tons' burden. Some 
 were prostrate with disease. The ship had sprung 
 a leak. It -would have been a great comfort to 
 them to have set foot once more on solid land. 
 But the day was holy time. They would not do 
 violence to their consciences by needless labor. 
 They waited in the close and comfortless cabin till 
 the sabbath's sun went down. The world has 
 rung with their praises from that day to this, for 
 that act of sacrifice to a principle of conscience. 
 
 But how did those devotees of conscience spend 
 those hours of holy time ? Did they engage in 
 mystic converse on the dignity of man, the su- 
 premacy of conscience, the godhead of self? Did 
 they commune with each other upon the sublimity 
 of law without a lawgiver ; of conscience without a 
 God; of Christianity without a Christ? Did they 
 amuse themselves with any such religious cat's- 
 cradle, experimenting to see how many senseless 
 and useless curiosities in ethics they could make 
 out of it ? Not they. They lifted up their voices 
 over that frozen coast in songs of praise and prayer 
 to the living One. I seem to hear them singing, 
 in commemoration of their deliverance from the 
 perils of the sea, the old quaint version, by Stern- 
 hold and Hopkins, of the eighteenth Psalm : — 
 

 270 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 " The Lord descended from above, 
 And bowed the heavens hie ; 
 And underneath his feete he cast 
 The darknesse of the skie. 
 
 On cherubs and on cherubins 
 
 Full royallie he rode ; 
 And on the winges of all the windes, 
 
 Came flying alle abroad. 
 
 And from above the Lord sent downe, 
 
 To fetch me from belowe ; 
 And pluckt me out of waters great, 
 
 That would me overflow. 
 
 He brought me foorth in open place, 
 
 Whereas I might be free ; 
 And kept me safe because he had 
 
 A favour unto mee." 
 
 To them right living was living to God. Con- 
 science was but the echo of God's voice. The 
 right was but the record of God's will. A per- 
 sonal and living Being, a faithful and present 
 Friend, was the power which made conscience, 
 the right, duty, all that they were to those Chris- 
 tian heroes. So it will always be with men in 
 whom religion assumes the solidity of a principle. 
 Only as God energizes it, can religion take on a 
 form so grand and so abiding. 
 
 4. The religion of principle is the only type of 
 religious character which commands the confidence of 
 the world. Who would have predicted that three 
 
THE MEN IN THE FIEE. 271 
 
 young men, but a little above the age and rank 
 of boys, waifs from a foreign land and a subject 
 people, exposed at any moment to the penalty of 
 death, should win over to a new and despised 
 religion the respect of the haughtiest monarch of 
 the East ? Yet this was the fruit of their daring 
 defiance of his commands. His outraged pride 
 was awed by their fidelity to a principle. " Blessed 
 be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego ! 
 There is no God that can deliver after this sort. 
 His servants have yielded their bodies, that they 
 might not worship any god but their own God." 
 Such is the outburst of astonished conviction from 
 the awe-struck king. 
 
 Always and everywhere men fall back and give 
 place to those who practise a religion which costs 
 them something. Other sorts of religion there are 
 which serve their turn in idle hours and times of 
 ease. There is a religion of form, whose pagean- 
 tries please the eye, and which does well enough 
 for a religion of state on festive days. There is a 
 religion of taste, in which music and architecture, 
 and the poetry of a painted window, may charm 
 the fancy of culture and refinement, when no 
 great stress of real life is upon them. There is a 
 religion of feeling, which may uplift great assem- 
 blies on great occasions, and bear them on waves 
 of religiosity which to certain temperaments may 
 seem for the time to mount up to the gates of 
 heaven. 
 
272 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 These reflections and refractions of religion in 
 times of prosperity, when no emergency tries the 
 souls of men, may do very well for their religious 
 entertainment, and the quieting of religious fears. 
 But when the tug of real life comes, when tempta- 
 tion, bereavement, disappointment, disease, death, 
 bring men's religion to the proof, these religious 
 fictions vanish in thin' air. No religious plaything 
 answers the purpose then. Men feel then the 
 need of something real, something solid, something 
 profound, something godlike. 
 
 Similar is the power of a religion of principle, 
 when viewed as a spectacle by reverent observers. 
 Nothing else rouses the enthusiasm of lookers-on, 
 and brings out their huzzas to the echo, like a 
 grand spectacle of self-sacrifice to a religious prin- 
 ciple on a grand scale. 
 
 In 1843 the Free Church of Scotland left the 
 shelter of the State Establishment. Four hundred 
 and seventy-five clergymen gave up their stipends, 
 the principal of which amounted to two millions 
 of pounds sterling. They abandoned the dignity 
 of association with a great empire. They left be- 
 hind them the parishes in which they and their 
 fathers had labored, the churches in which they 
 were baptized, the Lord's table at which they had 
 ministered, the manses where their children had 
 been born and in which they had hoped to die. 
 From almost all that was dear to them on earth, 
 they went out, and cast themselves on their fidelity 
 
THE MEN IN THE FIRE. 273 
 
 to each other and the promises of God. Some of 
 them had to worship on the sea-beach at low tide, 
 because the noble landlords would not sell or lease 
 a foot of land for a dissenting chapel. All this 
 for one principle of religious faith, which in con- 
 science they could not surrender, and would not 
 dishonor. 
 
 Among their ablest opponents was the Hon. 
 Judge Jeffrey, an ornament to the judiciary of Scot- 
 land, and one of the shining lights of her literature. 
 He had spoken against them, argued against them, 
 written against them, ridiculed their scruples to the 
 last, and had predicted, that, to a man, they would 
 yield if the trial came. The trial did come, and 
 they did not yield. The ejected pastors quietly 
 laid their protest before Lord Bute, who was pres- 
 ent in the General Assembly as the representative 
 of the Crown ; then turned, and in solemn silence 
 left the reverend judicature in which some of them 
 had sat as leaders for many years, but whose dig- 
 nities they were to enjoy no more. 
 
 As they filed out of the house, and marched 
 down the High Street of Edinburgh, with the ven- 
 erable Chalmers — the foremost man of all Scot- 
 land — at their head, Judge Jeffrey was told by 
 a friend, who came rushing in to inform him. 
 " They are out ! They are out ! " — " Who are 
 out ? " — " The evangelicals. There they go down 
 High Street. Don't you hear the cheers of the 
 crowd?" The august judge sprang to his feet, 
 
274 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 and, swinging his hat in the air with a hnzza as 
 hearty as the loudest, he cried out, " Three cheers 
 for old Scotland ! Nowhere out of Scotland could 
 so grand a thing have happened ! " 
 
 Yes, indeed, my lord, everywhere sacrifice to a 
 religion of principle is a grand thing. Every- 
 where, in Scotland or out, it can be done, and 
 nowhere without commanding the ovations of 
 lookers-on, friend or foe. Something in the human 
 hearts of us all exults in it. Tears of joy come 
 in the telling of it. Men not capable of it them- 
 selves approve it, trust it, revere it. It is the 
 only thing in the shape of religion which they do 
 trust under all conditions and at all times. 
 
 Is not this the type of religion which the world 
 needs to witness, above all things else, to-day? 
 Not only in great exigencies and in sympathizing 
 crowds. No, not in these mainly. But in still, 
 private life, and in the dull round of individual 
 toil. We have religious enthusiasm in great 
 assemblies, enough and to spare. We have great 
 religious awakenings in abundance, in which the 
 numbers of the church swell by myriads. We 
 have great religious organizations, societies, insti- 
 tutions, in which we glory, and into whose treas- 
 uries the wealth of nations flows. Our religion, 
 in these developments of its social and literary 
 and missionary power, thrives, never more than 
 in these times of ours. 
 
 But there is a calm and even flow of religious 
 
THE MEN IN THE FIRE. 275 
 
 principle in the individual, which underlies all 
 these, and which vitalizes them all. That is the 
 thing which needs re-enforcernent and revival. 
 Does not the world's conversion drag for the want 
 of this ? Does not the faith of the world in the 
 reality of our religion falter for the want of it ? 
 Men look to see religion in the life. They look 
 to see Christian merchants carrying their faith to 
 their counting-rooms; Christian lawyers, theirs 
 before juries ; Christian mechanics, theirs to their 
 workshops ; Christian fathers and mothers, theirs 
 to their homes, under the honest eyes of children, 
 and the silent criticism of . servants. They are 
 looking to see Christian leaders of society apply- 
 ing their religion to the settlement of questions 
 of social caste, and the choice of the churches in 
 which they shall worship ; to see Christian minis- 
 ters carrying theirs into private life in the selection 
 of places of professional labor, in the subordina- 
 tion of salaries to usefulness, of dignities to souls, 
 of literary tastes to missionary toils, of diplomacy 
 to godly sincerity. 
 
 Trades, professions, households, social usages, 
 the uses of property, the limits of its increase, 
 amusements, schools, travels, — the world is wait- 
 ing to see all these Christianized when in Christian 
 hands, — Christianized in the sense of being made 
 Christie in the principles which govern them. 
 It is »looking on to see if ours is a religion which 
 costs us any thing. Do we really feel the sacrifice 
 
276 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 of any one thing for Christ ? Does our life un- 
 mistakably and inevitably remind men of Christ's 
 life ? Does it probably remind him of it ? Does 
 he see in it of the travail of his soul that which 
 satisfies him? 
 
 This is the style of questioning by which the 
 world is silently putting our religion to the test. 
 One revival of a religion of such costly principle, 
 pervading individual life, would be worth a thou- 
 sand revivals of religious emotion and prayer and 
 song, in packed assemblies, if they stop there. 
 
 Yet how easy it is to talk in this strain ! Let 
 us who talk it, live it ! One of the early Presby- 
 terian ministers of Virginia once said, at the close 
 of one of his most pungent sermons of reproof, 
 " O my soul, hear thou this word ! for I must 
 preach to the one who needs it most." 
 
 
THE MAN IN THE LIONS' DEN. 
 
 Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live forever. My 
 God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that 
 they have not hurt me : forasmuch as before him innocency was 
 found in me ; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. 
 Then was the king exceeding glad for him, and commanded 
 that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was 
 taken up out of the den ; and no manner of hurt was found upon 
 him, because he believed in his God. — Dan. vi. 21-23. 
 
 DO not some of us remember the rude wood- 
 cut of "Daniel among the Lions," which 
 seemed such a marvel of art to us in our child- 
 hood ? We marvelled at the courage of the man 
 of God in putting his arm calmly around the neck 
 of the lion in the foreground. Would he do it if 
 he stood in front, where we did, and saw the grim 
 look of the beast face to face ? We doubted. 
 That one in the rear, — surely he was creeping up 
 like a cat from behind, all ready to spring upon 
 his victim. Such is the struggle of faith with 
 sight. Angels are nowhere in the comparison with 
 lions. 
 
 More than a lifetime of a generation has passed 
 with some of us since our faith and our fancy first 
 wrestled over the story; yet is it not to-day as 
 
 277 
 
278 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 fresh as e\ev? Let us see how it reads to our nia- 
 turer wisdom. 
 
 1. The story illustrates the fact that God often 
 seems to crown the machinations of the wicked against 
 the good with success. Dauiel was the victim of a 
 conspiracy. His very virtues were the spring of 
 the trap laid to catch him in an act of treason. 
 His enemies knew their man. They knew that he 
 would be true to his religion, come life, come 
 death. The plot was adroit. It was executed to 
 the letter. To all appearance it was successful. 
 When that stone closed over the mouth of that 
 den, his enemies had good reason to exult in the 
 assurance that they had seen the last of him. 
 They slept that night with grim pleasure in their 
 dreams, at the thought that beasts were crunching 
 his bones. 
 
 Such is sometimes God's way of procedure. He 
 gives wicked men full swing. He does not inter- 
 fere early in the beginnings of wrong. Not till 
 the plot has ripened, the victim been insnared, the 
 den opened, and the stone rolled over his head, 
 does the angel of rescue step in. Many times 
 over has this been the story of persecution. The 
 blackest feature in the history of persecutors is 
 their fiendish joy at the suffering of other men ; 
 and the darkest mystery in God's dealing with 
 them is that the malign pleasure which they show 
 does not provoke God to destroy them. 
 
 Claverhouse, the persecutor of the Covenanters, 
 
THE MAN IN THE LIONS' DEN. 279 
 
 used to witness, smiling, the agony of his victims 
 in torture by the thumbscrew and the "boots." 
 The " Blood Council," in the Netherlands, used to 
 celebrate their wholesale executions by midnight 
 carousals. One of the persecuting kings of Eng- 
 land used to order decapitations to be executed 
 before the windows, in sight of his guests at the 
 dinner-table. He sought to give a relish to the 
 royal dessert by the thud of the executioner's axe. 
 He drank to the health of the victim who begged 
 for one hour's reprieve. So secure, so free from 
 trepidation, so oblivious of an avenging God, have 
 wicked men often felt, at the height of their suc- 
 cess, in doing the work of devils. 
 
 Time was when the torturing and burning of 
 live men was a branch of ordinary and respecta- 
 ble business. Men chose it as a trade, and got 
 their living out of it. The items of the process 
 used to be entered in a ledger, like a grocer's bill. 
 Mr. Motley, the historian, quotes the following 
 from the old account-book of a Spanish execution- 
 er, the original of which he found in the Spanish 
 archives : — 
 
 To Jacques Barra, Dr. 
 
 For torturing twice John de Lannoy . 10 sous. 
 
 For executing said Lannoy by fire . . 60 sous. 
 
 For throwing his remains into the river . 8 sous. 
 
 With such diabolical coolness do satanic men 
 execute their will upon the friends of God. And 
 God lets them do it. Oh, poor John de Lannoy ! 
 
280 STUDIES OR THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Was there no being in the universe to whom thine 
 agony in the fire was worth more than fifty-seven 
 cents ? and thy pains on the rack, once and again, 
 more than nine cents and a half? 
 
 2. The story of the man in the den illustrates, 
 also, the insidiousness of sin in drawing men into 
 extremes of guilt ivhich they never 'planned for. 
 Darius was personally no enemy to Daniel, The 
 prophet was his favorite minister, rather. The king 
 was overreached as well as the victim. The con- 
 spiracy was so laid as to compel him, from mo- 
 tives of state policy, to execute the vindictive law 
 against the first statesman of the realm. He 
 passed a sleepless night, as many another over- 
 reached sinner has done, in unavailing repentance. 
 
 Most truthful is the whole scene to the facts of 
 real life. Sin creates sin. Beginning in vanity, 
 it ends in remorse. A little rivulet swells to an 
 Amazon. A man can never do one wrong thing, 
 and with dignity stop there. Factitious laws of 
 honor, claims of usage, bonds of habit, hedge him 
 around, press him down, and crowd him on to 
 deeper crime. Duellists have shed blood murder- 
 ously before God and their own consciences, who 
 still seemed to themselves to be unwilling mur- 
 derers. The most stupendous guilt man ever in- 
 curred has come upon him under stress of a 
 tyranny of circumstance which he himself invited. 
 
 Such was the sin of Pontius Pilate. Well has 
 an old English poet represented him as sunk 
 
THE MAN IN THE LIONS' DEN. 281 
 
 beneath the waves, with nothing visible but his 
 hands, and these washing themselves eternally, 
 in vain attempt to cleanse his soul, and exclaim- 
 ing, lifting up his head, — 
 
 "I Pilate am: the falsest judge, alas! 
 And most unjust, that by unrighteous 
 And wicked doom, to Jews despiteous, 
 Delivered up the Lord of life, to die! " 
 
 Such is the trap of doom into which sin allures 
 its victims. Probably the lost sinner never yet 
 lived who planned the end of his career at its 
 beginning. " Is thy servant a dog, that he should 
 do this thing ? " Yet he did the thing. Yes, he 
 was a dog. Penitentiaries are filled with men who 
 seem to themselves to have drifted there on the 
 resistless tide of little sins swollen into great sins. 
 Murderers have swung on scaffolds, who said they 
 were victims rather than criminals. Hell is popu- 
 lous with such victims. Said Alexander Hamil- 
 ton, when dying on the duelling-ground by the 
 shot of Aaron Burr, " I die like a fool." So he 
 did. It is the way of sin to make men fools. 
 The greater the man, the greater the fool. 
 
 3. This story of the man and the lions illus- 
 trates, further, the supremacy of duty over intrigue 
 in the defence of the right. The great statesman 
 of Babylon fell before duplicity and stratagem. 
 Yet the work of his defence was not of that sort. 
 He did not try to outwit intrigue by intrigue. 
 
282 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 His was a much more simple and safe procedure. 
 He had simply to do right. He said his prayers 
 "as he did aforetime." He prayed kneeling, as 
 he had always done. He prayed aloud, as had 
 been his wont. Three times a day, and with 
 windows open, he called on the God of his 
 fathers, as his mother had taught him in his 
 boyhood. 
 
 A more adroit man would have practised casu- 
 istry upon himself. A diplomatic saint would 
 have shut his window, drawn a curtain, prayed in 
 a whisper, lessened the number of his devotions, 
 had some other engagement, if haply he might 
 thus have saved his quivering limbs from the 
 lions' teeth. Not so this simple child of God. 
 He was no Jesuit. He would not save life or 
 limb by any Machiavellian policy. Not so much 
 as by the lowering of' his voice or the closing of a 
 shutter would he seem to fear man more than God. 
 
 Such is the grandeur of duty. A simple thing. 
 A child can understand it : a dying man can do it. 
 Yet the diplomacy of courts and cabinets, backed 
 by the standing armies of the world, is no match 
 for it. Lay it down as a first principle of truth, 
 that, if a man will take care of the right, God will 
 take care of him. In the long-run, and as a 
 general rule, there is no such thing as a good 
 man's failure. He may suffer : the right deserves 
 that sacrifice. He may die : the right is worthy 
 of that cost. But he cannot fail. God will look 
 
THE MAN IN THE LIONS' DEN. 283 
 
 out for that. As a general rule, the drift of 
 things, even in this world, is such that good men 
 succeed by simply doing right. The weakest 
 thing in this world is a stratagem when offset by 
 a straightforward act of duty by a live man. On 
 the contrary, it will commonly be found that in 
 the exceptional case in which a good man does 
 fail, his failure is nearly in proportion to the 
 extent to which intrigue has entered into his 
 plans of procedure. Men of stratagem in God's 
 service are not, as a rule, successful men. Men 
 of wily conscience are not the men of heaviest 
 weight. They are not the men who turn the 
 scales of things in crises. They are never safe 
 leaders, nor the best men. 
 
 4. I am indebted to one of the most suggestive 
 of recent commentators on the text, for the strik- 
 ing hint that the story of Daniel illustrates the 
 need which human governments often experience, of 
 something like an atonement for the violation of law. 
 This Eastern despot acted under stress of what he 
 deemed the dignity of law. Chaldsean jurispru- 
 dence provided no way for what we should call 
 the constitutional pardon of a transgressor. Once 
 proved guilty, he must suffer, no matter what his 
 rank or the palliations of. his crime. It was a 
 clear case of conflict between mercy and legal 
 justice. 
 
 Other human governments experience the same 
 conflict. The great anomaly of human adminis- 
 
284 STUDIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 tration of law is the power of pardon. Law, as 
 such, knows nothing of it. Be the pressure on 
 the side of mercy ever so great, Law says, " Par- 
 don ! What is that ? " In modern governments, 
 we jump the difficulty by lodging the power of 
 pardon somewhere, ignoring law. Yet never is 
 that power exercised without loss to the prestige 
 of authority. Murderers take courage in crime 
 for every murderer who escapes the scaffold. 
 
 Well-known cases have occurred in which the 
 benevolent impulses of an entire people were all 
 one way, and the necessities of law were all the 
 other way ; and benevolence was impotent, and 
 law triumphant. 
 
 Such was the conflict between justice and 
 mercy, when Major Andre, the British spy, was 
 condemned to death by the American court- 
 martial. Probably Washington never set his 
 hand to a document which cost him a more 
 severe struggle than that caused by the death- 
 warrant of Andre. But the safety of our young 
 Republic would not permit the deed of mercy. 
 Its very life hung in a trembling scale. Twenty 
 Arnolds might have been the fruit of pardoning 
 one Andre. Therefore said the commander-in- 
 chief, " He is a spy. By the laws in war, his life 
 is forfeit. He must die." And die he did. 
 
 In all such instances, human governments be- 
 tray their need of something equivalent to an 
 atonement ! something to do for human law what 
 
THE MAN IN THE LIONS' DEN. 285 
 
 the atonement of Christ does for the laws of God 
 in the pardon of the guilty. In that still moment 
 in which men hold their breath, in waiting to hear 
 the death-sentence from the judge, he bows his 
 head, and weeps for some other way of vindicating 
 the eternal sacredness of law than by the doom of 
 the now trembling offender. Is there no other 
 sacrifice, in earth or heaven, which will take its 
 place ? What else was the meaning of the tears 
 and the faltering voice with which Chief- Justice 
 Shaw of Massachusetts pronounced sentence of 
 death upon his friend Professor Webster ? 
 
 The argument, therefore, from real life, is to this 
 point : Why should not the same necessity be felt 
 under the government of God ? Why should we 
 believe that the mind of the universe could bear 
 without moral anarchy the shock of the wholesale 
 pardon of sin, when the mind of man cannot bear 
 the shock which law suffers in the pardon of one 
 poor, tempted brother-man ? Why should we 
 not believe that infinite justice feels the need of 
 some device for the protection of its sacredness, 
 when a world of criminals goes free ? And why 
 should we not believe, on the authority of God's 
 word, that infinite wisdom has found it in the 
 device of an atonement by the sinless yet dying 
 Son of God? 
 
 5. The story of the man in the den suggests yet 
 further, that G-ocCs deliverance of the good is often 
 hy methods in which the marvellous borders upon the 
 
286 
 
 STUDIES OE THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 miraculous. The closing of the lion's mouth for 
 the safety of the prophet was a miracle. What, 
 then, can we learn from this feature of the story ? 
 Not that we are to look for miraculous interven- 
 tions in our behalf. Not that we are to expect 
 angels to come to our rescue from wild beasts and 
 wilder men. The principle which governs God's 
 interference with the natural and probable course 
 of things is this, — that he will do for us what he 
 sees, in his infinite insight and foresight, to be 
 best, all things considered, and for all persons con- 
 cerned ; and that in doing this he often achieves 
 results which are as distinctly suggestive of his 
 agency as miracles are. In such deliverances, 
 devout minds will see God as clearly as if he 
 spoke audibly from the heavens, or as if one heard 
 the wings of angels rustling in the air. 
 
 The story of the lions in the den recalls in- 
 cidents very like it in the experience of African 
 travellers. Mungo Park once found himself con- 
 fronted by a raging lion, against which he had no 
 other available weapon than the look of his eye. 
 Yet the beast which had, a moment before, come 
 bounding and roaring towards him, stopped sud- 
 denly, looked abashed upon the ground, and then 
 turned and slunk away. 
 
 Another traveller in African wilds was once 
 actually seized by a hungry lion, thrown to the 
 ground, and had begun to feel the mysterious 
 anaesthesia which the magnetism of wild beasts is 
 
THE MAN IN THE LIONS' DEN. 287 
 
 said to produce in their victims, when suddenly 
 opening his eyes, and fixing them steadily on the 
 eye of the beast, he saw that its bloodshot look 
 wavered. The soul of the beast recognized the 
 soul of its natural lord. He let go his hold on 
 the prostrate man, turned with tail between his 
 legs, and fled. 
 
 In these cases there was no miracle. But were 
 those saved victims idiots in kneeling there on the 
 desert, and offering up thanks to an unseen power ? 
 Marvel or miracle, it matters little what we call 
 it, the agency of God in such events is beyond 
 question. Whether he works by a miraculous sus- 
 pension of the laws of nature, or by a marvellous 
 use of those laws, what matters that ? Sufficient 
 is it that he makes himself known to us as a very 
 present help in our emergency. 
 
 With such tokens of God's presence, does not 
 every human life abound? I know a man who 
 believes that he was once wakened by a supernat- 
 ural influence from slumber, at the critical moment, 
 in time to save his child from his burning dwell- 
 ing. One moment more, and it would have been 
 too late. Another believes that by an unaccount- 
 able impression upon his mind he was turned 
 back from a journey to his home, to save his fam- 
 ily from nocturnal burglars. Another was so 
 beset by providential hinderances as to prevent his 
 embarking on board a ship which was never heard 
 of after leaving port. President Lincoln believed 
 
288 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 that he was forewarned of some great catastrophe 
 a night or two before his death. The last day of 
 his life he spent under the shadow of eternity. 
 Who of ns does not know of snch events, which, 
 if they were woven into a romance, the world 
 would pronounce unnatural, if not absurd ? Yet 
 who of us can help believing ? Yes, in every 
 human life, truth is stranger than fiction. 
 
 6. The story of Daniel illustrates, finally, the 
 fact that the rescue of the good often involves the de- 
 struction of the wicked, by a very subtle law which 
 may be called the law of retributive re-action. The 
 enemies of the prophet-statesman fell when he 
 was restored. The scales were held by an even 
 and steady hand. When one went up, the other 
 went down. Though the revulsion came about 
 by the caprice of a despot, yet God used that 
 caprice as the motor to the execution of a pro- 
 found law which often appears in his adminis- 
 tration of the world. Providential retribution, 
 upon ungodly nations, occurs largely in the way 
 of re-action from the oppression of the good by the 
 violence and the machinations of the wicked. The 
 destinies of the good and the bad are so bound 
 up together, that the salvation of the one. is often 
 by necessary sequence the doom of the other. A 
 late writer has said that the most characteristic 
 thing which this world has to show to other 
 worlds is a scaffold on the morning of an exe- 
 cution. What for, but for the stress which the 
 
THE MAN IN THE LIONS' DEN. 289 
 
 security of the innocent lays upon law to afflict 
 the guilty ? 
 
 Do we not remember how our childish sense of 
 retributive justice responded approvingly to the 
 story as it ran : that " the lions had the mastery " 
 of those bad men, and "brake all their bones in 
 pieces or ever they came to the bottom of the 
 den"? We did not know our feeling by any 
 high-sounding philosophic title. " Retributive jus- 
 tice " we knew nothing about ; but did we not put 
 the case to the same purpose in our childish way, 
 saying, " It served them right " ? Were we uot 
 sensible of a mysterious satisfaction, down deep 
 within us, which our unsophisticated conscience 
 did not call cruelty ? Children are not by nature 
 believers in the doctrine of universal salvation. 
 
 Turn, then, the argument to the mystery of an 
 eternal hell. How do we know that the safety of 
 the good in eternity, and throughout the universe of 
 peopled space, does not involve, by this law of re- 
 tributive re-action, the punishment of the wicked ? 
 How do we know that heaven and hell are not so 
 bound together in the meshes of moral govern- 
 ment over free beings, that the one cannot exist 
 without the other? 
 
 Sin matured, be it remembered, is no longer the 
 silken and polite depravity which for the most 
 part it assumes to be in this world. It takes on 
 the form of demoniacal hostility to God and to all 
 holy beings. Consolidated in that mould of malign 
 
290 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 character, it voluntarily chooses to remain forever. 
 It is energized by spiritual powers of which we in 
 the body have no conception. We do not know 
 what resources of temptation, of guile, of direct 
 assault and resistless conquest, may be inherent 
 in the very nature of a lost soul, set free from the 
 limitations of a sensuous body. Whatever the 
 soul might have been as an heir of heaven, so 
 great it must be, perhaps, as an heir of hell. The 
 possibilities of spiritual being are the same, meas- 
 ured either way. Whatever its resources are, 
 the lost soul holds them at the service of eternal 
 sin. Heaven has once been thrown into consterna- 
 tion by them. Angels kept not their first estate. 
 There was war in heaven. Have you ever realized 
 in your imagination the possibilities of satanic 
 revolution through the universe, involved in that 
 one fact of an angelic fall ? 
 
 The practical question, therefore, as it must 
 present itself to the diplomacy of infinite wisdom 
 in adjusting the government of the universe, is 
 this : Shall devils and devilish men be let loose to 
 prey upon the objects of their hate-forever? Shall 
 heaven itself become hell ? Is there not in all our 
 hearts an instinct of upspringing and iron-hearted 
 justice which, if the security of the good requires, 
 by the law of retributive re-action, the eternal 
 confinement of the incorrigibly wicked, says in 
 mournful and tender, }^et firm and satisfied re- 
 joinder, "Amen and amen"? Did not St. John 
 
DEN. 291 
 
 hear something like this, when he saw " the smoke 
 of torment ascending forever " ? "I heard a great 
 voice of much people in heaven saying, Alleluia ! 
 For true and righteous are thy judgments. And 
 again they said, Alleluia ! And the smoke of her 
 torment rose up for ever and ever." 
 
 We are often asked, " How can you bear to be- 
 lieve in an eternal hell ? Why does it not craze 
 you ? How can you call such a God as can create 
 a hell, benevolent ? To us he seems satanic in his 
 nature. Yes, your God is my Devil." 
 
 Whenever I go from my home to the city of 
 Boston, I pass by a building which reminds me 
 of the castle of Giant Despair. It is constructed of 
 heavy granite blocks to the very roof. It is sur- 
 rounded with lofty granite walls, and these are 
 surmounted with iron spikes. I see doors of mas- 
 sive iron riveted with iron bolts. I see windows 
 barred with iron. Behind those iron bars, I have 
 seen pale, despairing human faces, — faces which 
 have re-appeared to me in my dreams. I know 
 that underneath those walls, in a dungeon cell, 
 there lives a man, manacled hand and foot, who 
 has clanked his chains there for seventeen years. 
 Sometimes more than five hundred of my human 
 brothers are locked within those walls of living 
 death. 
 
 I have been told that over against a certain win- 
 dow there, on the opposite side of the street, there 
 lives a pale-faced woman who never smiles. Every 
 
292 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 morning she places on her window-sill a blooming 
 flower, where a certain man behind those bars can 
 see it, and can know that a loving woman is think- 
 ing of him. Yet I see, in a turret on those walls, 
 a man in uniform, with a rifle at his shoulder, who, 
 if he sees that brother man trying to clamber over 
 the walls, and touch the hand of that loving woman, 
 is instructed to shoot him down like a dog. 
 
 Why do I not cry out against the malign power 
 which keeps asunder that suffering wife and hus- 
 band? Why do I not tramp the streets of Bos- 
 ton, pleading with the crowds to go with me, and 
 level that Bastille to the ground ? Why do I not 
 move heaven and earth against the infernal tyran- 
 ny which has devised, and the cold-hearted cruelty 
 which tolerates, that granite hell ? What is it that 
 sustains my humane sensibilities and yours at the 
 sight of such an anomaly of despair, in a world 
 where robins are singing in the spring-time, and 
 violets are blooming on the hillsides, and little 
 children are laughing in their glee ? 
 
 Answer me this, and I will tell you what it is 
 that sustains a benevolent universe in beholding, 
 and a benignant God in devising, an eternal hell 
 for the confinement of eternal guilt. And you 
 must prove to me that it is not so, before you 
 can charge God with satanic wrong in tolerating 
 such a place as hell within the bounds of his 
 dominions. 
 
 The question which all such suspicions of God's 
 
293 
 
 rectitude bring back like a boomerang upon the 
 inquirer is, What else shall God do with eternal 
 guilt? Shall he forgive it? Shall he, by one 
 grand act of amnesty, proclaim liberty to the 
 damned, to the Devil, to his angels, and to men 
 like them ? But how would that help the matter, 
 sin remaining unrepented of and unforsaken? 
 Free grace proclaimed in hell forever would not 
 quench for one moment its lurid fires, if sin were 
 still regnant there. Sin is hell. "Myself am 
 hell," says Milton's Satan. Guilt is itself dam- 
 nation. Again the question returns therefore : 
 " What else shall God do with it? " 
 
 Shall he give repentance, and then forgive ? But 
 that is the very thing he has been offering from 
 the first. Never will man or devil see the moment 
 when he cannot repent if he would. But that 
 is the very thing from which the incorrigible sin- 
 ner recoils. He will have none of that. Repent- 
 ance means submission. Better hell than that. 
 Such is the relentless choice of the doomed one. 
 Doomed because self-doomed. Doomed by the 
 fearful omnipotence of his own free-will. Noth 
 ing else which it is in God's power to offer does 
 he spurn from him with such concentration of ob- 
 durate and vindictive resolve. His whole being 
 revolts from it with the intensity, at last, of ages 
 of accumulated and malign passion. 
 
 Such is sin : once chosen and implanted and 
 indurated in the very nature of man, by a life 
 
294 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 of abused probation, in which the grace of God 
 has been scorned, and the blood of Christ out- 
 raged. . Once more, then, the question comes back 
 unanswered : " What else shall God do with it ? " 
 Through all eternity, that is the question which 
 infinite benevolence will ask of an awe-struck yet 
 satisfied and adoring universe : " What else shall 
 Crod do with it f " 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY IN THE 
 CAREER OF CYRUS. 
 
 Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word 
 of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accom- 
 plished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, 
 that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and 
 put it also in writing. . . . Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, 
 All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven 
 given me; and he hath charged me to build him a house in 
 Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all 
 his people ? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go 
 up. — 2 Celrok. xxxvi. 22, 23. 
 
 AN eminent Jewish scholar once read for his 
 entertainment the Gospel of Matthew. As 
 he read, his curiosity deepened into a more solemn 
 interest. A second time he read it, and his face 
 grew pale. The closing scenes in the life of our 
 Lord •enchained his attention as never before. 
 When he read for the third time of the death and 
 burial of Christ, he dashed the book across the 
 room, exclaiming with an oath, " Yes, the story is 
 true ! . The cursed Nazarene was the Messiah of 
 the prophets." The evidence which had con- 
 vinced him against his will was the exactness 
 with which the biography of Jesus tallied with 
 
 295 
 
296 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 the prophecy of Isaiah, written seven hundred 
 years before. 
 
 The fulfilment of prophecy is one of the two 
 supernatural arguments for the truth of the Scrip- 
 tures. I can think of no more valuable use which 
 I can make of this portion of Holy Scripture than 
 to present in some detail the fulfilment of proph- 
 ecy in the career and conquests of Cyrus. If my 
 young readers will have patience to follow me into 
 some of the minute declarations of Isaiah, I think 
 they will be rewarded by information which may 
 be of lifelong value to them. 
 
 In order to appreciate the comparison of the 
 prophecy with the history, it is necessary to ob- 
 serve, as a preliminary, that Isaiah wrote not less 
 than a hundred and thirty years before Cyrus was 
 born, and not less than a hundred and fifty years 
 before his conquest of Babylon. It was long 
 before the Median kingdom existed. The cap- 
 tivity of Judah had not begun. Three or four 
 generations lived and died between the prophet 
 and the Persian prince. The prophet could not 
 possibly have other means of knowing who Cyrus 
 was to be, or what he was to do in the world, than 
 the simple revelation of the facts by the Spirit of 
 God. Yet that he foretold the conqueror's career, 
 down to minutest details, is established by precisely 
 the same kind and amount of evidence which 
 proves that either Cyrus or Isaiah existed at all. 
 Bear this in mind as we go on with the story. 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 297 
 
 What, then, does the prophet tell us of the Per- 
 sian hero, which history confirms ? The following 
 are the most singular coincidences between the 
 two: — 
 
 1. The name of Cyrus, the point of the compass 
 indicative of his birthplace, and the direction of 
 his march upon Babylon, are distinctly foretold. 
 " Thus saith the Lord to Cyrus. I have raised up 
 one from the north. From the rising of the sun 
 — that is, from the east — shall he call upon my 
 name." The two points of the compass named in 
 this language of Isaiah are singularly true. Cyrus 
 was born in Persia, which was east of Babylon. 
 It was commonly called " the East." One his- 
 torian speaks of it as the " land of the sun-rising." 
 But at a very early age Cyrus was removed to 
 Media, lying on the north of Babylon ; and it 
 was from Media that he came down at the head 
 of victorious hosts upon the doomed capital. The 
 prophet thus sees in a vision a prince of eastern 
 birth, marching upon the city from the north, and 
 that his name is Cyrus. 
 
 Small matters these, but all the more significant 
 for that. The question is, Who told Isaiah such 
 minute details about a man he never saw or heard 
 of; coming from a kingdom which at that time 
 had no existence ; achieving .a conquest which 
 then had not been dreamed of? How did he 
 know what name the future conqueror would 
 bear, a hundred and thirty years before he had a 
 name? 
 
298 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Did anybody ever predict Bonaparte's conquest 
 of Italy a century before his birth? Did ever 
 statesman or magician, as far back as A. D. 1650, 
 declare, that, a century and a half later, a con- 
 queror born in the west of Italy would come down 
 from the north, and take possession of Rome, and 
 that his name would be Napoleon? Yet this is in 
 kind what the Hebrew prophet did. The ques- 
 tion is, who told him all that ? How did he alone, 
 of all the inhabitants of the world, find out the 
 facts so exactly and so minutely? 
 
 2. Isaiah furthermore describes with remarkable 
 accuracy the personal character of Cyrus. His war- 
 like spirit, his towering ambition, the rapidity of 
 his conquests, the equity of his administration, 
 and his heathen religion, are all declared, after 
 the manner of prophecy. " Calling a ravenous 
 bird from the East," is the prophet's language. 
 Prophetic vision deals largely in symbols. The 
 eagle is its favorite symbol of an aspiring, war- 
 like, swift conqueror. " Who raised up the right- 
 eous man from the East," is the prophetic descrip- 
 tion of Cyrus. It is almost the exact language 
 in which historians describe the government of 
 the Persian king. " The just one," he is often 
 called. " Take example from the Persian," the 
 tutors of Oriental princes used to say to their 
 royal pupils. " I have girded thee, though thou 
 hast not known me," are the words which proph- 
 ecy puts into the mouth of God concerning him. 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 299 
 
 This is a distinct prediction of his ignorance of 
 the true God. 
 
 These are but a few specimens of the prophetic 
 touches of which there are many more, portraying 
 with an artist's skill the character of this monarch. 
 Imagine now, that, in addition to announcing the 
 name and the birthplace of Napoleon a hundred 
 and thirty years before he was boim, the magician 
 had described him as an eagle in his conquests ; 
 had said that he would originate a superior code of 
 jurisprudence, — the " Code Napoleon ; " and that 
 in his religion he would be a Romanist. Would 
 not such hints, added to the items before named, 
 redouble the surprise at the magician's power? 
 Would not men ask with astonishment who he 
 was, where he came from, by whose .authority he 
 spoke, and where he got his information? Yet 
 this is just what Isaiah declares of the great 
 conqueror of the East. 
 
 3. . The significance of the prophecy deepens, 
 when it comes to describe the conquests achieved by 
 Cyrus. Passages abound of which these are spe- 
 cimens: "He gave the nations before him. He 
 made him ruler over kings. He made them as 
 dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his 
 bow. The isles saw it, and feared : they helped 
 every one his neighbor. Every one said to his 
 neighbor, Be of good courage. I will subdue 
 nations under him. I will loose the loins of 
 kings." 
 
300 STUDIES OF THE OLD TEST ANIENT. 
 
 By such rapid glances, the half of which I do 
 not quote, the prophet foretells the victories of 
 Cyrus over the great nations of the East ; the con- 
 sternation of their kings : their alliances for mu- 
 tual defence ; and the velocity with which the 
 Persian lesions marched from victorv to victorv. 
 
 Turn we now to history : what has that to say ? 
 It does but repeat the prophecy in describing the 
 facts as they occurred. Says one, " He had 
 scarcely gained one victory, before his tumultuous 
 forces poured down on other battle-grounds. 
 Scarcely had one city fallen, before he stood thun- 
 dering at the gates of another. Empires were 
 like dust before him, and cities like chaffy That 
 prophecy, " I will loose the loins of kings," had its 
 exact fulfilment in the consternation of Belshazzar 
 at the handwriting on the wall, when the Persian 
 armies were on the march, and within twenty-four 
 hours would be heard tramping the streets of the 
 doomed capital. 
 
 4. The prophecy of the downfall of Babylon de- 
 serves distinct review. The prophetic story runs in 
 this style : " Evil shall come upon thee. Thou 
 shalt not know from whence it riseth. Thou 
 shalt not be able to put it off. Desolation shall 
 come suddenly, which thou shalt not know." 
 Thus is expressed the sudden, the unexpected, the 
 irresistible, and the improbable calamity, which was 
 coming upon that haughty city. 
 
 Just such, in fact, was its conquest by Cyrus. 
 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 301 
 
 That event, to begin with, was in itself, and in 
 any form, improbable. The military science of 
 the age pronounced Babylon impregnable by any 
 methods of assault or siege then known. So 
 secure did king and people feel that it could not 
 be taken by human force or strategy, that, on the 
 very night of its capture by Cyrus, they were 
 given up to feasting and carousal behind their 
 insurmountable walls. The king would not be- 
 lieve the rumor of the enemy's entrance, even 
 when the blood of his people was flowing in the 
 streets. 
 
 Here, again, little incidents are detailed, which 
 no soothsayer would have thought of, or would 
 have dared to predict if he had thought of them. 
 " I will say to the deep, Be dry ; I will dry up 
 thy rivers. I will open before him the two-leaved 
 gates. The gates shall not be shut." The sig- 
 nificance of this language will appear from array- 
 ing it side by side with the historic facts. Baby- 
 lon was a city fifteen miles square. It was 
 intersected by the river Euphrates, as London is 
 by the Thames, and Paris by the Seine, and 
 Philadelphia by the Schuylkill. Solid walls sur- 
 rounded it, three hundred and fifty feet high, and 
 broad enough on the top for four chariots to be 
 driven abreast. The two sections again were 
 separated by walls running along both banks of 
 the river. Fronting the streets on either side 
 were folding gates for convenience of access to 
 
302 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 the stream by day, which the police were in- 
 structed to close at the setting of the sun. 
 
 Cyrus took the city by a remarkable stratagem. 
 In military invention he was a genius. He strik- 
 ingly resembled our own Gen. Sherman. In our 
 late civil war Gen. Sherman once despatched 
 a force to cross a certain river at a given point. 
 His subordinates soon came back, saying that 
 there was no bridge there, and that the river 
 was not forclable for twenty miles. Said the 
 general, with flashing eye, "Isn't there a village 
 within five miles of there ? " Yes, sir." — " "Well, 
 go back, and level every house in that village 
 to the ground, and with the timbers build a bridge 
 across the river." And they did it. 
 
 Cyrus was the Sherman of ancient warfare. 
 His genius invented a novel way of marching his 
 army into impregnable Babj'lon. If he could not 
 march over the walls, he would contrive to march 
 under. He did it by a very simple expedient, 
 when once thought of, but only he had the genius 
 to think of it. He dug an immense canal around 
 the walls, and turned the river Euphrates into it. 
 Then he marched his army at dead of night, and 
 in dead silence, under the walls, in the vacant bed 
 of the river. But this brought him only between 
 the two other immense river-walls inside. How 
 to surmount these was the question. The indom- 
 itable general had provided scaling-ladders for the 
 purpose. But the God of Isaiah had done better 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 303 
 
 for him than that. Sure enough, he found those 
 gates which let the citizens down to the river in 
 the day-time — " two-leaved," that is, folding gates 
 — wide open. Like other drunken policemen, the 
 custodians of Babylon had neglected to close. those 
 gates. 
 
 If my young readers have ever seen the gates 
 which are used in the locks of a canal, like those 
 of the Erie Canal at Little Falls, they will have 
 some idea of the structure of the "two-leaved 
 gates " of Babylon, and of the importance to an 
 invading army, penned up in the channel of the 
 Euphrates, of finding those gates open. Thus 
 Cyrus found them. Even the palace-gates were 
 not closed. The invader got near enough to hear 
 the drunken carousals of the king and his cour- 
 tiers inside, before they were convinced of his ap- 
 proach. Do you not now see a new meaning in 
 the words ? " I will dry up thy rivers ; I will open 
 the two-leaved gates; the gates shall not be shut; 
 I will loose the loins of kings." 
 
 Herodotus, the ancient historian of the event, 
 writing seventy years afterwards, comments upon it 
 in this manner : " If the besieged had been aware 
 of the designs of Cyrus, they might have destroyed 
 his troops. They had only to secure the folding 
 gates leading to the river, and to have manned 
 the embankments on either side, and they would 
 have enclosed the Persians in a trap from which 
 they could never have escaped. As it happened, 
 
304 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 they were taken by surprise ; and such is the ex- 
 tent of the city, that they who lived in the extrem- 
 ities were made prisoners before the alarm reached 
 the palace." "As it happened." Yes, it hap- 
 pened ; but, a hundred and more years before, God 
 had said by his prophet how it should happen. 
 He had said, " I will open the two-leaved gates." 
 So Cyrus found them wide open, and the way 
 clear to the very banquet-hall of the palace, just 
 as Isaiah had said, before Cyrus was born, that 
 they should be. 
 
 Now, suppose that about the time of the Ameri- 
 can Revolution, the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, one of 
 the signers of the Declaration of Independence 
 from New Jersey, had fallen into a trance. Sup- 
 pose that in that trance he had foreseen and de- 
 clared that one Sherman would arise in distant 
 times, who should go down from the north, and 
 march from the west to the seaboard with a con- 
 quering army, scattering devastation on his way ; 
 that his march would be like the flight of an eagle ; 
 that city after city should fall before him ; that 
 consternation should fill the hearts of the people, 
 and of the governors of States ; and that by that 
 march from victory to victory he should aid in 
 putting an end to a civil war which threatened the 
 existence of the nation, — suppose that in describ- 
 ing Sherman's march from Atlanta to Savannah, 
 that incident of his building a bridge and crossing 
 a river with the timbers of demolished houses 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PEOPHECY. 305 
 
 were named in language which could mean noth- 
 ing else, — would not the men of our time have 
 reason to think Dr. Witherspoon, in his trance, had 
 something more than guesswork in his prevision 
 of the future ? 
 
 Yet all this would not have been more singular, 
 more improbable, more impossible to human view, 
 than these predictions of Isaiah respecting the 
 march of the Persian monarch to the conquest of 
 Babylon. The question therefore returns, laden 
 with redoubled significance, Where did' Isaiah get 
 his information ? Who told him that Babylon, a 
 hundred and fifty years afterwards, would be shut 
 off from the Euphrates by gates ? Who told him 
 that they would be folding gates ? How did he 
 know that a man named Cyrus would enter the 
 capital in the bed of the river, and on that partic- 
 ular night, contrary to usage and to law, would 
 find that the police had left those gates open, as if 
 on purpose to let the invader in ? In short, how 
 came he to write history a hundred and fifty, years 
 beforehand ? Did any other historian ever write 
 his history a century and a half before it happened, 
 instead of a century and a half later, and be 
 lucky enough to have it all happen to be true, 
 even down to the structure and the opening of a 
 gate? 
 
 5. One other feature of the prophecy and the 
 history in parallels remains to be noticed. Isaiah 
 explicitly foretells the restoration of Judah from 
 
306 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 captivity, and the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusa- 
 lem, through the agency of Cyrus. God declares 
 by the mouth of the prophet : " I will direct all his 
 ways ; ... he shall let go my captives." " Even 
 saying to Jerusalem, Be built ; and to the temple, 
 Thy foundations shall be laid." ..." He shall let 
 go my captives, not for price nor reward." " Ye 
 shall be redeemed without money." ..." Ye shall 
 not go out with haste, nor go by flight." 
 
 Here we find another group of details which no 
 uninspired mind could have guessed at, and no 
 soothsayer would have dared to predict. Every 
 one of them was to the last degree improbable. 
 No statesman of the age did conjecture them. In 
 the prophet's time, there were no captives at all in 
 Babylon from Judah. When they became cap- 
 tives, long after, it was improbable that they 
 would be released in any way by an Oriental des- 
 pot, flushed with victory. They were very valua- 
 ble captives. They were of an intelligent race. 
 Good servants, able-bodied men and women for 
 household use, skilful artisans, honest laborers, 
 were abundant among them. Men of learning 
 and genius, like Daniel, some of whom were de- 
 servedly advanced to high places in the realm, 
 were Hebrews. 
 
 Scarcely any other race has the world ever 
 found so serviceable as that despised stock of 
 Abraham. At the very time when the Spanish In- 
 quisition was persecuting the Jewish people to the 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 307 
 
 death, and but one country in Europe was a safe 
 asylum for them, many of the most eminent schol- 
 ars, scientists, professors, musicians, even states- 
 men at the head of empires, were Jews in secret, 
 living under assumed Gentile names. And to this 
 day they are a race everywhere spoken against, 
 but everywhere used. Not a great war can be 
 carried on in Europe without the permission of 
 a Jew. Bismarck, Andrassy, Gortschakoff, all 
 are compelled to ask leave of a Jew before they 
 dare to plunge the governments they represent 
 into the vast expenditures caused by a great war. 
 Lord Beaconsfield of England is himself a Jew. 
 
 So in the Persian economy : never was a more 
 valuable class of slaves of equal number held by 
 the rights of war than those held under command 
 of Cyrus from Judsea. It was the last thing to be 
 expected from an Eastern despot, that he should 
 let such a people go free ; that he should charge 
 no ransom for them ; that they should not be com- 
 pelled to take their freedom by force or stratagem ; 
 that their master himself should restore to them 
 their plundered treasures, and direct the rebuild- 
 ing of their desolated temple. Never was a pre- 
 diction more improbable on the face of it. 
 
 Yet all these things happened just as Isaiah 
 said they would. The truth of the history no 
 infidel presumes to question, whatever he may 
 think of the prophecy. Imagine now, that a hun- 
 dred years ago there had been no Africans in the 
 
308 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 American colonies of Great Britain. Yet imagine 
 that Dr. Witherspoon in his trance had declared 
 that the march of one Sherman, the man of eagle 
 eye, from the Cumberland to the seacoast, should 
 result in the liberation of millions of African 
 slaves ; that they should go free suddenly ; that 
 not a dollar would be paid for their ransom ; that 
 they would not force their liberty by insurrection, 
 nor steal it by flight ; that it would be given to 
 them outright by the proclamation of the presi- 
 dent ; and that in the city of Washington a grand 
 university would be erected for their training as 
 free citizens of the republic. 
 
 The men of that age might well have laughed 
 at ravings so improbable. But what would now 
 be the verdict of the men of our age ? Should we 
 believe that the story was all guesswork ? Should 
 we not believe that supernatural prescience was in 
 it? Yet just such in kind was the vision of 
 Isaiah, — no less specific in detail, no less consistent 
 in the continuity of the story, and no less true to 
 fact. Not the half of the coincidences between 
 the prophecy and the history are given here. The 
 prophecy now all reads like history. The facts of 
 the one tally exactly with the prescience of the 
 other. 
 
 The question therefore returns again, — How 
 did Isaiah get his knowledge of coming events? 
 Who told him facts a hundred and more years 
 before the wisest statesman of the age had once 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 309 
 
 thought of them as conjectures? Did any other 
 man, not inspired of God, ever coin history thus 
 out of guesswork? Did ever romance fall true 
 like this? Sir Walter Scott wrote historical ro- 
 mances. Has " Ivanhoe " or " Quentin Durward " 
 ever come true? Toss up a font of alphabetic 
 type at random in the air, and will they come 
 down all set and ready for the press in the form of 
 the " Arabian Nights " ? Yet this is, in substance, 
 what infidelity asks us to believe, when it denies 
 the gift of divine inspiration to the Hebrew 
 prophets. 
 
 Such, then, is the argument from fulfilled proph- 
 ecy for the divine origin of the Scriptures. The 
 career of Cyrus is but a single sample. Other 
 cases of the same kind swell the proof to volumes. 
 The present condition of Babylon; the destruc- 
 tion of Moab ; the fall of Tyre ; the conquest of 
 Egypt ; the doom of Damascus ; the desolation 
 of Idumsea ; the sack of Jerusalem ; the life, death, 
 and burial of Christ, — are events which belong 
 to the same class. They all abound with the same 
 sort of coincidence between the prophecy and the 
 history. The coincidence extends to minute de- 
 tails. It is sustained without a break through 
 long-continued narrative, covering years — yes, 
 centuries, — and involving the destiny of individu- 
 als with the fate of nations and of empires. 
 
 Such intricate and involved prevision no human 
 mind could have painted without a break in the 
 
310 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 truthfulness of the story, unless inspired by an 
 omniscient God. Any other solution of the mys- 
 tery throws upon us a weight of credulity a hun- 
 dred-fold greater than that of faith in the " Ara- 
 bian Nights " as authentic history. For the most 
 part infidelity feels this, and very shrewdly de- 
 cides to let the fulfilled prophecies of the Bible 
 alone. There is no other argument for the truth 
 of the Christian Scriptures, which infidels so gen- 
 erally agree to ignore as this. 
 
 A single admonition is suggested by this rapid 
 review. It is, that young minds should guard 
 with special care against the beginnings of distrust 
 in the divine origin of the Bible. Any young man 
 can be an infidel if he wills to be one. The Rev. 
 Dr. Emmons was once appealed to by a saucy dis- 
 believer in immortality, who said, " Show us the 
 evidence of this thing you call a soul : what does 
 it look like ? " He replied, turning on his heel, 
 "No: I can't prove a soul to a man who hasn't 
 any." 
 
 So we cannot prove the divinity of the Bible to 
 one who has no will to see it. But in a Christian 
 land no man can deny it with an unsullied con- 
 science. The evidence is clear ; it is direct ; it is 
 abundant. Juries send men to the scaffold on evi- 
 dence not the half of it. No man can resist it 
 without guilt. No mind can sink so low, without 
 approaching near to that state of matured deprav- 
 ity in which it calls evil good, and good evil; 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 311 
 
 truth falsehood, and falsehood truth ; in which it 
 believes absurdities, and trusts in contradictions, 
 just because it stubbornly wills to do so. 
 
 Not the least among the surprises of the day 
 of judgment will be the re-discovery of lost truth, 
 through the resurrection of rejected evidence. 
 Proofs which once men saw as in sunlight, but 
 closed their eyes upon, will be again written in 
 flaming fire. Eternity will be ablaze with them. 
 These ancient Hebrew seers will be there, to bear 
 witness to the evidence they left on record of the 
 inspiration of God's word. " Fool that I was," 
 will then be the verdict of many a lost being, — 
 " fool that I was, not to believe what I knew to be 
 true!" 
 
 The near approach of death sometimes antici- 
 pates the surprises of that day. Ethan Allen of 
 Vermont, of Revolutionary fame as the leader of 
 the " Green Mountain Boys," was an infidel. His 
 wife was a devoted Christian. When he was on 
 his death-bed he was asked, " Whose faith do you 
 wish your children to adopt, yours or their moth- 
 er's ? " — " Their mother's," was the prompt reply. 
 
 A similar incident occurred in the last hours of 
 the celebrated Dr. Paulus, professor of biblical 
 literature at Heidelberg. He was substantially 
 an atheist. He denied every thing supernatural, 
 even to the denial of the immortality of the soul. 
 When his fatal illness began, he declared that he 
 was about to die, and that that would be the end 
 
812 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 of him. In this cheerless faith he calmly awaited 
 the closing scene. When it came, he lay in a 
 speechless coma for some hours. It was supposed 
 that he would never speak again. But at last he 
 suddenly opened his eyes, raised them to the ceil- 
 ing, as if he saw something invisible to other than 
 dying sight, and starting to raise himself in bed he 
 exclaimed, " There is another life ! " then fell back 
 a corpse. What an appalling discovery to make 
 at the last moment of an abused and lost proba- 
 tion ! — that a man's lifelong faith, on which he has 
 risked eternity, has been a lie, and that he has 
 nothing now but the ruin of a soul to carry into 
 another life. Let youthful readers take warning. 
 Watch with prayer the first wavering beginning 
 of distrust in the word of God. 
 
 It is the word of God. True or false, it is 
 inspired by an omniscient mind. If false, it is a 
 fraud so stupendous that mortal man could never 
 have originated it. The grandeur of the imposture 
 would be as miraculous as its truth. A living writer 
 has declared that our Lord Jesus Christ was God, 
 as he claimed to be, or he was the Devil. With 
 unutterable reverence be the hypothesis tolerated 
 for the moment. For it is between such extremes 
 of best and worst that we have to choose in ac- 
 cepting or rejecting the religion of the Bible. 
 There is no middle ground on which a reasonable 
 man can stand, knowing nothing, believing noth- 
 ing, caring nothing. This book is true, or it is a 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 313 
 
 lie so stupendous that human thought never con- 
 ceived it; and it comes to us sustained by evi- 
 dences which to the common-sense of men must 
 prove it to be the work of God. Which is the 
 more probable ? On which belief is it safer to risk 
 eternity ? 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL 
 THOUGHT. 
 
 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of 
 man came with the olouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient 
 of days, and they brought bim near before him. And there was 
 given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, 
 nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an 
 everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his king- 
 dom that which shall not be destroyed, — Dan. vii. 13, 14. 
 
 ONE of the first signs by which a traveller in 
 Italy observes that he is approaching the 
 capital of the kingdom, is that all the guide- 
 boards bear its name. From whatever quarter 
 of the compass he journeys, and by whatever 
 highway, he sees at all corners the outstretched 
 finger, and the words, " To Rome." The people 
 have a proverb that " all roads lead to Rome." 
 
 Similar to this network of highways is the in- 
 ternal structure of the Bible. That, too, is covered 
 over by lines of suggestion, which all point one 
 way. They converge to one centre, and that 
 centre is Christ. A sample of this is found in 
 the text before us. 
 
 I. Let us first observe some of the details of 
 
 314 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 315 
 
 biblical truth in which this centring of revelation 
 in Christ is seen. 
 
 The first token of it which the reader of the 
 Bible discovers is the Old Testament doctrine of 
 the Messiah. From afar, back at the epoch of the 
 fall, down to the last of the prophetic ages, we 
 find the promise of the coming of a mysterious 
 being, of miraculous birth and strange destiny. 
 His life is to involve strange contradictions. He 
 is to retrieve, in some mysterious way, the disaster 
 of the fall. He is to engage in victorious conflict 
 with the powers of darkness, and set men free 
 from their dominion. Who he is, what he is, 
 whence he is to come, what is to be his rank, what 
 he is to do, how he is to live and how to die, are 
 at first only hinted at. The seed of the woman 
 shall bruise the head of the serpent. Then with 
 increasing clearness comes the promise to Abra- 
 ham. Then follow the types of the Mosaic ritual, 
 pointing to a distant future, and hinting at an 
 atoning tragedy. In the Psalms the great ad- 
 vent grows more resplendent : " Lo, I come : in 
 the volume of the book it is written of me." 
 Finally the prophets pour forth a low and tender 
 wail, as if chanting a funeral dirge over the de- 
 spised and rejected One, the Man of sorrows; 
 him whose visage was marred; in whom is no 
 beauty ; who should bear griefs not his own, and 
 suffer stripes for others' healing. Then suddenly 
 the scene changes, and the chorus swells and 
 
316 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 deepens into exulting and triumphal song of 
 the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Prince of 
 peace, the mighty God, the everlasting Father. 
 To a soul inquiring after God, the Old Tes- 
 tament seems to fill the air with these mysterious 
 responses. 
 
 A German astronomer, not long ago, called my 
 attention to the magnificent distances and the 
 sublime evolutions of the heavenly bodies. Said 
 he, " Up there in the December skies, I can see 
 something that seems to me worthy of an almighty 
 God. But when I come back from the stars to 
 your Old-Testament story about fire coming down 
 from the sky to burn up the fragments of a 
 slaughtered lamb, it seems to me very petty in 
 the contrast. I cannot help asking myself, ' What 
 can the God of the sidereal universe have to do 
 with that ? '" True, it is very petty till we dis- 
 cover in the bleeding lamb, on the altars of Judaea, 
 the symbol of the Lamb that was slain from the 
 foundation of the world. It is beneath the notice 
 of the God of the stars, until we discern in the 
 blood of the sacrifice a type of the blood which 
 was fore-ordained for the- remission of sin before 
 one star glistened in the diadem of night. 
 
 Take Christ out of the Old Testament, and the 
 student of astronomy may well scorn and scout 
 the whole story. Put back Christ into its pages, 
 and they glow with a magnificence which the 
 heaven of heavens cannot contain. Petty, is it? 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 317 
 
 That very homeliness of its details is the measure 
 of God's condescension. Thus he has come down 
 to the slow and patient training of a rude people 
 in a ruder age. Is the prattle of the nursery 
 degrading to the young mother who fondly studies 
 its meaning? What else marks the love of a 
 mother like it ? But for just such pettiness, what 
 would the world have ever known of Homer and 
 Plato? The Old Testament is simply the story 
 of the moral nursery of the race. In this one 
 fact lies the whole volume of reply to the carpings 
 of infidelity. 
 
 The second feature of the Scriptures which 
 exalts Christ as their central thought, is the New- 
 Testament doctrine of his sufferings and death. 
 Here, again, we find the same convergence of radii 
 to a centre. Let a philosophical critic, unac- 
 quainted with Christian history, read the New 
 Testament for the first time, and he cannot fail 
 to see that the one central character of the whole 
 is Christ. The central fact is the crucifixion. 
 The locality of most intense significance is Cal- 
 vary. The hero of the " Paradise Lost " is not so 
 clearly defined as is the centring of the New- 
 Testament thought in the person of Christ, and 
 in his tragic death. As patriarch and prophets 
 looked forward, so evangelists and apostles look 
 backward, to this one mysterious person, and pon- 
 der the unfathomable significance of his dying 
 words. Here is an event in the world's history, 
 
318 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 which, in the reach of its meaning, is highei 
 than heaven and deeper than hell. Around it 
 the New Testament is built. We do not find five, 
 three, two, events, from which to select its natural 
 centre. There is but one. Every other bends 
 to that as a tributary. Take that out of the New 
 Testament, and the significance of it is destroyed 
 as hopelessly as that of the " Paradise Lost " 
 would be if you eliminate the person of Satan. 
 
 A quality like that which science calls " aerial 
 perspective " pervades the book, by which the 
 light and shade of all other truths are magnified 
 or reduced by their nearness or distance of rela- 
 tion to this one, — that a man whom other men 
 understood to make himself the equal of God 
 died an ignominious death on the cross. Even 
 the letter of the volume hints at this. St. Mat- 
 thew begins with, " The book of the generation 
 of Jesus Christ; and St. John ends the vision 
 of the Revelation with, " The grace of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ be with you." The one image which 
 fills tip the whole interval between is Jesus 
 Christ. A hungering, thirsting, suffering, pray- 
 ing, dying, buried, rising, ascending, interceding, 
 reigning, exultant, and triumphant Redeemer, is 
 the one burden of the story. 
 
 This concentration of biblical thought in the 
 person of Christ is intensified further by the bib- 
 lical doctrine of the deity of Christ. About this 
 the Bible does not philosophize. It is presented 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 319 
 
 as a simple fact in the biblical disclosure of 
 Godhead. The Word was with God, and the 
 Word was God. He is the brightness of the 
 Father's glory, and the express image of his per- 
 son. With such declarations the fact is left in 
 its mysterious and sublime simplicity. 
 
 Men often ask us why we make so much of 
 Christ in our religious life. Why magnify so 
 loftily the name of Jesus ? Was he not a Naza- 
 rene? Was he not born of a woman? Was he 
 not the son of Joseph ? Did not a carpenter claim 
 his filial service? A precocious child, a wise man, 
 a teacher, an example, a good man, a martyr, a 
 man of mysterious command of supernatural 
 forces ; all that is good and great and amiable and 
 reverend, if you please : still, was he not a babe 
 in Bethlehem? Was he not swathed in a man- 
 ger? Did he not hunger? Did he not thirst? 
 Did he not slumber ? Did he not weep ? Did he 
 not confess his ignorance ? * Did he not die ? Did 
 not the grave claim him as its victim? Believe 
 him, then, pity him, revere him, trust him, love 
 him, obey him, stand in awe before the mystery 
 of his being, if you will ; but why worship him ? 
 Why pray to him ? Why make so much of him 
 as to exalt him to the ineffable and adorable God- 
 head ? Why turn away from the forests and the 
 oceans and the heavens, which speak so grandly 
 of Him who made them, to seek your God in a 
 dying man ? 
 
320 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Our answer is prompt and plain. It is, that in 
 this Man of sorrows, this despised, rejected, suffer- 
 ing, dying One, we discern a disclosure of God 
 of which Nature, in her most magnificent attire, 
 can give us not a hint or conjecture. We go to 
 Nature with souls burdened by the consciousness 
 of sin, and we get nothing from her that speaks 
 to our condition. Both the silence and the speech 
 of Nature send us away from her in despair. 
 
 What says the speech of Nature ? We ask her 
 to give peace to our troubled conscience ; and she 
 tells us how old the mountains are, and where are 
 the birthplaces of the rivers and the springs of the 
 sea. We entreat her to tell us how Ave can obtain 
 forgiveness ; and she discourses proudly to us of 
 gigantic flora and fauna, the buried races before 
 man was. We press the question, "How can 
 man be just with God?" and she shows us exult- 
 ingly the bones of the mastodon, and guesses 
 wisely at the skeleton of the ichthyosaurus. We 
 beg to be taught what we must do to be saved ; 
 and she turns to her telescope, and measures for 
 us exactly the mountains of the moon, and tells 
 us that its diameter is two thousand one hundred 
 and sixty miles. On bended knees we beseech 
 of her to reveal to us who shall deliver us from 
 the body of this death ; and she puts a microscope 
 into our hands, and asks us to count the teeming 
 population of an oak-leaf, and to observe what a 
 tempestuous ocean a drop of water is. We re- 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 321 
 
 spond, "Not that, not that; but tell us, oh, tell 
 us, before it is too late, how we shall escape the 
 damnation of hell ! " And she proceeds with 
 arithmetical precision to count for us the four 
 thousand facets in the eyes of a house-fly. 
 
 Alas ! what shall we do ? We turn away in 
 despair : we go mourning m'any days for the wis- 
 dom that shall make us wise unto salvation. The 
 depth saith, " It is not with me." The sea saith, 
 " It is not in me." 
 
 " It cannot be gotten for gold ; neither shall sil- 
 ver be weighed for the price thereof. The gold 
 of Ophir, the precious onyx, the sapphire, the 
 crystal, cannot equal it. No mention shall be 
 made of coral or of pearls. The price of it is 
 above rubies. Whence, then, cometh it? and 
 where is the place of it ? " We have heard poets 
 say that 
 
 "Nature 
 Never did desert the child that loved her." 
 
 But we do not find it so. We find that Nature 
 does desert one who inquires of her after a God 
 who can purify from guilt. To every such inquiry 
 we find her dumb. 
 
 When we get nothing from her speech, we inter- 
 rogate her silence ; and that we find more pitiless 
 than the grave. The silence of the rocks, and 
 the silence of the waters, and the silence of the 
 skies, all speak to us of Law. They proclaim, as 
 
322 STUDIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 the secret policy of God's government, immuta- 
 ble, merciless, damning Law. Every hint that the 
 silence of Nature gives to a scorpion conscience is 
 charged and surcharged with irreversible and end- 
 less doom. Interpreted by Nature's silence, the 
 worm dieth not. We see, that, if we suffer ship- 
 wreck, the waters drown us. If we are hemmed 
 in by forest fires, the flames burn us. If we seek 
 shelter under a tree from the storms of heaven, 
 the lightning strikes us. If we taste a poisonous 
 berry in the woods, disease consumes us. If we 
 fall asleep amid the fumes of charcoal, we never 
 wake again. If we give ourselves to strong drink, 
 hell gapes upon us before the time. Above, 
 around, below, within us, we find Law, Law, Law, 
 — nothing but Law. Our very being is an incar- 
 nate Law. We find no hint of such a thing as 
 escape from the vengeance of an outraged Law. 
 When did ever a law of nature lift a foot, or tread 
 more lightly, because a praying man lay prostrate 
 under it? Talk to Law of your sins, ask her 
 how you can be forgiven, and she laughs at your 
 calamity, she mocks when your fear comes. Law, 
 therefore, suggests an eternal retribution for eter- 
 nal sin. Why not ? If we are crushed and man- 
 gled under the avenging tread of Law in this 
 world, why not in another ? Who can tell us ? 
 
 Therefore it is that we turn in our emergency 
 to seek for some other disclosure of God, if haply 
 we may find it. Why may we not believe that 
 
CHEIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 323 
 
 we have found it in this revelation of God in 
 Christ ? Here we find a God who can pardon sin. 
 Herein is the love we need, that, while we were 
 yet sinners, Christ died, and died for ns. The 
 mystery of the God-man, the man-God, does not 
 balk us. Sin is itself an anomaly in the moral 
 universe. The forgiveness of sin is an anomaly 
 at, which angelic wisdom may well stand aghast. 
 At the spectacle of sin unpunished, thoughtful 
 intelligence, the universe through, may well trem- 
 ble for the stability of God's throne. Till now, 
 so far as we know, it has been unheard of in the 
 history of the intelligent creation. We should 
 expect the method of forgiveness to be full of 
 mystery inexplicable to finite wisdom. The mys- 
 tery of Christ is just like God, in such an anomaly 
 of his government. Enough for us is it that it 
 meets our case. Here God does speak to our 
 condition. He comes down to a level with us. 
 He takes our polluted hand within his own. He 
 offers to create in us a new heart. What more 
 can we ask for? We do not haggle about the 
 life-boat that comes to take us from a burning 
 wreck because we cannot make a life-boat. We 
 do not spurn the hand of the fireman who lifts us 
 from a blazing window because we do not see 
 how he got there. Suffice it that we can be 
 saved. We believe, we trust, we rejoice with joy 
 unspeakable. Therefore it is that this thought 
 of God in Christ has become so dear to his 
 
324 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Church. Therefore it is, that, for almost a thou- 
 sand years, the Church of every name, and in 
 many lands, has been singing the refrain of her 
 St. Bernard, — 
 
 " O Jesus, King most wonderful! 
 Thou conqueror renowned! 
 Thou sweetness most ineffable, 
 In whom all joys are found!" 
 
 And therefore it is that the Church of to-day 
 sends back her response to the ages, without one 
 jot or tittle of abatement from the ancient faith, — 
 
 "My faith looks up to thee, 
 Thou Lamb of Calvary." 
 
 The centring of biblical truth in the person 
 of Christ receives another, and, if possible, a 
 grander illustration, in the biblical doctrine of 
 Christ's mediatorial reign. This is the special 
 teaching of the text before us. It is but a hint 
 of a more resplendent revelation, which runs 
 through the whole history of redemption. This 
 " Son of man " in the night visions of the prophet 
 is he to whom " all power is given in heaven and 
 on earth. God has highly exalted him. At his 
 name every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, 
 and things in earth, and things under the earth." 
 
 We are not alone, then, in the interest we feel 
 in Christ. He is the centre of thought also to the 
 whole universe of mind. His is the empire of the 
 universe. Svmpathy with his work here is felt in 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 325 
 
 distant worlds. Principalities and powers in heav- 
 enly places stand in awe-struck study around this 
 one spot where the mystery of redemption is un- 
 folding. A strange gravitation draws them to 
 this one globe above all others in inhabited space. 
 Such is the impression which the biblical glimpses 
 of other worlds leave upon us. This is known to 
 the universe as the "world of the cross." Lost 
 spirits know it as the " world of the cross." Min- 
 istering angels know it as the " world of the 
 cross." We do not know that another such world 
 exists within the bounds of creation. If demoni- 
 acal alliances are formed against it, to clutch it 
 from the hands of its Redeemer, from holy worlds 
 come spiritual re-enforcements in innumerable bat- 
 talions to its rescue. Dr. Chalmers did no vio- 
 lence to the scriptural disclosures of the reign 
 of Christ, when he represented the worlds of in- 
 visible being as pulsating and growing tremulous 
 in sympathy with the conflicts of the cross. In 
 the biblical story of redemption our atmosphere 
 seems populous with spiritual legions, marching 
 and countermarching at the bidding of the Cap- 
 tain of our salvation. 
 
 My space will not permit me to do more than to 
 mention the fact that the concentration of revealed 
 truth in the person of Christ is further indicated 
 by the biblical doctrine of the eternal union of our 
 Lord with the redeemed in heaven. 
 
 II. Let us now observe some of the practical 
 
326 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 bearings of this pre-eminence of Christ's person 
 and work npon Christian faith and character. 
 
 1. It has an obvious bearing upon the propor- 
 tion and perspective of truth in a Christian's 
 belief. A religious creed may be made up of 
 truths, and yet not be truthful. It may be false 
 in its proportions. It may be delusive in its per- 
 spective. Some truths may be inflated, other 
 truths may be scrimped. The resultant creed 
 may be a monstrosity of distortion. Yet, taking 
 it in pieces, doctrine by doctrine, it may be that 
 not a falsehood is affirmed, and not a truth is 
 denied. In the old punishment by torture, life 
 was often racked out of the body by the mere 
 distortion of thews and sinews, yet not a bone 
 was broken. So a system of Christian faith, made 
 up of Christian elements alone, may be paralyzed 
 as a practical working-power by the sheer loss of 
 symmetry, without denying one truth, or affirm- 
 ing one falsehood. 
 
 This tendency to dislocation in religious belief 
 finds its most effectual corrective in the view we 
 have just considered. The first thing necessary 
 to the construction of a geometric circle is to fix 
 its centre. So in the adjustment of a biblical 
 faith, truthfulness of proportion depends on pos- 
 session of the right centre. That is presump- 
 tively the most truthful faith, therefore, which 
 works into the experience of the believer most 
 effectually the reality of the person and the work 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 327 
 
 of Christ. The biblical perspective exalts Christ. 
 So should the thought of a crucified Saviour be 
 the regnant thought in all Christian belief. 
 
 Christ thus enthroned in the believer's faith has 
 a marvellous power to rectify speculative vagaries. 
 It is difficult for such a believer to go wrong in 
 other elements of his faith. He is not easily 
 made a slave of crotchets. This single conception 
 of God in Christ is charged with a centripetal 
 magnetism which holds in obedient circuit around 
 it all other truths, as the sun holds the planets. 
 Let this one truth become regnant in the soul, 
 and all other truths fall into rank around it, and 
 turn inward towards it, as metallic particles do 
 when a magnet approaches them. The cross, the 
 cross, the cross, — this is the burden of inspired 
 wisdom, this is the creative and corrective force 
 in all Christian theory of doctrine. 
 
 2. The centring of truth in the person of 
 Christ should, furthermore, impart to Christian 
 experience a profound sense of the reality of God 
 as a personal friend. God in Christ is brought 
 home to the believer in these two aspects of his 
 being, — as a living person, and as a present friend. 
 In redemption we have to do, not so much with 
 a device of government, as with a personal Re- 
 deemer. Divines talk much of the plan of salva- 
 tion. Believers speak rather of the living One, 
 the chief among ten thousand. The object of 
 redeeming love is not man, but men ; not the 
 
328 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 race, but the man, the woman, the child. The 
 race, as distinct from the individual souls who 
 compose the race, is a fiction of the schools. An 
 intense personality characterizes the whole trans- 
 action by which the sinner becomes a child of 
 God. A personal Redeemer reaches forth, and 
 takes to himself the personal believer. 
 
 Our hymnology often penetrates our theology 
 more profoundly than our creeds can. Hence it 
 is that our choicest hymns of praise, those which 
 the Church seizes upon by intuition, and learns 
 quickly by heart, are many of them founded on 
 this sense of the personal possession of a personal 
 Saviour. 
 
 3. Another effect of the pre-eminence of Christ 
 in Christian faith should naturally be to render the 
 friends of Christ objects of personal and profound 
 affection. Profound affinity between the followers 
 of Christ is an inevitable sequence from profound 
 faith in him as the centre of all faith. It is the 
 instinct of a redeemed sinner to grasp the hand 
 of every other redeemed sinner. To identify him- 
 self with Christ's Church; to be known as one 
 on whom rest the vows of Christ ; to be called by 
 the name of Christ ; to make the interests of 
 Christ's friends his own interests ; to be loyal to 
 the Christian brotherhood, as to kindred blood, — 
 these are spontaneous impulses to a child of God. 
 Christians are his friends simply because they are 
 Christ's friends. 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OP BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 329 
 
 This experience is not cautiously reasoned out : 
 it is involuntary. A child of God no more asks 
 whether it is reasonable than he asks whether 
 it is reasonable to breathe. Spontaneously he 
 says, "Wherever I see a fellow-sinner clinging 
 to the cross of Christ, there I behold my father, 
 my mother, my brother, my sister. They may 
 be my inferiors in wealth, in culture, in social 
 rank : still they are my kindred. They may be 
 of a weaker race, and of a despised complexion. 
 The weight of the world's scorn, which centuries 
 have accumulated, may be upon them. Still they 
 are my kinsmen. They have been bought with a 
 price, as I have been. My salvation is of no more 
 value than theirs. It has cost no more : it is 
 worth no more. I fill no larger space in the 
 universe, as Christ regards it, any more than I 
 shall fill a more gorgeous grave, or moulder back 
 to dust in more magnificent or beautiful decay. 
 Oh, no, no ! The thing which distinguishes us 
 all is, that Christ has chosen us. This it is which 
 attracts to us the wondering gaze of spectators in 
 distant worlds. This it is which surrounds us 
 with a great cloud of witnesses. This is the 
 crown of our glory, — that the Lamb of God has 
 died for us, and the blood of sprinkling has been 
 shed for us. 
 
 4. It follows, also, from the concentration of 
 faith in the person of our Lord, that the chief object 
 of a regenerated life should be the object for which 
 
330 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Christ lived and died. The genius of Christian 
 living in this world is not mere philanthropy. It 
 looks beyond and above the objects of philan- 
 thropic reform. It seeks that for which Christ 
 died. No Christian life is true to itself which 
 is not in this respect one with Christ's life. Phi- 
 lanthropy may be very well so far as it goes, but 
 it is not necessarily Christian living. 
 
 The reason why religion and reform so often 
 drift asunder is not that religion does not sym- 
 pathize with reform, but that reform does not 
 sympathize with religion. Reform plants itself on 
 the temporal and earthly plane of benevolent 
 working, and then claims that religion shall ' come 
 down and work with it. Religion can only an- 
 swer, "I cannot come down. Mine is the pro- 
 founder reach into the heart of human woes; 
 mine is the more radical method of their remedy. 
 Come thou up, rather, and work with me." The 
 object for which Christ lived, the methods of his 
 procedure, the spirit of his dying words, — these 
 are the model of a Christian manhood to every 
 follower of Christ whose eye has not been hood- 
 winked in its perceptions of Christian duty and 
 of Christian privilege. 
 
 5. The ascendency of Christ in Christian faith 
 gives character to a Cliristiaris anticipations of 
 heaven. A system of religion may always be 
 tested by its theory of the rewards of virtue in 
 another life. The old mythologies told what they 
 
CHEIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 331 
 
 were in the picture of Elysian fields. Islam 
 proclaims its nature in its promise of a sensual 
 paradise. The Scandinavian faith has its Val- 
 halla. The North- American Indian has his happy 
 hunting-grounds. Last and least of all, poetry 
 and romance disclose their effeminacy in the doc- 
 trine of a " spirit land," of which nobody knows 
 the character. The Christian heaven is distin- 
 guished from them all by this one peculiarity, — 
 that Christ is there. There as here, Christ is the 
 centre of holy thought. Heaven needs no sun 
 or moon : the Lamb is the light thereof. 
 
 The single idea of meeting Christ, therefore, is 
 the chief thing that makes heaven attractive to 
 Christian hope. This it is that makes heaven our 
 home. We are not qualified to go there till this 
 thought does make it homelike to us. It is not 
 the hope of happiness as such. It is not the 
 thought of meeting patriarchs and prophets and 
 apostles. It is not the hope of becoming the 
 companions of heroic men who have suffered for 
 the truth. It is not the prospect of sitting at the 
 feet of Christian scholars, who may be still pur- 
 suing the researches in which they once fascinated 
 us here. It is not the anticipation of meeting our 
 favorite characters in history; the authors who 
 have instructed us ; the poets who have charmed 
 us ; the statesmen who have roused us to patriotic 
 deeds ; the preachers who have moved us by 
 words which we expect to remember there; the 
 
332 STUDIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 writers of our favorite hymns, which we hope to 
 have sung to us on our death-beds; men and 
 women of the past, for whose creation we shall 
 thank God forever, — it is not chiefly the hope 
 of meeting this noble company that renders 
 heaven attractive to Christian faith. 
 
 Nor is it the dearer hope of meeting our kin- 
 dred there, of breaking the long silence of their 
 graves, and hearing again loved voices, and seeing 
 loved faces, and grasping loving hands again. 
 No : not this is the central and regnant thought 
 of heaven, when we seem to draw nearest to it, 
 and to catch the reflection of its radiance on the 
 hills, or to hear the echo of its strains in the 
 midnight air. The thought which then entrances 
 us is simply that Christ is there. " I shall see 
 Christ. These eyes shall behold him. I, and not 
 another. I shall be fitted to look upon him with- 
 out shame. I shall be so changed that I can bear 
 the look of his pure eye. I shall be able to stand 
 erect in his presence. I shall have a crown to 
 cast at his feet. He will own me as his friend. 
 I shall reign with him. What that may mean, 
 I do not know, but he knows, and that suffices. I 
 shall be satisfied when I awake." 
 
 Such has been the thought of confessors of our 
 faith in all ages, as they drew near the confines 
 of that world. Martyrs, from St. Stephen down- 
 ward, have rejoiced in this vision. When one of 
 the most learned of the archbishops of England 
 
CHRIST THE CENTRE OF BIBLICAL THOUGHT. 333 
 
 was on his death-bed, and friends sought to com- 
 fort him by a review of his great and noble life, 
 said he, " Tell me not now of what I have done, 
 or of what I have been. Tell me of Jesus Christ. 
 I am going to meet him, my Lord and my God." 
 Another of England's sainted ones, well known 
 in her annals of Christian martyrdom, when the 
 flames wreathed themselves around his form, 
 seemed to see heaven opened ; and he could tell 
 what he saw there only in words of rapture: 
 " None but Christ ! none but Christ ! " 
 

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